Actor Matthew Modine talks Mead High workouts, ‘Vision Quest’ scenes that didn’t make the cut and sing-along songs as part of Spokane International Film Festival appearances

When asked, actor Matthew Modine is quick to say that no, he did not anticipate that he’d still be talking about “Vision Quest” 40 years after its release.

The 1985 film starred Modine as high school wrestler Louden Swain, who is looking to drop two weight classes so he can compete against three-time state champ Brian Shute from a rival school (Frank Jasper). This mission, or “vision quest,” is complicated by the arrival of a woman named Carla (Linda Fiorentino), with whom Louden quickly falls in love.

“Vision Quest” was directed by Harold Becker and based on the novel of the same name by Terry Davis. The film was shot at several local high schools as well as the Onion and Bigfoot Pub and Eatery, where a then-fairly unknown Madonna performed “Crazy for You.”

While the sustained interest in the film was unexpected, Modine is still quite happy talking about “Vision Quest.” He’ll celebrate the 40th anniversary of the movie with two appearances during this year’s Spokane International Film Festival.

Modine will chat with audiences Friday at 10 a.m. at the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center before joining a screening of the film to close out the festival at 6 p.m. on Sunday at the Fox.

Modine’s “Vision Quest” journey began with eight weeks of three workouts a day with wrestling technical director Cash Stone, who created the wrestling program at Mead High School. A surfer, football player and track athlete, Modine was already athletic, but surviving on coffee and cigarettes while in New York left him quite thin, so he needed to build muscle and his wrestling abilities.

“I had that confidence as a surfer going into it, so I wasn’t intimidated at all,” he said. “I will say that when I would get a little heady and think that I really knew how to wrestle, each and every one of the kids that were state champions would put me in my place.”

The experience of filming “Vision Quest,” and getting put in his place at times, taught Modine the power of self-determination, which he said is a great metaphor for life.

” ‘How far are you willing to push yourself? What are you willing to sacrifice in order to accomplish a goal?’ …” he said. “So often we surrender, we give up and Louden doesn’t. Louden accomplishes the goal that he set out to accomplish. It wasn’t about winning. It was about making the weight.”

Modine keeps that mindset when considering his career, asking himself how much he’s willing to sacrifice to have the career he desires. Acting, Modine said, is about the opportunity to learn. He’s turned down movies that became commercially successful because they didn’t offer him an opportunity to better himself and learn about life.

Along those lines, Modine mentions several scenes that were cut from the film that featured characters getting a chance to redeem themselves after making a mistake, something he said young people today don’t always get.

In one scene from the movie, a man makes a move on Louden (“Inappropriate behavior. 100% wrong,” Modine said) before Louden runs out of the room. The cut scene involved the man meeting with Louden later to apologize for his actions.

Another scene involved a short interaction between Louden and Brian Shute, his opponent, which made Louden realize that Brian was not a monster but a fellow athlete working toward a goal. Instead, that scene was replaced with Brian telling Louden “You can’t hold your mud. You’re a bleeder.”

“We punish people so severely today for making mistakes, and it’s not fair,” Modine said. “I think that’s why a show like ‘Stranger Things’ or ‘Vision Quest’ is so appealing to young people. I don’t think that they’re conscious of it, but it’s a time before video games. It’s a time before social media. It’s a time before texting, before mobile phones, before all the things that create unnecessary pressure upon young people today.”

Modine is glad then to see young people are still watching “Vision Quest” decades after its release. He encourages those in attendance at the SpIFF screening to sing along to the songs in the film or recite their favorite lines as they’re said in the movie.

In a career that’s included films like “Full Metal Jacket,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Oppenheimer,” appearances on television and stage, and Golden Globe and Emmy nominations, Modine said “Vision Quest” is the one that’s changed the most lives.

Modine tells a story of hearing from a fan that Louden gave the man, a former drug addict and alcoholic, purpose and direction.

“How many times in your life do you work on a project, whatever profession you happen to be in, unless you’re a doctor and save someone’s life, that an event like that happens?” he said. “It’s just extraordinary, and it’s happened dozens of times.”

Moments like that add a bit of pressure to Modine’s work, but it’s a pressure he shoulders willingly for the benefit of all those watching.

“There is a responsibility that comes with this profession, and I do take that very seriously,” he said. “I don’t like playing bad guys, for instance. I think there’s too many bad people in the world, and what we need to do is learn to be better. But the fact is that there are bad people in the world, so sometimes there’s bad people in movies and TV shows and plays to help us to be able to recognize them and know how to make the monsters go away.”

Modine was featured as recently as 2024 in SpIFF for the film “Hard Miles.” And this isn’t Modine’s first visit back to Spokane. Modine attended a fan-inspired flash mob in 2012 where Spokanites set to “run the bridges just like Louden Swain.”

Before the anniversary screening of “Vision Quest” closes this year’s SpIFF at the Fox, a variety of feature-length and short films will be screened at the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, the Magic Lantern Theater and the Garland Theater.

Submissions are accepted between June and October, then the programming teams start the review process in the winter. SpIFF Programming Director Pete Porter said the teams were especially thrilled by many of the submissions this year.

Opening the festival is “Recollection,” a locally shot film directed by Caden Butera which invites viewers into a world in which people can choose to delete traumatic memories.

When watching submissions, Porter said he’s usually thinking of whether the film will make the cut, so to speak, and where it might fit into the festival schedule. That didn’t happen with “Recollection.”

“I got about 30 minutes into ‘Recollection’ and then ‘Wait a minute, I’m watching a movie,’ ” he said. “I was like, ‘This is really, really impressive.’ The more that I thought about it and the more we talked about it, we were like, ‘This is going to be our opening film.’ “

Porter is also excited for people to see the animation and Best of the Northwest shorts, as well as Ramey Newell’s “A Good Wolf,” about the conflict between state and federal authorities, fur trappers and wildlife advocates in regard to a tract of land near Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

Porter is waiting to watch another made-in-Spokane film, “Tim Travers and the Time-Traveler’s Paradox,” until the screening at the Garland Theater so he can enjoy the film with the filmmakers in attendance.

More than half of the festival’s screenings will feature a member of the film’s creative team in attendance. It’s an opportunity Porter said is beneficial for both creators and audience members.

The filmmakers, many still early in their careers, enjoy networking with other filmmakers and getting feedback from members of the audience, while those in attendance get to learn about the films on a more in-depth level while speaking with filmmakers.

Aspiring filmmakers, of course, also benefit from the opportunity to see films they might not have otherwise been able to and speak with people doing the work they wish to be doing.

To help get young filmmakers in the door, a charitable donor has made it possible for SpIFF to offer $10 tickets for students to the 40th anniversary screening of “Vision Quest” on Sunday. Porter said seeing where the Spokane film scene started, in a sense, and seeing where it is now can be inspiring for those hoping to one day work in film.

“We really want to build the film and media community here,” he said. “It can be difficult to see what you can become when you’re a student, and so we want people to say ‘You know what, this is what I’m going to do.’ And that’s, to me, what ‘Vision Quest’ is about and what SpIFF is about, becoming what you want to be.”