Oh, Just One More Question... (Part 5 in an Ongoing Series)
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 please take notice of the fact that I’ve placed a link to the original piece within the first appearance of their name and feel free to click back and check them out in their entirety 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…
Do you have a favorite project that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
David Hyde Pierce: We’re talking film, right? I really had a great fondness for Down With Love. And I haven’t seen it since it came out. I think it did okay on DVD, but it certainly was not a big hit at the time. I just remember thinking it was pretty good. Maybe if I saw it now, I would go, “Okay, I see.” I don’t know. But that’s the first one that occurs to me.
If you were talking television instead—this may or may not qualify for consideration, but what are your recollections of working on The Powers That Be?
Oh, well, that’s a good case, actually. You know, I loved working on that show. It was a Norman Lear show. I had come out to L.A., I think it would have been ’92, maybe, when they were casting the pilot. And it was the very last thing I read for. And I read, not for the part I ended up playing. I read for the part that ended up being played by Peter MacNicol. And Norman, I remember, said to me after I finished, he said, “Well, that was very good, but you’re completely wrong for the part. Have you ever thought about directing?” And I thought, “Well, no, not against my will.” And then I went back to New York, and they called me up and said, “Listen, there’s this other part, of the suicidal Congressman. Would you go on tape for that?” And the only thing in the audition was this guy in the theater, he was married to the senator’s daughter and was suicidal. Which you can imagine, being a congressperson. The scene was, he had to get up on a chair in his bedroom and tie the curtain rope around his neck and jump off the chair, and instead of hanging himself, he just opens the curtains. Which is what I did in the audition, and they cast me. And then I went out and I had the best time.
It was such an amazing company. Holland Taylor, Peter, John Forsythe, Robin Bartlett. Linda Hunt was in the original pilot! Yeah. Eve Gordon. Elizabeth Berridge played the maid, and I fell in love with the maid in that show, which is a precursor to Frasier. We loved it. I remember John Forsythe talking about how we weren’t really getting the perks that I guess one gets. We weren’t getting the treatment one gets when the show is a favorite of the network. Now, it was my first television show, so I didn’t know anything about that. It was on the air, doing fine. So we came on in the spring of whatever year that was. And then we were picked up, and we would come on in the fall of… Oh, yes, the fall of ’92, because it was the year Clinton was actually elected. But they postponed us until after the election. We lost the entire fall. And of course at the time, we had all these conspiracy theories that NBC… Because it was Norman Lear, he’s obviously so liberal, and this was gonna be a political show, and they didn’t want that on the air. I don’t know. We’ll probably never know what happened.
But it was a real blow to me, because it sort of died a slow death and didn’t get to end. They just sort of stopped it, and I think even the last few episodes…I think they eventually got shown on USA Network, but to my knowledge, it’s never been shown on TV Land or anything like that. I thought it was quite a nice thing. And [writers] David Crane and Marta Kauffman went on to do Friends. So they did okay.
As did Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for that matter.
Of course! Who I’ve seen repeatedly at Sundance. It’s so funny. He played my son Pierce on the show. There’s a fantastic production still of the whole cast, and I used it when I was at Sundance. I was there filming, and I showed it ’cause it’s got Joey, and… I don’t know how old he was. Eight, maybe? Tiny, anyway. Very sweet.
Do you have a favorite project over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Joe Morton: I’d have to really think about that. I suppose Brother From Another Planet—when we first did it, it was not the cult film that it ended up being. I think a lot of black people at first thought that it was just another black exploitation film until it hit the airwaves, in terms of cable television. That’s when it became a cult film. Ultimately, it got what it deserved, but at first people didn’t know what to make of it.
So I don’t know. I think I’ve been fortunate enough—knock wood—that a lot of the things I’ve been placed to do have turned out fairly well. Maybe the only character who didn’t get his due was in Equal Justice. It was taken off the air after two seasons. I thought it was quite a good show. I thought Thomas Carter did an amazing job putting that thing together.
I usually ask actors if there’s a favorite project they’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love they thought it deserved. It seems like Sons And Daughters is probably yours.
Dee Wallace: Probably. I so loved that part. Again, I was scared to death, because we really didn’t have a script. They didn’t work with scripts. All of that was improv. We had a storyline written out, and we’d go in and they’d go, “Okay, this is what you need to accomplish in this scene.” And we’d come in with our ideas and stuff, and we’d take a run at it, and… I had never worked that way. And I was absolutely scared to death. But once I learned the technique and I learned to trust myself, oh, my god, what fun I had. With all that freedom, and finding out all of the passive-aggressive places in that character. And working with Max [Gail] was just an absolute joy. You know, we were really the precursors of a lot of the shows that are on now. If we had come out a little bit later or been able to go on a little bit longer, we would probably still be on today.Bottom of Form
You and Max Gail really were great together.
Max and I have done a couple of other projects together, too, and there’s something about us where we just click with each other. We just connect. It’s always great when you find actors like that, where you’re, like, “Oh, I must’ve worked with you in another life!” You know, the people who found it were such incredibly loyal fans, but they just didn’t let us stay on long enough, and the public just wasn’t quite ready for that kind of programming yet. And that’s half of it, you know?
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Rob Lowe: I think Bad Influence is one. In fact, yeah, I’d say it’s probably Bad Influence. It was a little company that released it, it was really ahead of its time… I’m really proud of it. And it’s Curtis Hanson. He’d directed a small movie before that, but it was his first directorial work that really worked. Helmut Newton shot the ad campaign. It’s [James] Spader at the top of his game, right after Sex, Lies And Videotape. It’s sexy. It’s weird. It’s dark. The characters are great. It was David Koepp’s first big screenplay. It was actually a writing sample that was around town to get David work at the time, and Steve Tisch—now the owner of the New York Giants—found it, loved it, and together we put it together. But I’d say that would be the one I’d tell people to go and look at if they haven’t seen it.
It also had a great soundtrack, including Lloyd Cole’s “Downtown.”
Yeah, right? It was really weird. You know, it’s also a great snapshot of underground L.A. at the beginning of the ’90s. And yet it doesn’t feel dated.
Do you have a favorite directorial effort? Or just a favorite project in general that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Kiefer Sutherland: As far as films I’ve directed, I would say Truth Or Consequences, N.M. That, and Last Light. Those were the two films that I directed that I was really happy with. And in general… [Pauses.] I think there’s probably a few of them. But, you know, getting or not getting the love they deserve is one thing. I think some projects you have more hope for, but then I think generally the process of making them is just so difficult. The independent film world is kind of designed to break your heart.
And that’s why 24 was so important to me. I mean, 24 was important to me on many levels, but as an actor, the process of making that show wasn’t difficult because it had the support of its studio and its network. And then all of a sudden you’re making something that 50 million people are watching a week, and opposed to 20 people going to see a film that really mattered to you. I just think that over the years, I’ve made 70 or 80 films, 12 of them I can tell you did really well, and the rest were a struggle. And those are heartbreaking odds. So I think just in general there’s a bunch of films that mattered to me that didn’t reach their potential, and on some level you have to assume responsibility for that. And I think over the years that gets difficult. So when 24 became successful, that was just a real breath of fresh air. It did wonders for my confidence.
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
David Morse: Well, there’s probably a lot of them. Even though they got love from the people who saw them, it’s just that they didn’t get a wider experience of love. It’s hard to single out one, but there’s a movie called The Slaughter Rule that I did with Ryan Gosling when he was 19, by Alex and Andrew Smith. I was at Sundance one year, and I heard there were these two young filmmakers who wanted to talk to me about a movie they had. And I met Alex and Andrew, they brought me the script to The Slaughter Rule and I read it, and I loved it. I really loved it. And they asked if I’d do the role, and I said, “I’d love to do it.”
I think it took them three years, maybe four years, to do it from when they asked me. Originally they couldn’t get it done with me doing that role—there were two starring roles—and they were very heartbroken that they were going to have to ask other people, like Nick Nolte or other stars. But I said I understood that they had to get their movie made. So they went to other people, and those people, for whatever reasons, wound up not doing it, and eventually they came back to me, which I think they were happy they were able to do, because I was who they originally wanted. And they eventually actually got their money together.
At the time, Ryan had only done Remember The Titans, I think. He’d been a Mouseketeer with Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera, and he really did not want to go down the Mouseketeer road. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve met. I auditioned with a number of young actors in Los Angeles with Alex and Andrew—some of them are now famous—and I’d go off-script and try to challenge them or whatever, and I sort of pushed him in these scenes. Ryan was really the one who could stand toe to toe with me when we did these scenes, and after we saw him, it really felt like there was nobody else who should do the role.
And he was offered another movie at the same time, which was a traditional Hollywood movie, and he was offered a bunch of money considering how inexperienced he was. But he really felt as an actor that he could go make the money, but it wasn’t the same quality of role as The Slaughter Rule, and he just felt like the best thing for him as an actor was to not take the money and to do the role that was really going to challenge him more. I absolutely loved doing this movie with him. He really had a quality—and now you can see it—that was shared by the best people I’d worked with and known, like Sean [Penn] and Jack Nicholson. He had that same quality as a young actor, and I felt lucky to have been a part of his experience as an actor and lucky that we all got to do it together. I’m just sorry more people didn’t get to see it.
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love it deserved?
Jonathan Slavin: I think Better Off Ted. With Andy Richter a close second. Those two projects were both so ahead of their time and so smart that it was hard to see them not succeed.
So did Victor Fresco call you up for Better Off Ted and say, “I’ve got something else for you”?
I ran into Victor at a protest march when the writers’ strike was happening, and he said, “If we get this resolved, I just wrote something and there’s something for you in it, so I’ll need to see you.” So I went in for it, and I thought I didn’t do a great job, but then a few days later they asked me to test.
I knew Malcolm Barrett from before, and in the waiting room, Malcolm and I were, like, “We have to get this together. We just do.”And somehow that all just worked out, and we did get it. I’m really lucky to have gotten that. And Malcolm and I are still friends to this day. He’s so talented, that guy. I could never say enough nice things about him, and you can print that. But don’t show it to him. [Laughs.]
What are your recollections of the mistyped memo episode?
The week that we shot the mistyped memo episode of Better Off Ted was one of the most hilarious weeks of my life. The outtakes on YouTube are a tiny fraction of what we actually shot. The writers’ creativity lent itself very well to exploring profanity and I actually learned a few new words that week. And I’ve been around. [Laughs.] Malcolm has a run that was… I mean, I cannot imagine a single other actor being able to get through it. The glee it brings me to this day is unparalleled.
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Michael Madsen: Yeah, actually, I’d say Strength And Honour. I thought that was a great film. It’s a boxing film, and I sat with audiences around the world at different festivals and saw the reactions people had to the movie. It’s a good film. But it never got its fair distribution. I think it’s still involved in some sort of lawsuit. It was finished right around the same time as The Wrestler, and I know there were a lot of people who looked at it and were looking at The Wrestler, too. They’re both fight films, but that was a big comeback for Mickey [Rourke], and I think Strength And Honour kind of slipped through the cracks. But it’s one of those things. What are you gonna do? I mean, I’ve had a lot more good luck than bad, and I’ve made a lot more good pictures than bad ones, and I’m pretty happy with what I have. I don’t walk around regretting too many things. But if you want to put me on the spot and ask me, then, yeah, I’d say Strength And Honour should’ve gotten a lot more attention. It just didn’t get a shot.
Do you have a favorite project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Dean Winters: Most of the ones I really loved got the love. I did this really small independent film called Bristol Boys, which was about these weed dealers in Bristol, Connecticut, and the movie was pretty good, but the way the movie was made—it was made by these young kids who had a lot of energy and a lot of resources, and they were hustlers, man. I had a lot of respect for them. I wish more people had seen that movie.
Is there a favorite project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
John Kapelos: There was a really nice movie I did called We’re Talkin’ Serious Money, with Fran Drescher, the late, great Dennis Farina, and Leo Rossi, directed by Jimmy Lemmo. I haven’t seen that movie in years, but it was before Fran really broke, it was before Dennis broke with Get Shorty, and I think the movie has a lot of good moments in it.
There’s a movie I did recently [in 2008] called Everybody Wants To Be Italian that was kind of cute. But there are reasons that things don’t work, right? So when I say they didn’t get the love, I’ve been in enough that have gotten the love where you see it and just go, “Oh, okay.” I mean, I wish some films would’ve hit more. And when I hang up, I’ll probably think of 10 things that should’ve gotten more love. [Laughs.]
I’ve done a lot of strange projects. I did Platypus Man, with Richard Jeni. I was really saddened by what happened to him. And, you know, there are situations where you thought, “Man, that could’ve gone another way, it could’ve gone really good,” but it didn’t, and the project went south. I worked with John Mendoza on a project once a long time ago. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that you do because it’s like pickup games of baseball. There’s lots of nights where they close the lights down, you’re getting bitten by mosquitoes as you’re walking home with your buddies, and you just forget about those games, right? But you do it because you get a call, you suit up, and you show up. Some of them get lost in the mists of the time, but accumulatively these experiences help you. I try not to live in the world of “what if?” because you can go fucking crazy.
Have you got a favorite project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
John DiMaggio: Huh. That’s an interesting question. You know what? Not to sound schlocky, but I really hope that Out There is able to do well. Right now, IFC’s definitely giving it the love it deserves, but I just hope people respond to it like we want them to.
Everything else, though… What are you gonna do? I was hoping that Penguins Of Madagascar could stay around for much longer. But Nickelodeon said, “Nah, we’re good.” It’s, like, what, 82 [episodes] is the new 100? But that’s all right.
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Alanna Ubach: Oh, gosh. That’s a really great question. I’m sure there are, but, you know, it’s funny: There are so many things that I’ve gone up for that I didn’t book, and that’s really when you have to bounce back from rejection. But I remember I was up against Brittany Murphy for Clueless, and I thought, “Oh, my God, this is gonna be my big break!” And I was so devastated when I didn’t book that. But then Legally Blonde fell in my lap, and I thought, “Oh, well, here I am: It’s a similar kind of film, and I’m still playing against the lead!”
Just when you think that the world is over after not booking something that you think is the role of your dreams, something else comes along, and you really have to keep that in mind. I remember… [Starts to laugh.] All right, I can tell you this: I tested for Six in Blossom when I was a little girl. And when I didn’t get that role, I was devastated for weeks. That was my first big rejection where I thought, “Oh, my gosh, is it always going to be like this?” And lo and behold, it was. And still is. But Jenna Von Oÿ beat me out for the role of Six.
Do you still hold a grudge?
Oh, boy, yes. If I were to see Jenna now, I’d give her such a piece of my mind. [Laughs.]
How am I not shocked that you managed to mention “Downtown” when talking to Rob Lowe about ‘Bad Influence?’ 😉