Random Rejects
I’ve spoken before about how sometimes you turn in an interview and an editorial decision is made to excise certain anecdotes in order to keep pieces to a particular word count. I never love it when it happens, I’ve grown to tolerate that it’s just gonna happen, even if my mindset on this matter remains steadfast: if you’re doing a piece that’s effectively a career retrospective on an actor and it’s on the internet, then why wouldn’t you just use everything that the actor has given you, word count be damned?
Mind you, you’re reading this rant on a site that I created because I wanted to be able to do these sorts of interviews with a word-count-be-damned mentality, so it’s clear that I’m trying to find a workaround.
Which reminds me: on April 1st, which is the 10th anniversary of the day I officially became a full-time freelance writer, this site is going to shift to a model where the original content - as opposed to highlights from my past interviews - is going to become subscription-only. Those of you who’ve already subscribed to the newsletter should theoretically already know this, but if you aren’t a subscriber… Well, now you know. I hope you decide to support me in this endeavor, but I understand if you can’t. Trust me, I can’t support everyone I want to support, either. But if you can support me, I promise to make it worth the cost of admission…and if you don’t agree, well, you can always quit, right?
Okay, enough about that. Where was I?
Oh, right: I’ve got some “deleted scenes” from a few Random Roles.
In fact, I’ve got one from my Louie Anderson RR from way back when, I’ve got two from last year’s Frankie Faison RR, and I’ve got a veritable shitload from the one I did with Saul Rubinek, because he’s a great guy with a lot of stories.
Give ‘em a read, won’t you?
Louie Anderson
The Johnsons Are Home (1988)—producer, writer
Louie Anderson: Yeah, that was a great experience. You know, I won a couple of Humanitas awards for that. Norman Lear had a production company, and he said, “I want to do a development deal, and I want you to create a show that’s like your comedy.” So I tried to create the show, and I think that we had quite a nice cast, so it was a nice job. But—again—I wasn’t prepared, I didn’t know what I was doing, and when you’re not as prepared as you should be and you don’t know what you’re doing, you have to take the advice of other people who may not know what they’re doing. And you don’t know that they don’t know what they’re doing, but they don’t sometimes. So we didn’t hit the mark. And, of course, in hindsight, what it all comes to is that everybody in Hollywood acts like they know what they’re doing except the people who really know what they’re doing. [Laughs.] But I didn’t know that then. And, you know, just trying to make a sitcom work is a one-in-a-million thing, anyway. It’s not an easy thing to do.
As you were indicating, though, you certainly had a team of seasoned professionals to work with, including Geoffrey Lewis and Audrey Meadows.
Yeah! From The Honeymooners! Oh, she was fantastic. She was really a lovely person, I’m telling you. And Geoffrey Lewis was great, too. But Audrey Meadows, she told me stories about Jackie Gleason. That’s what I loved. She said he would just show up. He never came for rehearsal. He’d go, “All right, you guys ready?” And they’d be, like, “Fuck! Well, I guess we are!” [Laughs.] Which I admired about Jackie Gleason. Because he probably took show business for what he should’ve, which is just a big, fun thing. You should have as much fun with creativity as you can. I think the love and energy that you put into creativity is what makes it really valuable, not the perfection.
Frankie Faison
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant (2009)—“Rhamus Twobellies”
Frankie Faison: That’s my man! [Laughs.] That film was... I mean, the makeup alone was worth the ride and the journey. I had to be in the chair for three hours getting those two bellies on. That was a fun romp. It was a film based on a children’s book, so that was special. I show people that picture because I got to do one thing I always wanted to do: I dyed my hair red. So I got the red hair and the two bellies. That was exceptional. And I don’t know why people see me in these ways sometimes, but that was a director I had worked with before, a very lovely man. We did this thing called Down to Earth, and then when this thing came along afterwards, he keeps me mind, and there I was: Rhamus Twobellies!
My wife was actually a big fan of that book series, so she was really disappointed when there were no further adaptations of other books.
Yeah! It was a great book series, and it should’ve gone on. But the film was fun. We shot it down in New Orleans, it was a great cast, and everybody just had a great time. I enjoyed it! [Hesitates.] So you’re sort of getting this theme that I’ve been enjoying the stuff I’m doing...
Well, that’s what it’s all about, right?
It is! It’s very, very important.
Hot Hero Sandwich (1979-1980)—Various characters
Ooh, yeah! That was... That preceded everything, almost! And that was good, because it gave me a chance to get in front of a camera, get some exposure in front of a camera, and do some outlandish, crazy stuff. It was a gag show, it was for kids, and you were able to just do whatever you wanted to do. And I appreciated that, because it was a tool that helped me to get outside of myself, to be able to go with impulses. That was so far back that I’d forgotten about that! [Laughs.] But I really loved doing that show, for sure.
I did an interview for another feature with David Axelrod, who wrote on the show, but I hadn’t even been familiar with it until I saw it on his filmography. But I know that - among other cast members - Matt McCoy was part of the ensemble.
Yeah, Matt was on it! It was like Saturday Night Live, but on a smaller scale. We did everything. If you had a thought, you did it, and they’d keep it if it worked. It was great, and it was a good group of people, absolutely.
Saul Rubinek
The Family Man (2000)—“Arthur Mintz”
Saul Rubinek: The Family Man was great. I had a wonderful time shooting that. My memories of that are really good, because I really enjoyed working with Nic Cage. And what was really interesting over the course of that film was that, because Nic Cage’s has two different realities, I got to play two different characters, in a way, but in the same body. In one version, I’m a very mild-mannered person, and in the other version I’m a really hard-nosed, tough businessman. So that was really fun, and it was a really interesting experience. I loved it. Also, it’s become kind of a Christmas favorite. I mean, our family watches it sometimes as a Christmas movie. It’s a really cool movie. My only regret was that I didn’t get to work with someone who I consider one of the greatest underestimated actresses of her generation, and that’s Tea Leoni, who I think is brilliant in whatever she does. I just wish I had had any scenes with her, but I never got to work with her. So that’s a regret. But it just wasn’t meant to be.
The Contender (2000)—“Jerry Tolliver”
My great experience from that was getting to work in scenes with Gary Oldman and getting to know him a little bit, because he’s such an extraordinary actor and a great, very generous person. I don’t have a lot of memories of shooting that film, except that my wife... We’d always been together on our wedding anniversaries—we got married in 1990—and she flew east to where we were shooting, and everybody was leaving and going the other way, because there was a huge storm. But I remember Elinor flying in for our wedding anniversary. That’s probably my bigger memory than any of the shooting of the film, except for Gary Oldman.
Young Doctors In Love (1982)—“Floyd Kurtzman”
When you mentioned Man Trouble, it reminded me that I wanted to ask you about Young Doctors In Love. You worked with Harry Dean Stanton in both of those films.
He was why I did Young Doctors in Love. I had done other movies, and my agents only wanted me to play bigger parts, but I said, “You don’t understand! I get to work every single day with Harry Dean Stanton!” [Laughs.] Harry and I became friends because of that. So what I remember most about that - although it also had a great cast, and it was really out there, and it was Garry Marshall’s first feature film - is that I got to be friends with Harry for years and years. I got to hear his stories, and I visited him when I was in Los Angeles, because I wasn’t living there at the time. A great guy and an actor’s actor.
The Littlest Hobo (1980)—“Tim Reagan”
Well, what’s really funny is that I just talked about The Littlest Hobo two days ago. I did a series for five years called Warehouse 13, which had a lot of fans, and our cinematographer for most of the time was a great guy called Mike McMurray. He’s Canadian. I just ran into him at a dinner at [show runner] Jack Kenny’s house. We were both invited, and I hadn’t seen him in, like, five or six years, since whenever we finished shooting the series. And he reminded me that he was in the electric department crew on The Littlest Hobo.
By the way, I have no memory of The Littlest Hobo. [Laughs.] You have to remember that, in those days, I was a theater animal who—every once in awhile—was going to get his rent helped by doing an episode of a television show. But my life was all theater. It was a very early half-hour show about a German shepherd, and...I think I may have played a criminal. I don’t remember it!
It does seem like it’s a rite of passage for every Canadian actor. Kind of like Law & Order for New York actors.
No, no, no. [Laughs.] It’s only like Law & Order in the sense that every actor in Toronto was in it. But I heard that someone’s trying to revive it! That’s what Mike told me, anyway. It was a very early television show. But a lot of directors got to cut their teeth on it, and a lot of actors got to pay rent for a month. Well, maybe not for a whole month. It didn’t pay that well!
King of Kensington (1975 / 1977)—“Jerry Beck / Ansons Phelps”
Was The King of Kensington a similar situation?
No. The King of Kensington was a great show. It was... [Hesitates.] I’m not saying that The Littlest Hobo was not great. I don’t want to deal with that! But The King of Kensington starred a great actor, Al Waxman, playing a character who I think comes from his own neighborhood, Kensington Park, which is a very immigrant area,that had a great mix of people, as did the show. Very diverse, from all kinds of countries. It’s an open-air market, mostly, when the weather is good in Toronto. It’s still there. And he played a King of Queens kind of character, with his wife and his mother and his extended family. And I think George Bloomfield, who directed The Rimshots and SCTV, also directed that.
It was a four-camera show recorded in front of a live audience, which was not a very common thing in Toronto before that. So that broke open that idea, that you could do four-camera shows successfully. It was a very popular show, and I did two different characters on it, in different years. It was my first experience with four-camera. I’d never done it before that, although I got to do it again when I was in America, of course. I spent a couple of year playing a recurring character on Frasier, which was four-camera. But that was really my first experience, and it was great to learn. It’s a different technique from theater, and it’s a different technique from film. It’s an odd combination of the two.
Getting Even With Dad (1994)—“Bobby”
How was the experience of doing Getting Even With Dad?
I loved working with [director] Howie Deutch. I had a really wonderful time. Ted Danson and I... Let’s see, that was in ‘93 when we filmed that, so that was the first time I worked with Ted. But he also did kind of a cameo in a movie I directed [Jerry And Tom], and I became friendly with Ted. I also did a year on a series with him and Mary Steenburgen called Ink, so I got to know him pretty well. That was in ‘96, so it was a few years later. But that was my first time working with him, and I also worked with a great actor as my partner in crime: Gaylord Sartain, a wonderful comic actor. And I had a great role, I was in San Francisco for three months... So my memories of it are fantastic.
And Howie Deutch and I also worked together again when he directed a couple of episodes of Warehouse 13. He’s really a very actor-friendly, funny guy with a great sense of humor and a great love of actors who created a wonderfully friendly environment. When you’re doing comedy, you kind of need a director that’s going to let you fall flat on your face and who’s not going to put pressure on you to be perfect. You can’t really create anything if you have a fear of failing. You have to be able to fail. You have to be able to fall on your ass and humiliate yourself in public in order to do good work. And he created that kind of very free, easy-going environment. I remember that really well, and also how professional Macaulay was, despite being so young.
To confirm or dispel a claim that’s been made on the internet, did you really get hit in the face with a bat?
[Long pause.] I don’t think so.
Because the claim is that it happened in the scene where you fell down the stairs.
No. Not true. I think we just faked really well!
Are you suggesting that the internet has lied to me?
It’s astounding, isn’t it? [Laughs.
Bizarre (1980-1981)—cast member
Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004)—“Dr. Saul Funkhouser”
You were part of the cast of Bizarre.
Yeah, that was a sketch comedy show that featured Bob Einstein, who was a regular - until he passed away - on Curb Your Enthusiasm. It ran for many seasons, but I only did it for one season. I remember working on it was just really fun. One of my closest friends, Maury Chaykin, and I were both doing stuff on that show together. That was, again, a Law & Order-like experience: where every actor in Toronto comedy was on that show. [Laughs.] I mean, some of the sketches fell flat on their face, some were hilarious, some didn’t work... I’m surprised nobody’s revived that show and put it on Comedy Central or Nick at Nite or something. But some of it was really blue. And I suspect that it might not go over today. I don’t think I was ever involved in any of that stuff in my sketches, but there were sketches where actresses were topless.
Oh, I remember. I remember it because we had Showtime when I was in my early teens.
Yeah, I think there was a little bit of exploitation, or going in that direction. I think that, depending on what network the show was going to air on, there was a topless version, a more sexy or blue version, that they’d show. I don’t think that version would go over today. In fact, I think they probably crossed a line when it came to that kind of sexism. I don’t remember that from what I did on the show. That’s not my memory of it. Unless I’m blanking it out, I wasn’t in sketches like that. I remember that John Byner, the lead actor, could do anything. He was a great comedian, he could do impressions... He was very funny, really great. And Bob Einstein was hilarious to work with. He had unerring instincts.
Was it coincidence that you ended up playing his cousin on Curb Your Enthusiasm a couple of years later?
Total coincidence, yeah.