He runs throughout the year on Malibu Beach like a man possessed, during storms, brush fires or sunny days.
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”I think I`ve missed five days,” Bruce Dern calculates. ”One of those days was during the storm of 1983, when a single wave wiped out the front 2,000 feet of my Malibu house.”
Dern was the inescapable choice when writer-director-runner Rob Nilsson was trying to put together a deal to make ”On the Edge,” a movie about a former champion`s comeback try in a grueling mountain-to-sea distance race.
Five years later, ”On the Edge” is finally reaching the nation`s screens (it opens Friday in Chicago at the Water Tower theaters). Getting it made was almost as tortuous as the Dipsea race up and down northern California`s Mt. Tamalpais, which the movie depicts.
”When Rob first brought the script to me, I found it appealing,” Dern said in an interview. ”It was not just a movie about running; it was a story of the compulsion of being driven to achieve a goal. It also attacks the hypocrisy of amateurism.”
Dern plays Wes Holman, who returns to the competition after having been disgraced 20 years earlier. His presence in the ”On the Edge” package gave it legitimacy, but Nilsson and co-producer Jeffrey Hayes still had an uphill battle for financing.
”They raised the first $300,000 by going to races around the country and seeking contributions of as little as $10,” Dern reported. ”This picture has more than 3,000 backers.”
Production cost $1.6 million, a tiny sum in today`s film industry, and the filmmakers still faced a long period of editing and had to find a distributor. Skouras Pictures finally undertook the release, and Dern feels
”On the Edge” has a ready audience: ”For starters, there are 3.1 million competitors in running events out there. And maybe 30 million who run for recreation. But I feel the picture will also appeal to non-runners as well.” Bruce Dern is the best possible advertisement for the fitness craze. As an actor he proclaims himself to be in his late 40s, though he privately admits he`ll be 50 in June. His tall frame is devoid of excess poundage, his narrow face has the look of a young athlete.
He was born Bruce MacLeish Dern into a wealthy Chicago family. His father was former Gov. Adlai Stevenson`s law partner, his mother a department store heiress. A grandfather was Franklin D. Roosevelt`s war secretary, a great-uncle was the poet Archibald MacLeish.
”My family always gave me a rough time about becoming an actor, just as they`re giving Laura a bad time now,” said Dern, referring to his daughter, Laura Dern, a rising young actress.
”They disapproved because I dropped out of college and Laura only went a year. They seem to associate Hollywood with hucksterism. It`s that false sense of nobility that is typical of the North Shore of Chicago.”
The rebellious Dern, who had attended the University of Chicago, was overwhelmed by James Dean in ”Rebel Without a Cause” and went off to New York in 1958 with two goals: to join the Actors Studio and to work with the great director Elia Kazan. He achieved both within two years, making his film debut as a bit actor in Kazan`s ”Wild River.”
Dern came to Hollywood to be murdered in Alfred Hitchcock`s ”Marnie”
and decapitated in Robert Aldrich`s ”Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte.”
”Nothing happened for two years until Jack Nicholson introduced me to
(producer of B-movies) Roger Corman. Until then, producers said, `What`s a Bruce Dern?` Corman legitimized a lot of us, gave us top billing though little money. He paid scale, which was $415 a week.
”After that I had small roles in good pictures like `Castle Keep,` `They Shoot Horses, Don`t They,` `Hang `em High,` `Will Penny` and `War Wagon` with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas. But I found myself playing the same role again and again, and I wasn`t progressing as an actor.”
That changed when Nicholson cast him in ”Drive, He Said.” Dern`s first starring role came with the ingenious but neglected science-fiction adventure, ”Silent Running.” Since then he has tried to balance his patented crazies
(”The Cowboys,” ”Black Sunday,” ”Coming Home”) with more balanced characters (”Smile,” ”Family Plot,” ”The Great Gatsby”).
Approaching the half-century mark, Dern has somewhat slowed his running. Once he competed in ultramarathons–50 miles or more. Now he says ”no more long stuff; I do 14-15 miles a day, which is long but not long, long.
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”My only problem is that I`ve just about `run-out` Malibu,” he said.
”I figure I`ve clocked 56,000 miles in Malibu, and there`s a limit where you can go. You can run north and south and you can go east through some of the canyons. But you can`t go west, which is the Pacific Ocean.”