Oh, Just One More Question... (Part 6 in an Ongoing Series)
Featuring Frankie Faison, Kane Hodder, Jim Beaver, Julie Benz, John Lithgow, Richard Riehle, Ray Stevenson, 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 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 like what you’ve been reading here on THAT THING THEY DID? If so, why not consider supporting me via Patreon? Just click here!
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Frankie Faison: The only one would probably be the very first TV series I did on Fox, which was called True Colors. I just always felt that it came up short. It was a revolutionary show, way ahead of its time. Here again, I read this script and I read that character, and I said, “That’s in my wheelhouse. I can do that.” And I got the chance to do it. I actually went out to California to do it, because it was a bold show to do, challenging, dealing with interracial couples when there was a lot of racial unrest in our society. You’ve got this black man hugging and loving and being normal with a white woman and a white family on TV, and there was a lot of danger surrounding that. I mean, we had to have security on the set, just because it was a black man and a white woman on TV.
I thought that show had the potential to have the power of something like an All In The Family. We didn’t quite get there, because we sort of... [Hesitates.] I shouldn’t say “we.” I should say “they,” because it was always my intention to go forward with the most honest stories that we could have. I wanted it to be more risk-taking, where you just put all your marbles out there on the table. But it never got to that point. I was very disappointed, because at the time I was in an interracial marriage, and I knew a lot about interracial marriage. The director and the writers, they didn’t know that. But I’m saying, “I know about this stuff, and the stuff that you’re putting out there... Some of it is fun, and it’s entertaining and good, which is what you want it to be, but there’s a level of humor that you can go much deeper with. It could be cutting, it could be cutting-edge, just like an All In The Family.” But they wanted to do more of a stereotypical kind of thing, and if you do stereotypical stuff, sometimes it’s hard to get to cutting edge. That’s my biggest regret about that show: It didn’t get there.
The show was appreciated, it ran for two years, but I only did a year and a half because of artistic and creative differences. Now, at the end of that, I came running screaming back to New York, looking for some theater to do, because it was not a satisfying experience for me. But it was the first show to take me out to Hollywood and give me that exposure, and it was a learning and a growing experience, and I appreciate that. And I appreciate the great producer, Michael Whitehorn, who had the vision to come to New York and snatch me up and bring me out there. I really appreciate that. I just wish that we could’ve gone further with that, and deeper.
In fact, I’ve often thought about maybe revisiting it on my own and just writing a show that I thought up that would just really typify what it means to be in an interracial or mixed marriage or whatever. Because people have got this idea, but we’re all the same. The color of our skin cannot define the context of our character. So I’ve always wanted to do that. That show was so important to me, it was personal and everything, but I just never thought it got the credit or the push that it should’ve gotten. But it is what it is.
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Kane Hodder: I guess the Hatchet films have gotten a fair amount of coverage and response, but I always felt like they could’ve been bigger. The appeal is so wide that I was always surprised that they didn’t appear to be more successful. I don’t know what happened with box office and all that, but I think the movies are brilliant. I’ll always be happy to be a part of them, and I’m surprised that they’re not more widely enjoyed. Hopefully that’ll change in the future.
I also hope that people will give my documentary a look. The documentary on my life is coming out very soon, and it’s gotten a great response so far, so hopefully people give that a look, too.
By the way, I actually thought you might mention Ed Gein here, just because it’s one of the rare films where you have the lead role.
I’d actually say B.T.K., because I did that film, I had the title role there also, and it was for the same director. In fact, that’s a good answer. Let’s say that was my answer.
It’s okay. You can say both.
Okay, because now that you’ve gone in that direction, I was very happy with my work in B.T.K. And what a character to play: You’re asked to be murderously violent in one scene, and then you have to be really touching and a family man in the next scene. Yeah, that would be one I’d say that—as you say—should’ve gotten more love than it did. I’ve been told, and I don’t know how accurate this is, that Dennis Rader would like to talk to me. Now, whether that’s true or not, I’ve always been fascinated by serial killers and the mindset of such, so the fact that he might be interested in talking to me, I guess because I played him in a film, is intriguing. But who knows if it’s true?
If it is, you might have a whole other film right there.
Yeah, or a film about me playing so many horrible characters that it took hold of me, and I became a serial killer for real. Talk about an understandable motive: “Hey, man, when I killed all those people, I thought I was in a movie!”
Given the sheer volume of work you’ve done over the years, you may not have an instant answer to this, but is there a favorite project you’ve worked on that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Jim Beaver: Well, I’ve already talked about it, but certainly my first big break, In Country, which I thought was a marvelous story. Not heavily compelling plot-wise, but a real beautiful slice of life, and a slice of life that hadn’t been explored deeply before then. I was incredibly proud to be a part of it. It has some great work in it all around, and I was really sorry that it didn’t reach the audience I think it should have.
I had a wonderful experience doing The Life Of David Gale, which is a kind of odd experience in my career, in that the critics absolutely tore it to pieces almost unanimously, and yet I’ve never met or spoken to a non-critic who didn’t love it. I’m sure there are some out there, but any time I tell people I was in The Life Of David Gale, they tell me, “Oh, I love that movie!” And yet the critics ate it up like it was free chitlins. So what do I know? I thought it was a good movie.
Yeah, you know, there’s always a few that you’re really proud of or feel very good about. I had a great part on a series called Day Break, and I thought that was a wonderful show, really suspenseful and interesting and innovative. Well, I mean, as innovative as a series drama rip-off of Groundhog Day can be, but still. The network canceled it before it finished its run, so the only way you could see it was on DVD. I was really proud of that, especially because I got to play a heavy in it. That’s always fun. But it was a good show that nobody picked up on.
Is there a favorite project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Julie Benz: No Ordinary Family. For sure. It was right before the superhero phenomenon took off on television, so we only did one year of it, but it was such a fun show to work on, and working with Michael Chiklis was a real treat. I always say that No Ordinary Family was the show that should’ve been.
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
John Lithgow: Oh, you know, there are so many things that you love while you’re doing them, and then you’re disappointed by the response. Even some of the successful ones are never quite as successful as you’d hoped. One of my favorite recent films actually was successful, but on a very small scale, and that was Love Is Strange, a film I did with Alfred Molina two or three years ago. It got a fabulous response, and it did very well for a very small indie, but I would’ve loved to have seen that film cross over and become a major success.
And I’ve done plays that have been disappointing. I loved doing my first musical on Broadway, Sweet Smell Of Success, which I think was a terrific piece of work, but it’s now on the list of famous Broadway flops. It lost its entire $10 million investment. Curiously, it’s never had a major revival. I really think it’s Marvin Hamlisch’s best work since A Chorus Line. It was directed by Nicholas Hytner, and Christopher Wheeldon—he’s a big Tony-winning musical director now—but he choreographed it.
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Richard Riehle: Oh, golly! That’s funny, I never really thought about that.
To be fair, you do a lot of projects. I can see how they might fly by.
Well, there was one that was actually shot down there by you [in Virginia]. It was called Dismal—we shot it in the Dismal Swamp—but they changed it to something else: Desperate Escape. But we literally shot it in the swamp. They built a little cabin there in the swamp. It was the first time for me to do a villain and the first time I was sort of the lead. I mean, I was the lead bad guy. And it came about because I had done The Ransom Of Red Chief, and Ray Brown, who was the head grip on it, I used to see him at lunch a lot, and we used to chat. So he called me up and said, “Look, this movie down here in Norfolk, I’m curious if there’s any way you might able to come and do it.” And I said, “Well, send me a script.” It was a wonderful script. I had a great time doing it. It was all sorts of strange, interesting little things. And Ray did a great job, and it was a good cast, but it never really got any love at all, unfortunately.
Is there a favorite project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Olympia Dukakis: Whoa, what a question! [Laughs.] Probably Cloudburst. Oh, it’s a terrific film. A terrific film! It’s done great in Europe, but they screwed it here. Kimmel Entertainment wouldn’t sell it to distributors. They made a quick sale. It went to Lifetime, who put it on at 3 in the morning. What happened is that the guy on Kimmel who liked it died, and they passed it on to somebody else, and that’s what happened. That’s what I understand, anyway. Maybe it’s even darker and stupider than that. I don’t know. But that film is one, and Tales From The City. PBS refused to show it because of Jesse Helms. That, I thought, was outrageous. And what they did was, they took that series that Helen Mirren did about the detective [Prime Suspect], which was fabulous, a terrific series, but that was about pedophilia and this, that, and the other thing. And they couldn’t show two guys who loved each other and had fun with each other? Unbelievable. I really did as much yelling about that as I possibly could at the time. But it didn’t do any good.
In Cloudburst, you and Brenda Fricker had great on-screen chemistry.
Oh, we did. We had a great time together. Her character dies at the end of it, and… the journey that both women take is so interesting. [Thom Fitzgerald] is going to do a sequel called Sunrise. [Hesitates.] Sunburst? I don’t know. Either Sunburst or Sunrise. Cloudburst? Sunburst? Who knows? He may even change that. I don’t even think he’s written it yet!
Do you have a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Ray Stevenson: [Hesitates.] Three Musketeers. Again, it suffered from not really knowing how to pitch it. The marketing campaign was… I don’t know what happened, but it was a bit off, and it didn’t do well at the box office in America. There was no advertising in Canada, and we did higher box office there. And immense box office in Japan. Around the world it proved to be a hugely successful movie, but it’s seen as a bit of a pariah in America because it didn’t do well here. Well, I’m sorry, but it’s a huge movie. And people are still coming into it now and going, “How come I never saw this?” And you go, “Well, again, it’s forces out of your control. The studio got confused, they don’t know how to pitch it, so they kind of missed the pitch.” It’s a very skilled profession, and it can make or break a movie. So I was very disappointed that that one didn’t get sold right, because I thought—and still do—that it’s a great piece of work.
I’ve got another piece that I’ve just finished filming in South Africa called Saints & Strangers, for Sony Pictures and National Geographic. It’s a four-part miniseries about the authentic telling of the Mayflower landing in 1620 and setting up the first colony of pilgrims and strangers. It’s gonna rewrite history, because it’s drawn directly from the real historical facts and events. They’re gonna be showing it around Thanksgiving, and I’m very much looking forward to it. We literally just finished it the day before yesterday, and I can’t wait to see how it comes together. I know that Sony and National Geographic are very excited about it, and it’s been one of those blessed projects, so I’m very excited about it coming out.
And since they don’t list a character by your name on IMDB, which pilgrim do you play?
Well, I don’t play a pilgrim. I play a stranger.
Naturally.
[Laughs.] I play a guy called Stephen Hopkins. You can look him up on Wikipedia. In the New World, he didn’t set up a construction business or gas and oil or start farming. This guy opened a pub. So I automatically liked him! And I think one of his grandchildren was one of the signers of the Declaration Of Independence. So it’s a tremendous piece of history, and as I say, we’ve just finished, so I’m still reeling from it. But a lot of work’s gone into it, so I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Do you have a favorite film that you have done that doesn't get the love that you feel it should?
Bob Balaban: I never think that way…. Um, let me think if I could. I’m sure there’ve been some. Well, actually, I was just in a movie that I thought was delightful and nobody went to see it, called Dedication with Billy Crudup and Mandy Moore. It was a big hit at Sundance; I sat there in an audience of 600 people who screamed and laughed and cried and thought it was brilliant, and when it came out, it got pretty good reviews and nobody went to see it. So you never know.
Mildly amusing post-script:
As you may have noticed, when it comes to the actor’s back catalog, I have a tendency to consider the question myself, so if their answer isn’t the same as the one I was considering, I’ll tell them. In the case of Balaban, I outed myself as a huge fan of Greedy, and after asking me to repeat the title, he conceded that he didn’t think he’d ever actually seen it and didn’t remember anything about the film itself, “but I had fun and made some good friends during it.” In return, I assured him that there were scenes in the film that still made me laugh out loud even now, to which he replied simply and in the most Balaban-y way possible, “Well, good.”
Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
Scott Glenn: Yes. I did a little film. I don’t really play a lead in it. There isn’treally a lead. It’s kind of, I guess you’d say, an ensemble film. Very small. I think the budget of the film was $300,000 or less. And it went directly to television. It never opened in theaters. But it was called Magic Valley.
What was the premise of the film?
At the beginning of the film, the audience—along with two little kids—discovers a body of a young girl. The film takes places over one day, and by that I mean from dawn to dusk, and after that initial event, you’re introduced to all these people who all have connections to that girl, but they don’t know that she’s dead. The girl is my character’s granddaughter, she’s the daughter of two other people that you’re introduced to, and the film ends when everyone finds out that this girl has died, with the very end of the film shot in silence.
The idea is, you wake up in the morning, and the things of your life are the most important things to you, whatever they are. But things change. Like, today, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but when you hang up with me, I’m sure you’ve got other stuff you want to do, and that’s really what counts to you more than anything else. But one of these days—hopefully not today!—at 5:30 you get a phone call, and… is your mother still alive?
She is.
Well, imagine you get a phone call that she just died. And all of a sudden, all that stuff that seemed super important? It doesn’t count for shit. And that’s essentially what the film is about.
Do you have a favorite project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t necessarily get the love you thought it deserved?
Sam Waterston: [Laughs.] You’re kidding me. Boy, I’ve got a long list. This began at the very beginning. I made a movie very early in my career called Three, that an absolutely stupendous American novelist, James Salter, adapted from an Irwin Shaw short story. Salter directed it, and Charlotte Rampling was in it.
But the movie was about to come out, and they interviewed some executive at United Artists, and he said, “Well, really, there are basically three kinds of movies. There’s the kind you’ve got so much money in that you’ve got to get behind it with everything you’ve got, so there’s a huge amount of publicity and everything like that. Then there are these movies that get some attention, sort of in proportion to the amount of skin you have in the game. And then there are movies like… well, like Three. You don’t really have much money in ’em, so you just kind of throw them out there, and they sink or swim on their own.” That’s the story of my life. [Laughs.]
Steven Bochco unabashedly views Cop Rock as his favorite project that didn’t get the love it deserved.
Ronny Cox: And so do I. I’ll tell you, I had more fun doing that show than any other show. That’s the only time in my 40-year career that I went to work every day, whether I was called or not. Even if I wasn’t called that day, I still went in and watched them shoot. My God, we just had so much fun. The learning curve on that went straight up. I think Glee owes all of its success to Cop Rock! I just had more fun playing the chief of police on that show than you can even imagine.
Do you have a favorite number?
Yeah, my favorite number in that whole thing was when Carl Anderson and Louis Price, the former lead singer of the Temptations—they had that song that goes, “He’s guilty, judge, he’s guilty…” All of a sudden, they cut over, and the jury’s in choir robes. Oh God, that’s just as good as it gets. [Laughs.]