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ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MOSH PIT

Spheeris: The mosh pit scene was the very first day of the shoot, so it was like throwing the baby in the river. It’s, like, “If you guys can do this, then you can do the rest of the movie.”

Cryer: I really felt like a pretender in [the mosh pit]. The closest I ever came to being in a mosh pit was when I went to a Public Enemy concert and, basically, the mosh pit came to me. I was in the back. I was not hoping to mosh, as it were. [Laughs.] But the mosh pit just expanded backwards into the back of the auditorium. A friend of mine was trying to protect me from the encroaching mosh pit by pulling me back by the collar, but he actually ended up knocking me on the ground and then stepped on my crotch by mistake. So that’s the closest I ever came.

Roebuck: The very first day of shooting the movie, we’re doing the scene with The Vandals, where they’re playing “I Wanna Be a Cowboy,” and we’re all excited about it…and those motherfucking punk rockers almost killed us! They were doing this slam dancing, and I was, like, “This is like being a Russian in Fiddler on the Roof: we don’t really fight, we just throw stuff down and stomp around and be all, like, ‘I hate the Jews!’” But, no, these motherfuckers were trying to kill us!

Cryer: That was a new experience for me. And when you’re in it, when you’re just bouncing off everybody and arms and legs are flailing, you can see the appeal of it. It’s like wrestling when you’re a kid. You get into the music, and if you get hurt, you just keep going, and you pretend you’re not hurt and that you’re enjoying it. But it really made me feel like, “I’m not sure I’m the right guy for this part...”

Jahnson: I was there for the Vandals’ performance. They had a pretty authentic dive-y shithole of a club set up, but it was actually in a soundstage somewhere, or some facility like that. I remember it being way downtown. I don’t know exactly where it was. But when I got there, I thought, “Oh, yeah, this looks good.” Of course, I didn’t have to jump into the pit. [Laughs.]

When I got on the set, I vaguely recall Roebuck coming over to me and saying, “Dude! We’re getting our asses kicked out there! This is really intense!” I said, “Yeah, man. Welcome to it!” That was pretty funny. I’ve been to a lot of hardcore shows, and…I was not a guy who was ever a skinhead or someone who was in the thick of the pit. But I always liked to be up close to the band, and you take your life and body up there, you take your chances. You get shoved and pushed around a lot. And a lot of those guys, they were fit. There wasn’t a lot of body fat on some of them. So I knew what to expect. I’d seen Fear, Dead Kennedys, and Black Flag. That was a lot of heavy stuff.

Roebuck: Jon and I went to the first assistant director [Guy A. Louthan], and I’m sure he just had a momentary lack of common sense, but we’re like [In a low, conspiratorial voice.] “Hey, these fucking guys are killing us, man. I don’t know what to tell ya…” And he goes, “Hold on, hold on, I’ll take care of it.” And he pulled out a megaphone: “Okay, all the punk rockers, over here!” Jon and I looked at each other. I didn’t know anything, but I knew that this was gonna be the last fucking thing I hear in this world. And he goes, “With the actors, can we please make sure that you don’t harm them?” So he essentially put the fucking mark of death on us. And the very next time we went in there, they were punching us, kicking us, biting us… And then we came out, and I was, like, “I don’t wanna go back in!” So Dan Bradley goes, “Let’s put in the stuntmen.”

So they put in the stuntmen, and these morons – and if you were on the set that day and you were one of the punk rockers in the mosh pit, I mean you – didn’t know that the stuntmen weren’t us. Everybody was so stoned and happy to be in the mosh pit that it didn’t occur to them that it was just guys dressed like us. So I know we have on film where some guy punches my stuntman from behind, and my stuntman turns around and punches him in the face…and the guy does down. It’s not in the movie, because you can clearly see that it was the stuntman punching him. But as I’m talking about it, I’m getting a little nervous just thinking about it. That was scary. That was one of the scariest things that ever happened to me in a movie.

Cryer: We were a little bit taken aback. There was no mosh pit scene in Godspell. Evita has no moshing whatsoever. By the way, I have injured myself in the theater. It happens! But, no, it was a unique perspective for us, shall we say…

But in the end it was fascinating to me, because I got to actually hang out with a lot of the extras, who were actual hardcore punks from downtown, and they were nice folks. And that actually took a little of my poseur fear off of me, because you realize that, yeah, they’re wearing a Mohawk, and yeah, they’re dealing with a lot of issues with their parents and their schools or whatever. But they’re kids just like everybody else. They’re just dealing with it in a different way.

Jahnson: You know, Penelope demands authenticity, so all those extras that were recruited for that, they were the real deal. They weren’t poseurs. I was, like, “Oh, these guys are the real deal, man. That’s good.” And to see Bob Richardson go in there with the camera, moving through it… I forget what rig he had, but he was right there in the zone, and I thought that rocked. I just thought that was great, to see that happening.

Cryer: Bob was thrown into the mosh pit with his focus-puller and just basically told to hope for the best. And he had just done Platoon with Oliver Stone, and he confided in me later, “This is worse, man. This is way worse!” [Laughs.]

Roebuck: When you’re on a movie and someone’s playing music, you expect to hear, “5-6-7-8,” and then you’re gonna start dancing. No, these fucking people, they were punk rockers! And, okay, before I was making jokes and trying to be funny, but the fact is, they were committed to a lifestyle that I was not committed to. I was committed to a lifestyle of living through that day and then getting through the movie.

But this was a dangerous situation. When you have people who have no regard for your safety… I mean, one of those guys could’ve broken my fucking arm on the first day! So that’s where you’ve really got to be careful with that stuff. I appreciate that we were in the middle of it, and I appreciate that they were living their life authentically. But I am still mad at all of them. [Laughs.] And if they’d all like to send me an apology, I’m willing to accept it.

CHARACTER EVOLUTION

Jahnson: If you read Jon Cryer’s book (So That Happened), he talks a lot about Dudes, and I guess at some point he felt, like, “I thought I knew what this character was about, and I thought I knew what the punk scene was about, but I wasn’t quite prepared for it.”

Cryer:  Grant’s journey as originally written was that he was a brooding, hopeless person who, through the course of trying to get vengeance for his friend, came into his own. That was the original thing. But brooding is just not my strong suit. [Laughs.] So in those first scenes, it’s really hard for me to extinguish all the hope that I have. It’s really difficult. Although Trump is helping.

Spheeris: Going into the movie, I didn’t really know Jon. I didn’t know him as a person. A lot of actors really play it so that they’re in character all the time, and you don’t know who they are. It’s freaky. I think Jon was a little uncomfortable doing some of the things he had to do. But he stepped it up and he liked the challenge of it. Getting to be the “hero” and a little bit of a bad-ass, it was totally off from what he had been portrayed as before. So he was down for it. Actors really love to reach outside the box they’re locked in. And so do directors, really. I mean, I didn’t want to have to keep doing comedies after I did Wayne’s World. But they wouldn’t let me do anything else, so I was stuck with it.

Cryer: Once Penelope cast me, I think she ended up with a different movie than was originally written. And I don’t know if that’s for better or for worse. I really don’t! I’m not sure I was the right guy for that. As an actor, I’m generally playful, and that’s part of my strong suit. Also an issue I have as an actor, which directors try to make good use of, is that you can see everything I’m thinking on my face. I’m not holding anything back. Molly Ringwald is wonderful because sometimes she’s inscrutable, and it allows the viewer to project onto her what she’s feeling. Clint Eastwood’s another one. And Harry Dean Stanton, God bless him. But I’m not that. And Grant was written more that. Penelope realized that she had a couple of jokesters on her hands – and Flea, by the way, is also hilariously funny – I think she realized that she had to go with what she had and make that movie.

Roebuck: I think I played what was on the page. I think I did. Grant was tougher, I believe, and Jon being a fish out of water… The way he was initially conceived was that he was a tough guy in New York who was also a tough guy in the west. I think why I liked what Jon did so much was because he was a tough guy in New York and then in the west he had to figure it out again. He had to take a step back and earn being a tough guy, which I think made for a much more interesting story.

I hope that I did exactly what Penelope and Randy wanted. I liked both of them very much, and I certainly would have wanted to please them and would want them to still be pleased years later. I mean, you don’t want somebody turning on their movie and going, “Oh, that’s right, I fucking remember now: Roebuck ruined it! I was wondering why I didn’t watch this piece of shit…” But hopefully that’s not the case.

Jahnson: Characters have to evolve. That’s just part of the evolution of any project as the creativity goes into it. You make adjustments as it goes along, and that’s how it evolves and morphs into something. That’s how sometimes screenwriters are shocked to see the final product: because it’s so different from the vision that’s been dancing around in their heads for years prior. But that’s the heat of the kitchen. That’s the nature of the beast, and if you’re not prepared for that, you need to be sweeping floors or writing novels or doing something different. Because it’s going to change.

And that’s part of the beauty of it as well, I’ve discovered. Because there are so many talented people that come in to make a movie, and they’re bringing their creativity and their vision and their resourcefulness to the project, and a lot of times they can bring elements to it that, as a writer, you’d never have imagined, and they only make it better. They only enhance it. They make it bloom. They really make it come to life. And that’s a thrill.

FINDING YOUR INNER NATIVE AMERICAN

Roebuck: Looking back at Dudes now, it’s woefully politically incorrect…and to that I say, “Bravo! Bra-fucking-o!” But the thing that makes people say, “Oh, my God,” it’s me dressed as a… Native American. Look, I almost said, “Indian,” but then I stopped myself. Whew, that was close! [Laughs.] But in 1986, we all said “Indian.” And guess what? I respected and loved the Native American people equally as much then as I do now, even if I said “Indian” then and I say “Native American” now. My respect and regard for them has not changed one iota.

That’s what makes Dudes interesting to me now. Randy and Penelope may disagree, but I think it’s got this thing that everybody would be afraid to put in a movie now, which is Biscuit’s identification with a culture that’s not mine. Now somebody at a studio level would say, “We’re uncomfortable with a white man suggesting that he understands the plight of the Indian.” And that would be fucking stupid, but that’s what they would say. But I like that, back then, Randy was, like, “Dude, I’ve got this great idea! This guy becomes an Indian!” And we were all, like, “Because he has a Mohawk!” And that was good enough.

Jahnson: I’ve always been a history buff and I’ve always been interested in native American culture, so going back to the tribal notion of this, I thought, “What if Biscuit gets hammered on the head and wakes up and thinks that he’s native American?” I thought it would be an amusing situation as well as something that would be cool.

Spheeris: Biscuit’s vision… It doesn’t make any sense, let’s face it. But I think it had to do with peyote or something. Here’s the thing, though: Randall’s, like, the straightest guy in the whole world. I mean, maybe back in the day he was dropping some L. I don’t know. But I think he was living vicariously or something.

Jahnson: I’ve been accused a lot: “How many drugs do you take? How many psychedelics have you really had?” [Laughs.] But Penelope was right: I didn’t really do psychedelics or much drugs of any kind.

Roebuck: In that dream sequence, I got really sick. The movie smoke then wasn’t like the stuff they use now. If you watch somebody vaping, what they’re really doing is sucking movie smoke into their lungs. But in the old days, it was what they called bee smoke, and it wasn’t something you plugged in, it was something you lit on fire and then wafted. It was really dark, and Bob Richardson really had it looking cool, but all that dancing in circles and breathing in smoke and peace pipes and whatever else was in that scene… That was a little hard.

Jahnson: The three guys who played the native Americans who were in Biscuit’s dream, they were really wonderful. Apesanahkwat was a Miniconjou Sioux from Minnesota, I believe. Arleigh Bonnaha was Yavapai from Arizona, and he’d been a rodeo clown and was fairly famous as one. And the other was named Redwing. Redwing T. Nez. He was Navajo. Redwing and I stayed in contact for awhile. He’s a really good painter. At one point I was back in Arizona and he took me to some very special sacred places that were on reservation land and weren’t open to the whites. I felt truly honored to be able to do that. I’ve lost contact with him, but I’d love to find him. I know he’s still out in Arizona somewhere. But those guys, we hung out quite a bit, and they were really just a lot of fun and just the coolest people.

Roebuck: The scene whenthey were pursuing me in the woods, the effects guys showed me how the arrow-shooting worked – they had a crossbow that was held down with sandbags that were moved at the appropriate time – and they were, like, “We’re gonna have you run through here, and then we’re gonna shoot this arrow.” And they built a wall so I wouldn’t overstep the mark, but I look at that now… I mean, if you look at it, you will think, “Only an idiot would let even the most Oscar-winning effects guy shoot a fucking arrow at his head!”

BIG HAIR, BROKEN BONES,

SHOOTING GUNS, AND SINGING “HAVA NAGILA”

Roebuck: Okay, so the hair…

Spheeris: It was written into the script that Biscuit had a Mohawk. I think it was, anyway. Now I can’t remember if it was Randall’s idea or mine. But I do know that when Dan came to the audition, he had done his hair up in a fake Mohawk, and I thought, “Oh, that’s pretty cool.” But it caused him a lot of misery through the whole shoot. He complained the whole time. They had to put extensions in. I can imagine it was very uncomfortable. Back in the day, the punks used to use egg whites and SuperGlue to keep their hair up. It’s not comfy!

Roebuck: I just directed a movie where the lead girl had to shave her head, and I was in the room with her because I remember how freaked out I was when this odd man cut my hair and then dyed it brown and white and yellow. And then I had to go down to this woman who matched what he cut and dyed, and she tied this other hair into my hair. So phase one of my humiliation was the cut, and I remember the guy who did it was unpleasant. I also remember that at one point I was getting a little air – it was at my apartment that he did all this – and he was, like, “Come back here!” And he started clapping his hands. And I was, like, “I don’t know how they do it in your country, but here we don’t clap our hands or snap our fingers to get people. We just call to them.”

Then I went to this magnificent woman named Sugah off of Wilshire Boulevard, and she did the weaving, as it was called. They say “weaving,” but what they mean is “pulling and fucking tugging.” That’s what they do. But if they’d called it “pulling and fucking tugging,” then nobody would’ve had it done. But you call it “weaving,” and you’re, like, “Oh, that sounds nice.” It’s not. It’s pulling and fucking tugging, and I swear to God, my bald spot is exactly where that pulling and fucking tugging took place. So I did not cotton to the haircut like other actors, where they’re, like, “Now I can get into character!” I don’t really do that. I don’t really bring that shit home.

Spheeris: Most of the time on a shoot, we have doubles of the cars we use. The Volkswagen was easy to double, which was good, especially since we had to crash it. We didn’t have a double for the Buick, but there’s an interesting back story on the Buick. I think it’s a ’63 or something, and I wanted that car because when I was just getting out of high school in ’63, my father let me take his brand new ’63 Buick down to the beach to hang out with my surfer friends in Huntington, and I rear-ended somebody and totaled the car. So that’s why I wanted to have that specific car. And we actually found one and put the bull horns on the front of it.

Speaking of the cars, though, that scene in the Volkswagen where they’re singing “Hava Nagila”? That right there is where the “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene in Wayne’s World came from. And I’m starting to deduce lately that that’s where Carpool Karaoke came from as well! [Laughs.] I don’t care about the residuals. I’d just like a little credit, you know?

Roebuck: There’s some confusion as to who thought up the idea to sing “Hava Nagila.” We all take credit for it. I thought it was me. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s a funny moment in the movie. But I don’t think the crew knew. I think that was part of it. If you watch that, by the way, Flea starts banging his head on exactly where my microphone is…and I hold his head so he stops hitting the fucking microphone!

Jahnson: You know, when you see Catherine Mary Stewart shooting in the film, that’s all her gunplay. She’s very proud of that. And that’s one little regret she has: there wasn’t a full shot of her doing the whole thing, all the spinning of the guns and the target practice. She had really practiced that and was very proud of that.

Stewart: The guy who was in charge of the guns had this apartment in Marina del Ray, in L.A., and I would go out there and practice. He taught me how to shoot properly, he taught me how to twirl the gun so it falls right into the holster… It was fun, and it was a cool learning experience. I also loved doing the horseback riding. I got to do my own riding, which I love doing anyway, so that whole scene where I’m riding with Jon Cryer, that was all me. But that one shot where I just gallop full-out toward the camera, that ended on an interesting note.

Jahnson: The day that I arrived on location in Arizona… I flew into Phoenix, rented a car, and I was driving up to Flagstaff where we were based…and I got a flat tire. And I’m literally in the middle of the high desert out there, and it’s a rental, and I could not find the frigging spare. I’m tearing the whole car up, I could not find it. So I said, “Oh, to hell with it!” I was so annoyed, because I was so looking forward to it. I wanted to get up on the set!

So I ended up hitchhiking – I remember this bus going by and all these kids laughing at me! – and this guy pulls over in a pickup truck and has me jump in, and he has a big crock pot sitting in the cab of the truck! He’s made his chili for the weekend because he’s going to his cabin in Flagstaff. I thought, “Okay, great.”

I finally get up there, I get to the Dudes office, which is at the Holiday Inn, and they get me out to the set, which was out in beautiful high country in Flagstaff. And I’m on the set for about five minutes when Catherine Mary Stewart goes riding by on a horse, and there’s an accident. She’s thrown off the horse, and she broke her arm. And I go, “Oh, my God! I’m a jinx!” [Laughs.] Oh, boy, she really took a tumble.

Stewart: The direction was to make a beeline for the camera and then just go off camera left, and get as close to the camera as you can. So I’m galloping across the field, and I see that somebody has pulled their jeep up right where I’m supposed to exit the frame, right behind the camera. I’m, like, “Well, what am I doing here? Do I stop and say, ‘We’d better start this again’?” I knew it was a long shot, and I knew they wanted to try and do it in one, so I thought, “Well, I’ll get past the camera and then I’ll just turn off to the left and get out of the way of this jeep.” So I went for it. But when we got to the jeep, this horse… These are trained horses, they know what to do. So instead of following my lead, which was to pull him to the left, he just stopped. And I did not. I went right into the jeep. And I broke my arm!

It was bizarre, because I fell, and I was fine other than using my arms to protect myself, and I thought I was okay. But they said, “Yeah, you’d better get that checked out.” And it really didn’t hurt until I was changing to go to the hospital and I put some weight on that arm when I was leaning against something, and it just went, “WAAAAAAAAH!” And my entire forearm… The bone called the ulna, it was completely broken in half. So for the remainder of the shoot – and I think I only had, like, one more day, so we were really lucky in that regard – I had this cast that you could take on and off, and I was pumped full of drugs.

Jahnson: God love her, what a trooper she was: she was literally back in the saddle the next day, finishing the shots. I thought that was pretty frigging amazing.

Cryer: Oh, my God! That was crazy! To be back up on the horse the next day, I was, like, “I’m not sure that’s right. Has anybody talked to the union?” [Laughs.] But she’s unstoppable.

Stewart: Well, yeah, you know, you’ve got to hang in there, man. It’s all for the good of the movie!

THE HEARTBREAK OF ASBESTOS

Spheeris: When we arrived in Arizona, it was just so jaw-droppingly beautiful. It’s just amazing there at the Four Corners. I had never been there, and I remember saying out loud to Bob Richardson, “All right! We’re going to kick Arizona’s ass!” And what happened was that Arizona kicked our ass. [Laughs.]

Cryer: We had huge production problems. We had horrible weather problems, we had to cut whole scenes, and we had to do all kinds of post-production, a huge amount of looping and sound work.

Spheeris: It was windstorms, sandstorms, rainstorms, snow, everything. Every natural weather event you could imagine, except for earthquakes. We didn’t have an earthquake. We just got closed down a lot by Mother Nature. And I was sure it was because I said that!

Tejada-Flores: When you go in and do this stuff in beautiful, weird, relatively-remote locations and challenging, cold conditions, the metaphor is true: making a film is like making a war and directing a film is like being a general. But Penelope is a fucking great general.

Spheeris: Generally, I was really thrilled to do this movie. The only two real stumbling blocks were the weather and the fact that Lee Ving wouldn’t come out of his trailer for the last scene.

VICE: So what do you recall about the scene that had to be rewritten as a result of asbestos rumors?

Lee Ving: Tell me about that.

VICE: Well, I guess you guys were going to film in some location…

Lee Ving: Oh, it’s starting to sound familiar…and I think I figured pivotally in this.

VICE: Uh, I would say “yes.”

Lee Ving: [Laughs.] I think I was what you would call the bone of contention!

Cryer: We were shooting in this huge, amazing-looking old building – I think it was a copper-smelting plant – and there was a huge pile of debris on one side of it.

Lee Ving: I remember someone telling me, “Yeah, man, that’s asbestos! All of it!” Somebody in the crew informed me, and I would never say who it was. Not then, especially, because I knew they’d get fired if anything happened over it. I was already committed to the film, so probably getting fired wouldn’t be one of the choices for me. But it’s not some star bullshit that somebody concocted to get the afternoon off or to get back to their dressing room so they could waste more time at the company’s expense instead of working. It’s a logical objection.

Cryer: With all of us tromping around in there, it could well have been dangerous to our health, and Lee… It was odd to come from him, because this was a guy who used to stab himself on stage and have people just enjoy the bloodletting, so I did have reasons to doubt that he was all about health and wellness. [Laughs.]

Ving: Armed with that information, I’m not going to risk my life or my lungs! I’m a singer. I depend on my lungs! I’m not going to risk that for any film project, I don’t care who it’s for or when or how much I believe in it or what the fuck ever. And it’s not fair to ask people to expose themselves to that.

Roebuck: I appreciate that he didn’t want anything to do with it, but what was confusing was that the building had no windows. They were all broken out. So there was no accumulation of any asbestos substance, because the building had been airing out for, like, 40 years! But no one was going to force him.

Ving: I don’t know who among the cast and crew knew about it, but when I found out about it, I spoke to everyone included in the scene, which I think began with Penelope, and said, “That’s asbestos, man, and I just won’t expose myself to it.” And I went back to my dressing room.

Tejada-Flores: Lee didn’t want to cut 20 years off his life by breathing asbestos. And, dude, that’s a totally rational objection which any human being would make. Except if you’re the producer, in which case you’re going, “Hey, fuck, get in there and do it anyway!” [Laughs.] Or you want to, anyway.

Spheeris: You don’t get steam coming out of your ears around Lee Ving. That’s just a bad move. You can either act hurt or try to talk some logic into him, things that are more calm. No yelling or screaming around Lee Ving. You’ll get your face smashed. [Laughs.] No, he wouldn’t actually hit you. But you’d feel like he did. He’d just kill you with words. So I begged and pleaded with him, but there was no dealing with it.

Cryer: I was willing to take a chance at the time. I was, like, “I don’t know it’s asbestos. It’s just a big pile of crud!” But you’ve got respect his decision: if he thought it was, it wasn’t worth screwing up his lungs. And that’s fair. But that did put quite a crimp into what we could shoot.

Spheeris: So we rewrote the ending. That was…tricky. But it was cool.

Jahnson: I had to leave the sets before they shot that, but I found out later that Lee was upset about the asbestos that was supposedly out there, and… Ugh, it just killed me! It short-changed the climax, which was much more of a showdown, a running gun battle through the interior of this old facility.

Cryer:  There was supposed to be a whole cat-and-mouse game inside the copper-smelting plant. And all we ended up with was two or three shots of us stalking each other, and then – boom! – he gets the drop on me, and that’s that.

Jahnson: So that was a bummer, yeah. I was disappointed about that. But that’s just stuff that happens.

Tejada-Flores: These are problems you face in every movie: how do you get it in the can, and what do you do if you run out of money or time? Given that, we did a really good job.

Ving: Sure enough, we continued filming, but that location was cut from the film, and whatever it was that we were doing in that room, we did it somewhere else later on. But like I said, it wasn’t an attempt to establish some power trip or something. It had nothing to do with that. I was just petrified that some of that could be ingested, and I was angry that I hadn’t been told about it. But we went from there, and from that day I don’t think anybody ever mentioned it again. I think we just moved to a different location and used the same dialogue. I don’t think very many people knew that it had even happened! But it was just one of those things that you have to do. You have to protect yourself.

THE CULT OF DUDES

Cryer: I was in the midst of starting to shoot Hiding Out, I believe, or we were in the midst or rewriting the script or something like that, and I believe I remember hearing that Vista – the company that made it – went under and was selling off its assets, and Dudes was one of them. And I remember hearing that, instead of getting a real release, it was going to get, like, two theaters – New York and L.A. – because whoever bought it was required to do that. And I remember being sad about that, because even though it was a quirky movie, there were so many things I loved about it.

I was actually in the midst of a bunch of stuff that went wrong. I shot Superman IV, which was just a fiasco, and I had shot Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home, which was originally called Homefront. So when I heard about Dudes, it really brought me down, because it really brought home the crushing truth, which was that right after Pretty in Pink I had made three movies which would barely see the light of day. Because I don’t get into movies that I don’t love. My very first job was on Broadway, and I saved my money. That was my whole thing: I always saved my money, so I never took anything for the money. Say what you will about how these movies came out, but there was always something I loved about them at the beginning. [Laughs.] Either I loved the script or I loved the people. So it’s very difficult emotionally when you see something you love go wrong, something you had high hopes for.

Jahnson: I can’t remember how the news came down. In those days, sometimes a film would get a small release, and they would platform it. If it found an audience, if it was getting some butts in theaters, then they might open it in a few more theaters, and maybe it would roll upward. It was a little bit like rolling uphill. But that didn’t happen. I don’t think they had much left for publicity on it when it was all said and done.

So, yeah, I was disappointed. But you take it in stride. Honestly, I didn’t have much time to feel terrible about it, because I was working too hard on The Doors. This was all in 1986, I think the film came out in ’87, but by that point I was just rolling on to the next couple of things. You try not to look over your shoulder too much. [Laughs.] What’s that lyric? “You keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel…”

Roebuck: Here’s the thing about Dudes: I think it just missed its moment in time. And I don’t mean that as any kind of insult. I think a year or two earlier, when the punk rock movement was hitting its apex, it would’ve been great. Maybe a few years later, when people in the ‘90s were already looking nostalgically back at the ‘80s. Maybe that would’ve made a difference. But you won’t find nicer people than the people who made it. I think we were aware that the company, New Century / Vista, they didn’t have enough hits to keep going. I just don’t think they had the pull to get their films into theaters.

Spheeris: I’m really astounded that, after all these years, this film is finally seeing the light of day, because it didn’t get a release back then. That didn’t get a release, Decline didn’t get a release. I mean, tiny, tiny, little VHS releases or something. The Boys Next Door, too. But now everybody wants to see them. Isn’t that weird? But that’s kind of a trend with my films.

I wasn’t good at knowing how to do it back then. It was before Wayne’s World, and… I have to tell you, by the time I did Dudes, I was kind of used to it. Because I had done Decline, Suburbia, The Boys Next Door, and a really shitty movie that Carrie Fisher was in, Hollywood Vice Squad. And I didn’t care back then, honestly. All I cared about was making the movie. I don’t think I started caring about box office until Wayne’s World, which was really stupid.

I don’t mean that Wayne’s World was stupid. I mean that caring about box office was stupid. That’s why now people go, “Hey, here’s our target audience, and here’s how much money we think this movie can make…” I’m, like, “Stop talking to me.” Because that’s not why you make a movie. You make a movie because you believe in the subject matter, you think it’s going to help or change the world a little bit, you think it’s going to entertain people for an hour and a half. You don’t sit down and go, “I’ve got to make some money. Let’s do a movie!” It just makes me mad. It’s the punk rocker in me. Punk never dies. It’s like a cockroach.

Tejada-Flores: It’s interesting when you create something which is more complex and bigger and interesting than you ever thought it could be. I mean, a fucking punk rock western? Give me a fucking break. How many people have made one of those? [Laughs.] Well, actually, nobody. We made the only one, I think! You can make an argument that Dudes is the only fucking one ever made.

Cryer: I didn’t notice that there was a cult following for the film until very recently, actually. I thought the thing was impossible to find. I had heard that it was on laser disc, and it may have been put out commercially on VHS for a very short period of time, but it was never popular. So I didn’t know that people had had a chance to see it at all. But the guy at my local hardware store said, “Hey, are they ever gonna put Dudes on DVD?” And I said [Startled.] “I have no idea!” But then I realized that I had one of the old VHSs, and I was having all of my family VHSs transferred to DVD, so I just had them do that as well, and I gave him a copy of my somewhat-cruddy VHS, and he was extremely grateful. But that’s about it in terms of my being aware of the cult aspect.

Spheeris: For me, it wasn’t a moment. It was a slow build-up that really came home when I started doing the theatrical tour with the Decline movie a couple of years ago. I would fly all over the United States to the art houses, and every time somebody brought up Dudes. “Where can we see Dudes? How can we get Dudes?” That’s when it really hit home. And I thought it had something to do with Jon’s success and his ability, but… I don’t know, I think it’s the weirdness of it all. You know, it’s a weird fucking movie! [Laughs.] And weird is a little more embraced now than it was in ’87.

Roebuck: I think the only thing about it that was disappointing was its reception at the time, so I’m pleased – and I think we’re all blessed – that there’s a resurgence and an interest in it, and people are going to get to see it. Despite whatever lukewarm reception it had originally, I know I bump into people all the time who ask about it, so I think that reception was because they couldn’t get it in enough theaters. Although I know it opened in a second-run theater here in Hollywood. Now that was disappointing…

Ving: The movie didn’t come out and take over the world, but I think it’s made a fair enough splash. It’s a cult film, and those go on forever. Hopefully it’ll at least keep sending Penelope enough money to be able to stick quarters in the laundry machine at the laundromat. [Laughs.]

Jahnson: It’s interesting: when I moved up here to the Portland area, I’ve met tons of people who are L.A. expatriates or whatever, and I met a guy who used to work in one of the great video stores down in L.A., and he used to work there with Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery, and he said, “Oh, yeah, we used to play Dudes a lot! You know, Quentin really loved it. It was just his type of film.” It’s such a weird mash-up of sensibilities, but he said it was totally something they were playing.

So that was a little bit of an indication that there was life in it, and then with the rise of the internet I’d occasionally start seeing little clips that people had found somewhere, and people were talking about it occasionally. I’d run into people who’d say, “Oh, I loved that movie when it came out. Where is it? How can I see it again?” And I’d have to shrug and say, “I don’t know!” [Laughs.] So I’d heard these rumblings, and I’d had these little indications that there was a tiny little flame burning out there. Is it a bona fide cult film? I don’t know what the criterion is for that. I’d like to think so.

Stewart: The audience is passionate about it because it’s so weird. That’s what makes these little movies so interesting: going out on a limb, pushing the boundaries, that makes the audience it garners passionate about it. They like odd stuff. They don’t want to have to fit into a box themselves. I’ve done a few movies like that. Night of the Comet is similar: it has an audience that’s passionate about it, but it doesn’t fit into a neat little package, either. I go to these conventions and people come up and say, “Oh, my God, I love Dudes!”  And I’m, like, “That’s great!” [Laughs.] So it’s been a slow progression and…almost a rebirth.

Roebuck: It was a strange experience watching it relatively recently. I hadn’t seen it in 20 or 25 years, and Jon and I, when we saw it together at UCLA… I mean, I’ve never laughed so much, only because we were both… [Hesitates.] I don’t want to say “embarrassed by it,” because we weren’t, but it was odd. We were so young – it feels like we were children – and we’re up there saying dirty words. Yeah, it was very odd.

Cryer: Interestingly, in talking with Penelope and Dan when we were doing that panel at UCLA, I realized it was the movie shoot I enjoyed the most, just in terms of sheer pleasure. Even though it was troubled, even though I felt kind of at sea as an actor, Penelope was so much fun to work with, as were Dan and Flea, Randy Jahnson and Miguel Tejada-Flores were lovely, and we were shooting in the middle of Arizona and reenacting all these great cowboy moments… Despite everything, it was just an incredibly joyful time.

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