Jim McMahon, Lou Reed, Sandra Bernhard: Studs of scooterdom.
Fisher Stevens?
Maybe. It is a Thursday and Stevens–Chicago native, master dialectologist, Cub fan–is mugging for a photographer outside WBBM`s Streeterville studios, where he just followed the just-fired Cubs manager Jim Frey as guest on an afternoon radio show.
He spots a parked Honda motor scooter–the bike style of the hip and famous and the subject of a ubiquitous TV ad campaign. Mounting the trendy two-wheeler, Stevens flips down his shades and, with aplomb, generates some outrageousness of his own.
Then, comeuppance. A passerby, catching the act, figures the brown-haired guy in the big orange Nikes must be Somebody, but he can`t figure out who. So he puts the question to Stevens.
”I`m taking Jim Frey`s place,” Stevens says. No reaction.
”I am the greatest Shakespearean actor,” he tries–this time adding the clue of a Hindi inflection to his voice.
Even when the inquisitor is told outright about Stevens` current film role–as the testosterone-ridden, malaprop-prone Indian scientist who walks away with the hit comedy ”Short Circuit”–he still looks blank.
That, for a 22-year-old actor knocking on stardom`s door, is life. Although he is beginning to bring on some heat of his own, Stevens still doesn`t sizzle on the scale of, say, Honda`s cast of supernovas. He`s sitting on a sleek scooter, but it`s tethered to a pole.
Stevens` engine, however, is most definitely in gear. With some 2 1/2 years playing the lead kid in two of the hottest Broadway productions of the
`80s, ”Torch Song Trilogy” and ”Brighton Beach Memoirs,” he possesses a theater creed as strong as any actor his age.
He has sparkled in small roles in such well-received films as ”The Flamingo Kid” and John Sayles` ”The Brother From Another Planet,” and he`s weathered duds, ”The Burning” and ”My Science Project.”
In the robot comedy ”Short Circuit,” he`s finally landed a big role in a Big Hit Movie. He`s listed third in the credits, behind only ”Police Academy” megadraw Steve Guttenberg and leader of the Brat Pack Ally Sheedy. And, even though he delivers the bulk of his lines from the passenger seat of a van, almost all the laughs that go to humans go to Stevens.
For the arbiters of celebrity at People magazine, all of this added up to a June 16 Fisher Stevens write-up in the section titled ”Lookout–a guide to the up and coming.” Varoom.
But back in Chicago to visit his father, a local businessman, his sisters, and some old friends, all that star stuff is secondary.
Dressed L.A. casual–faded 501 Levis, aqua tank top under white button down, two left earrings and a white leather jacket–Stevens has just finished interviews with WBBM-AM`s Sherman Kaplan and, earlier, WGN`s Roy Leonard and now is heading to the East Bank Club with a newspaper reporter and his gym bag.
He`s more interested, however, in seeing the Tom Waits play ”Frank`s Wild Years” at Steppenwolf, going to the Cubs doubleheader the next day at Wrigley, and hanging out with a friend since nursery school named Todd Feldman.
On the drive over to the health club, where he`ll pump a little iron
(he`s started working with a trainer, he says), Stevens tells Feldman that on Leonard`s show, ”I was talking about Glenn Beckert,” the former Cubs`
infielder, ”the whole time.”
”Glenn Beckert works down at the board,” says Feldman, 22, soon to be a commodities trader.
”No,” challenges Stevens.
”Yeah. He trades, uh, wheat.”
”Are you serious? Do you see him every day?”
”Not every day,” Feldman responds. ”But when I go in the trading room, I see the guy.”
”Sh–.”
Born Steven Fisher, Stevens says he grew up, in Hyde Park, Highland Park and Evanston, wanting only to be Beckert: ”He was my idol.” His parents divorced when he was 13, Stevens recalls, and ”my mom said, `We`re moving to New York.` And I didn`t want to go.”
An out-of-work actor who Stevens` mother was dating at the time convinced the would-be Beckert to trade fastballs for footlights, the Midwest for Manhattan, and become an actor.
”When he said it to me it just clicked,” says the kid, who remains just the way his father remembers him: ”precocious and effervescent.” His father is chauffering his son around Chicago this day.
Stevens` mom`s friend ”just said, `You can do this. You can be an actor, and you can be on TV, and you can be in the movies, and you can do it, and it`s not hard.` And I said, `Okay.`
”And then it was very hard.”
His first film role, at 16, was in the slasher flick ”The Burning,”
where the script called for Stevens to sacrifice his face and fingers to Art. ”It was horrible,” he says.
He spent one year at New York University, and, at 18, got his big break:
He landed the role of Harvey Fierstein`s gay son in ”Torch Song Trilogy,”
staying for 544 performances–”too long,” he says now. Two days later he replaced Matthew Broderick as Neil Simon`s alter-ego in ”Brighton Beach Memoirs.”
The rest quickly followed, and now, he admits, ”it`s working out.” In a big, aerodynamic way.
His career, Stevens says, is moving ”really nicely. It`s gone really slowly and up, and I hope it just continues to go up slowly, because then you don`t burn out. You get to do a lot of good work and you don`t burn out and people don`t see you in one way or in one light.”
To keep stretching, to keep working and to bide his time waiting for an interesting film role, he currently is rehearsing in Los Angeles for an experimental (i.e., the actors go unpaid) play that will open there July 4, called ”Violence.”
In ”The Boss`s Wife,” the adult comedy he has just finished filming in L.A. that opens this fall, Stevens plays another ethnic type–Carlos, a Mexican photgrapher–alongside Daniel Stern and Christopher Plummer.
As he did in ”Short Circuit,” Stevens speaks his ”Boss`s Wife” lines with an accent.
”I`m not like a Rich Little, where I can imitate voices,” he says,
”but I can emulate dialects”–well enough so he`s been asked to interview for another role as a Mexican, something he says he`s not even interested in for fear of getting typecast.
Stevens, who describes himself as ”hyperactive,” maintains a wish list a mile long: He says he`d like to play Richard II, work with director John Sayles again, study Shakespearean acting in London, speak French fluently, read all of Hemingway and Dickens, direct plays, do a chase scene in a movie, work with Dustin Hoffman: ”There`s a lot I want to do.”
His immediate goal, however, is to land ”a lead in a dramatic role, or a lead in a comedy role. It`s the next step. You can just play sidekicks for so long without getting too totally bored.
”I mean, I`m looking for something now to play different, and I`m going to try and hold out–unless I run out of money and have to take something else. But right now . . .”
He pauses. ”I`m doing fine. I`m cool.”
