Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Heed the Wisdom of Rob Lowe
NRO ^ | 31 Jan 2021 | Kyle Smith

Posted on 01/31/2021 2:58:52 PM PST by Rummyfan

Take it from someone who took the Eighties for everything it had: Hedonism is overrated.

As a boy in Dayton, Ohio, and continuing after his unstable, divorced mother moved the family to Malibu so she could (only after arriving) announce that she was marrying a doctor she had met in a clinic that offered Seventies quackery to people with unexplained allergies, Rob Lowe thought of himself as an awkward theater nerd. When it came to flirting with girls, “I had no game whatsoever,” he recalls in his sagacious autobiography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends. Evidence accumulated to the contrary; for his 14th birthday, for instance, a girl he didn’t know particularly well offered him a birthday cake — and sex. (On the beach. It was lovely, he says.) He was barely 19 when Nastassia Kinski, one of his co-stars on The Hotel New Hampshire (1984) and generally acknowledged to be one of the world’s great beauties, openly propositioned him, and he didn’t quite grasp what was happening. She shot him a look that said, “Helloooo? Do I need to spell it out?” he writes.

But something changed in him when he played the freewheeling, sax-playing, shades-wearing, drinks-drinking cad, Billy, in one of the signature teen films of its era, St. Elmo’s Fire (1985). The director Joel Schumacher wasn’t sold on Lowe for the role, which the actor won only after showing up for an audition with a six-pack of Corona and swigging liberally as he pitched himself. Lowe enjoyed playing the roguish charmer so much that he started to play him in real life. In the famous June 1985 New York magazine profile of him and his co-stars Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson whose headline introduced the sobriquet “the Brat Pack,”...

(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bloggers
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-20, 21-36 next last
Wisdom and Rob Lowe may seem an odd combination...

I've never been a big fan - I have never watched and never will watch an episode of The West Wing for instance - but there is something to be said for surviving and enduring. Many do not make it through the first flushes and excesses of success.

He had a small but hilarious part in Thank You for Smoking...

1 posted on 01/31/2021 2:58:52 PM PST by Rummyfan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan

I think the movie About Last Night came out in 1985. I took my girlfriend at the time to see it. She broke up with me later that evening because “she wanted Rob Lowe but I was the (Jim Belushi charter) Bernie Lithgow.” Lol. She wound up marring my best old ex-friend Jim the Bus Driver.


2 posted on 01/31/2021 3:08:42 PM PST by Thilly Thailor
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan

I liked him The Stand. His silence was golden!


3 posted on 01/31/2021 3:09:34 PM PST by FreshPrince (P )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Thilly Thailor

I must admit, I had the biggest crush on Demi Moore in that movie.


4 posted on 01/31/2021 3:10:15 PM PST by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan

Imagine that: the book of Ecclesiastes is correct. :)


5 posted on 01/31/2021 3:10:47 PM PST by SoFloFreeper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan

Sounds like he grew up in a car cra household


6 posted on 01/31/2021 3:11:25 PM PST by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the cloudso)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan

Rob Lowe seems okay to me. He never was never as big a star as he was in the 80s, but he has had some interesting roles. I liked him in “The Stand”, “Wayne’s World” and “Tommy Boy”.

He simply got all the wild out of his system before he self destructed. At least he did not end up in prison like Robert Downey Jr.


7 posted on 01/31/2021 3:18:39 PM PST by rbg81 (Truth is stranger than fiction)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan
Good for him. I am pleasantly surprised.

There is hope for all. Come Home.

We get too soon old and too late smart. — Pennsylvania Dutch proverb.

8 posted on 01/31/2021 3:24:55 PM PST by Governor Dinwiddie (Guide me, O my great Redeemer, pilgrim through this barren land.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan

He and Robert Wagner played the same role ( Number 2 ) at different ages in the “Austin Powers” series.

He plays his part pretty good in “911 Lonestar” but I stopped watching after the show got in your face with the characters of his gay suicidal son and a Muslim female firefighter.


9 posted on 01/31/2021 3:25:05 PM PST by Hillarys Gate Cult
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dfwgator
I must admit, I had the biggest crush on Demi Moore in that movie.

Dude. Yeah. Not a darn thing wrong with that girly-girl, no sireee.

10 posted on 01/31/2021 3:26:43 PM PST by Thilly Thailor
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: FreshPrince
My favorite Rob Lowe movie has always been Youbgblood.
11 posted on 01/31/2021 3:27:13 PM PST by MPJackal ("From my cold dead hands.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan

His sons mock him mercilessly on Twitter and Instagram. So, you know he’s a cool Dad. ;)


12 posted on 01/31/2021 3:33:34 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin (I don't have 'Hobbies.' I'm developing a robust post-Apocalyptic skill set. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MPJackal

Tea with Miss McGill!!


13 posted on 01/31/2021 3:36:46 PM PST by TallahasseeConservative (Isaiah 40:31)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan

Always pegged him to be a snobbish asshole but recently saw him on a Joe Rogan podcast and he came across as a fairly down to earth cool guy, age probably has something to do with that. He had a ton of great Hollywood stories. It was actually an interesting podcast to listen to.


14 posted on 01/31/2021 3:47:05 PM PST by Tejas Rob
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Rummyfan

I regret my hedonistic past life. So many partners I lost count. Met a great women at age 31.
She would faint if she knew my past


15 posted on 01/31/2021 4:05:02 PM PST by setter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Thilly Thailor

Well you can’t call an operator anymore.


16 posted on 01/31/2021 4:13:59 PM PST by Fledermaus (The Republican Party is DEAD! It took 160 years but The Whigs Struck Back!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Hillarys Gate Cult

I got 15 minutes in and stopped watching. Way too woke Hollywood.


17 posted on 01/31/2021 4:15:22 PM PST by Fledermaus (The Republican Party is DEAD! It took 160 years but The Whigs Struck Back!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Fledermaus

Hey, you got the allusion!


18 posted on 01/31/2021 4:21:35 PM PST by Thilly Thailor
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: Fledermaus

I’m talking about the 1986 version starring Rob Lowe and Jim Belushi, not to mention the drop-dead gorgeous Demi Moore.


19 posted on 01/31/2021 4:22:26 PM PST by Thilly Thailor
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: MPJackal

Re: the movie Youngblood. It’s a good movie, Rob Lowe’s best, and it must have been tough for him to have his career peak at a young age.


20 posted on 01/31/2021 4:39:37 PM PST by T.B. Yoits
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-20, 21-36 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson