Here there "horsefeathers,"
Just wanted to say a big THANK YOU for letting me know this book was
out there! It just arrived today. I can't wait to read it! I'll
let you a know how it was!

Ciao,
Stephanie in CA

--- In christianslater2@yahoogroups.com, "horsefeatherz"
<horsefeatherz@y...> wrote:
>
> Has anyone heard about this biography??!? I found out about it
> yesterday by accident!! Looks like it was published in August. I
> bought it on Amazon and it should be waiting for me when I get home
> today.
>
> Christian Slater: Back From the Edge
> by: Nigel Goodall
> http://www.nigelgoodall.co.uk/christian%20slater.htm
> (there's an excerp on the website, I'll post it below)
>
> buy it on amazon (it says there's only 2 left):
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
> /1844541371/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1/102-5659152-1734543?%
> 5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance
>
> Enjoy....
>
>
>
> EXCERPT
> Three weeks before Heathers is due to open on 31 March 1989,
> Christian and Winona Ryder are about to appear at a promotional
> screening at a New York adult-school film class. The mostly
suburban
> middle-aged audience is clearly troubled by the movie and its light-
> hearted treatment of diabolical themes, and many walk out halfway
> through, muttering their disapproval, shock and disdain.
>
> Backstage, Christian and Winona are worried. She has an idea and
> whispers it to Christian. When the screening ends, they come out
> from behind the curtain and sit in chairs on stage, holding hands,
> and announce that they just got married the previous week in Las
> Vegas. Some class members applaud while others look befuddled, but
> Christian and Winona never drop the act or the conceit. Calling
each
> other `honey', their charm overpowers the critics.
>
> A few days later, Winona is striding briskly through Central Park
> wearing Christian's leather biker jacket. The zipper won't fasten,
> so her hands clasp it shut against the chilly spring breeze. She
> laughingly recalls the idea of marrying Christian. `We talked about
> how we were going to do all the Hollywood marriage things,' she
> later remembers, `like stage fights in restaurants, be really
> reclusive but then leak out everything. He'd cover my face when
> photographers came near, like Sean and Madonna.'
>
> But, when Christian later went on a talk show and proposed to her
on
> the air, Winona suddenly tired of the joke. `People have been
> calling me about it,' she recalled. `It doesn't sound too good.
> Marriage would be fun, but I don't think I'm ready for it yet.'
>
> For Christian, though, it was no joke: he actually did fall in love
> with Winona. He and the actress playing the lead Heather, Kim
> Walker, had been dating since stage school. `She was a terrific
> actress,' says Christian (Walker died in March 2001 from a brain
> tumour at the age of thirty-two), and Winona asserts that she and
> Christian `never fooled around or anything during the movie'. But
> isn't it possible that they could have, given that it was during
the
> thirty-two-day shoot that they fell for each other? It was the
first
> time, after all, that Winona had become romantically involved with
a
> leading man, but it probably wasn't the only time. Still doing the
> gossip rounds to this day are her oft-speculated flings with later
> co-stars Gary Oldman and Daniel Day-Lewis on and off the sets of
> Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Age of Innocence, respectively. If
> there is any truth to these rumours, perhaps it wouldn't be
> surprising if she and Christian did in fact have an affair during
> and after the film. According to Winona, however, their
relationship
> didn't begin until after filming was completed and Christian had
> broken up with Kim. Even if they had `fooled around' during
filming,
> Christian would have found it easy to explain away, marvelling
> at `the great chemistry you get going on a film set. You get to say
> all these things to a girl you never could normally.' Perhaps it
was
> during the strip-croquet scene that the crush began. When both are
> lying naked, after `boning away' on the croquet set, only covered
by
> the clothing they had supposedly flung off during the match, to
many
> this scene is evidence enough that the chemistry was already
> present.
>
> As to whether or not they were actually dating, Winona continues,
it
> was `only for a couple of weeks, but it was too weird. When you're
> really good friends with somebody, it's hard when you try to make
> [it] work. It's bogus. It should just happen naturally. But he
broke
> my heart, or I thought he did at the time.'
>
> Christian, on the other hand, hoped that that wasn't true. `She is
a
> wild woman to work with,' he still affectionately admits today.
`She
> has a naivety, a vulnerability almost, that makes her attractive to
> be with and to watch.' She was, after all, the very reason why he
> wanted to do Heathers in the first place. `I loved her since Lucas.
> She was so cute, so beautiful and so natural. She was very helpful
> and very professional. I could tell that she and I had some kind of
> chemistry.'
>
> Winona agrees, `We really have great on- and off-screen chemistry.
> He's one of the most brilliant actors I've ever worked with.' She
> can even remember the day he came in and read for the part of JD,
> his character in Heathers. `A lot of guys came in and read the
scene
> where I'm fake hanging, and they would do the whole monologue to
me.
> I was just standing on this chair for two weeks and pretending I'm
> hanging while the actors do the speech. Some of them just didn't
get
> the comedy of it, were really being very dramatic about it, and
then
> Christian came in and he was perfect.'
>
> But when one journalist asked Christian about a People magazine
> interview that quoted Winona as saying that he `so scared' her that
> she once locked herself in her trailer, Christian admitted that,
> when not particularly sober, `I was actually scary. Not the most
> positive guy in the world. A monster in some ways. Maybe I was born
> with anger. Maybe it was the weird, scary roles I was playing. I
was
> dealing with a lot of shit, desperately trying to find out who the
> real me was. When I finally stopped trying to fight [to be
somebody]
> I wasn't, I just sat back and said, "This is the guy I'm stuck
with.
> I've got to be happy with it, or why go on?"'
>
> Part of `that shit', as Christian puts it, started in the same year
> that Heathers was released. Between Christmas and New Year, on 29
> December 1989 – coincidentally just hours after Winona collapsed in
> Rome and was forced to drop out of The Godfather Part III – Los
> Angeles police observed a Saab 900 being driven erratically in west
> Hollywood. The driver was Christian, on his way home from a
> nightclub and doing 50mph in a 35mph zone. The cops pulled the car
> over and what happened next established a pattern of wildly
> unpredictable behaviour that would periodically affect the next
> seven years of Christian's life. Instead of simply pulling over, he
> began a ludicrously short-lived car chase that ended mere seconds
> after it had begun in a back alley, of all places, with Christian
> crashing into two telephone poles, abandoning his vehicle,
> attempting to flee over a fence and, in the scuffle – deliberately
> or otherwise – kicking one of the officers in the face. `I thought
I
> was Batman,' he said at the time. `I had the same mentality, but
> not,' he joked, `the utility belt.'
>
> Christian was charged with evading the police, driving under the
> influence of alcohol, driving with a suspended licence and assault
> with a deadly weapon – specifically, his cowboy boots. And, with
> another drink-driving conviction from the previous year already on
> the books, Christian was sentenced to serve ten days in prison,
> which he served just over six months later in July 1990. This brief
> sojourn behind bars was followed by a ninety-day stint in a
> voluntary rehabilitation programme, from which he discharged
himself
> on day seven. For the first few months of the following year, he
> also attended regular meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. `It's hard
> enough to be a parent, much less the parent of a movie star,'
> laments Mary Jo. `When you love someone so much and you see that
> they're falling and you're trying to stop it, you know they have to
> fall because it's part of life experience.'
>
> Part of that life experience included some court-ordered community
> service, for which Christian decided to try working behind the
> scenes, directing The Laughter Epidemic, a children's musical that
> ran at the Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles, raising $200,000 in
> the process for the charity the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. `People
> tend to ignore that,' he complained. `They like to focus on the
> darker stuff. It's more interesting, I guess.'
>
> Dan Lauria, Christian's childhood father figure and friend, agreed.
> It was a period that was a particularly tough one for everyone in
> Christian's life. `The reason Christian and I get along is because,
> during that time, I said, "I'm here when you call,"' he
> remembers. `I didn't bug him, so I always got the calls after the
> fact. When he went to AA meetings, that's when I had to go, just to
> get him started, until he got his sponsor.'
>
> Although the roots of much of his wild behaviour lay in the time he
> spent on film sets as a boy, Christian was still indulging in what
> he called his `old-time late nights'. On one occasion, he
> remembers, `It was about three in the morning and I was with this
> great girl. We were drinking and having a wonderful time when she
> mentioned to me that she had Jack Nicholson's telephone number. So
I
> was like, "Great, great. I'll give him a call." Well, I got him on
> the phone and said, "Jack, this is Christian Slater. I just
finished
> shooting Heathers. It hasn't come out yet, but I do this tribute to
> you in it." I heard a click from his end of the telephone line, but
> I wanted to impress the girl, so I went into a five-minute
> spiel: "Yeah, we'll play tennis sometime," and all that. I finished
> and paused for a second, and this voice suddenly went, "Eh hah." He
> was listening to me the whole time! I don't know if he thought I
was
> completely insane or trying to impress somebody or what, but I
> couldn't take it, so I just hung up on him. I hung up on Jack
> Nicholson. It was a moment of clarity, like, "What have I done?
I've
> just ruined my career."'
>
> But the soul-searching often gave way to exuberance. `I'm very
> mischievous,' he says proudly. `A couple of days ago, I ran around
> and stole the doormats from my neighbours. I just wanted to stir
> things up a little. I still have them.'
>
> According to People Weekly, one of his favourite pastimes was
> Nintendo, and the Westwood apartment he now shares with an 85lb
> Akita named Winston could pass for a branch of US toy store FAO
> Schwarz. `I spend a lot of time in toy stores,' he admits. Indeed,
> his mother recalls that, after shooting the explicit love scene in
> The Name of the Rose, Christian `went home and played with his Star
> Wars figures'. For Christian, being a ladies' man with a boy's
> psyche is just fine. `Maybe if I have time for myself, I can do
> stuff like take cooking classes and grow as a person and all that
> malarkey, but for now I just don't want to grow up.'
>
> Perhaps Winona didn't, either. Back in Central Park, she took a
seat
> on a park bench and stared out at the boating lake where, years
> later, she would film the opening scenes for Autumn in New York
with
> Richard Gere. But, for now, and just a few months away from meeting
> her first true love, Johnny Depp, she suddenly looked tired. She
had
> been doing Heathers promotions for a few weeks now. Waking up at
> dawn to do the Today show, for instance, seemed to indicate that,
> while her fame had finally caught up with her, it was beginning to
> take its toll.
>
> In the two years prior to filming Heathers, Winona had already made
> a significant mark on the big screen, from her debut as the love-
> sick teenager in Lucas to a girl who enters a tender but doomed
> relationship with a mentally retarded young man (played by Rob
Lowe)
> in Square Dance, playing supernatural comedy in Tim Burton's
> Beetlejuice and starring opposite Robert Downey Jr and Kiefer
> Sutherland in 1969. Born in Minnesota and raised in northern
> California, one of her many goals at the time of filming Heathers
> was to study literature and history at Trinity College, Ireland,
and
> to devote more of her off-screen time to screenwriting and film-
> making.
>