Ep. 26 - Patrick Swayze | Last Days

it comes down for me for quality of life I bet you I can hang on a long time I bet you I can be around to just just hassle people for a while I've pulled off 10 months when most people would have been dead long before now so I'm going moment to moment I'm going I can live through this I can live through that I live through the next one just keep throwing at me the issue is when do you get tired when do you decide the fight isn't worth is it matching up to your quality of life in late December 2007 Patrick Swayze the liethe and charismatic leading man from Dirty Dancing and ghost was filming the pilot episode for a new television drama series on a e called the beast the 55 year old actor was excited about the new project which allowed him to flex some different acting muscles to play a middle-aged FBI agent who uses controversial techniques to bring criminals to Justice he was sort of a complicated anti-hero which fit in perfectly with the age of prestige television that was in full bloom around this time the character was something of a departure for Swayze who found huge Fame playing the dreamy tough but sensitive leading man roles but this was vintage Swayze never one to rest on his natural good looks he always took on challenging roles that push the envelope and broadened his acting abilities instead of just settling for a bunch of fat paychecks and forgettable rom-coms shortly after filming wrapped on the pilot Swayze and his wife of 32 years Lisa Niemi were visiting some friends in Aspen when Swayze fell ill with a serious gastrointestinal problem he'd been having some digestive issues mostly acid reflux and some bloating for a few weeks but the actor thought nothing of it as he'd always had a sensitive stomach but this was different while toasting with friends Patrick took a swig of champagne and nearly choked saying it burned like acid and adding quote it felt like a drunk lye still he didn't think much of it and carried on with the evening just three weeks later in January 2008 the actor learned that the burning in his stomach wasn't just minor irritation but rather the result of a blockage of his bile ducts caused by stage four pancreatic cancer one of the most deadly and untreatable Cancers you can get his doctor told him that his chances of surviving for more than a few months weren't High but rather than wallow in self-pity the actor mustered a new resolve telling his doctor show me where the enemy is and I will fight him and that's exactly what he did going to Stanford University Medical Center for chemotherapy and treatment with an experimental drug called vitalanib which was supposed to cut off the blood supply to the tumor in his pancreas and initially he seemed to be responding well to the treatment by early May 2008 Swayze underwent surgery to remove part of his stomach after the cancer had spread but just a month later Swayze reportedly said my treatments are working and I'm winning the battle he even did an interview with Barbara Walters a portion of which was played at the top of this podcast and which originally aired in January 2009 and during the interview Swayze admitted there was a tiny little Mass on his liver but insisted he was kicking it but despite his optimism the actor was indeed losing his battle on January 9 2009 Swayze was hospitalized with pneumonia but released a week later to rest at home and on April 19th doctors informed him that the cancer had metastasized further in his liver a final picture of Patrick Swayze made the rounds of the internet shortly thereafter showing just how skeletally thin he'd become from the disease and the aggressive treatments just a few months later on September 14th in just 20 months after his initial diagnoses Swayze died at his Ranch in Sylmar California he was just 57 years old [Music] I'm Derek Hoffman I'm Jason Beckerman and this is last days Patrick Swayze [Music] by most accounts Swayze passed away peacefully at his so-called Rancho Bizarro home surrounded by friends and family although he was reportedly upset about the pictures and circulated before his death showing how the cancer had ravaged his once muscular dancer's physique it seemed as though the actor had passed with dignity his body was cremated and the ashes were scattered in New Mexico shortly thereafter however rumors began to circulate online about the final months of his life which painted a much more troubling and sad picture and much of the controversy came from an unlikely Source his wife of 34 years Lisa Niemi before jumping into the allegations it's necessary to give their relationship a bit of context Swayze and the Emmy met in 1970 at a dance studio run by Patrick's mother when Patrick was just 18 and Lisa was just 14. the couple married in 1975 but never had any children but painted a beautiful picture of lasting love and companionship here's Lisa from a recent Today Show interview talking about how the couple met and fell in love well you know we had such an unlikely start because we were both very cautious because he had this reputation of being a Casanova and they thought it was this quiet bad girl and you know the our first Contact was he reached over and pitched me on the butt and said hey cutie but I tell you what we uh but needless to say we went out with each other anyway despite each other's reputations and and grew to know each other and actually for as you know is off our reputations were yeah I think it was because we were both a little different from everybody else and we kind of understood that about each other and we ended up falling in love that's really a meat cute from a different era isn't it it really is your first meeting is he reaches out and pinches your butt without consent and she was excited and she was excited about it yeah meet cute from a different era in a 2008 interview Patrick said that Niemi was even the inspiration for his hit song from The Dirty Dancing soundtrack She's Like the Wind they shared many of the same interests both were FAA licensed pilots and enjoyed raising horses on the ranches in California Nevada and New Mexico yeah they were a very well-known couple in Hollywood because of the longevity of their relationship and it truly from all outside appearances seemed like a love story especially when it happens when he's playing the Romantic leading man that every girl wants and he kind of you know a bit promiscuous in his movie roles to then juxtapose that against A's by all accounts by all outward accounts you know a 34-year lasting marriage it seems at odds people question it maybe or are happy for them in their success yeah happy but noteworthy we think of Leading Men as kind of casanova's about town and that wasn't Patrick Swayze's reputation which is what made the allegations that would Surface after his death so bizarre an anonymous source claiming to be an old family friend alleged that Patrick's wife Lisa had actually abused and neglected Patrick while his primary caregiver Patrick's brother Donnie Swayze was away on a trip the accusations were very very upsetting Lisa was accused of beating him and letting him sit in filthy clothes The Source said Lisa would Claw at Patrick's neck and arms and slap and punch him during their knock down drag out fights even while he was weakened by the cancer there were also allegations of infidelity on Lisa's part and accusations that Lisa would ban visitors to the home including Patrick's mother Patsy now the situation with Patrick's mother was very very complicated because Lisa has always maintained publicly that Patrick had been physically abused as a child for many years until his father intervened on Patrick's behalf on his 18th birthday Patsy passed away in September 2013 at the age of 86 but had denied these allegations before then the source said the situation was so bad that Patrick would often wait until his wife fell asleep at around 2 A.M to call friends and families secretively it's important to remember however that this anonymous source and these stories that surfaced he never revealed his identity who the source was so you have to take these things with a grain of salt and for her part Lisa adamantly denied the claim she said it's categorically untrue and it is that simple and she would do interviews like the one you just heard to really set the record straight about their relationship we could only tell what we can tell from objective sources and one of them is that they remain together for 34 years obviously some of the time at the very end was spent when he was very very sick but there were decades together when they were both fully healthy and can you draw from that that there was some happiness in the relationship and there wasn't this abuse going on you would think you can draw something from it but you don't really know 34-year marriages are long and complicated your marriage isn't that long my marriage is only you know 11 years and I can tell you it's complicated and you know the abuse allegations are Beyond The Pale but relationships can be messy and it's particularly long ones there's a type of companionship and level of interaction that from Outsiders can seem sort of troubling at times and maybe not be that troubling between the couple the fact of the matter is she denied it the allegations never really went anywhere beyond that anonymous source but I did feel compelled to mention that it somewhat marred the aftermath of Swayze's death yeah I remember it being very shocking when these allegations came out and but like we do now like we're saying now didn't really know what to do with them because they were there was no face behind the accusation it was something that was floating in the wind without much behind it so you don't really know what to do with that Lisa eventually remarried a jeweler by the name of Albert deprisco in 2014 five years after Swayze's death but although Lisa found love again she maintains that love coexists alongside her enduring love for Patrick you know I fell in love with Albert I said you know it's really weird because I it doesn't conflict with the love that I still have for Patrick and just because somebody's gone doesn't mean you fall out of love and uh my wise friend said that's because love comes from the same well and I thought it was a really wonderful thing to say now Lisa also faced some criticism in 2017 when she ended up selling off a bunch of Patrick Swayze's memorabilia including the iconic leather jacket he wore in Dirty Dancing which fetched 63 thousand dollars a surfboard from Point Break and even a shirt from the movie Ghost she said it was difficult but part of her process of letting go of the past uh Swayze's niece however was very upset over the auction she said these were you know Priceless family heirlooms it was a slap in the face that she was selling away these Precious Memories you know it's unfortunate to see these this sort of nasty squabbling and I don't want to read too much into it but I did want to sort of lay out that Lisa while she's done these interviews and certainly had a 34-year relationship she's a complicated figure publicly because of some of these things it's objectively true she sold the heirloom it's not even understood the criticism it's her property she wants and needs the money for whatever purpose the idea that she owes it to I don't know to to to humankind to movie going public to hold this leather jacket I I just don't I don't even understand the argument that she if she can make what she thinks is a good amount of money off of this that she shouldn't take it and enjoy her life or give it to charity or give it to her her kids when she passes all these things are fine it's hers to do with what you want I think that's true it's also true of the fact that she sold Rancho Bizarro to a philanthropist named Eileen Getty um and that also ignored a last minute request to convert the property into a museum but to your point she was under no obligation to to erect a museum in Patrick Swayze's honor it's very easy for people on the sidelines to have all these Ambitions this should be in his honor you shouldn't monetize it it was also her home human beings are so fantastic at spending other people's money yes we know exactly what other people should do with their money when it's ourselves we might sell the leather jacket right but somebody else they they should hold on yeah yeah right notwithstanding the controversies that followed his death most people today remember the remarkably unique career of Patrick Swayze during his 30-year acting career on the big screen very few actors before or since brought the same combination of smoldering Charisma ruggedness matinee Idol looks genuine acting chops and nearly unrivaled dance skills as Patrick Swayze he was born in Houston in 1952 his mother was a dance instructor and choreographer and his father and engineer his All-American handsomeness is due in part to him being quite literally from a family that dates back to the Puritans in New England the Swayze family was on a ship called the recovery that sailed into Massachusetts Bay colonies in the 1620s yeah I learned about this he wasn't on the Mayflower but they were on another ship that was like right alongside it called the recovery right the Mayflower made just been pulling out a port when the recovery came in the real differentiator in the early part of Swayze's career was his dancing ability he first appeared in dance Review called Disney on Parade in the late 1970s before landing the role of Danny Zuko in the long-running production of Greece yeah Jason if there's one sort of comparison because I was thinking a lot about Patrick Swayze as I Was preparing for this episode who's he like because Patrick Swayze is not only a good-looking actor and leading man but what separated him was that you're going to Travolta aren't you and I thought Travolta don't you think of those and it was interesting to learn that he played the role of Danny Zuko that helped launch John Travolta's career in the movie Greece and they're kind of similar figures they're different physically trolls is a really big dude and and Swayze was a tiny guy right but other than that yeah their careers were somewhat similar they both played tough guys in movies but they could do song and dance but they can do song and dance right the real sort of artistic Renaissance guys Swayze bounced around Hollywood for a while with small roles and TV shows he pops up in an episode of mash in 1981 but his big break came and he was cast as the older brother of C Thomas Howell and Rob Lowe in The Outsiders in 1983. he then starred in Red Dawn a cult classic about a group of teenagers in a fictional dystopian future leading a rebellion in Soviet occupied Colorado it was in Red Dawn he was first paired with a young Starlet named Jennifer Gray who was a Hollywood kid her dad played an important role in the movie Cabaret and poised for her own breakout let me ask you before we move on from this Red Dawn and The Outsiders you're a man of a certain generation these were cult objects The Outsiders is in a class by itself in terms of the popularity among young people for a movie I mean you know Barbie's a very different movie but sure but the that was based on a really famous novel by Essie Hinton that was huge among young people and had a young Tom Cruise in The Outsiders well young Tom Cruise and Ralph Macchio and see Thomas Howell and Patrick Swayze and Matt Dillon and so many other actors who went on to phenomenal and almost legendary in the case of Cruz obviously legendary Hollywood careers but we didn't know those actors what we knew was this is a book that every single 13 year old had read right when when this movie came out and the the Buzz for it and the the anticipation for this movie was like nothing I I don't remember having seen before it um and he's part of that lineage because as you said the cast is so star-sided it's all before they were Mega famous but virtually everyone in that movie went on to have a pretty great career yeah so you also mentioned that he met Jennifer Gray on the set of Red Dawn another big movie from that error but the breakout for both of them would obviously come a few years later in 1987 in the Smash Hit Dirty Dancing Dirty Dancing story is legendary in Hollywood it was a low budget movie it was originally intended to spend just one week in theaters before moving over to VHS it cost four and a half million dollars to make it ends up bringing in 214 million dollars for inflation we're talking 750 850 something like probably somewhere in that range one of the most profitable movies in Hollywood history and it really is when you think about it a very low budget production it's sort of campy in its own way but the movie really stands up today it's just sort of a perfect encapsulation of what Patrick Swayze's talents were you know he's dreamy a little mysterious in the lead role as Johnny Castle who's a dance instructor at an upscale Resort in the Catskills in the 60s and he introduces a young ingenue Francis baby Houseman to a secret dirty dancing scene for the resort staff and who can forget this line look the movie's sort of a ridiculous conceit and it could have always been perceived as kind of creepy because Patrick Swayze in the movie is this older dance instructor and she's very young she's there with her parents uh she's 17 years old it was a different time and there's a lot of adult themes there's you know a whole subplot about abortions and and such but it just works uh the dancing is incredible it's sort of undeniable if you watch Dirty Dancing you're you're riveted because he's so incredibly charismatic and she's just sort of following it along there he's lifting her up in the in the water as they're practicing the dance scenes and so forth and on top of the acting and dancing Swayze showed off his singing Talent you know there's a very popular song you mentioned called she's like the wind that became a top 10 hit on the Billboard charts following the phenomenal success of the movie [Music] [Applause] this is just like Classic Soft Rock for me I I love that song uh Swayze ended up even getting a Golden Globe nomination and he suddenly found himself in very high demand and quickly released another sleeper hit as bouncer James Dalton in Roadhouse so after Dirty Dancing and Roadhouse Swayze is really becoming a brand name in Hollywood his career was about to enter the stratosphere with two huge hits in the 1990s first he played Sam wheat opposite Demi Moore in the 1990 romance Thriller ghost ghost was an absolute sensation Derek I know we we both remember this well it went on to become the highest grossing film of 1990 with 505 million dollars at the box office against a 22 million dollar budget getting nominated for best picture and even scoring an Oscar for eventual egot winner Whoopi Goldberg who played a charlatan psychic named odomay Brown who can suddenly actually communicate with real ghost of course the movie is best remembered for its most iconic scene where Swayze and more share a romantic moment with a pottery wheel to the Righteous Brothers hit Unchained Melody couldn't sleep [Music] we must have passed out what happened next he played Surfer slash bank robber Bodhi in the 1991 Catherine Bigelow crime action movie Point Break Keanu Reeves plays the part of Johnny Utah a straight-laced FBI agent who infiltrates a gang of bank robbing Surfers in president's masks led by Swayze's character it's pure adrenaline this is uh set in the mold the entire Fast and Furious franchise and Reeves would say later that he attributed a lot of the success of the movie to Swayze's full immersion in the thrill-seeking element of the role maybe even a little bit more than producers were comfortable with it's pretty famous stories coming out of this I mean Patrick during the course of of Point Break started to skyfide and he started to bring everyone in the tribe in his tribe from the movie skydiving so they're all like not working they're jumping out of airplanes and eventually production gave Patrick Swayze a cease and desist cause he jumping out airplanes okay and they're like no we're making a movie yeah I love that story Kiana's told it a couple times he was so immersed in being boaty the like bad boy of the surf world that he he just kept skydiving and the production was like we can't insure this movie if you're skydiving with all the people in the crew all the time so Swayze capped off all of it by becoming people Magazine's sexiest man alive in 1991 as if he was poised to compete with the likes of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt for the rest of his career but what's interesting is Swayze sort of chose a different path he started taking some Chances with his Newfound leverage in Hollywood and continued to challenge himself artistically in 1995 he starred as a drag queen with Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo in Tu Wong Fu Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar it's a road trip movie and has become somewhat of a cult classic it feels when you watch it I don't know if you've seen it Jason it feels a bit ahead of its time and it was sort of a courageous move for Swayze to subvert and almost parody his lead man image to make this fun romp about drag queens now this wouldn't this would be sort of par for the course as a movie to do and sort of challenge yourself but in the early 90s you know leading men who are always playing sort of strapping good looking rugged guys wouldn't do this it was Patrick Swayze sort of carving out this Niche you wouldn't see there was this processing era in uh you know in Hollywood we got Bosom Buddies a television show you have Tootsie comes along that's right this was a few years after that but nevertheless I think there was this this through line but you never saw the biggest star in the world sort of step forward and and play this kind of role yeah he's coming off of ghost which made 500 million dollars at the box office and he's you know doing pottery with Demi Moore and then his decision is you know what I could keep doing rom-coms and said I'm going to do this road trip movie with drag queens I I always thought it was interesting it sort of made him different um in 2001 he appeared in the Indie classic Donnie Darko which basically launched a career of Jake Gyllenhaal at the time Swayze played a motivational speaker who's later revealed to be a closet the pedophile not exactly a likable role but again showing his his willingness to take on controversial roles rather than just cash in on his status so he's becoming again one of the biggest stars in the world at the time where he has by this point but his one true love was dance in 2003 he got back to his roots by co-producing and starring in a movie called One Last Dance alongside his wife Lisa it was a passion project that wasn't super lucrative but marked a returned to what made him famous in the first place from there Swayze starred in London's West End production of Guys and Dolls in 2006 and in 2008 he released his final film entitled powder blue playing an aging rock star alongside his brother Don Swayze so I wanted to pause here and talk about what would have happened to Patrick Swayze I mean he was already kind of a legend and the reason we tracked the 20-month battle with cancer was because his status was cemented Patrick Swayze was Patrick Swayze he really didn't need to make another movie to prove himself in the industry at all but where do you think it was heading before the cancer diagnosis and this this case we have a bit of a clearer answer because he had just filmed the pilot episode of the Beast which I mentioned at the top of this podcast where he played that anti-hero in an FBI crime drama and I think the television landscape is now littered with anti-heroes I mean it's easy to imagine Swayze whose willingness to sort of stretch himself as an actor and and not have to appear like the handsome leading courageous man would have done really well in this era he would have you know continued to push himself and maybe played some more interesting characters and things like Breaking Bad and and projects like that I could imagine Swayze easily transitioned the other possibility of course is he sticks with what he loves he's now you know super rich and doesn't need to do anything else to prove himself or to make money so maybe the idea would be he would really lean into the dance the background that he had and start making movies that appeal to that side of him they're not going to be successful right the days of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly are over we're not going to have huge dance movies they're going to lead the box office so la la land you know something you pointed out that that's that was an exception but it had a but that may have been the direction that he had had it sort of maybe on Broadway doing a lot you can do a lot of dancing on Broadway or making movies that really appealed to that side of him I mean you know you you just don't know but the the reality is that he had reached a point in his career that he could have done basically whatever he wanted from that point forward I mean he would be an aging star now and you're confined to a certain number of roles I suppose but look at Tom Cruise but look at Tom Cruise more relevant than ever you know Swayze still might have had that gear in him to have one last Resurgence but you know unfortunately we'll never know Swayze's career touched a lot of different lives from Jennifer Gray to Keanu Reeves to Demi Moore and many others who have spoken out about him in the years since his death but Whoopi Goldberg who worked with Swayze on ghost was in the unique position of processing the loss in real time as host of the view at the time of his death and she shared the news of his passing on the program back in 2009 and gave a touching and very personal tribute to her friend zest for life and I thought but she deserved the final word here this was a well-fought battle Patrick fought like the Dickens to to survive it or to get through it he never thought of himself as someone who was dying because as he said to another good friend of mine he said you know we're all dying and so his attitude was until it kills me I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing so this was his attitude and I have to say I I I hope whenever it comes for me that I am the same because he worked up until the last minute he worked he did his his show he he just was a cat that never gave up and and I I'm I would like to be able to be that I would like to have that bravery [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: TMZ Audio Network

Views: 7,544

Keywords: tmz, celebrity, entertainment news, famous, fame, hollywood, hollywood news, entertainment, feature, tmz2016fs11221, tmz podcast, podcasts, patrick swayze, last days podcast, patrick, last days, celebrity death

Id: xkem0CRjVLY

Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 07 2023