Actor and Malibu resident Daniel Stern will discuss his career-launching film, the 1979 cycling drama “Breaking Away,” at a Malibu Film Society screening this Saturday.
By Michael Aushenker / Special to The Malibu Times
The seminal bicycle-racing film, “Breaking Away,” turned out to be one local actor’s breakout movie.
“Breaking Away”-a coming-of-age story centered on four young Midwestern men and built around the Little 500 bicycle race that is held annually at Indiana University-was 22-year-old Daniel Stern’s first film. The actor played Cyril in the movie, which centered on the struggle of Dave, Dennis Christopher’s character, to win the competition against a professional Italian racing team.
Stern (“City Slickers,” “Diner”) will discuss the making of the 1979 Oscar-winning sleeper when the Malibu Film Society screens “Breaking Away” on Sat., Nov. 5 at 7:30 p.m. at the Malibu Jewish Center complex, located at 24855 Pacific Coast Highway.
Today, Stern, 54, remains proud of the film.
He remembers the camaraderie on the set with co-stars Christopher, Dennis Quaid and Jackie Earle Haley.
“We were all young and fun,” Stern said. “We bonded incredibly on the set. Jackie and Dennis were the only ones who had been in films before and Jackie was the most famous, having been in ‘Bad News Bears.’ Dennis Quaid and I have remained friends.”
Stern told The Malibu Times that he owes a lot to “Breaking Away” director Peter Yates, with whom he became lifelong friends.
“Peter plucked me from the life of a theater actor and gave me a career in the movies,” Stern said of Yates, who passed away in January. “He was a very gentle director. He trusted his actors, even a novice like me, to find their characters and humor and gently shaping scenes with small insightful notes.”
“Breaking Away” won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for four other Oscars, including Best Picture.
Stern recalled, “I was actually in L.A., shooting another movie at the time [‘Honky Tonk Freeway’]. Peter and [screenwriter] Steve Tesich invited me to the very fancy banquet room at the Beverly Wilshire while they were preparing to go to the awards ceremony. I went back to my horrible hotel room in Hollywood and watched it on TV. When it came time for the Best Picture award, they showed a clip from the movie, which was one of my big scenes, talking about how my father likes it when I fail. My jaw was on the floor. I had never seen myself on TV and to be part of the Academy Awards was completely surreal.”
After “Breaking Away,” Stern went on to play in numerous features, including a pair of Woody Allen movies: “Stardust Memories” (1980) and “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986).
“It was always my dream to work with Woody, and to have the chance to do it twice is something I cherish about my career,” Stern said. “He was a lot more regular and cynical than I had imagined, not at all meek and neurotic as his character in the movies.”
Cultivating a diverse filmography over the years, Stern has also managed to participate in many family-friendly projects, from narrating (and directing) episodes of “The Wonder Years,” to the massively successful “Home Alone” movies and “Little Monsters.”
“I usually just try to find the best scripts and I have been lucky enough to be in these classics,” Stern said. “I do love kids and entertaining them, but it is not by design.”
Stern has three children of his own with wife Laure Mattos. For the last 22 years of their three decade-plus marriage, the Sterns have resided in Malibu.
“We moved here to raise our family in a small town environment and yet close enough to the city for me to work,” said Stern, who added that he still enjoys Malibu’s inherent charms. “The astounding beauty of the ocean and the canyons still makes me smile when I drive home.”
In addition to his main metiers of acting and directing, Stern has developed in recent years a career as a sculptor working with bronze. With his work currently on display in Venice and another of his sculptures set to be unveiled soon by the City of Coronado, Stern the Sculptor seemingly always has another creation in the kiln.
Yet on Saturday, it will be Stern the Actor who will discuss “Breaking Away,” which owed its success to word of mouth and continues to be a perennial, inspirational favorite.
“The humor, the specifics of the characters, the sports structure, the actors he cast–all of this made the movie excellent,” Stern said. “It was such a small movie that the audience embraced as their own. The little engine that could.”
For tickets and more information, visit MalibuFilmSociety.org.