MICHAEL J. FOX: IN PURSUIT OF GROWING UP

CLEVELAND — One drink was sent over by a shy young blonde in a black silk blouse. Another came from a pair of giggling co-eds in matching Ohio State sweat shirts.

Sitting at a noisy hotel bar here late one night, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other, Michael J. Fox was surrounded by so many frosty mugs of brew that you’d think he was on the 15th take of a Budweiser commercial.

It’s not that the young actor drinks that much. The beers were gifts from a bevy of female fans who’d discovered that their favorite heartthrob was in town shooting “Light of Day,” his first movie since “Back to the Future.” The Paul Schrader film, which wrapped recently and is due out early next year, stars Fox and rock singer Joan Jett as the brother-sister leaders of a struggling bar band.

Most of Fox’s admirers, who looked like they might’ve needed some fake I.D.s just to get into the bar, were too shy to approach him in person. Instead, every few minutes, one of the bartenders would bring another beer over to Fox, pointing toward the young lady who’d made the gesture. When Fox would grin and wave hello, the girls would burst into smiles, or in the case of one particularly shy admirer, immediately duck under the bar.

The young actor, who looks like a chain-smoking choir boy, seemed to take the adulation in stride. Frankly, it was a wonder that anyone even noticed Fox, who, at 5-4, can sit on a bar-stool without his feet hitting the ground. Wearing a T-shirt, jacket (with the sleeves rolled up) and jeans, he seemed to blend right into the bar’s swinging-singles scenery, swapping stories with “Light of Day” crew members over the din of current dance hits.

Watching all the girls around the bar eyeing the star’s every move, you couldn’t help but wonder what Fox thought about his swift rise to celebrity status. At 25, he’s already been in a mega-movie (“Back to the Future”), a mega-series (“Family Ties”), a mega-commercial (Pepsi) and emerged as a mega-cover boy (on a recent Rolling Stone--and the current issue of Superstar Crosswords, in which he stars in the “feature puzzle”) who reportedly has a nifty niche in the $1-million-a-film salary club.

Even at his hotel here, where he was registered under a pseudonym (“Mr. Andrews”), Fox couldn’t escape the constant swirl of attention. At 1 o’clock his phone was still ringing every five minutes, alternating with loud knocks at his door.

In fact, “Light of Day” crew members were startled to discover that the girls who crowded around outside the movie set were willing to pay $1 a shot for his used guitar strings from the film. His guitar picks, which bore the initials “MJF,” were also in such demand that the crew had even given them an off-color nickname, referring to what sexual favors the girls might bestow on anyone who had a plentiful supply.

Still, Fox seemed eager to shed his squeaky-clean teen idol image.

“To be honest, that character I’m portrayed as--the cute, little mini-E.T.--was starting to bore the hell out of me,” said the articulate Fox, who rarely seemed rattled by all of the uproar around him. “I’m not saying I don’t appreciate all the good things that have come from the TV show and its popularity, but there’s a dark side of me as well as a bright side.

“You can’t worry about being everybody’s sweetheart for all your life. I’m accustomed to being a nice guy and it’s nice to have people like me. But if someday people suddenly say, ‘Hey, he’s an . . . ‘ Well, I just can’t change that.”

It’s easy to see why Fox has never been lumped in with his Brat Pack peers. Armed with an affable, self-deprecating sense of humor, he has little of the brooding, self-consciousness that has made so many other young stars seem like cartoon versions of James Dean.

Later that night, when Fox spotted Little Richard performing a recent hit song on a big video screen at one end of the bar, he bounded over to the TV, turned up the sound and began strutting along with the song, even faking a few guitar licks as if he had a Fender Stratocaster in his hands.

“I didn’t become an actor to just be a pop sensation,” he said, back at the bar, drinking another beer. “If I wanted to be (“Knight Rider” star) David Hasselhoff and do the celebrity TV thing, I could do it and make a lot of money. But it doesn’t take that much to make me happy. I don’t need to own a mall or something.

“You just have to have the attitude that if you’re dancing while you’re on the up side, you’ve got to be able to dance when you’re on the down side too. ‘Cause I know that the down side to being hot is that sooner or later, if you’re hot, you’re gonna be what’s not hot.”

Fox glanced around the bar. “My dad’s a sergeant in the Canadian Mounties, and he doesn’t really know anything about show business and all that stuff. But he told me once, ‘You know, being a celebrity is like a banquet. They set up the tables, with all the nice, fancy silverware and the appetizers and cocktails. Everything looks great. But sooner or later, you’re going to be the main course.’ ”

Fox shrugged. “On the other hand. . . .”

Before he could finish, an attractive young woman with dark, curly hair appeared at his side, staring intently at one of the beers lined up at the bar.

“What’s going on?” she said abruptly. “You haven’t even had your drink yet.”

This new admirer (who said she was a waitress at a local restaurant) appeared to have already had a few drinks herself. She planted herself on a stool next to Fox.

Eager to make conversation, she began bombarding Fox with questions about his movie, but soon turned her attention to his visitor, demanding to see his notebook. Sensing an opportunity to escape, Fox quickly slipped off his stool and left the room.

When he returned a few minutes later, the young woman was still there, cross-examining his visitor. Fox took a sip of beer and began to walk away, saying he had to make a phone call.

His visitor grabbed his shoulder. “Are you going to come back and rescue me?”

Fox grinned. “Sure,” he said, “but who’s gonna rescue me?”

With stacks of pop cassettes everywhere, a mound of videotapes by the TV and an ashtray full of cigarette butts, Paul Schrader’s hotel room here looked like a perfect set for a rock tour scene from “Light of Day.” Having pulled a hamstring in a off-day softball game that afternoon, Schrader limped around the room, still trying to wake up from a mid-evening nap. Schrader looked exhausted, but then all directors look pretty exhausted after eight grueling weeks of on-location filming.

A balding, beefy man with the thick, muscular arms of a machinist, Schrader is a veteran screenwriter and director who has authored such dark, nightmare films as “Taxi Driver,” “Hardcore,” “Blue Collar,” “Raging Bull” and “Mishima.” In a Hollywood era dominated by addled teen dramas and escapist fantasies, he is the patron saint of lost causes, creating films full of hallucinatory demons, paranoid killers and fallen heroes seeking redemption.

Schrader has just as much stubborn, obsessive drive as any of the characters in his films. He’s been trying to make “Light of Day” for nearly six years, and after butting heads with several generations of reluctant studio executives, Schrader has somehow willed his project movie into existence. (Produced by Rob Cohen and Keith Barish of Taft-Barish Productions, “Light of Day” is scheduled for release by Tri-Star Pictures in February.)

Schrader first began researching the film in 1980, living here for six weeks in a raucous rock watering hole called Swingo’s Keg and Quarter, where he viewed the bacchanal of pop life in full bloom. “That’s where I last saw (Live Aid charity crusader) Bob Geldof,” Schrader recalled, “careening down the halls, totally naked.”

Schrader spent much of his time with a local group called the Generators, whose leader, Mark Addison (now in a band called Nation of One), has served as an unofficial consultant for the movie. As a longtime rock fan, Schrader wanted to write a family drama set against a backdrop of the Ohio bar-band scene.

At age 40, Schrader seems to have mellowed, especially since the days when he used to compare himself to convicted John Lennon assassin Mark Chapman, saying: “I’m very prone to addictive patterns and behavior primarily of the self-destructive sort.”

When his wife, actress Mary Beth Hurt, visited him on the set, toting the couple’s baby daughter, Molly, in a pink stroller, he genially played the role of the doting papa, hunkering down to give the beaming child a kiss on the cheek. Schrader--the man who once declared that “the fantasies of the artist are like the fantasies of the psychopath”--later explained that he writes scripts now so that he’ll at least “have enough money to keep me in baby shoes.”

After he finished “Mishima” last year, Schrader gave his rock tale a major overhaul, which he found regained its spark when he changed the older brother to a sister. “I made her sort of a bad-seed girl, who had this titanic battle with her mother, with the brother caught in the middle. To see a woman wearing the mantle of James Dean--with the black leather jacket and the tough talk--it made her a very scary character. It’s very unsettling to see all that frustration and misdirected anger in a woman.”

The change in gender may have also helped give Schrader a healthier distance from the jagged emotions in the script. Schrader’s mother died in 1978, and though he was uncomfortable discussing the details of his relationship with her, it’s clear that the generational conflict in the film draws heavily from Schrader’s personal life.

“Sometimes I refer to it as ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Cleveland Heights,’ ” he said with a thin smile. “The heavier stuff, the drama between Joan’s character and her mom, is really from my life. The whole well-spring of art is to be able to assimilate your experiences, put them in perspective and turn them into a fiction that has meaning both for yourself as well as others. Obviously the stuff in the script comes from real life--what else do you know?”

There’s nothing about the Euclid Tavern that would even remotely remind anyone of MTV. It’s a dingy, hang-dog rock ‘n’ roll saloon, with ancient posters on the wall (including one of Frank Zappa crouched on a toilet), a wooden Indian by the bar and a dance floor that has at least three generations of cigarette butts and beer ground into its slatted wood planks. The club made such a perfect setting for the film that the crew only added one new piece of scenery, hanging a singed red guitar on the wall behind the stage.

The gritty atmosphere rubbed off on Fox, Jett and Michael McKean, who form the core of the Barbusters, the group spotlighted in the film. (McKean, who co-wrote and co-starred in “Spinal Tap,” plays bass in the band.) They were all on stage, guitars strapped over their shoulders, practicing a new song which will be featured in the film. The scene Schrader was shooting was supposed to end with the band playing the first few notes of the new song, but the group got so revved up that they kept bashing away, making so much noise that they never heard Schrader hoarsely shouting, “Cut!” at the other end of the room.

What made this practice session so unusual was that the group wasn’t just rehearsing to a taped recording of the song--they were doing it live. Schrader has insisted that the band actually perform its own songs, which are taped in a 24-track recording truck parked outside the club. (The film’s sound-track album will probably feature polished versions of the same songs, but the music in the movie itself was recorded here--live--flubs and all.)

Schrader is a stickler for authenticity. According to Mark Addison, when he took the director around to the local clubs, he insisted on even touring the men’s rooms, curiously eyeing the local graffiti. To give the room the right bar-fly atmosphere, fog machines sent acrid smoke wafting across the rafters. The assistant director had even divided the audience into smokers and non-smokers, occasionally asking the smoking section to raise their hands before each scene to make sure the mix looks right on camera.

Schrader watched a rehearsal take of the crowd and the band, viewing the scene through a portable video monitor strapped to his belt which allowed him to roam freely around the set. After the scene ended, Schrader held up a bullhorn and addressed the crowd.

“You guys were great,” he said. “But there were too many fists in the air. This is a club, not a concert. It’s like you’ve been spending too much time watching rock videos. Remember, this is a bar band, not the Rolling Stones.”

If it turns out that Joan Jett can really act, it’ll only be a matter of time before some savvy producer casts her as a film femme fatale. With her heavy-lidded stare, dark, penetrating eyes and slinky figure, she’s make a great film noir heroine, the kind of gal who’d hire a hit man to bump off her husband for a piece of the insurance money.

Performing on the club stage here, the 26-year-old rocker was a dynamo, full of infectious enthusiasm, shaking her fist menacingly at the crowd. Away from the spotlight, she was anything but a cliched rock ‘n’ sock goddess.

An ardent Baltimore Orioles fan--she sent flowers to the team on opening day and the squad’s relief pitchers have been known to send her mash notes when they spot her in the stands--she happily spent half an hour talking baseball, rattling off how many strikeouts Orioles pitching ace Mike Boddicker had the night before. (She has little patience for non-devotees of the game. When a female visitor asked her, “Isn’t baseball a little silly?” Jett retorted, “It ain’t silly. It’s serious!”)

The baseball talk seemed to cheer Jett up. Exhausted from the long hours of filming, she was lying on a couch in her trailer, taking some medicine for stomach pains.

“You know, you spend 15 hours in a recording studio each day too,” she said in a rough, street-wise voice. “But in the studio, if you get tired or something, you can always take a walk down the street. But here”--she motions out the window--”you’re stuck. You can’t get away from the set. You’re on call all the time.”

Still, she’s fascinated with film work. Before she got the “Light of Day” role, she said she’d auditioned for a part opposite Charles Bronson in “Murphy’s Law.” “I didn’t get it,” she said amiably, “but it was great just meeting the guy, ya know?”

Jett said that she never wanted to play a rock star, especially in her film debut. “But when I read the script, I realized this was really a family drama, so I went for it. Anyway, I like Schrader. The guy seems like he’s always thinkin’, which he probably is.”

In the film, Jett’s character constantly wars with her parents, especially her strong-willed mother. “It wasn’t like that with me at all,” said Jett, who as a teen-ager joined the Runaways, one of the first all-girl rock bands. “I think Paul was a little disappointed, actually, when he found out I hadn’t been real unhappy as a kid.” Jett lifted her eyebrows. “The way I look at it, the music establishment is my parents, so I guess that’s who I rebel against the most.”

Jett wearily shook her head. “Anyway, I’m not playing a character I don’t know anything about. It’s not like I’m playing a 16th-Century princess.”

Ask most young movie stars who their heroes are and they’ll rattle off a list of names that begin with Robert De Niro and end with Harry Dean Stanton. Ask Michael J. Fox about his idols and he’ll give you a totally different roster--Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, Richie Blackmore, (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers guitarist) Mike Campbell--rock guitar wizards all.

“I dunno, I’ve met great actors, but there’s no real mystery there to me,” Fox said, sitting up in his room late one night, an acoustic guitar in his lap. “But I’ve always had this fascination with guitar heroes.”

He grinned. “I remember I had Mike Campbell over at my house one night, at 3 a.m., playing ‘Louisiana Rain’ on my guitar. I called up one of my friends in Canada, put the phone up to the guitar for a while and shouted, ‘Guess who’s playing MY GUITAR!’ ”

Fox took a swig of beer. “I had an older brother and sister, and when I was little I’d be listening to something like ‘The Rain, the Park and the Other Things’ and my brother--who I thought the world of--would tell me, ‘That stuff is . . . ! Listen to this!’ And he’d play ‘Losing You’ by Rare Earth.

Fox started strumming the melody line to the song, bending the notes on his guitar strings. “Later on, he turned me on to Led Zeppelin and--whoa!--that was my band! And Jimmy Page, he was my guy! I was just listening to ‘Led Zeppelin II’ on the way home tonight and--hey--if you’re gonna pick a metal band today, even though I love Blackmore and I love Twisted Sister and what Dee Snyder did to Tipper Gore, you gotta go with Zeppelin!”

Of course, there’s a big difference between worshiping rock heroes and playing like one, as Fox discovered on the set as he struggled through the difficult opening lines to his guitar solo on a bluesy Stevie Ray Vaughan tune called “Rude Mood.”

“I always play it fine standing over on the other side of the stage,” he said, wagging his head. “Maybe I should stay over there permanently.”

Fox tried again, this time with slightly smoother results. “Awwhh! I still haven’t got it,” he complained.

“Geez, that sounded pretty good to me,” said Michael McKean, standing nearby.

“Nah, I can do better.”

The crew in the sound truck suggested that Fox listen to the takes he’d performed so far.

“Well,” Fox said, hesitating. “Let me have one more try.” He started the song again, losing the tempo again near the end. “Hey,” he growled. “Did I already say that I wanted to try that one more time?”

After a few more errant notes, Fox asked that the set be cleared. Once things quieted down, he got the introductory passage on the first try.

Later that night, up in his room, Fox sheepishly apologized for booting everyone off the set. “I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he said. “I just hit the wall. As an actor, you can always say, ‘Come on now, you can work through it.’ But as a guitarist. . . .”

He lit another cigarette. “Well, that’s harder. I mean, I’m a pretty professional actor, but a professional guitarist. . . .” He laughed. “We still got a ways to go.”

The phone in Fox’s room rang again. After a brief, muffled conversation, he returned to the couch with another beer, a fresh cigarette and a thoughtful frown on his face.

“I know this movie is a risk, but I figure if you don’t take a few risks, you’ll never know what you can do,” he said, picking up his guitar again and strumming a few notes. “The risk is what makes it fun.

“I’m a big boxing fan and I remember once, when a great boxer was making a comeback, that Michael Spinks said, ‘They keep coming back because they miss risking death.’

“And in a much safer way, ‘cause we’re not exactly putting our life on the line, that’s what actors do. I’m not saying I’m the greatest actor in the world. But that is what I want to be. And the only way to get there--even get part of the way there--is to take the risks and see what happens.”