sex, guns & rock 'n' roll


Kerrang! March 2, 1996

That’s what Phil Alexander finds when he steps on to the set of Jon Bon Jovi’s new film. What’s it all about? And why does Jon end up in bed with women he doesn’t know? Read on...... It’s 11am, Sunday morning. We’re in London, down by the Thames. It’s cold. Bouncing around in a trailer parked on the North Bank of the river is Jon Bon Jovi, his lovely wife Dorothea, their two-and-a-half year-old daughter Stephanie, and Kerrang! Jon is in town shooting ‘The Leading Man’, his second major feature film following on from his starring role in ‘Moonlight and Valentino’ which is due to hit Britain in March. He’s been here for a month, living in South London in a rented house and working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. By Jon’s own reckoning, a day’s filming actually translates to approximately 2 minutes of big screen action.
His trailer is sparse and modest, not the luxury home-from-home you’d expect. The caravan is about 18 feet long with what looks like a bedroom at the back and a kitchenette with a small table in the front. His home comforts include a ghetto-blaster playing Elvis Costello and a video player. On the table there are a few daily newspapers, a copy of Kerrang! (the ish with Dog Eat Dog on the cover) and an autobiography of Darby Sabinni titled ‘The British Godfather’. (“He was around 20 years before the Krays,” Jon informs us).
Walking into the area where the cast have their trailers parked is the total opposite to being backstage at a Bon Jovi gig. There are no large men with walkie-talkies and ‘Security’ tattooed on their foreheads. You do not need 15 sticky passes to venture into the leading man’s inner sanctum and another 15 to go for a pee in the caravan next door. Instead the vibe is mellow and relaxed. Just like any other Sunday morning. The perfect time and place to meet the real Jon Bon Jovi.
Jon looks incredibly well for a man on a punishing schedule. He pours Kerrang! A welcome cup of black coffee and we shoot the breeze.

The conversation ranges from Henry Rollins’ role in ‘Heat’ to filming certain parts of ‘The Leading Man’ on various locations in London. Jon mentions last year’s Kerrang! Awards, where Bon Jovi picked up 2 prestigious awards (Best International Live Act and the Hall Of Fame awards) and recalls the event in chuffed tones. Indeed, he was so chuffed that when it came to inviting people on to the set of his movie, he called Kerrang! first.
We’re interrupted when on is told that he’ll be required on set in a few minutes. Slipping into a set of Versace threads, Jon heads off to the make-up department for the odd bit of anti-glare facepaint. A few minutes later we’re travelling towards the South Bank in a car with Paul Rafael, one of the film’s producers.
Rafael is the man who put Bon Jovi in the frame for his current role, after seeing the rushes for ‘Moonlight...’. According to the critics, despite ‘Moonlight...‘ being panned, Jon was the best thing about it. His performance as a happy-go-lucky painter met with the approval of director John Duigan, a man whose track record includes such films as ‘Sirens’ and ‘The Year My Voice Broke’ and who offered Jon a part in ‘The Leading Man’ without an audition.
We arrive on the South Bank facing the Houses of Parliament. The film crew are working themselves into a frenzy. A gaggle of extras mill around trying to keep warm. Among them are Dorothea and Stephanie who will blend in inconspicuously with the rest of the extras in a rare moment of public exposure. The crew know the shot they want and, since this is a re-shoot of a scene already committed to film but junked, the heat is most definitely on.
There’s around 2 minutes to go before a producer yells, “Turning over!” and the cameras start to roll. We are about to see Jon Bon Jovi The Rock Star turn into Jon Bon Jovi The Film Star in the wink of an eye. As Big Ben starts to chime 12, we’re ‘Turning over!‘, the cameras are rolling and Jon has to begin his walk down the riverside. Kerrang! is right by his side. In fact it’s impossible to tell the difference between Jon The Rock Star and Jon the Film Star in the brief 5 minute scene.
There’s no dialogue, just a moody walk down the South Bank with Jon listening to a Walkman. One thing becomes obvious about Jon The Man. Sporting shades, clad in black and looking remarkably hard, he is a man who knows what he wants and has a shrewd idea of how to get it. It’s the difference between determination, confidence and the willingness to try hard, and the prospect of naked fear.
“If I were to worry about looking bad doing it, I wouldn’t act,” adds Jon later, “I think it’s that blind faith in just doing what it is that I want to do that got me there in the first place. That’s probably what got me to do my music in the first place. Somebody said to me before I made the first record that you had to make a record as good as The Rolling Stones’ because if you don’t sell records then the record company’s going to dump you. Now, with acting there’s no ‘Hey, isn’t that nice, Jon wants to get into acting,‘ because Keanu Reeves or Christian Slater would have wanted that part - so you better be good, or don’t think you’re going to get the part. You’re judged the same as the A-Team. There’s no growth period, you have to be ready to go.” In this case and despite the cold, Jon is ready to go. Six takes later and the scene is in the bag. We head back to the trailer for a more of an extended chat. Back in the caravan, Jon looks relaxed again. His daughter has become the centre of attraction. We’re back in Sunday morning mode.
Swigging an energy drink called ‘Ripped Force’ and eating raisins, Jon’s ready to talk about what’s going on. His intake of health drinks and fruit are his way of keeping fit, alongside his daily work-out. In the back of the trailer, his exercise bike and weights are a testimony to the latter. Somewhere back there, there’s a guitar too. He’s written 3 new songs in between takes during the making of this film. He’s sent them to his old buddy Aldo Nova to demo, since Bon Jovi, the band, are absent. “Well I’ve got Aldo making demos in Montreal. I’ve got all kinds of stuff going on - I’m out of my mind! That’s usually a bed back there,” begins Jon, gesturing at the back of the trailer, “But I threw the bed off and now that’s my studio now. I just sit back there and write.
Away from the music though, we’re here to talk about what could be - ‘Moonlight..‘ not withstanding - Jon’s first step into major-league acting. But what attracted him to this particular role? ”The stretch,“ states Jon, ”Just the idea that there’s going to be a darker side to the character. The painter in ‘Moonlight..‘ was comfortable in his own shoes, but it wasn’t very different from me playing me. With this guy, he’s a real SOB.“
Jon plays Robin Grange, a famous Hollywood actor who comes to London to work with established playwright Felix Webb (played by the actor Lambert Wilson) on a West end play. Grange offers to help out the playwright who is having an affair with a young actress named Hilary (played by actress Thandie Newton). Jon picks up the thread'...
”The playwright doesn’t want to lose his castle, his dogs, his kids, his cars - but he wants to lose his wife. So I say to him, ‘I tell you what, I’ll get your wife to fall in love with me. I’m an actor, I can convince her to do this. She’ll throw you out and in doing so you won’t be caught as a bigamist, so you’ll be ok.‘ So the playwright asks me what I want from this , and I say, ‘Hey I don’t want nothing. If you make the play or movie then I’ll star in it’. So the playwright thinks, ‘Christ, I win on every front’. What you really find out is that he just made a deal with the devil. I take over his wife, his kids, his cars and, for spite, I take the co-star and give her a tumble. And, in essence, I’m doing him because I’ve taken over his whole life and I blackmail him too throughout the rest of his career. He’s now a part of me. I get him to write scripts for me and movies for me. It drives the guy a little crazy. It’s a cool script.“
And it’s a role that Jon clearly relishes. In fact, in The Leading Man, Jon manages to romp his way through countless bedroom scenes, revealing his newly shaven chest. There’s also a scene which sees him brandishing a gun and looking as hard as nails. All this sex, guns and rock ‘n’ roll behaviour is all well and good but the film company are keen to point out that Jon’s role isn’t a gratuitous display of evil. Nope, he’s more of a charismatically scheming bloke who has a good time and a dodgy past.
The fact that Jon has taken up smoking because the part demanded it speaks volumes about how far he’s willing to push his acting. While he admits that he may not be a method actor who has to live out his part in order to feel it, he’s using the lessons he learnt during his 5 years of acting classes to the full. ”The first time I went to classes, I was sitting there with this play book in my hand with my legs crossed and my head buried in the pages,“ he explains, ”I was really afraid to say anything to this guy. He was smoking a cigar, with a beard and moustache, and I was like, ‘Oh great.‘ The greatest thing that he could ever tell me was really simple: be in the moment. Literally, don’t read the next sentence, read the first sentence. That was the biggest revelation for me in acting. There’s other actors like Daniel Day Lewis and the great method actors who do it differently. I read that he sat in the wheelchair for three months during the making of ‘My Left Foot’ and he wouldn’t get out of the wheelchair. That’s still a bit extreme for me. I’m still closer to holding the book and keeping my legs crossed than I am to sitting in the wheelchair. The whole thing is a learning experience.“
Acting, however, is the opposite of Jon’s current musical position. Instead of calling the shots, Jon is at the mercy of the director. How does that feel?
”In the music business we (Bon Jovi) have total control. Every aspect of it from the marketing of the record to the album cover to the videos and the songs we write. But in the movie business, you have no control. You relinquish everything and that’s difficult because it doesn’t mean that your vision and the director’s are going to be the same. The only thing you can do is hope that your point of view may be taken as one of interest.“
So how different is the movie business to the music business? Is the film world really populated by air-kissing ‘loveys’ behaving like members of the cast of ‘Absolutely Fabulous’?
”It’s very different. In rock and roll you’re a lot more isolated. If you’re in a town, it’s highly unlikely that Guns ‘n’ Roses are in the same town at the same time, so I don’t know those guys. This is much more of a situation where the actors have known each other over the years and run into each other over the years. In doing all those things, there is a ‘lovey’ thing. Very often, in those situations I go and sit in a corner by myself - and I’m supposed to be the star of the show! You should really be ‘Mr Personable’ but it’s a little foreign to me. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be sociable, but these people are really good friends who’ve known each other a long time, so it takes a long time for you to warm up to that. I don’t know these people. It’s not like the band where they’re my buds. With the leading ladies, I’ve been in bed with both of them and I don’t even know ‘em. That’s nothing new!“ jokes Jon.
While the film world may be a little alien to Jon, he has a longstanding love of movies. Ask him to pick his greatest film of all time and he’ll enthuse about ‘The Godfather’. Ask him to pick a film he’d love to have starred in and he’ll pick 70‘s Western ‘Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid’. He isn’t, however, a fan of action movies. He’s a fan of ‘Shallow Grave’ rather than ‘Die Hard’. His aim is to make films that have a hip factor rather than a multi-million dollar special-effects budget.
”Those (independent) films are the kind of films I pay money to see and I’d like to make. The only big role I’ve pursued was in ‘Heat’, other than that I’m not into the big films. I don’t pay money to see the ‘boom-blow-up-the-car’ movies. I don’t rent those movies and I don’t go and see them. I’m much happier going to see hipper films. I saw ‘Trainspotting a week ago and I called the director and the producer immediately and said ‘Please come down here and have a beer with me’ so they could tell me what they were up to. It blew me away.“
Before we can delve further into all things film-orientated and discuss the next step for Bon Jovi musically, we’re interrupted by Jon’s daughter. Stephanie is tired and is getting bored. Jon inquires whether we can get back together later in the week to finish off the interview. We can. For now though, we bring things to a close. Jon pays Stephanie the attention she wants and exchanges a visit to eat fries and ice cream for a pair of kisses from the two-and-a-half-year old. The third kiss surprises Jon. ”What’s that for?“ he asks. ”For ketchup,“ grins Stephanie. Jon looks up beaming. Rock Star, Film Star and, more than anything, a proud Family Man
Who's that bloke?
When Kerrang! Editor Phil Alexander turned up to interview Jon Bon Jovi on the set of his new movie, he didn’t expect to star in the film. Jon had mentioned getting him a walk-on part and when filming began opposite the Houses Of Parliament, Phil was cast as an extra playing the role of a tourist and had to walk past Jon - looking as inconspicuous as he could. ”It was surreal,“ says Phil, who is still waiting for his Equity card. ”At first, I thought Jon was joking, but clearly he wasn’t. I asked him what scene it was we’d just filmed, when it was over, and Jon told me it was the opening scene. Because we did the scene 6 times, there’s a chance I could end up on the cutting room floor. I’ll blame that on the fact that I was having a bad hair day.“ If you go and see ‘The Leading Man’ and spot a man of no fixed hairstyle in the opening scene, you’ll know who it is. Don’t say you weren’t warned!