Random Reminiscing: Looking Back at my Many Random Roles Interviews (Part 3 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!
Glynn Turman:
The Richard Pryor Special? (1977)—“Booster Johnson”
Glynn Turman: Oh, we had so much fun. Richard and I, we used to all hang out back in the day. Me and Richard and one of his friends and writers, Paul Mooney. So we were all friends back in the day, hung out at all kinds of places together when we were young. He got this show, and he said, [Does perfect Pryor impression] “Glynn, they done fucked up!” “What you mean, Richard?” “They done fucked up!” “What are you talking about?” “They done gave me a television series!” I said, “Oh, yeah, you right. They done fucked up.” [Laughs.] He said, “Well, come on, man, let’s go fuck ’em up!”
And we did that! That’s what we did. When we did that scene…we did that scene in the hallway of NBC Studios over in Burbank, and we used all the Wheel of Fortune props. We were grabbing and stealing shit off of the show, we’re taking all this shit, and I’m, like, “Richard, I don’t know if we ought to be doing this…” He said, “Fuck it! Take it! Take that shit! You think I’m gonna pay for this shit?” [Wipes tears from his eyes.] Oh, my goodness…
Diedrich Bader:
The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)—“Jethro Bodine”
You mentioned being classically trained, which may surprise some people, but Jim Varney was classically trained as well.
Diedrich Bader: Yes, he was. Absolutely. And in stark contrast to me, he actually still remembered all of his lines from Shakespeare, which was incredible to me. [Laughs.] What a great guy to hang out with, too. A great on-set personality, and a great joker. Just great to be around. A really warm, lovely, nice guy. That was an interesting role, too. It got kind of got me on the big screen for the first time, and working with all those real vets was a real lesson for me, especially from Cloris [Leachman]. I learned a lot.
Were you a fan of the original series?
Yeah, I was, actually. I really liked it. You know, it’s sweet. I’m from Virginia, so the Southern thing… Some Southerners didn’t like it, but I did. It had a sweet sense of humor. One of the great things about doing the movie was that I probably watched a hundred episodes of the show before we started rolling, and it was really funny. It’s really underestimated. It’s the perfect sitcom, in that the situation is the star. You’re putting these people into the situation, and it’s a very clean setup. What you’ll notice now on a lot of sitcoms is that they’ll have jokes that literally could’ve been anywhere, in any situation. But they really wrote to the situation on the show, and it was a beautiful thing. It’s very pure that way.
Did you ever meet the original Jethro, Max Baer, Jr.?
I did. One of the things people said was that I wasn’t big enough to play Jethro. I’m 6’2”, 210 pounds… I’m a big guy, and nobody ever told me I was too small to play anything. So I’m like, “Come on!” And then I met Max. That guy is huge. Oh, my God, he’s huge. You have to remember that his father was the heavyweight champion of the world, but his hand is, like, the size of a ham. It’s enormous. You don’t want to get hit with that. It’s massive.
Did he like your performance?
We didn’t discuss it, because we met before the movie came out. They were shooting some sort of Hillbillies reunion show for CBS, and I came down to the set. So I actually got to see him do Jethro, which was kind of cool. Unfortunately, it was after we’d finished shooting, so it didn’t really help my performance. If only we’d done a sequel. My God, what I could’ve brought to the table… [Laughs.]
Bruce Greenwood:
The Malibu Bikini Shop (1986)—“Todd”
Bruce Greenwood: Possibly my finest work. [Laughs.] Except for Bear Island, that’s just about as far back as you can go, and I don’t think you can unearth anything more ludicrous than that. What can I say, man? I’d been in town a month, and I thought it was a movie. A few years ago, it suddenly burped back onto the horizon and started getting played on TV again, so of course a couple of friends of mine called me and said, “Oh my God!” So my wife and I watched it one night, and I realized that I had so much energy back then that, if you watch the movie, I literally run into every scene. No matter what the scene requires. I just ran into the scene. Kind of a precursor to Michael Richards on Seinfeld. [Laughs.]
So you’re saying you were the Kramer of the Malibu Bikini Shop cast?
Oh God, no. I’m not saying that at all. [Laughs.] That would be giving me way too much credit.
Lea Thompson:
The Wild Life (1984)—“Anita”
Lea Thompson: Oh, wow! That part was really interesting on two levels. One, that’s how I got Back To The Future, because they were looking at Eric Stoltz for Marty McFly, and they were, like, “Who’s that girl?” So that’s how I got the first audition for that. The other thing was that I actually had a topless scene that they cut out of the movie. [Laughs.] I found that really interesting to have my breasts cut out of a movie that was basically a teen exploitation film. I was, like, “Really?”
Was that a blow to your ego?
Actually, it was a calculation on my part. It was contractually obligated, so I said, “If I’m going to have to do this, it’s not going to be stupid. It’s going to be really sexy.” And that’s what happened, and because of that, it was too sexy for the movie. [Laughs.] It was like, “Wow, this is a really sexy scene!” It didn’t fit with the tone of the movie, so they took it out. So, y’know, it was mission accomplished, actually, on my part. I outsmarted them. That was in the scene with Hart Bochner, by the way. The scene’s still in the movie, but they cut before he unbuttons my blouse. Kind of a funny accomplishment, but take note, teenage girls in exploitation films: Make the scene sexy!
You realize, of course, that this will cause countless men in their 40s to rise up and demand a special-edition DVD of The Wild Life.
Well, that’s okay. Because, y’know, I was only 22. Trust me, the boobs were looking good.
Andie MacDowell:
Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes (1984)—“Miss Jane Porter”
Andie MacDowell: Well, Cameroon was amazing. Not many people have been to Cameroon. The locations that we went to were astounding, and the sets themselves were gorgeous as well. The clothes were beautiful. There were corsets. That scene with Christopher [Lambert] on the bed, with him jumping around and going, [makes monkey sounds]. That’s a pretty vivid memory. [Laughs.] I remember the actors wearing [Rick Baker’s] monkey suits and how they had to completely cover their eyes while wearing those really hot costumes. Oh, and working with Ralph [Richardson]. Sir Ralph.
There was a lot of British acting royalty in that cast. Was it intimidating, given that it was your first film?
I felt a little bit like a fish out of water, you know, just because I’d never experienced it. Everybody else knew what they were doing, and I didn’t quite know what to expect. It was a huge movie, too, which is kind of a hard way to start. I wouldn’t suggest that to anyone. Start with a small film. Start small and build up to something like that, because it was enormous, with a lot of attention on it.
What was your reaction when you found out about the post-production dubbing? [After the completion of filming, it was decided somewhere up the food chain that MacDowell’s Southern accent was inappropriate for the character. As a result, her dialogue was dubbed in post-production by Glenn Close. —ed.]
I was shocked, for starters, because I had no idea. And how I found out, I felt, was cruel. I went over to do looping, and they kind of told me. I was by myself. My agent didn’t know. Nobody knew. I thought the way they did it was very underhanded and thoughtless. I still ended up making the sounds for the baby being born in the jungle, but… well, you can imagine that ended up being pretty easy, because I was in so much pain after that. I fought really hard to redub it myself, but it was really… I had a lump in my throat the whole time, so I’m surprised I even made it through. It was horrible. [Hesitates.] I thought about jumping out a window. Seriously, I did. Because I kind of knew what the fight was going to be for me. And I was correct. I was right.
But, you know, in the end, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me in my career, because it made me work really hard, and it made me more appreciative, and it made me very humble. And it taught me huge life lessons about arrogance and hard work. I’m really not talking about my arrogance, I’m talking about how the world judges people. So I think it taught me a lot. It made me who I am. It’s one of those horrible things that happens to someone where, at the moment it happens, it’s debilitating and heart-wrenching, but when you look back, you know that you overcame what most people could never overcome. So in the end, if you ask me, it’s the greatest accomplishment of my life. Well, as far as my work goes. That’s not including my children. [Laughs.] But it was a huge accomplishment. I look back at it, and I really feel like I overcame the impossible.
Sam Neill:
Sleeping Dogs (1977)—“Smith”
Sam Neill: Wow. You see, that was my first feature film of all, with my friend Roger Donaldson, and there I really had no idea what I was doing. [Laughs.] In fact, none of us did. Apart from Michael Seresin, who shot it, no one on that production had ever made a feature film before. In fact, there hadn’t been a feature film made in New Zealand for something like 17 years. So we were really… We lit a little candle, which didn’t illuminate much of the darkness in front of us, but we got through it. It’s a very uneven film, and I’m pretty uneven in it. [Laughs.]
Oh, actually, the other person on the film who had any experience was, of course, the wonderful Warren Oates. He came in for about two weeks, I think, and… [Laughs.] He discovered on day one, I think, that in the area of New Zealand where we were working, they grow the best marijuana, and so he was basically smoking joints all day. In some of the scenes where he’s playing Col. Willoughby, a U.S. army advisor in New Zealand, he’s addressing his men with his hands behind his back, and you might even possibly detect the little curving smoke behind his right shoulder, because he wouldn’t even put the joint aside when the camera was rolling. He just put it behind his back!
But Warren was a lovely guy, and when he left—I’ll never forget this, actually: He shook my hand, and he said, “Goodbye, Sam! I’ll see you in the movies!” It was such a surprising thing for him to say, but I was very touched by it. I never saw him again, because he died rather young not very long after that. But he lived hard, you know. And he had some great stories of the madness of working with Sam Peckinpah.
Kevin Pollak:
Morton & Hayes (1991)—“Chick Morton”
Kevin Pollak: Oh, my. Have you actually seen this?
Some of it. There are a surprising number of clips on YouTube, albeit in bite-size chunks.
Oh, wow. Well, it was an extraordinary auditioning process. This was prior to A Few Good Men, and Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest created this show that would star two actors who would be basically a combination of Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello.
Each week, Rob Reiner would start the show, playing himself and addressing the camera, saying, “Hi, I’m Rob Reiner. When I was a kid, I was always a big fan of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and my favorite comedy team for the ’30s, Chick Morton and Eddie Hayes. Basically, while construction workers were tearing down a Frosty Freeze to make room for a Dairy Queen—or vice versa—they discovered a vault filled with old two-reelers starring Morton and Hayes. We dusted them off, and each week we’ll present one to you. Tonight’s is entitled ‘Society Saps.’” And then he’d press his button on the television, and then this black and white, 20-minute two-reeler would unfold as if it had been shot in the ’30s.
There you go. Act that. [Laughs.] You know, the comedy timing and the sensibility of making ’30s comedy… I don’t know why we ended up on CBS. We were a summer series. This was… 1990, I wanna say, or ’91 maybe, so you’re talking about a time when a summer series meant there were original shows on during the summer, period. How about that? So it was a six-week run, and… [Starts to laugh.] I just remember there was a great picture of Rob with his arms around me and Bob Amaral, who played Eddie Hayes, and it was on the cover of every TV supplement of every newspaper around the country. That was the biggest thrill of all. But then, y’know, Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner? And Michael McKean was there for a lot of ’em. Peter Smoklar, the DP, has been doing It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia for their whole run. Just some very creative, wonderful people. And, again, a type of comedy acting that doesn’t exist anymore. It seemed then and does to this day, some twenty years later, to be a one-of-a-kind, ridiculously rare opportunity just as a performer to be able to do 1930s comedy for real, as if you’re trying to be it. I guess it’s not too dissimilar to The Artist. I guess the big similarity would be that it’s of that period. And then the giant difference would be that The Artist was insanely successful. [Laughs.]
Rachael Harris:
Treehouse Trolls: Forest Of Fun And Wonder (1992)—“Big Mama”
This credit sounds way too good to be true.
Rachael Harris: And yet that is, in fact, accurate. [Laughs.] I did that when I was living in New York City, trying to get stage work. You know those characters that walk around Disneyland with the big heads? Yep, that’s what I wore. It was a live-action thing like Barney, and that’s how big the costume was. The head was huge. I wish I could find a copy of it. I have never seen it. But that was one of my first jobs. Actually, I did an episode of Hard Copy. That was my first job ever in New York, when I was living there. It was a reenactment. I would pay big money to find that. [Laughs.] But Treehouse Trolls, that just came out of an audition in this shitty theater. Like, it wasn’t even a theater. It was a room. Near Times Square. And I was like, “I hope this is a legitimate audition. I could be going in for a porn. I don’t know.” It was like, Backstage East. [Audibly shudders.] Ugh. I mean, good God. I could’ve died so many times.
AVC: So what do you think you brought to the character of Big Mama?
RH: [Laughs.] I have no idea. I don’t remember a single line. I think I’ve tried to block that out.
AVC: Surely you at least remember what the inside of the huge head smelled like.
RH: I don’t! I don’t remember what the head smelled like! I just remember—okay, this is what I remember thinking: “Oh, my God, I hope it gets better than this.” [Laughs.] But also, at the time, I was like, “This is awesome! I have a job! I’m getting paid!” Because I’m from Ohio, I grew up in the Midwest, and honestly, I think at that time—you know, I take that back. I don’t think it was, “Oh my God, I hope it gets better than this.” I think I was like, “Okay, here we go. I’m getting paid. I’m getting paid to act. Yes, I’m in an outfit like a Disneyland walking character, but I’m getting paid to pretend I’m somebody else… and she happens to have the name Big Mama.” [Laughs.]
[Note: Although the following clip provides a general idea of Harris’ work for the Treehouse Trolls franchise, she can neither nor confirm nor deny that it’s her under the Mama head. Or, to more precisely quote her Tweeted reply, “Just watched the video. Scared the shit balls out of me. If it’s me, I blocked it out.”]
Martha Plimpton:
The Mosquito Coast (1986)—“Emily Spellgood”
Martha Plimpton: Oh my God, I loved that character. That was just awesome. First of all, I got to play Andre Gregory’s daughter, and even though it was a small role, I was down there in Belize, where we shot the movie for quite a long time—maybe even for about a third of production I was down there—and… Okay, first of all, the character’s just so weird. She’s this missionary’s daughter who’s all sort of decked out in ’80s new-wave teenybopper garb in the middle of this jungle, with her Walkman and her Lolita sunglasses. I think this may be the only time any director has ever cast me in the role of a sexually forward young person. Actually, young or otherwise. [Laughs.] And I was a little shy about that. I was only, like, 15 when we shot that. But it was an incredible experience, and it changed my life.
Peter Weir remains one of my favorite directors of all time, someone I would beat people over the head to work with again. And Helen Mirren! I mean, I remember when I came on set and she was there, and… I don’t know if you remember this, but of course she was in one of the greatest movies about the Middle Ages ever: Excalibur. I thought she was one of the most beautiful things to ever have existed, and I was enthralled by her and wanted to be like her and wanted to become her when I got older. And, of course, personally that movie had a huge impact on my life. And also, being in Belize, being in Central America in the mid-’80s was an incredible experience for a 15-year-old kid. I mean, in the time that I wasn’t shooting down there, I went traveling around Belize and Guatemala and saw some extraordinary things. You know, I will say that, in talking about all this, it makes me think how many incredible experiences I’ve had and how many extraordinary places I’ve been because of my job. The incredible people I’ve gotten to work with, the astonishingly talented people I’ve gotten to meet and watch work over the years… I’ve been extremely fortunate, and I’m very grateful for that. But that movie, I think, ranks up there in my top five experiences, if not my top three.
You mentioned that the film had a huge impact on your life personally, but setting aside those personal aspects, how was the experience of working with River Phoenix as an actor?
It really was fantastic. It was good for me as a young actor to be in the company of another young actor who took his job seriously. I enjoyed that. That was rare for me. I knew what it was like to work with adults who took their job seriously, but most of the time if I was working with people my own age, they weren’t particularly interested in authenticity or studying what they were doing. So I think I had a kindred spirit there. And it was really great.