Living in the ’80s

The Guttenberg Bible

by Steve Guttenberg

Thomas Dunne Books

Atari, Rubik’s Cube, BetaMax, parachute pants, Steve Guttenberg. They’re all relics made obsolete once the 1990s hit— but only one of them has a pulse.

Actor Guttenberg was once a movie icon of the 1980s his goofy grin and good-guy attitude lit up screens across the country in the decade’s biggest blockbusters, “Police Academy,” “3 Men and Baby” and “Short Circuit.” He showed off his acting chops in “Diner” and his bare-chested hunkiness in “Cocoon.”

Guttenberg was the king of the world then — no project was off-limits, no budget too big, no director too out of reach.

And then, once the calendar flipped to 1990, it all stopped. And he disappeared.

What happened to Steve Guttenberg?

If fans are hoping that Guttenberg’s new biography “The Guttenberg Bible” will fill them in on lost time, they’ll be disappointed.

Guttenberg’s 300-page memoir begins in 1976 and ends — either ingeniously or sadly, depending on how you look at it — in 1987, at the height of his career with the release of “3 Men and a Baby.”

It’s as if in Guttenberg’s mind the last two decades never existed, or at least they’re not worth writing about.

Instead of padding his book with talk about working with the Olsen twins in “It Takes Two” (1995) or playing the lead in the straight-to-video live-action cartoon “Casper: A Spirited Beginning” (1997), he sticks to his “best-of” moments.

But we still want to know: What happened to you, Steve Guttenberg?

‘Get out of the business, get out of this office and become something else. Forget being an actor. You don’t have the look, you don’t have the talent, and your name is ridiculous,” one New York agent told a teenage Guttenberg in 1975.

But, Guttenberg writes, “I swear I didn’t hear a thing.”

Instead, after graduating from high school in Long Island, Guttenberg headed out to Los Angeles.

When he wasn’t hounding his agents for auditions, Guttenberg spent hours on the Paramount lot (he got in by pretending he was the stepson of Paramount President Michael Eisner, his first foray into ad-libbing).

But he was an amateur, a nobody. No one could even get his name right, a long-running joke in the book: “Gluberman,” some would say, or “Glutterberg.”

Two agents tried to convince Guttenberg to change his name to Johnny Venture, but he only agreed to alter the pronunciation from “Gut” to “Goot” and it stuck.

Commercial offers roll in until he finally landed a starring role in the teen movie “The Chicken Chronicles.”

But after wrapping up his first feature and surviving 10 months in LA, he decided to return home and attend college in Albany to pursue dentistry.

Steve Guttenberg: the dentist. It didn’t make any sense once “The Chicken Chronicles” had made a splash.

He was offered a supporting role in the film “The Boys from Brazil” alongside legends Gregory Peck and Sir Laurence Olivier;, and then was cast in “Players” and the musical “Can’t Stop the Music” (with Bruce Jenner and Valerie Perrine) where he learned an invaluable lesson about his own marketability.

“With Valerie you have f—ability, with Bruce Jenner you have a lot of f—ability and a good amount of likability, with Steve Guttenberg you have a lot of a likability and I think f—ability, but a lot of likability,” explained the musical’s publicist Gary Kalkin.

Likable: like puppies or vanilla wafers. It was a key insight into Guttenberg’s appeal, whether or not he saw it as such then.

In 1982, Guttenberg finally got his big break when he was cast in the slice-of-life buddy flick “Diner,” with a stellar cast of newbies including Kevin Bacon, Tim Daly, Mickey Rourke and Paul Reiser.

He was particularly fond of Rourke, who wore leather jackets, white silk scarfs and a pompadour. “Mickey has a bop to him, like he hears the sweetest jazz all the time. He smiles like he knows something we don’t know,” Guttenberg writes.

The combination of acting talent and authentic writing made for one of the best (if not the best) films of Guttenberg’s career. He was just 22.

“ ‘Diner’ was the perfect movie,” he writes. “Everyone was at their best on this film.”

Still, the movie was misunderstood by MGM and was initially shelved. But when it finally got to the big screen, the results were unanimous: They had a hit.

“A hit is unlike anything you know, or I know, or anybody knows,” he writes. “When you are in a hit, you have heat. And everyone in town wants some of that heat.”

That “heat” fell into his lap in the form of a script, described by Guttenberg as “Stripes” meets a raunchy “An Officer and a Gentleman: It was called “Police Academy.”

He joined retired football player Bubba Smith, a “gentle presence” despite his 6-foot-7 frame, and Kim Cattrall, who then was a far cry from the sex-addicted Samantha she played on “Sex and the City.”

Cattrall was “a very polite lady and was genuinely shocked” by the movie’s infamous podium scene. “She would cover her face with her hand as she watched some of the bawdiness that filled the set,” Guttenberg writes.

Guttenberg knew from Cattrall’s reactions that they were solid, big laughs — but he had no idea how iconic the movie would become.

“I got to put some money in the bank, and I was off to the next job. That’s all ‘Police Academy’ was, a job, just like all the others. So I thought,” he writes.

“Police Academy” went straight to No. 1 at the box office its opening weekend in 1984. Overnight, Guttenberg became a household name. No one butchered his last name anymore.

So he bought a red Ferrari and even earned his own stalker (whom he seduced, against his better judgment). The film was cash cow, and the studio was ready to milk it dry. Guttenberg went on to star in three sequels, one each year from 1985 to 1987.

In the midst of “Police Academy” mania, Guttenberg was cast in Ron Howard’s “Cocoon,” a sci-fi film about a group of elderly people who are given the gift of youth by aliens.

“This film is about old people, and no one wants to see a movie about old people,” one top film agent told him.

Guttenberg, smartly, didn’t listen and joined the ensemble cast that included Maureen Stapleton, Don Ameche (who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role ) and Brian Dennehy.

Even though the cast was stocked with octogenarians, Guttenberg managed to get in the most trouble of his career on the set.

He befriended the curmudgeonly Dennehy, who chided Guttenberg for being the “only 25-year-old 65-year-old in the world.” To loosen him up, Dennehy invited him to a nearby Bennigan’s in Clearwater, Fla., where they had a drinking duel, which ended up in a night in jail after police pulled over an intoxicated Dennehy in his car.

Otherwise, Guttenberg writes, the filming was professional and undramatic, and it was only after the critical success of “Cocoon” and the mass market popularity of “Police Academy” that Guttenberg started believing his own hype.

“I dated above my natural category. I went to award shows and mingled with other celebrities. My ego was eating every day, getting bigger, fatter, uglier. I started to buy what was being sold to me,” he writes.

(Not even the laughable “Cocoon” sequel — sans Ron Howard — could tame the wild ego beast growing inside of him).

He hosted “Saturday Night Live” and slept with the pretty lighting technician; he starred in “The Bedroom Window” (1987) where he filmed a steamy sex scene with Isabelle Huppert (while the equipment driver, another woman he was having an affair with, watched on).

And there were more successes: the robot-comes-to-life film “Short Circuit” (1986) and “3 Men and a Baby” with Ted Danson and Tom Selleck (1987), followed by the sequel “3 Men and a Little Lady” in 1990, the final truly successful film of his career.

And this is where his story ends — not just his career but the memoir as well. Luckily, we have IMDb to fill in the rest.

There’s the TV movie “Single Santa Meets Mrs. Claus,” a brief stint on “Veronica Mars,” a supporting role in a Jessica Simpson straight-to-DVD film, “Major Movie Star,” and a bunch of other movies or TV spots you’ve probably never heard of. Guttenberg’s most promising role was on the stage, when he was cast in Woody Allen’s one-act play in the Broadway show “Relatively Speaking.” (It got decidedly mixed reviews.)

Thanks to a hilarious New York Observer 2008 article, “The Goot is Loose,” we know he’s living on the Upper West Side without a wife and is still very much on the market. (In that interview, he admits to bedding 600 ladies but cuts the figure in half in a follow-up.)

His most recent work has been about poking fun of the Guttenberg myth: There’s the fake commercial on “Funny or Die” for Guttenberg’s Steak House (best line: “Wait a second, I am Steve Guttenberg!”); the time he played himself on an episode of “Party Down;” and the 2008 viral video of Guttenberg running naked in Central Park.

The same year as the pant-less viral video he appeared on “Dancing with the Stars” but was, sadly, the third person kicked off.

But it still doesn’t answer the question: Why has Guttenberg fallen so far? He’s not a recluse, like an Eddie Murphy, nor did he have self-admitted issues with substance abuse, like a Mickey Rourke.

Instead, it’s just a part of the business: Guttenberg had a moment, and his time was up.

“He’s the norm. I could come up with 100 guys like Steve Guttenberg who are big one moment,” explained Steve Gaydos, executive editor at Variety. “This is a young person’s business and only the actors with the magnificent chops of a Michael Caine or a Paul Newman get to stay on top.”

So, what’s his next step?

Guttenberg said in an interview that another sequel to “3 Men” is in the works, this time called “3 Men and a Bride” and he also has plans to return to other ’80s classics.

“It’s definitely time for another ‘Police Academy,’ ” Guttenberg said in an interview in 2009. “And I think they could make another ‘Cocoon.’ They’re surefire hits, and I think they’re good for the world.”