Random Reminiscing: Looking Back at my Many Random Roles Interviews (Part 14 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!
Christopher Meloni:
1st & Ten: The Championship (1989-1990)—“Johnny Gunn / Vito Del Greco”
Christopher Meloni: Man, you’re… [Starts to laugh.] You’re really bringing in the hard stuff, aren’t you? You’re throwing me fast balls! That was kind of… interesting. I think that was my first TV gig, so it was the first time I actually made what was to me very serious money. And I thought, “Wow, this is going to be my career!” And it lasted one season. I didn’t know they liked to get rid of their quarterbacks every year on that show. My high school football experience got me that job, and oh, boy, that was a tough one. That was tough.
How so?
I mean, it was an excuse for T&A, you know? And I didn’t realize it wasn’t Shakespeare. [Laughs.] I think I was a little bit at cross-purposes. Yeah, that was like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. God, man, you’re making me sweat…
I’m sorry.
No, you’re not. [Laughs.] No, you are not sorry. You are not sorry one bit!
Jeremy Piven:
Say Anything… (1989)—“Mark”
Singles (1992)—“Doug Hughley”
You did two films with Cameron Crowe. How did you fall into Say Anything…? Was it the connection with John Cusack, or was it incidental?
Jeremy Piven: I definitely got the audition because of… [Hesitates.] Well, wait, I don’t know. I know we were both represented by the same agency. But I got the audition, and we’re auditioning to be a bunch of friends of John [Cusack’s]—and we were friends of John’s—so we put together an audition tape of all the scenes and improvised. We did some very strange, naughty things. [Laughs.] We would just, like, do crazy shit like light things on fire, improvise songs that were, uh, apparently offensive… It was just a disaster. But I think it was all in the spirit of who these guys were. And, obviously, Cameron took to it. He’s another one of these guys who’s totally inspiring to me, another really authentic artist who’s true to him. So that was a really great experience. Also, the D.P. on that was László Kovács, one of the greatest D.P.s of all time. Working with him was amazing.
And Cameron just called you up and asked if you’d do that bit in Singles?
Yeah, from there we built a relationship, and I think he needed a little moment of something in Singles, so I headed up to Seattle and improvised that speech, and, you know, you work for scale, so you work for a couple hundred bucks. But because I said, “Oh, man, you’re my favorite DJ, you’re the only one who can mix Public Enemy and Elvis Costello,” and then started going, “What’s so funny ’bout / Peace! Peace! Peace! / Death row, what does a brother know / What’s so funny ’bout / Peace! Peace! Peace!” I cost them thousands of dollars, ’cause they had to get the rights to both of those songs. [Laughs.] They thought, “Oh, we’re gonna get Piven for $216, we’ll shoot him on a lunch break,” but they ended up hating me because they had to spend a ton of money to pay off Elvis Costello and Public Enemy!
Pamela Adlon:
Night Court (1984)—“Andy / Stella”
The Redd Foxx Show (1986)—“Toni Rutledge”
Pamela Adlon: This is craziness! Well, The Redd Foxx Show was funny because… It happened because they were casting this boy on the show that Redd’s character was going to foster. I had done an episode of Night Court not long before where I played a boy who turned out to be a girl, and I had just done an independent movie where they had cut all my hair off, and I literally looked like Bruce Springsteen at age 11. [Laughs.] So my agent at the time, Bob Gersh, said, “Why don’t you go in for this? Let’s see what we can do.” Then we came up with the concept that I would go in as a boy. The only people who were in on it were the casting people, and they introduced me to the producers as Paul Segall instead of Pamela Segall, through every single step of that show, up through the network level, where I read against five real guys. And they hired me! Then a few episodes into the season, they changed the character so that Rosanna DeSoto figures out that I’m really a girl, pretending to be a boy because Redd only wanted to foster a boy. That’s kind of what I did on Night Court: Bull, Richard Moll’s character, wanted to foster a kid, and I pretended to be a boy on that, too, with the big reveal that I was actually a girl. So that was part of my teenage years in ’80s television. Then I ended up playing boys throughout my life in animation!
Dare I ask what you learned from working with Redd Foxx?
Uh, hang on to your money? [Laughs.] Don’t do drugs? He was an angel. I loved him. He was so sweet, and he was so funny. I still have a couple of things he gave me. I have this can of hairspray called NapSnap. And you know he made albums, but he also made greeting cards. I remember he had one that said, “Money’s tight and times are hard, so here’s your fucking Christmas card.” He’s part of my coming up, working with legendary comedians. I worked with him, and then I ended up working with Andrew Dice Clay on [The Adventures Of] Ford Fairlane, and Louie, of course. It’s been a big part of my career.
Scott Baio:
Detonator (1998)—“Zack Ramses”
This feels like a must-ask just because it’s such a brilliant/ridiculous action-hero name.
Scott Baio: Ugh. Detonator. Well… [Sighs, then starts to laugh.] Uh…
If you start to discuss this and find yourself making a statement you wish to retract, let me know.
No. What happened was, I got a call to do a Roger Corman film, so I thought it was going to be an actual film by Roger Corman. You know, something along the lines of, like, Little Shop Of Horrors or something like that. A cheesy horror film. But then I read it, and I was like, “Uh, well, okay, this isn’t what I was expecting, but I guess they’re gonna turn it into something.” So I agreed to it, because I still thought it’d be cool to do a Roger Corman movie. Then I got to the set, and that’s when I realized that they weren’t trying to make a Roger Corman movie. The director was trying to make a serious movie! And I just went, “Oh, God… I’m stuck!” [Laughs.] And that was it. Sometimes I should read stuff a little bit closer than I do. I don’t like reading very much, and sometimes I get burned. But you know what? Nobody saw it. And even if they did see it, who cares anymore?
There’s not even a clip on YouTube, so you really dodged a bullet.
[Surprised.] Is there really not a clip on YouTube?
If there was, it would absolutely be accompanying the piece. But there isn’t.
[Well, there wasn’t one. But now there’s a trailer…and it’s glorious.]
Listen, I don’t know if that’s worse that Skatetown, U.S.A., or if Skatetown, U.S.A. is worse than that. I’ve seen neither one.
Skatetown, U.S.A. (1979)—“Richie”
Well, you opened yourself up for that one.
I did not remember that character’s name. I have blocked that movie from my memory, it was so bad. I remember shooting it at the Hollywood Palladium. I remember taking a picture with Patrick Swayze. He was in it. A lot of people were in it. I think the idea was, “If a lot of people are in it, maybe people will go see it.” That was that whole time where Xanadu and Roller Boogie and all that crap was coming out. That was one of those things where they sent me the script and I said “no,” but they just kept calling and offering more money! I mean, they offered me a lot of money. And finally I said, “Well, hell. What is it? Two weeks’ work? Whatever, okay, fine.” And it was… You know, sometimes money isn’t everything. [Laughs.] It was just bad. I mean, it was bad shooting it. I’m trying to think of any real stories that I have, but it was just insanity. When was that? ’79? It was just a guy making a film who didn’t know how to make a film, and I don’t even know what the story was! But Greg Bradford was in it, who I worked with later in Zapped! I’m sure you’re gonna get to that one. But Skatetown, U.S.A., that was crapola.
You made that comment about how a lot of people were in it, but it’s interesting to look at the headliners of the film: It’s you, Flip Wilson, Ron Palillo, Maureen McCormick, and Ruth Buzzi, none of whom were particularly known for film work.
Exactly! I think that and Can’t Stop The Music with Bruce Jenner might be two of the worst films ever made. That, and maybe The Lonely Lady, with Pia Zadora. That’s another real stinker.
Oh! I just remembered a great story about Skatetown. We were working nights, and we were on the Santa Monica pier. We were at the top of the pier—it must’ve been about 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, so it was completely dead, except maybe for a couple of junkies walking around—and the camera dolly was on top of the hill. I was sitting there, talking to somebody, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see the camera dolly starting to move very slowly by itself. And I didn’t really do anything, because it didn’t register. All of a sudden, it starts going… and going. And nobody can get in the way of this thing, because this was a big dolly. It got all the way to the bottom of the pier, hit the railing, the camera came off the head, and went flying into the ocean. It was awesome. [Laughs.] So there you go, there’s a story for you.
Jimmie Walker:
Guyver (1991)—“Striker”
Jimmie Walker: You know, it’s so strange, because I do so many shows on the road, and everybody always has Good Times stuff—J.J. dolls, albums, whatever—but about once a week, there’s a guy who shows up with a Guyver poster or picture or something. Everybody else is like, “Oh, I loved your show, I grew up with it,” but that guy is going [Lowers his voice.] “I saw Guyver, and I have it on DVD and VHS, and I watch it every week.” In every town, there’s always that one subterranean guy. I always tell the bouncers, “You’re gonna watch this guy. He might have a gun. He likes Guyver, so he’s obviously a sick bastard. [Laughs.]
How did that gig come about?
They saw me on Good Times. And I was liquid and fluid in those days, and they thought, “We need this wild, zany, kooky character,” and these were two cats from Japan. This was a comic book. I didn’t even know what the hell this Guyver thing was, but it’s a comic book in Japan, it’s a huge thing, and these guys came over to do this thing. The star of it is the guy from Star Wars, Mark Hamill, and, boy, they loved him! So he’s in it, and they just got the kookiest characters they could get to be in this thing. But I’ll tell you the honest-to-goodness truth: I still don’t know what the movie’s about. [Laughs.] I have no idea what the movie’s about.
But we shot down in this thing at, like, 1 o’clock in the morning, which is frightening. I mean, there’s homeless people, there’s people living in sewers… You’re just going, “What the fuck is happening down here?” [Laughs.] You know, you never even think about it, but we shot down there. There’s, like, a river flowing through it, and there’s people coming up out of it like zombies, and I’m just going, “What is this?”
Garrett Morris:
Little Richard (2000)—“Carl Rainey”
Garrett Morris: Yes! I sure did do that movie! I might say that I didn’t really like the way they backed away from getting… in-depth. That’s all I’m going to say, because I like Little Richard. I think Little Richard stands at the fulcrum of the breakthrough of rock ’n’ roll as it moved into our world—he’s not alone, but certainly him, Chuck Berry, and Ike Turner deserve a lot of credit—and Little Richard was always very obvious about who and what he was. But I was glad to be in a movie that was celebrating this great rock ’n’ roll genius.
You mentioned earlier that you’ve been singing since you were 4 years old, but you’ve also released a couple of albums.
Yeah, I actually just put one out called Black Creole Chronicles. My first professional singing was as a member of a gospel quartet that went around Louisiana. My grandfather, who was a minister, made me the first tenor, so I was singing gospel and blues before I ever started singing classical music. A lot of people know that I sing German lieder and French art songs and all that because I studied that in college, and I did make a lot of money singing German lieder stuff after I became a man. Actually, in my teens I started singing German lieder. But before that, I was more of a bluesman.
My grandfather… I don’t know if you know how revolutionary it was for a Baptist minister to let his grandson listen to Ray Charles and Ike Turner and Charles Brown and Bessie Smith and all of them. In the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s, blues was considered evil… and some people still say that! There’s still a little faction, a little sect of conservative Christians who still believe that. But back then you most definitely didn’t sing the blues if you were a church person, and you certainly didn’t let your grandson hear it, but he let me hear the blues and he let me hear Redd Foxx. He really was crazy. [Laughs.] He was out of his mind. But I still have the residue from that. My main man in the blues is Muddy Waters, and on my new CD, I do my version of “[I’m Your] Hooche Cooche Man.” I also do a song called “If Blues Was Money, I’d Be A Millionaire,” written by a friend of mine, Deacon Jones, who heads the band at my club, the Downtown Blues And Comedy Club.
I also do four songs of my own, one celebrating Storyville, which is the background to the French Quarter. If you know about the French Quarter, you should know about Storyville. I also do a thing called “Walkin’ Down Bourbon Street,” which is a song I wrote when I was at Saturday Night Live, when we were going to New Orleans. I figured I’d write a song—the hometown boy!—and do a video for the song, so I went into Lorne [Michaels’] office to pitch it, and it got zero. I realized then that, when you’re trying to pitch your ideas to a producer, you should go in with your boy or your girl who’s going to laugh at your shit. [Laughs.] Don’t go in by yourself and laugh at your own shit, okay?
But the song, “Walkin’ Down Bourbon Street,” when it was first written was called “Walkin’ Down Rampart Street,” because it was a celebration of the actual street where black people in New Orleans really hung out. It’s the same with 125th Street in Harlem, or Central Avenue in Los Angeles. Rampart Street was where the black people hung out in New Orleans, but then I changed it, because let’s face it: A lot of “in” people would know that, but people who don’t know much about New Orleans would respond more to Bourbon Street or Beale Street or Basin Street. So I went with Bourbon Street. There’s another song called “Livin’ On Top of the World,” and a love song I wrote to one of my ex-wives called “Come Back Valentine.” Anyway, the album’s on CD Baby, it’s on iTunes, and… the other thing. Amazon? Something like that. [Laughs.]
Since we’re discussing your singing, when Walter Matthau hosted Saturday Night Live, you sang an aria.
Walter Matthau demanded that.
How did he come to know that you could sing an aria?
Well, I expect he looked at Saturday Night Live. I sang all the time, and I sang a whole lot of different things. Matter of fact, I sang German lieder one time that they’d written a comic thing to accompany. German is my forte. I was doing French art songs, Italian art songs, English art songs, and Spanish art songs, but when I was doing German lieder… I was pretty good at it. People thought I spoke the fucking language. [Laughs.] In fact, after I did it on Saturday Night Live, they got letters from people, saying, “Does he speak German?”
But, anyway, Walter Matthau was a knockdown, drag-out fan of operatic tenors. He was traveling around with his cassette player and about 20 or 30 tenors singing arias. So he asked. He said, “When I do the show, can Garrett Morris sing without any accompaniment?” So I sang “Dalla Sua Pace” [from Don Giovanni].
How do you look back on your album Saturday Night Sweet?
I don’t. [Trails off.] That was when I made a lot of bad, fucked-up decisions. I blame myself for that tragedy. I was making a lot of bad decisions. I was very much into being dependent on cocaine. By the way, I don’t know you if know it, but I’m eight years away from that now. My “birthday” was in October. You know, you have your “birthday” when you quit. When I hooked up with cocaine, it was called “the white lady.” I don’t know if you knew that. But I found out that bitch was a hermaphrodite, and she had a penis about a mile long, and she shoved it up my ass said, “I’m going to keep it there for 30 years.” And she did. Thank you for laughing, by the way. But people will read that and say, “Ain’t that a shame, ain’t that a shame…”
Well, they may laugh, too—to be fair, your delivery was a thing of beauty—but your comments will certainly be taken in the spirit in which they were intended. Plus, it’s a lot easier to laugh knowing that you’re still here to laugh with.
That’s right, I’m still here. You’d better believe it!
Timothy Dalton:
Sextette (1978)—“Sir Michael Barrington”
Timothy Dalton: Ah. Well. Well, well, well. Now, then. Let’s see how we can dance around this one…
You can dance while “Love Will Keep Us Together” plays in the background, if you like.
Yesssssss. I tried singing that, you know.
Oh, I know. The clip is on YouTube.
Well then, you know I’m not a good singer. [Laughs.] But I don’t think that’s me doing the singing! I don’t think it is, anyway. Anyway, as you can imagine, it was one of the remarkable, interesting, and extraordinary pieces of work that I have ever been in. Well, for me, it’s more notable for meeting Mae West and getting to know her. She was… well, nobody really knew how old she was then. I think they lied to the insurance company—maybe they didn’t—and said that she was 84. But other sources said, “No, no, she can’t be 84. She’s got to be at least 87!” And one very reputable source said, “All wrong: She’s 91!” I mean, this woman was one of the great comedic film stars of, what, the ’20s? The ’30s? How long did her career go? Into the ’40s? Probably! But she was one of the great stars.
So I found myself talking to a woman who… [Hesitates.] Well, she couldn’t remember very much about now. That was hard. But she was pin sharp and crystal clear about life in New York in the 1890s! Now, when you’re talking to somebody who’s got that kind of experience and memory and can communicate it, it’s fascinating! I mean, this is a woman who, basically, lived at a time when the fastest a human being could travel wasn’t much faster than a horse could pull a wheel! Yes, they had steam engines, and maybe even the beginning of motorcars. I can’t remember when the motorcar was invented! Essentially, though, it was at a time when few people could go faster than a horse could pull a wheel, and by the time I was working with her, men had landed on the moon! In the movie, we even have a reference to “a small step for man.” She hadn’t a clue what that was about. [Laughs.] She had no idea what it was referencing. But her life had spanned the greatest technological upheaval in the history of human beings ever.
Anyway, she was fascinating in that sense to talk with, and she was fascinating to talk to about theater in New York. And, of course, beyond that, George Raft turned up for a line! I mean, it was an amazing, odd bunch of people as the cast. It was, again, a great experience. But not a good film, of course.
How much interaction, if any, did you have with the rock-star contingent of the cast?
Oh, do you mean Keith Moon? [Laughs.] He was great! Again I’m going to say it, but they were good people. He was terrific. But most people are, particularly if you’re having fun!