The Expurgated Bits: Troy Evans

Sometimes my interviews for other outlets go long. When they do, here's where you can find the bits that had to be cut.

After promising it on social media, not to mention in the comments section of the A.V. Club, the time has come to unveil the remainder of the anecdotes that Troy Evans blessed me with during his Random Roles interview.

Spoiler alert: we did not discuss Near Dark. But we did discuss a bunch of other good stuff. In fact, if you find yourself reading these additional anecdotes and thinking, “Man, this is good enough to pay for,” and you don’t already have a paid subscription, then this would be the perfect time to remedy that situation, and it would be greatly appreciated.

To set the stage, I’ll just say that the first anecdote is one that was excised from Troy’s story about working on Soap, which - as I discovered (and which you probably also discovered) during our conversation for the A.V. Club - was his first on-camera appearance, as opposed to the episode of Lou Grant, which is what IMDb assured me was his first on-camera appearance. Anyway, the Soap story leads into a Lou Grant story, which in turn leads into a story about his days in a rock ‘n’ roll band, and from there you should be able to find your way without any further assistance.

Read on, and enjoy!

Troy Evans: Do you know what craft services is?

Oh, absolutely. 

Okay, well, for anyone out there who might not, craft service... It evolved, but it used to be basically the janitor on the set, and they still have those responsibilities, to keep things neat and cleaned up and taken care of. But their main job is providing a constant supply of treats and snacks and food and drink for cast and crew, who often are long, long hours on the set. But I was totally oblivious to this, and I show up on the set early morning, very hungry, really broke, and the craft services are set up along one wall. And I look at it for about two hours...and I finally went over there and said to the guy, "Um, how much are the donuts?" He said, "They're free!" I said, "Excuse me?" He said, "They're free!" "The donuts are free?" It's all free! It's free food! That's what it is!" I'm, like, "Oh, my God! I'm never leaving this business!" [Laughs.] So that's my first-day story.

That's awesome. By the way, as far as that Lou Grant episode goes, I realized two-and-a-half minutes into it that I'd just seen the entirety of your performance. 

[Laughs.] Well, I do have a story about that one also. We were shooting on location out in Van Nuys, right in a little business district, we had cast chairs set up out on the sidewalk, and I'm sitting out there in a cast chair, waiting to go in and do the scene. And this elderly woman goes by with one of those little personal shopping carts, the little two-wheel jobbers that people take to the grocery store, and she said, "Making a movie?" I said, "Yeah, well, we're making a TV show." She said, "Oh!" So she went off, she went to the store, got her groceries, and then maybe 40 minutes or so later she's coming back, she's got her stuff in her little cart, and she looked over at me in utter disgust. And she said, "Still making the same movie?" I said, "Uh, yes." She said [Huffily.] "No wonder it costs so much!" 

You mentioned that you're a vet, you spent some time behind bars... But I'm more interested in the fact that, before either of those things, you were in a guitarist in a rock and roll band.

Troy Evans: Yes! I should've sent you a picture. [Laughs.] I started a band in Kalispell, Montana in about 1962, '63, something like that. We were called Gang Grien, spelled that way for no particular reason. I loved rock and roll, and I recruited these other people, and I had the good sense and the good taste that all the other members of the band were pretty skilled musicians...and I was, to be honest, an atonal ignoramus. But I owned a car, the P.A. system, I did the booking, handled all the business, and...it's shocking in retrospect. We had a five-piece band, and we'd play usually at least one gig every weekend. We'd travel mostly to little towns around northwest Montana, and what we frequently did...Well, like, we'd go down to Polson, which was 40 or 50 miles south, and I'd rent the VFW hall, and we'd hire a couple of off-duty cops to do the door, and we'd charge a dollar to get in. This is 1962. To put it in context, I had a good-quality used car - I had a 15-year-old Chevy with less than 20,000 miles on it that I paid $150 for. And that wasn't, like, a screaming deal, that's just what things cost. Now, how much do you think we made a night?

I don’t know. Maybe 20 bucks each?

A hundred dollars a piece. And sometimes more. But if you're a musician playing in L.A. today, it's rare to be able to make a hundred dollars for a night's work! It was probably 30-35 years ago when I had friends who were real musicians that were trying to break into the music business, and they'd get a gig at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go, and that was a $1500 gig. That is, the band would pay the Whiskey $1500 to play for one hour. The whole idea is to try to get record people to come see you at the Whiskey during the hour that you're there. So they had to work whatever kind of jobs they could get to get $1500 together to do an audition at the Whiskey that they had to pay for. I have no idea what that is now, but...that's a perverted system, man. That is sick.

So we played, and then we went to college together. We left in the fall of 1966 and went down to Missoula and started school at the University of Montana in Missoula, and...I was way more interested in my rock and roll business than I was in going to class. And in those days, if you didn't go to class, you got drafted and sent to Vietnam...which is what happened to me! And all my bandmates...were so happy. [Laughs.] It took them, like, 12 seconds to get an actual guitar player! I can remember being onstage, I'm playing this guitar solo, I'm wailing away, and our sax player turns and looks at me and says, "What are you playing?" I said, "I'm playing what I feel!" He said, "Well, play something in B-flat, motherfucker!" But honest to God - and I probably shouldn't tell people this - but for a guy who was working and making money as a professional musician, not only could I not hear pitch, but to this day I don't really understand what that means. The whole concept is lost on me! So I'm probably better off not in that business. [Laughs.] So there you go. Is that enough rock and roll for you?

Wizards and Warriors (1983)—“Homer”

Cheers (1985)—“Cop”

When you messaged me, you brought up that I was on Dungeons and Dragons.

Close enough: it was called Wizards and Warriors.

Wizards and Warriors! Yeah, well, one of those things. This and that. [Laughs.] Anyway, I wanted to tell you a couple of things, because you mentioned seeing John Ratzenberger in it. At that time, John Ratzenberger were...roughly on the same level. He was maybe a little bit up the ladder from me. But we're doing that Wizards and Warriors, and I was a blacksmith, and...I remember when I got there they put me in this sleeveless thing, and then the director got really pissed off because I didn't look strong enough. So he made them get me a long-sleeved shirt so I wouldn't look like a pussy over there blacksmithing! But John Ratzenberger was telling me that he'd just done a thing... He did a pilot, and he didn't think it would go, but he said, "If they play the pilot, watch it, because it's really funny." And it was something called Cheers. He'd just done the pilot for that. How'd that work out?

Not bad.

[Laughs.] Yeah, it worked out pretty good, didn't it?

And then you proceeded to pop up on an episode of that, too. 

Yeah: "The Mail Goes to Jail." That was the episode. And I'll tell you... You know, I'm aggravated with John Ratzenberger, because he inhabits a political world that I find disturbing. However! It happened that the episode of Cheers I was doing was the week before Christmas. So we finish the episode, and they have the curtain call, and of course I'm a guest on the show, a cop with one scene, maybe two, I don't know, but it wasn't a gigantic role. So the audience is applauding and everything, and then the producers came out, and they had presents for everybody, which they presented in front of the audience...to everybody except me. They didn't have enough for the cop.

And John Ratzenberger ran back to his dressing room and got some Cheers swag and gave it to me for Christmas. The producers didn't think of it, but John Ratzenberger, instead of just taking his shit and going, his Rolex watch or whatever the fuck they were giving out, he grabbed me... I don't remember what it was, but it was, like, a coffee mug, a t-shirt, and that kind of thing. And I've always remembered that. It was a moment of kindness and consideration. He's a nice guy.

The Black Dahlia (2006)—“Chief Ted Green”

Oh, very interesting! We shot that in Bulgaria. The car picks me up at the airport, and...this is common with almost any location movie you go on: what they found for a headquarters for the film was this industrial building out on the outskirts of Sofia, with this two-lane highway going by. There was a loading dock out there, and it's just a place they can get cheap, set up their offices, do some small scenes maybe. They do that whether they're here or South Carolina or Sofia, Bulgaria! So a car takes me from the airport and drops me not at the hotel but at this industrial building out on this highway.

So I'm just sitting there on this loading dock, because I figured eventually somebody would show up and take me to the hotel or something, and these big trucks are zooming back and forth on this highway...and here comes a wagon. And the wagon was, like, the bed of an old truck that had been cut off, and it was being pulled by a big old work horse. There wasn't an actual seat on the front, but an old man and a young girl were sitting on the front edge of this wagon, and they come to this same place. They're going, like, 5-7 miles an hour, and the trucks are doing 75 miles an hour. And what was that truck delivering to the movie company?

I have no clue.

Apple Computers. [Laughs.] Isn't that a magnificent moment? So, yeah, that was interesting. And I'll tell you one other thing: on the top floor of the hotel in Sofia, there was a casino. And one day I walked out to some local restaurant to eat, and I come back to the hotel, and there's a bunch of black SUVs out front. And each SUV has two big burly guys in overcoats standing by it, and they're just sitting out there. So I walk up to the doorman, and I say, "Hey, what's with the SUVs?" And he said, "Do not look at them. They are not normal people." They were Russian mafia. That's who they were. I went up to the casino one time, and they had guys standing around in the casino with AK-47s. I was, like, "I don't think I really want to play poker here." [Laughs.] Not my idea of a good time.

I’ll Remember April (1999)— “Chief Harrigan”

I know you did at least one other movie with Bob Clark, because it's one that's come up in another Random Roles interview: I'll Remember April, which was the first time Mark Harmon teamed up with his wife, Pam Dawber, for a film.

Yes! And I have to tell you about Mark Harmon. We live in a very cool old house in L.A. If you want to Google it, it's called the Hiiner House. Hiner was Doc Hiner, who was... [Hesitates.] Do you know who John Philip Sousa was?

Yeah, sure.

It's amazing, I'd say that less than half the population now knows. 20 years ago, everybody knew who he was, but that's fading. But Doc Hiner was Sousa's cornetist, and he built this stone house here in this neighborhood of Highland Park in L.A., and Bob Clark used our house for Harmon's home in that movie.

Mark Harmon was so nice, including... I've never heard of anything like this. Well, first I'll tell you the little thing. He's doing a scene with his son on the stairs, and our cat just went in and climbed up on his lap. Now, this is a sign of a really good actor: he didn't go, "What the fuck is this cat..." He just starts petting the cat and completed the scene, and that's the shot they used. It was wonderful, and it completely sold that he was sitting in his house, with his son and his pet cat and all. But the other thing is... Now, they weren't here a long time - three days, maybe four days at the outside - and then we got a package, and he sent us a beautiful set of vintage candlesticks to go with our hundred-year-old house. Who does that? You know, the movie company's paying to rent the house. But he liked the house, and he liked us, so he sent those to us. I thought, "That's a classy guy." 

Teen Wolf (1985)—“Dragon Basketball Coach”

You mentioned that you'd already worked with Michael J. Fox before. Did you actually have a Teen Wolf story?

I did, but it's actually about Jay Tarses. He's a writer and producer as well, but he's a wonderful, splendid guy. Very, very funny, very dry. So I'm on the set, and I was pretty green in those days, and very happy to be there. This guy's obviously a pro, so I'm watching him. And there was a makeup woman who was really a beauty. I mean, she stood out in the Hollywood crowd. So I'm there, she comes out of her trailer, and Jay Tarses says to her, "I'd eat bees for you." [Laughs.] Now, how's that for a pickup line?

Well, crew people don't really want to get involved with actors. Actors are trouble. But she's intrigued, and she says, "Well, what are you?" He says, "What do you mean?" "Are you an actor?" He said, "Well, no! I mean, in this, yeah, sure. In this movie. But in life, no. No, I...do other things." She said, "What other things do you do?" And he said, "I'm a chiropractor. Do you want an adjustment?" [Laughs.] There’s always a story...

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1996)—“Bibbo Bibbowski”

I can't remember exactly what the plot was, but I was in a bar, [Dean Cain] was in a bar, and I'm supposed to punch him in the stomach. And, y'know, at that time I'm probably a 210 lb. guy, but a pretty good-sized guy, and I'm a Vietnam vet, I used to box when I was a kid, I was a bar owner in Montana... I've been around a little bit, y'know? So they try a couple of takes, and I'm supposed to punch him in the gut, and they come over and say, "When you're punching him, it looks really phony." I'm, like, "Well, geez, I don't want to hurt him!" And Dean Cain said, "Just hit me!" "Well..." "Just hit me!" "Well, okay..." So we start the scene, and I step in, and I gave him my best shot right in the solar plexus...and then I went... [Does a double take.] And I looked him in the face, because my hand felt like I had punched a steel beam! I've never encountered another human being with that composition. It was not like a human body. It was Superman! Holy crap...

Hannah Montana (2009)—“Jerry”

Nothing spectacular about that one. I had a really nice time, though. Both Miley Cyrus and her dad (Billy Ray) were really nice. They found out I was from Montana and like that. That was when Obama was running for office, so I brought them in some Obama bumper stickers, and they were really happy to get those. But I think she was, like, 13 or 14, something like that, and that was the focus of the show. It was an early-teens show. I was... I think I was a guy who ran a junk shop, and they bought a junky car from me, or something like that. But it wasn't like I hung out with her or got to know her or anything. It was just do the job and go home.

Frank’s Place (1988)—“Kirby”

What I remember... [Hesitates.] I loved that show. Frank's Place was just a great, great show. And the part I had wasn't much, but in that episode, there was a character actor - not super famous, but really well-known in the business - and that was his last job. He died after that. But he was the rich guy, and what the episode turned on was that they were closing up, it's a real quiet night, it's late, and I show up, I'm a chauffeur, and I have my rich customer in the car. And he comes in and pays them $500 to open the kitchen for him. So they do it, but they're all pissed off about it. They wanted to go home, and here's this guy, just waving his money around, and they took it as an insult to the cook. "Oh, he's paying $500, and he wants a grilled cheese sandwich!" But the resolution of the episode was, in the end, before we leave, he goes to the crew and he says, "Listen, I appreciate what you did for me, and if you can make a grilled cheese sandwich sing like that, you can cook anything." So it had a super nice little message at the end of it, and it was just one of those sets where - at the risk of sounding corny - the set was just full of dignity and respect. 

I'll tell you another funny thing that happened. There was a guy in that cast who had a new girlfriend, and he was very excited to show everybody his new girlfriend. Well, his new girlfriend was Kelly McGillis! And you know the place I was talking about in Santa Maria? The first place I worked, where I met Jeff Combs? Kelly McGillis had been a student of mine in Santa Maria. So she got there, and...I had the smallest part in the episode - I'm the chauffeur: I bring the guy in and I sit and wait - but Kelly McGillis was very happy to see me, and the guy who thought he was gonna marry her or something, he was quite disappointed that she was more interested in the chauffeur! [Laughs.] She's a very nice person, by the way. 

That's awesome. Oh, and I looked up the episode, and I think the character actor you were referring to was Kenneth McMillan.

[Long pause.] Maybe. It's been awhile. [Laughs.] But, anyway, that's what I remember about Frank's Place!

Article 99 (1992)—“Pat Travis”

The Year of Spectacular Men (2017)—“Sketch”

I can only imagine that one had a personal meaning to you, being a veteran.

Oh, yeah. Wonderful story, start to finish. A guy named Howie Deutch directed that, and Howie has directed a lot of stuff. He's a really talented man and a really nice man, and he had an assistant named Elaina Spiotta. I mentioned how I have a one-man show that I've done periodically over the past 40 or 50 years, telling true stories about my life. Well, they we working on this movie, and they needed Pat Travis, who was a Korea vet. I'm a Vietnam vet, but he's a Korea vet, and it's in a veterans hospital. Well, Elaina saw my show, and she brought Howie to the show, and then Howie asked me to do that movie. 

We shot it in Kansas City, and I don't know if you've seen the movie, but it's Forrest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Kiefer Sutherland, Lea Thompson, John Mahoney... It's just loaded with fabulous, fabulous people. And it was a really interesting shooting situation, because what they got was this hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. It was a vintage hospital building, and they had built across the street a brand new hospital, and then on the day they'd just picked everybody up and taken them out of the old hospital and and put them across the street into the new hospital. So everything was there, including...a lot of the rooms still had clothes in the closets! The rooms had the hospital beds and the TVs up with the corded remote so it wouldn't come off the TV. Transportation had the garage, and there was room for sets, and the production company was in the offices... The whole movie company, we had our own building. So it was a far different social energy than you usually get, because we were all there together, all the time. 

I think of this almost every day, but Eli Wallach... Bless his heart. He had a part in that movie, and one day, out of the blue, he said to me, "Kid, you're an artist. But you're an artist in a business. And being an artist in a business is like being a cocka-roach in an elephant's ear." [Laughs.] Now, first of all, I loved that he said "cocka-roach." And I don't know exactly what he meant, but what it meant to me is - and it's very true - I might be along for the ride, but I'm not driving. I'm just a little bug up in the ear! 

So we're all together, and we didn't have trailers outside or anything. We had hospital rooms! We each had two of those reclining beds, and two TVs... I just loved that movie. And that's the only movie where I was included in the PR tour. We went all over the country and we did screenings, and...people loved that movie. And we thought we were going to the Academy Awards with that movie. But it was a company called Orion Studios, and...most people don't know this, but it costs at least as much to open a movie as it costs to make a movie. If you spent $50 million to make the movie, you need another $50 million, because think about it: you have to have prints all over the place, in hundreds and hundreds of theaters, you need posters, newspaper ads, television ads... They don't give that shit away. And Orion was broke., They had, like, 25 or 30 movies on the shelf, and for their last gasp, they went through and decided that because of Ray Liotta and Forrest and Eli Wallach and Lea Thompson and this list goes on. John C. McGinley...

Keith David.

Keith David, for sure! Who also came from the little theater in Santa Maria! The little theater that could, brother.

No kidding!

So anyway, Orion decided that of all the movies they had, the one they could open would be Article 99, because of the cast. And what they planned to do was what's called platforming. Inside of a wide opening, they'd open it in L.A., New York, maybe Chicago, a handful of theaters, hardly any advertising, but then all those names. So the idea is, the people would come to theater and go, "Well, look who's in this movie! Let's go see this!" Well, it opened the same fucking day as Wayne's World...and it was never heard from again. It opened, and it was gone in two days. 

Oh, but here's one other story about a person I encountered doing publicity for the movie in New York. I was staying in the Plaza Hotel, and I had a driver picking me up at 11 a.m., and he was taking me to some kind of interview somewhere. I came down, and I don't know if you've ever been to the plaza, but there's sort of a rounded porch that goes around the corner of the hotel, and you come out, and you're on a raised cement porch, and then it goes down to the sidewalk and two different streets there. And I come out one door...and right next to me, unbeknownst to me, this other guy named Donald J. Trump came out of the other door. 

 I'm just looking for my driver...and a guy on the sidewalk turns and points up there and goes, "Hey, hey, hey! Look, look, look, look!" And Donald J. Trump turns into the Statue of Liberty. [Laughs.] Because there's somebody pointing up there, y'know? But then the guy said, "Look! It's that guy from China Beach!" I'm about four feet from Donald Trump, and I looked over at him. He looked at me like I was eating a baby. That's as much hatred as I've ever seen in a person's face. And it was because someone was interested in me instead of in him...and in front of his fucking hotel. He couldn't stand it.

Just as a sidebar, I noticed that a couple of years ago you also got directed by Lea Thompson (in The Year of Spectacular Men.)

Oh, yes, that's right, in her movie!

Yeah, I just happened to notice that credit, and I was, like, "Oh, so he was directed by both husband and wife!"

Yeah! And I'll tell you another funny thing about them. About that time, my wife and I had bought my parents' house on a beautiful lake up in northwest Montana. It's on Flathead Lake. It's just a little thing, only 180 square miles or something like that, but it's a beautiful, glacier-fed, pure mountain lake. It's just magnificent. And we had this funky old hundred-year-old farmhouse at the head of the lake, and they came up to visit Heather and I. And then they went over by Big Fort, which is the other side of the lake, and they bought a place over there. We sold our place a few years ago, and I think they sold theirs, too, but we were sort of neighbors up there in Montana for a couple of decades. They're really good people.

Is there a project in your back catalog that didn't get the love that you thought it deserved?

Well, at the top of that list would have to be Article 99. And the interesting thing about that is... You know, I'm in close contact with the Vietnam vets community, being part of that community. And those are the people who've seen that movie and love that movie and know what that movie is about. So in that way, it was a success. But I really wish more people had seen it, because I really liked the message of it, but also because that's probably the best part I ever had in a movie, and nobody saw it. We actors, we sort of like to be seen. [Laughs.] It's part of the game.

Life Goes On (1991-1993)—“Artie McDonald”

Oh, that was lovely! That was really, really great. It was one of those dream jobs, because it was a handyman. I think he was a guy who had, like, a handyman service, sort of a carpenter kind of guy. It was just one episode...and then I ended up doing, what, 20? They just kept writing for me! I mean, they wrote some really sweet stuff. When the older daughter was pregnant, she was in trouble, and I was the one who helped her out and told her that no matter what she did, I'd take care of her. So that was really nice. Now, here, I'll tell you an actor's story. Have we talked about M.C. Gainey?

We haven't. But I certainly know him.

Yeah, M.C. and I, we go way back. We were roommates together back in the late '70s. M.C. is - and always has been - a handful, man. I mean, he's super talented, he's a super good guy, but he's a freakin' madman. So I get the audition for Life Goes On, and I drive over to Warner Brothers and get on the lot, and the audition was in one of these little bungalows, with a little garden outside. I go in, and - as it used to be - there were, like, 15 guys in there...and one of 'em is M.C. Gainey! And I said, "Hey, M.C.!" And he got up and stomped out of the room and goes out into the fucking garden.

I went out, and I said, "What the fuck is going on? What's going on with you?" He said, "Jesus Christ! Did you see that room in there? Did you see those guys in that room? I got this audition, I come in there, there's all those guys sitting there... This is my fucking job! You see anybody in there who's gonna beat me for this? And then here you come!" I said, "What, you think I'm gonna automatically get the fucking job? And you can't take a little competition? How do you think the other guys feel? They'd all like to do the part, too! Why don't you calm down and go in and do your audition?" He said, "All right, all right..."

So we go inside and we sit. Everybody auditions. Then we went to lunch, and I bought him lunch - he's pretty calmed down - and we went home. Then I called him up at about four that afternoon. I said, "Hey, M.C., did you hear anything about Life Goes On?" He says, "No, I don't think I got it." I said, "I don't think so, either, 'cause I got it, motherfucker!" [Cackles.] It's probably the meanest phone call I've ever made in my life. Ah, and it's a moment I treasure...

By the way, Bill Smitrovich told me to tell you that he said "hello."

Oh! Just now?

AVC: Well, when I first mentioned on social media that I was going to be talking to you, he made a point of saying, "Ask him about doing Life Goes On."

Oh, okay! You know, Bill Smitrovich is probably too nice to be in this business. He's just a mensch, man. A wonderful guy.