Teri Garr once said during the election campaigns that her personal choice for President of the United States was Pat Riley. As Hollywood’s coach, he certainly gets women’s attention. I have to be honest here: I can picture Pat Riley as many things, but not as a Hell’s Angel. “Yeah,” Riley says, riding an imaginary bike. You mean the one with Marlon Brando in a motorcycle gang? The one in which, when someone asks Brando what he’s rebelling against, he asks, “Whaddaya got?” Just to determine his preferences, I ask Riley what his favorite movie is, which videocassette he would take to a deserted island if he could only take one, and if the island just happened to have a VCR. Fair’s fair.) Or how about one of those horror movies, with Riley either as the slasher or the slashee? And an earring, maybe.) As the love interest of Goldie Hawn. (Have to wear older clothes.) As a rock star. Personally, I am trying to picture him in the following roles: As a Western sheriff. Riley does think he will try his luck at a movie bit someday, if somebody will have him. Try saying your lines with that going on sometime.” “One time he put five women up on the stage while I was reading something, and had them wrap themselves around my legs. “He really tried to distract me,” Riley says. He did Mel, the Jack Lemmon role, from Neil Simon’s “Prisoner of Second Avenue.” He took instruction from Corey, stood his ground while the teacher attempted to see if he could shake the neophyte actor from his concentration, as when he loudly flung a trash can onto the stage right in the middle of Riley’s lines. While there, Riley acted out scenes from plays and films. During his broadcasting days, while also taking communications and speech courses at USC, Riley signed up for the popular character actor and acting teacher Jeff Corey’s drama classes, to cultivate self-confidence and poise, and just to see how he would do. “He plays me better than I can play me.”Īnd yet, it turns out that Pat Riley does know his way around a Hollywood stage as well as a hardwood court. Unlike Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who squeezed in “Airplane!” and other films during his free time, Riley does not intend to mix two careers at once, saying, “I just think there’s a certain decorum that a coach has to maintain.”ĭoes he see “Tequila Sunrise” and wonder what sort of job he would have done with Kurt Russell’s part? “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it 5 years from now, when I’m out of (coaching).”īeing Hollywood’s coach, handsome, popular, successful, cool, Riley has been offered a number of acting opportunities over the last few years, but says he has never responded to any. Towne was introduced to Riley, a man who already had made transitions from player to assistant coach to broadcaster to head coach, all roles he played for Hollywood’s favorite team. Robert Towne, the man we have to thank for the screenplay to “Chinatown” and the women’s-track story, “Personal Best,” went to the Forum a few years ago as a guest of Laker boss Jerry Buss. I did this as soon as I discovered that the part of the cop was written for-and offered to-mister slicked-back himself, Laker Coach Pat Riley. My women friends went to check out Mel, and most of my men friends preferred Michelle. Recently I went to see this movie, mostly to watch Russell. County police lieutenant decked out in custom-made suits, white-on-white shirts, small-knotted neckties and a haircut that is slicked straight back with some sort of Brylcreem or Vitalis or Dippity Do. Michelle Pfeiffer co-stars as a restaurant owner who eventually waits on a couple of her customers hand and foot, and all else in between.Ī third party in this love triangle is Kurt Russell, who plays an L.A. Mel Gibson appears in the new motion picture, “Tequila Sunrise,” as a drug dealer who may or may not have reformed.
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