Random Reminiscing: Looking Back at my Many Random Roles Interviews (Part 8 of Quite a Few)

With the 10th anniversary of my career as a freelance pop culture journalist coming up on April 1st, I’m feeling a tad nostalgic, so I decided that I wanted to start looking back at the portion of my freelance career of which I’m most proud: my Random Roles interviews for the A.V. Club.

If you accidentally missed the previous part of this reminiscing, you can check it out by clicking right here…and if you missed the part before that, well, each installment has a link to the previous installment in the intro, so just keep on clicking back until you’ve read ‘em all!

If you’re all up to date, though, then for heaven’s sake, why are you wasting time with this intro? Just dive right in!

Billy Burke:

Dill Scallion (1999)—“Dill Scallion”

Billy Burke: At the time, it was the most fun I’d ever had doing anything. Ever. Anything. [Laughs.] I hadn’t done a whole lot at that point—I believe I’d just finished Mafia! —and I went in to meet Jordan Brady, the creator and director of that. Kind of like with Twilight, we just sort of sat and B.S.’ed about what it was, we threw around a couple of scenes, and, I sang a couple of silly little tunes. Literally, he gave me the words of some songs he’d made up that he hadn’t even written melodies for, and I just sat there with a guitar and sort of made them up as I went along. And literally there on the spot—this has never happened before—he’s like, “We leave in a week. You wanna go?” And I was like, “Yeah!”

So we literally got on a tour bus in Los Angeles and shot on tour across the South, all the way over to Nashville. We finished the movie in Nashville, and every single day was… Nobody knew what was going on any day. It was complete guerilla-style. We got to Texas, and we didn’t have backstage passes, but we rushed onstage with cameras. Everything was done without permission. It was awesome. And what a cast we had! That’s how I met Peter Berg, who I ended up doing Wonderland with.

Kyle MacLachlan:

Showgirls (1995)—“Zack Carey”

Kyle MacLachlan: Uh… yeah. [Laughs.] That was a decision that was sort of a tough one to make, but I was enchanted with Paul Verhoeven. Particularly Robocop, which I loved. I look back on it now and it’s a little dated, but it’s still fantastic, and I think it’s got some of the great villains of all time in there. It was Verhoeven and [Joe] Eszterhas, and it seemed like it was going to be kind of dark and edgy and disturbing and real. I signed on, and… I think they’d wanted Dylan McDermott and he’d passed, so then they came to me and asked, “Do you want to do this?” And I was like, “Yeah!” Because I was really into that mode. And I worked hard, I came in and did my scenes, but then I wasn’t really involved in anything else until it finally came time to do the press for it.

It was about to première, I hadn’t seen it yet, and I wanted to. So I went to see it and… I was absolutely gobsmacked. I said, “This is horrible. Horrible!” And it’s a very slow, sinking feeling when you’re watching the movie, and the first scene comes out, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a really bad scene.” But you say, “Well, that’s okay, the next one’ll be better.” And you somehow try to convince yourself that it’s going to get better… and it just gets worse. And I was like, “Wow. That was crazy.” I mean, I really didn’t see that coming. So at that point, I distanced myself from the movie. Now, of course, it has a whole other life as a sort of inadvertent… satire. No, “satire” isn’t the right word. But it’s inadvertently funny. So it’s found its place. It provides entertainment, though not in the way I think it was originally intended. It was just… maybe the wrong material with the wrong director and the wrong cast.

But apart from all of that…

Apart from all that, it was great. [Laughs.] It has a couple of moments in it that are pretty wild. And I gotta say that, when I was watching the actual shows that they created, I was like, “Hey, this is a Vegas show!” I was watching it from the audience, and it was amazing, what they were able to create. But reduced down to its elements, it was, uh, not one of my finer attempts. But it was done initially for all the right reasons; it just didn’t turn [out] to be what I anticipated. Everybody has one of those in their repertoire, I think. It’s just that this one has stayed around. Even Ishtar eventually disappeared. But this one keeps coming back! [Laughs.]

Michael Biehn:

Tombstone (1993)—“Johnny Ringo”

Michael Biehn: Johnny Ringo is my favorite antagonist. Johnny Ringo is a character that I always played as somebody who kind of had a death wish. He was tired of boozing it up, tired of women… He was bored with life and wanted some excitement, and his way of getting that excitement was having a shootout with Doc Holliday and/or Wyatt Earp. Wyatt Earp was who he was looking at, really. The thing about Johnny Ringo that’s kind of sad, actually, is that they changed his story. Johnny Ringo never shot a priest. Johnny Ringo never shot anybody. That was all done for the movie. Johnny Ringo was known for calling Wyatt Earp out for a gunfight, and Wyatt Earp declined. [Ringo] was one of the cowboys, but that’s really where he got his reputation: calling out Wyatt Earp, and Wyatt Earp saying, “I don’t want to fight you.” He never killed anybody; that was all made up.

But that’s my favorite antagonist that I’ve ever played, and there’s a moment in that movie where I say to Doc Holliday, “My fight’s not with you,” and he says, “I beg to differ.” And there appears to be kind of a twinkle in Johnny’s eye, and that’s where I’m basically saying, “Let’s do it.” I think that’s one of my favorite moments in my film career. There was an excitement about it. It’s like guys who go bungee jumping. How close can they get to death without dying? That’s the exciting part of life, and that’s what Johnny Ringo was to me. The rest of it was just a big bore. [Laughs.]

You added Val Kilmer’s name to that list of volatile people earlier, but most people consider Tombstone to be among his finest moments as an actor. How was he on the set?

Val’s great. Val’s somehow gotten a reputation for being difficult. I don’t know why, actually, except for that he works very hard. To give you an example, Val and I went out the day before we shot that scene, and we choreographed that scene together. It was Val and I who decided that we weren’t going to be walking 10 paces, turning, and shooting, like they’ve done in a million other movies. We thought, “Well, wouldn’t it be fun if we did it kind of close, where we’re just, like, 2 or 3 feet apart from each other?”

And we went out and rehearsed that, and we spent six or eight hours rehearsing it, kind of doing that thing where we’d walk around each other, sizing each other up, and then how I got shot and how I still continued to pull the trigger even though I had a bullet through the brain. All of that stuff, Val and I rehearsed the day before we shot, and that’s the kind of actor that I know Val Kilmer is.

I mean, he is passionate and he wants to get it right, and he is like me and like Jim Cameron and like a lot of people who are like, “I’m making a movie here. I’m going to do the best I can, and if you’re not with me, then get out of the way.” But I’ve never heard him raise his voice on the set. He’s very smart. Sometimes he can say something and then, like, a few seconds later, you say to yourself, “Wait a second. Did he just put me down? I’m not sure.” [Laughs.] But by that time, it’s too late to say anything back to him.

So, yeah, he’s very smart, I’ve always enjoyed working with him, but, yeah, that’s the kind of passion he has, that we went out and rehearsed that stuff. Everybody still talks about that scene, and that’s because we worked hard on it. That wasn’t just, “Okay, everybody, let’s get together and shoot this, all right?” That scene was rehearsed for eight or 10 hours the day before. So there you go.

Robert Patrick:

Within The Rock (1996)—producer
Ravager (1997)—producer

Robert Patrick: Let me just say something right now: My love for Roger Corman is here. [Pounds heart.] Whenever I see him, I remind him, “If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know how a guy like me would ever get in the business.” And I mean that. Because when you don’t have connections, and you don’t have a way in, you’ve got to find your way in. Roger broke a lot of people into the business, and to be one of those gives me a great honor. My pedigree is what it is. People ask me, “Where did you learn to do what you do?” And I learned it in the Roger Corman Film School.

That seems to be a recurring theme with actors this season. William Forsythe said something along the same lines, talking about Corman using footage he’d bought on the cheap to flesh out films.

[Laughs.] Goddamn William Forsythe! I love that motherfucker. Yeah, that’s classic Corman, man. That’s how it goes down. And God bless him for it. In the mid-’90s, while I was doing Striptease, I produced a couple of films with these guys, and… I wasn’t in the movies, but I helped get the money, and we did ’em.

One was a story about an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, and a mining team goes up there and sets charges and, you know, tunnels into this thing, and when they do, they hit this sarcophagus which releases this alien that had been kind of jettisoned out into space by some other life form in the universe. And it gets exposed to oxygen, and the thing regenerates and starts killing ’em one by one. It’s a great little movie called Within The Rock. And while we were doing it, we were sitting there going, “God, we got these sets, we got all this stuff…” And I literally said to the guys I was working with, “What would Roger Corman do with this?” And we all agreed that Roger would quickly write another script, go out and find some more money, and then make another movie. So we did.

We went out and created another movie called Ravager, which was kind of like Stagecoach set in space, and we shot that movie. It’s a great thing to learn from Roger. But Jim Cameron learned from Roger Corman, too. So many people did. Jim and I were talking while we were making T2, and he said, “Yeah, you know, the acorn doesn’t fall too far from the tree.” And I remembered that. We all walked away with something from Roger that we’re still using in our lives.

Matthew Lillard:

Thir13en Ghosts (2001)—“Dennis Rafkin”

Matthew Lillard: The only time in my life a director’s said to me, “Do it again, but do it better.” Look, I loved the movie. Tony Shalhoub is one of the great actors of our generation. All I really remember about Thir13en Ghosts, though, is that it was really hot and filled with people who were doused in blood. ’Cause there’s nothing that conducts heat like glass and movie lights. It’s a terrible combination. It was glass, movie lights, and the smell of burning latex, ’cause all the rubber on the people—all the ghosts were covered in latex, and the whole thing just stunk to high hell.

Also, I’ll never forget F. Murray Abraham at 4 o’clock in the morning, in a junkyard in the middle of winter in Vancouver, British Columbia, standing on top of 16 stacked cars with a fan blowing directly in his face, screaming down, “This movie isn’t about special effects, it’s about acting!” I was, like, “I think you’re wrong, bro.” [Laughs.] I mean, he was screaming it in this really snide, pompous voice, “It isn’t about special effects, it’s about acting!” Eh, maybe not.

Marcia Gay Harden:

King Of Texas (2002)—“Mrs. Susannah Lear Tumlinson"

Marcia Gay Harden: Working on King Of Texas was a life experience for me. We were down there doing a period film, it was Hallmark, which is just a joy, and it was in Mexico. First we were in Pachuca, where there’s nothing. Nothing. Except for a great children’s museum, there’s just, like, nothing there. A bodega, and that’s it. And then a couple of miles away, there’s a Christ as big as a high-rise, his arms outstretched. And there were rooster fights at the Pachuca hotel, which I tried to put a stop to using bad Spanish. But it was a rooster fight! So that was horrible. But what was more horrible being a stupid American going, “Please stop! Please!” [Laughs.] “Que es eso? Que es eso?” But then we went to Pueblo, which is absolutely gorgeous. We shot in and around there, we rode horses, we made some beautiful friends. And to be with that whole Mexican horseback riding, the rancher tradition of the Mexicans, it’s really nostalgic, because it’s very elegant. I loved shooting that. I love it when you take a version of a Shakespeare play [King Lear] and turn it on its head and it still makes sense. And that’s kind of what we did with that.

I was trying to think why that story about the rooster fight sounded so familiar, and I just realized why: because Patrick Stewart told me about it.

[Laughs.] Yeah, probably because they were all mad at me! Patrick Stewart was so gorgeous to work with, but they were all sleeping, and everybody wanted to sleep. I wanted to sleep too, but I couldn’t understand why no one was complaining to the front desk. It sounded like there was a wedding going on, because you would hear them going, “Opa! Pollo, pollo, pollo!” So I thought people were asking for more chicken. I mean, I didn’t know!

But it was really loud, there was loud music, so I walked down in my robe and nightgown and slippers, and walked past what looked like a Toulouse-Lautrec painting. Bleary-eyed people, kids drinking beer, dark shadows. There was a crowd in a circle, and I thought maybe the bride was in there dancing or something. And I shoved my way in, and I saw the chickens. The bloody roosters. “Pollo, pollo, pollo!” So that’s when I was like, “Perdón! Perdón!” Everyone shut up and looked at me. We’re talking, like, 40 drunken people around these roosters, gambling. “Que es eso?” They’re like, “Go home, American!” [Laughs.]

I’m lucky I didn’t get run out of there. It turned out it was, like, the mayor of the town or something horrible like that. I don’t really know. But it was business people, and it was their tradition. It just went against all my sensibilities. But I learned a lesson, and it was embarrassing for me to realize how unwittingly pompous it was of me to judge them. It’s not my culture, I don’t like it, but it’s not my place to go in and go, “Que es eso? Por favor! Dormir!”

Well, for what it’s worth, Sir Patrick summed up your actions by saying, “That’s balls.”

[Laughs.] I love it. Well, let’s let him have the last word on it, then!

Christopher Lloyd:

Taxi (1978-1983)—“Reverend Jim Ignatowski”

It seems like Danny DeVito was your good-luck charm during the early years of your career: He was in Cuckoo’s Nest, Goin’ South, and then you co-starred with him on Taxi as well.

Christopher Lloyd: That’s right! People have speculated whether he said anything or had anything to do with influencing having me come in for Reverend Jim. I do not know whether it’s just all coincidence or whether he had anything to do with any of that. We’ve never talked about it. [Laughs.] I’ve never asked him, so it remains a mystery.

Taxi was your first full-time series role. Did you have any hesitation about doing a TV series?

Yes, I did. Because I was in New York, and I’d spent years there doing theater. I had kind of an attitude, which was not uncommon in New York. Theater people who went to Hollywood to do sitcoms were selling out. That was the attitude. And I didn’t really relish the idea of being cast in a sitcom, because I shared that attitude. [Laughs.] At least to an extent. And I told my agent, Bob Gersh, of the Phil Gersh Agency, I said, “I don’t want to do sitcoms.” And over time he would send me up to meet people to do sitcoms, and he’d say, “Just go meet them, because you never know: Down the line, it might be something that might be important.”

And then he sent me the script for Taxi, and I got really into getting ready for the part. I’d picked out all of the costume pieces, which eventually I wore when we shot the series. I just got into it. And then I came and saw rehearsal with the cast—Judd Hirsch, Marilu Henner, Danny DeVito, Tony Danza, etc.—and I just thought, “My God, these people are terrific!” So I ventured into a world of sitcom, and I have no regrets. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I loved the role, I loved the people I was working with, a great team of writers… It was a wonderful experience. And they’re hard to come by, a series that actually works and has a good run.

Kelly Lynch:

Road House (1989)—“Doc”

Kelly Lynch: Well, there you go. I mean, what can you say? I got a call from my agent, and I had just done Drugstore Cowboy, which was a little different, but he said, “There’s this other movie.” I was actually one of the last contract players, I guess, but I had a two-picture deal with United Artists, which I don’t remember signing it, but apparently I had it, and that’s how Road House first came up. The actress who’d been cast first to play against Patrick Swayze was Annette Bening, but she was fired. Patrick just didn’t feel any chemistry with her or something. I don’t know what it was. But I didn’t know who she was, I didn’t know what this movie was, all I knew was who Patrick Swayze was, and that’s because he’d just done Dirty Dancing, which was a big movie. And I thought, “Man, he’s a really interesting guy,” so I took the script, but then I read it and I was like, “Okay, I don’t understand what this is. There’s a big-wheel truck, there’s a bad guy, there’s a doctor in a mini-dress, and there are bouncers.” It was just, like, a goulash. [Laughs.] So many elements were thrown into this movie that it just didn’t make any sense to me.

But I took a meeting with the producer, the famous Joel Silver, who did not disappoint as far as offering a larger-than-life personality. He was hilariously funny and charming and a maniac. We sat in his office, and he basically talked me into doing it. He said, “Look, first of all, I don’t make art, I buy it,” which is his famous quote, but here I am, this young actress trying to become an artist, just coming off Drugstore Cowboy, listening to him and just going, “Uh-huh.” But he said, “I promise you that this will be the best drive-in movie ever made. It will be a movie that people will love. It will be fun, we’ll have a great time making it, and just trust me.” And then he just looked at me and said, “And by the way, you don’t have a choice, you know. You’re under contract. You can say ‘no’ and we can get really difficult, but we want you and you should do this. It could be great for you.” So basically he said, “You have to do this.” [Laughs.] So I said, “Okay.”

So I showed up for work, and I have to say that, between John Doe, Jeff Healey, and all these musicians, plus working with Sam Elliott and Patrick, it was like a barbeque on set every day. Just a really good time. All that “pain don’t hurt” and “I used to fuck guys like you in prison,” all those lines, we would be roaring at the time. I mean, it was just hilarious, you know? But no one winked at it. Everyone played it straight. I wore my tablecloth miniskirt dress, and we just had the best time. And I think it shows. And it lives on. I think it’s playing on some network somewhere in the universe every single day, probably even as we speak. It’s pretty girls, guys fighting, good guys and bad guys… and mullets! We all had a mullet, for God’s sake! [Laughs.] I remember saying, “How are you getting my hair to do that?” Because my hair’s really straight. But they put stuff in it and made it happen. It was amazing.

So, yeah, it lives on. In fact, my daughter was at the Fairfax Theater, where they had a Road House trivia night, and she was, like, “You’ve got to go! A bunch of us are going!” They said it was like Rocky Horror, where they do all the lines and everything. So she’s like, “You’ve got to come! You’ve got that dress. I bet it still fits you. Come on, you’ve got to put that dress on!” I was like, “Oh, I wish I could, but I just can’t. You guys go have a good time with it, but…” [Laughs.] It’s so great that it’s such a fun thing for everybody. It is what it is, but people love it for that.

It seems like your sex scene in the film must be one of the most uncomfortable in cinematic history, being up against a rock wall and all.

Oh, I know, but I was padded. [Laughs.] No one knows, so it looks more painful that it was. They really liked everything about the way that scene looked, with the blonde hair against the rocks behind me, but I was like, “Isn’t this kind of… mean?” So they put a thin padding under my dress, so you can’t see it. But he’s still slamming me against the rocks, so I had to be careful not to hit my head. Thank God Patrick was so strong. He could’ve carried me around that room forever.

By the way, speaking of Bill Murray, every time Road House is on and he or one of his idiot brothers are watching TV—and they’re always watching TV—one of them calls my husband and says [In a reasonable approximation of Carl Spackler], “Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now. They’re doing it. He’s throwing her against the rocks.” [Away from the receiver.] What? Oh, my God. Mitch was just walking out the door to the set, and he said that Bill once called him from Russia. 

Sorry, not to dwell on this, but you said that Bill Murray “or one of his idiot brothers” will call. Which brothers are we talking about?

All of them! Joel has called; Brian Doyle has called. They will all call! Any and all of them!

This was already an awesome story, but now it’s even better.

I know, right? I dread it. If I know it’s coming on—and I can tell when it’s coming on, because it blows up on Twitter when it is—I’m just like, “Oh, my God…” And God help me when AMC’s doing their Road House marathon, because I know the phone is just going to keep ringing. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2 or 3 in morning. “Hi, Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now…”