Random Reminiscing: Looking Back at my Many Random Roles Interviews (Part 1 of Quite a Few)
On June 14, 2011, my world as a pop culture journalist began to change in a big way, thanks to a little feature called Random Roles.
I’d been a fan of the feature since first discovering it on the A.V. Club, so in case you were one of the many folks who’ve been convinced that it was a concept of my creation, well, now you know that it wasn’t. In fact, it was Sean O’Neal who came up with the concept, although I had no idea that it was his doing until seven years later: after announcing in July 2018 that he was leaving the A.V. Club, I took to Twitter and thanked him very specifically for offering me the opportunity to do an oral history of Airplane! for the site, and in return he said, “Thanks for taking Random Roles, a thing I just whipped up because I literally had no idea what to ask Jon Gries, and turning it into such a respected institution.”
Praise from Caesar, to be sure.
As of this writing, I’ve done 217 Random Roles for the site…or, more specifically, I’ve had 217 Random Roles appear on the site. There have, however, been a few such interviews that didn’t make it onto the A.V. Club.
I did one with Jane Adams that never made it online because it was - with all due respect to Ms. Adams, who’s a great actress - a bit of a snoozefest, owing to the fact that, as nice as she was, she didn’t really enjoy looking backwards and offered very little in the way of lengthy remembrances.
I also did one with Mira Sorvino, but due to a scheduling error, someone else also did a Random Roles interview with her, so I was given permission to put my interview on my own site. (I’ll try to remember to move it over here sooner than later.)
Lastly, I did a Random Roles with John Cho when he was starring in ABC’s Selfie, but the show was canceled before it ran, so they set it aside…and then they forgot they had it, apparently, because when Star Trek Beyond was released, they ran a straightforward interview with Cho. That was almost five years ago, and I’m still sitting on my interview. Maybe one of these days I can get on the phone with him to finish it.
Mind you, this doesn’t even include the handful of other interviews that I started with the intent of making them Random Roles, only for the conversations to be cut short for one reason or another, never to be finished. I sat down with Kenneth Branagh for all of about 10 minutes, but he had a fantastic and fun Chariots of Fire story. I also talked to Holly Hunter about her horror-film beginnings on The Burning. And then there’s Tom Cavanagh, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Roebuck…
But I digress.
We’re here to revisit the Random Roles interviews that actually did make it onto the A.V. Club…and God knows that’s plenty enough interviews to keep us busy for ages.
So let’s get started, shall we?
Peter Gallagher:
Summer Lovers (1982)—“Michael Pappas”
I will preface this one by saying that when I was 13 and first got cable, this was, for all practical purposes, the best movie in the history of the universe.
Peter Gallagher: I love that! It was not a bad way to spend the summer, I will tell you. It’s so wild, I just ran into Daryl [Hannah] in Chicago, and she was with her friend Hillary, who was with her on the set of that movie, and it was like no time had passed. Well, maybe time had passed, but no more time had passed than I had lost visual acuity, so it looked like no time had passed. [Laughs.] The funny thing about that was my agent at the time said, “Hey! What do you think of this movie?” I said, “I can’t do this movie, this is ridiculous! I wanna be, you know, Marlon Brando, I want to be the great actor of the entire world.” And he said, “What do you mean? I already said you’d do this movie.” I said “What?” “Don’t worry, we’ll ask for so much money, they’ll never pay it.” And of course they did, and I was on a plane to Greece. And it was great. I was a little serious, initially, but now when I look back on it, I mean, to have been there…
Okay, here’s a funny story. All right, so I played Michael Pappas. And then, a couple years later, we went to Greece, to that island, Santorini, because it was so beautiful. So I get back, first time I’d been back since the movie, and all the tourists… I felt terrible in some ways, because the quaint little taverns are now polished white with new lights and tables. It’s all been kind of transformed, and I go in the tavern.[Shouts in Greek.] So we’re staying in the village where we stayed when we were making the movie, and I’m up with my friend and his wife and my wife up at the top of the hill, and it’s unbelievably beautiful. And Jonathan, my friend, says he’s gonna stay behind and take some pictures. So we’re gonna head back down to the village. So I’m walking down the path with my wife, a beautiful blonde, and her friend, a beautiful brunette. And there are two guys that clearly had just gotten off the boat from the metropolitan area, and… they had clearly seen the movie, okay? So they’re trudging up this steep hill, and I’m gliding down with these two beautiful women and all of a sudden, one of them stops and sees me. [Adopts a frantic, cartoonish New York accent.] “Tommy! Tommy, look! It’s him! It’s him! And he’s got two other women with him!” I go, “Hey, man, how you doing?” “Hey. All right, see ya.” And they just ran up this path. [Laughing.] As far as they were concerned, the Holy Grail was just another hundred yards up the path. It was like the ménage á trois store was open.
Tom Kenny:
Shakes The Clown (1991)—“Binky the Clown”
World’s Greatest Dad (2009)—“Jerry Klein”
Tom Kenny: Yeah, Bobcat Goldthwait and I are longtime friends. Since early grade school. Since we were 6 years old. We grew up together, went to grammar school together, went to high school with each other, went to each other’s houses in suburbia when we were kids, we both did stand-up together, we were best men at each other’s weddings. In 1992, he wrote a script that he wanted to direct, and IRS Films gave him the go-ahead, and it became… [Mock horror.] My God. My résumé is littered with cult classics. And I don’t even know what that really means! [Laughs.] But, yeah, Shakes The Clown, really fun, really low-budget, some of it made up as we went along. Quite a bit of it made up as we went along, actually. And Bobcat was an amazingly facile director, considering he hadn’t really done that before, except for some shorts. It was really fun, littered with weird cameos: Robin Williams, who’s another longtime friend of Bob’s, Florence Henderson, LaWanda Page, who was a Chitlin Circuit comedy legend, Sydney Lassick from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Joel Murray, who I think Bob met on one of those Savage Steve Holland movies. So, yeah, it was really low-budget, but it was really crazy and really fun. I just remember the première of the movie. People were pretty sure that the movie Bob had given them was not going to be the mainstream, feel-good, shopping-mall hit they were hoping for. [Laughs.] At the première, which was at the TV Academy in Los Angeles, they set up some carnival rides and booths, keeping with the clown-related motifs. I remember it being a fairly dispirited affair.
So years later, Bob’s been working on various scripts—he’s a hard-working guy—and had a script called World’s Greatest Dad, where Robin Williams plays a failed writer who’s the father of the most horrible teenager in movie history. The most unreasonable, horrific child to ever be on a movie screen, brilliantly played by Daryl Sabara. I’m always so busy with the voiceover stuff that Bob let my wife and I do a scene—because we only had one day—with Robin where she’s the makeup artist and I’m the floor director of a Oprah/Sally Jessy Raphael-esque morning show that Robin was going on. Basically, it gave us an excuse to spend a day in Seattle. [Laughs.]
Oh, one more thing about Shakes. The amazing thing is that, after not having seen Shakes for years and years and years, I went to a screening of it at The Silent Movie Theater here in L.A., which was jam-packed. Crazy packed. Sold out. But, y’know, watching that and then seeing World’s Greatest Dad, just seeing the almost-eerie strides Bob made in his directing… like, on Shakes, he was way better than he should have been to begin with, but with World’s Greatest Dad and this new one he’s doing, called God Bless America—where Jill and I have cameos as office workers that are struck down in a bloody mêlée—it’s like he’s Robert Johnson and sold his soul at the crossroads to the devil. It’s like, “How did you learn to direct so good?” [Laughs.]
Allison Janney:
Big Night (1996)—“Ann”
The Imposters (1998)—“Maxine”
Allison Janney: Oh, well, Stanley Tucci, love of my life. I did a play with him and got to know him, and he was talking about this movie he was doing, that he was getting together. And I just loved him so much that I wanted to be around him, so I said, “Stanley, let me be part of this movie. I will be craft services. I will be your script girl. Just let me be part of this in some way.” And he called me up in my New York City apartment one day and said, “Allison, I want you to play the part of Ann, the flower lady in Big Night.” He just called and offered that to me. And that was one of the happiest movie sets I’ve ever been on. The most fun. Such difficult hours, but I was hanging out with Marc Anthony! He had a wordless part in that movie, and he and I became friends. We were so silly, hanging out together. And I loved Campbell Scott. I was just so happy to be there that I could’ve worked 24-hour days and not complained a bit. I was having such a great time. Really one of my favorite movies I got to do.
So did he then call you up a few years later and say, “You want to do another one with me?”
Yeah, totally. For a while, I was fantasizing that he was going to have an acting troupe, that we were gonna be together and keep doing movies as The Stanley Tucci Acting Troupe. Or whatever. I don’t know what he would’ve called it. [Laughs.] For that, I bleached my hair blonde, and the woman who did it ruined my hair, so my hair had to be cut off completely after that. That was a big mistake I did during that movie. One of the funnier things I remember is sharing a dressing room with Billy Connolly. They had, like, a rope with a blanket over it [to divide the room]. It was like in It Happened One Night. And he was on the other side from me, and I was, like, “This is surreal! I’m sharing a dressing room with him!” It was so funny! That was an odd thing about that movie. And Richard Jenkins, who is one of my favorite actors, I got to play his gangster moll. [Laughs.] We had a good time. That’s where I met Alfred Molina, who I adore. There were some great actors assembled in that cast. Steve Buscemi. It was a smorgasbord of talent and funny people to hang around.
Treat Williams:
Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1995)—“Critical Bill”
Treat Williams: Probably one of the most iconic, interesting scripts. Scott [Rosenberg’s] script, he created a new language that I just thought was amazing. And Gary Fleder, with whom I’ve remained very good friends, he’s a wonderful director. Great guy. In fact, we just texted each other yesterday. He knows about [Against The Wall]. He’s always aware what’s going on. In fact, I actually did a pilot for him last year. I adore him, and he let me try stuff and create things. When I came in and said, “I think Critical Bill doesn’t have a bathroom in the apartment, but he has to pee, so how about he pees in plastic bottles?” And someone said, “What if we have the plastic bottles lined up?”
So everybody had these kind of weird, fun ideas, and then Andy [Garcia] started playing with the idea that the apartment smelled, so he’s got the handkerchief through the whole scene. We just had a blast. It was a really fun, creative, open environment, and without Gary and Andy, I don’t think Critical Bill would’ve come to life. But it really was one of my most fun roles. I’m really proud of that character. He was really fun to play. It’s very difficult to make it work when someone’s that far out on the edge of reality, but I think as a team we kind of pulled it off. And, I mean, look, you’ve got Andy, Christopher Walken, Jack Warden. Oh, man, Jack Warden. Who gets to work with Jack Warden? That was so cool. I just watched Being There again. He’s so wonderful as the president. To have Jack Warden actually describing your character to the audience? That’s one of the greatest honors I’ve ever had in film.
Victor Garber:
I Had Three Wives (1985)—“Jackson Beaudine”
Victor Garber: [Witheringly] Really? Oh, no, you can’t bring that up. [Sighs.] First of all, I’m, like, “Jackson…? Who the hell is that?” You know, I was so young. It was my first series. Bill Bixby, God rest his soul, directed that, and I loved him. He was a fantastic guy, and he made it all okay for me. I was cast out of a play. I was doing a play in L.A.—Noises Off—and I went in and auditioned, and Marc Merson, I think, was one of the producers, and some others whose names I can’t remember. You know, what was really the biggest surprise was that I thought, “I don’t know if it’s really worth it. The work, it’s too hard.” I was paid… well, by today’s standards, not a lot of money, but it was certainly more money than I’d ever made. But I thought, “I’m too tired to spend this money. I’m literally exhausted.” I didn’t know what it was like to be the star of an hour-long comedy-drama, as it was. I couldn’t believe how hard it was.
Hank Azaria:
Heat (1995)—“Alan Marciano”
Hank Azaria: I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve seen the movie, but there’s a scene where Al Pacino’s interrogating me, and… I shot that on the night of my 30th birthday. And it happened to also be Al’s birthday. We have the same birthday: April 25. It just so happened, however, that I was shooting The Birdcage at the same time, and my first day on The Birdcage was the following morning. So I had to go straight from the Heat set, where I shot ’til 6 in the morning, over to the Birdcage set, where I shot the whole rest of the day. That was my 30th birthday. And Mike Nichols found that out and took pity on me. He said, “It’s your birthday?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “Well, I’ve been shooting for 18 hours straight so far.” And he’s, like, “Oh, God, go home. We’ll do something else.” Which was very sweet. Although I kind of felt robbed, too, because I kind of wanted to say that I shot for 24 hours straight. [Laughs.]
How was Pacino to work with?
Pacino was awesome. Michael Mann does like to shoot a lot of takes—if you’re going to shoot it once, you’re going to shoot it about 25 times—and Al really likes to play around. But I was so young and naïve then that I was silly enough to ask Michael Mann if, when Al was improvising, I could sort of improvise back and start riffing. And Michael Mann thought about it for a minute, then said, “Nah, just say what’s on the page.” I mean, now, of course, as a more experienced actor, I would just not ask. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, you know? I’d just start riffing right back at Al. But I asked Michael and he said no, so I’d be doing the same exact thing on every take while Al was improvising all these brilliant things. It probably frustrated Al, looking back on it. It was probably annoying to him.
But one thing that did make it into the movie that was extemporaneous was… I don’t know if you remember, but I say something like, “I don’t know why I got mixed up with this stupid broad,” and he says [Does a loud, spot-on Pacino impression.] “’Cause she’s got a great ass!” He just screams it. And that was the line, but Al kind of yelled it for the first time, and he did it so completely out of nowhere that it scared me. So much so that I just went, “Jesus!” Not in character, just as Hank. I got frightened, and I went, “Jesus!” And then Al improvised [As Pacino.] “I’m sorry. Something happens to me when I think about a woman’s ass.” Or whatever it is that he said. And that actually made it into the movie! Michael Mann told me not to improvise, and the one line that I said that wasn’t scripted made it in there because… I don’t know, I guess because it was a good moment. Because I was scared of Al. [Laughs.]
Thomas Jane:
Padamati Sandhya Ragam (1987)—“Tom”
Thomas Jane: Oh, yeah, I remember that one! I was 16 years old, I’d dropped out of high school, I was working at a hardware store and taking acting classes above a liquor store in Bethesda, Maryland. My acting coach, Ralph Tabakin, called me up and said, “There’s these Indians in town, and they’re looking for a blond-haired, blue-eyed kid to be in their Indian Bollywood movie.” And I said, “Ralph, I don’t have blue eyes. I can’t go.” Ralph said, “Well, you got blue eyes now. You go down there and get the part. And I get 10 percent, ’cause I’m acting as your agent in this regard.” And I did, and I did. And he did. [Laughs.]
And I ran around America with a crew of about 30 or 40 Indians and a real stuck-up Indian starlet bitch, and we made this singing, dancing Bollywood-style Romeo-and-Juliet-type love story about an Indian girl and an American boy. And then we all ran off to India, where I lived for six months finishing the film, and it was probably… well, it was definitely a defining experience of my life and career, because I came back to America and… They didn’t have money to pay me, so they gave me the RV that we used to make the movie and drive the crew around in. And I sold it, bought a 1969 Camaro, and drove it out to California to be an actor. But I miss all the singing and dancing now that I’m in Hollywood.
Jonathan Banks:
Wiseguy (1987-1990)—“Frank McPike”
Jonathan Banks: Great character. You know, there’s an old picture of Jimmy Byrnes, Kenny Wahl, and myself together when we came back and did that TV movie [in 1996], and it made my heart warm. I’m telling you, man, playing Frank was… I mean, holy shit, you’re out there in the rain all the time—’cause we shot a lot of nights—and it was wet and it was cold and it was really long hours, and I was there a lot. It was wonderful, but it’s kind of a bittersweet memory now. It really bothers me that Stephen Cannell has died. I had lunch with him about eight months before he died, and… I really liked him. I really did. And it just bothers me that I didn’t get to speak to him. I had no idea. So, uh, there you go. There’s my reaction to Wiseguy. [Laughs wistfully.]
That show felt fully formed from the moment it came out of the gate. It’s very unlike most of the other shows in Cannell’s catalog up to that point, at least by my perception.
Mine, too. To my knowledge, anyway. But it was always Stephen. And, you know, I just will not say a single derogatory thing about Stephen. I won’t. It’s a real trap to be too cute, I think, and you really gotta fight against it. But when Wiseguy came out, that was a good piece of work. It was truly a good piece of work.
It’s too bad that music rights have kept the Dead Dog Records storyline—the arc with Debbie Harry, Glenn Frey, and Tim Curry—from coming out on DVD.
Oh, really? I didn’t know that.
It’s cost-prohibitive, as they say.
Oh, what the fuck is that? Hell, why don’t they just waive the rights, for God’s sakes? They don’t need that.
Hey, look, while we’re on it, let me tell you a quick story about Jerry Lewis, who, as you probably know, was on the show. But it starts back when I was a kid, in Washington, D.C. Lewis was at the Loews Palace Theater. I would think it was probably before a movie, but he was onstage. I must’ve been 8, maybe 9, maybe even 7. But there was a roped-off area down below, and of course, I’m a kid, so I bolted for it. [Laughs.] And it was the red velvet rope, so I got inside, and my mother tells me that the usher was immediately chasing me down, but Jerry saw it from the stage, and he says, “No, no, no, let the kid sit there.” And unbeknownst to me, I didn’t think it was any big favor, but I sat there, and I was just enthralled with everything he was doing, because he’s another one I tried to be like.
Anyway, so you flip forward years later, and on a rainy day in Vancouver as I was getting out of the van, there was sort of a mist on the windows, and there was a guy standing there with an umbrella. I got out, and it was Jerry. And before I could speak, he said to me, “I’m a big fan of yours.” In my entire career, it’s still one of my greatest moments.