Random Reminiscing: Looking Back at my Many Random Roles Interviews (Part 9 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!

Brooke Shields:

Pretty Baby (1978)—“Violet”
Endless Love (1981)—“Jade Butterfield”

Brooke Shields: Endless Love was the second time I was ever seriously directed in my early years. That was [Franco] Zeffirelli, and it was not pleasant. At all. But I look back, and I can actually say that Pretty Baby and Endless Love are the only two movies from my youth—let’s say pre-college—that I’m really proud of. And it’s an example of European directors… not that European is better than American, because this is not that, but at that time there was an aesthetic and an uncompromising nature, and they were less impressed with celebrity than they were demanding of talent. So with those movies…

With Pretty Baby I wasn’t well-known, but by the time of Endless Love, I had a reputation of being a well-known person, and, thank God, someone like Zeffirelli, that wasn’t enough for him. We filmed the whole last scene, the kind of rape scene—well, not really rape, but—we filmed it four-and-a-half months after we wrapped. Because Zeffirelli said, “This is not strong enough, it’s not good enough, we need a better ending.” And I was miserable having to go back, but it was some of the best stuff I think I’ve ever done. There’s an example of a director who wouldn’t accept less from his actors.

Preceding that, then, what was the Pretty Baby experience like?

Louis Malle… He didn’t micromanage me, he didn’t support me a whole lot, but you knew that he wouldn’t let something pass by that was less than what he wanted. I don’t know that I knew that at that age, though. I was just all about being a good kid and wanting to be liked and wanting to be accepted and get the stamp of approval. So having said that, you knew that he was very hard to get approval from, so when you did get it… He never stopped until he got what he wanted, so when you finally did get that approval, you knew it was warranted.

Given your age at the time, were you aware of the controversy surrounding the film and its subject matter?

No, because the filming of the movie didn’t feel terribly controversial. I mean, the subject matter felt… adult. But it didn’t feel taboo in the way the early 1900s dealt with it. I came from Manhattan. Like, I knew 42nd Street and prostitutes, I’d seen the drugs, and I knew about the streets you didn’t go to. And here was this elaborate, beautiful home with someone who protected the girls, so… there was sort of a romantic nature to it. And it was all fake and cinematic, you know? And I was a virgin myself, and I certainly didn’t my lose my virginity while I was on the film. [Laughs.] So… I think it was not nearly as traumatic for me as it seemed to be for other people and what they projected onto it.

Toby Jones:

Infamous (2006)—“Truman Capote”

Toby Jones: I’d done a play which involved having guest stars on every night, different guest celebrities came and took part in the show. When it toured to Broadway, I was invited to read a one-man show called Tru that I think Robert Morse made famous. It was a one-man show about Truman at the end of his life. I didn’t end up doing that, but the person who showed me the script said, “There is a script about Truman Capote that’s going around. You should get your agent to look into it.” By the time I got back to England—this is 2003—my agent had heard of this script, and she said, “Johnny Depp and Sean Penn are looking at the script, but I think you should look at it.” To be honest, as an actor, you learn not to get your hopes up too high when you hear those names ahead of you in the queue. [Laughs.]

But a year after that, for whatever reason, I finally met Doug McGrath, the writer/director. We had a meeting, and he says that he was thrilled because I looked so like him already that he felt that he could make me really look like Truman Capote. But the big test was the screen test, and we had that the following day. And because it was the first lead role I’d played on screen, I think I’ll never have another job like that again. The script for Infamous was so poised between tragedy and comedy. It’s a dream part. One reads those scripts with a sense of melancholia. When you read a script that good… I remember thinking, “Oh, this script is too good. They’ll never give it to me.” [Laughs.] And you learn to protect yourself when you’re starting out as an actor with these sorts of premonitions of failure: “It’s not gonna happen, so don’t get your hopes up.”

Dabney Coleman:

Nothing Personal(1980)—“Dickerson”
North Dallas Forty(1979)—“Emmett”

Dabney Coleman: Speaking of that kind of stuff, there was a line in a movie I did called Nothing Personal, with Donald Sutherland and Suzanne Somers, who is a fantastic actress and really got screwed out of a great career. She’s a terrific actress, comedy or otherwise, and a wonderful human being. Do you know her at all?

I’ve never had the pleasure.

Well, God almighty, you’ve missed something. She’s an angel. At any rate, there’s a line in that movie that I created. I was playing a bad guy, and I had an associate with me in the car, and I was following somebody. It was… oh, who’s that fella? Very erudite guy who spent quite a bit of time on Broadway. Roscoe Lee Browne. Very successful writer as well. To set this up, this was after Roots. But we’re following someone, we know it’s gonna be the next guy who comes out of the door, and when he comes down the stairs and out of the apartment, I made up this line that I’m very proud of. I said, “Damn! He looks like that black actor… the one that wasn’t in Roots!”

Now, I heard you laugh just then, and I don’t know if you’re faking it or not, but either way, it’s by far the best reaction I’ve ever gotten to that line. [Laughs.] I thought it was hysterical, but nobody else seemed to get it.

And speaking of making up lines, in North Dallas Forty, I’m talking to Nick Nolte, we’re gonna cut him because I didn’t like him, because I knew he was flirting with my fiancée. And the line was something like, “I guess you’re gonna be playing your football in the Canadian Football League,” but instead of saying that, I changed it to, “So I guess that’s it, Phil. Oh, uh, by the way… do you speak Canadian at all?” [Laughs.]

Now, why am I jerking off like this? Why am I telling you this stuff? I hope this is the kind of stuff you want, ’cause I don’t know if it’s gonna make sense in the context of what you’re writing. But I hope to hell it does.

Lily Tomlin:

The Late Show (1977)—“Margo”

Lily Tomlin: C’mon, Art Carney and Bill Macy? It was Bob Benton’s second picture, and he wrote it. And Altman produced it. But it was done very low-budget. The woman who played the owner of the house that Art rented [Ruth Nelson], she was the wife of John Cromwell, the great director whose son is James Cromwell. Anyway, I thought that was an interesting bit of a trivia. And then both Ruth and John were in one of Altman’s films together a little bit after that [3 Women] But now I’m definitely giving you too much information. [Laughs.]

AVC: How was the experience of playing against Art Carney, given that the two of you were of decidedly different generations?

LT: Yeah, right, I’d be in his generation now, wouldn’t I? We made that in ’76, so that was 35 years ago. Wow. Yeah, I loved him. But I didn’t get on with the crew at all, because it was a very inexpensive movie, and they had to bounce light from the ceiling just to light something. They were forever saying to me, “Well, just hold your head up.” [Laughs.] Because Art had this florid skin and white hair, so he looked great, he had so much light coming off of him, anyway. But I had this black hair and a long face and more olive skin, or at least not rosy like his. So I began taking a mirror on the set, and I could tell just from feeling that the light wasn’t good, but I took the mirror to be, like, my substantiation. I said, “I’m not going to shoot until you give me at least an eye light or something in my face.” Anyway, it got really bad. Although I knew Altman better, I didn’t go to him right away. I went to Bob Benton first, and I said, “Bob, no one understands that my hair is really black.” Do you want to hear all of these details?

AVC: Absolutely.

LT: Okay, well, my hair looks like shoe polish, but without the shine. But they were just being dismissive of how it was going to look. The director of photography just said to me, “Oh, you’re a pretty girl. I’d marry you.” I mean, stuff like that. And, of course, I was starting to boil by the minute, that’s when I started to bring the mirror on the set. Then Bob Altman called me. We used to go to his office at Lion’s Gate Films [Altman’s production company, no relation to the current Lionsgate Entertainment —ed.], which was over in Westwood, and we’d look at dailies every night. He calls me one night and says, “Y’know, the guys say you’re giving them a really hard time…” I said, “I’m not gonna take the rap for this, Bob. These guys, they’re just not paying any attention to me, they don’t care what I say, they don’t try to help me, or make it look better or anything.”

So they said they were going to try to light me better, but they were really meaner than I’m telling you. I’m not really even telling you the full story on the crew, because they could be really vicious. Especially in those days. I mean, the stand-in girl, they would shoot beer all over her. This is because Bob Benton is such a mild-mannered guy compared to Altman, and he had Altman’s crew, and Altman’s crew was just… Altman could control them, because they were totally cowed by him and his presence. But Bob Benton was a much milder and much smaller guy compared to Altman, and they just ran roughshod over him! So, yeah, they would shoot beer on the girl, who was wearing a T-shirt, so she’d have a wet T-shirt, and they’d literally throw her from one guy to the next. There’d be sexist jokes and homophobic jokes and racist jokes. I’d say, “Don’t ever tell those jokes in my presence again!” [Laughs.] I was just unbearable for them.

But you know when they really started to admire me? When I did all the driving on the film myself, running over lawns and knocking down things, I could see that their attitude changed a little bit. It was so funny. And after I talked with Altman, he talked to them, and he said, “Okay, if you won’t take the mirror on the set, they’re gonna light you better. And then we’ll come back here and look at dailies, and if everyone agrees that it’s better, then everything will be fine.” So I did that. I didn’t take a mirror on the set, we shot for a couple of days, we went and looked at dailies, and it was improved. And I said, “Okay, if I look this well the rest of the movie, that’ll be fine.” And then the DP walks past me and says, “You always looked like that.” He was so mad. Then the next day, we go to the set and we’re shooting the scene that was in the laundromat, where Bill Macy is doing his laundry, and all the guys in the crew hold up a big sign that says, “Pretty is as pretty does.” And I said, “Do you guys really think that’s amusing?” It just went on and on.

But, of course, all this time, Art Carney was just “hail fellow, well met.” He was so dear, honest to God. He would play the piano. Someplace on the set we had a piano, and he’d play it. The crew just adored Art. It was only me they loathed. [Laughs.] At one point, I said, “Look, you guys go on to the next movie and it doesn’t matter. I have to try and get another movie!” But later I saw it printed in Time, and it was the exact opposite: “You guys have to try and get another movie. I’ll just go on to my next movie.” Okay, that’s it, now you’ve heard that story.

Jami Gertz:

Square Pegs(1982-1983)—“Muffy Tepperman”

Jami Gertz: For me, I think that’s the definitive moment where I became this actor. You know? There were little things I had done, like a week on Endless Love, but that was… First of all, it was the first time I saw women in such impressive roles. Anne Beatts was our creator; most of the staff were female writers, from SNL and other places, but just really brilliant women. Kim Friedman was a female director we had. It was the first time as a young girl—I was 16 when I did the pilot—that I saw such creative women all around me. And it had an effect on my mother as well, who came with me, because I was a minor at the time. But she got a job after Square Pegs was over. She decided to go out into the work force after being on Square Pegs and seeing all these women working and creating and just being creative. So I think it had a profound effect on my mother as well as myself.

I think it was a groundbreaking show at the time. It’s so funny, because our ratings were… We were canceled with, like, 22 million viewers a week. That’s how many viewers you would get for that show. And I just ate it up. I loved the character. I just adored Sarah Jessica Parker. We were very close on that show, and we lived at the Oakwood Garden Apartments, and her mother, Barbara, was just such a bright woman. I remember we would just listen to NPR all the time. Barbara would make sure that we listened to NPR, and Barbara and my mom would take us to museums and plays. It was just a magical time of working really hard, working with amazing people. Bill Murray played a substitute teacher on the show!

So do you have a Bill Murray anecdote? It seems like everybody’s got one.

Well, he’s just such a character! Because I was from Chicago, he called me “Chicago.” And I had just gotten my driver’s license, so he threw me the keys to his car at lunch one time and said, “Let’s go!” And I got in the car, and we just started driving around. We went to In-and-Out Burger in Norwalk, California, and I think they started looking for us, because he had absconded with a minor! [Laughs.] But I was like, “Mr. Murray, I know how to drive!” So he threw me the keys to this, like, Mercedes convertible, and we were just driving around for an hour during lunch. We came back to, like, “Where the hell were you?” And he’s like, “She just learned how to drive!”

So, yeah, he became a friend of mine for a while there, and I did some improv with him back in Chicago, with Del Close. He really introduced me into the improv world and what improv is all about. In fact, there was a small time there where we were… well, he was trying to get a movie through improvisation, and he had put together a whole group of people, including Dana Delaney, Bud Cort, Bill Irwin, Brian Doyle Murray, and Bill. And for a couple of months there, he was trying to get a movie script through improv. I mean, it never happened, but for me, I think I was 19, maybe only 18 at the time. We went to study with Del at Second City, then we went to New York and studied, and we would just do improv all day long. It was very interesting, and it was like school for me. It was like a master class in improv. 

Danny Huston:

The Proposition (2005)—“Arthur Burns”

Danny Huston: I suppose evil is his lover, but he doesn’t necessarily see himself as that. He’s quite a romantic, in a cosmic kind of way. He has a strong sense of family. He has his own family values. He’s like a mystic. Yes, maybe a little psychotic, but I have great affection for Arthur Burns. I really do. He’s somebody who I think has a way of seeing the world that’s maybe not necessarily what we want to see, but it is a truth.

How was Nick Cave to work with?

Fantastic. Nick would come in in his suit in the middle of Australia, and it was very hot. Beer has never tasted so good. But he was there for the rehearsals with Guy Pearce, and I said, “So how long have these guys been in jail? When did they come over?” Things like that. And Nick would roll his eyes and say, “Well, I don’t know!” [Laughs.] Well, okay! You know, I think of all the films I’ve done, it’s the one that stayed the closest to the original script. I wish it had gotten a bit more love, because it’s a film I absolutely adore. But with that said, Nick also said one of the most annoying things about it: “It took me three weeks to write the script: one week to figure out the script-writing program and two weeks to actually type out the story.” I’ve never had a script come that easy!

Dominic West:

The Wire (2002-2008)—“Detective James ‘Jimmy’ McNulty”

Dominic West: Yeah, that was a good job. [Laughs.] Not bad. Well, I mean, that’s the reason anyone knows me, isn’t it? And there are still people coming up who are just discovering The Wire. It’s amazing. It started back 10 years ago, and it’s got an amazing life after. I suppose it happily coincided with the start of box sets and binge viewing. That’s a great development, and The Wire was a perfect sort of thing for that. But Jimmy McNulty, I don’t know what to say about him. I’ve talked about him so much, I don’t know what to say now!

Well, let’s talk about the American accent. How long did it take you to get it down?

Oh, I never found that very easy. I always found that difficult, and especially when we had English directors. We had quite a few English directors, and every time we had one, my accent went out the window. So, yeah, I found that really hard, because—well, in one way, even though I’m English, I’ve all my life been heavily exposed to American television and culture in general, so I knew the accent. We all do. But on the other hand, I’ve been watching American cop shows all my life and loving them, so I always had it in my head this sort of critic, this imposter syndrome, saying, “I used to run around pretending I was Starsky and Hutch or Kojak, and now I’m actually running around pretending to be an American cop!” I always felt like I was being a bit of an imposter and that nobody would believe me. But fortunately they did.

Do you have a favorite of McNulty’s storylines?

Oh, fuck. Well, I really enjoyed the fifth season. I really enjoyed the fake serial killer. That was really a great storyline for McNulty. But I really liked the crashing the car and reversing, ’cause that actually happened. It was based on a cop who was called [Terrence] McLarney. So I was sort of in some ways based on him. And he actually did that. He used to drink and fight and crash his car, and he couldn’t work out how he crashed it, so he reversed and did it again to see what the trajectory was, and… I think he flipped the car. Which we didn’t write in the scene, but he flipped the car, the police came, and he wound down his window—he’s upside down—and he said, “Do we have a problem here?” [Laughs.] He should’ve kept that bit in!

Was it frustrating that The Wire didn’t get any Emmy love in its time?

Well, initially. And then it was like we were really just hoping that we would get absolutely none, because to have got one award, or to have gotten one just for sound or something… But we actually got nothing. [Laughs.] And that was quite gratifying, because then you can think, “Okay, well, the awards are stupid, then.” And I continued to think awards were stupid for a long time, until this year, when I won one. And now, of course, I think they’re absolutely marvelous!

Rob Paulsen:

Body Double (1984)—“Cameraman”

Rob Paulsen: Oh, dear. [Laughs.] That is an interesting story, actually. My son was coming along, and I remember that my agent called me—I was still doing live-action stuff at that point—and said, “Hey, Brian De Palma wants you to come in and read for him.” And I said, “Wow! That’s pretty cool!” I don’t know how the hell he knew who I was, but I was happy to do that, because he had actually just come off of directing Scarface, and Scarface had a lot of press that was very… [Hesitates.] Not criticizing, really. I mean, the movie got pretty good notices, and it was a successful movie. But [De Palma] had gotten a lot of reviews that suggested that the violence of Scarface should’ve made it an X-rated movie. Mind you, this was 28 years ago, so the stuff that was considered racy or violent then was nothing compared to what it is now. I read an article in the L.A. Times where Brian De Palma said, “You know what? Screw those people. If they want an X-rated movie, I’ll give ’em one!” And that movie was Body Double.

I remember going to audition for Body Double, and I read for a different role, and when I went in, I read the part, and Brian said, “Put the script down, let’s just improvise.” And I’m comfortable with that, so we did. And by the time I got home, I had a message on my machine from my agent, saying, “Hey, Brian loved you! He doesn’t necessarily want you for the part he read you for, but he really loved you and wants to use you. It’ll be three or four days.” And I said, “Oh, great!” Mind you, I was in my late 20s at the time, Brian De Palma was a big deal, and it was a Columbia Pictures movie, his first movie after Scarface. So they just said, “Your call time is such and such, you’re going way down on Melrose, way past Hollywood. It’s Melrose and Heliotrope, it’s an abandoned warehouse, and you’re going to shoot your stuff there.”

So I drove down there, and they said, “Your scenes are going to be with Craig Wasson and Melanie Griffith, the stars of the film.” And I remember Steve Burum was the director of photography, a very well-known and excellent DP, and, of course, De Palma’s there, too. Now, I knew that the movie had something to do with the adult-movie business, but I didn’t know that I was going to be involved in the parts that were directly involved in the adult-movie business. [Laughs.] But when I got down there, they just kind of handed me the script and said, “You’re this guy.” And then the guy that was playing the director in the adult movie was Al Israel, a really intense actor who got a lot of notices for being the chainsaw guy in Scarface. So I was already thinking, “Wow, this is really weird…” And then as I was getting ready to do my scenes, they brought Melanie and Craig in, and then they also had a bunch of extras who were real adult-movie actors, and… It was all just really bizarre for a young man from Flint, Michigan. [Laughs.] I mean, I’d already been out here for about five years or so by that point, but it was still pretty disconcerting. But I didn’t have the guts to say, “I can’t do this.” I don’t think it was purely discomfort. It was a little bit of consternation, but also going, “Wow, what the hell is going on here?”

So these folks were all in various stages of undress, and Melanie was very uncomfortable with all of the people there, so the only crew that were allowed on the set were the DP, Brian De Palma, and… that was it, actually. The rest of us were actors. And it was a very odd circumstance. They shot more than [they] ended up [using]. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. [Laughs.] I was on the movie for three days, and I remember coming home and telling my wife, “Wow, that was a bizarre experience. At least I know I’m making some diaper money, but it was pretty wild.” Luckily, I didn’t have to take off my clothes. Nobody’s going to want to see me naked, anyway. Trust me.

Years later, my son was about 16, he had a bunch of buddies over, and they were watching movies. I’d already gone to bed, and he came in and said [whispers loudly], “Hey, Dad!” He woke me up, and I said, “Yeah! You okay?” He said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh… Were you in a movie called Body Double?” And I heard my wife immediately laugh. He and his buddies were watching Body Double, and they saw me. Then he said, “That was so cool!” I said, “It wasn’t really that cool, buddy, but…” [Laughs.] So it came back to haunt me. And it shows up every now and then in articles like this or whatever. But, hey, if you decide to be in show business or politics, your life is an open book. So I have no problem with people asking about it. I suppose it’s a left-handed compliment: When you achieve a certain modicum of celebrity—and I don’t consider myself a celebrity, but other people do—your past is available. Whether it hurts you or helps you, it’s all fair game.