Lotsa Ruck
Why is this man smiling?
Well, besides the fact that he saw Sloane Peterson changing out of her clothes by the jacuzzi, which would make anyone smile, he’s presumably also pleased that I’m finally picking up the excised pieces from his 2018 Random Roles interview, putting them all together, and placing them out here for the world to see.
I should mention that I actually have shared these anecdotes with a few select folks, but since those individuals were members of a private Facebook group, most of you haven’t seen them, and even those who did see them had to deal with me doling them out over the course of four separate posts.
Not this time, my friends.
I know I tend to say this about virtually all of my interviews, but chatting with Alan Ruck really was a great deal of fun. He’s a really nice guy, someone who’s endured the career ups and downs that are requisite for most actors (including a stint with Sears after he co-starred in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which still blows my mind), but it’s clear that those downs have only served to transform him into someone who appreciates his ups all the more.
And now, here they are, together again for the first time…
The Alan Ruck Random Roles Outtakes!
The Happening (2008)—“Principal”
Alan Ruck: That was just a little thing. I just met Night [Shyamalan], and…I can’t remember what the actual audition was, but I talked with him for a little bit, and then he offered me this small part in that movie, which—to tell you the truth—I’ve never seen. I’m not a big fan of watching me. I really enjoy the doing of it. I mean, occasionally… Like, I’ll watch Succession because the writing is so good, and there’s so many wonderful people in it, and I want to see their work, and I’m pleased with what I’ve seen of my work. But for the most part, I don’t care about watching it. [Laughs.] I mean, I know me. Succession is good enough that I can suspend my disbelief and go into the story and not think, “Oh, yeah, that’s me.” But I don’t really have anything to say about the principal in The Happening. I went down to Philadelphia, and I think I worked, like, one day on that job. I met Mark Wahlberg briefly. “Hi!” “Hi!” Shook hands with him. That was it.
Carnage Park (2016)—“Sheriff Moss”
Oh, Carnage Park! [Laughs.] Okay, Mickey Keating knew a friend of mine who’d seen the script, and he gave Mickey my name. So I met with Mickey, and…he might be, like, a new Martin Scorsese. He’s a young guy—he’s not even 30 yet—who has an encyclopedic knowledge of film history. I mean, you can shoot a name of a film off and he’ll say, “Oh, yeah, that was Columbia, 1953, it starred Stewart Granger…” I mean, he’ll know the whole rundown. He just loves movies. He’s crazy about them. He’s made a number of features, and he’s been very well received.
I know they call these things “genre pictures,” which I think is stupid, because “genre” just means a style of film. But “genre picture” has come to mean horror or horror-thriller. But he’s made a number of these, and I guess that a lot of young people coming out of film school make these kinds of movies because they can sell them. It’s actually a fairly easy sell, because they can make them fairly cheaply and there’s a market for them. Mickey’s full of ideas and he’s got unbridled enthusiasm. I think he’s going to turn out to be a major director. And he writes and directs. He’s just a pleasure to work with.
200 Motels (2013)—“Ginger / Good Conscience”
You worked with John Cusack in Class, but then you worked another member of the Cusack family not terribly long ago, in an orchestral performance of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels with the L.A. Philharmonic.
Yeah, that was crazy!
How did that come about? Were you a Zappa fan?
I do dig Zappa, but I don’t know how my name came about. My manager just called up and said, “Here’s something crazy: you wanna go do this thing with the L.A. Philharmonic? Esa-Pekka Salonen is gonna conduct. Are you interested?” [Laughs.] And on top of everything else, I’d never seen the inside of the Disney concert hall, so I said, “Yeah!”
My baby boy wasn’t born yet—I have four kids: two grown kids and two little ones—and my wife and our little girl were just flying back to Canada, because my wife was doing The Killing in Vancouver, and I just stayed back for another two days to do this Zappa thing. But I hadn’t slept the night before because we were packing and doing whatever to put them on a plane, and I went to rehearsal that day, and I had an out-of-body experience because I was so tired. [Laughs.] When I walked onstage with Annie Cusack, I was, like, “I don’t…know… What am I supposed to say? I don’t know!” And she was very sweet to me. She said, “Don’t worry, it’s all in there, you’re just tired, everything’s going to be fine…”
But I hadn’t done any plays in a long time. The last time I did a play was 12 years ago when I met Mireille [Enos]. We were doing a play together in New York—that’s how we met—and I haven’t done a play since. And I don’t know that I ever will again. Film is just a more civilized medium. You tend to get your weekends off.
Absurd Person Singular (2005)—“Sidney”
Had you been familiar with Absurd Person Singular when you tackled the play?
No, actually, this is an extension of the story about my divorce.
Oh, good. Because that’s a story I’m sure you want me to keep extending.
[Laughs.] No, it’s all good. My ex and I decided we were going to get divorced, I do the Stella episode the next day, and then it was sometime in the next couple of months where I was just out of my mind and was, like, “I’ve got to go do something! Instead of sitting around the house and thinking about my life, I’ve got to get out of myself.” So I auditioned for a couple of plays, and the one I got was Absurd Person Singular. And I almost didn’t do it, because I didn’t really have a feeling for the play. I was, like, “I don’t know. I guess I get it. But I’ve got to do something. Okay, I’ll do it!” And Mireille was doing Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway at night, but when they offered her the role in Absurd Person Singular, she almost didn’t do it because she was, like, “Do I really want to do a play at night and rehearse another play during the day? I guess. I don’t know. I guess I do. Okay, I’ll do it!”
The great thing about doing that play, though, was that I met my wife. And, boy, getting married was the last thing on my mind, because I’m in the middle of a divorce! And then here’s this really cute younger woman flirting with me, and I was, like, “Yeah? Nah. She’s not flirting with me. Actors are flirty, and we’re backstage. That’s all.” And then a friend of mine came to town to see the play, and he asked her out, and… [Starts to laugh.] I come outside the theater that night, and she looks great. I go, “Wow! You look like a million bucks! Where are you going?” She says, “I’m going out on a date with Joey.” And then he calls her right then, and while she’s talking to him on the phone, she slips her arm through my arm and just stares me in the eyes while she’s talking to this other guy on the phone. And I drove home, and I’m, like, “You’re so stupid, you’re such a moron…” But it worked out. A few days later we went out on a date, and that was it.
Justified (2010)—“Roland Pike”
Oh, yeah! Well, Adam Arkin, who wound up working on Succession, just offered me that part. He directed that episode. I had a blast! Because I don’t usually play leading characters. I usually play supporting roles, and at least in that episode, I got to carry the episode, and there were a lot of different places to go with that character. He was a pretty nutty guy. He had been an accountant for the mob and stole their money and then went to Mexico to go to dental school. [Laughs.] And he reinvented himself! He was basically fixing poor kids’ teeth for tamales and casseroles, whatever people could pay, because he’d had a change of heart. But he’d had a past where he’d been working for some dangerous people, and they caught up with him, so he wound up paying the price.
That was really fun. It was a great job, and it was great to work with Adam. It was my first time working with him, and then luckily we got to work together again on Succession. He’s great because he honors your ideas, whatever they may be, and then he’ll come up with ideas that maybe you haven’t thought of and ask, “What do you think about this? Do you want to try this?” And they’re always good ideas. So I feel lucky to have worked with him.
The Producers (2004 touring / 2005 Broadway)—“Leo Bloom”
Star Trek: Of Men and Gods (2007)—“Captain John Harriman”
How did you come to reprise the role of Harriman [from Star Trek: Generations] for the fan film Of Men And Gods?
I was just between gigs. I had a funny thing happen. [Hesitates.] I mean, I’ve had some ups and downs in this career. I’d been in New York for awhile—I was doing Spin City in New York, and I moved my family there for that—and I had done a musical. I toured around with The Producers, and then I did it on Broadway. And then I did Absurd Person Singular, where I met Mireille, and then she’s, like, “Well, I’m moving out to California.” And obviously I had this great new girlfriend, so I said, “Well, I guess I’m moving out to California!” And it kind of took awhile before casting directors out here… They kept thinking of me as a New York guy, since I’d been there for 10 years, so they were, like, “Oh, he’s here?” So I had a little trouble getting work.
A guy named Bob Catalano, who represented me for autograph shows, he said, “Listen, there’s this movie that this guy’s written, and he wants you to play Harriman again.” I said, “I’m not doing anything that week!” So I just went up about as far north as you can go in the state of New York and not be in Canada, to this teeny, tiny town, and we shot in this warehouse that had been an old car dealership but which they’d turned into a soundstage. It wasn’t really good, because it had a metal roof, so when it rained, it was impossible. You couldn’t shoot. So, yeah, it was a goof. It was something to do. I thought, “Why not?” And Walter Koenig was involved, so I thought, “Well, if Walter’s gonna be there…” [Laughs.]
The Famous Teddy Z (1989)—“Sheldon Samms”
Since this was just a one-off episode that you did almost 30 years ago, it’s okay if you don’t remember anything about it.
Oh, I do, because I was in a bad frame of mind right there. That was right before I went to work at the Sears warehouse, so I was a little shaky as a human being.
To kind of set this up, I come from Chicago, so it’s kind of like the “more is more” school of acting. There’s a very funny actor named Glenn Morshower who used to tease me. He said, “Alan, I love what you’re doing, I just want you to take it down about 95 percent.” [Laughs.] So especially early on I had a tendency to be expansive when that was not was what required.
Well, the director was a guy named Max Tash, and Hugh Wilson was the guy who created the show, and Max said to me, “I’ve just got to tell you something: Hugh really does not like acting, so to speak.”
So we had a run-through, and I was just very nervous, because I was at a low point in my personal history and I’d kind of lost confidence in my abilities, so maybe I was a little too energetic during the history, because Hugh Wilson said, “Goddammit, there’s a lot of acting going on here!” [Laughs.] And then Max came up to me later, and he was very sweet, but he was, like, “I tried to tell you!”
Young Guns II (1990)—“Hendry French”
Part of this anecdote was, in fact, in the piece, but not this part. Within the published interview, there’s a bit where Alan was talking about how he and Lou Diamond Phillips still remain friends as a result of working together on Young Guns II, and this picks up right after Alan related the story about Lou being dragged by the horse and ending up in the hospital.
You’d think he would’ve said something to me about this when we talked to him about the movie. But, no, he didn’t.
He may have tried to put the whole thing out of his mind.
I’ll buy that. Talk about traumatizing.
Yeah, it was a painful experience. To this day, he calls me Shinaaí, which is Navajo for “brother.” But he’s a funny boy, Lou. I love him. He was, like, “Alan, they cast me as Mexican, they cast me as Native American… I’m a fucking Filipino!” [Laughs.]
Oh, that reminds me that he said something in his interview, and it’d be interesting to hear your take on it.
“That generation—my generation—also including guys like Robert Downey and Sean Penn and Tom Cruise, even Brad Pitt and George Clooney—when we were breaking into the industry, we wanted to do good work. We wanted to make good films. We wanted to do work that could stand the test of time. And you see that today in some of the young actors, but there’s also this… I don’t know, it’s a phenomenon created in Hollywood today where people just want to be famous.”
Well, I think that’s always existed, but I think it’s been aggravated by the types of movies they make now. Most of the movies that are made in America are fanboy movies. The big studio pictures tend to be sequels or superhero movies. And since then—I mean, Young Guns II is almost 30 years ago now!—CGI has taken over, so a lot of what young people are required to do now is look good, maybe be able to do some martial arts moves, and just sort of be believable in front of a green screen, because all the CGI is going to be painted in around them. There are weird things happening. There’s an acting class in Los Angeles called “Under 5,” and it’s everything you need to know to land that under-5 part, which is a bit part. It’s, like, why don’t you just take a regular acting class and figure it out? It’s getting so weirdly specific. Why would you take a class that only helps you get bit parts?
To get back to your question, though, obviously we all felt that way, and we always wanted to do—as he said—work that would stand the test of time. But I think the business has changed. The good news, though, is that all those opportunities have shifted over to television. I think there’s an opportunity to do good work in all of these television shows. There’s so much product that you can’t even keep up with it, so I think the competition is probably more now than it was then. When I was a kid, there were three television stations, and the only way you got to see a movie was if you went to the movie theater and paid your money over and over and sat in the theater and watched it. Well, you learn how to act by watching good actors. That’s a big part of the process. So now lots of kids can just sit in front of the screen at home and watch a great performance by Gary Oldman or Sean Penn or Meryl Streep over and over and over again, until it kind of gets down into their bones. So the competition is certainly not less than it used to be, but there are a lot of opportunities out there. It’s, like, if you build a freeway, it’s not going to end the traffic problem. It’s still gonna fill up with cars!
War Machine (2017)—“Pat McKinnon”
Was there any actor who particularly impressed you early in your career by sticking around to do off-camera coverage during your performances when you knew they technically didn’t have to be there?
I’ve always been lucky when it comes to films. I’ve worked with people who’ve been very gracious. I mean, I worked with Sean Penn in my first movie ever, and he was all about the process and the actor, so I remember early on that he was right there for me. When I worked with Matthew on Ferris Bueller, we’d already done nine months together in a play, so we were already friends, so he was right there with me. Even though he was the star, he wasn’t using that star “get out of jail free” card to go home early. Even recently, when I worked on War Machine with Brad Pitt in England, some of his kids were with him, and he’d had a hard day… We did Brad’s coverage first, and then we were going to do mine, and the only thing Brad said was, “Would you mind if I took my wig off?” [Laughs.] I was, like, “Absolutely, man! Get comfortable! Do whatever you need to do!” So I’ve always worked with generous people. I’ve been very fortunate.
Bunheads (2012-2013)—“Hubbell Flowers”
I had done a pilot with Amy Sherman-Palladino that didn’t get picked up, but I had a really nice experience working with her. And then about a year later or something, she said, “Alan, I’ve got a new pilot, I’ve written a part for you.” And Mireille was doing The Killing, I think it was maybe the second season, so I said, “Oh, uh, well, when does this go?” And she said, “It shoots in, like, two weeks.” And I said, “I can’t! I’m going with Mireille and our baby daughter to Canada, so I’ll be up there. I can’t be here!” And she said, “No, it’s not a big deal. You’re only in the pilot, and you get killed.” [Laughs.] I was, like, “Oh, okay, then I can do that.” And then I show up, and the part’s basically described as the most homely man in America! And his name was Hubbell, and some woman was outraged because it was the same name as Robert Redford’s character in The Way We Were. She was, like, “How could you name this homely man with no sex appeal after the most sexy and romantic character in movie history?” Uh, wow.
Anyway, that was an easy one. I got to meet Sutton Foster, and she was a charming young woman, very talented. And I got a big kick out of Amy. So that was really just a one and done. I was basically there for two days, and then it was over.