Interview: Gary Kroeger (Pt. 1)
If you’ve come of age at any point from the ‘70s onward and you’re in any way, shape or form a comedy fan, then you can identify when you first fell in love with Saturday Night Live. For me, it was in the early ‘80s, during that window after the oft-reviled Jean Domanian era but before Lorne Michaels return to the helm of SNL after having departed in the wake of the show’s first five seasons. For some, it’s simply identified as “the Eddie Murphy years,” but I don’t think of it that way.
Sure, Eddie’s great, but I remember all of the cast members from that era.
I see the name “Tim Kazurinsky” and my mind goes to Weekend Update and all of the awful jokes he slid across the screen on his cards as Dr. Jack Badofsky.
I’m the guy who started watching Seinfeld and thought, “Oh, hey, it’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus from Saturday Night Live!”
And, yes, when I watched the live-action Archie movie on NBC in 1990, I thought, “Hey, playing Reggie Mantle… That’s Gary Kroeger!”
These days, Kroeger really isn’t doing much acting - at least not in the traditional sense, anyway - but he’s rarely far from the public eye, whether it’s because of politics, his blog, or just his interaction with fans via social media. You can find out what’s going on with him lately via that aforementioned blog - it’s called Gary Has Issues - and we’ll discuss his current goings-on a bit more in part two of our conversation, but for now, let’s enjoy some flashbacks about his past endeavors…
First of all, I should tell you straightaway that Richard Kind sends his love.
Oh, my God! [Laughs.] You know, I've been trying to get ahold of him, because I'm one of the few people in the world who has his email...and he never gets back with me!
Well, I have found that the way I can get in touch with him is via Twitter. We've traded a few DMs on there, and he seems to invariably read my messages and reply to them.
Then I'm going to try that! Because I want to put him on my podcast. He'd be a fantastic guest, as you know.
Oh, yeah. In fact, I listened to him on Andy Richter's podcast the other day, and he mentioned how he'd been friends with you since college, which is what spurred me to send him a message and say, "This is what is known as doing research by utilizing one's available resources: what should I ask Gary Kroeger about?"
He said, "Practical Theater Company. Ask about Rush Pearson and/or Tom Virtue. Wild men. May have funny stories about escapades with them...that he can tell. Gary is an all-American guy with a wild side. (He may hate me for saying that.) He is a superior guy. I love him. A true friend." And then, of course, he closes by saying, "Give him my love."
Well, as far as him saying, "That he can tell," how censored are we?
None. So have at it.
I mean, I'm not a guy who particularly swears, but sometimes things drop out of one's mouth. But if there's no censorship, then that's good. It tells me I can tell any story.
Absolutely. Well, I guess let's kick things off with an obvious one: how did you find your way into comedy? Because it's clear that you were at least doing it as far back as college.
Well, I kind of fell into it. You know, I'm one of those people who's always been kind of the class clown. I was the funny guy in high school. But I didn't intend to be a comedian. I still don't consider myself a comedian. But I was funny, you know? So I went to Northwestern to study theater. My dream was to be on Broadway. It still is my dream! I haven't gotten close, really. But that was my dream: to be a professional actor. I wanted to be doing Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
But I fell in with a funny crowd: Richard Kind, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Hall, and some names you don't know, like Rush Pearson and Tom Virtue, although Tom has carved out a good career as an actor. But I fell into this crowd, and... You know, there's always a niche for comedy. Always. We want to do Brecht and we want to do serious things and some original pieces, many of them dramatic, largely satirical, but there's always a place for comedy, because comedy draws a crowd. Everybody wants to laugh. That's a cliche, but it's true. So we found ourselves doing a lot of comedy shows, the Practical Theater was created, and - long story short - it caught the eye of Second City.
We had a space right next to Second City, which is now called the ETC space, where Richard Kind has performed as well, but then it was the PTC space - the Practical Theater Company - and that's where SNL discovered me and Brad Hall and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Paul Barrosse and whisked us off to New York in 1982. Well, that wasn't our plan. Brad and Paul had a theater, they were dedicated to doing everything under the sun. I was hoping just to get a commercial or something out of it, so that I made a little money out of it to take my girlfriend to the motion picture show and put some gas in the car.
Well, sure.
It wasn't any of our design - I don't even think Julia's - to be on Saturday Night Live and suddenly be branded as funny people. It just happened. But once you're there, they never let you out. [Laughs.] When I die, it'll say "comedian Gary Kroeger." Well, I'm not a comedian! I would rather it said "Gary Kroeger, reasonably funny guy," and maybe, "He tried to make it on Broadway but never got there."
Not so fast: it could also say "Columbo victim Gary Kroeger."
Yes! [Laughs.] Yes, it could! I was just talking about that yesterday on a Zoomcast, actually. Somebody said, "Yeah, I just saw you being drowned in a tub. I think Rip Torn drowned you, actually." Yes, that was my fate!
Oh, good. Because everybody who's ever worked with him always has a good Rip Torn story.
Well, it just so happens that I have a Rip Torn that goes with that!
Then let's go ahead and do that right now, shall we? Just to get it out of the way.
Okay, so in the episode, I win the lottery, and I go to my uncle - who's played by Rip Torn - and he says, "Let me win the lottery, I'll give you all the money back, and buy me a nice Rolex." "Great!" Well, it turns out that he's having an affair with my ex-wife, and he's going to keep the ticket, so he drowns me in my tub. So I'm in the tub and Rip Down's drowning me, and...Rip Torn's method. [Laughs.] If Rip Torn is drowning you, then Rip Torn is drowning you!
So I've got this strong, meaty hand holding my neck under the water, and when I came up - because the take was over - I went to the second A.D. and I said, "Look, I'm frightened here, to be perfectly honest with you. I'm frightened that if I couldn't breathe, he wouldn't stop the scene!" I mean, he was a good man, of course. He wasn't trying to kill me. But I just don't know how deep into the character he could be to maybe keep me down there a little too long! So I said, "If I wiggle my feet, pull Rip Torn off of me." [Laughs.] In the final take that was used, I was just about to wiggle my feet. So if you see the scene, I'm drowning. [Laughs.] I'm essentially this close... [Holds fingers very closely together.] ...to drowning.
Thank God for the internet, where we can go back and watch your drowning whenever we want.
My mother can't watch it. [Laughs.] Never has been able to.
When you made it to Saturday Night Live, that was not long after the notorious sixth season, so virtually anything you did was going to be deemed better than the previous season.
You're talking, of course, about the Jean Doumanian year, and... Listen, it was all good people. Tremendous. Gilbert Gottfried, for heaven's sake! Tremendously talented. Charlie Rocket! Tremendously talented! But nobody was really going to give the show a shot at that time, because it was like the Beatles had disbanded. So it did fail that year.
But Dick Ebersol came back, because he was part of the original creation of the show that brought in Lorne Michaels, to revamp the show, and he basically started over. But he saw this featured guy named Eddie Murphy, and he said, "I'm keeping him. I'm keeping that guy!" So he brought Eddie and [Joe] Piscopo along, because he saw something there, and he was right. And then he hired a good cast around them, but even then I think the show stumbled a little bit. Again, though, great cast. Christine Ebersole. Great! Tony Rosato. Unbelievable! But they wanted to keep nurturing this until they found the cast they wanted.
Well, that's why they came out to see the Practical Theater Company, hired us all, really figured we had that sort of 'garage band' quality that the originals had. Dick even said to us, "Look, you're here to scare Eddie, because Eddie's already becoming distracted, he's making movies, and we need some blood in here that looks like..." Well, that never happened, because Eddie was never threatened by us. [Laughs.] He went on to become the superstar that he still is. But that's how it all started. But even after that year... I think we managed for about two years with that cast, but even then there was something restless that happened, and Dick changed casts. I managed to survive, Julia did, Mary Gross. And we were with the cast that included Billy Crystal, Marty Short, and Chris Guest. And I thought that one year stands with the best of all years of Saturday Night Live.
Yeah, I'd agree. That was the first year that I was really watching the show intently, and I can still tell you the episode that caused me to lock my sights on the show in a big way: the Ringo Starr episode.
Yeah, well, I loved the Ringo Starr episode. In fact, I still have his cigarette ashes behind me in a cup right here. [Laughs.] I really do! They're right there! You know, I keep talking about my death, but when I die, I'll be very proud of a couple of things. I worked with Eddie Murphy when he was skyrocketing. I saw Eddie Murphy up and close and personal, and I got to be on one of the years with Saturday Night Live that deserves to be in the pantheon of great years, and that is with Billy and Marty and Chris.
I'm guessing Ringo would rank as one of your favorite hosts, but who were some of your other favorites?
Well, I don't think it was the best show, but I still think about the fact that I stood next to Ringo Starr. I'm a Beatle freak - this office right here is filled with Beatles stuff - and I have been since I was a little boy. I have looked at pictures of them, I own all the movies... I mean, they are mythical to me. So be standing there with Ringo... [Drifts into a Liverpudlian accent.] Sitting in the office and him asking, "Do you have an ashtray for me?" Well, like I said, I kept his ashes! And I still pinch myself to realize that face that I have stared at, that there are a zillion pictures of, stood next to me and even gave me a drum lesson.
Nice.
Oh, yeah. So I have my memories, you know? [Laughs.] I didn't become the biggest star in the world - obviously, right? - but I have memories that nobody can take from me!
And I've found that with a lot of people, where they'll say that it's less about what they accomplished than what they experienced.
That's brilliant. That's perfect. And I got to shake Paul McCartney's hand! And I still can't believe that that guy, that I saw in everything, pictures, posters... There's the Swedish poster of A Hard Day's Night right over here! And I shook his hand. I still can't believe it...
We interrupt this interview for a sidebar story which I kinda sorta told Gary during the conversation, but since I have the actual story available, I’ll just throw it into the mix:
I've never done a one-on-one with Paul McCartney, but I did get to ask him a question via satellite during the summer 2011 Television Critics Association tour, when he was promoting his Showtime documentary The Loved We Make, and I always summarize the experience like this: Although he and I were not in the same room or even in the same state - he was in Ohio at the time, I was in Beverly Hills - I asked Paul McCartney a question, and Paul McCartney heard that question and answered it, which means that, technically speaking, I interviewed a fucking Beatle…and if someone wants to put those five italicized words on my tombstone, you won’t hear me complaining.
Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.
Anyway, here’s the exchange, just to satisfy your curiosity:
Me: Hi, Paul. I know that George visited America in 1963 and got to see some of the country at kind of a less frantic pace than you did when you toured with the Beatles. When was the first time that you came to America and actually got to enjoy the trip?
Paul: I did that a few times, actually. I came once…I had a girlfriend, Jane Asher, in the ’60s, who was an actress, and she was touring with a Shakespeare company. And I got to come out to Denver and spent some time in Colorado, just hanging out, which was very nice. Used to just kind of go up in the mountains and hike. That was a very gentle pace. And then later, I would come to New York a lot with Linda, who was from there and whose relatives were there. So we would just go and hang out.
And it was funny, really, because around that time, I’d grown this big, black beard. And the fashion was kind of…we were dressed in kind of, like, old army stuff from thrift shops and stuff. So I had complete anonymity. I could be on the streets of New York and people would say, 'Aren’t you worried about someone mugging you?' I said, 'No, I look like the guy who’s going to mug you.' But I had a lot of fun. I would go up to Harlem, whereas with The Beatles we’d been warned, 'You mustn’t go up there, you know, it’s dangerous.'
So I was able to go up there and go into record shops and talk to the guys, talk to the people there, and just generally hang out in New York. So that was another very sort of good restful time to just see America for what it was rather than the hysteria.
For the record, I am still really fucking proud of that question.
We now return you to our interview with Gary Kroeger, immediately after he agreed that I should say that I interviewed a Beatle.
You know, I think about the fact that this man, he hasn't met anybody in 50 years who hasn't gone, "Oh, my God, you're Paul McCartney!" For 50 years! Millions of us are sharing stories like this...and he hears that every...single...day. What would that be like?
I don't know. But I know Chris Farley nailed it.
[Laughs.] He sure did. And it's largely from that moment with Chris Farley and Paul McCartney that Chris Farley became my favorite performer in the history of Saturday Night Live. Well, that and the motivational speaker, which is so iconic that it's crazy.
Oh, sure. And Chris’s bit with Paul McCartney is certainly the most relatable moment in SNL history.
It really was.
So who were some of the hosts you worked with the best or who made for the best shows?
Well, for me personally, and I said this the other day to someone, it was Howard Hesseman. And Howard Hesseman was an old improviser, and he was the star of WKRP in Cincinnati, but he's not a household name. He never will be. But a really fine actor and a great comedian and a great improviser. So coming from an improv background myself, for me - and I know for Julia and for Brad - we were very theatrical. We didn't really like the cue cards and all of that. We were a fish out of water. But Howard seemed to be of our ilk, wanting to memorize the scenes and create a theatrical environment wherein it's actually more free to improvise, because we know the lines and we know each other. So Howard offered that in a couple of scenes with me, so they will always be my favorite.
Do you have a favorite musical guest from that era?
Well, my first show, the musical guest was Queen. [Laughs.]
That ain't bad.
[Laughs.] Ah, but Freddie Mercury had laryngitis, so we thought, "They're not going to be able to do the show. What's going to happen?" And I don't know if was a shot of cortisone in his neck, but it could've been something like that, because he came out to sing. He apologized and said he wasn't up to his best, but Freddie Mercury's 50% is better than any human who ever existed! So he came out and knocked it out of the park, because he's Freddie Mercury. But I sat down at their booth in the party after the show, and I'm sitting there with Brian May and Freddie Mercury... I couldn't believe it. So that will always be a favorite moment. But The Clash was a big deal. I mean, "The Only Band That Matters"! So those are the two that I'll never, ever forget. Robert Plant, though, I can't forget him either, or partying with him at the Hard Rock Cafe after the show. Pinch me!
I wanted to ask about some other things from your back catalog, and I have to say that - although I haven't revisited it recently - I really liked Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again.
Well, I loved doing it. And I played Reggie, of course, and I thought I found the right amount of likeable smarm. And it had a backend pilot deal, so we did it thinking, "This could be a Movie of the Week that could really translate!" It didn't really work. It wasn't the flavor of the era. At the time, shows like thirtysomething were the goliaths, and people were looking for more realistic dramatic material. I think it would do better now. So it didn't get picked up, but it was a really great check for five days of work. [Laughs.] So I take that.
And at the same time, Larry David had requested me to come in for a Seinfeld. Well, I had just taken a part, and it would've conflicted. So I said "no" to Seinfeld. Of course, Seinfeld wasn't yet a huge hit. It was actually a low-rated show at the time. But that wasn't the reason. I simply didn't want to say "yes" to a friend to something I couldn't do. Well, rumor has it that Larry doesn't forgive those sorts of things. [Laughs.] And I think he held a grudge. I did eventually - 10 or 12 years later - do a Curb Your Enthusiasm, so he either forgot or forgave. But that's been asked of me several times: "You gave up a Seinfeld?" No, I gave up a chance to come in and read for a Seinfeld, but there was a conflict of interest there. I tell that story hoping that maybe someday Larry David will hear it and go, "Hey, come on back and do another one!"
So how was the experience of doing Curb?
One of the best times of my life. Again, I only worked about two or three days, but that's how fast the show works. There's no script to memorize. Larry just says, "Here are the beats, here's a short narrative outline of where we want the scene to go, this is who you are. Improvise!" All he said was, "Make sure you say, 'It's going to rain on Sunday.'" So I improvised some weathercasts where I did that, and he said, "I'm going to meet you at the golf course."
So we meet at the golf course in Pasadena, and he said, "I'm going to confront you, because you're golfing, and I'm going to accuse you of tailoring your weathercast so that the golf course will be open. So...improvise!" So I defended myself. I said, "Look, the jet stream changed the weather," and then Larry improvised, "The only jet stream I see is the jet stream of bullshit coming out of your mouth," which I thought was the most brilliant thing I'd ever heard. [Laughs.]
But they have six cameras running, and you might do the scene twice. He offers a few notes - 'Tighten it up here," and so on and so forth - and then you go it again, and you move on. So the show was a really freeing experience. And you know you're doing something great, because it's Larry David.
How did you find your way into the game show circuit, as it were?
Well, I have this Iowa work ethic. [Laughs.] I really do! All I ever wanted to do was work. It wasn't about fame or fortune. Those are byproducts if you're lucky. I just wanted to work. And the truth of this business of show business is that there are long periods where you're not working. Unless you get really lucky and you become a commodity, there are these big spans...and I just hated it! I'm a rather affable fellow, I love people, I love games and things like that, so I got an agent that packages those sorts of things.
Actually, I think what happened was, I was doing voiceovers, and I was the announcer for The George and Alana Show. And they would put me on camera - George Hamilton and Alana Stewart - and the production company liked it.
They liked the chemistry that I created, and they said, "Would you do a pilot for the revamped version of The Newlywed Game?" And they liked me enough, so they said, "Would you do it?" A lot of people would say, "Kroeger, you can't do it, you'll never be an actor again." But like I said, I wasn't acting at the time, it's a paycheck, it sounds like a lot of fun...
And then what happens is, you get into that niche, and the next thing you know, they ask you, "Will you do Beat the Clock?" Sure! "Will you do Card Sharks?" Sure! "Will you be the warmup guy and announcer for Whammy! with Todd Newton?" Yeah, you betcha! So that became a career. I consider myself lucky: I was paid to play games with people and give nice people cash and prizes. Usually, the people who come in, they're not wealthy. A bunch of them are on a vacation, and this is their dream. And I'm able to give them a cruise for a second honeymoon? That's a good job.
Okay, so now I have to ask you about A Man Called Sarge.
[Cracks up laughing.] You have great questions! I don't get to talk about this stuff anymore.
Well, I'll be honest: half the fun of this for me comes from the fact that I love to do the research and discover things precisely like this.
A Man Called Sarge... It was a starring role in a Cannon film, so it wasn't a large-budget movie, but I was asked to do it by the guy who directed me in The Return of the Shaggy Dog, which I did for Disney. A gentleman named Stuart Gillard was the director, and he wrote this movie, which was a fun, Airplane!-esque look at World War II. [Laughs.] I played Sgt. Duke Roscoe, who was sort of this defect from the Foreign Legion, and it's a rather funny script that allowed us to improvise and have some fun. Of course, we had hoped it would find a vein and be like Airplane! and then we'd do Sarge 2 and Sarge 3.
That never happened. I think opening weekend was about $14,000. But it was a trip to Israel, getting paid, meeting great people... Again, I don't look at the negative side and go, "Well, it didn't do anything." No, I had a blast. And it's a funny enough movie. If you're a 12-year-old boy, because it's very much a male-adolescence kind of humor, then you might think it's a very, very good movie. [Laughs.] I don't think my mother's ever sat through the whole thing.
