C. Adolph: Back to the film industry. What do you make of the sad state of the contemporary American cinema? What needs to be done to save it?

Robert Trebor: I dunno, destroy all the digital cameras??
Look we actually had a decent year in 2008. There were many wonderful films available to be seen. Any year that had In Bruges, Dark Knight, Milk, Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and Britney and Paris Go to the Bidet (or am I imagining that one?) can’t be all bad.
Aside from the years 1939 and 1969 critics have been bemoaning the declining state of cinema forever.

CA: Tell me about the industry today as opposed to when you broke into it back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. What’s changed for the working actor?

RT: Back in the “old days” an actor could establish “a quote”, meaning a fee above scale that your agent and a producer agreed upon and all future projects would either meet or exceed that quote. Now, unless you’re a “star named actor” (and I am not) you must accept scale plus 10% as a matter of course. Also there is more ageism for actors as well as the usual ageism there always was for actresses. I’ve been told many times, “we love you but you’re too old for the part” and this is when casting said the part was written for someone in their forties or fifties. They wind up casting someone in their early thirties.

CA: Let’s continue with the Hollywood talk. As a star and industry insider yourself, you have probably become inured to the excitement of celebrity. But as a film buff, who were you most in awe of upon meeting them?

RT: Probably John Frankenheimer, John Malkovich and Martin Sheen. Not just meeting them obviously, but working very closely with them over a number of days and, with Frankenheimer, weeks. I worked with William H. Macy, Dennis Quaid, and Rosanna Arquette when they were virtual unknowns. And now they never return my calls.

CA: What leading men influenced you?

RT: Sheen, and though I never met him, Jack Lemmon.

CA: Character actors?

RT: Alan Arkin, Peter Ustinov, Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Bert Lahr, Raymond Walburn, and Eddie Mayehoff.

CA: Actresses?

RT: Genevieve Bujold, Jean Arthur, Paulette Goddard, Jane Fonda.

CA: Directors?                                                                                                                                  
RT: The list is way too long. For a start, Frankenheimer, Wilder, Capra, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Fellini, Bergman, Truffaut, Coppola, Kazan, Moodysson and Damiano.

CA: Who’s your favorite person to have worked with?

RT: Martin Sheen.

CA: Least favorite person to have worked with?

RT: Don Johnson.

CA: With your inside scoop, who’s the most famous person in Hollywood whom we’d be shocked to find out is Republican?

RT: Maybe Gary Sinise??

CA: Name the three films you want to be buried with other than your own.

RT: It’s a Wonderful Life, Ikiru, and a documentary on the restoration of cryogenically frozen corpses.

CA: Who’s got more money, Spielberg or Lucas?

RT: Lucas, by a wide margin. He kept all merchandising rights for Star Wars which alone could buy and sell Iceland many times over.

CA: As a critic and film buff, what’s your favorite elitist cinematic term or word?

RT: “Neo-Godardian deconstructionist hogwash.”

CA: This is not a sexually euphemistic question. Are you a popcorn eater at the theater?

RT: Actually, since AMC theatres lets you bring in your own food, I’m more of a Teriyaki Chicken Bowl eater with more veggies substituting for excess rice. With a nice cold ginger beer to accompany it. MMMMnnnnn.

CA: Best movie of the last ten years?

RT: Spirited Away by Miyazaki. It’s so breathtakingly good on so many levels. Even the dubbed version (and I usually hate dubbed versions of anything). I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone with a pulse.
You can see it alone, with a child, with a lover, with a pet or any combination of the aforementioned and it keeps getting better with repeated viewings.

CA: Have the Scientologists completed their death ray yet?

RT: Yeah, it’s called Blu-Ray and it will destroy the American economy as we know it.

CA: Which film have you seen more than any other for whatever reason?

RT: Next to the last 5 minutes of Damiano’s The Devil in Miss Jones, because it’s the absolute best rendition of Sartre’s No Exit I’ve ever seen, probably Dr. Strangelove. It’s just so damned funny!

CA: Which is the better film, Godfather I or II?

RT: II. The play of the DeNiro historical segments intercut with the Pacino segments is absolutely astonishing and brilliant.
And frankly, and this is heretical, I’m not that impressed with Brando in the original. His work pales next to his genius as Terry Molloy in Waterfront in terms of sheer art and craft. It’s a fine performance, but I think it’s inferior to Pacino’s and not nearly as moving.
Let the hate mail commence.

CA: I saved my favorite film question for last. You are in a hypothetical situation wherein you can positively influence the future of filmmaking for generations to come. You are allowed a choice between two preconditioned courses of action. For the greater good, do you:

1.) Save the last remaining print of Citizen Kane?

OR

2.) Destroy all evidence that Michael Bay and his work ever existed?

RT: Save Kane, destroy all colorized copies of same, and use forced viewing of the film Pearl Harbor to extract info from terrorists in lieu of waterboarding.

CA: What’s on the horizon for you? Anything you’d like to plug to my readers? Either of them?

RT: Hopefully one of your astute, attractive and aesthetically adventurous, well-heeled readers would like to invest in an independent film that will cover everyone involved in glory and provide an inclusion in Halliwell’s Film Guide.
My screenplay, My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean, is ready to shoot; all I need is roughly $1.5 million.
Aside from that I’m always involved in new script workshops. I’m performing a delightful one for the next several nights called Oy To The World. Oh, and if anyone is close to a wonderful theatrical agent WITH CLOUT (I’m currently with Shleppers and Assoc. for film and TV) contact me.
Like almost everyone in Hollywood I’m looking for new representation. And if you see me on the street, ask to buy a copy of Dear Salmoneus. I’ve always got a few in the trunk.

C. Adolph: I couldn’t have been more excited when I found out that you also appreciate the genius of Brother Theodore (Theodore Gottlieb) and recently did a one-man stage show celebrating him. Did you have a personal connection to Brother Theodore? What inspired you to do a project about that strangely funny, brilliant man?

Robert Trebor: I saw the guy maybe a dozen times in the ‘80s, his midnight show in Greenwich Village. This is before I ever saw him on TV. The first time I saw him I thought he was having a conniption fit but very funny. Then I saw him several times after and understood he was following a very tightly written script. He was just an incredibly vital, compelling and dangerous performer.
I would actually take girlfriends there as a litmus test to see if they “got” his humor. If they didn’t, a relationship was unlikely. I hadn’t thought about him in years but, in 2006, I was invited to do a cabaret performance for the January 2007 Annual Xena Convention in Burbank. Now I had done many of these in addition to doing Q&A’s and autograph signings, usually doing an act called “Salmoneus Sings Songs in The Key of Money” (“If I Were A Rich Man,” “Brother Can you Spare a Dime,” “Monty Python’s Money Song,” etc), but this time I wanted to do something different, REALLY different. The idea of doing some of Theodore just occurred to me and I found some of his monologues in a book about performance artists of the 20th century.
I also remembered specific bits that were NOT in that book. Bits where he’d “assault” the audience with his flashlight and leering insults. I did some of this for Milton Katselas’ acting class and they went wild with enthusiasm. Some in the class actually knew Theodore, many had no idea who he was… but collectively they gave me a big thumbs up.
So I did it for the Xena Cabaret and, like Theodore’s actual shows, some people really got it… and many were left bewildered. I enlarged the show to about 45 to 50 minutes, the length of his shows in New York, and the rest is history.

CA: You were up for some awards for that, right?

RT: Yes. I was nominated for a 2008 Best Solo Performance of the Year for the LAWeekly Theatre Awards. Considering there are like sixty solo performances in Los Angeles in any year, it was an honor just to be nominated.

CA: I can’t tell you how many people I tried to persuade into appreciating Brother Theodore. I was very unsuccessful. It was the same with Captain Beefheart. Everyone thought me quite mad. Did you run into similar frustration?

RT: You bet. I did sixteen shows on successive Saturday nights, he always performed only late night on Saturdays well into his nineties, and maybe 200 people saw me in total. This was after I got rave reviews in several LA publications (you can Google them under the title The Return of Brother Theodore). If we got 35 people on any night it was a full house! Actors like Paul Dooley and Paul Provenza loved the show, saw it multiple times and brought their friends. But it was really a “Best Kept Secret” and, after we closed, many people came up to me and said “I wish I knew it was playing, I would have loved to have seen it!” Yeah, right.


CA: He gave us one of the greatest nihilistically ironic lines of all time, “As long as there’s death there’s hope”. Do you agree with that?

RT: I don’t know about agreeing, but many (non-humorous) philosophers believe that our knowledge of our own eventual demise helps to give our life meaning. We have a limited time to actually do something meaningful that can help leave the world a better place than before we arrived. So get started now, goddammit!

CA: How difficult was it adding material to his existing monologues? How did you match that inherent strangeness?

RT: Some of the reviews said I didn’t imitate Theodore but rather reincarnated him. I really channeled his madness and method. Once I was in that zone it really wasn’t hard. I could improvise as Theodore when kibbitzing with the audience. I didn’t see it as doing an act, but rather inhabiting a character who performed every Saturday night within his world view and background.

CA: For the unacquainted reader, Theodore was a Holocaust survivor and I believe he lost all of his family and fortune during the Nazi atrocities. Do you believe that the best comedy comes from a sense of suffering or places of deep sadness?

RT: Technically he didn’t lose all his fortune, he sold all of his family’s properties and publishing empire to the Nazis for one Reich mark and, in exchange, he was allowed to walk out of Dachau with most of his internal organs in almost satisfactory working order. Comedy comes out of profound dissatisfaction with the status quo, often elevating to irritation and anger and then refracting it with a humorous prism. It’s kind of like an oyster producing a pearl; without that grain of sand entering its shell and irritating it almost to death, you don’t get the jewel.

CA: I noticed that you can spell your entire name with letters from Brother Theodore’s name as long as you use the “B“ and an “R” twice. Strange coincidence or something deeper?

RT: You need to lose both “H‘s” as well as the “D“, but yeah, it is an AMAZING coincidence!

CA: In your recent stage work you played a Russian detective in T.S. Cook’s politically charged Ravensridge. You had worked with him before on Out of the Darkness. How was that reunion?

RT: It was wonderful and totally accidental. I never actually met him while I was doing the film. We shot it in New Jersey and he was based in Los Angeles.
Four years ago I was invited by someone involved in Ensemble Studio Theatre, a theatre company in which I’ve been a member for 25 years, to a reading of a new play. I was free that night, so I went.
When I got to the theatre I was handed a one-sheet program stating the name of the play, playwright and cast. The playwright was T.S. Cook, who I remembered wrote Out Of The Darkness. I asked the woman who invited me to point out Mr. Cook to me. After the play, an epic Western about an Indian uprising, I walked up to him and said, “Mr. Cook, I’m Bob Trebor, I played the Son of Sam in your movie” He smiled and said “Yes, you did, and quite brilliantly” and we shook hands for the first time.
He then called me several months later, said he had written a new play and asked if I could do a Russian accent. And the rest is continuing history because I believe his wonderful play Ravensridge will have future productions, hopefully with me in the lead.

CA: How do you prepare for characters with foreign accents?

RT: No special preparation. I have a good ear. I can do many accents relatively effortlessly. If I’m assigned a role with a particularly difficult accent I’ll use a good coach, of which there are many in Los Angeles.

CA: How important is a work’s politics for you?

RT: Politics shmolitics. I want a good role with several dimensions in a compelling dramatic landscape. I’d like to play Rush Limbaugh (with a really good fat suit thank you very much). I wouldn’t cheat on the fact that he’s a demented, bloviating shithead, but I would give him a decent measure of humanity as well. Heck if I could do it for the Son of Sam, I could do it for Rush. Richard Dreyfuss is as dyed-in-the-wool Liberal as you can get, and he was brilliant as Cheney in “W,” absolutely brilliant.

CA: Is there a scenario where you would turn down a role due to a work’s political slant?

RT: If the basic work is a lie, a fraudulent thesis trying to make a case that say, Bush was a good, competent President, and I’m sure there’s another example using a Democrat although I can’t think of one at the moment then, yeah, I would turn it down. I don’t think art should be used to further a pernicious, outright lie (see Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will). I don’t need the money that badly.

NEXT: The finale... gossiping on Tinseltown... the current state of the American Cinema... personal favorites... and a film lover's hypothetical quandary.

TeeVee Questions (con't):

C. Adolph: In the Men in Pink episode for Hercules you had a little Some Like it Hot thing going with Bruce Campbell. How intentional of an homage was that?

Robert Trebor: I was Jack Lemmon and Bruce was Tony Curtis. In fact, I sent a copy of the show to Jack Lemmon; he sent me a gracious note back saying how much he enjoyed the episode and wished me the best for my career.

CA: That episode seemed to be quite a diversion. Especially since Hercules was nowhere to be found in it. Was Sorbo out for a weeklong chest wax or something?

RT: Actually the guy was laid up in a hospital with an aneurysm and came perilously close to buying the big casino. He was out for months as the writers scrambled to write shows without the character of Hercules. In fact there was a big celebration, in life and in an actual episode called Yes, Virginia There Is A Hercules, when Kevin returned to work. I was in that episode as a Hollywood mogul patterned after Mel Brooks as “The Gov” in Blazing Saddles.

CA: Most of the Men in Pink episode you performed in drag. You are a severely unattractive woman. You make Divine look like Coco Chanel. However, you seem very comfortable in women‘s clothing. How did you prepare for that performance?

RT: Well here we disagree. I may have been unattractive in terms of sexual capital (a la Dustin’s comment about his looks in Tootsie, “I was never pretty enough to want to date myself”), but I thought I made a charming and delightful auntie type. And given Bruce’s chin and shoulders I thought I cut a more successful female figure than he in any case. Producers have been trying to get me into drag for years; I’m not sure why. That you say I looked comfortable in woman’s clothing may be the biggest testament to my acting skill I’ve ever heard.
The high heels and corset imposed to give me that hourglass figure (cough cough) were painful and always on the verge of causing me to twist an ankle (see the character Schlemmer trying to impersonate Lilo Pulver in Wilder’s One, Two, Three).
In fact, the costumer wanted the heels to be higher and pointed at the base where they touch the floor. I said “Ngila (the great and gracious Academy Award winning designer Ngila Dickson), if you want me to finish this episode upright and in one piece please make the heels lower and give them a wider base.”
She complied and the rest is history. I prepared for that role as I do for any role I undertake: internalize what the character really wants, in this case to save his ass by any means necessary, and carry out the tasks, meeting the obstacles to fulfilling them as I would if I were actually that guy in those circumstances.

CA: Did performing that fan dance make you feel cheap and exploited?

RT: In just the right proportion to the amount of money I was being paid. Actually more than feeling cheap and exploited we were worried about being sued by Hefner for copyright infringement for use of bunny ears and tail. Never happened thankfully.

CA: I couldn’t help noticing that the two of you also bore a striking physical resemblance to Marilyn Monroe (you) and Jane Russell (Bruce) in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Did you enjoy being the preferred one? Are you a fan of Monroe’s?

RT: Thank you for finally acknowledging my alluring feminine blandishments. Yeah, I was grateful the warlord found me hot.
Monroe… hmmmm… I have very mixed feelings about. The whole Actors Studio thing that she could have been one of America’s finest actresses I think is baloney. I think she was most effective in Bus Stop and The Misfits. I’m not crazy about an actress pouring on obvious sexuality like syrup on waffles.
I think I would have enjoyed talking with her when she wasn’t “on”. Her friend Susan Strasberg said they could be walking down the street in New York and nobody would notice. Then Marilyn could consciously turn her “Marilyn sex vibe” on and stop traffic and cause collisions. Literally.

CA: Hercules was thick with sexual entendre. Do you think Salmoneus got laid a lot? I’m guessing he was not averse to bartering or paying for it.

RT: Well, when Salmoneus was loaded, or thought he was loaded, he cavorted with five luscious babes in a hot tub spreading precious gems and necklaces over their supposedly nude bodies (see the Fire Down Below episode). He even wound up with one of the babes at the end of the episode after he lost his treasure.
She says it was because of his kind heart and tenderness towards her, but I think it was because of his incredible sexual prowess. Unfortunately she was AWOL in the next episode and not because of any Casanova trait in good old Sal.
I don’t think Sal had to pay for it that often. He was a sweet talking smoothie, one of the few men at that time who knew women had a clit and what it was used for.

CA: The writing for Hercules seemed a bit more clever and tongue-in-cheek than for Xena. A knowing wink to the audience. Was that something the cast tried to play up also? The sort of innate campiness of it all?

RT: You never play the campiness deliberately or you wind up with a cast that becomes Paul Lynde and Joan Rivers exclusively. It all becomes bullshit. You’ve got to believe in the integrity of the situation, however fantastical or “campy” it might seem or you’re dead in the water. I tried to excise the “wink-wink, self-conscious campy lines” during the table read runthrough.
As I said earlier, you play the truth of what your character is going through as honestly as you can. Of course some of us understand comic timing, but that’s not being campy.

CA: Was there anyone who was not in on the joke and continually played it straight?

RT: Uhmmmmm… moi?

CA: Why are we always, in the words of the immortal Bonnie Tyler, “Holding out for a hero”?

RT: Part of our hard-wiring I suppose. None of us is so self-sufficient that he or she can do everything for oneself without relying on someone else to ply their special expertise to save our bacon every now and then. Yes, when our toilet and/or sink backs up and threatens to drown all our possessions, even Joe the Plumber can be our hero… especially if he has the actual skill and training to do the job. Or if catastrophe is imminent, say our plane is about to go into the Hudson, we pray to God there can be a hero in the cockpit to save our lives. And sometimes He listens.

CA: In the Unchained Heart episode, Salmoneus is captured and being fattened up to be fed to Graegus, a sort of giant half-dog/half-reptilian creature. You are chained in its lair awaiting consumption. Graegus is obviously an effect put in during post-production. How do you handle that situation as an actor? What do you play to or off of?

RT: The production actually put two Dixie cups on either side of the top of a broom handle, and an AD waved the broom handle around to provide an exact eye line for me to respond with terror. The CG department in post production then computerized the monster in response to my gasps of fear and loathing. It was kind of cool actually. I did see the artist’s drawing of what the monster was eventually supposed to look like.

CA: Many of Executive Producer Sam Raimi’s signatures (slapstick, intentionally cheesy effects, silly humor, high camp) are imprinted on the Xena canvas. Can I say that, “the Xena canvas”? Anyway, how much of a hands-on creative influence did he have on the show?

RT: Virtually none. His partner Rob Tapert came up with the concept for the series and supervised its development very closely. Of course Rob and Sam have been partners for decades so a certain amount of osmosis is bound to happen between the two.

CA: He seems like a guy who would be a riot to work with. Any interactions?

RT: Yeah, I’d love to work with him sometime. I understand he thinks I’m very funny.

CA: Salmoneus wrote a book (with your assistance, of course) called Dear Salmoneus: The World’s First Guide to Love & Money, a sort of self-help manual for the ages. Where did that idea come from?

RT: The idea originated from reading The National Lampoon in the ‘70s. Each issue would start with “Letters To The Editor” written by dead personages complaining about some petty issue in their lives or something in the previous month’s magazine.
I then thought it would be cool for Sal to answer questions from the characters in the shows about his two specialties; love and money. And since Sal never died in the series (unlike almost every other character, some several times) I thought he could answer questions from across the millennia: from Zeus to Stanley Kubrick and a whole Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr-Tripp barrage that came to me fairly easily. The last letter is for career advice from Robert Trebor addressed from The Moebius Strip, Hollywood California.

CA: How are you with the writing process? Drudgery or fun?

RT: A combination of both actually, tilted more toward fun in the final analysis. Certain portions came easily to me… but if I wanted it to be more than a pamphlet I had to write something almost everyday for about six months. I took a note pad with me everywhere in case a potential letter-writer idea came to me.
I was listening to the BBC when I heard a segment about The Rare Patagonian Toothfish….and I jotted down the name instantly for possible inclusion. I then let my imagination percolate and found a hook to get the fish into the book (so to speak).

CA: Who are some of your favorite writers and influences from the literary world?

RT: For the humor and style of this book, SJ Perelman and the staff of the early days of National Lampoon had a certain influence.
For general fiction, I love Tom Wolfe, Philip Roth, and John Irving.
For recent essays, I like Tom Friedman a lot.
From the classic past, Jonathan Swift and the shorter, less florid work of The Marquis de Sade have a certain frisson.
For drama, the list would be far too long… but Paddy Chayefsky would top the list for both drama and screenplays.

NEXT: The Stage... Trebor treading the boards... channeling Brother Theodore... and politics' effect on the actor.

TeeVee Questions:

C. Adolph: You were in an episode of the short-lived Boomtown. Is Donnie Wahlberg actually an idiot or does he just play one in real life?

Robert Trebor: Actually all my scenes were with Neal McDonough so I have no opinion about Donnie. By the way, my part was written for me by Graham Yost, the creator of the show, and then all my stuff was cut for time! Graham was a fan of mine since 52 Pickup and the scenes took place in an S/M bar where some kinky stuff was happening. My character might have been implicated in a murder but he was less sympathetic than Leo in 52 Pickup. The kinky sex behavior might have encouraged the CBS censor to cut the sequence as well as the running time length problem.

CA: You’re most recognized for your continuing role as Salmoneus on the Xena and Hercules series. Being neither a dork or a virgin, I never watched much Xena or Hercules. Looking back however, they must have been very fun shows to work on. Any funny inside stories to tell?

RT: Now come on, you must have been a dork and a virgin at some time during your development, and yes they were terrific shows to work on. We didn’t do a lot of goofing on each other, the clock was too brutal for that (finishing an episode in seven days and starting another one immediately thereafter). A story involving the rat falling on my head in the Mummy Dearest episode on Hercules comes to mind. They de-clawed the rat and held it just out of frame to drop on my head when Hercules and I are searching for the mummy. In my tight close-up the rat kept sliding off my head. It was supposed to stay on my scalp for a few seconds to freak me out and I was supposed to brush it off, bumping into Hercules sending him down into a pit. They finally got the angle just right for the rat vis-à-vis my head, the rat handler did something to spook the rat and it clutched my head pretty good considering it was “de-clawed”. I screamed, brushed the rat off, bumped into Hercules, he fell… cut… everything worked.
Except the medic came over to me and saw my scalp looked like a red tic-tac-toe board and there was some bleeding. The nurse gave me a tetanus shot, cleaned the broken skin, and I went to the next set-up.

CA: It was shot predominantly in New Zealand, no? That must have been nice?

RT: It was shot ENTIRELY in New Zealand, even the modern day episodes that looked like a Hollywood soundstage. It was stupendously beautiful. In the Hercules episode Let the Games Begin, Kevin Sorbo and I are waiting for the next set-up on chaise lounges on the gorgeous green hilly area of Muriwai about 30 miles east of Auckland in the Waitakere range. They put up beach umbrellas to protect us from the often strong New Zealand sun (we always wore spray sunblock over our makeup). Some AD’s were handing us lemonade and asking us if we wanted Powerbars or anything else to nosh on. Kevin and I just looked at each other (this was already well into the second year of the series, third year if you count the movie wheel that preceded the series) and Kev said, “Not a bad office to come to everyday to earn a few bucks.”, to which I just smiled, nodded and sighed.

CA: Do you get residuals for those?

RT: We DID get some nice residuals up to six years ago. Now they’ve trickled down to pennies per episode.

CA: Was it mandatory for every Xena episode to begin with the ransacking of a village?

RT: No, sometimes they begin with Xena and Gabrielle bathing nude in a lake… just not the episodes I was in.

CA: You do a lot of the Xena/Hercules fan conventions. For us “virgins”, what are those like and what goes on there?

RT: I’ve been doing them since 1995. A trivia note in some history of the shows confirmed that I was the first actor on either show to appear at a convention. Basically you talk about being on the shows, kinda like what I’m doing here, then they ask you questions, then you sign autographs, take pictures with the fans and recently I’ve been selling the book I wrote, Dear Salmoneus: The World’s First Guide to Love and Money.

CA: What’s the typical Xena/Hercules fan really like? Are they as pathetic as “Trekkies” or “Ringers”?

RT: Our fans are mythologically handsome and beautiful, kind of what Hitler was hoping for in his perfect Aryan utopia, except many of them are Jewish, Black and Asian.

CA: I noticed while browsing through the events calendar that there are $40 photo-ops and a $20 admission charge. What kind of racket do you have going on here? Is this all Salmoneus’ idea?

RT: I’m certainly gratified that my hosts at these shindigs have learned a thing or two from Salmoneus. In my book, Salmoneus gives advice to everyone from Donald Trump to the Rare Patagonian Toothfish to The Pet Rock, who’s upset at losing his fad value. Salmoneus is an equal opportunity educator.

CA: Did you have a preference between working on Xena or Hercules?

RT: Yes, during the years of production my preference was to be working on Xena or Hercules.

NEXT: More Xena & Hercules... tranvestitism... working with Bruce "The Chin" Campbell... and Salmoneus' sex life.

C. Adolph: On to acting. Describe the differing approaches (if any) you take in preparing for roles on film, television and the stage.

Robert Trebor: There is virtually no difference in prep among the various acting outlets. You get to the truth of the character by any means necessary. You do your research and use your imagination and life experience to fill in the motor and behavior of the character as given clues by the lines. You get more rehearsal time for the stage so you can delve into the work with your fellow actors and, hopefully, a good director who gives you room and space to discover aspects of your character slowly.
With film you have to do more of the work on your own more quickly and with TV the process is speeded up even more.
But you still have to go through a discovery process or you’re just delivering surface impressions off the top. With really thin material that might be okay, but you’re still cheating the audience and yourself.

CA: Do you have a preference between the various mediums?

RT: Stage for sheer acting pleasure. Nobody calls cut and you live through your character each performance with the challenge of keeping it fresh for yourself and the audience.
And you always get the chance to get it better each time.
Movies and TV to earn a living and enabling you to count on residuals to see you though the lean times. Also movies and TV improve your popularity and recognition factor which is important in getting better parts in any medium.

CA: What do you see as the shortcomings of each with regard to the others?

RT: For stage it’s the pay, for TV it’s sometimes the rapidity of the work, and for film… sometimes after all the work you put in, your part is drastically shortened and/or the project never gets released.

CA: Does the type of medium have any effect on your role choices? Do you find yourself more effective in any one particular format?

RT: No effect whatsoever. I want a role that has some dimension and wit to the dialog. And I want to work with terrifically talented people who can help me ratchet up my game.
I think I’m equally effective in all formats; I’m stage trained and that’s really the foundation for all compelling acting.

CA: As you have been both a critic and an actor, as a performer, how do you deal with negative reviews? Does it effect how you approach subsequent roles? Or do you simply brush it off, knowing firsthand just how full of shit we critics are?

RT: This is going to sound really conceited, but I don’t really get negative reviews. In 35 years I can count them on one hand.
The project might be slammed but I either get a pleasant nod or they say nothing. Now this probably means I haven’t done enough work. I’ve had plenty of dry spells during my career and I do plenty of workshop theatre productions that don’t get reviewed at all. Reviews have usually been helpful to my career. The critiques I got for playing the Son of Sam made me flavor of the week in Los Angeles for a couple months, they helped convince Frankenheimer to hire me for a major role in 52 Pickup and got me a wonderful agent (who turned out not to be so wonderful when they lost my entire salary for a film I did in Belize, but that’s another story).

CA: Certainly negative reviews have a greater effect on an actor in an ongoing stage production. Has this happened to you?

RT: I don’t think I’ve ever received a negative review for my stage work. (again, I probably haven’t done enough stage work). Here we go with my egomania again, but sometimes I’ve been the only one to get a good review while the others have been slammed or ignored and THAT makes for a certain amount of discomfort backstage.
When that happens everybody tries to just ignore the review, and if someone refers to the kindness of a critic to me I just say that 10 bucks donated to the Critics Welfare Fund works wonders.

CA: You played David Berkowitz (the “Son of Sam” killer) on both stage and small screen. How do you prepare for a role like that?

RT: Basically I just tapped into my feelings when my first girlfriend dumped me for someone else, and I saw them kissing, unbeknownst to them, on a street corner in Manhattan. That quiet murderous rage that millions of people have felt after being dumped was a key to my character. And that’s the kind of thing you can’t learn in acting class!

CA: Italian actor Vittorio Gassman averred that “Acting is not that far from mental disease: An actor works on splitting his character into others. It is like a kind of schizophrenia.”
Do you ever worry about becoming too immersed in the role? Does it affect your personal life in any way?

RT: Remember, Vittorio was married to Shelly Winters for several years so that may have informed his acting/mental illness analogy. I don’t worry about being too immersed in a role.
The only way it may affect my personal life is if I’ve had to gain weight for a part. It’s getting harder and harder to lose it.
Actually I think acting can be a very healthy and profitable way to ventilate the darkness in one’s psyche. The point is to take the work seriously but not so much yourself.

CA: Were you worried about being pigeonholed by that role? I mean, look what happened to Steve Railsback as Charlie Manson in Helter Skelter.

RT: Not too much. Railsback played the lead character in a four hour mini-series. I basically came in for the last fifteen minutes in a two hour film. I essentially pay the film off, not provide the center support for the entire project. (Railsback played an uncredited cameo in The Devil’s Rejects along with me, but the PR department didn’t play up the two former psychos connection…..in a film about an entire central cast of raging psycho characters).

CA: You seem to naturally embrace a character actor’s sensibility.
Tim Roth spoke of it, “There is less pressure as a character actor. It generally means that you will be acting for all of your life, which is my intention. It is not my intention to just be a rich and famous person, that would be pretty boring.”
Does your approach to being a working actor run along similar lines of thought?

RT: Precisely! Although I wish I had Tim’s agent and the chance to work as often as he does.

CA: Do you make your entire living as an artist?

RT: If you include Unemployment Insurance and investment income based on the underlying money I earned as an actor… yes.

CA: Have you done commercial work? Is there a dark television ad secret out there you’d like to share?

RT: When I lived in New York I did a lot of commercials (remember theater doesn’t pay that well). The first time I ever played a Russian was for Long John Silver’s Restaurants in the ‘80s. It was a whole campaign, four different spots that played everywhere but LA and NY. For four days work I earned about fifty grand. And my character, Yuri, was really popular. In fact, I was invited to Oklahoma City in ’88 to sing The National Anthem with a Russian accent for a AAA minor league baseball game. They treated me like a major star; it was actually very cool. I also did a National Nikon commercial that won a Video-storyboard award for 1986.

CA: Okay, give me the "role call". I want the names of a few parts you were dying to get and didn’t.

RT: Here are a few: I wanted to play Belushi in the film Wired, although the script really sucked big-time (Michael Chiklis played the part). I wanted to play the part Bob Balaban played in DeadBang just to work with Frankenheimer again (but again, the script really sucked). I wanted to replace Alfred Molina in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway a couple years back, but I wasn’t a big enough name. I wanted to play a rabbi in a play called Splitting Infinity in San Jose (and the script was really wonderful). I recently found out I was one of five finalists being considered for the role of Gimli in The Ring Trilogy; they were Warwick Davis, Timothy Spall, Robert Trebor, Billy Connolly and John Rhys-Davies. I'm the only name I hadn't heard of.
There are others but it’s best not to dwell on them.

CA: What is your one gem of advice for an aspiring actor or filmmaker?

RT: Don’t dwell on your rejections. As a corollary, be aware that the odds you’ll ever be able to earn a living in the field are infinitesimally small. So you better love the process of doing the work a whole lot.

CA: How’d you come by the palindrome for your professional name?

RT: I loved Regal Crown Sour Lemon candies as a kid, and on a slow day when I was reading the candy wrapper I saw the manufacturer was Trebor, Ltd. I said to myself “that’s my first name spelled backwards!” and the rest is history.

CA: By the way, who’s this two-bit, name-thieving musician Robert Trebor? Any run-ins with him? Or is it actually you in disguise? I know you have some musical talents.

RT: I know nothing about him except he’s adding confusion to my googling myself. He works out of Fresno and if we ever meet he’s gonna have some splainin’ to do.

NEXT: The TeeVee... Salmoneus on Xena and Hercules... Dorks, virgins, conventions... and the perks of New Zealand.

C. Adolph: Another stellar performance of yours was in John Frankenheimer’s 52 Pick-Up, an unfortunately overlooked sleeper from 1986. One of your first film reviews as a critic was of a Frankenheimer film, was it not?

Robert Trebor: Yeah, actually my review of The Fixer directed by John in 1968 earned me the first money I ever made in show business.
I wrote it for my high school Lit Mag, and it was submitted to the annual Scholastic Art and Writing Awards where it won a prize.
And $25 then is about $150 now, not bad considering I often act now onstage for free. And a gig I’m about to do now, initially for free, is a project about Dalton Trumbo who wrote the screenplay for The Fixer!

CA: And then, in a bizarre turn of the cosmos, you ended up auditioning for the man years later as an actor.

RT: Yep, and I was given the wrong address to show up at- his production office rather than the casting office. John read with me himself since there was no casting person at that location.
He offered me the part on the spot. Nice to work with someone who doesn’t have to confer with a committee.

CA: 52 Pick-Up is adapted from the Elmore Leonard novel by the author himself. Did you get a chance to meet him?

RT: Nope, never met “Dutch”, although the original screenplay was written by John Steppling, a hot Los Angeles playwright in the ‘80s. Leonard came in for a final polish.

CA: It struck me, re-watching this film twenty years later, how much less gritty and more antiseptically polished our thrillers have become. Your character, Leo, is particularly immersed in the slime. He’s a pornographer, pimp, strip club manager, extortionist, kidnapper, accomplice to murder, a homosexual (not that there’s anything wrong with that), a toady, a weasel and an all around sleazebag.
You played him with a sweaty, anxious intensity. He has a drink for a prop in nearly every scene. How did you arrive at that quirk? Did Leo have hydration issues?

RT: That’s in the book, Leo is something of an alcoholic. The beef jerky in many scenes was my idea however.
Here’s a little inside nugget. When you drink on film it’s usually iced tea cause you have to do a lot of takes; master shot, each actor’s perspective of midshot, close-up and tight close-up. That’s maybe fifty or sixty takes involving drinking during the shooting day. If you drank real booze, or let’s say if I drank real booze, I’d be wasted by noon. So toward the end of the day (we’re finishing with my close-ups), John comes over to me and says “Ok, we’ve got it in the can. Would you like to do one more with real scotch? We’ll have someone drive you back to the hotel.”
I said sure although I’m not really a scotch drinker.
Well at that point in the day the scotch tasted reeeeaaall good!
And most of that last take wound up in the final print. The tight close-ups of me crying and spilling the drink and stuttering were all on real scotch.

CA: Leo is no damn good and yet he is not as savagely reprehensible as the other over-the-top villains. Did you try injecting that little bit of humanity into the character in order to keep him realistic and unique?

RT: I try to “inject humanity” into every part I play. Even serial killers like Son of Sam. Or, rather, I just play them with as much dimension as possible- without judging them- connecting with my own humanity as a bond. It’s been said that actors get paid for doing things that might get other people arrested.

CA: Is it just more fun playing a slimeball?

RT: It is indeed a lot of fun playing a well-written slimeball. Not so much one that is badly written where the powers that be want you to play a stereotype.

CA: What techniques did you use to get into the near hysterical state we continually see Leo in?

RT: No techniques, I just behaved as Leo would under the highly pressured circumstances in which he found himself. Once Cini (Kelly Preston) gets killed my world and possibilities start shrinking dramatically. Frankenheimer let John Glover, Clarence Williams and me improvise a scene at a strip club where I protest the idea to kill Cini to squeeze Mitch (Roy Scheider). That’s where I came up with the line “I voted against the whole thing” when in the bar Mitch accuses me of plotting to kill Cini with the others. I really didn’t want her dead. In fact, in one of my early scenes at the porno party, Frankenheimer let me improvise a scene with Kelly Preston and HE SHOT IT, something that is usually not done (this was a whole little self contained scene not on the schedule). In the scene I’m comforting Cini telling her that if the deal goes down properly I will give her a piece of my take so she can leave LA and get her life together. I end the scene with “You’re a good girl Cini; you stay a good girl” and I kiss her on the forehead. This scene was cut because John didn’t want any of the blackmailers to be too sympathetic, but it was useful for me to play the scene as an aspect of my character.

CA: I generally don’t like porn being associated with underhandedness or impropriety but it gave the film a nice edge. There were quite a few actual porn stars of the era in the film: Tom Byron, Ron Jeremy, Amber Lynn, Sharon Mitchell, Honey Wilder, Jamie Gillis, Randy West, Danielle and, of course, Ann-Margaret. Any delicious or lascivious stories to tell? The after parties must have been something.

RT: Well, the porno party was a fun night shoot. It was a 6:00pm to 6:00am schedule at a real home in Laurel Canyon. We were told we could bring swimsuits if we wanted to relax in the Jacuzzi between setups. There is often a lot of time between sequences; you have to re-light, change camera positions, lay track, it all takes time.
So rather than going back to our dressing rooms which were a distance down winding canyon streets, wardrobe had our outfits on set and we could change in bedrooms in the house. So for an hour or so I’m in the Jacuzzi with Vanity and a couple of the porno extras.
The porno actresses were fairly discreet… Vanity on the other hand
was something of a cock tease. She was very sweet, but slinking and rubbing up against us in the tub in a fishnet French cut bathing suit, giggling and purring all the while. Maybe she was being ‘method” for her character. But it was a great moment for this New York actor, relaxing in a Jacuzzi breathing in Eucalyptus tang in the air and being aroused by Vanity while thinking “and they’re paying me for this!” Two other tidbits: There were adult actresses as you mentioned but also nude models who’d pose for Penthouse, Playboy and such. And those extras were adamant that they did not do porn.
There was a real demarcation in their minds and they wanted to make clear to me working nude was a notch above those who’d have sex onscreen. In fact one of them who recognized me from playing Son of Sam wanted me to know that she played Stella in a production of Streetcar Named Desire back in Tennessee. Secondly, in the middle of a shot where I’m talking to Bobby (Clarence Williams) about how great the deal is going to be with Mitch, Frankenheimer absolutely surprising me, sends a totally nude actress over to give me a very deep French kiss, grinding against me and rubbing my crotch while saying “Such a waste, Leo”. Frankenheimer calls “Cut”. Smiling he comes over to me and says evenly, “Now remember, you’re gay.”
Apparently I cupped her ass while she was grinding against me which was inappropriate for my character. There is a less X-rated version of this sequence in the commercial release.

CA: Speaking of sleaze, do you miss gratuitous nudity in film as much as I do?

RT: I miss the gratuitous nudity in films in which I’m paid to act.

CA: I also forgot how feline-hot Vanity was (she plays a dancer/hooker). You mentioned she became a minister. “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz (whom you played in Out of the Darkness and on the stage) also became a man of the cloth. What is it about you that drives people to Jesus?

RT: Something in my blue eyes, gentle smile, and long flowing hair reminds the collective unconscious that there IS another way.

CA: Ann-Margaret is a gorgeous woman, but I heard she’s batty as hell. Any truth to that?

RT: Who ARE your sources?? She’s a terrific gal and everyone I know who’s ever worked with her has nothing but praise for her on all levels.

CA: 52 Pick-Up was one of the first films to address the influx of video into the film industry (the porn industry was being overtaken by it). Do you see the emergence of digital video as being particularly dangerous to the industry in either an aesthetic or financial sense?

RT: Yeah, the digital move bothers me on both aesthetic and financial grounds. Aesthetically, digital projection sucks in my opinion at this point. Depending on the aspect ratio of the projector and knowledge of the projectionist the actors sometimes look squashed like Hobbits. And many times the lights and darks are too contrasted. Shooting outdoors with digital requires great technical finesse, unless you really crave a dingy washed out look (as opposed to a total whiteout snow blind effect which is the other way digital outdoors can go.)
And you don’t want to do interiors if there is an open window in the shot.
Financially more productions will be under an AFTRA contract rather than SAG since the digital medium is not film. AFTRA is less advantageous for actors than SAG for a lot of monetary reasons.
Their pension plans cannot be combined and most of my work over 30 years has been under SAG.

CA: You have written a film, My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean, which you plan to star in and direct. Where are you with that project and how can we get those Hollywood deadbeats to fund it?

RT: I’m stuck on the financing. The film is ready to shoot; hopefully some of your readers still have deep pockets and are fans of my work.
If they contact you and have the required number of sandwiches for a picnic, contact me and maybe this can be the first film financed by blog!

CA: I wouldn’t hold my breath on that. My readers tend to be cheap, poor and suffer substance abuse issues.
Have you thought about My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean as a possible video project? David Lynch used the format quite effectively for Inland Empire. It seems strangely suited for films dealing with a darker realism, as your film suggests.

RT: It might be. Ninety percent of the film is interior and video would probably knock off half a million from the budget. But I’d still insist on a SAG contract.

CA: It’s the story of familial tragedy and lifelong guilt, yes? All terrific themes. What was your inspiration?

RT: The film is loosely inspired by the Joel Steinberg case in New York where he was convicted in the death of his illegally adopted daughter. He never testified on advice of his counsel.
My film gives the fictional character (VERY LOOSELY INSPIRED BY STEINBERG) the chance to air his side of the story.

CA: You’ve directed before for television. Do you have a preference at this point in your career whether to be in front of or behind the camera?

RT: I love both acting and directing; I’d like to divide my time between the two. With directing you get a lot less sleep, but your hands are on the creative levers shaping the whole project, and that’s very satisfying.

NEXT: The craft of acting... Film, TV or Stage preferences... role preparation... and the effect of critics on performance.

It is not often that I have access to a Renaissance man of Hollywood like Robert Trebor.
Actor, director, screenwriter, author, monologist, composer and critic, his oeuvre has spanned four decades in film, publishing, television and the stage. He began his entertainment career as a film critic (our simpatico) and has worked with such diverse personalities as John Frankenheimer, Oliver Stone, Lucy Lawless, Rob Zombie, Martin Sheen and Hillary Duff. He is perhaps best known for his continuing role as Salmoneus on the popular Xena and Hercules television shows and is one of the most recognizable character actors working today.
Trebor shows a great openness during our Q & A, reflecting on his craft and the successes/struggles of a working artist in the business of show. He deflects my more lurid, prurient and gossipy bullshit with humor of his own- honestly assessing the difficulties of someone who strives for perfection (and work) in an industry born to pabulum with the occasional hint of artistry.
He might even argue that assessment.
Regardless, it is a rare glimpse into the career of a working Hollywood performer and artist.
His candor and time were greatly appreciated.

The interviews will be posted in segments (every other day for the next two weeks) focusing on his film work first, then the craft of acting, followed by television, stage work and a few fun questions about the industry and film in general.

On Film:

C. Adolph: You were born and raised in Philadelphia and moved out to Los Angeles later in life. My experience is that west coasters are either idiots, flakes or certifiably insane. How is it for a cynical northeasterner out there in Hollywood?

Robert Trebor: My major problem with LA is that it’s not really a city; it’s a tissue of neighborhoods, some of them quite delightful, connected by freeways.
I’ve always been a city guy and I miss the electric street feel of population density and architectural verticality. So, yeah, I miss the canyons of Manhattan, but I don’t miss the twelve degree wind chill.
And there are lots of certifiably insane arts folk on both coasts.

CA: You played an obnoxious hotel owner in Universal Soldier and your scenes were filmed in the middle of nowhere. Was there any nervousness being a Jew in the desert, surrounded by the Aryan likes of Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Roland Emmerich?

RT: They were as swell a bunch of gentiles as you could hope to find in Arizona, and I’d work with them again in a heartbeat. Dolph actually trained to be a chemical engineer and has a very high IQ (this is not bullshit).
I think he modeled to pay for college and found acting to be more fun than atomic weight and ion flow. Jean-Claude found me amusing and good to work with and I’m still waiting for Roland to give me another work assignment. By the way, I got a paid vacation to the Grand Canyon out of this… it was supposed to be a four day gig, but they couldn’t get the UniSol truck to expand laterally (you have to see the film to understand this) so I was kept on location with pay and per diem and, since it was over Labor Day, I had time to see the big ditch at my leisure.

CA: Do you ever question the sanity of it all or the existence of a benevolent god when you have to play second thespian fiddle to actors of Lundgren's or Van Damme's caliber?
Isn’t that a sign that pure evil does exist and essentially guides this planet?

RT: I don’t feel I play second fiddle to anybody under any circumstance. I’m grateful that they had name value to get a film made and to give me a chance to play. AND get a paid trip to the Grand Canyon in the bargain!

CA: You have actually been a film critic and had a fun turn as a passionate, snooty one in The Devil‘s Rejects. You came off a bit like Gene Shalit, only human and informed. You also played a film critic in Martin Short’s Jiminy Glick in LaLaWood. Your character says at one point, “Film criticism itself can be an art form”. Do you buy into that?

RT: It was one of my “cutout scenes”. Now, do I buy into that line I improvised? Yes… although not for the recent vintage of criticism. George Bernard Shaw was a professional theatre critic before he ever wrote a play. Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol were film critics for Cahiers du Cinema before they ever directed a frame of film. Penelope Gilliatt was a film critic before she ever wrote the rather good screenplay for Sunday Bloody Sunday. These were all passionate, incipient artists writing about their respective forms in a rather brilliant way, trying to move the art forward. Read some of Shaw’s critiques of Ibsen and Strindberg; whether you agree with him or not, he shapes his argument rather artistically.

CA: Speaking of Jiminy Glick in LalaWood. I have a “Glick-like” question for you. Here goes:
Your first name’s Robert. (low pitched voice) Baaaawb. Like Robert Wagner of Hart to Hart. Boy, that Stefanie Powers sure was one hot piece, wasn’t she? (High pitched voice) Did you ever work with her? Because, if you could arrange it, I’d love to meet her. And I do understand that she’s dead. At least that’s what her agent says (guffaws). What dead person would you like to have worked with, Baaaawb?


RT: Well JIMINY, you got it wrong as usual. Stephanie Powers isn’t dead, you’re probably thinking of Suzanne Pleshette or Charles Nelson Reilly. Steph was The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. But you’re really leching after the Center Square. I would have enjoyed working with Louise Brooks because she never wore a bra and probably needed a good spanking.

CA: On the DVD extras to the Glick film you have an extended bit of very funny improvisation that didn’t make the final cut. Does that just grind your gears as an actor? Particularly when unfunny bits do make it into the film? Or is the paycheck enough?

RT: Actually my entire role was virtually cut out of Jiminy Glick because it wasn’t involved with the murder mystery aspect of the plot. I had two weeks on that film including several enjoyable scenes with Martin Short and I actually did a single seven-minute take in a bar where I trash Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola as examples of “failed promise”. I got a nice ovation from the crew after “cut”. I have about two minutes of that scene on my demo reel.
The paycheck wasn’t that much, believe me. We had a lot of fun on and off set riffing with each other and Marty was a joy to work with. We were playing What’s My Line? in the green room waiting for the shot to be ready (this was the big final night awards scene), Marty was the host, I was “John Cleese”, the other actors couldn’t guess who I was so I got a fruit basket.

CA: Your role as fictional radio personality Jeffrey Fisher in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Talk Radio is my favorite performance of yours. You simply nailed that transition of old radio deejay to the mid-‘80s emerging “shock jock” mentality. It was a treat to recently look back upon that with so much having changed in the medium over the past twenty plus years. Fisher acts as sort of a Cassandra to the ugliness that talk radio would become with the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, Stern, Imus, Ingraham, etc.
Did you sense that in Fisher’s character at the time? That he might be onto something monstrous coming to devour us and an entire industry?

RT: In 1988 when we shot the film in Dallas the ugliness was already here! In fact Eric (Bogosian) patterned his hair style in the flashback on Howard Stern who was already immensely popular. Imus was really big and I think Limbaugh was starting to bray in many markets. Oliver took Eric and me to a radio station in Dallas where a talk show guy named Dave Gold was holding forth with incendiary conservative views and gleaning a large audience. We saw how he operated the board technically and spoke with him about how he handled difficult calls.
I don’t think Fisher was a Cassandra because the handwriting was already writ large on the wall.

CA: Fisher discovers and nurtures Eric Bogosian’s character as an on-air personality only to realize, in Frankensteinian regret, he has created that which will destroy him. Where, or at what, do you think Jeffrey Fisher would be working now? Still schlepping it around on the airwaves somewhere?

RT: Jeff would not still be working in radio. He would not, to quote Lillian Hellman, “cut his fashion to fit the times” (unlike, say, Dennis Miller). I’d like to think he might be teaching in some highly respected Radio-TV-Film department at my Alma Mater Northwestern.

CA: Is Oliver Stone the absolute tool I believe him to be?

RT: He’s a passionate filmmaker who knows how to goad some pretty terrific performances from his actors. He’s still working and I’d like to work with him again.

CA: How did you get the dual duty of the voice of “Francine”, one of the troubled callers?

RT: Actually I played four different voices in addition to Jeff Fisher; three of them were cut. All the voices were performed live opposite Eric in a sound proof booth on location in Dallas. Some people were hired just as voice actors doing different voice characterizations (Park Overall may be the best example). She became a series regular on Empty Nest shortly after doing this gig. Michael Wincott and I were hired for both on and off-screen roles. I did a lot of voice work in New York where I was hired and the casting director was familiar with this.

Next: Working with John Frankenheimer on 52 Pick-Up... wrap parties with porn stars... the fun of playing a slimeball... Ann-Margaret... and hot tubbing with Vanity (remember her?!).