William Sadler: Acting and Music Unraveled

From the astounding stages of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival to the big screen of Die Hard 2 and Bill & Ted's, we're thrilled to have William Sadler, the iconic actor, share his riveting journey in the world of acting. William weaves an inspiring tale that began with his memorable performance as Hamlet, his first paying gig. Hear about his transition from being 'Bill' to 'William', a change motivated by Franco Nero during their Die Hard 2 stint.

We also travel down the musical lane with William, where he unveils how he utilized the pandemic to return to his music roots and even record an album! He painted a vivid picture of his writing process, his dedication to a philanthropic cause, and how music became a crucial part of his acting toolbox. His story of molding himself into an elderly man for an audition via special makeup, a move that yielded positive feedback from industry producers, is one for the books.

Finally, William discusses the bittersweet sensation of reprising roles he played years back. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, he warns, citing the physical demands of roles and the blistering heat of New Orleans. But the thrill of bringing a character back to life, especially at the age of 70, is a joy that truly resonates. Join us as we navigate through William's captivating journey, which serves as an invaluable treasure trove of insights for both budding actors and film buffs alike. Listening to William's story is a privilege, and we can't wait for you to join us on this adventure.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is William Sadler and you're listening to NOLA Film Scene NOLA.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Film Scene NOLA Film Scene.

Speaker 3: 0:14

Hello, welcome to NOLA Film Scene with TJ Play-Doh. I'm TJ and, as always, I'm Play-Doh, and I am so thrilled to have our guest here. We met a while ago on a set which we can't talk about right now because of the SAG strike, but eventually we will With the great William Sadler.

Speaker 1: 0:31

How are you, sir? I'm good. How are you?

Speaker 3: 0:34

It's good to be here, wasn't that the yes, sir, you came down a couple years ago. A couple years ago. Yeah, you started me basically on the journey towards lines, towards speaking parts. I had started with Kevin Smith that was background in one of his movies and I did a few other background things and that was a lot of fun and I loved it. And then I was your photo dub, you know, and I was there for like a week and a half and just I guess I saw a little more behind the scenes and background. Does the bug bit me?

Speaker 1: 0:59

Well, I wish you the best of luck. It's not an easy road. You saved my life there, though. Down in New Orleans, as I recall yes, sir, I think it's safe to say they had had a hurricane like the week before I got there, and it was August in New Orleans. Yes, and I'm wearing these Reaper robes, you know, yeah, thick, 60 pounds of black cloth, and boots and makeup.

Speaker 3: 1:26

Five inch platform boots.

Speaker 1: 1:28

It was the sweatiest thing I've ever done in my life. It was great, but having you to step in and save my butt so this old guy could sit down and I had a team of people with fans lift up my skirt. I have some embarrassing looking photographs.

Speaker 3: 1:50

We've got a few. We're going to blackmail you with. No, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 1: 1:54

So you got the bug, I did, I started taking acting lessons with Jim Gleason, who's local.

Speaker 3: 1:58

He's now, he's our SAG president I say ours even though I haven't made it in the SAG yet and then improv voice acting during the pandemic with people like Michael Bell and Charlie Adler, debbie Derryberry, and then now even some singing anything. Oh, and I took a theatrical combat class. I'm looking up to my light and put out the camera.

Speaker 1: 2:18

So that's very cool. I would suggest that for anybody who wants to, who's thinking about approaching this career as a career, get some, get some training. Yes, sir, I mean, there's lots of sort of happy amateur groups out there and you can get your rocks off in community theater or high school or college plays, whatever. But if you're serious about going further, there's enough about the craft that, I think. Anyway, my opinion.

Speaker 1: 2:49

I studied, I did undergraduate for four years and then I studied. I got an MFA at Cornell in just enacting. I spent two years at Cornell having my acting chops torn apart by these teachers and the rest of the class I was. It was devastating. I thought I was, I thought I knew what I was doing and they were like, no matter what I did, it was, you know, they found, they found things to pick at. And then there was like this joyful discovery when I got out and got my first job and I'm like I do a scene in rehearsal on the end of looking around where there's no one yelling at me or you know there's there's not a room full of people saying why'd you do it that way? That was dopey. Once you're in there, like oh, that's so great.

Speaker 3: 3:33

You're like what you like me.

Speaker 1: 3:35

And you get paid for it.

Speaker 3: 3:36

Then it's like money's good, crafty's better.

Speaker 1: 3:40

The first paying job I had was playing Hamlet at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and it was right between those two years at Cornell In that summer I drove to from Buffalo, from Cornell, ithaca, new York, all the way to Colorado was my girlfriend and I played Hamlet on and that's where I think they paid me 500 bucks for the whole summer. It was really. It was. It was theater at its best, but it was great. It was like it was like this weight got lifted off of me. I was it's just just do the work, you know. Just all of a sudden it was all fun again, you know, and I was making like $7 a night or something for this.

Speaker 3: 4:24

It wasn't bad back in the day, wasn't great, but it wasn't bad Back in the day I could afford earth shoes. I get to call you Bill. I know, I know it's William Sadler, I've been a fan of yours for years and he's great. And then we met and you told me on set, call me Bill. And I still couldn't do it and it took us like a year after. We just talked a little while, you know, on a video call before this and I was like, okay, I'm going to try it.

Speaker 3: 4:48

And you're like what are you talking about? I said, oh no, it's just it's hard for me.

Speaker 1: 4:51

So you're right. Well, I am, I'm a monster. No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I grew up being Bill. And well, I grew up being Billy. And then, as I got older, it was Bill. And then, during Die Hard 2, the filming, franco Nero, the other villain, one night said why he isn't it? He's Italian, he's why you are Bill. No one is going to pay for to see Bill. You should be William, it's big, it's William, said. And I was, like the second or third movie I had done, I thought, oh, okay, so so I changed it to William and and I spent my whole life telling people just call me, call me Bill, I can't get used to William.

Speaker 2: 5:39

I understand, so I get it too. I use a stage name because my name is very common. My real name is Thomas. It's Thomas Smith.

Speaker 2: 5:46

And it's so, so common. To distinguish myself, I'm using my mother's maiden name, sebastian, and DJ is a family nickname. It's my dad's and a variation of my middle name, so that's the distinguish from all the other Thomas Smiths out there Are. There. Are there a few? Yes, on IMDB there are a lot of different Thomas Smiths, so I didn't want to use a Roman numeral after my name. You're an actor as well.

Speaker 1: 6:16

I am Outstanding, Outstanding. So you're taking lessons, Brian. It sounds like you're. It sounds like you're hot on the trail.

Speaker 3: 6:25

I am, and if I haven't sent you the movie, I will. I did an independent movie where I played that. I think we've talked about it a few times.

Speaker 3: 6:31

And I had a few lines and, like you were saying, in your classes when you graduate, when you got into it, the thing you felt like an actor and you finally could say it and you got to experience it. For me, being in that in that class. Jim Gleason's class is greatest every week and he's not nitpicky, but he is hey, what about this? So in the week to week you don't see the improvement. But doing that movie, being in a movie with line, and I took some other Zoom classes and my only self-tape and then Charlie Adler's voice acting to each. So it's like six weeks here, six weeks there, but there was a break in between. So in between those I did that movie and then when I came to the second class for each of them first day, they went you have improved so much, you could see it. You know what I mean. Like, oh, okay, you know I finally felt like an actor instead of a student, do you?

Speaker 1: 7:12

credit that to the classes or do you credit that to actually getting in front of the camera and doing the gig? Both when you actually have to do it, it's a, because that's a place where the learning happened. You still make mistakes, yeah, but the learning happens quickly when you're on stage, you know in a play, or you're in rehearsals. That's that's what I found anyway. I learned a lot. I learned a lot in the classes and so on, but then I moved to New York and spent 11 years doing theater.

Speaker 1: 7:43

And there's the lessons that you learn out in the when you're buttoning your head again, when you're actually in the mix, actually doing it. They're expensive lessons. I mean you, you know you screw up badly in an audition and there's nothing like doing it on the to get your, to get your feet under you and feel like you know I can do this. And that confidence it's just a huge thing. I mean, I guess some people may be born with a sort of innate confidence and they can. They can stand in a room and here I am, go to town like that. Yeah, the rest, the rest of us sort of have to earn that a bit. Yeah, and over the years it became I got better. Like I said, the lessons in front of audiences, the lessons in rehearsals, the mistakes that you make out in the real world Teach you. It's like learning to cook. When everybody sits down and eats the meal, it's like the rubber has hit the road.

Speaker 3: 8:42

So, bill, we've been asking people about their inspiration. Can you remember what started you on the path towards acting? You said you went to college, but before that, like what, is there a point where you can go? This is where I decided I wanted to do this.

Speaker 1: 8:53

I had an English teacher in high school. I was doing music. Before that I was in a garage band called the Night Riders back in Orchard Park where I grew up, just south of Buffalo Sweet. Before that I was in a folk band doing the Hootenanny stuff. This was back in the I don't know early 60s, mid 60s, oh, actually I did a for a couple of years I was doing stand-up comedy, playing the banjo and telling jokes around Buffalo. So I kept trying to get on stage. And finally I had this English teacher named Dan Larkin, my high school.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Why don't you try out for the play? Try out for the senior play we're doing, harvey, about the guy who talks to an imaginary rabbit. Yes, and he's funny and he's charming. And I did it and I was, you know, much like yourself. I was, like you know, I got a taste of it and it was a successful run in the play in high school. But it also wet my appetite for her. And he said there's a community theater group that he was a member of in Amherst, the Amherst players in Buffalo, and they were doing a play called the subject was roses and it's this Pulitzer Prize-winning drama three characters, mother or father and this young man who's come back from the army and confronts his drunken, abusive father. And I was I guess I was 18 at the time, but the writing was so intense and the process of figuring out how. You know working backwards from this is what he's saying and you're always working backwards. Well, how would you have to feel to say that to somebody you know to let yourself in. And I was just. I was blown away. I was just and I found I could submerge myself in a character and kind of come alive on stage.

Speaker 1: 10:50

And the director's name was Bob Schultz. Said what are you doing after high school? Cause I'm still in high school? I don't know, I'm gonna. Vietnam War was raging and you could get a deferment, a student deferment, if you went to college. So I'm gonna go to Buff State and study industrial engineering and be a shop teacher.

Speaker 1: 11:12

And Bob Schultz looked at me and he said is it your mind if I make a phone call? Or to any call the head of the drama department at Geneseo, the state university college at Geneseo, where he had just graduated. And he said I got this kid. I think he'd be a good match for your program and I think he would get a lot out of it, and so he put me in a car, drove me to Geneseo and introduced me to the head of the drama department.

Speaker 1: 11:42

We saw a play, we got drunk, we drove home and that was it. That's where I went and spent four years. That was the beginning of it, but that was the inspiration. It's remarkable. I can point to this one English teacher who said why don't you try out for this play? I think you might be good at it. And it was like all he did was point to the door and I guess I didn't know what I wanted to do. I really I was really as dumb as a sack of hammers. But then I became enamored of the whole process. I started looking at movies differently. I started my heroes were like George C Scott and remember, this is the 60s and 70s and they're like Robert Duvall and Al Pacino. And the Godfather came out just as I was in college. All of us actors went to see it and just sat, spent the next two weeks mumbling and trying to be Marlon Brando, yeah, so that was sort of how it all began. I didn't have any other plan. I didn't.

Speaker 3: 12:59

Something happened and, like a Dr Wadi, you started swimming. You found it.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my father. It's funny. My dad said he insisted that I get a teaching degree while I was at Geneseo in case this acting thing doesn't work out Right which was smart, because it doesn't a lot of times it's good. Very easily, ben Five, six years down the road I'm going oh, this blows, I have to do something else. But that wasn't the case. I had fallen into the thing that I wanted to do. That's excellent.

Speaker 3: 13:40

And you mentioned that you started with music. Yeah, and we've been talking a little bit. I've heard your album in the kitchen tapes and I used to watch the YouTube videos and I'm amazed at what you bring. Thank you Talking to my baby. The first song, and then Lion Saka shit, the last song of my two favorites.

Speaker 1: 13:57

One of my all time favorites.

Speaker 3: 13:58

Yeah, those are great. And Key of Sea Talk to my Baby Feels Pure Blue. Yeah, I mean the second song too, I'm sorry, and like there are different categories Almost folksy and some and a singer songwriter maybe. Like I couldn't just pin you down to one thing, sorry to interrupt you, it was whatever you were going to say. But, now I was. How would you describe yourself? Your music? Well, I'm pretty.

Speaker 1: 14:18

I'm sort of pretty late to the game, I suppose at this age to be recording these things. But I started writing songs back in college. I was, I've always been, I've always been making up songs. You know I never took it seriously. And then somewhere in the 90s, out in law, I was living in LA for 15 years or something and I started. I started doing coffee houses and open mics and things and that's, and I wrote a lot of these songs in the mid 90s and they've just been kicking around like where the music has gone.

Speaker 1: 14:51

And Doctor of Love, key of Sea, was one of the first things I wrote because I'm I'm a pretty mediocre player. I've never studied. I've never really studied. There's every guitar player I know is better than I am. But the pandemic happened and I had all the I.

Speaker 1: 15:08

Suddenly I'm stuck at home and I've got all this time and all these songs and I had been doing open mics here until the pandemic and I started recording them with a friend of mine named Matt Cullowits who I was doing the Stephen Colbert, our cartoon president with. He was the sound engineer and he set me up with a microphone and the whole thing at my house and he would through the internet. He would get on the computer, on my computer, and hit record and I would play and I would play and sing and he would take it and, you know, fiddle with it, make it sound better. And then we get this Denny Bonet, this violin player, she would drop her violin on it and John Colbert piano, wonderful piano player, used to play with John Lennon. He would drop a little, you know, piano under things. And it was all of a sudden these songs felt real and you know they were like we're ready for, ready for people. Otherwise they were just going to. You know they would sit in a drawer and they'd be gone when I'm gone, you know I felt like I should get these out there and I had so much fun doing it, the songs.

Speaker 1: 16:17

At the end of the day, scott Hall, down at Master Disc and it's a big studio in Peekskill he did the mastering and putting together and now I have a CD coming out. I think next week I'm going to start getting boxes of CDs of the kitchen tapes. I'm going to autograph every one of them and sell them online and the money goes to St Jude's so you can feel good about buying Christmas present for somebody. Anyway, that's that's, and I'm working. I'm already working on the second album. I wanted to do something for St Jude's. From time to time I've done things for doctors without borders and there are lots of good, you know, wounded warriors. There's tons of really good causes out there and I've been very fortunate on it. It doesn't hurt to give back a little totally cool, t-jab and I love doing the songs.

Speaker 1: 17:11

That's a really fun part. I played them in my car, you know, and driving down the road listening to it, like it's on the radio or something, is just the biggest kick in the world. There's this violin, the guitar, and it's all balanced and the piano comes in and it actually sounds like you know, like I know what I'm doing. It's good. So one of these days I'm going to take it on the road. I'm going to put together a little band, take it on the road and see what I can do.

Speaker 3: 17:38

I know a city you should go to. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:42

I have to overcome the yeah I was going to say. What I think is really cool is your persona, some of the characters that you've played, where you play the kind of stern bad guy and then you put out this music and I just I think you're a wonderful singer and to me it's a contrast of the characters you played and then the music. I found it really incredible.

Speaker 1: 18:03

Well, thank you. Thank you, that's really good to hear. I have a lot more confidence as an actor than I do as a singer, but I'll take it. I appreciate it. I guess I don't try to, I figure, as long as I try to be kind of authentic. Yeah, I think you succeeded. People seem to enjoy the music, which shouldn't be surprised, I guess, but it's. I still get such a big kick out of the fact that people think it's that's a great song, or this is a great, or they cover the songs like Key of Sea. There's a guy in Finland who put out a cover in Finnish of my song, the Key of Sea. He plays the ukulele. It's just sweet and it's all in Finnish. I can't understand, but I guess it works. Oh, totally.

Speaker 3: 19:01

Anyway, and the Key of Sea, with no sharps and flat, that simple scale. And then the joy that you hear when you're singing and like I can do it, but I'm not. I'm tricking you people, you know.

Speaker 1: 19:09

It was like. No, it was like it was just a fun song about how I learned to play the guitar. Because it isn't, it isn't fancy, and when I try to play a jazzy riff my hands get stiff, augmented or diminished. Or honey lamb, I'm finished. But I can play a song so sweet without those sharps and flats. Amino dogs behave like pussy cats. Republicans begin to dance like Democrats when I play it in the key of sea. Leon, thank you. Thank you. Leon Redbone, thank you.

Speaker 3: 19:44

I got a little bit of Dr John from you in some of your songs, but he hada kind of more you know, frog yeah. Right place, no, but it was still like really, oh, okay, I hear that I didn't know if I wanted to hear that, because I felt it.

Speaker 1: 19:59

I have the voice that I have. It's good. I've been using it for a lot of years. So it's like I said, I grew up loving George C Scott. So it was really one of my first inspirations was George C Scott in Patton, you know. Yes, I didn't have a much prettier voice. If I didn't, I hadn't spent so many years trying to find a, trying to gruff it up so that it sounded good. The hell am I supposed to tell Ed Moore's parents he was assassinated in the middle of the night by two of our nurses. That couldn't tell him from a god damn 82 year old man. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 20:32

Awesome, you put your hand into a ball of goo. That, a minute ago, was your best friend's face. You'll know what to do. And I, just like he had me. That was, and I'm sure that it was the drinking. You know, it was like the drinking and the smoking with the gravel in his voice. Oh yeah, I hope I stopped drinking and smoking soon enough.

Speaker 3: 20:51

Oh, you're saying, it sounds good, so I'm going to say yes.

Speaker 1: 20:53

Thank you.

Speaker 3: 20:53

You're welcome, TJ. I have been monopolizing the conversation. Do you have any questions for Bill?

Speaker 2: 20:58

I do. So I saw you were talking about getting some education in case the acting thing didn't work out for you. Right? Your background shows speech communications, that's correct, yeah, so I'm wondering, brian and I both are starting to delve into the voice, acting that's. We're both very interested in doing voiceover work and I'm wondering if that path helped you with some of the voice characters that you do, because you do a lot of different accents. You do the depth accent is different and I've heard your Irish accent. And did that path in college help you with developing different accents that you used or performed?

Speaker 1: 21:37

I don't think that the speech communication, like clinical speech therapy and speech communication, helped specifically with that. What probably helped the most was music, because I could. It was my ability to hear, to mimic, to hear and repeat back the sounds that I heard when people spoke with an Irish accent and where they placed their, where they put their, where they made their sounds and how they changed the shape of their mouth on the little thing. You know, the music of, the music of is quite different on the everyone you know, when they go up on the end, things like that. I think I mean I guess I would credit, I would credit all the music because I spent so many years, you know, listening to the Beatles and Liverpool accents and then I used to love Danny Kay. He was an early, early influence and he did all of these funny French accents. And when I did the, I stole that. It's a Czechoslovakian accent and I know that because I stole it from a Czech actor that I did a play with in New York and his name was Jan Triskin. He's gone now but thank you, jan. The play was called New Jerusalem. We did it at the public theater back in 78, 79, something like that. Sigourney Weaver was in it, jan Triskin was. He had this accent, was so like that. Everything was in this really thick Czechoslovakian accent. Welcome to New Jerusalem.

Speaker 1: 23:08

My name is Saran Missing and I thought it was funny and I heard the music, I mimicked it and then I made it. When the time came to audition I called a casting woman on. It was Karen Ray and we called her office or I had my agents call her office, I forget which and I said I'm thinking of doing an accent and they said, oh no, you probably shouldn't do you probably shouldn't do an accent. But I couldn't help it. I did it anyway. I just found it. It's such a funny. It's funny by itself. You could hear him read the phone book and it's like humorous and I'm sure that's why I got the job was because I just went full monkey Czechoslovakian.

Speaker 2: 23:52

Yeah, you had to get some special makeup to age yourself for that audition too, didn't you?

Speaker 1: 23:56

I did, I did the audition that, the one I just described, and it was funny. And I got a call like three weeks later from Karen Ray's office. Karen says, well, you got to come back in do the same audition, but they think you're too young. So go to a Halloween store and get some gray and put it in your hair and black out your teeth, and they just think you're too young. I honestly thought that's gonna that's just gonna look like shit and I had just done die hard too.

Speaker 1: 24:25

And the makeup man for that his name was Scott Eddo was in town and I called him and I told him what was going on. He's come on over the morning. So the morning of the audition I sat in his kitchen in Marina del Rey and he did this age makeup on me and he made I guess I was 39 or 40 or something about that time and he made me like a believable 80. But camera ready like in close up you'd look at it and go. And I got in the car and drove to, drove to the studio and went in, did the same Jorgen Sorokian, ex and with, but now I was old and as I left, karen Ray told me later. She said one of the producers turned to her and said you know he's, he looks a lot older in person and the rest, as they say, is his history.

Speaker 1: 25:24

But it was. But it was a chance to be funny and I had played a lot of villains. I had just come off, you know, die hard, to hard to kill project X 70. It was just like one evil mother after another and here was a chance to be genuinely silly in the in the guise of this. You know this character and it was great. I, to this day, I, you know, I still people quote back to me the rap you might, you might be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper or your don't forget my butt.

Speaker 1: 26:00

Both of which were ad libs. By the way, they're not in the script. Don't overlook my butt. Reaping burns a lot of calories.

Speaker 1: 26:11

It was just once I got into the character. I couldn't shut him up and it was fun. The first day they didn't know what to do with the makeup, they didn't know how to what he should look like. The first day of filming up in Santa Clarita, the first day, the first scene was the games playing the chess and board game playing, yeah, yeah, colonel Mustard did it with the candlestick, oh, and battleship and all this. It was so weird because I'm sure the producers were all sort of gathered around the monitors and the cameras and throw watching, sweating and you know, is this going to work? Is this going to work? And after the first day they watched the dailies and then they all backed off and said, oh no, this is. I think this is yeah, you do it. Do whatever the fuck you want. Just just you go, you go. You know which was lovely, and that's when I was. I would ad lib or change lines or whatever Respectfully suggest alterations to blind things.

Speaker 3: 27:21

Right, nice, you've already said this in public. But and I won't say how the scene went about but on the third movie, when you filmed here in New Orleans, you went down basically on the first day, hurt your knee and your wrist, that's right. That's right. They put out a call. It's mycasting filecom, if anyone wants to know. That's how you get background rules. But it was photo double for death and I had already been background in the scene early and then was like, yeah, I want to be.

Speaker 1: 27:43

You did. Is that how you got the job? They got the gig so holy. I think so. You did the hopscotch that I couldn't do because I tripped. Yeah, they made my robes too long and I tripped. That was the very first take of the first scene. I think that I shot down there. I tripped down the robe and almost broke my wrist.

Speaker 3: 28:06

That's a very interesting thing, because I didn't think they used my footage.

Speaker 1: 28:09

So no, I think no, and I believe when you do, when you see the hopscotch-ing, I think away from the camera. I think that's, I believe that's you, because I couldn't, you didn't complete the act, I couldn't, I couldn't do it.

Speaker 3: 28:25

I think they put your head on my body because you have your hair and you had the bald wig and we've taken a selfie together which we could talk about later. But your head is rounder and mine's more knotted, so it's egg-shaped. I also have one ear that sticks out a little bit. You know what?

Speaker 1: 28:39

I mean, I didn't notice.

Speaker 3: 28:40

Yeah, well, I know, but I'm like looking for myself in the movie and going, wait a minute, that ear is not there. So, and even if they did, fantastic, I'm glad I could help. So they had put out the call and I was like, yeah, and I clicked the button. I think he went down on a Tuesday Could have been a Monday and then on the next day it's like okay, they call me, you want to be in it? Yeah, and my schedule was because I worked overnight graveyard shift cleaning bars, so I worked overnight and my wife we only had one car, so at 7am I had to get home and then bring her to her work and then I'd get in the car and I'd go back to work and finish and then go home and then pick her up for the afternoon.

Speaker 1: 29:14

So then and then you raced to the studio.

Speaker 3: 29:17

Yeah, they send it to me. And they said, okay, you want to do it? Yeah, okay, great. And they hang up, it's like. So I did my little bag and then I call back an hour late, okay, and I said this is what I'm going to do, because anytime I went to set I would Uber, so my wife would have the car. I said I'm driving to the school. If at any point in this process it shuts down, you tell me no problem, but for me to get there at a reasonable time, I've got to do this. And they said okay. And I got a call while we're going they said oh, we're going to pay you even if they don't get my wife the car.

Speaker 3: 29:40

Get in the Uber, go to a place called the ranch and the ranch dropped me off at the wrong spot. It's starting to rain a little bit. I end up in the makeup building. They send me to the trailer. I still don't have the job and I sit down here. Here's the shoes With you. I have a platform boots and I have bad ankles. I've twisted my ligaments, pulled them 10 times over my lifetime and I'm like perfect, yeah, at least you know I don't have to run in them. And they go no, you're going to play hopscotch.

Speaker 1: 30:04

You have to jump and play hopscotch.

Speaker 3: 30:06

So we're going to take it and I don't know if I have the job. I go to set. I sit for a while and they find Bill Corso, the makeup man, one of the PA's. I'm sorry if I've got your crew title wrong. I struggle with that and I feel bad when, if I get it wrong, but he brings Bill hey, bill, this is Brian, he might be our double. And I stand up and Bill's like, hmm, rubbing his chin, okay, and he walks away and I'm like, did I get the job? Still don't know.

Speaker 3: 30:29

It's like four hours later. I'm like, all right, fine, they say they're going to bring me into where you were and the director Dean I forgot Dean's last name. He did a galaxy quest, a terrible name. I guess I'll never work with him. So he said come here. And then, hey, this is the director Bill, come here and here you can walk. And you didn't have the boots on and neither did I. He said, oh, and you had the makeup on. So I'm fanboying all over the place and say if you all the same height.

Speaker 3: 30:53

We stand shoulder to shoulder and the director's like I still don't know what do you think, bill? And you go back to back Brian like a 70s cop show. So I went who's Charlie? And they went okay and I walked away and then the PA came. You got the job.

Speaker 1: 31:04

Good, yeah, that was a fun shoot and, like I said, you saved my ass, I think. More than once I really did hurt my wrist. My hands swole up, yeah, and they put them tall makeup. They'll make it look, you know, white and dead and so on the scene where I'm playing the bass and so on. If you look when I'm talking to them, they come to the door and I was in the groove, that whole scene. If you catch my shot of my hand, it looks like a grapefruit, it's like it was all swollen. Playing that character was such a treat. It was really fun. I mean, it was difficult and it didn't get any easier with age and the heat in New Orleans. It really didn't. It was one thing to do it, you know, when I was 40, it was quite another thing to do it when you're 70. Right, but fortunately the character was still inside me. So when I unleashed him it was like we had just finished filming the other movie, right, and we just kept right on going. That part I thought was lovely, it was excellent.

Speaker 2: 32:09

Bill, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a true honor to sit down and talk with you. Thank you so much. Thank you.