CULTFILMFREAK•ORG

MARY-LOUISE WELLER ("ANIMAL HOUSE")

2012-01-01T19:07:00.000-08:00

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE, directed by John Landis and produced by Ivan Reitman, stars John Belushi, Tim Matheson and other young and at that time, little known actors and actresses: one in particular played by the gorgeous and talented MARY-LOUISE WELLER as the classy college bombshell Mandy Pepperidge...

When did you first know you wanted to be an actress and how did you go about becoming one?

I flew out of the womb in full camera makeup and screaming "HAIR... MAKEUP"!!! First role was (not joking here for a change) while still in diapers I played an X-mas present in a box under the Xmas tree… My Dad grew up with and hung out with Danny Kaye... who was always a family friend... which really got my little engine going... My Aunt was head of Dell publications, which at that time published all the tabs… so there were always fabulous drunken singing and dancing stars in her house...

How were you cast for “Mandy” in Animal House?

They had hired another actress before my meeting with the boys in the black tower at Universal. Suffice it to say something rather graphic happened in my audition that convinced them to hire me and pay off the first actress... who has gone onto huge huge movies...

A memorable scene where you and “Greg” (James Daughton) are in the car on the hill and you’re, um…

OH GAWD!!!!! That scene will forever be stuck in my mind... it was freezing out... it took forever to shoot... shot night for night... the motion with my hand was actually just us shaking hands... but the entire crew was leering over the windshield discussing how each one of them liked that particular motion... you know... faster... faster... NO NO... not faster... SLOWER SLOWER... Really hard (sorry pun) to do while hands are frozen into claw shapes... face is blue... lips stuck to teeth... and laughing so hard.

On the DVD commentary it’s said the Omegas and the Deltas were separated during the filming… Is this for real?

Sorry...but that just isn't true... the movie cost barely a million dollars... they were way to cheap to put us in different hotels... there was only one rental car for all of us and it was rented and paid for by Martha Smith... We all hung out in D-Day's hotel room... where he had somehow secured a large piano... a fridge…You couldn't have separated us with crow bars...

Did you have any idea how big this film would be?

I'm pretty sure all of us knew that the movie would be a huge hit...The script was simply brilliant... I remember showing it to Brandon Stoddard... who was head of ABC at that time... he also knew it would be an enormous hit... but he warned me that it would be the movie I would always be known for...

MARY-LOUISE WELLER INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE AND ENJOY MORE PHOTOS OF MARY-LOUISE AND CO-STARS TIM MATHESON, KEVIN BACON, JAMES DAUGHTON, MARTHA SMITH, STEPHEN FURST, THOMAS HULCE AND THE LATE GREAT JOHN BELUSHI

Mary-Louise Weller greeting Stephen Furst and Tom Hulce in ANIMAL HOUSE

Martha Smith and Mary-Louise Weller with Stephen Furst and Thomas Hulce, right before Martha says, "A blimp and a wimp."

Kevin Bacon as Chip with Mary-Louise Weller and James Daughton as Greg

Mary-Louise Weller and James Daughton

Martha Smith as Babs and Mary-Louise Weller talking on the bleachers... and someone's watching from below

The camera begins to lower, revealing the phantom beneath of the bleachers

Mary-Louise Weller (Mandy) and Tim Matheson (Otter) in ANIMAL HOUSE right before the food fight

Martha Smith (Babs), Mary-Louise Weller (Mandy) & Tim Matheson ("Otter") during the food fight

"It wasn't that great."

Mary-Louise Weller and James Daughton in a classic scene from ANIMAL HOUSE

John Belushi watches Mary-Louise Weller in ANIMAL HOUSE

The signature breaking of the fourth wall, which occurs in every John Landis film

Mary-Louise Weller's Mandy is proud of Tim Matheson's speech but dare not admit it

POV of John Belushi's character Bluto in the finale of ANIMAL HOUSE

Bluto takes a wife

And the rest is history. Or, Theirstory.

MORGAN PAULL ("BLADE RUNNER")

2010-02-27T01:54:00.003-08:00

MORGAN PAULL is a highly versatile character-actor who appeared in many films including PATTON as the legendary General's right hand man, FADE TO BLACK as a sleazy film producer opposite Dennis Christopher, THE SWARM as an exposition-spouting scientist, DIRTY O'NEIL as a womanizing cop, MITCHELL as an Italian hood, and BLADE RUNNER as the cigarette smoking Tyrell Corporation agent, Holden, who questions Leon (Brion James) in the intense opening scene that sets the mood for the entire picture.

Let’s start with PATTON where you play Captain Richard Jensen… Was there a real Captain Richard Jensen?

There was… He was from Pasadena, California where Patton himself spent a lot of time. And I had, before I got cast in the movie, a part in a play at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles… The first play about Vietnam of any significance... The producers saw me and wanted me to play Patton’s aide.

And I wanted to meet the Jensen family and they just advised against it because they wanted everything in the movie to be true, and we had to get General Bradley’s permission for everything that was about him. And they didn’t want to muddy the waters by suddenly having my character’s parents having something they disagreed with. It was a great experience of one’s life. General Bradley was around a lot. It was an incredible experience and I had just come from theater… It was my first movie.

You're in this a lot in the beginning – the first forty five minutes – as General Patton’s right hand man… How was it working with George C. Scott?

How did you know it was forty-five minutes? Because it was exactly forty-five minutes before they kill me off…

Well I usually time these things… But I’ve seen so many movies and forty-five minutes is usually the point where something of great significance happens… From KING KONG to whatever else… And this is the big battle; the first battle scene altogether…

I don’t know whether it hurt my career, but every picture after that… Directors call other directors in Hollywood and ask: “How is this guy to work with?” And the first time they called Franklin Schaffner for FOOL'S PARADE, my second movie… Schaffner said, “He’s fine, as long as you kill him off after the first 45 minutes.” And every movie I made that was successful, I die in, so I don’t know what that means…

And you asked about working with George C. Scott… He was terrific as an actor to work with and that’s about all I can say. Did I want to have dinner with him again; well now I can’t, he’s wherever he is now. But if he weren’t an actor, he’d have been in jail, period… He was a "Sunday Puncher"… He was crazy. He’d put out an eye of a guy who was a tourist visitor in Spain.

George was insane, personally, and that’s it. I mean, people loved his acting and we loved working with him but after the third time he pulled a stunt with me, I said, “Don’t look at me again in a restaurant, just stay away.” He said, “So you’re my ex aid?” And I said, “I’ll finish the movie, obviously. But stay away from me socially.” And he even thought he was Patton at some point.

Okay Morgan, I have an idea for a script I want to pitch for you… It’s called ALABAMA AND THE FORTY THIEVES and… Actually, this is from the cult horror movie FADE TO BLACK where you play a producer named Gary Bially who rips off Dennis Christopher’s movie idea...

That scene was quite a lot of fun. By the way, that was produced by two guys I went to school with. They were a year behind me, at Culver Military Academy in Indiana… George Braunstein and Ron Hamady. Two of the greatest guys you ever want to know. And my agent called me one day and said, “Look, these guys are independent, I don’t know who they are. But they got options over at CBS studio center, which is a little film studio in studio city. They want to see you.” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “I don’t know why, but you live near there.” So I went over and they turned out to be guys who went to the same school. They were one year behind me and they had seen me in school plays. And they said, “We got a movie and we want you in.” And I said, “Okay, fine, I’ll call my agent.”

So they did and we went on to make it. And it’s really a true story about the film’s writer, Vernon Zimmerman, who had a script stolen… It’s nothing new in Hollywood. So it was all based on truth: The psychotic kid played all these movie characters and took care of Hollywood.

And your death scene involves Dennis Christopher shooting you with a Tommy Gun in a hair salon…

That was a lot of fun and I got burnt by squibs, they’re called: The things that go off to make it look like I’ve been shot. Boy they really drilled me, as you recall. He comes in as Cagney and starts shooting away. And these things are popping off and they burn a little bit… They get hot, sometimes, even though you’re wearing a vest over them. But you know, it was fun, the whole movie was fun – a great little movie.

Yeah, it’s one of my favorites and a dream for nostalgia buffs as Dennis imitates movie legends like James Cagney and Richard Widmark…

I did a few movies with Ricahard Widmark. We did one called THE TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING together, and we did THE SWARM, really a "Bee" movie. Widmark and I were in a death scene together there… Widmark was great. And in THE SWARM I’m the scientist explaining to everybody… Olivia de Havilland, Henry Fonda, all these people… about the killer bees coming to the country and if we don’t do something about it…

In fact when I did the first take, about sixteen times because they wanted… Irwin Allen didn’t know how to direct a movie. He produced, but this was his first directorial activity and he was just an idiot. And so, at any rate, I’m doing my scene, a long one-and-a-half page speech which I have to do sixteen times perfectly so they could have each star reacting in their close-up. And I’m doing it off camera, you know what I mean? And it winds up, if we don’t do something about this soon, we can see the end of the human species.

So, on the sixteenth take I apparently said, “The end of the human feces.” And Olivia de Havilland said, “I’m sorry, did he say Species or Feces?” So they played back the tape… This is my first day… And sure enough I slip up and say, “Feces.” So Irwin Allen says, “Do your jokes on your own time… Not very nice.”

So Michael Caine took me to lunch and said, “Look, let me explain to you about this director because I’ve been out here a couple weeks: He’s like the London airport authority. They got everything lined up at Heathrow. They got the luggage coming and going. They got the ticketing absolutely perfectly processed. They got all the time schedules all set and then – the passengers arrive and fuck everything up.” He said, “That’s the way he is with actors.”

So you die in THE SWARM… And in FADE TO BLACK you’re killed in a chair and the same with BLADE RUNNER…

But I don’t die in BLADE RUNNER. Here’s the catch… New to your universe… If you listen closely: a couple scenes after me, Harrison Ford goes to the police sergeant and asks what happened to Holden, my character. And he answers, “He’s okay if you don’t unplug him.” And there were scenes shot – which are in an extended version of BLADE RUNNER. In that four pack they show a couple of the scenes where I’m plugged in and shooting myself with drugs and watching movies. And Harrison Ford comes in to see what happened, and all that might be in another new version of BLADE RUNNER which apparently is gonna go forward… But at any rate, instead of that, in trying to trim the movie they trimmed those scenes.

Before you were cast as Holden in BLADE RUNNER, you had another job on the film...

I was hired as an actor to do screen tests to help girls in the part of Rachel and five girls for Daryl Hannah’s part. So I tested with each of those girls and for a good amount of money, at the end of which they decided to have them in the movie. And they’d all been cast except for this Holden character. So he offered me Holden, which I wasn’t expecting… It was unusual for me. My agent said. “You’re not testing, you’re gonna test girls.” And I said, “What kind of flukey thing is that?” And he said, “You’re gonna get paid a good amount of money. You’re probably gonna be kissing and necking with ten of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood.” And I said, “Okay, it can’t be all that bad.” And then they hired me as Holden and that’s how that came about.

Your brief but extremely important scene when you interrogate Leon, played by Brion James, sets the stage for the entire film…

Brion was a good friend of mine, and we’d worked on other things, TV shows… And it wasn’t that short a scene when we did it. I actually had a terrible cold and I can hear it myself but I guess most people can’t. At any rate, it was what it was and very intense – Brion James is just terrific. He would have a difficult time, because we worked together before and everything, of not cracking each other up. So there was a little bit of that going on… I’m afraid he’s gonna make me laugh, and I’m gonna make him laugh. Of course there’s none of that in there… But it worked out, I guess. And I was surprised it became such a cult thing.

Does your character, who works for the Tyrell Corporation, already know Leon’s a Replicant and wants to confirm it, or do you not know anything?

In my perception, I didn’t know… I was giving a test rather, you know, routinely like I’ve given it many times. And it’s only when he balked at a couple things that I got suspicious.

So tell me about Ridley Scott, the director, and working with him…

Great, I mean, he’s just one of those hands-on people. He’ll move chairs, he’ll move lights… And that didn’t make Hollywood labor unions happy at all. They had problems after problems. I mean, he wanted to run the camera occasionally. That’s not allowed in Hollywood so he found a cinematographer who’d let him… But why not, he’s directing it? And he also knew how to run a camera… So he wanted to sit behind it in crucial scenes – like he considered the opening scene, my scene, crucial. And instead of standing there watching with the cameraman, he’d get behind the camera and watch it himself to make sure he captured the emotion and intensity. He was just a hands-on guy and I really loved him, and I’m surprised I haven’t worked for him since… He keeps hiring Russell Crowe… But what can I say?

In my interview with actor Yaphet Kotto, who was in ALIEN, he described Ridley Scott in the same way: working behind the camera as he directs…

He gets involved in everything. And, probably to the woe of studios, when he’s doing it he really forgets about the budget… He wants it to look perfect. He invented that smoke, which everybody seems to be using now, that look. The budget would be just… It would take time to get that right look. But guys like David Lean did that… You know, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, all that… In RYAN’S DAUGHTER he’d wait for the clouds to be right.

And Schaffner did that a lot with PATTON. But PATTON actually managed to stay on budget whereas BLADE RUNNER went over. And they had to keep finding more people to help kick in with the financing, and that’s why there’s so many partners involved, including Bud Yorkin, and it was so hard to get a sequel together. They all want to get the biggest chunk now, it’s ridiculous. If they’d just relax and let it go forward, there would be a sequel. And there still may be… And my character is still alive!

So then you did end up doing a scene with Harrison Ford… What’s he like?

Oh he’s great… We’d done a TV show together before called PETROCELLI out in Tucson and I had the top billing guest star. In fact, William Shatner was in that with us… It was a lawyer thing, if anybody remembers. It only ran a couple of years, but anyway, I was the top guest star and Harrison was a minor co-star.

So we go into the rehearsal for BLADE RUNNER… The first day, a read-through of the script… And Sean Young was, of course, late. I told Ridley that this girl was gonna be nothing but a pain in the ass… And Harrison was doomed. All of which was true. So the first day we were sitting there at the table and Harrison comes in and shakes hands with everybody. He’s like, “Hi, I’m Harrison Ford… Hi, I’m Harrison Ford.” Now I know he knows me, we spent a week together in Tucson on this thing not that long ago. And it’s like he’s gonna ignore me as he’s walking around. And he finally doubles back, leans over and whispers in my ear: “I got top billing this time.” And I laughed and it was great. And right after he came to see me in my dressing room and couldn’t be nicer.

And when I was doing a movie called THE LAST HARD MEN with Charlton Heston, James Coburn and Barbara Hershey… And I’m a rapist and I get killed horribly in that one… You don’t screw around with Moses’s daughter, I found out. At any rate, I was offered STAR WARS… Harrison’s part. But Andy had been so good to me, the director Andy McLaglen… That my agent said, “The last guy’s science-fiction was a turkey. It was called THX, or whatever. Stick with Andy, he’s been good to you. This is your third or fourth movie with him… Come on, don’t give up.”

Well Andy said he could get me off in time for this; he could rap my scenes in a week if I needed to. And my agent said, “No, no, stick with it.” So I stayed there three more weeks and I came back to town, and found out about STAR WARS… You don’t know anything when you’re on location… So I found out about Harrison doing the role and everything. And I said [later on] to my agent, “Is that thing you had me turn down, that I could have gotten… Was that STAR WARS?”

Anyway, so that’s the chance of the business. Harrison was up for several movies, including DIRTY O’NEIL. He got the hit, I got the bomb… What can I say?

Alright, so let’s talk a little about DIRTY O’NEIL… This is a fun exploitation drive-in flick from the early seventies, and I actually enjoyed it a lot…

It’s the lowest budget movie in history, believe me… I mean our lunch was whatever they could find at a local hotdog stand. But it was a lead role and it was supposed to be funny, a takeoff on all the cop movies that were going on… And it had potential of being funny. Art Metrano was funny and I was trying to be somewhat funny… And the premise was funny. But you know – it was what it was.

I have never been so jealous of a protagonist in my life: DIRTY O’NEIL gets all these beautiful women, nonstop throughout the entire film, the likes of June Fairchild, Tara Strohmeier and many others – he’s luckier than James Bond…

Well let me tell you, I was happily married at the time so it was the greatest waste of talent in my life. My wife checked every night… She called the set to say, “Have they rapped yet, have they rapped yet?” She wanted to know everything, so those girls – we had our scenes and that was the end of it.

Well one b-movie that has a huge cult following is MITCHELL…

I’m surprised to hear that… I didn’t think anybody ever saw MITCHELL.

In the 1990’s there was a show called MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER where one guy and two puppets watch low budget movies and make fun of them: and the best episode was when they set their sites on MITCHELL…

I didn’t know about that. And that was again Andy McLaglen. I’m playing an Italian hood and the producers are all against this. They said, “He doesn’t look Italian.” And there are Northern Italians who are blonde… I had light brown hair, you know. And he sold them on me for this thing. I think my name was “Mistrada” or something.

And you die on screen once again, this time on a motorcycle…

That little motorcycle scene he wanted in close-up and it was really dicey because the guy actually shot a blood pellet and hit me in the forehead. You know, if they hit you in the eye, you’ve lost your eye. And I said, “Andy, what are you trying to do to me here?”

But Mort was the best guy in the business… It took him three takes before he fired off the shot and it hit right where it was supposed to hit me. But, you know, that’s one of those things that can go bad. And Andy I trusted for everything… You had to… He was my meal ticket.

And there are other great actors in this including Martin Balsam, John Saxon…

And Merlin Olsen and a girl who I was just in love with at the time, Linda Evans. And her husband was always lurking around; he wanted to see what’s going on because she’s so gorgeous. And he didn’t want her out of his site… It was very inhibiting for everybody. So Andy said, “Tell him to park in Malibu… We gotta do this thing!”

MORGAN PAULL INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE AND YOU CAN LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE PODCAST AND CHECK OUT MORGAN PAULL'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE.

KRISTINE DeBELL ("MEATBALLS")

2010-02-27T01:48:00.000-08:00

In MEATBALLS, actress KRISTINE DeBELL played a camp counselor in a movie that's lived on for many years and continues to be loved, thanks not only to Bill Murray’s comic brilliance but the talented young cast, adding their own energy, warmth, and humor.

This is Bill Murray’s first big film following SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE… How did you get involved in this movie?

Well at the time I was auditioning like crazy. I’d just done a whole bunch of television in ’78 and it was just another audition. It was a summer camp movie, and I went to the audition and I remember getting the part. And I didn’t… I guess I was watching SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE but I don’t think I knew it was Bill Murray till we got to Canada.

And there were two of us that were flown from Los Angeles: myself and Todd Hoffman, who played “Wheels,” my boyfriend in the film. And we met Bill there. And the rest of the cast was Canadian. And it was just a lot of fun. Seriously, it was one of the most… I would say it was the most fun I had on any film set.

Was Bill Murray as funny in real life as his character?

Oh my gosh, yeah. I told people over the years… Bill, at that time, was basically playing himself. I mean he’s gone on to have an amazing career. But he was himself. That’s what got him on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and that was who he was then. He was a stitch; it was so much fun. And it was Ivan Reitman’s directorial debut as well. It was his first time and he was very open.

That scene where Fink was under the cabin… And that idea of all the girls… Of the girl’s heads popping out… that was my idea. And Bill brought that kind of soul – it was very improvisational. It was my first experience with that. And as for Ivan… obviously I didn’t do any other films with him, so I don’t know if his style’s changed. But because it was his first time, and he had this talented actor, it was like: “Okay, well what do you think? Let’s just try this.”

And it was freezing cold there, because it was in the fall, and it was at a real summer camp outside of Toronto in some little town in the mountains somewhere. But I know Toronto was the nearest big city. And it was freezing. And here we are doing swimming scenes, and boat scenes, like it was summer.

And I was thinking about it the other day. And everyone used to comment, “Oh my God. You had that sexy, raspy voice.” And I had a wicked cold. I almost had laryngitis when I did the scene where I don’t go to the big dance everyone’s prepping for. And I stay in my cabin, which is apropos since I’m really sick.

Did you improvise the scene where the blond girl reads the romance novel?

Honesty, I don’t even remember the script. And I think I probably have it upstairs, somewhere saved in the attic. But we filmed it and we went crazy, sort of creeping around, and it was all adlibbed. And that’s sort of what Bill brought to the project. And Ivan was like, “Cool, okay.” So with that sensibility we were all coming up with ideas and, “Let’s film it like this.” Or whatever came to your mind: you just did it. We played with it.

I think the spontaneity lends itself to the freedom of being at camp…

What’s interesting is I grew up in the country so I was not a vet summer camper. I remember going to art camp, or if you had an interest, a sport camp. But so many of my friends, later on, grew up in cities. So that was part of your life. And I think Ivan… The new movie he made with Natalie Portman… The very beginning is the two of them at summer camp. So I think that he was a summer camp kid. And I meet people that were at camp and saw the movie. Or they’d been to summer camp their entire lives. And I don’t know – there had obviously been other films about it, but… It really just touched a chord with everyone.

Did your character “A.L.” have a name or just initials?

No, there wasn’t a name. I used to joke, just call me “Alice Louise.” It was A.L. Obviously it was, whatever… They created that name, and it was to be short for something, and I just said, “Call me Alice Louise.”

You have an amazing laugh in this movie... I love it...

Oh thank you. It’s so funny because I grew up in a big family. I have four sisters, and actually my cousins. We have very close cousins; my mom’s sister. And all the girls, we all have the same laugh. We have been to parties and stuff, and all of the sudden we… [Laughs] You know that big open mouth laugh, and it would be like, Oh my God. My cousin Mary, my cousin Debbie… Myself… My sister Georgia… It was like yeah, that was me!

Bill Murray delivers two great monologues: the campfire and the famous, “It just doesn’t matter” scene… Were these completely improvised?

Absolutely. He just has an idea. And he sits around and starts. And that’s totally him. That’s improvisation. That’s exactly what it was. It’s impromptu fabulous humor. He was just funny. And “It Just Doesn’t Matter"... It’s like the line in NETWORK. And they just used that recently in… There was a news item on MSNBC… It was hysterical. They were saying, “It just doesn’t matter” on a political thing. It was great.

And where we met, at the autograph show – it was so wonderful. You don’t realize till you do that: how many people came up to me and said, “That movie has such an effect on my life. And I have chosen my lifetime friends… Whether they like that movie or not.” And I didn’t know that. And obviously I get fan letters, but I didn’t know it had that big of an impact on people. Even from the middle of the country they had me autograph a copy of MEATBALLS. And it’s like, wow.

KRISTINE DeBELL INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE, AND TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE PODCAST CLICK HERE, AND BE SURE TO JOIN THE KRISTINE DEBELL OFFICIAL FACEBOOK FAN PAGE WHICH INCLUDES PHOTOS, VIDEOS, AND FEEDBACK ON THE MAIN WALL

SALLY KIRKLAND ("ANNA")

2010-02-27T01:45:00.000-08:00

SALLY KIRKLAND is an amazing, highly versatile actress, a fact proven in many eclectic roles, particularly the 1987 independent film ANNA as the titular Czech actress struggling in New York City, a performance that garnered an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win.

What kind of preparation went into Anna’s accent?

I can answer that question… The way I achieved that voice and that accent… Initially she was Polish in the script, and then she became Czech. And then I went to the Samuel French bookstore and I got tapes on Eastern European accents. I combined that with restudying Meryl Streep in SOPHIE’S CHOICE…

I combined that with going to the Heidelberg Bar on 86th Street in New York and listening to all of the different Eastern Europeans in all of the different countries. I combined that with Marlene Dietrich… [Imitates Dietrich] “Falling in love again, what am I to do with someone like you, I can’t help it.” I tried to channel Marlene Dietrich with that voice, put that together with what I learned about the accent...

And then once I found out that it was Czech, I knew there was an elevator man in my mother’s building in New York, and I went back to him in the back elevators, and I said, “Cleo, can you spring yourself for about a half hour – I’ll give you a bottle of wine, and come to my apartment – to my mother’s apartment – and I want you to help me with something.” And he read every line in the movie in that Czechoslovakian accent and I put them on tape. Plus I marked the script whenever he would change the W's to V's or role an R, or whatnot.

And there were a lot of extraordinary women who I think were being considered – I’m just gonna take a wild that guess that I think maybe they approached Vanessa Redgrave’s people… Lee Grant, Shirley Knight – lot of different ways to go – and I don’t think initially he [the director] thought I was right… His name is Yurek Bogayevicz.

And I kept coming back; I think there were about three auditions. And I would send him flowers all the time. At one point I think I was standing in the rain, waiting for him to come out – like the scene in the movie. Waiting for him to come out of the building and I just stalked him, you know.

And finally I got a call, right when I was at the airport ready to go to Sidney, Australia to teach a hundred actors "Insight Seminars" (acting with Spiritual or New Age techniques)… And that had been planned for some time.

And I had got a call to come read with Paulina Porizkova. And I said to my agent, “I can’t do it, I’m at the airport and I’m ready to go to Sidney.” And they said, “Sally, this is this part you want.” I said, “I know, I know… But I feel terrible letting down a hundred people who have already paid their money. They’re expecting me tomorrow.”

And it was a real moment in my life where I didn’t know how to make a decision, but somewhere I honored the whole spiritual part of me that had already committed to doing this thing that, you know, was very far away and couldn’t be cancelled. So I just… leap of faith… I did a week long there. And I came back and he was waiting for me to test with Paulina Porizkova.

And he had us improvise, and she and I got along instantly and she guessed that I was a Scorpio. I guessed that she was an Aries. It was kind of incredible and we fell in love, she and I, so to speak. And I coached her on acting, and she coached me on Czech, and it was a marriage made in heaven, you know. She was the number one model at that point.

And there was another little trick I used for Anna’s accent. I had, starting in 1970, right up until recent years… I had been a yoga teacher for the Integral Yoga institute. And a man named Swami Satchidananda, who opened the Woodstock Festival… If you remember the guru sitting there, opening the festival… That was Swami Satchidananda. I taught for him, and we learned Sanskrit chanting, so we’d learn [Sally begins chanting]… So if heard in there: there was a rolled R, in a very literal sense. So I used that also for Anna’s accent… I combined Hindi with German with, eventually, Czech.

Did you use your own past experiences for the role of an actress struggling for work?

That and men… My experiences with men. I didn’t have to try too hard. Although one reviewer or journalist said: “Sally Kirkland: Overnight Discovery.” And I said, “Yeah, after twenty-five years.” I’d been doing this thing since I was… Making money at it since I was 17. And I started acting when I was ten… Not for money, you know. So by the time they said “Overnight Success,” it was sort of like: “Okay, sure.” But all the actors out there in the world really related to this role because it totally gives you the hopes and rejections of the actor.

I really enjoy the scene where you’re auditioning for the play with the other actresses…

Wasn’t that great? We did that in one take. Bobby Bukowski, the cameraman there, had a track, and the camera would go from one end of the track to the other, and what you saw, we really didn’t rehearse a lot. We sort of shot the rehearsals. When I jump up on one leg – you know, “Humpy Dumpty sat on the wall…”

In the audition he said, “Throw away the script; give me a nursery rhyme.” And I jumped up and down. I did whatever he told me to, and that ended up in the movie but we didn’t rehearse it. Everything you saw in the movie was filmed exactly how you saw it. Not every scene, but that scene for sure, what you’re talking about, with the actresses.

I loved how Anna walks around in a sort of heavy, clunky manner, reminiscent of certain women from European countries…

Well that was my observation of the Eastern European women. There was a word for it that Yurek told me, and I can’t remember the word for it now… But it was definitely characteristic… Interesting you picked up on that.

Along with your friendship with the young girl, and the aspect of the struggling actress, there’s a love story that’s very moving…

I’d been in love with Bob Dylan in that time-frame, I mean… All my life. But in the seventies, eighties and it was sort of… Ultimately I felt like my heart broke. And I used that for Tonda, the husband… I used Bob. I personalized Bob for Tonda.

One of my personal favorite scenes is with you and Paulina lying on the bed…

It was a five-minute scene, and we only had enough film in the camera for one take. And they asked me if I would mind doing it in one take… We were at the Chelsea Hotel and we only had it for a certain amount of time that day, and this being a low budget film we had to really get that shot so they started out with a master shot in the corner of the room. And they came down closer and closer and closer to the two of us on the bed in more of a two-shot close-up. And I remember that it was a long, long amount of lines, and I was nervous that I wouldn’t get through the whole thing in one take.

And so I had some lines written on a piece of paper, taped to the wall. And when you see my eyes look up, I’m actually looking at the lines on the wall. But being a good actress you would never know… It was just the very end of the monologue. I needed support from this magic marker from this piece of white paper on the wall.

I remember in that scene with her I was talking about having been in a Russian prison, and losing my baby. And I had had a couple of miscarriages, and as a method acting teacher, too… which I am… I used something called Emotional Recall where I was thinking about these two children that I would have had – and using that for losing the baby in the Russian prison, and getting mad at the Russians who kind of created that situation for me… And then holding onto this young woman who was my child and just transferring all of that lost love that I always wanted to have as a mother, to her. It’s a wonderful film, you guys… ANNA.

SALLY KIRKLAND INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE, AND TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE PODCAST INTERVIEW CLICK HERE, AND YOU CAN ALSO LISTEN TO VOLUME TWO AND THREE, AND JOIN HER OFFICIAL FACEBOOK FAN PAGE AND CHECK OUT HER OFFICIAL WEBSITE.

RICHARD KIEL: VOL.1 ("THE SPY WHO LOVED ME")

2010-02-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

RICHARD KIEL is one of the most beloved villains in the James Bond canon, and the scene in his first 007 outing, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, where his character "Jaws" tears apart a van with Roger Moore and Barbara Bach inside, is both humorous and violent, epitomizing the giant thug's formidable power.

My most outstanding memories of the van scene where I tear the van apart would be where Barbara Bach is supposed to throw me off the van by changing gears from forward to reverse and back again. By accelerating quickly in first gear then slamming on the brakes, shifting quickly to reverse, accelerating quickly in reverse then slamming on the brakes again she would be successful in using these forces to throw me off the van, an English Ford product that required "Double clutching" to change from forward to reverse gear or vice-versa. Commercial truck drivers would be familiar with the fact that you have to push the clutch in twice in order to synch the gearbox and change direction. Obviously Barbara Bach wasn't familiar with this although she could drive a stick-shift car (they don't require "double clutching).

When she tried to go from forward to reverse without "double clutching" the gears ground miserably making a very loud gear grinding noise. Roger Moore being a most accommodating person was outside the passenger window standing on the running board next to the camera in order to give Barbara a person to look at for her lines and facial reactions. When the gears ground loudly Barbara was totally frustrated by the loud and sharp grinding sound and this was obvious by the look on her face. Roger shot her an ad-lib line through the open window, saying: "You want me to drive?" This was not in the script that lovely Barbara had memorized and his ad-lib quip took her completely by surprise and the stunned look on her face was priceless.

Barbara told the director she was sorry but Lewis Gilbert said, "No, Barbara, it was fine!" He had ideas of his own at that point on how to use this in a humorous way. "Let's try it again" he said. Barbara did the scene again and the gears made that sharp metallic grinding noise again and this time Roger said, "Women drivers!" Barbara reacted again even more surprised to this second unscripted ad-lib by Roger and Lewis said, "Cut. Print!" with a big smile on his face.

Lewis then proceeded to get close-up shots of Roger Moore saying these lines inside the car so he could cut the scene together with both of those funny lines from Roger. Both lines and Barbara shocked reaction ended up in the movie. All the time this was going on I was ripping the roof off the van; then started ripping the side panels off. Lewis got one of the transportation people to show Barbara how to double-clutch and they shot the scene again. This time I was standing on the back bumper of the van and Barbara was supposed to slam the van gently against the curb in front of the wall, which would throw me off the back of the van.

When she accelerated in reverse after successfully double-clutching, the gears were going so fast that when the van's real wheels hit the curb, I was thrown off so hard that I ripped the metal ladder that I was holding onto right off the van. Thank God the van didn't go up over the curb or Jaws wouldn't have been able to do another Bond film as I would be dead or at least maimed. After I am tossed off the back of the van James Bond and Anya drive quickly off to make their get-away. Frustrated, I pick up a 2,000 pound stone block and try and throw it at them in a feeble attempt to stop them. In the close up of me lifting the massive heavy block you can see me grunting and groaning as I struggled to get it over my head so I could throw it at the van.

Early on in my career I had been told by directors to pick up heavy objects like they were nothing and when I saw the movie on the big screen it looked like the huge boulder I was picking up weighed nothing and it looked like I was picking up what it was a light-weight Styrofoam boulder. Knowing this I used my acting talents to make the huge Styrofoam block look like the real thing as I grimaced and struggled to raise the block over my head making it look like it really weighed a ton. This was a rehearsal so I decided to show the director, Lewis Gilbert, that I too was capable of injecting humor into a scene.

Struggling to get the "heavy" block over my head, you can see by the look on my face that the van is simply too far away for me to land the huge block on it, and, frustrated, I just let it fall to the ground. Then from the look on my face and the gasp of pain everyone watching knew that the "heavy" block had dropped on my foot and as I hopped around in pain people were calling out, "call for an ambulance," or "Get the nurse, quick." Lewis was practically falling down on the ground in laughter as he knew full well that the "heavy" block I dropped on my foot was lightweight Styrofoam and weighed practically nothing.

Lewis came over to me and said, "That was hilarious, let's shoot one like that." I said, "Sure, but let's also shoot one a bit more subtle.” We shot it both ways and the final edit used the more subtle one where I look down with a slightly painful look on my face as I realize that I have dropped this two-thousand pound block on my foot. Audiences throughout the world roared with laughter as they watched the van scene.

RICHARD KIEL INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE AND TO READ VOLUME TWO OF THE RICHARD KIEL 'THE SPY WHO LOVED ME" INTERVIEW CLICK HERE AND YOU CAN PURCHASE RICHARD KIEL'S BOOK "MAKING IT BIG IN THE MOVIES" ON AMAZON

LYNN BORDEN ("BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA")

2010-02-24T19:10:00.019-08:00

LYNN BORDEN played a guard in BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA starring Pam Grier as a woman imprisoned overseas… But Lynn's real adventure began when she fell upon bad luck weeks before appearing in WALKING TALL.

You were in BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA, which was shot in the Philippines…

Oh was it ever… It was shot in the Philippines and they were having an uproar over there, and they declared Marshall Law while we were making the movie. We had a bulletproof car, bulletproof glass and all that. Every time we went anywhere… when we went to shoot something or whatever… we had to have that, and we were guarded and everything else. And we’d just go through – they would be shooting in some certain place, and we would go by and say, “We’re making a film,” and we’d just go right on. It was amazing.

And then we’d finish… We’d get back to the hotel, and we were really careful what we ate – because they had typhoid fever. And of course I got it. I didn’t know I had it. I didn’t know because I didn’t know what… I just didn’t know I had it. But I knew that I was gonna start WALKING TALL [with Joe Don Baker] in another couple weeks, and I had to get out of there. I had to finish the film and get back to the U.S., and then get to Tennessee to do WALKING TALL.

And I remember when they finally said, “Okay you can…” You know… They can send me home. And they said there aren’t going to be any planes going back to the U.S. And I’m going, “Oh my God, I’ve just lost this great part in WALKING TALL, and I’m sick and all of this.” So finally there was one plane that was leaving, and first they were gonna go to Australia, and then go from Australia to LA, but luckily I got out.

And I saved all the newspapers with all these little, you know… about what kind of typhoid and what was going on. And when I got home I went to the doctor and said, “This is what was going on and I gotta get well.” So he saw the test, and said, “Thank you for keeping these records because this helps me tell what…” I guess there’re different types of it. So he told me what kind I had and said, “You’re not gonna give this to anybody, you’re past that.” So he said, “Don’t tell anyone you have it, just keep your mouth closed. And no one will know, but everybody will be fine.”

You played a bullying prison guard in this movie…

I also played a lesbian… That was so far from me, so I thought… I called a friend of mine, who’s a writer, and said, “You gotta help me understand this role.” So we went to a few bars… And things like that, he took me… So I did a lot of research on that kind of thing [laughs]. So it was fun to do because it was different for me. It was a challenge.

And your character sets her sites on Pam Grier…

At one point I slap her. And I didn’t slap her; it was just a few inches away… But it sure looks that way. We were intense, and she’s a great gal to work with. She’s got the longest legs I think I’ve ever known. And she said that she had a kid in her neighborhood... And on the way home from school she would have to run from boys. So she would run – and just run so fast... And I thought that’s really interesting because she was this beautiful girl and had these long legs and could run like a leopard, just really amazing.

LYNN BORDEN INTERVIEW BY JAMES TATE AND FOR THE ENTIRE PODCAST (WHERE THEY DISCUSS OTHER FILMS LIKE "FROGS" AND "WALKING TALL") CLICK THIS LINK AND VISIT THE CULT FILM FREAK SITE FOR OTHER INTERVIEWS WITH ICONIC ACTORS AND ACTRESSES

BEVERLY WASHBURN ("STAR TREK")

2010-02-24T19:10:00.017-08:00

BEVERLY WASHBURN, from a child actress to an adult starlet, appeared in projects ranging from OLD YELLER to SPIDER BABY, and always gave wonderful performances including a guest spot as “Lt. Arlene Galway” in the STAR TREK episode “The Deadly Years," which is very memorable as she, and the crew, age rapidly.

You’re beamed down onto an unknown planet, which means you probably won't live long…

Or if you’re wearing a red shirt, you’re doomed. And I wasn’t even wearing a red shirt, I was wearing a blue outfit, and I still croaked. But at least I got to die [later, aboard the Enterprise] in Captain Kirk’s arms, which wasn’t a total loss, I guess. It’s just so amazing to me that it’s still going strong after all these years, especially because, you know, it wasn’t even on TV that long. I think it was only on three seasons. And it wasn’t even that popular while it was on, but afterwards the fans kept it going and then it became huge and it’s still going, which is amazing.

But yeah, so I ended up dying. I was supposed to be the youngest crew member and so apparently the younger you are, the quicker you age. And then they all look like they were gonna die of old age, but of course they found the cure. But too late for me… It was a really fun show to do.

How did this part in STAR TREK come about?

Well I went on the audition; I had to read for the role. And then they asked me if I was claustrophobic, because they had to make a plaster cast of my face. And I had to breathe through a straw for like four hours, while it dried. And then after they had the plaster cast, from that they made a rubber mask, and then they put that on and then all the makeup on top of that. So it was pretty grueling and tedious. I said I didn’t… That I wasn’t claustrophobic and it should be fine… So I never knew if I got the part because I went along with that proceeded or they like the way I read.

But anyway, I did it and it was so long ago that the makeup back then was certainly not as good as it is now. And it was a procedure where they put it on with spirit gum, and so, after the end of the day, they had to take it off. And that took two hours, just to get it off. So it was pretty intense but it was worth it. It was fun to be part of STAR TREK and I had no idea at the time that it would be such a huge phenomenon, like all over the world.

And I’ve done a few STAR TREK conventions and the Trekkies and Trekkers are just the most amazing fans, you know, they come dressed up and there’s been a couple of conventions that have been outdoors, and they even bring their dogs will be dressed up in Trekkie outfits, it’s pretty cute.

I like it when some of the fans remember some of my dialog. I didn’t really have a large role, but it was a good role. And there’s this one seen where I come in and look in the mirror and say, “That’s a stupid place to hang a mirror.” Which is pretty funny; I’m sure they’re just gonna happen to have a mirror right there, but… it’s okay, it was TV. So fans will just walk up to me and say, “Well that’s a stupid place to hang a mirror.”

When did you first realize how big STAR TREK had become?

I guess I would say about twenty years ago, my husband and I had moved to Dallas, and they were putting on a big convention in Los Angeles. And somehow they tracked me down to see if I’d appear at a convention, and ironically I was supposed to be in L.A. that weekend. So I said, “Yeah, I would be happy to.” So they said, “Bring lots of pictures because the fans will be there and wanting your autograph.” And I really didn’t know what to expect, so I brought like a hundred pictures. And was thinking: “Oh my God, I’ll never use these up.”

But when I got there, it was outdoors, and they had a table. And as I was picking out my pictures and putting them on the table – I didn’t even have a chance to set them all up... And people were there wanting to buy the picture from that episode, “The Deadly Years,” and I was supposed to be there for two days. And in less than an hour I sold out. I was living in Dallas, so I couldn’t even go back the next day, because I didn’t have any more pictures.

And there was a guy sitting at the next table, and they were lined up. He was all in costume and everything. And they were lined up to buy his pictures too and so I… I was talking to him and asked, “What character did you play?” And he said, “Oh I was just an extra.” [Laughing] It’s like, “What?” And they still were buying his picture too because he was in full makeup, and he had photos from the scenes, and they really liked that. Even though he didn’t have any lines but… I mean they’re just… The STAR TREK fans are just amazing – they really want to collect all that stuff!

PIT STOP, which centers on Figure-8 racing, is my personal favorite Jack Hill film… And I loved your character “Jolene."

Well I’m normally blonde, although my hair is now reddish, and you know, because I just met you last week, but… Typically I’m blonde, as a child and all that. So when I got cast, Dick Davalos and I had the same color hair. And so Jack had asked me if I would consider darkening my hair, because he thought visually on screen we would look better as opposites, rather than both of us blending with the same hair color. And since I was the woman, it kind of made sense that I would be the one dying my hair.

So they sent me to some little beauty shop, and they dyed my hair that dark color. And back then – you know, this was a hundred years ago – they didn’t have the right chemicals like they do now. And all my hair fell out. And so they had no choice except to just cut it all off – and that’s why it’s so short.

And it was right after that that I got the part in STAR TREK. Because a lot of people said, “Why is your hair that way – did they do that specifically?” But it’s because I had just finished PIT STOP and so my hair was dark because of… playing opposite Dick. And it was short because it had all fallen out... So that’s the story.

BEVERLY WASHBURN INTERVIEW BY JAMES TATE, AND TO LISTEN TO THE COMPLETE PODCAST INTERVIEW, CLICK THIS LINK AND YOU CAN BUY THE OFFICIAL BEVERLY WASHBURN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (WITH PERSONAL PHOTOS AND GREAT STORIES) "REEL TEARS" AT AMAZON.COM

BIG WEDNESDAY (RETROSPECTIVE)

2010-02-24T19:10:00.015-08:00

In the wake of DILLINGER (1973) and THE WIND AND THE LION (1975), writer/director JOHN MILIUS set out on his next project, which turned out to be his most personal. Based on experiences growing up as a surfer in Southern California, he and fellow surfer Dennis Aaberg wrote BIG WEDNESDAY, a masterpiece that centers on three friends:

MATT JOHNSON (Jan-Michael Vincent), JACK BARLOW (William Katt), and LEROY SMITH (Gary Busey) on their personal journey for big parties, big waves, and good times... which are curtailed by the Vietnam War.

Other characters include BEAR (Sam Melville), the group's mentor who makes boards on the pier until he's forced inland where he opens a board shop; WAXER (Darrell Fetty), the party mascot who works for Bear and is eventually shipped off to Vietnam; and ENFORCER (Reb Brown), a muscular stud who defends the group from inland party crashers.

And the TWO CENTRAL FEMALE ROLES are played by Lee Purcell (Matt's girl, PEGGY) and Patti D'Arbanville (Jack's girl, SALLY). Other cast includes Geoff Parks (THRASHER), Robert Englund (FLY, who also narrates); and co-writer Dennis Aaberg (as SLICK). With appearances by Steve Kanaly, Frank McCrae, Joe Spinell, Fran Ryan, Michael Talbott, Perry Lang, Charlene Tilton, Terry Bolo, and John Millius himself.

from LEE PURCELL ("Peggy Gordon"): WHAT MEMORIES DO YOU HAVE OF THE KEG PARTY SCENE?

"The best part for me was in the bathroom when I tell a girl she should wear a padded bra and she responds that she already is! Very funny and very realistic female dialogue!"

GIRL AT PARTY: "You've got a great figure."
PEGGY GORDON: "Thank you. You too."
GIRL AT PARTY: "Is that a padded bra?"
PEGGY GORDON: "No, this is all me."
GIRL AT PARTY: "God."
PEGGY GORDON: "You should try a padded bra."
GIRL AT PARTY: "I have one on."

"When Jan (Matt) and I were on the couch towards the end, and my character is so drunk that I fall over sideways. That was my improv and John loved it and kept it in. Of course, then I had to fall over and over, from different angles, for many takes." Lee Purcell

from TERRY BOLO ("Party Girl") WERE THERE GOOD TIMES BETWEEN TAKES? "The party crowd led by the Pied Piper, Sam Melville, who played Bear, and Darrell Fetty, hung out in Sam's motor home, dubbed The Motor Hooter. Some people would go home on Sun, back to LA, again...

"I can't remember how long we were up there, maybe 3 weeks or more. Well, the crew and extra bus, coming back from the location, was the place to be. Word soon got out, and even the principal actors and some of the key crew, would pass on their privately driven cars, and join the party bus."

GOING BACK TO BEAR

MATT JOHNSON is the epitome of a star surfer. In his time he was the top dog. After hitting the skids and becoming a heavy drinker, he causes a traffic accident and gets kicked off the beach by Jack, now a responsible lifeguard.

Matt returns to Bear's inland shop. Bear tells him an idea to make a Matt Johnson model surfboard. Matt wants no part of it:

MATT JOHNSON: "I don't wanna be a star. Have my picture in magazines, have a bunch of kids looking up to me. I'm a drunk, Bear, a screw up. I just surf cause its good to go out and ride with your friends. I don't even have that anymore."

Bear was played by the late Sam Melville. His character is the baseline of the film; the father figure and mentor. There is a epic quality to this character. In a movie centering on young people running wild, he is the safety net.

The pivotal Bear wedding scene is the film's centerpiece, as Jack and Matt become friends once again.

"I loved working with Sam Melville (Bear); he was a wonderful person and terrific actor. That scene has a wonderful bittersweet quality to it that is so true of time passing, people growing up and the inevitable changes of life." Lee Purcell

ANYONE FEEL A DRAFT?

Matt, Leroy, Waxer and several others are called to serve in Vietnam, something they don't want to do. So they show up to the recruiting station, each with their own way to get out of it.

Leroy the Masochist feigns insanity:

PSYCHOLOGIST: “I see here they call you a masochist.”
LEROY THE MASOCHIST: “I like pain.”
PSYCHOLOGIST: “Can you be specific? What kind of pain do you like?”
LEROY THE MASOCHIST: “Any kind of pain.”
PSYCHOLOGIST: “Such as?”
LEROY THE MASOCHIST: “I like fights, I've dove through windows, I've eaten light bulbs, I like sharks, any kind of blood. If you gave me a gun, I'd shoot you in the face just to see what it looked like when the bullet hit.”

Matt Johnson fakes a knee injury; Fly blindness... And Waxer had his own unique approach:

SERGEANT: "Are you a homosexual?"
WAXER: "Well, I guess I am. I wrote it down, 'Homosexual Tendencies: Yes.' Yes."
SERGEANT: "Well, you're just gonna love it in the United States Army. There's lots of men there. And they get real close in foxholes and tanks, and in combat. Get him out of here and process him in the Marine Corps."
WAXER: "If you send me to Vietnam, I'll just die."

The Drill Sergeant is played by character-actor Frank McCrae, who also appeared in the Milius classic "Dillinger" and a string of other movies spanning many decades. The scene involving Frank McCrae and Darrell Fetty is one of the most memorable in the film.

from DARRELL FETTY ("Waxer")

"John Milius set it up so I'd be uncomfortable within that scene - I didn't quite know what was coming when Frank was screaming at me. That's actually one of the places where there was a little improvisation. In fact, the line that buttons the scene 'If you send me to Viet Nam, I'll just die!' was a pre-scene suggestion from Carolyne, my wife at the time. I sprang it on John and Frank during the take - and John kept it in, because as you know in the movie I do go to Viet Nam and get killed."

EULOGY FOR THE WAXER

The funeral scene involving Matt, Jack and Leroy reflecting on their fallen friend Waxer at a military graveyard is one of the most poignant in the film, especially the eulogy given by Jan-Michael Vincent.

MATT JOHNSON: "We're gathered here to say a few words about our friend Jim King. We called him Waxer. I'd just like to say that… he was a good surfer… and a really great guy. He had a nice cutback. He rode the nose real well. He was kind of screwed up the way he treated women, but he always got the one he wanted. So it doesn't matter anyway because he was a good guy all the way around. He'd always give people waves... Just give them a wave. He'd always stick up for his friends in a fight. He wasn't worth a damn but he was always right in there. I don't ever remember a big day that Waxer wouldn't go out and ride with his friends. Old Waxer was our friend. He was a little part of us. And we're gonna miss him."

Waxer is a very memorable, important character. He's the number one party animal, the mascot: representing the epitome of having a good time, which makes his loss the turning point of the film.

"What's surprising is that at film festivals and special screenings, quite a few present-day surfers and younger fans come up to me to quote Waxer lines…although they mostly quote lines that Jan, Gary, and Billy Katt say about Waxer during that drunken cemetery scene." Darrell Fetty

AND THE IMPORTANT THINGS FOR LAST

from Lee Purcell: "I also loved working with Billy’s mother, Barbara Hale – she is a great woman, a real trouper and very funny. "

Before the big day of surf, Matt has some business to take care of. He shows at Jack's house, and Jack's mother (Barbara Hale) answers the door. After a short surface conversation, Matt opens up with:

MATT JOHNSON: "You know, Mrs. Barlow, there's something I'd like straighten out."
MRS. BARLOW: "What's that, Matt?"
MATT JOHNSON: "Well, I did a lot of things around here I'm kind of ashamed of. I tore up your lawn with my '40 Ford..."
MRS. BARLOW: "Many times."
MATT JOHNSON: "Took my pants off in front of your friends..."
MRS. BARLOW: "Oh, yes."
MATT JOHNSON: "And I even passed out in your closet, but I never... and I don't know who could have if I didn't... but I never, and I repeat never, ever pissed in your steam iron."

"BIG WEDNESDAY is a classic, now considered one of the great films of that incredibly innovative 1970s era of filmmaking. Many say it's the most authentic surfing movie ever made. I think it's been featured at more film festivals, benefits, and retrospectives than any of John's movies. I know I've made more personal appearances at various screenings as 'The Waxer' than for any other role I've done." Darrell Fetty

BIG WEDNESDAY RETROSPECTIVE BY JAMES M. TATE AND YOU CAN FIND EACH INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEW ON CULTFILMFREAK.COM INCLUDING DARRELL FETTY, LEE PURCELL, TERRY BOLO AND VISIT THE OFFICIAL SITE OF LEE PURCELL AND BE SURE TO CHECK OUT TERRY BOLO'S INSIGHTFUL BLOG: THE HOLLYWOOD GAL

NIGHT OF THE COMET (RETROSPECTIVE)

2010-02-24T19:10:00.013-08:00

“At the time that we were shooting it and when it was released, I didn’t really think a lot about its’ popularity or longevity. I knew it was a quirky little film. Even the producers weren’t sure exactly what to do with it. Thom Eberhardt, the writer/director, had always intended it to be tongue in cheek – a kind of salute to the old-fashioned horror genre with a twist of wry humor. The producers looked at it in terms of being a serious horror film, perhaps knowing that there was a more solid market for that sort of thing. Fortunately, it ended up the way Thom had envisioned, which of course makes it stand out and adds some sort of weird validity to it.” CATHERINE MARY STEWART

NIGHT OF THE COMET is a very unique zombie film. Not relying on overblown blood and guts, it’s basically a character-study of two sisters, CATHERINE MARY STEWART as "Regina" and KELLI MARONEY as "Samantha," waking up to discover a comet has destroyed the earth's population: and having to survive the circumstances... But before this catastrophe happens, "Samantha" has another battle: a slap-fight with evil step-mother “Doris,” played by horror film staple SHARON FARRELL (“It’s Alive," "The Premonition").

KELLI: “It was chaotic... Sharon and I kept doing it a few times, but those scenes are hard to make look real. Because I had already done this type of scene on Ryan’s Hope with my 'Mom' Louise Shaffer, I told her to just slug me a good one so we wouldn’t be there all night. It actually hurts a lot more to fake it countless times than to just take a punch in film. I was choreographed to throw myself over the couch and tumble to the TV set. That was planned. Strange little cartoon moment that people really enjoy.”

And since bitchy stepmothers are people too, let’s get SHARON FARRELL’s perspective on the fight…

SHARON: “She said, ‘Just really slap me, and I’ll really slap you, and we’ll fake the sock.’ And she just flipped over the back of the couch, but the slaps were real. But the punch was not… I would have broken my hand. And we would have been hurting too much for that. But a slap… You can do a slap if you just do the palm of the hand and hit the cheek you can do it. It’s always better to fake it but… We were shooting so fast we just… Kelli just… She just took over then. She just said, ‘Hit me… Slap me… I’m gonna slap you, Sharon, and you slap me.’ And she was a good little actress… She was a wonderful little actress.”

SHARON FARRELL is an important character: for not only does "Doris" die along with most of humanity as the comet flies over the earth, but her character’s the only human shown actually watching it... making her the symbol of the earth’s demise.

SHARON: “The director threw a football across, and that was our Comet. He just took a football… I think it was… He took Chance’s [Sharon's son, Chance Boyer, who's in the film as one of the survivors]… He wanted to be Terry Bradshaw during those days… And he wanted to carry a football. They have this little boy carrying a doll and he said, ‘I don’t want to carry a doll, I’ll carry a football.’ So the director took Chance’s football and he threw it across and that was our Comet... We all followed it with our eyes in horror.”

And since both sisters (both having chosen to stay indoors rather than watching the comet) survived, they now must deal with zombies: the first involving Catherine Mary Stewart’s character “Regina,” who, outside the theater where she slept with her doomed boyfriend, deals with a zombie bum…

CATHERINE: “That may be my favorite scene in the movie. I love all that rough and tumble stuff. There was no stunt double for me, except to actually ride away on the motorcycle. I don’t know how to ride those things. The zombie was a stunt guy, so I felt safe because I knew he knew what he was doing when he threw me. Then I got to crack him with a 2 X 4. Such FUN! Everything was fun for me in that scene.”

The world coming to an end, and all your friends and family and everything you know of are gone… can’t be easy for these characters, especially the sweet and vulnerable “Samantha,” who, while being told of this catastrophe by “Regina,” simply refuses to listen or believe it...

KELLI: “That was our first day of shooting. My coach, Roy London, suggested that I play that I am talking non-stop and running around so that she will not be able to get a word in edgewise, and so can’t say the words out loud that everyone is gone. It’s a classic denial scene and that’s what powered me through it. When she says: ‘Where are the g-damned kids?’ I shut the door on her. Then I feign some more disbelief—because as long as I don’t believe it, it isn’t true, right?"

And “Regina,” being the bearer of bad news, has her take on the scene…

CATHERINE: “What is cool about scenes like that is that they are like a double-edged sword for my character and in that way it makes it more believable to the audience, because while I am trying to convince Sam, I’m also trying to convince myself. Maybe in some way Reggie is hoping Sam has an explanation and it gets more and more frustrating when her response doesn’t answer anything. I think Reggie is in denial in the beginning too. So the scene isn’t as simple as me trying to explain something to Sam, which makes it meatier to play.”

These two sisters are anything but prissy… With a mercenary father, they’re both tough cookies, wielding guns like commandos during a scene in which they do some target practice on an empty street…

KELLI: “It was fun. Everyone on the set loved it when we had gun-play! Plus we were all pretty tired and firing a round or two off lets off some steam. Thom added ‘Daddy would’ve gotten us Uzis’ at the last minute because the prop guns kept jamming. So, he said, if that happens in the next take, say… so, I did. Sometimes the best things come out of what’s actually happening on the set rather than a pre-planned ‘moment.’"

Then, after shooting the guns, they sit on a cop car and have a deep conversation about life and death…

CATHERINE: “Those are nice moments. It’s important to have lots of contrasts in a story. I think intimate, human moments like those in amongst the insanity of the story are important for the audience so that it keeps it on a level that they might be able to relate to as opposed to just slamming them with one improbable situation after another.”

So what are the sisters gonna do if they’re the last girls on earth? Well heck, there’s a mall right around the corner…

CATHERINE: "Another fun, crazy scene! We had the whole Sherman Oaks Galleria mall to ourselves, which was pretty bizarre in and of itself but it helped us with our characters. As I mentioned earlier, I love the rough and tumble stuff, so the firefight with the zombies was a gas. Things blowing up; squibs firing off everywhere; and ultimately the showdown with the zombies after we’ve been captured and tied up. So funny! Talk about running the gambit of emotions!"

KELLI: "That night we just went in and trashed everything. It was tremendously freeing for all of us. We just improvised things as we went along, like with the shoes and the TV. Thom wanted it to be kind of a homage to those gangster films of the ‘30s."

And not to forget Robert Beltran as “Hector,” the male survivor who helps the sisters throughout the film, becoming Regina's love interest...

CATHERINE: "Robert Beltran is a pretty sexy guy. He was so charming and mellifluous, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. As Reggie, I had no trouble being attracted to him. I liked the scenes with him in the radio station because they were intimate and a little more adult. They had a different tone to them than in the rest of the movie. Reggie reveals a more vulnerable side, I think."

NIGHT OF THE COMET is, for the most part, a zombie film, but the main villains aren’t zombies, but government researchers slowly dying from a radiation leak and they want to kill, and then do tests on, the survivors: one in particular played by a recognized actor...

CATHERINE: "I loved the scene where I’m being interviewed by Geoffrey Lewis’ character, Carter. I think Reggie is confused, defensive, scared and with the fact that she is a young woman, hopeful that this scientist is who he says he is and will take care of her. She answers the questions as only a teenager would, perhaps not quite realizing the gravity of the situation in the beginning. I love Carter’s reactions to some of her responses. He’s trying so hard to stay focused and not only is he feeling the affects of the comet, but he had to deal with this nut."

So after our heroes battle, then defeat, both zombies and scientists alike, they are, along with two children, the Earth’s new population: "Hector" and "Regina" are the new “Adam and Eve,” but “Samantha” needs her own man, and at the very ending, meets him.

KELLI: "Being that in the original first draft Sammie was supposed to die, this was added afterwards. In a comedy, at the end everyone has to be paired off—you couldn’t have just left Sam by herself, because that’s not a happy ending. I don’t know how many people realize that DMK is the person who kept beating Regina in the video game at the beginning in the movie theater. So, Thom rapped up the whole story by doing it that way. Ingenious, huh?"

“I’m so proud to be a part of this film simply for the same reason I was attracted to the script in the first place. It was a story about two young women, who find themselves in a dire situation and have to muster everything they have to survive, and they do! They do it themselves. I think it’s a very strong message to send to young women everywhere and I hear from women who were influenced in a very positive way by that message. I love that.” CATHERINE MARY STEWART

NIGHT OF THE COMET RETROSPECTIVE BY JAMES M. TATE AND YOU CAN READ HIS INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEWS WITH CATHERINE MARY STEWEART AND KELLI MARONEY AND VISIT CATHERINE MARY STEWART'S OFFICIAL SITE OR HER FACEBOOK FAN PAGE OR THE OFFICIAL SITES OF KELLI MARONEY OR SHARON FARRELL AND THE OFFICIAL NOTC FACEBOOK FAN GROUP AND LISTEN TO CULT FILM FREAK'S PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH SHARON FARRELL ON CULT FILM FREAK RADIO

JACQUELINE SCOTT ("PLANET OF THE APES")

2010-02-24T19:10:00.011-08:00

With the release of the new film RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, the fact all the simians are computer animated will bring more than a spark of honored repose to the original movies, as well as the TV series that starred Roddy McDowall and, in two classic episodes, JACQUELINE SCOTT, recalling the time and effort to get those masks on.

You were part of the short-lived but brilliant television series PLANET OF THE APES…

It was just crazy that they didn’t continue them. They only did thirteen of the television shows and I did two, one playing a little farm wife [The Good Seeds]. And I was trying to get out of the Westerns because I’d done it so much that people thought I couldn’t talk any differently, so I had to get out of Westerns. And then I get this script for “Planet of the Apes” and it says: “The humans come over the hill and we see a little farm house.” I said, “Oh my God, now I’m gonna be an ape farm wife.” But I loved to do it. And then I played Roddy’s fiancé [The Surgeon] and if they had continued doing them, I would have been a recurring ape.

Why did the series get cancelled?

Because it’s so expensive – putting the makeup on was about three and a half, four hours. And then you could only wear the appliances once, and then they had to be destroyed. And they had to have the very best makeup man in the business on that show, because it was not easy to put the masks on. And they were in two pieces… And then they had to know how to lay the hair on your face, and hair on your hands, and it’s quite a complicated makeup job.

So with the combination of only being able to use the appliances once, and then the time that it took to put them on… And then they didn’t want to pay us to take them off, but we got around that, because if you could imagine driving home on a freeway in those ape masks – we would have caused about a five-hundred car pile up.

I was at the casting with Beverly Garland, and we were the only women who liked to work in them, and yet you never got used to them. You would walk past the mirror and just scare the living daylights out of yourself.

They had these crazy makeup men, and they were all funny. And when you start getting those appliances on you cannot laugh. And so it was not an easy thing to do, but they would be around stirring these huge vats all day long, pouring these into moulds. I had Kim Hunter’s mask… That mould fit me well enough they used that for me… They had all the moulds. I may be telling tales out of school here, but I don’t think so. But they used moulds; I think they probably had been originally done for different characters in the movie. And Roddy had a special one, you know… And to cross his path was to love him. He was the most wonderful person… He was just a lovely man.

There are some incredible expressions by the actors and actresses playing apes in the films and TV series…

Well that’s the brilliance of those masks because the area… The mask… It’s two-pieces. I don’t know if I can explain it to you but… The top goes on your forehead and over your nose and over your mouth… I mean – your own mouth is free. And then there’s just a chin that is separate, but the area around the edges of your mouth, and the edges of your eyes, are your own skin – and those are the two most expressive places on your face. So that’s the real brilliance of those masks and why they are, you know… Why you really think you’re watching a talking ape.

I don’t think they can do with computers what they did with those masks...

Yeah, they can’t make the human expression and feelings. I don’t know if you watch “Jeopardy.” The other night the contestant was playing the computer, and they said the computer cannot… It has no feelings, no emotion. So, you know, that’s of course what we had in those masks.

I just loved to work in them. Because you had to use a lot of the most expressive things that just happen as a reflex action, as an actress, that doesn’t happen because your hands are all covered with hair, and your face is all covered and your body… You have loose clothing and so you have to find very specific ways to express yourself different from what you generally would have to do. I just loved doing it. But the worst thing was having them on.

Like one day I had it on for eighteen hours, and Roddy said to me: “These don’t seem to bother you as much as they do other people.” And I said, “Well what are you gonna do, put ‘em on and complain all day?”

I really didn’t realize, but when I finished doing the shows, the next morning I opened my eyes and the first thought that crossed my mind was: “Thank Heaven I don’t have to put those masks on today.” And I never thought it bothered me… Isn’t that interesting?

And I imagine taking off the makeup is much easier…

Well yeah, but you’re talking it off with… It takes about twenty minutes to take them off… But you’re getting a little face peel there. A lot of ripping off appliances and God knows I… I didn’t even want to ask what we had to use to get that glue off, but it didn’t get rid of my freckles… So there you are.

But when that mask is on, and when the crew starts telling you that you look pretty that day, you know they’ve been on the show too long.

JACQUELINE SCOTT INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE, AND TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE PODCAST WHERE JACQUELINE DISCUSSES OTHER CLASSICS SUCH AS "CHARLEY VARRICK" AND "EMPIRE OF THE ANTS," CLICK THIS LINK AND ENJOY THE SHOW.

RICHARD HATCH ("BATTLESTAR GALACTICA")

2010-02-24T19:10:00.009-08:00

RICHARD HATCH is legendary in the “Battlestar Galactica” universe, having starred in the original as “Captain Apollo” and a recurring role in the popular revision series, ultimately appearing in the same amount of episodes on either show. Richard shares his memories and opinions about the original, and then compares the old with the new.

What’s your favorite episode of the original series?

"The Hand Of God" because I just like the essence that there was a message from Earth. I loved being up in the Star Chamber… I loved the whole feeling of it. It wasn’t an Apollo episode necessarily, but I just liked the episode a lot, I thought it kind of left with this kind of mystical feeling of hope, of something greater out in the universe. I love the feeling of that. And I thought the original two-hour movie was quite extraordinary. I thought that was really quite well done.

You’re prominent in the episode “The Lost Warrior,” where Apollo’s forced to land on a planet and helps a mother, her son, and their small town against a lone Cylon and his human master…

The “Shane” episode… That was a nice episode. It gave me a chance to do something a little more: and obviously they followed on the footsteps of dealing with his… Apollo had a son… I actually begged for them to leave my son in Battlestar, at the beginning with Jane Seymour, because I just felt like the Starbuck character, and all these other characters, were getting more interesting things to do, and I thought I needed something to hold onto, I felt, that would give my character an opportunity for some dramatic possibilities.

And one of the things I thought would open up at least an area of interest was to have a son, which nobody else on the show had, so, I really wanted them to keep Noah Hathaway in the show, even though I think they were talking about exiting that character... I asked them to keep that character in.

And the “Shane” episode, again, he deals with the mother and the son and that whole relationship thing that, you know, that’s a good place for Apollo to show himself a little bit, find out a little about who he is, because he’s kind of like… Just like Adama… You know… He’s that father that we all wished we had… and Loren Greene was the father we all wished we had and Apollo was kind of a version of that, so I think that was smart to do.

But I did think the original show needed to get more into exploring the life and death challenges of surviving in space, every day, and get into the community of Battlestar, rather than just being on the ship and running down to this planet or that planet, which is fine to do but I think the best shows in the beginning, that I loved the most, are where we were trying to help people survive, and dealing with the ups and downs of trying to rebuild communities, and trying to deal with the logistics of surviving and all the stories that would come from that.

I wish we’d gone more into that, but again, too many cooks in the kitchen, people who really didn’t love science fiction didn’t get the sci-fi audience, and I think that it really made it difficult for those wonderful writers back then to maybe write all the stories they wanted to.

The first couple of episodes didn’t have that problem because Apollo… You know, listen… I know the show’s not just about Apollo, it’s about all the characters, and everybody deserves their time in the sun, and everybody deserves to have interesting stories and things to do – my frustration was I felt, in the beginning, obviously because we’re having the original catastrophic event happening and then obviously this is a time when Captain Apollo can be most appreciated, why?

Because in a weird way, he’s kind of like the hero, the hero, the guy who comes and saves you, right? He’s the guy that, when all else is failing, and everyone wants to give up, he’s the guy who comes and doesn’t give up. And that’s very much who Apollo was… He’s the guy who will lead everybody into danger, and inspire them to do the things they didn’t think they could do.

And so those early shows allowed the Apollo character to blossom a little bit, and you could appreciate that character more in those original episodes.

Once we got past that, and just kind of got into the every day living in space and dealing with that, where it didn’t seem we were in such danger, then I think slowly but surely the emphasis got switched and, again, the story’s not about Apollo, I just felt that Apollo didn’t have much to do.

And I had multiple lunches with the writers; it wasn’t about being the star of a particular episode, as much as it was having interesting themes to play and interesting dramatic situations that would challenge the Apollo character and bring challenge for everybody in the show.

So did you feel they gave more screen time to “Starbuck” (Dirk Benedict) throughout the series?

Why do the girls always go for the bad guy or the naughty guy? I think writers love to write for deliciously bad characters or flawed characters, and when a character is kind of the, you know, good guy, they’re not as interested.

And obviously they did their best [for Apollo] but it’s a little frustrating for the actor because you want more conflict, and more edge, and more things to deal with.

But unfortunately, the good guys, or good girls, are so overlooked and unappreciated and it’s an interesting kind of thing that people are always, in a sense… They want more of the bad thing, they’re always attracted to the dark side, and I guess that’s where our culture is.

The Starbuck character is kind of the free-roaming bad boy, naughty boy, and a little bit irresponsible, and the Apollo character is very responsible, so they wanted to make the Apollo character a little less responsible and make the Starbuck character a little more responsible. Not take away who they were, but just to bring a little more balance into the characters. So I think that was in their thinking – in their plotting – of where they wanted to go.

Onto the new “Battlestar Galactica,” in which you played an important character, "Tom Zarek"… What are some differences between the two shows?

To create dramatic possibilities, you’ve got to throw these characters that you’ve grown to love into very challenging circumstances, where they get tested, and sometimes something happens between them, and then they fight, they argue, they separate, and then they find out that they did the wrong thing, or they wish they hadn’t, and they come back and they become even better friends. And that’s the whole story arc of drama: that you create controversy, you throw gasoline on the fire because you want to build the drama – so you’re always looking for conflict.

But again, we [the original series] started out with the show developing characters that won you over, that had great relationships with each other, the father/son relationship, everything in there was a great relationship between these characters.

The new show kind of had every character being complex, very flawed, morally conflicted, and it took a while to get into those characters and like them because they seemed to have so many issues and problems.

But as the show went on, we got to see their humanity, we got to see a deeper part of who these characters were, and then we slowly bonded to these characters, and fell in love with these characters as well. So in a sense they started out making the characters very conflicted, and in some cases unlikable, and then we grew to love them, and we grew to love the relationships.

Whereas the original show started out with us loving these characters, they were not so flawed, and we could bond with them immediately.

But then I think had the show gone on, we would have had to go the direction of the new show and these characters would have to be put into edgier circumstances, because every show seeking drama is going to find conflict for their starring characters.

We just started on one side, they started on the other side, and ultimately we probably would have met in the middle. Although both stories obviously had different mythology and backgrounds but, again, I love both shows.

Back to the original… The game “Triad” was very interesting... How was it playing this particular sport with your co-stars in those awesome uniforms?

Well we evolved that. People don’t realize that they had a basic thought or idea of what the game might be, but when we got out on the court, we kind of evolved how it would play. There was a court, it looked like a basketball court; it was a combination of football and basketball and soccer and there was a whole thing of trying to get it through and we figured out the logistics of it: we kind of played with it with the stunt guys and we evolved the way the whole game’s played, so that was fun to be part.

And the spandex was a little painful, but other than that…

RICHARD HATCH INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE AND BE SURE TO VISIT THE CULT FILM FREAK PODCAST SHOW WEBSITE AND SEARCH FOR RICHARD'S INTERVIEW AND MANY OTHERS, AND READ JAMES TATE'S MOVIE REVIEWS AS WELL

LEIGH TAYLOR-YOUNG ("I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS")

2010-02-24T19:10:00.007-08:00

LEIGH TAYLOR-YOUNG, after working for a year on the popular television series PEYTON PLACE, went onto a leading role in the Peter Sellers classic film I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOLKAS where she played "Nancy," a free-spirited hippie girl who, with an intoxicating beauty and a special recipe for brownies, changes the course of a stuffy man's existence...

How was it working with such a big star, Peter Sellers, in I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS?

I was just twenty-two and it was a leap from television into a major film with a major superstar at the time. It actually wasn’t that daunting because he was so creative, so wonderful with me, and so welcoming and funny, that he made it fairly effortless. To say what kind of talent he is – it’s kind of hard to describe because he would be familiar to people, I would say, from forty-five up unless they’re, like yourself, a student of film going back… And then of course they pick up Peter Sellers in his early English films, and then his stardom in America and the “Pink Panther” series, his unique kind of comedy.

Blake Edwards directed him so many times, and for me some of those films are utterly classic comedies. He’s English and wacky – gifted with voices and often when he’d have his driver pick me up for work, when we would go to the same location we’d drive together and just entertain ourselves. He would take me on a world tour as a storyteller, make up a story with his character going from country to country, and each country he would enter in, he would take on the accent of that country – and he was telling the story he was making up on the spot. So, I was exposed to such a spoiling experience in a lot of respects.

Was there a lot of improvisation in this film?

With Peter you did improvise. There were some scenes that weren’t quite right so Peter and Paul Mazursky, who was the writer of the film, not the director... Paul – who went on to a very creative film career, as you know – and Larry Tucker was his writing partner: They creatively bonded with Peter much more than Hy Averback, who was kind of an old-school television director… They sort of bypassed him… They got very creative on the set and we did scenes, which were shot and worked beautifully…

Because Paul was so creative, Peter was so creative, and so a number of the scenes in the movie were… I wouldn’t say completely improvisational, but took on that quality in terms of how you worked some of the scenes. And for me that was so much fun because one of the things that was so great (and I feel so strongly about this) is when they welcomed me into the film, never having done a film, Peter, Paul, Larry – they welcomed me as a co-worker, not kind of, “Oh you’re just the young beautiful girl who has the major role in the movie.”

Peter welcomed me as a co-worker, which is a remarkable thing to do to people. That is immensely generous, very stimulating, and I personally think that with the person you’re extending that privilege to, their talent will thrive. And they did that for me… I thrived because I was very well educated in my craft. So when they did that with me I was ready… I was ready to fly… I was ready to take the invitation… To match them, to work with them, and to feel like I was ready, in many ways, although never touching the majesty of Peter’s reputation… But I was allowed to feel like I could touch the sun.

Peter plays a character that starts out uptight and then becomes a laidback hippie… Which person was more like the real Peter Sellers?

I have to say, on the personality level, if you remove the idea of a Jewish lawyer to hippie, that kind of arc-type idea: Peter had a very uptight quality to him… In his intensity, in his demands, in his absolute ruthlessness for certain things that he wants: Sometimes they were unreasonable, and he would get all kind of obsessed and tense about it, but that was more the shadow side of that kind of raw, intense talent. The other side of him was very much the hippie, in the sense of… playful, you know he… I had no knowledge whatsoever of drugs…

I was very fresh out of the Midwest… All of the sudden I’m in a skirt three-fourths up my thighs, saying "cool" and "groovy" and smoking pot… And making brownies… I had absolutely not one reference point for this character and Ryan [O’Neal] gave me the greatest key, because I’d never smoked anything when I auditioned for this. As you know she’s the one who’s smoking and doing the brownies, and Ryan said… He knew I was a great aficionado of classical music, having grown up in the ballet world… He said, “Just be listening to your favorite symphony, which sort of pulls your consciousness out as if you’re sort of out of it; you’re listening to something else, and that can represent a high.”

And when we went to the audition, he looked at what I was wearing. And we had motorcycles at that time that we drove, and he said, “I’ll drive you to the audition.” And I had on this sort of shammy tunic top that came to the middle of my thigh with the shammy bell-bottom pants, and he said to me, “Take off the pants, don’t wear the pants, and you’ve got sort of a mini.” And I said, “Oh no.” Being the girl I was, I said, “I can’t do that.” He said, “No, this is a character.” So I did and I walked in with the short skirt and with this correction for the character, and I got the job on the spot. I mean on the spot, Paul and Peter said, “That’s it, you got it. Right now you’ve got it.” Which is pretty fantastic.

And Peter, yes, he was into what you would call social drugs or things of that nature, as was Paul. And I’d come onto the set and I’d smell this smell… Because I was into alternative healing... Even in the late sixties I was a vegetarian at the time, and I was into meditation and yoga. I was a very, very early person in all this and I’m like, “Oh, somebody’s got herbs.” Finally one day I figured it out… That people were getting stoned.

The best story about that was – the first time ever in my life, given that it was 1967 and it was very much in the culture but not in my personal culture, I was shooting a scene in the movie where he picks me off the street, if you remember, hitchhiking. He takes me back to his apartment… He’s asthmatic… He leaves me in the living room and I say that’s all right, just leave the sound off my TV and I’ll be fine. And he goes into his bedroom and he’s got his inhaler, and he’s doing his inhaler but he hears sort of inhalations other than his inhaler. And what I’m doing is lighting a joint in the living room, watching Cowboys and Indians with no sound and getting high.

I didn’t know how I was going to do this scene… I didn’t even know what it looked like to do a so-called “toke” or even roll the cigarette. Fortunately, on the set, one of the grips was French and he rolled his own cigarettes and he showed me how to do it.

Well when we lined up the shot it was a five-inch camera right close up, because they go way into my face. To line up the shot they handed me all the tools and in a little vial was oregano to simulate the grass. When they went to shoot the scene, they gave me grass and didn’t tell me. In the vial… that they gave me… it was grass!

So they’re shooting the scene, the camera’s rolling, and they say, “Just do whatever; you’re watching TV.” I’m actually staring at sixty men holding reflectors and lights and everything else, pretending to be watching a television screen with Cowboys and Indians and no sound, rolling a joint. Someone had shown me what taking a toke looked like – and I’m praying inside, going, “Oh God, I hope I do this right.” I take a couple of tokes, and then, all of the sudden it was like the top of my head transformed. My acting skills came in, and on some level of my brain there was a little voice that said, “Use it… Use it.”

So on screen you just see my eyes are gigantic… And that’s the moment that it took, and I just stayed with it, knowing on some level what they’ve done but I stayed with it – and that was the first time ever I had that experience.

LEIGH TAYLOR-YOUNG INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE, AND TO READ MORE OF JAMES TATE'S INTERVIEWS GO TO HIS MAIN WEBSITE AND THERE WILL BE MORE INTERVIEW SELECTIONS FROM LEIGH COMING SOON: TILL THEN BE SURE TO VISIT HER OFFICIAL SITE.

KIRK BALTZ ("RESERVOIR DOGS")

2010-02-24T19:10:00.001-08:00

KIRK BALTZ played "Marvin Nash" in Quentin Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS, the cop who gets trunk-napped by thugs, dragged in a warehouse and turned into a bloody piñata... And here are a few selections from my podcast interview where Kirk discusses a scene with Tim Roth and a story about the legendary Lawrence Tierney…

What do you remember about the scene where you and “Mr. Orange,” played by Tim Roth, are alone in the warehouse?

The main thing I remember about that scene was… There’s a great master two-shot of Tim and I that’s from the other end of the warehouse, and obviously the camera’s all the way down there and behind the camera is the entire crew, maybe like thirty, forty people… I saw twenty-five, thirty people at least… What it felt like was like Tim and I were in a play... And we did the whole scene… we did a master… It was one of the first shots of that whole ending sequence.

It was exciting for me because I’d done some other things; I’d done some other films and certainly some television and this was a very exciting moment for me. And we finished one of those master takes… I think the first one… And the whole crew just applauded, like we were at a play… And it was incredibly exciting. And I remember that was a big moment for me and like… you know… I had seen Tim in other things, I was a fan of his work… And I was so excited to have the opportunity to do that much work with him.

Lawrence Tierney, the veteran actor who played the boss, “Joe Cabot,” is known for his backstage antics… Anything happen with Lawrence on or off set?

Yeah there's one little one I got for ya: I’m sitting in my little trailer in-between something we were doing… All of the sudden the door to my trailer flies open, and he walks in and he’s undoing his zipper, and he’s starting to pull his dick out – he didn’t quite get that far, he was getting close. And he’s making a beeline for my bathroom; he kinda looks around a little bit like, “Shit, this isn’t my trailer,” and then he sees me sitting over there, reading a book…

I’m on my chair… And he looks around the room and he sees me sitting in… for a moment what he thought was his room… And then he goes [using gruff voice]: “Can I use your bathroom?” And I said, “Sure Lawrence, you can use my bathroom.” He was a free spirit.

KIRK BALTZ INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE AND TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE PODCAST CLICK HERE AND FOR MY MAIN SITE CULT FILM FREAK THIS IS WHERE TO GO AND FOR A BRAND NEW OFFICIAL LAWRENCE TIERNEY SITE CLICK THIS LINK AND FOR KIRK'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE HERE'S WHERE TO BE AND HERE'S MY WRITTEN INTERVIEW WITH FELLOW "RES DOG" MICHAEL MADSEN

DEBORAH WINTERS ("KOTCH")

2010-02-24T19:09:00.017-08:00

In the early seventies, a young, beautiful, talented actress named DEBORAH WINTERS starred alongside Walter Matthau in KOTCH, directed by Jack Lemmon, centering on an old man who, ostracized by his family, befriends a pregnant babysitter and helps her... while she helps him... cope with everyday life...

I went in and read for Jack Lemmon: this is the only picture that Jack directed. You know, actors don’t usually end up liking to direct and the reason is it's extremely difficult to direct a picture. It’s very, very hard work and the work begins before you’re filming, and then of course during filming, and it’s long after filming: doing all the editing and post-production…

It’s too much work. They like to go in and memorize some dialog for the day’s shoot… The make-up man and the hairdresser makes them up and makes them look good, and then they shoot for one day and they go home, and when the picture’s over they relax.

It took Jack six years to get this film finally made… And I came in, of course, more on the tail end of it. Nobody would give him the money and he really loved the story and thought it should be made. So he kept working on it and working on it...

And it was something where I went in to audition and Jack felt I really understood "Erica Herzenstiel," and I was the one he wanted from the very beginning... It was a great compliment and I loved working with both of them. They were fantastic men, and characters, and very funny together.

Jack used to talk to me privately, and say, “You know I can’t tell Walt what to do. You know when he hasn't done the scene right. You make a mistake and I’ll have to yell cut and then it won’t be me, it’ll be you… You do that for me, okay?” He used to call me “Debs” and I’d say, “Okay, okay.” So then I would know when Walter got off track, or he would ad-lib too much… And I’d make a mistake and we’d have to start over.

Walter told me one time after he was nominated for the Academy Award, and the song was nominated as well. And I met him one day and he said, “Deborah, you should have been nominated too.” And I said, “Oh no,” you know… And he said, “No, you really should have been. The reason you weren’t nominated was they thought you were that girl. They didn’t realize you were doing an acting job.”

DEBORAH WINTERS INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE AND TO LISTEN TO BOTH DEBORAH WINTERS PODCASTS GO TO CULT FILM FREAK RADIO AND BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE POPULAR CULT FILM FREAK MOVIE REVIEW WEBSITE WITH NEW AND CLASSIC FILMS AND THE BRAND NEW SCREENMARQUEE.COM WHICH YOU'LL HAVE TO SEE TO BELIEVE

RICHARD KIEL: VOL.2 ("THE SPY WHO LOVED ME")

2010-02-24T19:09:00.015-08:00

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is considered, by many, the best of the Roger Moore era James Bond films. Much of that has to do with Richard Kiel, who played one of the greatest screen villains of all time: the steel-toothed Jaws... And among several fights, one particular scene involves Jaws battling Bond in a train compartment...

Filming in England is quite different then filming in the U.S. Stunts are usually rehearsed with the actors and choreographed on the day, which usually causes a two to three hour delay as the stunt coordinator lays out the scene for the director, the camera man and the lighting director. In England they build a mock-up of the train set and when you are not acting in a scene they have you rehearsing with the stunt coordinator and the stunt men involved.

At first this seemed like overkill and an unnecessary drudge but as I worked out the scene with the stunt men I realized how much better this was going to make the scene. They used a mini-trampoline for Roger Moore to bounce up in the air as I picked him up seemingly with little effort and attached him to a cable so I could bang him against the ceiling of the train. They even had an articulated dummy (its arms and legs and writs and ankles had joints, which moved making it look like a real person flailing about, whom I could slam against the train ceiling even more easily).

What started out as boring became much more interesting and fun as we all came up with ideas to make the train fight scene better. I had an idea: my hands are the biggest thing about me and I knew that and used them in photos to make it look like was crushing someone’s head like a ping pong ball. I showed the stunt coordinator, Bob Simmons, what this would look like if I grabbed James Bond's face in my huge hands and shoved his head and whole body up the wall of the train compartment… Bob Simmons loved it!

Unfortunately as they began to dress the mock train set out they put a luggage rack on the very wall we were using for me to push Roger Moore up against. Bob made them move the luggage rack to the corner so we could still do the visual gag. After dressing the set they found that Roger wasn’t going to be able to reach the lamp so he could break the light bulb and stick the metal filaments to my steel teeth shocking the living hell out of me.

Bob had them move the shelf so the lamp could be reached by Roger as I was shoving his head and body up the wall. Come day of shooting, this scene was so well rehearsed that it went like clockwork! I slammed Roger Moore against the ceiling of the train compartment like a rag doll. Of course he was either on a cable or I was slamming an articulated dummy dressed in his clothes. As I grabbed his seemingly little head in my huge hands Roger lifted himself up using his feet to make it look like I was pushing his whole head and body up the wall.

We rehearsed this for about 15 minutes while the director, the cameraman and the lighting director watched to see how they would photograph and light this scene. Forty-five minutes later the camera was in place the train compartment lighted and we began to film. The scene really “cooked” as we say in the movies. At the end Jaws is supposed to be thrown out the train window by Bond. I wondered how they were going to do that as I knew one thing for sure they weren't going to throw me through a glass window to the ground below.

To make this even scarier the people who make candy glass (glass made out of sugar) so it wouldn’t break into shards and cut you, well, they were on strike. This meant no candy glass but rather real glass. In spite of this challenge and the scene had to be shot and there was only one stunt man in England that had the balls to do it and that was the stunt coordinator Bob Simmons. He was only about 5' 9' or 5' 10" at the most and I am 7' 2" so I doubted if it could look like me going out the window.

They dressed him identical but smaller matching wardrobe and he proceeded to use the minitram to run and jump ad hitting the minitram just right he flew right through that real glass window. The only cuts he sustained were when he landed on the mattresses below as some shards of glass had made there way ahead of him but they were just superficial cuts. Bob was a brave man and I was sad to hear a number of years ago that he had passed away. He died not from doing a dangerous stunt but from excessive drink as I understand. He was a wonderful guy and a true friend. He certainly made yours truly look good and helped turn me into a James Bond icon.

RICHARD KIEL INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE... AND TO READ RICHARD KIEL: VOLUME ONE WHERE HE TALKS ABOUT THE VAN SCENE BITE THIS LINK AND YOU CAN PURCHASE RICHARD KIEL'S BOOK "HOW TO MAKE IT BIG IN THE MOVIES" ON AMAZON.

LES LANNOM ("SOUTHERN COMFORT")

2010-02-24T19:09:00.013-08:00

Walter Hill's cult classic SOUTHERN COMFORT is one of the great all-time action flicks, pitting a group of National Guardsmen against some angry Bayou Cajuns who use shotguns, big dogs and even bigger trees in this gripping thriller featuring character-actor LES LANNOM as "Sgt. Casper," the second-in-command who winds up leading the ill-prepared troop against some bad odds...

How was the scene where “Bowden” (Alan Autry) tips the canoes filmed?

The camera and sound were on boats and were there in the water with us. There was no marked difference in the number of takes required to cover the stuff. You always have cover shot from the distance and that is followed by a number of closer shots from various angles and covering varying numbers of cast members. Walter just took these shots until he felt he had the scene and action sufficiently covered. He just shot until it was right, and Walter seemed to be very good at knowing when to stop and move on to the next shot.

The one significant problem we encountered was losing a very expensive M-60 machine gun in forty feet or so of damned cold water. They looked for it but never found it. We were all wearing wet suits, so none of us were in danger of drowning (you couldn't sink!); and the most difficult part about it was making it look like it was a desperate situation. Fun stuff, though!

And when we finally waded ashore and filmed the rest of the scene, we couldn't wear the wet-suit booties. Had to wear the combat boots, as our feet would be seen. Everybody's feet were aching from soaking in the water. The water was cold (this was fairly early in the shoot) and the air temp was about 36 degrees. The socks were not much insulation when they got wet. All of us parked our feet up next to some kerosene heaters to try to thaw them out.

A little later, because this was an ongoing problem, Keith [Carradine] found out that he could peel off the sole from the booties and stuff them into a slightly over-sized combat boot and make the situation bearable. All of us followed suit, and the rest of the shoot was a lot more comfortable... if you discount the fact that every morning we arrived at the set and had to put on still-freezing damp wet-suits that had hung all night in our un-heated dressing rooms in the honey-wagons!

The part when the Rottweiler dogs attack the men… Was this as scary as it looked?

Jim, those dogs were not Hollywood dogs. They were trained attack dogs... but (and this is a BIG "but"), they were trained to go after the arm... mainly. If you resisted them they would go after damn near any part of you they could reach.

The idea was to offer them an arm and then struggle with them. They were scary. They had tried to use "Hollywood-trained" dogs, but they just didn't have the same level of ferocity Walter was looking for. I didn't really have to have actual contact with them, and was I glad.

I made it look like I was hitting the dogs, but the very last thing you wanted to do was get one of these Rotts pissed off at you. I made the mistake of making eye contact with the only female dog they were using, and she started preparing to come and get me... and I was about 40 feet away.

The dog's handler was a German woman, and she alerted me that looking at the dog was an act of aggression, and that I should refrain from doing so. The female was actually the most difficult one to work with, and they sort of put her off on the sidelines while the close work was being done. Not fun. Fortunately, nobody else pissed them off either, and the dogs did their "thing," which was to grab and shake like hell, and nobody got hurt.

Of course, some of the hairier long shots had stunt men in them. They weren't 2,000 pound trees falling at you, but they sure could have done some serious damage if they'd gotten carried away.

Were there any injuries during the falling trees scene?

One of the falling fake trees nearly cut short my career. Almost got me, and my son, who was about twelve at the time, was on hand to see his old man damn near get pile-driven into the swamp! That was invigorating, believe me! You can actually see it in the shot. It's the last two trees that are dropped.

The very last one was released by the special effects guy just a teensy bit early. I saw that thing coming and made a mad scramble up the bank. Dropped my rifle (buried the barrel in the mud!), dropped my helmet, and clawed my way out of that shit.

Lewis [Smith] ducked into the one safe hole between the branches... of course he did that every time anyway... liked to live kinda on the edge... and Carlos (now Allen Autry) went high-stepping out into the swamp!

When they cut it together, they used a couple of different takes, so you see me fall and bury the rifle barrel, but still see me come up the bank with the helmet on and the gun in my hand. My son still talks about the day he was almost made a fatherless child. Those trees were made of fiber-glass, except for the branches, and weighed a couple thousand pounds. Wouldn't have been good.

There’s a DVD cover that predominately shows “Casper” as he’s running through the swamp (right before he’s shot)… Have you seen this?

I had never seen it... didn't even know it existed! Son-of-a-gun! I sure as hell remember the day this picture was shot. It was as cold as hell. I walked out to the set and looked out at the bayou. There was a skim of ice all over it, and I just knew I was in for a real treat. Walter had me rehearse the run toward camera about three or four times.

Once I tripped and fell in the water, lost my helmet, scrambled up and grabbed it and kept on running. When you first walk out into the bayou the water is crystal clear and it's like stepping on a trampoline. You can feel the years of fallen twigs and cypress needles bouncing under your weight.

Do a couple of runs across it (or have about six or seven guys walk through it) and you break through to the soft mud bottom. Couple more passes and you've dug a trench. Water that was only shin-deep is then up to your thighs. Deviate from the path you've created and you trip on the side and down you go. Happened a lot! After a couple of takes they re-set for the close shot of me taking the bullet-hits, and I went off to wardrobe to put on the jacket they had wired up with the squibs.

And your death scene…

They had submerged a wooden platform that I had to step onto and then spring backward to simulate being shot by those buffalo guns. Everything went fine on the first take (except for the ice-water hit to the brains when I hit the water), but Walter wanted to cover himself, and, besides, they had a second jacket all rigged out for the bullet hits! Yay!

Got to freeze my cranium a second time and we moved on to the next set-up. As they say in the song: "Hi diddle dee dee, an actor's life for me!"

LES LANNOM INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE AND TO VISIT THE OFFICIAL LES LANNOM WEBSITE GO TO LESLANNOM.COM AND TO READ MORE OF JAMES M. TATE'S WRITTEN INTERVIEWS CHECK OUT CULTFILMFREAK.COM AND TO HEAR HIS PODCAST INTERVIEWS JOURNEY OVER TO THIS WEBSITE

JUDY BROWN ("BIG DOLL HOUSE")

2010-02-24T19:09:00.011-08:00

The lovely and talented JUDY BROWN, who began her career as a singer and then went on to television and film, is one of the actresses, along with Pam Grier and Roberta Collins, that appeared in Roger Corman’s groundbreaking women-in-prison films BIG DOLL HOUSE followed by WOMEN IN CAGES...

Your first Roger Corman produced prison flick was the iconic BIG DOLL HOUSE directed by Jack Hill…

I met Jack, I believe, when we got to the Philippines… He was just great. And we had a terrific cast, and we were all new to this, and it was the early parts of all of our careers. We were in the Philippines, blazing the trail for Roger Corman, basically. We did two, back to back… “The Big Doll House” and then he kept some of us on… and we did “Women in Cages.”

In a film like this, your intensity level is always high, and for your character, anything could happen at any time… How did you get motivated for this kind of performance?

It was during martial law, with Marcos… And so anything could happen at any time, and we were all aware of it… And it did when Roberta [Collins] and I were almost kidnapped in the jungle by a group of mountain men there, for real… And that was an interesting experience. We were swimming in a swimming hole, way up in the jungle and the rest of the cast and crew were filming just over a hillside… And before we knew it a whole bunch of what they called in those days, “mountain men”, jumped into the water.

We didn’t even know they were around… They had been, I guess, spying on us… And had we not started screaming… They were coming very close and literally tried to take us away. And a couple of the crew, from over the hill, just happened to hear us… Because we were sort of screaming and they came and got us out of there… And the mountain men ran away. And those kind of things, you know… We were very naïve to all of that… And not after that, mind you.

MY ENTIRE PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH JUDY BROWN CAN BE FOUND AT CULT/FILM/FREAK/RADIO

SHARON FARRELL ("IT'S ALIVE")

2010-02-24T19:09:00.009-08:00

Larry Cohen’s cult horror IT’S ALIVE centers on your average suburban family: a husband, John Ryan, and his pregnant wife, Sharon Farrell, who thinks she’s going into the hospital to give birth to something human, but as luck wouldn’t have it she delivers an evil mutant...

How did this role come about?

It was so funny because this was a really low-budget film, and Larry Cohen called me and said, “You know, Sharon, this is not a glamorous part.” And I said, “Oh listen,” I said, “Don’t worry, I can be unglamorous.” And I ran into the bathroom and I washed my face, and I straightened out my hair, and I came in and he said, “That’s it, that’s it… That’s what I want. That’s exactly what I want!” So that’s the way I did the movie, kinda like a plain Jane kinda character… And it was wonderful, I had a good time, but I was kinda worried... The way it was cast and everything… It was all his neighbors and everything, it was like, all friends of Larry Cohen did the movie.

And at one point I said, “Are you really going to show the baby? You aren’t really gonna show the baby?” ‘Cause I was so scared, and I was like, oh man, if they show that baby it’s gonna be all over; everyone’s gonna be laughing, you know, ‘cause he brought this rubber baby out, and the baby, it looked like a scary baby, but it was like a hard rubber thing. And I saw the movie and I don’t know how he got that camera to do what it did. And of course the music was so great… Bernard Hermann did the music… And oh my goodness the music was incredible. And the way he filmed that… Larry Cohen is a genius.

It's a very intense scene as you're in the hospital about to deliver the mutant and the doctor keeps reassuring you: while you know something's not right...

That was a real doctor… He was not a fake doctor, and he was really trying to examine me, you know, he wasn’t like an actor. He was trying to do what he was trying to do, but at the same time, I was an actress and I wasn’t really having a baby, but at the same time he was like going through the motions like, I mean, he was like… He had to stop himself from really… He had to stop himself several times from examining me. But he did make my screams and screeches a lot louder and more authentic just by being the doctor that he was. All those nurses in there and everything; that was a real hospital… They wheeled me out and wheeled somebody in.

SHARON FARRELL INTERVIEW BY JAMES TATE, AND TO LISTEN TO THE COMPLETE SHARON FARRELL PODCAST ON CULT FILM FREAK RADIO AT BLOG TALK RADIO DOT COM CLICK HERE AND TO VISIT SHARON FARRELL'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE CLICK HERE

SHARON FARRELL ("OUT OF THE BLUE")

2010-02-24T19:09:00.007-08:00

The 1980 independent film OUT OF THE BLUE, directed by and starring Dennis Hopper, is one of the most shocking, controversial, and intense coming-of-age films ever made, and Sharon Farrell, as the mother of punk rocker Linda Manz, adds a desperate, intensive realism to the mix...

How did this film begin for you?

I went up to Canada and the first couple of days somebody else was directing and we were going to dailies and the shots were kind of normal kind of dailies and Dennis was sitting there saying, “Oh man, you should’ve done this… Oh man, oh man, you should have done it this way”, or, “What did you do that for?” “Why did you use that shot?” It’s like… in two days all of the sudden Dennis was directing this movie… And I kept thinking, “Why would a director give up his reigns?”

And I thought, “That guy probably had money in the movie," and Dennis had directed EASY RIDER, with Peter Fonda, and I had worked with Peter and I had heard all kinds of tales, and Dennis started rewriting the script. And what we went into that movie with… The script we went in with was not the script that was done. That movie had a life of its own, it really did. It was a lot of… It was Dennis. Dennis was just brilliant, he really was.

What kind of things did Dennis change from the original script?

Dennis had a horrible problem with the fact that his character had molested his daughter in the movie, and I think it kinda changed, it was a story about a girl who was molested by her father, and when you see the movie I don’t know whether you see that…

Only in the very end does the audience realize the girl, played by Linda Manz, had been, and still is being, molested by her father…

It was really hard because Dennis had a hard time with that. I remember he was saying things to me like, “You know it’s really the mother’s fault, it’s not the father’s fault, it’s the mother’s fault, because the mothers always know that this is going on and look the other way.” And so we’re always trying to figure out how to put that in somehow. It was like a… It was a dark movie.

What memories do you have of Dennis Hopper, the director?

It was a drug-induced… Everybody was on drugs during that time… And Dennis was a big drug user. I mean, it’s very hard to walk across the floor, in a room, and walk across the floor with amyl nitrate is stuck up your nose… Number one, when you take amyl nitrate, you get such a rush, your heart flutters and goes so fast you don’t know what’s happening. You have to walk across the room, you have to get over that just to walk into the room like a normal person, and he was always pulling stuff like that.

He was a little scary, you know… And he drank and drank, and he smoked. He started drinking beer at the crack of dawn. You know, it was just like… If you weren’t in that dressing room when he was rewriting the script, you’d be written out. So if they didn’t show up, they weren’t in the scene that day. And Dennis, he didn’t like the Canadian actors at all, and he kept firing them. And he brought in Don Gordon, and there was just actors he did not like… He just did not like Canadian actors and he got so many of us American actors in on it that they kicked him out of Cannes.

How was Don Gordon, who’d worked with Dennis in THE LAST MOVIE, to act with?

Oh he was wonderful… He was a good actor. And we were both scared, we didn’t know what Dennis was gonna pull… We really didn’t. We didn’t know what he was gonna ask us to do… We were scared to death.

SHARON FARRELL INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE AND FOR THE COMPLETE PODCAST CLICK HERE, AND TO GO TO SHARON'S OFFICIAL SITE CLICK HERE

DEY YOUNG ("ROCK N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL")

2010-02-24T19:09:00.005-08:00

DEY YOUNG played “Kate Rambeau” in the classic ROCK N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, the quiet chemistry student opposite P.J. Sole’s confident rocker “Riff Randall,” and those distinguishing, signature glasses Kate wears was her own idea that she brought to the character...

How did you land the role of “Kate Rambeau”?

It was my very first movie... I had really thought I would have more of a stage career. I was back in town for about a week, and it just happened that I got this audition. I didn’t even have an agent… I was just at a party, happened to be at a party… I was living at my sister’s and I went to a party with a casting agent there, and she knew they were looking for this character… They were starting on Monday and I went in on Thursday and I was like the last person they saw; it was the last person they cast. They couldn’t find a Kate Rambeau and I was really fortunate to go in and meet with Alan Arkish, and meet with the producer and then I started on Monday… It was really a stroke of luck, I just happened to be at the right place at the right time.

This was your first film and P.J. Soles had been in many big movies like "Carrie" and "Halloween"… Did she help you along during filming?

She was very helpful, and she was very supportive… Everyone was very supportive… And she was just a very generous actress, but she didn’t make me feel necessarily like I was a newcomer or anything like that. But we just became really good friends on it, and we knew that was important, to make our friendship work, and it was a very easy thing to do with her. There was nothing intimidating about her, she was just a very generous actress and a generous person... She really works to make it the best movie possible, and she’s very professional.

The gym scene is mostly known for P.J.’s song and dance number, but it begins with a certain someone hanging onto a rope…

You know, they kept bringing me up and down, but I did get a couple of rope burns; that was a really wicked rope and getting me up there was always a challenge, because I had to shimmy up there. But yeah, I had to go back up there a couple of times but we definitely shot that out so I didn’t have to hang up there the entire time… And that was such a fun number, and you probably heard the story of Alan Arkush having gotten sick and not being able to be there… He had exhaustion and Joe Dante came in and ended up directing that. It was like one of the last days of the shoot.

What do you remember about the “practice date” that Clint Howard sets up for you and Vince Van Patten?

We literally went up to Mulholland, and we pull over... And when I open my shirt, that was me… I just kind of flash him. That wasn’t in the script… It was a very, very cute scene; I really enjoyed that. The one thing though that you can kinda see… We were outside and my eyes get so sensitive to light, people with blue eyes get sensitive… So I’m trying my best to keep my eyes open as much as I can but you can kind of see me squinting a bit.

Being that there were so many high school comedies in the eighties following the same template with the shy girl and her popular friend, I’d say this film was very ahead of its time…

It so was ahead of its time, I absolutely agree, and you know I was so sad that it didn’t catch on in the very beginning, but it’s definitely had legs, and became a real cult classic… It didn’t open big… It wasn't like a big horror movie or anything like that, and I don’t think they put a lot of money into it: to promote it. But this is supposedly Roger Corman's favorite movie and it’s done so amazingly for him.

DEY YOUNG INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE, AND TO SEE DEY'S AMAZING SCULPTURES GO TO HER WEBSITE DEYYOUNGART.COM AND FOR THE COMPLETE PODCAST INTERVIEW ON MY CULT/FILM/FREAK BLOG TALK RADIO SHOW WHERE SHE TALKS MORE ABOUT THIS AND OTHER FILMS AND TELEVISION SHOWS, CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

DEBORAH REED ("TROLL2")

2010-02-24T19:09:00.003-08:00

DEBORAH REED not only steals her scenes in the cult classic TROLL2, but as Queen of the Goblins, she owns them entirely, allowing her awesome talents to shine into a one woman show: traipsing around her little house of horrors and turning young men into vegetables... Something no other actress could pull off quite the same...

When did you realize the movie was gaining such an immense cult following?

Probably about seven years ago and I was actually working at a congressional office at the time, and someone came in from the Washington office and said, “Oh my gosh,” somebody made a comment, “Oh, she’s the Troll Queen.” And I thought, well, they won’t know what that is. And they said, “You’re kidding. Our whole floor there, of the staff, is called NILBOG.” And I said, “You’re kidding?” I said, “What?” And somebody said, “You gotta go to imdb.” And there were all of these horrible, hilarious, nasty remarks about the movie, and I just thought that was the funniest thing in the world.

I got a kick out of it from the get-go, and… Actually I can go back a little farther… I knew it was bad when I went to pick up a copy, the first time it came out, on video and I was standing there in line with the movie, and somebody next to me glanced over and they said, “Oh, you don’t want to rent that, that is the worst movie you’ve ever seen.” And I just laughed out loud. That was my first funny experience with the movie as far as how bad it was, and how it was perceived.

Do you remember if that chainsaw you wield on "Arnold" was heavy?

That is something that does stick in mind because I remember I couldn’t even pick that thing up… And they had to literally, just… Right before I did the scene… Just plunk that in my arms… And again, it was one of those one-take things… Throw it in my arms, do the scene, and we’re done.

How was doing that popcorn scene with "Brent" in the RV?

We got into that awkward position and they made me jump into that scene and the popcorn machine broke and they said okay, turn it on, and it starts popping out, and they said, “Don’t move, don’t move”, and there we are, and, till we fixed it, I don’t know how long it took… It could have taken fifteen minutes and so, it was odd, awkward, to say the least… They had some funky machine that they made, and it was just popping it out all over, isn’t that funny? And I don’t remember it exactly, but that’s kind of what they did, and then they got it going again…

Going back to the audition… How did you land the role as Creedence?

I was with an agency, and there were literally hundreds, if not a few thousand… I mean… There were so many. I remember going up to the audition and it was up in Park City in a hotel… And people were just literally lined up and down in the hallways just sitting there waiting, and I just thought, wow this interesting… And went in. I remember walking into the room, and there were all these Italians in there, and they could barely speak English, and they just said, “Here’s what we want you to do”, and they told me to kind of play out a scene, and it was one of my most memorable, I guess, now, scenes…

Where I’m standing at the stone and I just let it go with every bit of gusto and it was funny because I remember looking out the door and there were all these actors and all these other people just standing there watching as I just kind of went for it, and they turned a fan on me and I did the line, and found out later I got the part.

THIS IS BUT A SPECK OF MY INTERVIEW WITH THE GREAT DEBORAH REED, THE ENTIRE DEBORAH REED INTERVIEW PODCAST CAN BE FOUND ON BLOGTALKRADIO.COM WHERE YOU CAN ALSO FIND AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKE HAMILL WHO PLAYED THE EVIL PREACHER IN THE CLASSIC, TROLL2.

SHARON FARRELL ("NIGHT OF THE COMET")

2010-02-24T19:09:00.001-08:00

SHARON FARRELL appeared in the zombie film NIGHT OF THE COMET in a very important role during the first ten minutes, playing an evil step mother of the two lead actresses, not only setting the stage of how life was before the comet turns humanity into piles of red dust, but the camera only shows her reaction as the comet, unseen to the audience, passes in the skies above: making her the sole representative of the world's demise.

Memories of the fight scene between you and Kelli Maroney?

She said, “Just really slap me, and I’ll really slap you, and we’ll fake the sock.” And she just flipped over the back of the couch, but the slaps were real. But the punch was not… I would have broken my hand. And we would have been hurting too much for that. But a slap… You can do a slap if you just do the palm of the hand and hit the cheek you can do it. It’s always better to fake it but…

We were shooting so fast we just… Kelli just… She just took over then. She just said, “Hit me… Slap me… I’m gonna slap you, Sharon, and you slap me.” And she was a good little actress… She was a wonderful little actress.

And it was fun working with her and the other girl [Catherine Mary Stewart] was great. And my son [Chance Boyer] was in that.

When you’re staring up at the sky as the comet is passing, what are you really looking at?

The director threw a football across, and that was our Comet. He just took a football… I think it was… He took Chance’s… He wanted to be Terry Bradshaw during those days… And he wanted to carry a football. They have this little boy carrying a doll and he said, “I don’t want to carry a doll, I’ll carry a football.” So the director took Chance’s football and he threw it across and that was our Comet... We all followed it with our eyes in horror.

You've done some other great indie horror films like IT'S ALIVE and...

THE PREMONITION! That one’s a scary one… Danielle Brisebois was in that… She was a little girl that was in “Archie Bunkers Place”, she did that series, she was a wonderful little actress… She was such a trooper. I was holding her in my lap; it was raining and cold… We were on location, oh my God, these little kids that start out acting… They go through so much. The thing of it is that whenever you’re on a set, everybody loves kids… And they’re away from their kids and so everybody has a lot of love for children… And they get a lot of attention that they wouldn’t normally get from anyone else, you know… And I remember she was just a little doll.

SHARON FARRELL INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE, AS THIS SELECTION WAS TAKEN FROM A NINETY MINUTE PODCAST INTERVIEW ON CULT FILM FREAK RADIO AT BLOGTALKRADIO.COM WHERE SHARON DISCUSSES WORKING WITH STEVE MCQUEEN, JAMES GARNER, DENNIS HOPPER, BRUCE LEE AND MANY OTHERS AND ABOUT A LOT OF OTHER CLASSIC CULT FILMS AND FOR SHARON FARRELL'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE CLICK HERE

SHARON FARRELL ("THE REIVERS")

2010-02-24T19:08:00.004-08:00

SHARON FARRELL, after working in Hollywood for over ten years, she got a chance for the love interest in THE REIVERS, a coming-of-age story based on a novel by William Faulker and starring the biggest movie star at that time, Steve McQueen, with whom she's the romantic interest...

What was Steve McQueen like and how did you get this part?

He was just lovely. I read for that scene like twenty-three times. I read for it and read for it and read for it and I was studying at the time with Joanne Linville who was with Stella Adler and she was married to Mark Rydell and I had worked with Mark Rydell, he had been working on “Ben Casey” and I had worked with him on “Ben Casey”, so I wasn’t like Leigh Taylor-Young or Tuesday Weld… There were a lot of actresses who were up for this part that were like much more well-known than me… And I just begged him and begged him, “Please, just let me read for Steve McQueen.”

Because I had had a crush… You know, who didn’t have a crush on Steve McQueen? And I just thought, I don’t care if I get it or not, I just want to meet him, I just want to read with him and then I said, “I’ll read fast, Mark, I’ll read really, really fast.” So it was this one scene I read over and over and over and I wasn’t supposed to cry but I kept crying and I could not stop crying.

And it was when the little boy says to me, “You’d make a good nurse”, and I say, “I’ve had men fight over me before, but I’ve never had anyone fight for me, and I don’t know what to do about this.” He looked at me. And I’m bandaging up his hand and… At that point I just turned into a faucet and Mark Rydell did not want that. He said, “Number one, this woman has been a hooker forever, and, you know, just because some little kid says something like that to her, she’s not gonna cry.”

So he had me do it over and over and over. So finally he got me all drained out of tears and he called Steve in, and I read with Steve and I read it just the way Mark wanted and he said, “Okay now, Sharon, do it the other way. Do it the way you came in.” And tears came poppin’ to my face and Steve said, “You’re Corrie. You got the part.”

SHARON FARRELL INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE, AND TAKEN FROM A PODCAST INTERVIEW THAT CAN BE FOUND ON BLOGTALKRADIO.COM ON THE CULTFILMFREAK RADIO PODCAST SHOW WHERE SHARON TALKS ABOUT MANY OTHER FILMS INCLUDING "NIGHT OF THE COMET", "IT'S ALIVE" AND "OUT OF THE BLUE" AND FOR SHARON FARRELL'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE CLICK HERE

KATHY COLEMAN ("LAND OF THE LOST")

2010-02-24T19:08:00.003-08:00

KATHY COLEMAN played "Holly Marshall" in the classic Saturday Morning television show LAND OF THE LOST, a wonderfully bizarre journey into an other dimensional world of dinosaurs, hissing lizard men, and anything else you could image in a classic brought to vivid life with special effects that, although dated today, add to the everlasting cult status...

Was it scary working with every child’s worst nightmare: the SLEESTAKS?

No, no, no, no, they were all basketball players… My buddies… I loved ‘em. What you saw was on video; what I saw was these really handsome guys with their wetsuits pulled down to their waists ‘cause they were sweating under the lights and their smiling faces, so there was no fear there whatsoever. They were famous basketball players that, back in the day, thirty some odd years ago, were under million dollar contracts for their basketball careers… Bill Lambeer was one of them.

What was a memorable scene with Philip Paley, who played CHAKA?

There was a scene that we did together. It was an episode with, oh my goodness… The woman with the snake’s in her hair… Medusa. That was the name of the episode and there was one scene where she had me trapped in her garden and with her evil ivy branches that closed the gates or what-have-you. Well Phil was trying to find me, as Chaka of course, and he kept coming up behind me and I was supposed to say “Chaka, are you there, Chaka?” And he goes, “Behind you.” It took about thirty five takes for us to get that shot done because Phil and I had been… talk about the giddies… We’d known each other since we were like... Way prior to Land of the Lost…

What weren’t some of the more challenging things to do on the show?

If it had a lot to do with chromache… those weren’t that much fun because you’re just working on blue screen. Whoever the director is… They had multiple directors… They’d say “Everybody look up there!” And if you look at any of the stills of us… It’s like, I don’t know if they said, “Look up there at that light”, or, “Look up there at that ladder”, you never know. So looking at our eyes in the still photos, we all seem to be looking at something completely different but… It’s a children’s show on Saturday Mornings, and we weren’t experts.

But you guys were all fantastic…

Yeah, you know, I think, it’s now going on about thirty-eight years. And for what we had, a kid’s show, I’m really proud to say I was a part of that... It was really a cute little thing that we did… And very intellectual as well. You know, try to keep up with Enik and his terminology. And it’s almost more situated for adults than children, in a weird way.

KATHY COLEMAN INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE

ROBERT DIX ("FIVE BLOODY GRAVES")

2010-02-24T19:08:00.001-08:00

The exploitation Western, FIVE BLOODY GRAVES, written, produced and starring Robert Dix, directed by Al Adamson and co-starring Scott Brady and John Carradine… while not the vision Robert had in mind, is a compelling, action-packed movie just the same… And stands out, being that the entire film is narrated by none other than the Grim Reaper…

It’s the first time that Adamson and I worked together. What happened was I wrote the original screenplay which was very different than what ended up on the screen for several different reasons, one of them was Al fell in love with the leading lady and was very distracted, but the other was, we were on short money and I had some good faith money and Al met my bucks and we opened up an account, and we produced the movie, the Western, originally called THE LONELY MAN.

I researched a gunfighter from the American West name of Ben Thompson, and this is based on a true story of Ben. But what happened was there we were in Utah… Monument Valley and Goblin Valley… Some of that scenery that you saw in the Western… But there was coverage lacking in some of the scenes, and by the time they got back in the editing room in Hollywood… the character… the stream of consciousness of the voice of Death, Gene Raymond, was added…

It was kind of a stream-of-consciousness or narrative track that was needed and the theme of what they eventually called FIVE BLOODY GRAVES was that everybody, with the exception of Thompson, met their death by the end of the story so it was kind of like the consciousness that was expected by the audience as people met their demise throughout the story… It was a “gag” that worked well…

The entire Robert Dix interview can be found on cultfilmfreakradio. And for lots more about his career you can purchase his book OUT OF HOLLYWOOD. Robert also serves as a guest on a podcast interview with his friend, and fellow actor, GARY KENT.

BRENDA CURRIN ("IN COLD BLOOD")

2010-02-24T19:07:00.016-08:00

What epitomizes a great actor or actress is range, and BRENDA CURRIN brilliantly embodies two polar opposites: as a killer's victim in the haunting IN COLD BLOOD and a haunting killer in THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP...

How was it filming the scene in which your character is murdered in IN COLD BLOOD?

Richard Brooks directed me to turn and face the wall at the moment that Perry Smith [Robert Blake] was about to pull the trigger. Mainly what I remember is the high emotion at this point of the filming. The filming of the murder sequence took place over an entire week at the actual Clutter house. All the windows had been blacked out to create nighttime. Conrad Hall used only the light of a flashlight to shoot every horrific scene. It was completely claustrophobic in the house.

When picturing that moment you ask about, it hurts me and feels terribly private because it represents the moment before an awful death for the real human being, Nancy Clutter. It was a simple and true direction for Brooks to give me. There was a point made by the real killers themselves, the Clutters never screamed or struggled. They kept thinking if they were nice, the killers would leave the house and the family unharmed.

And you're a cold-blooded killer in THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP... how was this scene, in which your character shoots Robin Williams, filmed?

I was to enter the gym on a small staircase, wind my way through the boy wrestlers towards Garp. When I am in close range, he looks up, sees me and says, “Pooh,” and I shoot point blank and all the boy wrestlers are to jump me and wrestle me to the ground. Hill told the cameraman to shoot the rehearsal. The camera was aimed at my feet coming into the gym with the ominous nurse’s shoes.

This was my first shot in the movie, which unnerved me because I’m self-conscious about my feet. It went perfectly and Hill called it a “take” which was a huge relief to me because it was very intense being wrestled to the ground. But after a quick review it was noted that one of the boy wrestlers had smiled during the take and we had to do it again. I turned to the boys with my gun pointed and asked “Who smiled?” We did it again.

THESE ARE BUT A FEW SELECTIONS TAKEN FROM A LONGER WRITTEN INTERVIEW WITH BRENDA CURRIN THAT CAN BE FOUND HERE, WHERE SHE DESCRIBES HER SCENES FROM “IN COLD BLOOD” AND “THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP” (AND SOME OTHER FILMS) AS WELL AS DISCUSSING ACTORS ROBERT BLAKE, ROBIN WILLIAMS, AND JACK NICHOLSON.

GARY KENT ("THE HARD ROAD")

2010-02-24T19:07:00.013-08:00

GARY KENT has acted in many exploitation films, portraying the hero at times, but usually psychotics, and in this low budget odyssey, "The Hard Road", directed by Gary Graver, Connie Nelson plays a teenager who descends into a lifestyle of drugs and orgies and otherwise, and Gary doesn't play the hero or villain, but something somewhere in-between...

How did you get into character for "Leo"? There was an agent, with offices on the Sunset Strip, who embodied the hot-shot, testosterone-fueled fellow named Leo, whom we meet in the movie. This fellow, Mickey, even had the two-way mirror to view his secretaries. He also would frequently appear wearing a fur coat of some sort, the kind for males they used to wear at Yale ball games. I had a pet coyote who ate the coat one day when Mickey laid it on my sofa, and proceeded to the kitchen to mix drinks. Poetic justice? Anyway, it was Mickey I was channeling.

How was it working with Connie Nelson? Connie was Gray Graver's girlfriend at the time of the making of the film. She was friendly, but also a bit anxious, as it was her first film I believe, and here she was playing a lead. In a later movie for Al Adamson, I am making out with Connie on a beach blanket just before being beheaded by Lon Chaney.

And working with director Gary Graver? Gary was one of my best friends, and remained so for many years. We must have done at least ten or more films together, wrote screenplays together that we could never get produced, we went through family problems, personal triumphs and failings, etc... Gary was one of the hardest working guys I have known... he was mostly a cinematographer... his forte was speed getting the shot set and done, and his personality... which was charming, very funny in a dry way, and ingratiating. He worked tirelessly as a film editor, also, and frequently, after a long day of filming, Gary would go to the editing room and edit long into the night. If he wasn't doing that, he was dragging us (some cast and crew) off to see a foreign film he particularly liked, or some work by his idol, Orson Welles.

As a director, Gary was fun and enthusiastic...he knew how to set staging, but was not schooled in drama or theater, so he left the actors pretty much on their on as far as interpretations, portrayals, etc. were concerned.

GARY KENT'S BOOK "SHADOWS & LIGHT" CAN BE PURCHASED HERE AT AMAZON AND HIS OTHER BLOG ENTRIES CAN ALSO BE FOUND ON THIS SITE INCLUDING MEMORIES INTO FILMS SUCH AS "THE THRILL KILLERS", "THE FOREST", "SATAN'S SADISTS", "PSYCH-OUT", AND "SCHOOLGIRLS IN CHAINS".

KATHLEEN WILHOITE ("PRIVATE SCHOOL")

2010-02-24T19:07:00.005-08:00

Kathleen Wilhoite played "Betsy", Phoebe Cates's tomboy pal/sidekick in the early-eighties sex comedy PRIVATE SCHOOL... The epitome of a character-actress, Katherine never stopped working through the eighties, nineties, and beyond. Here she shares about her first film that also starred Phoebe Cates, Matthew Modine and Betsy Russell.

How was your experience working on PRIVATE SCHOOL?

Working on “Private School” was not a job for me. It was a dream. I had come down to LA to go to USC. I was a drama student. I had been down here for a month when my ex-boyfriend's manager called and said they needed a comedian to play sixteen. I had long red hair, freckles and a husky voice at the time. I was perfect to be Phoebe Cate's sexless counterpart. I got the part. I auditioned on a Friday and started work on a Monday.

I got college credit for doing the movie; a move the drama department later regretted come grading time. Thank God, acting isn't rocket science, the work was shockingly easy. Know your lines and hit your mark. I met my best friend on that film and together we went on to have numerous adventures of debauchery, Hollywood-style. I guess it was all the same crap the Lindsey Lohan's of today find themselves wrapped up in, but back then, and thankfully, the paparazzi were not nearly as aggressive. Either that or they just weren't that interested in a couple of B-movie pipsqueak hack actresses.

KATHLEEN WILHOITE INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM

GARY KENT ("THE FOREST")

2010-02-24T19:07:00.003-08:00

Gary Kent has played some pretty vicious psychos and here’s yet another memorable loon: a bearded mountain man who has a taste for pretty girls, literally, trudging around the outdoors and making mince-meat out of campers, while being haunted by the ghosts of his two children, in this, a unique slasher-feature directed by Donald Jones...

How did you get into the head of John, the psychotic forest dwelling cannibal?

For this particular character, I more or less channeled a real murder case that took place in Sequoia Nat'l Park shortly before Don Jones wrote The Forest... in that case, a guy who had been working as a handyman at one of the park lodges turned out to be the culprit. He had killed and even decapitated several of his victims... mostly innocents enjoying nature at its finest.

We never think of our forests as particularly deadly places, but of course, they can house some pretty demented folk along with the critters. The fellow was not your usual handyman type... being mid-aged, very fit, totally at home in the Forest.... da... da... dum da dum!!!! So I wanted to play Don's villain as more animal like in his view of life... eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.... nothing personal.

Two great scenes during your character’s flashback involve the killing of his cheating wife and the fight with the lover…

The demise of the dearly beloved wife. Yes, I remember the scene well. It was fun to shoot, as the woman playing my wife was sufficiently the bitch to motivate the murder. It did give me pause to consider what kind of man would take such abuse from his mate, but then, as I read on in the script... what do'ya know... he didn't!

The fight with the lover. I was bothered that the lover hung around after being caught in bed with this man's wife. Seems like he would be long gone. But, that's what Don wanted, so how to make it work? It was kind of tongue in cheek, then, the whole sequence, asking you to suspend belief for a moment, in order to justify the future events.

In that light, staging the fight became easy... I thought it would be interesting to have as weapons only the tools of a hardscrabble farmers arsenal (pitchfork, band-saw, etc.)… The power-saw at the end would have looked much deadlier if we had been able to turn it on.

And how was it working with Donald M. Jones again?

It is always a pleasure working with Don Jones. As usual, he lucked out and got us great quarters at this new lodge inside the park. The owner of the lodge was new, and wanted to make a statement to future guests, so all of our meals were gourmet cooked, all amenities first class for a film abut a maniacal killer lopping off heads and feet in search of a decent meal.

My wife, Tomi Barrett, played Sharon in the film, using the AKA Elaine Warner... as did I when I used Michael Brody or something like that, for my credit. It was done in order to work a non-union film for a friend, and not have to suffer penalties from the Union, SAG.

This picture seems to be gaining in popularity years after we made it. Not quite sure why… maybe the scenes of the forest... All in all, pretty inspiring. I loved this shoot.

GARY KENT INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM AND TO READ GARY'S BOOK THAT TAKES YOU BEHIND THE SCENES OF GREAT FORGOTTEN MOVIES LIKE THIS ONE CLICK HERE AND ORDER

GARY KENT ("SCHOOLGIRLS IN CHAINS")

2010-02-24T19:07:00.001-08:00

SCHOOLGIRLS IN CHAINS came out in 1973 before a lot of films that imitated not only the violence and shock-factor but, like in Troma’s MOTHER’S DAY, the overall plot involving two crazy, mother-whipped brothers who kidnapped three beautiful young women, holing them up like live toys in their dusty, rat-infested cellar... And while Gary seems the more normal of the two psychos, he's anything but...

How did "Frank" differ from your other "psycho" roles?

This fellow was perhaps even more dangerous, as he physically did not give a shit about the suffering of others... Why? And the only clue we are given is that flashback with the mother... yes, that's right, the demented mother raises killer son syndrome... but does that hold up? Frankly, yes, not a deluge, but a rivulet... cases of mother/son maniacal misadventures. Many have been committed to news-events, and even works of high-drama. William Shakespeare has taken care of that.

Well, my mind was on one of those guys, a cross between a hen-pecked, whining son who had killed his fiancee on his mothers orders… True story – when I was first in L.A., the early years... to a dour, low key brute, who along with his close friend, an Oriental fellow, kidnapped, tortured and murdered a variety of people in the late 60s – early 70s… This bastard seemed in the newsreels, to be removed emotionally from any compassion for the injuries or deaths of his victims. Yeah, I borrowed some of that guy to inhabit Frank’s persona.

How was the interaction between you and your “brother” John Stoglin?

It was cool playing off my co-star, John Stoglin Parker. John is a very good actor... did much stage work in and around L.A., including winning "Best Actor" award in the glory days of the Glendale Center Theater. You can see that acting ability in how much that poor, misshapen fellow is resurrected by John into a real person... and he never lets it go... not once! This made it easy for my character to feel some of his only human warmth... and that toward his "sicker" brother.

The scene where Merrie Lynn Ross runs through the orange field and then the train passes is jarringly memorable...

That train was a Godsend... came by location site the same time every day, so we just figured out what we wanted to shoot, using a train, and then just shot it. The shot where Lynn Ross' body is hanging over the fence, and then, on a reverse, we see her body through the spaces between cars, hanging on the fence. And then, suddenly it is missing, no longer there, and as the train pulls away, we see the two brothers walking away, chatting amicably and Frank is carrying the body over his shoulder. That was a great shot, reverse shots; that I thought were dynamite.

What else did you do on this film besides act?

I mainly started the film as Production Manager... Don already had a lot of things lined up, though, so I assisted with the location scout, putting the crew together, negotiating salaries and equipment rentals even assisted in casting. Once filming began, there was little time for me to function well in two demanding areas... some other very capable crewman who's name escapes me, took over my Production job and brought us through on time and on budget.

Behind the scenes, I think John and I personified what a team of cheerleaders would probably be like on a movie set... we exuded sunniness and optimism, in light of such a dark, deadly and dehumanizing on screen persona... can you imagine?
The predicament? The gradual despair... quite sad, really... we needed to see it resolved… although strangely so...

GARY KENT INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM AND TO BUY GARY'S BOOK CLICK HERE

GARY KENT ("THE THRILL KILLERS")

2010-02-24T19:06:00.007-08:00

GARY KENT appears in this famously infamous b-movie, THE THRILL KILLERS, in which he and two buddies, having escaped from a mental asylum, are on the loose in L.A. and… let’s just say they aren’t too friendly to a couple in an abandoned house or the couple’s friends at the local diner. Directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, who appears in the film as a solo-roaming psycho, this is an indie drive-in classic like you'll never witness...

How did you get into character to play such a vile, dangerous loon?

Well, if I have an excuse, it was watching newsreels of genuine maniacal killers... dangerous, psychically imposing men, driven to an edge, imaginary or otherwise, men willing to kill their way out of it. When they were that far into it, indeed, they would have a short tenuous grip on reality, anything will spark the rage... I always wanted Ray to do a back-story on the characters... like, what was the life like, or series of events like that led to "Gary" carrying all that rage at merely being locked up.

You have a great insane laugh in this film… How did this eerie cackle come about?

I had a neighbor at the time, whose husband was in prison for armed robbery. She had a lot of children, one of whom was a little boy about seven or eight years. All of the children seemed to be dealing emotionally with a variety of problems... self-esteem, mostly, and a mother who was right out of a John Waters movie, (only darker)... anyway, I was struck by how that little boy laughed. He lived mostly with foster families... but he would show up at his mother's on holidays, where there would be some semblance of festive gaiety. Much laughter among family and friends... I sometimes would notice how loud the boy laughed, and how empty the laugh was of any real feeling of "mirth" or "joy"... feelings one normally associate with laughter. He was laughing because he felt it was what had to be done to fit in, or get by, but he wasn't feeling "funny" at all. I am over stating here... but I remembered how hollow his laugh sounded. I decided to try and recreate that (to me) "panic and paranoia" masquerading as a good, hearty "laugh"...don't know if it worked, but at the time it seemed like the ticket - if you get my drift.

Now, strange, James, to say this, but I have been trying to get a wild, Texas Red wolf to bond with me... long story… (felt trapped, did he, by a city encroaching rapidly on his habitat?... hounded by the city pound, the town dog patrol… a kill, kill situation… hounded by folks that consider him a ghost dog, a devil dog, etc. of mythic proportion... all incorrect...) he has shown up in desperation at my place... I have given him shelter, and am gradually ever so gradually winning him over... he will even come in my house... AS LONG AS I KEEP THE DOORS OPEN!!!! If I close a door, he reverts to sheer dangerous animal-panic... "Don't f**k with me pal… Don't close me in, cut off my escape!"

Hmmmm… could a human be driven to that edge? It happens everyday.

I can only remember making the decision to play this character as definitely riding the edge of psychosis, one of those bad, violent blokes that kills men and women on a moment's whim, hair-triggered and bad news when you see him on the street..."Oh no, this guy is easily trouble waiting for a light"... Ray agreed, so we went for it... Loved it, the rough stuff.... love it!!! Over the edge, well… that's my gig!!!

Recollections of the diner scene?

The diner scene was shot in Topanga Canyon, at a biker/bar/bistro smacked upside the hills between The Great Valley and Malibu... a dynamite sort of "outlaw" venue, as opposed to Coldwater, Benedict, Laurel, etc. The gentler, more civilized canyons. This particular cafe appears a lot in biker flicks of the era. The owner of the Cafe was played by my then wife, Rose Mary aka Laura Benedict. That's her smoking the cigar. Rose Mary had a background in Texas theater, and was working at the time for a theater company in Burbank. It was strangely a hoot doing the scene with her; she had an intriguing panache in the scene.

How about that wonderfully long scene as you chase the girl up the hill and then fight with her husband?

Well, this was a steep step into the twilight zone... a zone, my friends, where a women in high heels, on a rocky, bramble covered series of cliffs and back slides, continuously and easily avoids capture by a husky, athletically fit male in his fighting trim... wearing gimme' shoes! How are we going to make this thing work? The fun part was doing the actual chase - the actual climbing and stunt fight... I didn't know what I was doing, only that I enjoyed all the scrambling over things, and getting in fights. Hmmmm... could it be? Nah.

I also felt a sort of pity for Liz Renay... why she did not break an ankle is a testament to her background in dance.

And finally, tell us a little about the iconic director…

Ray Steckler. Wow! Let me remember him, if you will. I met Ray as he lived across the street from me in a low-end, artsy-crafty section of Hollywood... I'm talkin' south-east Hollywood, headed for the outskirts of downtown L.A.

We met while we were both out doing yard work, mowing, trimming kind of stuff... and struck up a conversation. He was a friendly enthusiastic fellow who wanted to make some movies, and I wanted to do some stunts, or a chance to figure out how to do them. I also had acting credentials, so Ray asked me to be in his movie, "The Thrill Killers"...

I do not recall seeing a script, although there could have been one... basically, he would have us improvise... he would set up the scene, the problem, etc. And then let you start with each other, feeding into and reacting in the moment as our characters might... led to some very bizarre stuff... I think Ray got off on watching his actors improvise, and giving them a premise and a stage on which to do so... Hey, Ray, RIP.

GARY KENT INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK AND TO BUY GARY KENT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY CLICK HERE

GARY KENT ("PSYCH-OUT")

2010-02-24T19:06:00.005-08:00

Gary Kent appears in the Roger Corman produced Richard Rush directed hippie drive-in flick from the sixties, PSYCH-OUT, centering on the exploits of a band with members such as Jack Nicholson and Adam Roarke, and in this hippie-era classic, Gary, playing a junkyard thug, is anything but peaceful...

How was it working with a then non-famous Jack Nicholson?

Working with Jack was a pleasure. He was always dead serious about his work, and at the time I met him he was in mid-thirties, did not drink or smoke (except for pot). He was not a huggy-feely kinda guy, nor was he a prima-donna... he didn't hang with cast and crew much after the day's shoot, he was always holed up in his room with some good homegrown and a beautiful lady... when I first met him, that beautiful lady was his wife, Sandy.

He was competitive... a good sport, and was also co-producer on the first two films I worked with him on (The Shooting, Ride In The Whirlwind). Jack always seemed very sure of himself as an actor... and more or less private person off the set, except for a few close, close friends. One of those friends was actor John Hackett... with whom I became close friends, and John was instrumental in my securing a few gigs doubling Robert Vaughn on The Man From Uncle television series. Small world....

How about the late Adam Rourke?

Adam Rourke was one of the guys. He was hardwired, and lived and performed pretty much out there on the edge. He came from a humble, even hardscrabble Bronx family... he learned to fight early in life – "on the block." Later he fought in the Golden Gloves competition and did quite well.

Adam was also very outgoing, could party hearty, but, like Jack, took the work seriously, no matter how raucous the film.

What were some of highlights behind and in front of the camera?

Well, I had a whole bunch of things I was in charge of, so each day was a challenge for me in some way, mostly in effects, figuring out how to give the script and director Richard Rush, what they wanted to see on the screen, but not CGI... this (the fire trips) had to go from reality, segue into a bad trip on acid, fire becoming the main threat, real and imagined, segue into our heroine coming out of the trip on the Golden Gate Bridge and how to double Dean Stockwell in the car hit sequence that kills him. Whew! Then I had to coordinate the stunts, work 'em out with Richard, then hire the guys and get down with it.

As to how I played my scene with Jack...I knew Jack would likely under-play his character at first, before letting hi explode in the fight, so I decided to underlay my character also, this seeming lack of physical threat with only implied violence, vocally....until the real stuff begins....

And what was the…

Most intense stunt? In Psych-out? Well, that would have been when I doubled Bruce Dern coming through the skylight at the art museum... after I broke through the glass, I saw the balustrade I was to swing to was a little farther that I had realized. There were no pads below me to fall on if I lost my grip, or missed my landing point... as the camera and crew were directly below, shooting straight up.... when I did the swing, I barely made it over the balustrade... doesn't look like much on film, but for me, a miss would have meant a crushed skull, for sure, and very possibly a bad attitude!

GARY KENT INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM AND TO BUY GARY KENT'S BOOK CLICK HERE

GARY KENT ("SATAN'S SADISTS")

2010-02-24T19:06:00.001-08:00

In the 1969 Al Adamson biker flick SATAN'S SADISTS, a group of hog-riding thugs roll into a small town and turn over a cafe where, besides the owner and a waitress is a tough Vietnam-vet marine, played by GARY KENT, and a seasoned cop (Scott Brady) and his wife who'd given the marine a lift: and here's where they end up, now having to deal with the lethal Sadists, or die...

How was it working with Scott Brady in SATAN’S SADISTS?

Well, I had worked with Scott Brady before, and liked and respected him very much. He was also one of my heroes when I was sneaking off to movies while still in school and dreaming of becoming an actor. So, being able to work with him again was a joy.

The scene itself was cool... I thought Scott was great as the tough cop with a chance at he and his wife finally getting some slack. I mean, here we were, in the desert, beautiful day... doing what we all liked to do. Pleasant feelings in the acting whirlpool...

Then, to have it culminate in that scene in the cafe... where we are immediately confronted by the thug bikers... tough, it would seem, for anyone to handle... now, it is a tribute to our acting that Scott and I didn't do some major ass-whupping, as we were not the type of guys to let that happen... but, we were acting, and that ass whupping stuff wasn't in the script...

It also was a good example of how "just going along, and maybe they will leave us alone" mostly does not work. My credo had always been, if you are gonna move, do it soon, fast, and heavy as all hell...or you lose...

Any other recollections of the shoot?

I was disappointed that I was not more charming in the film, didn't smile more...but then, producer Sam Sherman told me "remember...you do not have a lot to smile about!"

At night, after the martini shot, Scott and I and Bob Dix would meet in Bud Cardos' room for drinks before dinner. Bud had whipped up a marvelous pate' that, munched on a Ritz cracker, tasted great... until we found out it was freshly killed and skinned rattlesnake...
And after dinner, there was much singing of "the old songs" and a lot of raunchy joke telling. It was very eerie for me to return years later as a witness for the prosecution in the trial of Al Adamson's killer, Fred Fulford. They put me up at the same motel Bud, Scott, Dix and I had stayed at years earlier, during the making of Satan's Sadists...

GARY KENT INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM AND YOU CAN FIND THE FACEBOOK FAN PAGE FOR "SATAN'S SADISTS" BY CLICKING HERE (TAGS: GARY KENT INTERVIEW, SATAN'S SADISTS INTERVIEW) AND TO BUY HIS BOOK ON AMAZON CLICK HERE

DANIEL HOLZMAN ("IT'S ALIVE")

2010-02-24T18:34:00.000-08:00

The iconic Larry Cohen horror classic IT'S ALIVE centers on a young suburban couple who have a baby from hell. The newborn goes on a killing spree, beginning in the hospital room and ending up in the sewers. DANIEL HOLZMAN played the twelve-year-old son of this very unlucky couple, who has to deal with the fact his little brother makes Linda Blair seem tame...

HOW DID YOU END UP WITH THE ROLE OF "CHRIS DAVIES"?

I was performing at a children's playhouse, one of the actors from the movie (I think he played a cop) came by to watch us work. He asked me to meet with Larry Cohen, and I did a couple of days later. The meeting seemed pretty informal, just read a few lines and that was it. Larry asked me to be in the movie, and I said yes.

HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN IT CAME OUT, AND WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE MOVIE?

I guess I was 12 when it came out. My family and I all went to the premiere, and I remember my brother and I laughing at how silly the movie was. We especially liked the milkman scene, and when the cops were throwing steaks under the cars.

HOW DID THEY SHOOT THE SCENE WHEN YOU'RE RUNNING HOME?

I was running behind a car. The camera was mounted on the back of it.

DID YOU EVER SEE RICK BAKER WORKING THE BABY PUPPET?

No, I don't remember meeting Rick Baker, but I remember the doll and Larry Cohen telling me how expensive it was.

DID YOU WITNESS ANY OF THE BLOODY SCENES BEING FILMED?

I don't think I saw any gory stuff, but I think that was just because I wasn't in those scenes.

HOW LONG DID YOU WORK ON THE SHOOT?

I'm guessing a week or two.

HOW WAS IT WORKING WITH DIRECTOR LARRY COHEN?

He seemed nice and patient with me. I remember for one scene he said "Throw some water on the kid's puss.” I never heard that expression for someone's face before and it stuck with me.

ANY MEMORIES OF WORKING WITH JOHN P. RYAN ("RUNAWAY TRAIN") OR SHARON FARRELL ("OUT OF THE BLUE")?

John Ryan seemed very fatherly and cool; Sharon Farrell seemed a little high strung. In one scene she slapped me a few times before we did it to try and get me to cry. Later she asked me to slap her, and I did, pretty hard too as I recall.

DID THIS FILM INCREASE YOUR POPULARITY AT THE TIME?

No. I don't remember anybody even mentioning it.

HAVE YOU KEPT IN TOUCH WITH ANY OF THE CAST OR CREW?

No.

THE CHARACTER "CHARLEY" SLAPS YOUR BUTT IN ONE SCENE, AND SEEMS VERY INTERSTED IN "CHRIS"... WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?

He did seem a little over-friendly. Maybe if he had more time before the baby monster got killed he would have made his move. Perhaps a little hug to comfort me in my time of need, followed by a chance to see his special home movies in the basement.

DANIEL HOLZMAN INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM AND SPECIAL THANKS TO MY COUSIN DAVID DEEBLE FOR LANDING THIS INTERVIEW, ONE OF MY FIRST THAT GOT THE BALL ROLLING ON MY INTERVIEWS.

SETH WAGERMAN ("CRIMES OF PASSION")

2010-02-18T22:41:00.000-08:00

Seth Wagerman appeared as a young John Travolta in THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE and was one of my first interviews on cultfilmfreak. On that interview is a selection where he talks about his work on the film CRIMES OF PASSION, cast as the son of John Laughlin and Annie Potts...

What are some memories working on Ken Russell's controversial film CRIMES OF PASSION?

Ok, I was a little older for this one. But I had no idea what kind of film I was making. My scenes were completely separated from the rest of the movie. I remember a breakfast scene with Annie Potts, and that she was nice to me, and said she was allergic to MSG (random memory; we were talking about Chinese food). The crew guy was arranging my breakfast cereal in Elmer's glue so that every flake was placed the way they wanted it, which I thought was utterly crazy. I mean, it wasn't a cornflake commercial! I remember a scene where I was supposed to be watching TV with my sister, only it was just a cardboard box with a flickering bluish light in the middle, so it would reflect off our faces as we lay there, looking bored and zoned-out…

The interesting thing about probing these recollections is what a kid remembers. I don’t remember stuff about "how the shooting went." I remember craft tables full of food, how some of the sets looked, the other kids I played with, and having to be in "school" with the on-set teacher. I guess that was what was salient to me at the time…Oh, yeah – and I DO remember seeing it for the first time. I went to the special cast-only viewing, and it was X-rated. I don't remember what age I was, but I remember my Mom telling them all it was ok for me to watch (she was a huge hippie and always told me that sex was no big deal). I remember sitting next to her and watching stuff and getting a little turned on and being extremely uncomfortable. This is probably why I've never watched the movie since, come to think of it. Weird.

Thanks, Mom.

THE ENTIRE SETH WAGERMAN INTERVIEW CAN BE FOUND HERE ON CULT FILM FREAK DOT COM -- SETH WAGERMAN INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE (TAGS: CRIMES OF PASSION INTERVIEW)

KATHLEEN WILHOITE ("MURPHY'S LAW")

2010-02-10T01:51:00.001-08:00

Kathleen Wilhoite is a talented, energetic, versatile actress who’s played a wide variety of roles including a teenage delinquent in the Charles Bronson vehicle "Murphy's Law", where she's not just a side-character but is teamed up with the iconic actor throughout the entire film...

No other actress can claim they were handcuffed to Charles Bronson in a film… How was it working so close with the iconic Charles Bronson in “Murphy’s Law”?

Unbelievably fantastic. Charles Bronson is a brilliant actor. The real deal. I think whatever you might imagine working with him would be like; you probably wouldn't be far off. He was funny and kind, and brutally honest in a good way, smart, worked hard to get a scene just right, valued his family above all else.He became protective of me. He told me that my boyfriend had a head like a chicken. “How come you're dating a guy who's got a head like a chicken?" he'd ask. I had to laugh. Again, the guy was brutally honest. I had no answer for him.

Charles Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson had made several films together before “Murphy’s Law”… Did the production flow nicely?

Oh, yes. I remember the day before I went to work, J. Lee had a meeting with me and told me not to expect too much from Charlie, that he was a quiet man and just because he didn't say much, didn't mean he was thinking there was anything wrong. He said a lot of the actresses Charlie had worked with in the past would get progressively more paranoid as the filming went along.He told me that it was important I was made aware of that. My father's a lot like that, so when Charles and I had a long car scene, or when we were handcuffed together for long period of time, I just sat there quietly and let him steer the chitchat. He couldn't have been kinder and more interesting. When he was finished with his story, he'd say, "Let's shoooooooooot!" and the film would be rolling again.

“Murphy’s Law” was very physical – lots of action and fighting and your character was the brunt of most of it… Did you do any of your own stunts?

Sure. I love that stuff. I'm a tomboy and an ex gymnast. In my last life, I might have been a stunt chick. I developed a fear of heights but it was long after “Murphy's Law”. I remember the stories surrounding all the guns on the set and how careful the prop people were with them.

Your character had an interesting vocabulary, phrases such as “Chism Breath”, “Scrotum Cheeks”, “Snot Rags”, “Dinosaur Dork”… Do lines that stand out that you remember being particularly interesting and/or that you were embarrassed to read?

Oh, holy crap. All of them. Who talks like that? It was big part, but no potty mouth that I know of would ever "nail" someone by calling them a donkey dork. I was a student of Peggy Fruerry and Bill Traylor from the Loft Studio. We were all about "keeping it real," so to get a script like that, I had to just throw away my ideal about shaving my performances close to the bone. They didn't want me to swear too much.Last time I checked, swearing is kind of central to being a "potty mouth." I had a blast though. No doubt, except afterwards when I was doing a play in New York and every time I went down to Times Square, someone would follow me and say, "Hey, hey, Scrotum Cheeks, Jizz Breath. . ."

KATHLEEN WILHOITE INTERVIEW (PART 1) BY JAMES M. TAT

JORDAN RHODES ("THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO")

2010-02-10T01:50:00.000-08:00

Character-actor Jordan Rhodes appeared in numerous classic cult films including the Charles Bronson vehicle MR. MAJESTYK and Sean Penn's directorial debut THE INDIAN RUNNER, and in-between this time he got the opportunity to work on a popular television series called THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO with the late Karl Malden...

Karl Malden…What a tremendous actor and professional. When I first was hired to recur as Jerry Billings, the D.A. on Streets of San Francisco, to replace John Kerr, I had no idea that Karl was the man responsible for getting me the job. I had been hired to do a guest shot on the show a few months before, during the season. In that show, my character had a couple of scenes with Karl and Michael Douglas. Shortly after I finished that episode, John Kerr, the actor that had been playing the D.A., left the show because of some creative differences. Michael had just announced that he was also leaving the series so he could produce One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. A play, that his father, Kirk Douglas, had starred in on Broadway and had owned the movie rights to for over ten years. Kirk had given the rights to Michael and he had finally found the financing and wanted to produce the movie. So the production company was going to bring in another young actor to take over the role of Karl’s partner and side-kick, Richard Hatch. The company was very anxious to keep Karl happy, and now due to a new guy coming in, Karl was going to have to go back to working at least 5 days a week, since Michael’s character and story line would no longer be able to take up a couple of days a week. The production company wanted to bring in a new guy for the D.A. that was capable of taking up some of the slack and have enough scenes in a show to allow Karl a day or two off during a grinding season of shows. I’m not sure people realize you work 10 to 12 hours a day on a series, and when it’s a hit, you were doing 26 episodes. They went to Karl and asked him if he had any suggestions for the new D.A. – AND he remembered me from my guest shot, where I played an attorney whose law partner had been killed by an ex-convict, and he suggested they bring me back as the D.A., who left his private practice to join the district attorney’s office. Karl never said anything about this to me, I learned it from someone in the production office after I was on the show for a while. I learned a great deal from Karl. He would tell me how to “stay” in a shot, even when we were walking along headed to the courthouse, he would grab me by the arm and say, “stay close, that way you’ll always be in the shot”. In the beginning, he watched out for me with the make-up men and the lighting. In every scene I did with him, Karl was always “there”! He believed in giving, sometimes more than he got, and taught me you always worked for the “good of the scene”, the good of the story. He was just terrific to work with and if you could leave your ego home, you would always learn something from working with him. I’m thankful that a few years ago, I took the time to write him a letter expressing my thanks for all he taught me, and his kindness toward me during the time I worked with him.

JORDAN RHODES INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM (TAGS: STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO INTERVIEW) and for the complete Jordan Rhodes Interview where he tells a great story about working on the set with Karl go to cultfilmfreak.com/jordanrhodes

BELINDA BALASKI ("AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON")

2010-02-10T01:49:00.001-08:00

In the sketch-comedy film “Amazon Women on the Moon” you appear as a grieving wife at a funeral who ends up joining some old stand-up comedians in roasting your dad husband (Archie Hahn)… How was this experience?

It's actually one of my personal faves as I was soooo nervous trying to do stand up with the likes of Steve Allen and Henny Youngmen. Thank God Joe [Dante] shot it 3 camera live!!! I was soaking wet from the top of my hat to the bottom of my toes!!! I had to call Steve "Merv" just to be sure to get their attention and, worried, Joe would call cut to correct the name!!! But Steve does the best double take I've seen in years and stayed riveted thereafter!!!

BELINDA BALASKI INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM (TAGS: AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON INTERVIEW) AND ONCE AGAIN FOR BELINDA'S INTERVIEW ON THE MAIN SITE CLICK HERE

OLIVIA BARASH ("LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE")

2010-02-10T01:46:00.001-08:00

Olivia Barash was an extremely gifted child and teenage actress who appeared in a number of television shows and motion pictures, starring in one of the most popular episodes of "Little House On The Prairie," playing the title character "Sylvia," as well as the pilot of "The Incredible Hulk," a semi-regular on "Fame", and appeared in cult films like "Repo Man," "Tuff Turf," "The Doors," and she continues to not only act, but record music as well.

When did you first break into show business?

I started singing Sinatra songs at two years old. Started playing piano at four, classically trained at Carnegie Hall and won a competition at five years old for best classical pianist of that age-range in the country. I was also going to dance class in New York City. All of my peers in that school were professional actors. I wanted to do what they were doing. So, my mom and I met with one of the top, children’s managers of that day and I was signed on the spot. I was a ham and worked non-stop from the gate! Starting with commercials and theater in N.Y. on to prime-time t.v. and film in Hollywood.

You worked on the pilot of THE INCREDIBLE HULK… How was this experience?

My memory of The Hulk pilot stands out because I was honestly frightened when I first met Lou Ferrigno. He was in full costume and I was told to look at him when I spoke and to speak up because he had a hearing disability. I was pretty young and what I saw in front of me was a big, green monster man. If I acted terrified in the episode; it’s probably because I really was a little. I do remember Lou being very kind to me and trying not to scare me when we were off camera. I was just a kid. That entire shoot was, me falling in a lake and being blown dry, over and over again. Fun at first – until take 92. But I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world!

The two-part LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE episode “Sylvia”… Was it hard filming an intense subject like rape at such a young age?

Nothing on that set was difficult because Michael Landon was directing. One of the best directors I’ve ever worked with. He would emote me by crying behind the camera in the rehearsals as well as the shooting of the intense scenes.

That particular cast of actors was amazing to work with! From Matthew Laborteaux, to Royal Dano, who played my abusive father, to Richard Jaeckel who played the rapist. All, highly professional, veterans and genuinely good people.

Describe the emotion you had to bring up during Sylvia’s death bed scene…

I put myself IN Sylvia’s heart. I believed in that moment that I wanted to marry Albert more than anything else. I also just recalled the emotion that Matthew Laborteaux put forth for and with me in that scene. It was so hard not to cry after my character died, when Albert layed his head on me, sobbing.

What are some FAME memories?

Fame was never an easy show to do. The cast was used to it’s fullest capacity. When we were not on camera, shooting a scene, we were being choreographed for a dance routine in the rehearsal hall, and when not needed on set or in rehearsal, we were at The Record Plant, recording our vocals for the musical numbers. I rarely saw the inside of my dressing room on that shoot.

My second episode, “The Crimson Blade” was fun because of the costumes and the boys. My character had both Jesse Borrego and Robert Romanus, vying for their attention. Robert became my recurring boyfriend on the series. And I got to play the damsel in distress, which is always a good time!

You are singing and playing an acoustic guitar in Oliver Stone’s THE DOORS, how did this job come up and how long did you have to play this song?

I read for one of the female-lead roles for Oliver Stone. I was too young for the part but he wanted to write me into the script because he saw something special. About a month later, I was sent on a call-back to read ONE line for him, to play a groupie. The waiting room was filled with gorgeous, 6 foot tall models, reading for the same role. I felt that I hadn’t a chance against these beauties, reading one line. So I ran to my car, where I had one of my guitars, got it, and walked into his office, guitar strapped on me. I told Oliver I wanted to play him a song I wrote, since he hadn’t time to come see my band play. He said, “go ahead”. I got through a verse and a chorus, when he stopped me and said… “Do you want to sing in my movie? You’re going to sing in my movie!”

So, Oliver Stone wrote me in, playing an original song of mine. A fantastic credit along side “The Doors” songs for a new, singer/songwriter.

How was it working on TUFF TURF with Robert Downey Jr.?

It was a bit of a party scene with the exception of James Spader. We were put up at the Chateau Marmont in the ‘80’s. Robert Downey Jr. was a gem to get to know and to play opposite. He said to me, one night, “Olivia.. I’m gonna be a big movie star. Just watch.” I replied, “I believe you, Robert.”

How was it working with Johnny Depp in 21 JUMP STREET (episode: Nemesis)?

Johnny and I met on that shoot but didn’t have many scenes together. We did end up working together at The Viper Room. I became the promoter for his club. He is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever known.

How long have you been singing as NORMA DEZMOND?

NORMA DEZMOND was just a name I created for my MySpace Music Page. I was being urged by some friends to put my music up there and I wasn’t so into being a recording artist at that time. The name, NORMA DEZMOND was my joke about being too old to have a music career. You know, the whole, “Sunset Boulevard” plot. Little did I know that other people did not feel the same way about my age as I did. The music was what mattered and I was blessed to have worked with musicians and producers who I admired. One of my songs on that site was chosen for another film. Funny how we can’t always see what’s best for us.

What particular standout memories do you have working on the cult classic REPO MAN?

It was a phenomenal experience to be a part of that film! From researching the UFO world by going to Extraterrestrial Conventions and such to working with a cast and crew of some of whom I’ve maintained friendships with to this day, to the authenticity of the Punk Movement that was portrayed in the film, (a scene that I was part of in real life, therefore, close to my heart).

I think that REPO MAN was the one project that enmeshed itself perfectly with my life. Everyone who worked on that film seemed to be of the same ilk.

And how was it working again with Alex Cox in REPO CHICK?

It was great to be brought back together again after all these years. I play a Railroad Engineer with a bit of a twist. I’d expect nothing less than beautifully twisted characters coming from Alex. This is why we all love working with him. REPO CHICK is currently making the film fest rounds. I’m proud to be part of it.

You are currently producing films – what are you working on at this time and what’s in the future?

Jennifer Lynch and I are forming a production company. It’s so fresh that we haven’t named it yet. We have about four projects in the works, right now. Two of which Jen are interested in directing. I’m being asked to act in two of the films, as well. This wasn’t the plan for me, going into this business venture. All I wanted to do was make good films. You know, and stay on the other side of the camera. I must say that I am really excited to play one of the lead roles in a film directed by Jennifer Chambers Lynch. It’s fun enough just being her friend and business partner. She teaches me so much. We are going to have a blast on set!

The first two productions that we are currently securing financing for are an action/horror called “The Compound” written and to be directed by Corey Brandenstein. A fantastic story that is addictive during the read. It’s like a horrible, car crash that you’re passing by. You don’t want to look but you can’t help but look. My heart was pounding out of my chest when I finished that script.

The second is called “The Monster Next Door”. It’s a comedy/horror written by Jim Robbins. This is the first of our crop that Jen wants to direct. It is hilarious, twisted and way quirky. Right up our alley! And the scripts continue to flow to us. We have a talented and unique group of writers who surround us, plus Jen and myself write also. We seem to attract just what we are looking for.

A few have asked what type of films we will make. Multi-genre, original and quality films. Eclectic like us.

How do you like producing films as opposed to acting and/or singing?

I enjoy creating. I started out by creating characters that I portrayed. This led to creating songs. I just see producing film as the natural progression of Olivia Barash. My canvas just gets bigger and better as time pushes on!

OLIVIA BARASH INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM AND JOIN HER OFFICIAL FACEBOOK FAN PAGE

ALAN DEAN FOSTER ("STAR TREK")

2010-02-10T01:45:00.001-08:00

ALAN DEAN FOSTER is an important cog in the Star Trek wheel, having written novelizations, known as LOG BOOKS, based on each episode of the animated TV series, and he wrote the original storyline to the first theatrical release, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE...

What part of the original story was yours?

Roddenberry gave me a two-page outline titled 'ROBOT'S RETURN" and asked if I could expand it. I developed a long treatment I called IN THY IMAGE. This was to be the opening episode of the new, revived network series. They then decided they wanted to open with a two-hour movie for TV. I again expanded and revised the treatment, which subsequently became the basis for the film. 97% of that treatment was mine (everything except the idea of a terrestrial probe returning in altered form to seek its origin).

How much of your script did they turn out using in the film?

The first five minutes of the film is exactly as it appeared in my treatment. They then took off and did numerous things differently. It was also my idea to promote Kirk to admiral.

And what did you think of the film itself?

Fine film, more time and money would've made it better. Not a shoot 'em up, which is always easier to do. And an utterly non-biological adversary. An attempt to do real SF.

So tell me how you got into writing the STAR TREK LOG BOOKS which were based on the STAR TREK ANIMATED SERIES in the early seventies...

Judy-lynn del Rey, editor of the Ballantine (now Del Rey) SF line, had found a gap in the contract Bantam Books had with Paramount regarding books based on Star Trek. That gap failed to cover animated versions, and she quickly snapped up the rights.

Knowing that I knew my way around a screenplay, and had already done two novelizations for Ballantine (LUANA, DARK STAR) she asked if I could novelize the TV scripts. I agreed. But when I received them, each twenty minutes in actual length, I told her there was no way I could get a book out of each short script. I suggested using three scripts per book and tying them together as best I could. We did this for the first six books.

She then called me and explained that the books were selling so well that I had to get a book out of each of the remaining four scripts. I struggled with the idea, but eventually decided to use one script as the basis for each book and then write original material to fill it out. So the last four books contain mostly original material.

Fortunately, I had saved what I felt to be the best scripts for the last, including two by actual SF writers, Larry Niven and David Gerrold… I remember wondering if they would cut the scene I added in one book where a love-struck (or actually lust-struck) ensign chases Uhura around the tree at an on-board Christmas party. They didn't…

And in the STAR WARS novelization that you ghostwrote for George Lucas, when Obi Wan is talking to Luke after first meeting him on Tatooine, he mentions a duck... And Luke asks, "What's a Duck?" Where did this originate?

Duck was my input. The line is from a Marx brothers movie where Groucho asks Chico, "Why a duck?" They're actually talking about Florida real estate, and…viaducts. I am sure it is the only reference in the entire Star Wars canon to a Marx brothers movie.

ALAN DEAN FOSTER INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE... AND FOR THE FULL ALAN DEAN INTERVIEW GO TO THE MAIN WEBSITE WHERE ALAN DEAN FOSTER SHARES INSIGHT ABOUT MOVIE TIE-IN NOVELIZATIONS LIKE ALIEN, ALIENS, THE BLACK HOLE, CLASH OF THE TITANS, THE LAST STARFIGHTER, OUTLAND, PALE RIDER, STAR WARS, AND THE FIRST STAR WARS EXPANDED UNIVERSE NOVEL: SPLINTER OF THE MIND'S EYE... AND HERE ARE SOME OF THE GREAT STAR TREK LOG BOOK COVERS:

HAMILTON MITCHELL ("CADDYSHACK")

2010-02-10T01:44:00.001-08:00

CADDDYSHACK is best known for the iconic leading actors: Rodney Dangerfield, Chevy Chase, Ted Knight, and Bill Murray, but originally the film was supposed to an ANIMAL HOUSE on the golf course, centering primarily on the young caddies: with the adults as secondary characters... This all changed during filming, and HAMILTON MITCHELL takes us back to the rough and greens of Bushwood Country Club...

How did the role of “Motormouth” in Caddyshack come about?

It was one of my very first auditions in Los Angeles. I read for two roles, Motormouth and Goofy, and they combined them for me on the strength of my audition. I took a risk, made a "show" out of my scene and performed it non-stop from walking in to leaving.

The movie was originally mostly about the caddies – with the four “ringers”: Knight, Dangerfield, Chase and Murray as side characters – can you describe some of the scenes involving just you and the caddies that were cut out – or that were in the original script and not filmed?

There were so many... For the first month, we did many caddy scenes and improved and came up with material. Before the stars arrived. One example, I was pulled from the Dalai Lama scene for a basketball scene, which was cut. I also used to have romantic scenes with "Grace" played by Ann Ryerson, though she was nearly cut from the film too. I arrived at The Caddyshack being thrown off a bus, did faux golf announcing with Tony DuNunzio (the Great Scott Colomby)... but all those and more were cut. I filmed for over 3 months, with just a few lines left.

Was the decision to center on the four older characters something they came up with during filming, or was it a pre-production decision – and when did they change the script?

I don't know when they decided, but the producers wanted the star power, and began cutting and adding as we went along. There were some disappointments by the end of the run.

How much do you recollect of the swimming pool scene?

I remember we shot that in a day. I had a stuntman to help me do the leading flying leap into the pool. Choreographing the underwater dance was fun, though hard to breath. I improved a couple of other bits -- one, I walk upside down along the pool wall with my shoes sticking up -- a funny visual -- another, Scott drowns me.

Were you part of the synchronized swimming scene? If so – did it take a while to rehearse?

You can't miss me, I've got the tall, plaid covered legs... it did not take long to figure out, just a couple of circles, maybe ten minutes.

Your greatest line is “I’ve often thought of becoming a golf club”… Was this adlibbed? How many takes to “nail” this beautiful line that epitomizes your awesome character?

Thank you: that is one of my favorites. Really slams Danny's brown-nosing. I think it was fed to me by Harold Ramis and/or Doug Kenny [pic shown]... I provided some, but they gave me so many great ones... another one which didn't make it was when I came upon the Caddyshack brawl... my announcement was "Another beautiful day at Bushwood marred by teen violence."

Would you say your character “Motormouth” was a stoner, an airhead, or both?

I like to think of him as the "class clown" of the caddies... he was supposed to do faux announcing at every opportunity to lambast the proceeding.

Give us a summary of the following alumni:

MICHAEL O’KEEFE: An extremely talented mystery to the rest of us.

CHEVY CHASE: Chevy was going through a lot back then, but he was generous to us at times, critical at others.

BILL MURRAY: The best. Salt of the Earth. He and Brian took me up to NY after to do SNL.

TED KNIGHT: We all thought Ted would steal the movie at the time; his craft and comedy were so honed.

RODNEY DANGERFIELD: He really was that guy, always nervous about how he was doing. We told him he was doing great. He took care of me when a swamp reed hit me in the eye.

SCOTT COLOMBY: A great friend and young veteran already by then. Helped me a lot on my first set.

CINDY MORGAN: For a babe, Cindy was fun and accessible back then.

DOUG KENNEY: A genius, and very funny. Doug was one of a kind. A tortured intellect. I was not surprised by his death in Hawaii.

BRIAN DOYLE MURRAY: Another great, grounded Irish Catholic Mensh. Brian co-authored the film and let me stay at his penthouse in NY.

What did you think of the film when it first screened?

It didn't open that well, but I think we had an idea it would be something special a few years later, it's cult status started to take hold.

What scene was your favorite to be filmed in?

My individual pratfall and physical comedy golf scenes, and the one on one scenes with my fellow actors which are not longer there. Probably where I played in the Caddy Tournament (later cut out).

What scene is your favorite scene (or character) as you watch the movie now?

Bill Murray with the flowers or the gopher.

The golf course blowing up – were the actors present during this or was it all filmed separately?

We watched from a distance.

I’m a fan of Tony Danza and Stacy Nelkin, and enjoyed the film “Going Ape” – what part did you play in this?

They were great to work with, and very nice. The mom was a little rougher. Anyway, I played Marvin, who delivered ape food.

You have worked on film and television – give us a couple of the differences between the two?

I enjoy both, my current television series on Nickelodeon, Ned's Declassified (cable) is nice, because I work almost every day, for most of the year... and I will be on Suite Life on Deck coming up this Fall. Sometimes film work is more disjointed... separation between days and locations... yet, I just had that on an episode of COLD CASE.

HAMILTON MITCHELL CADDDYSHACK INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE

NATHAN GEORGE ("ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST")

2010-02-10T01:43:00.001-08:00

Nathan George, an energetic, talented African-American actor, appeared in a handful of films in the 1970s, all of them intense, timeless classics including SERPICO (as a bad cop); SHORT EYES (as a tough, wily convict) and the Oscar winning ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST...

When did you first realize you wanted to be an actor?

Right after I got out of the military, and something went off in my head where I knew I could do this.

What were some of the most memorable experiences working with Al Pacino in the film “Serpico”?

Well, Al and I would have lunch every day, but that all changed after the scene where I threw him up against the locker. He really took exception to that, and wanted us to do it over. But Sidney Lumet thought it looked real, so it stayed. The friendship was pretty much over after that.

How were you cast for “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” as one of the assistants under the Head Nurse?

Michael Douglas (producer) saw me in a play in NYC, and thought I would be right for the movie. Also, Milos [Foreman] really liked rehearsing. We rehearsed for that film for months.

Was there any adlibbing during the pool scene?

Jack [Nicholson] and I worked on it a little bit, but that scene was acted as written. It was a tense scene, but it called for a lot of emotion.

Any other memories working with Jack "R.P. McMurphy" Nicholson?

Jack was a real ham; he really liked the camera. Whereas most everyone else involved in that film, was theater-based...including myself. I wasn't as aware of the camera, as Jack was.

Was the climax as intense as it looked?

Yes, incredibly. However we did numerous takes, so it loses intensity as you play it out over and over again.

Where was “Short Eyes” filmed?

Shot at the Tombs, which was a rundown prison in NYC.

Who was the toughest con in the prison?

Well, I think Ice is up there on the top, but I'm a bit partial.

Any memories of the climactic scene of “Short Eyes”?

Robert (Young) the director was going to throw Bruce Davison down the table, and they were having trouble setting up the shot. It was my idea to have the DP put the camera on a blanket, and pull it down the table. They used it... and it worked.

NATHAN GEORGE INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE

LARRY FLASH JENKINS ("THE WHITE SHADOW")

2010-02-10T01:42:00.001-08:00

LARRY FLASH JENKIN has been in films and television shows for several decades, playing the troubled, quick-footed "Gummy" in the Chevy Chase comedy FLETCH; a basketball player in THE WHITE SHADOW; and is one of the two free-spirited parking attendants in the John Hughe's classic FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF...

How did you get your start in acting?

Hey James...I got started in acting in 1973 right after I graduated from Fenger high school (Which I am on the wall of fame)...I was a stand out Baseball player, loved basketball..but my mother thought I was a ham and would make a better actor…I disagreed…so we flipped a coin and she won…one catch...she would not let me go to Los Angeles right away...too far from Chicago...so off to a local college...Olive Harvey Jr college...which I was the best actor and got staright 'A'...on the deans list and did 3 plays and to rave reviews...including one play outside of College at X-Bag theater starring me and Robert Townsend...

Next up was Southern Illionois University...my second year in college...str8 'A''s again dean list...my mother felt I was ready now to go to LA…next year was in Los Angles on a drama scholarship to Pepperdine University... dean's list...again..str'8 'A''s...named best actor..etc...first semester..but got discovered by Ray Powers a fellow actor in a play with me off campus...he introduced me to Personal Manager Steve Block ..who repped...Sherman Hemsley (The Jeffersons), Robert Hooks (NYPD), Kevin Hooks (The White Shadow), Denise Nicholas (Room 222), Antonio Fargas (Starsky & Hutch)...Steve said that Ray told him that I weas the best actor he had ever seen...I told him… I am and ray told me that too...he came to see me in a play and signed me...

A few days later I was up for Apocalypse Now...Larry Fishburne lied about his age and beat out me and Kevin hooks...from there my career was off and running...

When you appeared in the episode of THE WHITE SHADOW as a student (season 2)?

I remember my role was on the previews all week and was very happy because every black actor wanted to be on that series...I was hoping it would lead to me being a regular.
What’s your favorite episode of Season 3 (when you were a regular) of THE WHITE SHADOW?

The HERO episode when I pulled the lady out of the burning car was my favorite episode...I was in every scene...many of the cast members from the previous year thought thery were exploiting me too much...but Bruce Paltrow loved me as an actor...it was fun meeting all those named pro stars etc....and playing ball everyday and getting paid for it...!! I was so [popular on the show I could not go to Burger King or Mcdonald and order...I would get mobbed...]

How was it working on FLETCH?

Fun...me and Chevy clicked...me and George Wendt became friends…everything and everyone was so cool...

How about filming the intense scene when you are chased and arrested by the abusive cop?

Had to slow down to let the cops catch me... I was running too fast for them.

How about the scene talking to Fletch in the sand (as he's dressed up in the beard)?

We had a ball adlibing...Chevy and I would crack jokes to each other... Michael Ritchie of Fletch died a years ago…

What are your recollections of FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF?

John was scared to tell me at the screening that all that work and scenes that me and Richard shot was on the editing room floor...it was suppose to be two stories going on...ours and Matthew's...but the film became too long.

You have become a producer and a writer and director on various projects… Tell us how it was switching from acting to behind the camera?

I always had a gift to how the character should be played by my co-stars as an actor so transitioning to behind the camera was easy and smooth for me…I enjoy the whole process of casting to editing to seeing the words I wrote up on it's feet on the screen...very cool...

How did you get your middle name FLASH?

Early on Bowling team in high school…then Karate…then Bruce Paltrow thought it was perfect for me because I learned lines so fast…

You worked on YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE… How was this?

Did the director a favor after the White Shadow… Garry Marshall writing the script as we filmed...changing scences in mid stride of the movie…

How about ARMED AND DANGEROUS?

Funny and great cast and we shot most of the film at The Beverly Hillbillies home in Bel Air...

Working on Brian De Palma’s BODY DOUBLE?

So cool… Me and Dennis Franz became the best of friends after that and remember we were on Steven Bochco's Bay City Blues together on the NBC series the year b4 that starred me and Sharon Stone and Michael Nouri along with Dennis...

The newly released 80’s buddy film LOOKIN’ TO GET OUT?

Jon Voight and Ann Margret was cool to be around…

LARRY FLASH JENKINS INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM (TAGS: Fletch Interview, Ferris Bueller's Day Off Interview, The White Shadow Interview)

KENNETH JOHNSON ("SHORT CIRCUIT 2")

2010-02-10T01:41:00.001-08:00

As a writer, producer, and director, KENNETH JOHNSON turned the Marvel comic THE INCREDIBLE HULK into a thought-provoking TV show, and he brought the same heart and soul into the sequel "Short Circuit 2" after writing and directing his very own creation, the iconic mini-series "V"...

What were some of your favorite sci-fi books or authors and sci-fi movies growing up?

Heinlein, H.G. Welles, Philip Wylie, Jules Verne, Orwell... Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds...

When you wrote the first draft of “V” – did you outline it before you began to write or did the story sort of come together as you were writing it?

There is a very thorough 60-odd page story outline that completely details everything.

How much of “V: The Final Battle” did you write? And did you see the weekly television series?

Though I supervised the writing of the 6-hour sequel, I left Warners over creative differences before it was produced. To this day I have never seen it, except for one minute by accident -- in which I saw them make every wrong choice possible, so I knew I'd never survive watching the entire thing... And I never saw any of the series at all, but my friends who were in it said it was pretty awful and certainly missed the essence of what I had been attempting to create.

Many consider "Short Circuit 2" a supeior sequel, humanizing the robot, Johnny Five, even more the original film...

I always knew that the visuals and the sight gags would play very well, but I worked very hard with the talented writers to mine all of the human emotion that was central to Johnny's character. Then when the amazing puppeteers Rob, Gord and Trish came on board they really brought Johnny to life in a way that was so realistic and enchanting that everyone fell in love with him.

People would visit the set and have complete conversations with Johnny -- totally unmindful of the puppeteers, who were only a few yards away. After the movie was over I experienced a very strange period of mourning...because I could still talk to each of the people I had worked with...but Johnny...who was a combination of their talents...was gone. It was a bit like a dear friend had died. I still feel a sadness to this day.

KENNETH JOHNSON INTERVIEW BY JAMES M. TATE CULTFILMFREAK.COM