Last night, my friend Ben texted me about the Patriots' come-from-behind win against the hapless Bills. He wanted to share with me the many wonders of Tom Brady. I texted back: "Can't talk right now. Patrick Swayze died." The news hit me kind of hard, although it wasn't exactly a surprise. Swayze had been battling Stage IV pancreatic cancer for more than a year. It was impossible to avoid Swayze as a kid. The man was practically everywhere, starring in such classics as "Red Dawn," "Youngblood," "Road House," "Dirty Dancing," "Point Break," and "Ghost," among other quality flicks. Like just about every other person of my generation, I've probably seen every Patrick Swayze movie ever made. Well, not all of them. This strikes me as odd for a number of reasons. Most notably, his movies centered around ridiculous plots, and he was kind of a bad actor, which is why almost all of his films were, in a word, fucking awesome.
Patrick Swayze was probably the best bad actor of his generation. Although he earned three Golden Globes nominations for “Dirty Dancing,” “Ghost,” and “To Wang Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar,” Swayze seemed to conquer Hollywood, however briefly his reign, in spite of his limited range as an actor. His celluloid success didn’t exactly stem from a keen sense of craft. I can’t exactly envision him, for instance, creating a back story for Bodhi or Dalton or Jed Eckert, probably because these characters were there for one reason and one reason only: to kick some ass. No, Swayze's talent existed almost exclusively in his ability to look past the underlying silliness of his characters, and just go for it. Swayze, at least for a moment, believed he was Bodhi. He believed he was Dalton. And you damn well know he believed he was Johnny Castle.
How else can you explain pulling off the following lines?
“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
“Pain don’t hurt.”
“Ditto.”
“100 percent pure adrenaline.”
An actor better commit to these lines, or the scene's going to end up an absolute train wreck. Which other actor could have made a career out of these unmistakably terrible lines? Each one, though, shoots right to heart of each movie: a young girl’s coming-of-age; one man’s fight for justice (and an honest bartender); everlasting love; to thine own self be true, brah. As disposable and risible as these lines are on the page, Swayze somehow made them believable, palpable, classic.
