Random Reminiscing: Looking Back at my Many Random Roles Interviews (Part 11 of Quite a Few)

Having just passed 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!

John DiMaggio:

Little Fockers(2010)—“EMT”

John DiMaggio: You know what? That was awesome. I got to be with De Niro all day! I was doing, like, Paul Lynde impressions, I was doing all sorts of shtick, and he was laughing. He [was] strapped up in this gurney, and we had to carry him across this lawn, and a gurney on a lawn is fucking treacherous, man! So I was the one who was, like, controlling the gurney, and they’re like, “Dude, you have to make sure that Mr. De Niro is all right.” And I was like, “Uh, all right, I’ve got it, no problem!”

There was this one take where they were doing my close-up, and we’d done the scene a couple of times, and it was fine, I was already kind of cracking him up a little bit. And I’d done my Larry Hagman impression for Ben Stiller. Somehow we got talking about Larry Hagman, and I said, “Oh, I do a little bit of Larry Hagman.” He was like, “Really?” I said, “Yeah, I do a little bit.” [In a perfect Larry Hagman voice.] “Jeannie? Jeannie…? Jeannie! Jeannie!” That’s it. [Laughs.] That’s all it is. It’s just fucking “Jeannie.” But it’s him! He laughed at that. But I’m just kind of trying to work the crowd. Meanwhile, I’m freaking out, ’cause it’s De Niro!

So the camera’s on me for this take, we do the scene, and I fuck it up. And I was just like, “Sorry! Sorry! I’ll get it! I screwed it up. That’s was my fault. Can we do it again?” So we do it again, and I stroked it. I nailed it. Just sent it out of the park. Direct shot, boom, done, covered. As soon as the director went, “Aaaaaaannnd… cut,” De Niro looked at me and went, [DeNiro impression] “That was good. That was good. That was good, you.” I fucking burst out in laughter. De Niro nailed me. It was a comedy punch to the gut. It was perfect. And I felt so redeemed that I was on the same page as Robert De Niro. As Bobby D. Bobby D!

Donal Logue:

MTV promos (1990-1996)—“Jimmy the Cab Driver”
120 Minutes (1994)—co-host

You referenced playing Jimmy the Cab Driver on MTV, and you also mentioned being longtime friends with Greg Dulli, but those two worlds collided when you and Dulli hosted 120 Minutes together.

Donal Logue: Yeah, and both of those things date back to when I lived in Boston. I was a bartender, and all the people I hung out with were on the edge of the arts. My friends were in bands. I was actually in Bullet LaVolta for about 10 minutes before getting kicked out. [Laughs.] But we all did temp jobs in bars or wherever, and when my friends in Bullet LaVolta and the Lemonheads started doing well, I’d go sell T-shirts or road-manage or whatever, and that’s how I met Greg Dulli. The weird thing, though, comes later in life. Look, I know where I’m at in the landscape of what I do. I’m squarely in the middle of the batting order. I’m not on top in the standings, I’m somewhere in the middle, and I’m okay with that. What I’m saying is that Greg Dulli’s one of those guys who’s an old friend of mine, and we went through some really weird, struggling times together. He was there when we were both broke as shit. Once, me and Greg were outside Whiskey Pete’s in Henderson, Nevada, begging, “Dude, can we get quarters?” We had no gas, we had no money to get back to L.A., and we didn’t have families who could really help out. Yeah, Greg and I go way back.

Jimmy the Cab Driver came from Clay Tarver—who was also a friend of Dulli’s, and who used to be in Bullet LaVolta but is now in Chavez—and also from Jesse Peretz, who’s now one of the go-to directors for TV [New Girl, Girls], but used to be the bass player for The Lemonheads. Jesse and Clay were like, “Dude, what are you doing auditioning for goofy shit in L.A.? Why don’t you just dress up and do weird stuff like you did around the common room in college?” So that’s how the Cab Driver came to be. I went and hung out with them, found some glasses, and greased up my hair, and that’s how the Cab Driver came into existence.

By the time we did 120 Minutes, I’d probably known Greg for about five years, and we were mostly friends through the indie-rock scene. Then Gentlemen came out, which is just an amazing record, and I was already friends with the MTV people, so whenever they wanted Afghan Whigs to do something, they would say, “Hey, can my friend Donal do it?” And they’re like, “Yeah, of course!” [Laughs.] Look, if it was up to me, if all I had ever done my entire career was guest-host 120 Minutes with Greg Dulli, that would’ve been fine. We had such a fun time. I’m sure people watching were like, “What a bunch of smug pricks, sitting there chain-smoking.”

Anyone watching that would feel obliged to place a wager on which one of you would succumb to lung cancer first.

It’d be a fucking tie! [Laughs.] We were smoking, God, I don’t know, three packs a day? I was Marlboro Reds, he was Camel Wides. When I think back to hanging in Cincinnati with Greg and [John] Curley and those guys, I was just really lucky that I got to meet those dudes when I did. In 1989 [when I got] Common Ground, they said, “We’re gonna cast you in this movie, but you’re not gonna work for months.” So I said, “So can I go on tour with this band?” And they said, “Yeah, go on tour! We’ll tell you when you have to jump off.”

So I went on tour with Bullet LaVolta, and I found out when I was in Seattle that I had to leave after the show in Champaign, Illinois. And the show in Champaign, Illinois, was on the night of the earthquake that hit San Francisco during the World Series game. So I went to this club where Bullet LaVolta was playing with Afghan Whigs, and Greg Dulli got me—and this is saying a lot—drunker than I’ve ever been in my life. Because I’d had many, many deep drunks. That’s when I became friends with Greg: on that night of the earthquake. Then the next night, I had to leave the tour and go to Toronto to work on my first gig. I was like, “Man, it’s been four days, and I’m still hungover! This is really bad.” Yeah, thanks, Greg. [Laughs.]

Later, after I’d quit drinking, he and I were arguing about something, and he told me he wrote “Fountain And Fairfax” about me. I’m like, “Oh, that’s awesome… and way to feminize me!” We’ve been through a lot of together. I love him. But I’m also a huge fan of his work, and it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes super-familiarity with someone makes it hard to hold their work in awe. But that guy’s unbelievable.

Jon Cryer:

O.C. And Stiggs (1985)—“Randall Schwab Jr.”

Even though it’s decidedly one of Robert Altman’s lesser works, how did you manage to start your [film] career with an Altman picture?

Jon Cryer: Well, I just auditioned for Bob in New York. I had just started auditioning for stuff. I had done an understudy role on Broadway… actually, I was understudying Matthew Broderick in Brighton Beach Memoirs. And I managed to get fired from being Matthew Broderick’s understudy. Certainly not for not looking like him enough, because I had that nailed. No, mostly it was because it was a huge role and it was my very first job, and I don’t know that I seemed confident enough in it. That, and also the wiseass issue kind of arose again.

So, anyway, I had a little free time after that. [Laughs.] And I found myself auditioning for Robert Altman. At his house. This was the guy who had done M*A*S*H, Nashville, and so many other amazing pieces of work, and I was totally in awe. I found out that he would cast people that he liked, and then he let them make it up as they went along. That makes the movies like M*A*S*H and Nashville all the more amazing, the fact that they’re accidents in many respects, but shaped by a guy who happens to have been a genius. However my particular accident, O.C. And Stiggs, remained an accident all the way through.

I remember my very first day of shooting. We were shooting a wedding scene; my sister was getting married in the movie, and the idea was that we came out of the chapel, and we were supposed to get pooped on by a bunch of the doves that are released. The idea was that we were reveling in the grandiosity of the event, only to be shat upon. That was the humor that Bob was going for. But the special-effects guys that made the fake bird poop were trying to fling it in from the side, and Bob did not feel that that was realistic enough. So… well, let’s say the portly Bob Altman ascended this rickety aluminum ladder—like, a 10-footer—and sat there with this bowl of fake bird shit that was basically, by the way, sour cream with little cut-up bits of black rubber band. Just in case you ever feel the need to simulate bird poop. At any rate, he sat there with this big bowl of fake bird poop, and he flung it on the crowd as the camera rolled. Because, you know, obviously that was where his artistry was best used. [Laughs.]

What I loved was the reaction of the actors, because as we came out… there were actors of great renown—Paul Dooley, Jane Curtin—people I respected enormously. Paul Dooley got nominated for an Oscar, for crying out loud! And we were all jockeying for position to get shat on by Bob Altman. I said, “If this isn’t a metaphor for show business, I don’t know what is.” I should add that this is a movie that I’ve never seen a final cut of. I saw a rough cut that Bob was screening that I believe never made it out. I believe the studio re-cut the movie. Because it supposed to just be a fun, teenage… It was supposed to be a teenage M*A*S*H. That’s what they were going for. At least I think that’s what the studio thought they were gonna get. But Bob has a very particular sense of humor, and it never quite gelled.

Michael McKean:

1941 (1979)—“Willy”

Michael McKean: Oh, man, 1941. Well, that’s just me and David Lander on the set, on a soundstage. We knew Steven [Spielberg] because he’d just struck up a friendship with Penny Marshall. Over sushi, I think. That’s when everyone was discovering sushi, so there was a sushi bar they used to go to. Anyway, Steven was buddies with Penny, so he wanted to put Penny in 1941, and he was a big fan of our stuff, me and David, and thought we were funny, so he put us in. But, you know, we couldn’t really use the characters of Lenny and Squiggy. We would’ve been fine using them, but at the time, the matter of who owned those characters was in question, even though they didn’t exist before we were [on Laverne & Shirley], and everybody knew it. We wound up retaining the rights, but at that point, it was up in the air, so we couldn’t really use those characters. We didn’t really have much to do. We’re really just a sight gag, just kind of there for a second.

But we spent two days on a soundstage firing a howitzer or whatever that thing is called—an antiaircraft gun—indoors. I mean, it was the loudest thing I will ever hear. Hopefully! It was overwhelming. And great. But there was a lot of smoke. There was a certain kind of smoke that they wanted to use so that it would hang in the air like fog, but it’s an oil-based smoke, and although it looks great, everybody who breathes it has diarrhea for several days afterwards. I came in the next day, and I’m like, “Uh, did anybody else get…” “Uh, yeah, we did.” And one of the assistant directors, I forget who it was, but she said, “How do you think I’m keeping my girlish figure?” [Laughs.] The Diarrhea Diet? Is that really an option? But it was interesting. It was an interesting time. I was disappointed that there wasn’t more in the movie, but there’s just so much in that movie already. A lot of it is kind of fun, but… do you know about John’s fall?

Belushi falls off the wing of the plane in the movie. When he comes pulling up in the plane and encounters Warren Oates and those people, he gets out of the cockpit and falls off of the wing and onto his head. And it’s really him doing it. He really fell. And they had to stop shooting for, like, several days. But I, uh, actually saw him at a music club one of the days he was out. He said [Does an impression of a slurring Belushi.] “I’m not shooting right now ’cause I fell. And I, uh, think I might’ve broken my neck.” [Laughs.] Yeah, I don’t think you broke your neck, John. I think he was fancying himself like Buster Keaton, who actually did break his neck but didn’t know about it till, like, 15 years later. But, anyway, he was fine. He came back and shot the rest of that scene and everything else.

It’s kind of an overstuffed movie, really. But when it shows up on cable, I find myself watching parts of it, and, you know, there’s some really funny performances in there. Ned Beatty’s really funny. And Robert Stack is really funny as General Stilwell. And Warren Oates is just one of the greatest actors that was ever on film, but he’s really funny in it. He could’ve been a great comic actor along with all the nasty stuff he’s known for.

James Caan:

Alien Nation (1988)—“Det. Sgt. Matthew Sykes”

James Caan: Why the fuck… Why would you bring up that?

A lot of people actually like the film. I do, for one.

Yeah, well, I don’t know. I don’t have too many… [Hesitates.] I mean, I loved Mandy Patinkin. Mandy was a riot. But… I don’t know. It was a lot of silly stuff, creatively. And we had this English director who I wasn’t really that fond of. I mean, nice guy, but… it was just one of those things where, you know, you don’t quit, you get through it. It certainly wasn’t one of… I wouldn’t write it down as one of my favorite movies. But it was pretty popular.

Mireille Enos:

Without Consent (1994)—“Naomi”
Face Of Evil (1996)—“Brianne Dwyer”

The farthest back of your onscreen roles that I could find was a pair of TV movies: Without Consent and Face Of Evil.

Mireille Enos: [Laughs.] Face Of Evil! Yeah, that’s the one with Tracey Gold, right? Where I get killed in an airport bathroom and then shoved into a suitcase and thrown into a landfill. It was a very unhappy ending for me.

Have you still got that one on your highlight reel?

No. I do not. [Laughs.] In fact, I think that’s still the only thing my mother has never seen of mine, because she couldn’t bear to see me end that way.

So how did you find your way into acting in the first place? Was it something you started in childhood, or did you get into it in your teens?

Well, growing up, my older siblings were very involved in theater, and it always seemed like such a magical world to be a part of, so I started in school. By the time I was in my teens, it seemed pretty clear that that’s what I wanted to pursue.

You started in theater. Do you recall what your first theatrical production of note was?

My first theatrical production of note… was probably The Diary Of Anne Frank in my senior year of high school. I played Anne.

How did you go about making the jump from stage to in front of the camera?

Well, I started out in New York, and the theater was where I was initially the most comfortable. I definitely did a little TV here in New York, but I was predominantly focused on theater. Then, after doing a long run of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway and the West End, I decided that I was ready to shake things up and head west. Once I got to L.A., within that first year, I had gotten the twins on Big Love, and it just went steadily from there.

Virginia Madsen:

Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)—“Louise Marcus”

Virginia Madsen: Oh, my God, that was such a ridiculous movie. But I’ll tell you why I did that film. It’s funny because it was between me and Sharon Stone. Me and Sharon were up against each other for at least five movies. I would get one, she wouldn’t, and then she would get one and I wouldn’t. So, of course, she ended up winning the lottery, and I got Highlander II. [Laughs.] But I’ll tell you why I did that movie: I got to go to Argentina for three months and work with Sean Connery. That was my entire reasoning for doing that movie.

Oh, it was heaven. It was a great adventure. And I loved Christopher [Lambert]. He was such a sweet guy. He was a real bad boy in those days, but he wasn’t with me. He was very sweet, and it was wonderful to watch him work because the material was so silly, but he had so much action he had to do. I saw him work a 23-hour day one time, and he never complained. I was coming into work as he was finishing a night shoot, and he was going to sleep in his trailer for two and a half hours and then do another whole day of shooting… and he did.

Some really wonderful stories came out of that. I got to bring my best friend to Argentina, I got to bring my boyfriend, I got to bring my mother, and I got to dance with Sean Connery! On more than one occasion. [Laughs.] I would go out to tango bars with him. This one particular tango bar that was off the beaten path, where only local people went. It was just really terrific to be around a man like him. He’s another one of those really manly men who like women, and he was very supportive of me. My career was kind of inching along at that point, I was a little bit worried about what I was doing, and he was kind of like, “In the end, it doesn’t matter. Just do it and have fun. Have fun with your life!” I was like, “Thanks, Sean!” He was very sweet to me. A very nice man. Very gentlemanly.

But all of us were told by production that nobody was to mention the B-word, that he didn’t want to talk about or be referred to as James Bond. If you did that, you could be fired. It was a really, really serious thing. And I was like, “That’s bullshit! Are we not supposed to talk about Tarzan with Christopher, either?” And they’re like, “Listen, just be respectful.” I was like, “Of course! Don’t tell me that! Of course I’m going to be respectful! But those are some of the greatest movies in movie history! How can I not ask him about James Bond?” They’re like, “Virginia, it’s the rules. It’s been decided. And if you make trouble…” So I was incensed because I didn’t like these people very much. So I made a T-shirt that said “Jane” on the front and “Moneypenny” on the back. [Laughs.] And the first day that Sean came to work, I went up to the set and I said, “Oh, my God! James Bond!” And he turned around, a big smile, and hugged me. I said, “I hope you don’t mind, but they instructed me not to say that, and I just don’t like to do what I’m told.” And he said, “Then we’ll be friends.” That’s what kind of guy he was.

Elliott Gould:

M*A*S*H (1970)—“Trapper John McIntyre”

Elliott Gould: To start this story, I have to tell you about the first time I was fired. I was fired twice from Broadway shows, and I mentioned one to you earlier, but both times the shows didn’t work. This one was called A Way Of Life, a play by Murray Schisgal that I had auditioned for prior to participating in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, but I went into the rehearsals, and first they fired the director, then they fired me. I don’t even know if it ever opened. [It did not. —ed.] But I came back out to California and was asked to meet Robert Altman.

So I went to 20th Century Fox and met him in his office, just the two of us, and he gave me the script by Ring Lardner Jr. I read the script, I came back, and he said, “Would you consider playing Duke?” This was the American Southerner, which went on to be Tom Skerritt’s part. I said, “I’ve never questioned an offer, but I’ll drive myself crazy. I’ll be so intense being an American Southerner. I could do it, I have an ear for accents, but… if you haven’t cast this character of Trapper John, I’ve got the juice, I’ve got the energy, I’ve got the spirit that you want for that. And the heart.” And he cast me. It’s like he let me cast myself. And the rest is history!

Then he asked me to have lunch with Donald Sutherland alone—Donald was cast before me—at the commissary at Fox. When we sat down to lunch, the first moment, I felt we didn’t like one another, but Donald and I became very, very close. How it worked was that Donald and I would be together, we were both inseparable during the course of that production, and then Bob was directing us. But there was this one scene where both Donald and me, we were a little taken aback by the way Bob was working. Donald and I were coming from different places, but we were two people who both took ourselves very seriously. You know, a couple of asshole actors. [Laughs.] And we weren’t getting how innovational Bob was being. Bob thought we wanted to get him fired. We didn’t, but we didn’t understand what he was doing, either, so we complained about him. On a Saturday, we met with Dick Shepherd, who was our agent, and we complained, and then Bob painted me after the picture as being his enemy. Well, you know how I feel about Bob Altman now. I was so blessed to be able to get past myself ,to do the work that I was able to do with him, and I’m honored that he liked me.

There’s one scene where we’re all playing poker, the guys from the other camp who were going to play football are there, and Bob said to me, “In the scene, I want you to turn around and look at the guy wearing sunglasses with mirrors on them, and when you realize that he’s standing behind you, I want you to say to him, ‘There’s two ways of getting killed in this war: You go out on the front and you fight, or you stand behind me wearing those glasses when I’m playing poker.’” But then Bob said to me, “I can’t keep my eyes off of you. It’s distracting.” I said, “So don’t look at me, then. I’m always in character, Bob. Look at what I’m doing in concert with what you’re shooting, and then you tell me and I’ll make an adjustment.” And the next day he came back to me after he saw the dailies, and he said, “You’re right.”

Sometimes Bob could get flustered, because he sometimes would be given a hard time by management. Historically, the studio would give Bob a hard time because he was so inventive and so original. So there was a crane shot that had to move over a body of water, but now we’re looking at the time, and we’re approaching lunch… and if you get to lunch, they call it the golden hour, where the people get paid a lot of extra money. So Bob was really pressing, and he was a little flustered, but we were able to get it. It’s in the picture. And then we went to lunch. Corey Fischer was there, who was one of the members of The Committee, an improvisational political comedy group from San Francisco, and Bob said to me, “You’re ruining it for me! Why can’t you be like someone else?” And he pointed to Corey Fischer, which… I mean, I loved Corey Fischer, but the idea that I should be like somebody else? That I should act like somebody else? Well, I revolted. I started shaking, I threw my lunch, and I said, “You motherfucker! Fuck you, man! I’m not gonna stick my neck out for you again! Just tell me what you want, and that’s what you’ll get!” And Bob said to me, “I think I made a mistake.” And I said, “I think so!” And Bob said, “I apologize.” And I said, “I accept.”

By the way, that scene… later on, Sylvester Stallone said to me that he was there that day. He was an extra. And he said to me, “I don’t admit that I was an extra in many pictures, but I admit that I was an extra in M*A*S*H.” I thought that was sort of touching. But I told Bob Altman, and he said, “No! I do not accept that! I do not accept that Sylvester Stallone was an extra in my movie!” [Laughs.] God, Robert Altman… You’ll bring me to tears. I mean, he was like my father. I just loved him, and there was so much other work, more work that we talked about and would’ve loved to have done together.