“If I ever did get this part and the movie hit, I would have to carry this label for the rest of my life!” But he “found some of the high school storyline characters a bit corny and stereotyped”. “I recall connecting to the father-and-son elements and heart in the story right off the bat,” Macchio writes of his first reading of the screenplay.
It was set to be directed by John G Avildsen, who had made the underdog classic Rocky. The screenplay was based on an article about a bullied kid who learned martial arts for self-defence. After his first movie, Up the Academy, and a one-season stint on US TV network ABC’s Eight Is Enough, he landed the career-changing role of the “lost puppy” Johnny Cade, opposite his fellow teen idols C Thomas Howell and Matt Dillon, in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders.īack home, Macchio, then 21 years old, got called for another audition. (His brother took more to the family laundromat and pump-truck businesses.)Īlong with roles in school plays and dance recitals, Macchio started auditioning for advertisements.
Soon enough, he was taking tap-dancing lessons in between Little League games and working Saturdays with his dad. Growing up on Long Island, Macchio would watch MGM movie musicals with his mother. I recall connecting to the father-and-son elements and heart in the story right off the bat,” Macchio writes of his first reading of the screenplay
It’s something he shares with Daniel LaRusso, “the every-kid next door”, he explains, who “had no business winning anything”. On a sunny rooftop terrace in lower Manhattan, Macchio – a not at all 60-looking 60, even with his sunglasses off – displays the natural relatability that has been a hallmark of his career. It teaches and inspires through pure entertainment”. Looking back, he writes, the original film is “a prime example of when Hollywood gets it all right.
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