Elasticpop caught up with Sweeney as he was promoting the darkly comical road movie “Two Tickets to Paradise,” his directorial debut – which he made four years ago, has been re-released on DVD with a big marketing push from Paramount.
Sweeney, best known for roles in “Eight Men Out” and “The Cutting Edge,” tried to snare the right director for his first screenplay. His first two choices weren’t available, and several other directors open to the project were a bit too green for his taste.
“I didn’t really plan to direct it, or have a desire to direct it. It was the only way to get it done,” Sweeney tells Big Hollywood. “You don’t get a front-line director to make this small movie.”
So Sweeney directed the tale of three longtime buds (Sweeney, John C. McGinley and Paul Hipp) whose bumpy road trip spark some serious navel gazing, not to mention a rock soundtrack to die for.
“The directing was great. The producing was a slog, especially when you use your own money,” he says of the project, a labor of love with just enough rough edges to sweeten the storyline.
He knew the folly of sinking one’s own money into a film, but he also understood the message a self-financed movie would send to the cast and crew.
“If I’m not going to bet on myself, why would anyone else bet on me,” he asks.
Directing wasn’t foreign to the Long Island native. He got his start in theater and directed a few plays as part of his training. And while other actors retreat to their trailers between takes, Sweeney tends to linger.
“I like hanging around the set and learning how people do things, how the set runs,” he says. A successful film often boils down to the choices people make, and he knew from experience how frustrating it can be for an actor to be victim of lousy decisions.
Another lesson came from being directed by some of the biggest names in the industry – less is often more.
Sweeney the actor had worked under the likes of John Sayles (“Eight Men Out”) and Francis Ford Coppola (“Gardens of Stone”), two filmmakers with a streamlined style.
“They never ‘directed’ anybody,” he says. “Hire the best people and trust what you hired them to do. The less you say, the more likely you’ll take ownership [of the characters].”
Sweeney told me he started kicking around the idea for “Two Tickets to Paradise” back in the winter of 2002. Though the film is a comedy, the idea has decidedly somber roots. “. I had friends who were New York City firefighters, and in the winter of 2002 they were still going to funerals almost every day – or several a week, anyway – and maybe spending a little too much time at the bar after the funeral. So I’m sitting with these two guys one night, and I said, “You gotta take a night off. Why don’t you go bowling, or go to a movie?” And they had the biggest laugh they’d had since September [11]. They fell off their chairs and said, “Movies? Nobody makes movies for us anymore.” And I thought, “You know what? I’m gonna try.”
Beyond the obvious professional challenge, Sweeney felt a connection to the highly autobiographical story he had written (originally entitled “Dirt Nap’) about three childhood friends who are reaching their 40s and are each at life crossroads and get a chance for a road trip to see the college football championship bowl. Of course, with the group’s normal luck, there are three guys and only two tickets.
Sweeney likes the idea of kids growing up together and staying friends. Now, decades after making his life in Hollywood, he is still in touch with a few close childhood friends from his Staten Island, NY home.
“I have my friend Scott Lashier,” Sweeney explains. “He did 22 years in the Marine Corps and now he’s retired. We played Little League together. Kyle Stanford sells bonds or something down on Wall Street. He’s a good guy to meet in any kind of bar called O’Looney’s. Who else? Bob Sickle is another guy I played Little League with. So, yeah, I’ve got three guys that’s I’m in touch with from way back, that far in my life. John McGinley and I went to NYU together in the early 80s. That was really why I wanted him in the movie, because we already had that kind of bond.”
John C. McGinley well known lately for his role on the sitcom Scrubs, plays Mark, the local hero athlete who is now a degenerate gambler. His mounting debts are poisoning his relationship with his supportive wife (played by Janet Jones Gretzky.) Sweeney plays Billy McGriff, a former local rock star who has now settled into a life driving a delivery truck for Coors and just has learned that his wife (played by Sweeney’s “Cutting Edge” co-star Moira Kelly) is having an affair. Jason (played by comic actor Paul Hipp), the brains of the three who is now desperately single, living with his parents and toiling in a dead-end job at Office Depot.
“Brian Currie, who I wrote the movie with, almost every event in the movie either happened to him or me,” Sweeney says. “But my character is McGinley’s character, more or less. Obviously, I didn’t turn out to be a waste-product degenerate gambler or whatever, but I had a sports background that didn’t work out and that was a big problem for me for a while after that – and for a lot of athletes – transitioning into whatever the rest of your life is going to be. That would be the biggest thing. The character that I played was the character I always wanted to play. I always wanted to be the goofy guy who only cared about his guitar.”
When asked about Moira Kelly, D.B. said, “I always hoped Moira and I would work together again. We never found a script. The Cutting Edge sequel scripts were terrible. When this thing came around, she was right at the top of my list, either for that role or for McGinley’s wife in the movie. It turns out she was living in Wilmington, North Carolina, where we were filming the movie. The crew of One Tree Hill – a lot of their crew ended up to be my crew on the movie, so I was able to get a hold of Moira. She immediately said yes and came down. Had I known with more lead time that I was going to get Moira, we would have had much more scenes together, believe me. I think there would have been a scene of us at a skating rink. I don’t know if we would have been skating, but we would have been at the rink.”
As it is, “Two Tickets to Paradise” is a great movie to pop in the DVD player when you’re going to have a small group of friends around.
