Sounds Like Lou Diamond Phillips Had WAY Too Much Fun Making ‘Young Guns’

Ask Lou Diamond Phillips what the Young Guns set was like and the first thing he does is refuse to answer.

"I can't tell," Phillips said, laughing, before landing on the only defense available. "First of all, Charlie Sheen was there, so enough said. Thank goodness there were no camera phones and TMZ at the time did not exist."

He gave Rich enough anyway.

The setup is a group of guys in their mid-20s, most of them single, shooting in Santa Fe, New Mexico in January of 1988. The escalation started on day one, when the whole cast received boxes from 20th Century Fox with a card reading, from your friends at Fox, just want you to know what we really think of you. Inside every box: cow pies. Emilio Estevez had gotten there first.

"It's on," Phillips remembered thinking. "It's on."

The retaliation took a couple of weeks and came after Estevez started complaining about how hard it was for him to date. Phillips and Kiefer Sutherland vowed revenge. They were shooting on a sheep ranch, so Phillips paid the rancher a hundred bucks to rent a sheep for the day, then dressed it in a corset and a garter belt, planted it in Estevez's trailer, and left a sign.

The universe improved on the plan. The cast was out in the desert all day, and by the time Estevez got back, the sheep had eaten his couch and crapped on everything.

"That was memorable," Phillips said, and when Rich called it a cherry on top, Phillips upgraded it. "Sprinkles."

None of which is why Young Guns mattered to him. Phillips' first three Hollywood films were La Bamba, Stand and Deliver and Young Guns, in that order, and he was nearly broke through the first two. La Bamba was made for $6 million, a negative pickup with no blockbuster written on it, starring an unknown kid from Texas playing a rocker who was a footnote in Buddy Holly's obituary. Phillips ran out of money in December of '86 with about three thousand dollars left, having sent a chunk to his mother.

Then he booked an episode of Miami Vice called Red Tape, with Viggo Mortensen as his partner and Annette Bening as the bad guy's girlfriend. Edward James Olmos saw it, wrote a phone number down, handed it to him and said call this number when you get to LA, I'm doing a movie next month, you have to be in it. That was Stand and Deliver.

Young Guns was the one where it registered.

"Not until I stepped on that set that I go, I've arrived," Phillips said, describing standing there with Charlie Sheen, Estevez and Sutherland. "All of a sudden I was like, I'm the brown Brat Packer. I'm Brat Pack adjacent."

The best story is the smallest one. It took Phillips 20 minutes to get propped up with all the knives and guns, and he was standing there on Jack Palance's first day when Palance came over to pick a weapon. The prop guy looked at Phillips, and Phillips stepped back in deference. Palance took his time, selected a derringer, tucked it away, and turned to leave without ever acknowledging him. So Phillips gushed for two full minutes about what an honor it was to be in a western with a legend.

Palance looked at him and said, "Yes." Then walked away.

There is a payoff coming for all of it. All six of them are reuniting September 11th at a fan expo in Dallas, the first time in almost 40 years, and Phillips says they are charging an arm and a leg for the group photo. He has been talking to Estevez a lot lately, because Young Guns 3 is a definite possibility. Estevez has written the script and is talking to the studio. He would direct.

Phillips' pitch to Hollywood is a fan convention observation. At every one he attends, a dad in his mid-40s walks up with his teenage son and says, I showed him Young Guns.

"If they literally took the time to quantify the amount of support there is out there," Phillips said, "they'd be signing the check already."