The Lone Gunman

- Yahlin Chang

John Cusack is a lovable hit man in 'Grosse Pointe Blank.' A Gen-X icon, he's half as famous as he ought to be but twice as famous as he'd like.

THE FOUR SEASONS HOTEL IN Boston is filled with white winter sunlight this afternoon, but John Cusack has buried himself in the deepest couch in the darkest corner of the restaurant. Gripping a double espresso in one hand and waving a cigarette in the other, he pretends to be a movie executive. "You can't make money unless there's a big concept that cost $ 62 million and there's no ideas," Cusack thunders in a gruff mobster accent. His face glows pale against his signature mortician's get-up -- black T shirt, black jacket, black pants, black shoes. "No ideas, a big concept and superficial characters. These characters are too complex! They gotta be superficial! They gotta be two-dimensional!"

Cusack's new film, George Armitage's "Grosse Pointe Blank," cost just $ 15 million and has actual thoughts in its head. The movie's about a depressed hit man trying to survive his 10-year high-school reunion. Cusack wrote and produced it with longtime buddies Steve Pink and D. V. DeVincentis, and he's so fond of it that he's forcing himself through a press tour. He's getting only three hours of sleep a night, and he's exhausted. Still, with his high-speed banter and precision hand gestures, Cusack's an engrossing lunchtime show -- even when he talks about how much he hates being famous. "Your life is a commodity," he says. "You're always seen in the 'right' places, you put on this happy '30s champagne party face" -- he flashes a crazed plastic grin -- "and it has nothing to do with being an actor. I mean, I don't get it." Cusack stops to spear his Thai-flavored roast chicken. "You know, when I was growing up, the Pacinos and De Niros and Duvalls weren't on TV talking about what they were doing in their kitchens that morning. They weren't like, selling soap. So I'll do it, but I still won't do it . . ." Suddenly he's at a loss for words. In a cheap way? "Umm, well, to sell this movie I'll probably do it in a few cheap ways." He smiles and takes a bite.

"Grosse Pointe" is a terrifically absurd black comedy: Cusack's hit man has a therapist and a cat, and reunites with his long-lost love to the strains of a-ha and the Bangles. But the actor believes the film's also about the soul-killing you undergo as a corporate or government lackey in America. Spend an hour with Cusack and you'll get an earful of Noam Chomsky, Studs Terkel and a couple of anti-Ollie North diatribes. "Slaughtering the competition, making a killing, cutthroat professionalism -- taken to its logical conclusion, you'd literally kill someone for money," he says. "Whether you're chopping someone's head off or downsizing a corporation, carpet-bombing Iraq or slitting throats in Nicaragua in camouflage paint -- as long as it's a socially acceptable vent for that kind of rage and horror, we pat ourselves on the back and just go ahead." His eyes widen in revulsion. It's amazing: at 30, he's still idealistic enough to be shocked. So when do we get to read the Cusack manifesto? The actor bolts upright in embarrassment. "See, that sounds horrible! That sounds so pretentious! I don't have a manifesto. Is that what you're going to write?"

Cusack grew up in Chicago, the fourth of five kids in a tightknit Irish Catholic family. (Three of his siblings show up in "Grosse Pointe" -- well-known actress Joan plays his secretary, and Bill and Ann have bit parts.) His mother, a teacher, and his father, a writer, hung out with antiwar activists Philip and Daniel Berrigan; Cusack grew up hearing tales of lamb's blood thrown on the steps of the Pentagon and fearing that the family phone was tapped. He started doing theater in second grade and made his first movie at 17. "I wasn't a good boy -- I had too much stuff going on," he says, clenching his fists. "I couldn't just sit down and be quiet. Whatever I was afraid of, I wanted to dive into. So I was just like, f--k school." He dropped out of NYU after one semester.

Early in his career, Cusack typically played a teenager who was sharp and funny but also nerdy and lovelorn. He was cool but not too cool; he was the loser who got the girl. His anti-slick underdog won over a generation of '80s teens who spent Friday nights group-renting "The Sure Thing," "Better Off Dead" and "Say Anything," the against-all-odds romantic anthems of their high-school years. Cusack says the aw-shucks guy in "Say Anything" came closest to himself. In an oft-quoted speech he co-wrote with director Cameron Crowe, he says, "I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed. Or repair anything sold, bought, or processed, you know, as a career." That's what Dustin Hoffman should have said to the man who suggested plastics, and it became a slogan for a generation famously cynical about their options while secretly holding out for something better. Cusack is a hero they can identify with, a champion of ambivalence -- more hopeful than alienated, but still kind of depressed.

Cusack's later characters struggled against the horror of living in the world armed with only a fledgling idealism. In "The Grifters," he was a small-time con searching for redemption but foiled by his sharky girlfriend and murdered by his mom. In "Bullets Over Broadway," he was an earnest young playwright who gets bank-rolled by the mob. In "City Hall," he was a naive deputy mayor who discovers he works for a corrupt machine. Now, with "Grosse Pointe," Cusack has managed to write his political agenda into a movie even a Hollywood executive could love. "It's a commercial movie, but its ideas are subversive, so it's sort of, like, submercial," he says, laughing. "Disney can market it, you know? There's explosions, there's guys with guns, there's a pretty girl. It looks like an action movie. But it doesn't taste like one."

You could also interpret "Grosse Pointe" as a statement of Cusack's ambivalence about being an actor for hire -- his character is named Martin Blank, for heaven's sake. "Sounds Freudian," barks Cusack (who also says he was terrified of going to his high-school reunion). The actor, who finally relented and moved to Los Angeles from Chicago six years ago, admits, "Being in Hollywood, you can be a mercenary, believe me. It's not always fun to look at yourself." This summer will find Cusack in a decidedly strange place, Jerry Bruckheimer's popcorn production "Con Air." The movie, also starring Nicolas Cage and John Malkovich, is about a planeful of the world's most dangerous criminals. For his first action role, Cusack's one demand -- to everyone's mystification -- was that he wear sandals. "It's completely inappropriate footgear," he says proudly. Don't people accuse him of selling out? "Yeah, sure," he says. "But I don't think I sold out. I'm the first post-Charlton Heston, non-Biblical action star wearing sandals in the history of film. So for those who say I'm selling out, I say it's a cinematic first." Cusack will no doubt keep "Con Air" from being a tired formula picture. He always lands on his feet.