Oh, Just One More Question... (Part 4 in an Ongoing Series)
Featuring Michael Ironside, Bobcat Goldthwait, Rod Lurie, Rob Schneider, Sean Astin, George Wendt, Lea Thompson, 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 another installment sometimes soon…
What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Michael Ironside: Hmmm. Well, I don’t know. That’s a tough question. Probably…Jesus, I think maybe Starship Troopers. When we did that, it was meant to be a satire and to take a shot at totalitarianism, the idea that…I know that when I asked Paul (Verhoeven), “Why are you doing this, it’s such a right-wing book,” he said that if he stood on a soapbox and told the religious right that their way of doing things was unnurturing, they wouldn’t hear him. “So I’m going to create a perfect fascist world,” he said, “but it’s only good for killing bugs.” And I remember liking that. So we set off to do a satire based on Heinlein’s book, a satirical look at totalitarianism, and a lot of people didn’t get that. They thought it was anti-Semitic, they thought…I mean, I was, like, “God, don’t journalists do their homework anymore?” Paul comes from a place that was ravaged by the Nazis – the Netherlands – and…well, they just missed the point. A lot of the press, a lot of people. It’s one of those films…I looked at it again recently, because my daughter wanted to see it. I have a 10-year-old, so we looked at it together, and I thought, “God, it still stands up.” It’s very sarcastic, it’s very satirical, and I actually enjoyed it. I think it’s something that’ll be revisited maybe ten years down the line, and people will go, “Oh, my God.” So that’s one of them, I guess.
What’s a favorite project that you have worked on that didn’t get the love that you thought it deserved?
Bobcat Goldthwait: I would have to say…and it’s not me being, like, “It will never work, everything is doom and gloom,” it’s not like that…but usually, in general, the things I work on, I don’t really think, “Oh, this is going to be a huge deal. ”I’m the direct opposite. I’m actually really surprised when anything that is personal to me, like Sleeping Dogs Lie or World’s Greatest Dad, gets any kind of heat or attention. It’s really awesome, you know. It exceeds my expectations.
What would you say is your favorite project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love that you thought it deserved?
Rod Lurie: My television series Line of Fire. It was a series that was…I love it with, really, all my heart. It was an FBI/mob series which starred Brian Goodman, who is the director and one of the stars of What Doesn’t Kill You. It starred Leslie Bibb, Leslie Hope, and David Paymer. ABC gave us a shocking amount of freedom to make that show. Maybe too much freedom, because its violence and sexuality really fell victim to the Janet-Jackson-showing-her-tits fiasco. All of a sudden, Puritanism hit the business.
Which project of yours didn’t get the love you thought it deserved, and why?
Rob Schneider: The Hot Chick. I released it at the wrong time, and it was my decision. Disney would’ve released it anytime that I wanted to, and I released it in the middle of Christmas, against Sandra Bullock and a Star Trek movie, and we just got lost in the shuffle. It was a really good movie, a sweet little movie. My daughter was 12 at the time, and it was a good message to put out there: you don’t need a guy to make you feel beautiful or to make you feel special. All you need is you. It was a nice little movie, and I loved that movie. That it’s had a huge life of its own afterwards is nice. And that’s just it: it’s not just about what it does at the box office. It’s about the life and the impact that it has on kids. So in that sense, it’s a nice, sweet little movie, and I’m glad that a lot of people have since found it or are still discovering it. It still has a life. I’m proud of it, and, y’know, you can’t control what you can’t control. So in that sense, I don’t feel like it got the love it deserved. But that’s okay. It happens. The title was bad. “The Hot Chick” was a bad title, and it was a bad poster. At a certain point, I have to take responsibility for those things.
Is there a particular project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love that you thought it deserved?
Sean Astin: Oh, wow. Well, you know, nowadays you pretty much know what is going to happen with a movie, you know what I mean? A Blair Witch is really rare, where you go, “Oh, my God, that little thing that nobody would have ever thought was anything is now 150 million,” or whatever. So I did this movie, The Final Season, this baseball movie in Iowa, and I knew it would be a really strong home video title and cable and whatever, and we kind of hoped it would get a theatrical release. And it got a theatrical release, but it was kind of limited. We knew who was paying for the P.R. campaign, we knew what kinds of screens it was in, and it just didn’t do very well theatrically, which we kind of expected. So I don’t know if I would have thought it should have gotten more recognition. In fact, now in my kids school, people are coming up to me everyday because so and so, their friend from Iowa said, or so and so who’s a little league manager said. So it’s doing exactly what I thought it would do, which is to have its own life on DVD and satellite and whatever else.
There was a movie that I did… Caught in the Act is what we filmed it as. It was released as Bigger Than the Sky. Anyway, I loved that and I thought that was really sweet and really funny. I don’t think anybody saw it. It’s one of my favorite characters that I’ve ever played. Ken Zorbell was like this pompous actor, prancing around the stage, saying, “I’m an actor, I can’t work with this.” And my mom is in it. She plays a little satire on her Patty Duke Show by playing two characters, like a kind of school marm, officious lady and then the kind of boozy, wardrobe lady. So that was kind of fun. I got a real kick out of that. But I don’t think many people saw it. That’s one that I think was deserving. You know: could have, should have, would have gotten more attention. Other ones, you kinda know what they are when you make them. They get the attention that they are meant to get.
Do you have a favorite project that you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love that you thought it deserved?
George Wendt: Huh. So it probably has to be film or television…?
No, it could be theater as well. And it doesn’t have to be just one, if you have more than that.
I was sort of surprised Modern Men, written by Marsh McCall, didn’t have a bit of life over at The WB…or The CW, whatever. It was three funny, cute boys, and I was the dad of one of them. It was all about them. Oh, and Jane Seymour, she was their life coach, and, basically, they were just tired of being losers in love, and they really wanted to employ this life coach to sort of transform themselves into viable life partners for the girls. In a real earnest way, but it was really funny. And, of course, I was this horrible role model who had been divorced, like, three times. [Laughs.] I was the anti-Jane Seymour!
What would you say is your favorite project that you worked on that didn’t get the love that you thought it deserved?
Lea Thompson: Oh, gee, that’s interesting. Well, I did Sally Bowles on Broadway, Cabaret, Sam Mendes’ version, and I was like the third or fourth one to do it, maybe the fifth one to do it, so I never got reviewed…and I was really good! So that was upsetting to me a little bit, although I still got to do it, which was fantastic. But…gee, that’s hard to say. You know, I was watching the first season of Caroline in the City, and it was super duper. I mean it was really funny. So I think maybe that show…since it was pretty much critically hated!
I’ve been watching it on DVD, and it’s fun. I guess it was during that period of time where it was just, “Well, it’s not Cheers and it’s not Seinfeld, so we’re going to bash it.”
You know what I think? I think it’s because I was at the center of it. I think my essence is pretty nice, and that it wasn’t quite twisted enough or something. It was like it was too nice for people. But I think that show was undeservedly criticized. You know, another problem was that we weren’t an underdog. We got the best time slot in the history of TV! But when I watch that show, it’s really solid, and it’s really, really funny. Probably by the last year it wasn’t quite as solid, because they took away my writers, but I think that show was given a little bit of flak…but people loved it. I won all these People’s Choice Awards, and we won stuff, so people loved it. And it had really good ratings.
Anyway, that would probably be what I would say was a little brutalized. But I’ve had a few of those in my time. You know, nowadays with the internet, it’s an equal opportunity brutal playing field. I mean, everyone is brutal to everybody half the time. Well, not half the time, but you know what I mean. People can be unbelievably brutal on the internet, about everything. But they can also be really, really nice. The problem is that human beings like to focus on the negative sometimes, unfortunately.
Well, the upside is that the people who are usually the most brutal are the ones that can barely string two words together. If you can’t trust their punctuation, you probably can’t trust their opinions.
Well, you must know. You know exactly what I’m talking about.
I do indeed
I was reading a review of a Renee Zellweger movie on IMDb, the one about Minnesota, and this person was going on and on about how people aren’t like that in Minnesota and said, “It’s just about as annoying as a Lea Thompson interview.”
Yikes.
I’m, like, how did that happen? How did I get inserted as an insult in someone else’s review? Anyway, that’s the internet: it’s not for the faint of heart!
How can someone not like an interview with you? A minute ago, you used the word “super-duper” in a completely non-ironic way. That’s awesome!
[Laughs.]Yeah, well, I think we’re dealing with so much information in this time that we’re all trying to peg each other really quickly, and human beings aren’t that way, you know? We’re lots of different things.
Is there a project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Nestor Carbonell: “The Tick,” I think. I really do. I think it’s gotten the love now, on DVD, from people who’ve discovered it that way, but it obviously didn’t last long. But I thought it was a special show. “Lost” is certainly a show that I love, and it’s definitely gotten a lot of love, but I think “The Tick” is one that really could’ve been nurtured a little bit more. I always love it when people bring it up. It was really a special show.
Is there a particular project that you think is underrated, that hasn’t gotten the love you think it deserves?
Michael Rapaport: Well, I think Special is going to wind up being like that, just because it’s a small film. But I think it’s going to wind up having a long shelf-life… No, not “shelf-life,” but a long history. I really feel like it’s gonna be talked about after its initial release, just because of the nature of it.
The Spike Lee movie I did, Bamboozled, has taken on some different sort of definition since it first came out. The smaller movies are the ones that sort of have that. When you have a big distribution, it’s easy for people to get a reaction, but it’s more fun for people to come up to you and talk about something small that you did a while ago.
What role that you’ve done would you say is the most underrated, that you wish more people had seen?
Luke Goss: I don’t know about underrated, but I wish more people had seen Charlie. I enjoyed that role. And, also, Bone Dry. I think for me…I did a scene, the cactus scene, that I really analyzed the work. Sometimes it turns out great and something it doesn’t, but I think you get to a point where the filmmakers you work with guarantee a certain level of quality. But with Bone Dry, I think we really pulled something off there. It’s a really good thriller. I wish more people had seen that, to be honest.
What’s your favorite project that you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love it deserved, and why does it deserve that love?
Michael Vartan: Well, I think, actually, that it’s kind of a tie for Season 1 of Alias and Rogue. I mean, I know Alias was considered a hit, but our ratings were really, really not that good. I just wish more people had seen that first year. I thought that first season of “Alias” was as good as TV gets for that genre, for that action-spy stuff.
And Rogue, I just…I’m incredibly disappointed with the way the Weinstein Company completely dropped the movie and decided not to release it in theaters here. Those are things, again, that we have no control over, but that was very disappointing, because I think that, as an action-monster-thriller movie, it’s a good one, and it has a lot of elements to it that most Hollywood movies of that nature don’t have. And that’s what makes it different and fresh and kind of “oh, that’s nice that it unfolded that way,” as opposed to, ten minutes into the movie, you know exactly what’s going to happen. So, yeah, obviously, I wish more people had seen it, but, hey, what can you do?
What’s your favorite project that you’ve done that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved, and why does it deserve that love?
Philip Baker Hall: Oh, my gosh, that’s interesting. Hmmm. Well, I did a film a few years ago about an architect, called A House on a Hill, and that never really saw the light of day. The New York Times strangled it. [Laughs.] That was kind of a serious film about an architect that didn’t really get much of a play at all. I was kind of disappointed by that, because I thought it was a really kind of radically interesting film. But, y’know, a film about an architect is not gonna put lines around the block! It got into some of the esoteric and fine points of architecture and its importance, socially as well as its practical functions. Kind of esoteric, but it was an interesting film nonetheless. But it really died. I don’t even know if you can find evidence of that one anymore!
Startlingly, Hall was almost completely right: there are no clips from the film on YouTube, there’s no trailer, and it was only after a fair amount of Googling that I found it on Amazon, where you can buy it for a whopping $1.99…and, no, it’s not because it’s bad, it’s because they’ve mislabeled it as a TV series…and since it’s not a TV series, you’re just buying the one and only “episode” in their catalog!
Is there a favorite project that you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love you thought it should have?
Eric Roberts: Star 80. It was also a bomb in movie theaters, and it’s also become a huge cult classic, but in the movie theaters, it was a bomb because it was so dark and so real. I mean, Bob Fosse was one of the greatest filmmakers ever to make movies, and he made everybody who watched the movie have to go through that experience…and it was hard. Obviously, it was a big loss financially, because it should’ve been a mega-hit, but it was ahead of its time. It has since become a cult classic, so I am satisfied by that, but Bob Fosse never saw that. He died. And I love him like I love my life, and I mean that totally. He became my second father, and he was great to me. We had a great relationship, and we spent a lot of time on the road together, doing press, and we bonded. I just cannot say enough about that monster talent and great man.
What’s your favorite underrated project was, your favorite project that didn’t get as much attention as you thought it should have?
Clint Howard: I did a little movie called Planet Ibsen. I got to play Henrik Ibsen in that movie. It’s a really odd little movie. You know, listen, in retrospect, there were probably things about the picture that could have been better or different, but I just was sort of proud that it was one of those little independent movies that wasn’t a horror movie. It was sort of a fantasy drama and I felt pretty proud of the choices I made and this character that I created.
Listen, there are a lot of good performances that are never going to see the light of day. I’ve done performances in movies that have long since past. I did a great part when I was about 12 or 13 years old in a movie called The Red Pony, with Hank Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. I was the lead; I played Jody. At the time, this was like ’72 or ’73 or something like that, it was a really well-respected, Emmy-nominated project. I was really proud of the work I did.
Listen, I’ve gotten to do so many things, and there’s some stuff that’s pretty forgettable in my mind, but I’m proud of most of my work. I’ve gotten to work so much that for me to have favorites… [Laughs.] I work, and then I let it go.