What Is Jeff Bridges Afraid Of?
Jeff Bridges lives in the hills above Malibu. He lives with a steady woman friend who feels that she has been portrayed as a “piece of ass” in previous interviews, and therefore is not present and Jeff will not discuss her. The house is all wood and glass and overlooks the Pacific. There are dogs and cats and plants and big comfortable couches all about. Jeff is dressed in shapeless green slacks, a faded Hawaiian tourist shirt and huaraches. He is cleanshaven and his shoulder-length hair is tied back into a neat ponytail. Occasionally he rolls a mixture of Thai stick and home-grown.
“Last night all these things started to come together, important shit, and I thought, ‘Oh God, I’ve got this interview tomorrow and everybody’s gonna know what I am and I don’t even know what I am and I don’t know if I want to expose what I don’t know I am.'”
Some of the things coming together involved decisions. Should he release the album he spent five weeks working on? Did it need more work? Maybe he could release “Kong.” The song is his version of how the movie might have been, but would people think he was just cashing in on the movie? He had to appear on the Dinah Shore Show to promote King Kong. Most important, he had a new film coming up in 10 days.
The film is called Winter Kills and it’s loosely based on the Kennedy assassinations. Bridges plays a man who would be John Kennedy’s stepbrother, if he had had one. The movie is set 10 years after the assassinations and, as new evidence emerges, the stepbrother begins to follow through. “The thing about the script that hooked me,” Jeff says, “is that it’s about taking responsibility for who you are and what you’ve been given. And that’s one of the reasons why I decided to do the interview. This morning when I called you back I thought, ‘Shit, I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. I can make this anything I want it to be … I can do anything, except go crazy and lose my head about it. . .’
“It’s like my writing, the stuff you asked to see. I sent over some of it last night and I thought, ‘Oh shit, I don’t want anybody to see this.’ That’s the thing. I’d like to see it in the article, but it isn’t right. It isn’t developed. It’s not time. I’m afraid I’ll blurt it all out and blow it prematurely.
“I would like people to know me as I am. I think each person’s life is an art piece, each person’s life is a poem. Or a nightmare, sort of.” It is a peculiar verbal habit Jeff has, this use of “kind of” and “sort of” to deflate his best lines. It is as if he’s afraid of sounding too articulate. “I remember I did this one interview in which I talked about how I think love and hate stem from the self.”
As an example, Jeff had said he hated himself for using his father’s name to get work in film. Though he was probably overstating the case — just searching for an example, really — it is true that being one of the Bridges didn’t harm his early career. His brother, Beau, nine years older than Jeff, had been a child star in the 1949 version of The Red Pony. Whenever the producers of Sea Hunt, the long-running Lloyd Bridges TV serial, needed a towheaded youngster in peril, they called on Beau, Jeff or their younger sister, Cindy. Lloyd’s agent handled Jeff, and he landed him parts in TV doctor shows and series such as The FBI or Lassie.
Beau resumed his film career in ’67 with The Incident. Jeff appeared in his first film, Halls of Anger, in 1970. In 1971, Jeff was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in The Last Picture Show. His roles after that in such films as Bad Company, Fat City, The Last American Hero, Hearts of the West and Stay Hungry were landed on the strength of his acting, certainly not his name. “Still,” Jeff says, “all the interviews I have end up talking about my self-hate.”
In the midst of this conversation Kenny Lauber, the man who is producing Jeff’s record, stopped by. Kenny had been present at Jeff’s 27th birthday party that Saturday, and he was still chuckling about what had happened. A friend had made a moving speech about friendship and when he finished, someone set the cake in front of Jeff in a sweeping, elegant gesture. Jeff took the cake and completed the gesture by smashing it in his face. Kenny and Jeff laughed over that one quite a bit and when I expressed some bewilderment, they assured me that it was one of those things where “you had to be there.”
We talked a bit about Jeff’s past, and there is a common thread . . . catharsis and the need for a father figure . . . that winds itself around the things he chooses to remember best. “When Dad scored with Sea Hunt we moved from Vista Mar to Westwood. I went to Uni High and got pretty tight with this guy Caldwell Williams. He was running one of these groups where you could get together and discuss drug problems. I’ve always been a pothead, but I didn’t have any real big drug hassles. Speed was the problem then. But this turned out to be a place where you could work through other hassles too. It was like an encounter-group situation and a lot of the real problems had to do with love and not getting enough love. It was a safe place to do some experimenting on yourself.
“We used to have these marathons where we’d go somewhere and we wouldn’t sleep for three days. Remember we were talking about fear? So long as you keep up the front, keep your smile, you’ll be cool. Just turn on that light. But that takes rest and stamina. After a while without sleep you don’t have the strength to keep up those walls. Anyway, we had a marathon in the high desert at a Benedictine monastery and there was this young seminarian there who sat in with the group. About the third day I was bored and I walked outside with this kid. We started talking. I felt he was into the group and that he wanted to express his feelings about spirituality, but that he just couldn’t do it. I came back into the group and all of a sudden I felt really bad. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I felt so fucking sad. And Caldwell said, ‘What’s going on with you Jeff?’ And I said that I felt sad. Then someone said something to click it off: ‘You’re always so happy,’ or ‘That’s bullshit.’ I don’t even remember, but I just went into a convulsion. I was spewing laughter and sobs and shaking and I really didn’t know what it was. It lasted between 15 minutes and a half an hour. I either passed out or fell asleep.
