Road House is a movie that not only seems to get better with age, the stories about Road House seem to get better too. It’s great that Road House went from being universally panned to becoming one of the most-viewed movies ever on cable, but even greater that Bill Murray and his brothers would prank call Kelly Lynch’s husband and do running commentary every time it played on cable. (“Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now. They’re doing it. He’s throwing her against the rocks.”)
That may go down as the greatest Road House story of them all, but we did manage to get a few more from director Rowdy Herrington when we talked to him for our retrospective. As one of Herrington’s stories went, Julie Michaels, who played the movie’s other blonde, Denise, who strips for Dalton (Swayze) and plays armpiece for Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara), won her part by writing “property of Joel Silver” on her thigh during her audition. Joel Silver being the super-producer (Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, The Matrix, a million other things) who pitched Road House to potential cast members in three words: “boobs and bombs.”
I didn’t want to just take Herrington’s word for it, I had to hear it from Michaels herself. And as it turns out, she’s had a pretty interesting career herself. After booking her first movie role in Road House when she was just 19, she went on to train with famous kickboxer Benny “The Jet” Urquidez and eventually transitioned to doing stunts full time. She’s also a former NCAA gymnast who trained kickboxing in Thailand. In addition to Road House, you can see her as the topless babe who beats up Keanu Reeves in Point Break. She’s currently married to stunt coordinator Peewee Piemonte (for 26 years) and the two shared an Emmy nomination last year for their work on SEAL Team for CBS.
It’s a hell of a resume. When I first reached out, I had no idea Julie Michaels would turn out to be the pin-up version of The World’s Most Interesting Man, but here we are.
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You came up when I was researching [a Road House retrospective] and, naturally, I wanted to hear your story of how you got involved in the movie.
I had just moved to Hollywood from Florida. I went into an agent’s office because a friend of mine had a scheduled meeting with the agency and I went with him, just to go. I was sitting in the lobby, and when he came out of his meeting, the agent came out and he looked at me. He goes, “Are you an actress?”, and I said, “Yes, sir. I am.” He goes, “Come in here.” So I went into the office and 10 minutes later he gave me a slip of paper of where to show up for an audition, which turned out to be for Road House.
What was that audition like?
All six of them, you mean?
Oh wow. Yeah.
They were very, very, thorough for sure. There was a regular audition with the casting director and then later with the director, Rowdy Herrington, one with producer Joel Silver, and then there was a dance audition. There were several auditions. I think at the time I was too young to be nervous. It was just fun. One thing just got more fun than the next, and all the rest, as they say, is history. It seems kind of unfair, although I had already done several years of stage work by then but very little movie acting… In fact, I wasn’t even in the union, I was so young. So it was all a big learning curve.
I’ve always been kind of a seat-of-the-pants kind of girl and I learn really fast. And I was surrounded with really fabulous people, from our DP to Rowdy, and a plethora of actors that just had hearts that were bigger than their bodies. Terry Funk and some of the fight guys were my kind of guys, just from being physical and an athlete, so I would hang a lot with them. Of course, Patrick was always really great. Sam Elliot, to me, is like the ultimate guy on the planet. So sitting on the back of the grip truck with my little feet just dangling over, kicking like a little kid, listening to his stories and his lovely voice, it was a dream come true. It was one of those things that people say, “That’ll never happen,” you know? It happened.
How old were you at this point?
I think I was 19.
The way Rowdy Herrington told it, he said that you pulled your dress up and you had written “Property of Joel Silver” on your leg.
I had a very smart agent. In a dance audition, you’ve got to do something that’s pretty fab, so that was his suggestion. And I had the balls to do it. So I wrote “Property of Joel Silver” on the inside of my thigh. Kicked my leg up and stuck my foot on the top of his desk and the rest. Everybody blushed. It was great.
Yeah.
I’m surprised he remembered that. That’s so cool.
You went on to do stunts. You weren’t doing stunts before Road House were you?
Well, I was a martial artist. And I always hung with the stunt guys, but I always thought, “These guys are crazy.” But I always found myself hanging with them, just because I was an NCAA gymnast at the University of Washington. So I had that team mentality, and acting isn’t always like that. It’s more solo, where with stunts, everybody is as important as the next person. And I found myself hanging with them more and more. Then, right after that, I got cast in Point Break with Patrick and Keanu Reeves, and it was because of my fights. That’s when it really started open up, that the action on film is stuff that I just feel very connected to. Acting is my first love and will always be my first love, but when you can add stunts on top of that, it made me feel like a really authentic actor. And this was in the days of, the studios took you under their wing and you learned to fight, and you learned to ride horses, and you learned to do swordplay. That, to me, I felt was being the entire athlete and actor all into one.
Did you want to have more fight scenes in Road House?
No, because at that time for me, my plate was full with just making this character work. It wasn’t that mindset. She was an arm piece and she knew it. She was caught and she knew it. At the end of the film, they were talking about alternate endings and I was like, “Oh my gosh. Let me kill him [Brad Wesley]. She’s already beaten the crap out of him. Let me be the one. I’ll go to jail for it.” Ultimately, obviously, they didn’t do that, but for the most part, I wanted to do that one job and do it really well.
What do you remember about shooting the movie? I grew up in Reedley, California where part of it was filmed. I was just wondering if you might remember anything about any of the times you guys had shooting there.
There’s a thousand. We shot for a decent period of time. But most of it was, again, very new to me, so everything was fun. Everything was exciting. We flew up to Fresno to shoot the stuff around the ranch. It was neat experience to me because it was also the day that I met Sensei Benny [“The Jet”] Urquidez and became one of his students. We rode in the limo from the airport to the set, and he just introduced himself as Benny. I didn’t know who he was. He was the kindest, most humble, most delightful man I’d ever met. And then I got out of the limo and Charlie Picerni, the stunt coordinator, said, “I see you met Benny The Jet,” and I thought I was going to choke. He looked over at me with this cute little sweet sheepish grin as if to say, “It’s no problem. It’s okay.” But I couldn’t speak because I was like, “All this time I’m sitting next to Benny The Jet!” So that, for me, was one of the first parts of the shooting process that was so exciting and so fun.
Then we walked through this long field, Charlie Picerni, myself, and Sensei, and some of the guys were shooting bow and arrows. And he was walking and talking with me, picked up a bow and arrow without barely even looking through his sight and shot a bullseye. He put it down, and just kept walking. Again, I thought, “Holy crap.” Two of the most amazing men on the planet.
Everybody had this very unique je ne sais quoi. They did. Marshall Teague, the same way. Terry Funk became a very close friend of mine. I just loved him, and he has great uniqueness he brought to it. And the casting overall, to me, was what made this movie so great, was that it was like a modern-day western with the black hat and the white hat, and all these really fabulous henchmen.
So you were practicing martial arts before the movie? What were you practicing before that?
I grew up on a ranch, so I was very physical to begin with. And being a gymnast, that lent itself to really being physical in that manner. And I went to Asia and studied in Thailand. When I came back, it was just a few months before I decided that I was going to move to Los Angeles. The Thai style, they weren’t very accepting of women, as you can understand. In that a) it was brutal, and b) it was just not done. But I found coaches that would do it, and then trained in Florida before I came. Then once I got here, it was like, “Okay.” My sights were set on acting, and it wasn’t until Road House when I met Sensei Benny when I said, “Okay, now I know what Sensei I’m going to study with here.”
Then you studied with him for how long?
Several years.
When I was talking to Rowdy, he was talking about how when they were shooting that scene in downtown Reedley, the women had all come out of their offices and were peaking around corners trying to see Patrick, like he was a huge rockstar. Do you remember anything like that?
No, not really, because most of the stuff that I dealt with him was pretty one-on-one. He was so quiet and humble on set that even though I knew he had done Dirty Dancing…he really wasn’t as well-known to me, and I just knew him as “Buddy.” I look back at it now, I remember the day he passed away and I stood outside on my deck and I cried for three hours. All I could remember was that he was so humble and so kind to me. It was a very difficult thing to do the strip dance, but I knew I had to do it and I knew I had to be on point with it. And he made it so easy. His wife Lisa, too. She pulled me aside and she goes, “Look. You’re an actress. Act. Just do it.” Both of them made a big difference to me. So to me, they were just kind of like aunt and uncle. It wasn’t like, “Oh my gosh, it’s Patrick Swayze.” They made me feel a bit like family.
What was Joel Silver like?
Joel was awesome. He’s Mr. “Boobs and Bombs.” He actually named my hooters. He named them… I can’t even remember, Frank and Henry, I think it was. He would go, “It’s going to be Frank and Henry day coming up.” He was great. He knew his stuff. He’s about as good as they get when it comes to action. He would call on me to help some of the younger girls, if you can imagine that. Younger in the business, so to speak, to help them to try to get some of them a line or two. I felt like he was very fair. At the end of shooting, they kind of ran out of money, so instead of paying us they offered us our wardrobe. And we were like, “Heck yeah. I’ll take that wardrobe!” I still have my wardrobe from Road House.
So wait, they didn’t pay you at the end?
They ran out of money, and they basically said to everybody, “We don’t have any money. If you don’t want to work this week, we understand.” We’re like, “No, I want to work,” and he ended up giving us our wardrobe as payment.
Oh, I see. So you’d worked for the contracted amount of time, and they wanted you to come back for reshoots and they didn’t have the money for it?
Well, it wasn’t reshoots. It was just finishing it. I don’t remember. I don’t think it was a lot. I think it was just one of those things like, “We’re done.” They were toast.
You’ve been in the movie business for quite a while now. Is there anything that stands out to you about Road House that you think would be different now, or that you couldn’t get away with now, or anything like that?
Not necessarily couldn’t get away with, but it hit at a perfect time. The ’80s were a big action time, and it was action that was more realistic, not so much of the CGI. It was based on character-driven action, and it was a really powerful era for that. Now, I think stuff is so much over-the-top, and while that was campy, it wasn’t over-the-top. It was stuff that really legitimately could have happened. But it was because there was a clear line between the black and the white hat. Today, a lot of that is not really that clear, so the audience doesn’t quite know who to cheer for. Back then, they really knew who they were going to cheer for, and it had the best one-liners.”Oh, I thought you’d be bigger.” You know?
Yeah.
I also thought it was really great that when they wrote that script, they wrote this part about a blind guitarist. And somebody had seen Jeff Healey somewhere, and then it went to California and they cast him, not knowing that that’s who it was actually written for. He sat around some days and he was like, “Why am I doing this? This is such a waste of time. I should be on the road.” I’m like, “No, Jeff. You have to understand. This is going to make you a household name.” He’s like, “Really? I just think it’s a waste of time.” I’m like, “Dude, I’m telling you.”
That’s a great story. That era compared to now, what are some things you miss? What are some things you’re glad are not the same way that they were? Are there differences that stand out in your mind?
I don’t think so just because it’s more about the genre than the era. There are changes in the genre, for sure, but era-wise the biggest change for me is visual effects. I just think that unless you’re doing a fantasy, it ruins it. When we do our stunts, my husband is all about as honest as you can make it, as real as you can make it and make it safe. We’ve done some stuff that’s been crazy, but we did it because we knew we could do it safely and it was real, because I think people appreciate that.
There’s movies I see that are directed by stunt guys now, and even some of those, like they keep shaking the camera. I like the old ones where you could see the stunts.
Yeah. Agreed. Well-played. Yes, exactly.
Anyway, I appreciate you giving me so much time. Is there anything you want to add before I let you go that I didn’t ask you about?
No, I don’t think so. That was kind of fun going down memory lane, though, I have to tell you.
Yeah, for me too.
It is kind of interesting to know that it is the number one movie on television. Did you know that?
I heard that, yeah.
Did Rowdy tell you that?
Yeah, he said something like that.
Crazy.
I know the Bill Murray story about him calling Kelly Lynch’s husband every time it’s on TV.
That’s funny, right? I think they said it played in the movie theaters in Alaska for like a year. It’s crazy. It’s just one of those that for some reason… It’s all-American, blood and guts, boobs and bombs. It’s got a little something for everyone and some pretty nice performances.
Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more retrospectives here.