The Angry Zen of Matt Dillon

Actually, all protestations aside, Dillon has done quite nicely with the retelling of his discovery story and in more detail, he says, than ever before ("I gave it to you better than I gave it to anybody"). But that's the way he is: Get him going and he easily loses himself in the drama of it all. When he says, "Nobody wants to be called that shit," he spits the line out, like he's right back there. His big bushy brows twitch with dismay, his rock-solid chin grows even more rock-solid. You have to watch out with Dillon, however, because if you give him too much slack, he'll turn all poetic on you and start talking about "the sad grandeur of Manhattan" and quoting haikus by Jack Kerouac (" 'The lonely businessman walks across the football field at night,' or something like that"). In fact, he can be exceedingly long-winded. A story he tells about going to L.A. at the age of fourteen to work on Over the Edge, for instance, ends up involving the Chateau Marmont hotel; Walter Matthau and Shelley Winters (who, he says, "kept calling me Malcolm. 'Malcolm.' Over and over again. I kept telling her, 'It's Matt.' 'Malcolm. Malcolm' ") and the old McCarthy blacklist; Lana Turner and Schwab's Drugstore, "which is now the Virgin Megastore"; "a magician on Hollywood Boulevard -- I stayed on the guy's sofa"; cops who say, "Kid, why aren't you in school?" and then proceed to haul him downtown and say, "OK, punk, how many times you been down here?" and "We know how to deal with punks like you," and him saying, "I'm here making a movie!" and them saying, "What, a skin flick?" and finally letting him go, and it all being "really interesting now that I play this cop in Crash, because I had my own prejudices that've been there since that trip"; food at the legendary Musso & Frank Grill; a visit to his manager Vic Ramos' office; a cup of coffee; a sighting of Richard Gere and "all the beautiful women, too old for me," although at the age of nineteen, he did have a twenty-nine-year-old girlfriend; and so on, etc., at the end of which he sits back in his chair, refocuses on the present, including his order of little big clams, and says, "Anyway, it's nothing that interesting to talk about."

For the most part, he's right about that. The main problem is that he never gets to the point, or maybe the point is so submerged it's beyond understanding by anyone but him. But does that deter him? No, it doesn't. He's relentless like that, when he wants to be.

How old were you when you lost your virginity?

"I was young. I'm not going to talk about it."

You aren't?

"No."

But just the age?

"I'm not telling you the exact age."

Get out of here!

"OK," Dillon says. "I was fourteen. To my first girlfriend. And all I can tell you is, she was hellbent on marriage, maturity and disco, and I was the antithesis of all that. Rock & roll. Led Zeppelin. The Who. Still, we were young, and I loved her."

And he's apparently loved a lot since then, too, especially during his early days of living in Manhattan, when he really got around; indeed, about seven years ago, one local twinkie said, "Ask any attractive girl in her late twenties in Manhattan, and she'll tell you a Matt Dillon story." This is something Dillon doesn't mind talking about, however.

"At one point," he starts off, "I was going out with this semifamous actress, real trouble, and we had a really weird relationship, and I was just crazy about her. But she left me high and dry right before Christmas, and for the next year this friend and I just hung out at this place called Blanches, on Avenue A, playing pool, and it was like we were on a pirate ship. Very roguish. Hard-charging, total womanizing and debauched bohemianism. I mean, I definitely needed help.

"But that was then," he goes on. "That was another time. Certain things I did I would never do now. Like, in the back seat of a moving taxi going up Sixth Avenue. It's totally dangerous. You put your seat belt on now. Back then" -- he smacks his hands together -- "you got busy. Those, ha-ha, are the subtle distinctions between then and now."

So you're no longer a womanizer?

"I don't even like that word. Bukowski always said a womanizer is a guy who leads a woman on and breaks her heart. That's not what I was."

What were you?

"I don't know. Just a young guy enjoying New York." He pauses, waiting to see what occurs to him next. "I mean, there was one time I knew I was going to score with this girl, because I sort of provoked her, needling her, and she slapped me. That was it. I knew I was in. I could see she had that fire. And she was hot. Actually, there were three of us that hung out together. One guy was Sloppy, one guy was Shaky, 'cause he used to shake a lot, and one was Slappy. I was Slappy. They were insane, silliness, wild times, drinking until the sun came up and, again, a long time ago. It's less like volume now and more like meaningful one-night stands that happen again and again. Some people might call them booty calls. No. Ha-ha. That's not right. But you know what I'm saying," he says, and you kind of do and you kind of don't, which is how Dillon sometimes likes to play things, making himself hard to pin down, which may also partially explain the demise of his three-year relationship with Cameron Diaz.

"It had to do with geography and just, you know," he says, uneasily. "When something isn't happening -- look, I loved her and we were very close, but it just ran its course. We're both actors, she was living in L.A., and I was living in New York, and I didn't want to commit to moving out there. But I don't want to say it was about any of those things. It just ran its course," he says again. "You know?"