Vision Quest star Matthew Modine spoke to ComingSoon to celebrate the iconic film turning 40. Modine discussed the physical filming of the movie’s wrestling scenes, what made Louden Swain such an iconic character, and more. The film is now available to buy on Blu-ray and Digital.
“Matthew Modine and Linda Fiorentino star in this coming-of-age underdog story about gentle yet ambitious 18-year-old Spokane, Washington high school senior (Modine) Louden Swain, who sets two goals for himself in which nobody seems to be overly enthusiastic about supporting him with. First is to be the number one wrestler in the state of Washington, a feat his father outwardly expresses to be virtually impossible for him; and second to win the affections of a young drifter he has fallen head over heels for named Carla (Fiorentino),” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Vision Quest has really stood the test of time. What really impressed me looking at this was all the actual wrestling segments because your collar ties were on point. You looked great doing those. How was the training aspect to make sure it did look believable? Because these are some phenomenal scenes still.
Matthew Modine: Oh, thank you. I went out for high school wrestling when I was in high school, and I said, “You gotta be crazy to do this sport. This is the hardest thing I ever participated in.”
Then when I got the role in the film, I realized I was gonna have to get very physical and learn how to do that wrestling. So Harold Becker sent me to Spokane, Washington about two months before we began filming, and we did three-a-days. You know, we do conditioning, wrestling, and weightlifting three times, you know, over the course of the day, every day for two months.
And I learned how to wrestle. All the kids that were in the movie were state champions. Even Michael Schoeffling from Pittsburgh. He traveled to Europe with some American team. Not an Olympic team. But Michael Schoeffling was a real proper wrestler.
Louden’s such an interesting character because the hormones are just firing off at unprecedented levels. But he knows his body so well, so he can recognize when he is acting irrationally, even if he can’t stop it. How is it leaning into that youthful exuberance, the frustration and also the dedication because he’s being pulled in like 500 different directions?
Yeah, I mean, the wonderful thing here was that the book Vision Quest was written by Terry Davis, and that provided me with a lot of insights and understanding of what was going on emotionally inside of him.
Then the writer of the screenplay, Darrell Ponson, who wrote a terrific film with Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid […] Terrific writer. He asked me if I’d ever read The Catcher in the Rye. And I said, no, I haven’t. He said, you have to read Catcher in the Rye. This is who Louden is. He’s Holden Caulfield.
So that was a good tool to have as well. The emotional life of this really interesting character.
This film also has a remarkable soundtrack. Obviously Madonna’s in it, but “Lunatic Fringe” is a great song in it. UFC champion Randy Couture, he would always come out to “Lunatic Fringe” because he loved that movie. He also bought the Shute log, which was a really fun piece of memorabilia.
And Dana White, who said he based his whole work ethic on Louden Swain.
What did it mean that the wrestling and MMA community really embraced the movie so much?
It’s wonderful. When you make a movie, you feel a sense of responsibility of how it can impact people’s lives negatively or positively.
And you know, a lot of people say, “oh, we should remake Vision Quest.” And the fact of the matter is you can’t remake it. There’s so many things that are inappropriate for today’s audience that were done in that film that Louden would get canceled in in today’s world.
But that’s, you know, the mistakes that he makes, the things that he does or says that are inappropriate in life are learning tools. They’re experiences. […] We all do and say things that are inappropriate in some point of our life. And so when we get to see a movie like Vision Quest and get the opportunity to learn through a character in a movie, we’ve done a service to the community. To help them to understand what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate, and how to speak to a woman, how not to speak to a woman.
There are some hilarious lines in this just because he is all revved up and being inappropriate. When you mention that you’re dying with a hard-on, it was just pure laughter. That’s a great line.
Yeah. Or he wants to be a gynecologist in outer space. I mean, like, who says something like that?
Yeah, I did wanna ask you now that it’s been 40 years. Do you think Louden ever achieved his dream of becoming a cooze doctor in space?
He wrote a follow-up book, Terry Davis, and it was on the space shuttle that went up and exploded. So Louden Swain was stardust. He didn’t make it back. That’s sad.
I did a movie called Hard Miles this last year about a guy who takes troubled youth on a bike ride from Denver, Colorado to the Grand Canyon, and when we were making the film, everybody involved felt that this could be Louden Swain growing up and trying to help kids to go on their own personal “vision quest” and learn.
Because when you do something difficult and arduous and have to work together, even though you’re as a bicyclist, an individual on a bike, you’re still part of a peloton. A group of bicyclists trying to accomplish a goal. You have to draft off one another and help one another.
