Oh, Just One More Question...
Featuring Campbell Scott, Darryl Bell, Spike Lee, Susie Essman, William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett, and more!
Ever since my days as an assistant editor and writer for Bullz-Eye, I’ve regularly enjoyed asking people one specific recurring question toward the end of our conversations, and while I’ve switched up the precise phrasing here and there, the general premise is always the same:
“What’s your favorite project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?”
Here are a collection of answers to that question, and with the exception of one of them, I’ve placed a link to the original piece within the first appearance of their name, so feel free to click back and check them out after you’ve finished reading this piece.
Oh, and rest assured that I have many, many more answers to this question from various past interviewees, so don’t be surprised to see a sequel sometimes soon…
So what’s your favorite project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved? And you can go with one you’ve directed and one you’ve acted in, if you’d like.
Campbell Scott: Dude! How much time do you have? [Laughs.] I don’t know. Love is…relative. I think I live in a world where…it’s funny, but people in your profession or in the audience might come up to me and say, “Oh, God, why didn’t I hear about that movie? Why didn’t I hear about Off the Map when it was out?” Or whatever. And I always think, “Well, shit, I was in Kansas City with a big, huge group of people, and we saw it and loved it.” And I’m not being prickly about it at all. I really just think it’s a world that I live in.
In fact, the times that I’ve appeared in films which are larger and have the machine behind them…which are rare…I always feel, frankly, a little less a part of it, you know, because it is such a machine. But, like, Off the Map and Final and The Dying Gaul and Roger Dodger and pretty much everything I’ve made in the last eight, nine, ten years…you travel with them, and you talk to people in staircases about them, and you talk to people like you, who are smart about them, or you read something about them on the internet. And I think, “That’s where I sit.” And I like it, dude, because I also ride the subway and nobody bothers me. Nobody knows who the hell I am, and it’s the way I prefer it, I have to say. But that’s not to say that I’m not itching for more all the time in some different kind of way. But it’s usually on my own terms and not what other people think of are “more.” For me, “more” is “different.” Or, y’know, I want to do a musical or whatever. Whatever comes up. It’s not through any planning on my part, because I’m not a planner, but I think I’m more satisfied in that kind of arena.
So the answer to your question is two answers: I wish all of them got more love, almost everything I’ve ever done, but by the same token, I love what they are and the kinds of failures they are. And by that, I mean creatively, too. You do nothing but fail, dude, as far as I’m concerned. But you just have to do it interestingly. I’m sure someone said that at one point, and I agree with them. Success doesn’t make any sense to me, because it doesn’t exist. By that, I mean, if you’re perfect, what are you going to do? What’s next? That doesn’t interest me.
What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love that you thought it deserved? I guess you can include pilots in that, given that you’ve worked with some big names in pilots.
Darryl Bell: Wow! Wow, that’s interesting, and I will tell you that it’s a toss-up. I would say in one sense, it would be the pilot I did with Jim Burrows, which we all thought was terrific, but it just happened to come at a time when reality TV…how’s this for irony? Reality TV was just starting to take off, and I want to say that it was Meet the Parents, Average Joe, The Apprentice, and I think they were about to do Average Jane. I think that was coming up, and all of them were taking up our blocks in NBC lineup. Additionally, they had already agreed and dropped $55 million on the Siegfried and Roy animated series.
Oh, Father of the Pride.
Yeah, Father of the Pride was coming up. So they had all of these things they had already committed to that I guess they didn’t they know would be successful before the upfronts. But by the time they had already renewed them for a second season, the window for available space for television wasn’t good. They had ordered, like, 24 pilots, and this was, like, Jim Burrows, Larry Wilmore, who had gotten an Emmy for The Bernie Mac Show, and Henry Winkler was in a part. We even got a day off filming the pilot, which never happens, but it was because it was so tight. And it didn’t get picked up. So I was disappointed in that.
Writer’s note: This is literally the only clip I can find of Beverly Hills S.U.V., and as you can tell from the clip’s title, it’s heavy on Bell’s co-star, Aron Kader, and decidedly light on Bell himself. Still, at least you can get a little bit of a feel for what it was like.
But the other answer to your question would be A Different World. Dr. Cosby always said that our show was the goose that kept laying the golden eggs, but they never wanted to credit the goose. They always wanted to say that we were a show that was a beneficiary of our time slot. Notwithstanding the fact that I think in our third season, we beat The Cosby Show. They also never wanted to give, I think, Debbie (Allen), Susan (Fales-Hill), and the writing staff credit for being as funny and topical as they were with the shows that still hold up now on AIDS, war, racism, and all the things that we did. We’re still one of the 50 highest rated shows in television history, and we’ve been in syndication for 17 years. We’re only the second show in television history to debut at the number two spot, behind Bewitched. I could go on, I’m good with the numbers. [Laughs.] You know, everyone in the cast was always, like, “If you want to know the details, you’ve got to ask Darryl,” because I remember all that.
So that would be the only other thing. People tend to look at our show, some people, under the umbrella of Cosby success and don’t give the people who put in a lot of good, hard work and were really good at what they do, for our show. But, you know, for what that show didn’t get in terms of that kind of recognition, to have shared the stage with Whoopi Goldberg, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll… I mean, it paid dividends in so many other ways. It was the best.
Is there any project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
William Daniels: Hmmm...
Bonnie Bartlett: You’ve been lucky, Bill.
WD: Well, that’s true.
BB: Oh,do you remember after St. Elsewhere, when we were trying to do a show together? We had commitments, and we turned down a lot of things, but it didn’t happen.
WD: [Long pause.] I know I turned down the Bob Fosse thing.
BB: Oh, but that was after 1776. He wanted you to do Chicago.
WD: That’s right. I stayed too long in 1776 - two years and two months,almost a thousand performances, eight a week - and I didn’t want to do another show. So I didn’t want to do Chicago.
BB: You were also wonderful when you went and did A Little Night Music for six months.
WD: Well, I couldn’t turn down A Little Night Music, because it was beautifully mounted and a beautiful script, and the lawyer, Egerman, was a lovely part. So I did it. I replaced... Was it John Cullum?
BB: Len Cariou.
WD: Len Cariou, of course. Yes, I replaced Len Cariou for the last six months of the run of A Little Night Music, and I enjoyed it very much.
For Chicago, was it Billy Flynn that Fosse wanted you to play?
BB: Yep.But he didn’t want to do it.
That would’ve been very interesting to see.
WD: Well,Jerry (Orbach) did it, though, so...there you go.
BB: It’s so interesting as you’re talking to us. Bill just mentioned John Cullum, and then Jerry Orbach, Len Cariou... At one time, New York was kind of a family of actors. And even though they were competitive,there was a great deal of love and... Well, I won’t say love, but comradeship.It was very beautiful.
WD: There was a great deal of respect, certainly.
BB: Respect and comradeship. It was a lovely time. I hated to come out here (to Los Angeles). Oh, God, I hated it. [Laughs.]
WD: You know, a lot of us came out of the Lee Strasberg class. That’s where we got to know each other.
BB: That’s where we met Jerry and his wife. And Peter Mark Richman. We met a lot of wonderful people. And Marilyn (Monroe)! Ask Bill about Marilyn! [Starts laughing.]
Well, now you’ve done it.
BB: Okay, Billy, will you tell that? It’s… [Hesitates.] It’s a little bit gross. But go ahead, Bill. You were sitting in class...
WD: Yes,Marilyn Monroe walked out, I guess, on a movie contract and wanted to study seriously, so she came to Lee Strasberg and became a friend of their family’s and was up there a lot, and she came to the classes. Once she even did a scene in which she was so nervous that I noticed that the back of her dress was solid perspiration. That’s how nervous she was. But the first time she came in,everybody knew who Marilyn Monroe was. She went by me with this tiny voice - “Excuse me! Excuse me!” - as she’s going down the aisle. And I had to get up out of my seat to let her through, because she had the biggest ass you’ve ever seen!
BB: [Bursts out giggling.] I remember he told me, “This huge ass walked by!”
WD: [Laughs.] So, anyway, that was my big encounter.
BB: You never got to know her. I did. She was okay. She was a good gal.
WD: She kind of latched on to Bonnie. Lee Strasberg used to have these almost European salons or soirees or whatever you want to call them on Sundays, and by then Bonnie was a secretary at Lee’s class and would collect the money from the students and all that, so she became almost like a member of the family, and I hung around, so we were expected to come up to their house on Sundays during that period. And sometimes you’d see people like Peter O’Toole who were in town.
BB: I remember Richard Burton once in the kitchen, telling stories. He could tell stories beautifully. It was so much fun. He’d tell stories about whales or what have you. He was just fun to listen to. He was a beautiful, beautiful man. A beautiful voice.
WD: It was just very nice and very friendly. Everyone would just come and spend Sundays at Lee Strasberg’s.
You’ve got a few signature films in your back catalogue, but is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you’d hoped it would?
Wallace Shawn: Well, Andre Gregory and I spent 17 years working on our production of Ibsen that became the film A Master Builder, directed by Jonathan Demme, and I would say there are quite a few people out there who’ve never seen that movie, if you can believe it!
Thankfully, it’s been released by Criterion, which certainly ups its chances of being seen.
Yes, it’s definitely on Criterion, and no one is stopping anyone from seeing it.
You and Andre have collaborated a number of times over the years. When you and he first met, did you get along immediately, or did it take some time to find a groove while working together?
He was the first person in professional theater to like my writing, so that was an overwhelming thrill for me. Because I was so absolutely determined that I wanted to spend my life writing plays, but I hadn’t yet found anyone who actually worked in the theater who liked what I was writing. So that was a very big deal for me.
In general, is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Haley Joel Osment: Huh… [Long pause.] I guess things have been… I mean, even if they didn’t do big numbers at the box office, the way things are today, they still find their audience online, even if it’s years down the line. Like, doing a movie like Tusk… [Laughs.] I love doing stuff like that, because even though some people responded negatively to it and there are some bad reviews, the movie is such an absurd, Twilight Zone-like thing that it’s very funny to see people get mad at a movie like that. It’s, like, based on a joke on a podcast! Movies that people make primarily to amuse themselves, which is what Kevin [Smith] did because he wanted to work with his friend and create a fun, crazy movie, that’s the stuff that I’m always down for.
What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Susie Essman: Oh, geez. [Considers the question.] I don’t know that there is one. My favorite project is, of course, Curb [Your Enthusiasm], and my equal love is stand-up, so I don’t know that there is one. I guess you could say Bolt, because I thought it was going to be bigger than it was, but it made something like $300 million, so I can’t really say that. It wasn’t as big as, like, Shrek or something, but it did really well, so I can’t really say that it didn’t get the love it deserved. A lot of people loved it. So I don’t think that I have one, really. Nothing else comes to mind.
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Spike Lee: As far as critically? Or box office?
Either, really.
Well, I think that sometimes there are films you make that for whatever reason…I mean, everything is timing. Raging Bull is now considered one of the greatest films ever, but that didn’t make a dime when it came out. You know? So I think that Miracle at St. Anna is going to be discovered. It did not do well at all at the box office, and the reviews… [Trails off.] But I think that’s one of my best films. So you just have to keep on keepin’ on, keep moving, and let those films keep adding to your body of work. You just keep going.