THE JET’S WINDSHIELD SHATtered at 45,000 feet. Without warning. Three hours over the Atlantic. They could press on for Europe or make an emergency landing in Maine. Only one man could make the call: Sylvester Stallone. ““Should we go on? We might make it’,’’ the pilot shouted. ““Or we could turn around and go back to Bangor.’’ Stallone thought of his girlfriend, his daughter and, strangely, of Woody Harrelson. Harrelson had skipped the flight at the last minute. Stallone could imagine tomorrow’s headline: HARRELSON MISSES STALLONE DEATH FLIGHT. The pilot was waiting. ““I said, “Death? Bangor? Death? Bangor? Let me think about it’,’’ Stallone said later. "” “OK, we’ll go back’.’’ On the way to Maine, Stallone called Jennifer Flavin from the Gulfstream. ““I love you so much,’’ he told her. ““Come over to London with the baby. We’re going to get married on Saturday.''
What a wuss! Couldn’t Stallone have leapt from the plane and landed on a passing jet? Or is that too Schwarzenegger? In any case, there’s even more surreal news on the Stallone front. When his jet ran into trouble, he was on his way to the Cannes Film Festival to talk up the reportedly troubled ““Cop Land,’’ in which he plays a timid, partially deaf sheriff who, as far as we could tell from advance footage, blows absolutely nothing up. Stallone gained 40 pounds for ““Cop Land,’’ which also stars Method heavies Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel. Does he regret his years as a groundbreaking action hero? ““Partially,’’ he told NEWSWEEK, suddenly thoughtful. ““I had no idea that Rambo was going to become part of the lexicon. Every time a guy grabs a gun, they say, A Rambo-like assassin went nuts and shot everyone in the post office. So that’s kind of a problem, but it’s been a very good career.''
Well, not lately. As Stallone joked in Cannes, "” “Gandhi’ made more money than my last three pictures.’’ The truth is that, where action heroes are concerned, Hollywood is attempting a changing of the guard. Stallone and Harrison Ford are both in their 50s, Arnold Schwarzenegger turns the corner in July and Steven Seagal isn’t far behind. Ford and Schwarzenegger will produce many more blockbusters, including this summer’s ““Air Force One’’ and ““Batman & Robin.’’ Still, as one head of production puts it, ““you can’t be 60 and sit around saying, “I’ll be baach!’ ''
So Hollywood is recruiting new action figures for its biggest-budget pictures, the theory being that Tom Cruise cannot star in all movies all the time. Action pictures, of course, are the movie industry’s prime export. Even a Stateside flop like Stallone’s ““Daylight’’ can make $120 million abroad. What the studios are finding as they attempt to repopulate action movies is that American audiences, at least, are bored with the soulless big bang, and that young actors are, too. In March, a front-page Variety headline begged, WHERE’S THE ACTION? GENRE STARVED FOR NEW FACES, FORMULAS. This summer Will Smith (““Men in Black’’), Jason Patric (““Speed 2’’) and Nicolas Cage (““Con Air’’ and ““Face/Off’’) are the latest twenty- and thirtysomethings to ride to Hollywood’s rescue. This fall, even the ever-corseted Winona Ryder gets physical in ““Alien Resurrection’’ (page 75). Says Cage, ““I wanted to try something new with the genre, to sort of redefine the action hero as a sensitive man.’’ Ford actually worked that miracle already, but Cage’s peers have a similar mission in mind. They’re going to fix action movies - or get rich trying.
What’s interesting about this summer’s list of young heroes is not just who’s on it, but who isn’t: Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves and Johnny Depp. Their ambivalence about fame is well established. But it’s too simplistic to say they don’t want to be superstars; what they really don’t want is to trade their souls for box-office receipts. If you’re a thirtysomething star, you entered your teens in the mid-’70s, precisely as De Niro, Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman were giving some of their most astonishing performances and blurring the lines between character actor and leading man. Now you yourself are famous at a time when fame has less to do with credibility than ever before. You’re almost as obsessed with depth - and as wary of commerce and artifice - as your peers in Pearl Jam. They want you to be another Terminator? He was a robot, for God’s sake.
Reeves’s fine, minimalist performance in ““Speed’’ was a benchmark for his generation. And his decision not to make ““Speed 2’’ was a benchmark as well. One top executive calls it ““one of the dumbest career moves I’ve ever heard of.’’ A bad career move? Heaven forbid! A source says Reeves simply didn’t like the script, and you’ve got to admire someone who wouldn’t be swayed by a studio’s money or even its wrath. Pitt has never done a full-blown action movie, though he’d be worth $20 million. Depp tried wielding a gun in ““Nick of Time.’’ The movie flopped, and he returned to his brilliantly eccentric career. Even the new boys of summer are ambivalent about action movies. ““The majority of them stink,’’ says Patric, who’s Sandra Bullock’s new beau in ““Speed 2.’’ ““They’ve replaced the Western, and just like with Westerns there are a few good ones and tons of cruddy ones. People say, “Do you worry about going into a sequel?’ But they’re all sequels. It’s all the same formula. They want to translate it all over the world, so dialogue doesn’t matter.''
Patric says he signed on for ““Speed 2’’ partly because Jan De Bont is one of the most influential directors around. Almost everybody’s got an explanation - or an excuse - for getting in on the action. We’ll spare you all the quotes about what a rush it is to do your own stunts. Smith, for one, seems unapologetic. His unabashed glee in the sci-fi comedy ““Men in Black’’ is a godsend in this age of action-hero Hamlets. (Smith’s character, like his counterpart in ““Independence Day,’’ just can’t wait to shoot some damn aliens.) Others figure once they’ve had a huge hit, they’ll have the power to get offbeat movies made. Patric bats this notion down. ““That’s the big lie,’’ he says. ““What I find is that once people get the power, they’re so concerned about protecting that power that they’re actually more limited than they were in the first place.''
Cage is well established as one of the best actors of his generation, so forgive us for pointing out that after his Oscar-winning turn in the infinitesimal ““Leaving Las Vegas,’’ he made three spectaculars in a row. He’s now said to be asking $10 million to $15 million to wear the cape in Tim Burton’s ““Superman Lives.’’ Two of Cage’s action movies - ““The Rock’’ and now ““Con Air’’ - are traditionally macho. John Woo’s ““Face/Off,’’ though, is hilarious and inventive. Cage and John Travolta play a demented terrorist and an FBI agent who surgically exchange faces. Both are in top form: they chew every inch of the scenery, and they’re hungry again an hour later. ““Face/Off,’’ out June 27, will convince you Cage isn’t in it for the money. But surely he approached ““Con Air’’ differently from ““Las Vegas’’? ““I approached it exactly the same,’’ Cage insists. ““I had the same amount of commitment to create this person. It’s like sculpting: you take the clay and you build.''
It’s 1997 and clearly no one wants to be Rambo anymore. ““When Stallone and Schwarzenegger were starting out, you were measured by the size of your paycheck,’’ says one executive. ““Today, you’re measured by your ability to do all sorts of roles. The younger actors want to win Academy Awards and exercise their craft. But they also want all the goodies that come with being action stars. They want worldwide fame, and they want to be paid $20 million. They want it all.''
Will the world want them? It’s cheaper for a studio to pay Cage $10 million than to pay his elders $20 million - but not if audiences won’t worship him in South Korea. Stallone and Schwarzenegger made their mark being gloriously big, and here come the thirtysomethings determined to be life-size. Meanwhile, will the grand older men just hang up their guns? Nearly all of them have dabbled in comedies as a sort of retirement plan. Even Bruce Willis, only 42, recently spoofed himself adorably on the season finale of TV’s ““Mad About You.’’ It seems that after making three terrific installments of ““Die Hard,’’ he’d taken a blow to the head while shooting something called ““Die Already.’’ Still, don’t expect the old action figures to go quietly. What do they care if there’s a new generation struggling to be born? And what did they ever do quietly?
Don’t look now, gentlemen. They’re right behind you, and they’ve got guns.
Grand older men AGE Harrison Ford 54 Sylvester Stallone 50 Arnold Schwarzenegger 49 Young contenders Nicolas Cage 33 Jason Patric 30 Will Smith 28
