Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (17 page)

Luckily, my flubs weren’t holding up a studio audience. We were filming in a dog park, because there were too many dogs in the scene to shoot it in front of a live crowd.

“What’d you play on
Seinfeld
?” Paul Reiser eagerly wanted to know.

“This guy who never remembers Elaine and that makes her more intrigued by me.”

Paul laughed and seemed to appreciate hearing some of the lines and interplay between my character and Elaine.
Seinfeld
was so popular that even some of the crew on the set wanted to hear what was in that upcoming episode. But I was starting to sweat. On
Seinfeld
, my lines were part of an exchange, a back-and-forth that had a flow. Not so here.

On
Mad About You
, I played a wacky dog walker. I had to say, “Hey, remember last week I was talking about dog saliva?”

“Remember? That’s why we came back,” Jamie (Helen Hunt) replies.

“Well, I used Misha’s saliva to cure my athlete’s foot. And it actually worked!”

It was hard to concentrate because I had to make sure the dog hit an exact spot for camera coverage as I pass Paul and Jamie.

I felt pressure right off the bat when the animal trainer brought me my dog and told me its history.

“You’ll be working with the dog that Geena Davis walked in her Academy-winning performance in
The Accidental Tourist
!”

After my first flub, I got paranoid that maybe the dog knew that he had worked with better and was shaking his head, thinking, “Can you believe this guy?”

Originally, the line was something like, “Misha’s ringworm is taking on a tube-like shape.” Someone on the set said that Helen Hunt didn’t care for that line. That year, her contract gave her a producer credit, enabling her to have say in such matters. Becoming a producer also enabled her to share in the enormous money generated by syndication.

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried also played a dog walker in the episode. At first, Gilbert’s performance puzzled me. He seemed very subdued. He wasn’t doing his usual trademarked screaming shtick. Then I found out that when he got too loud, he scared the dogs.

Gilbert had one or two more scenes than I did and was upset that he had to cancel a stand-up comedy road job to film. He didn’t want to lose that money. I kept explaining that he’d make more from
Mad About You
. Here he was, distressed at having to stay, and I was wishing I could stay there for more than just one day. I knew Gilbert from the New York comedy days. He was notorious for being cheap. When the wardrobe woman said his shoes were fine to wear, he insisted, “No, I want to wear your shoes. What shoes of yours do you have for me to wear?” I didn’t ask what his motivation was for pleading to wear their shoes and not his own for his scene. Perhaps he was hoping they’d forget the shoes and he’d walk off with them. And the dog trainer told me Gilbert kept asking for more and more dog treats for the dog he was walking. He suspected he might be pocketing them, though Gilbert didn’t own a dog.

When we were done, of course someone said, “Maybe you can be the recurring wacky dog walkers.” But alas, Hank Azaria got to be the resident dog walker on the show. Later, he married Helen Hunt as a result of that gig! That could have been me. But I later consoled myself that it wouldn’t have worked out anyway. They ended up divorcing.

When my
Seinfeld
episode aired, a few of my lines were trimmed but it still remained a fairly good-sized guest star part. For the first two weeks or so, I was recognized and complimented unlike any other show I had appeared on. Suddenly, I had an influx of auditions. Casting directors would greet me by telling me how much they liked my spot.

The panhandler standing in front of my local 7-Eleven saw me and said, “Hey, you dated Elaine!” Contemporary actors I’d see at auditions and around Hollywood of course had seen it. Two high school students waiting for the bus near Fairfax High School said, “Hey, you’re funny.” One of them pointed up to the illustrious Hollywood Hills and said to his friend, “He must live up there!” I was tracked down by old campmates from Camp Sequoia and an old English teacher from Kingsborough Community College. My former teacher told me he made a motion to nominate me for the school’s wall of fame. (A few months later he called to tell me I had been turned down. That’s still my favorite unsolicited rejection.)

I really felt I was headed in the right direction and toward my dreams. I felt I was on the verge of really breaking through as a character actor in a very big way. For a while, I even started getting some work without having to read for it.

The casting director of
Wings
saw me on
Seinfeld
and called my agent immediately to request me. They needed a masochist who was attending a masochists’ convention. I don’t know what it says that I was the obvious choice for one who craved uncomfortable beds, bad food, and abusive bosses, but I was glad to be on board.

I never bonded with a cast like I did with the cast of
Wings
in just three days of work. In the show, Steven Weber and Timothy Daly portrayed two brothers who were pilots running a one-plane commuter airline on Nantucket Island. The cast got along well except for Crystal Bernard, who played Timothy Daly’s wife. She mostly kept to herself. They were also relieved that Thomas Haden Church, who played the airport’s mechanic, was gone that year. I heard stories about him throwing others off by changing lines mid-taping to suit his own needs. Steven Weber was a big
Seinfeld
fan. He recited to me the lines I had done just a few weeks before.

I enjoyed hanging out with this very friendly cast, although I had to be on my own for lunch. (It was another show where just the regulars had catered lunches brought to them.) Sometimes it’s fun going to different commissaries, though.
Wings
was filmed on the Paramount lot, where they shot
Star Trek
. I enjoyed seeing all of the different characters made up in their alien attire. One afternoon, I sat down at a table with my chicken sandwich and lemonade, feeling quite confident. I might have been eating alone as usual, but I was working! I had a purpose sitting there at that commissary. I felt a bond with my fellow diners, so I went over to make conversation with this woman who had the whole
Star Trek
alien thing going on, silver skull head covered with moon craters.

“So, you’re on
Star Trek
, that seems like fun.”

Okay, not the wittiest line, but I tried. She grunted dismissively as if to say, “Brilliant observation,” and turned away from me. It’s not like a woman had never done that to me before, but this had to be my all-time low: rejected by a Klingon. Amy Yasbeck, who portrayed Crystal Bernard’s sister, was very comforting. She reassured me that I’d soon meet a very good woman. Of my own species.

I was on a roll. Soon I got cast on
Caroline in the City
, a brand-new show filmed on the CBS Radford lot, where
Seinfeld
and other Thursday night NBC shows filmed. Lea Thompson (Caroline) also welcomed me with the enthusiastic
Seinfeld
validation.

There was an exterior set on the lot made to look like a New York City street that had been designed at
Seinfeld
’s request. Sometimes, on a Thursday night you could see that same block used on
Seinfeld
,
Caroline in the City
, and another show called
The Single Guy
.

I was standing in the alley of one of the exterior sets with a gun, playing an unlikely mugger who robs Caroline after her horrific date. A few
Seinfeld
writers happened to be passing by and saw me rehearsing my scene. One of them commented that it was going to look like the guy from
Seinfeld
, who dated Elaine, snapped and now was mugging people in Manhattan. There might have been some truth to it.

After that, I got a small part in the film
Dear God
. Two of Garry Marshall’s assistants told him that he should check out a funny guest star actor from
Seinfeld
. This time I wasn’t doing the mugging. I played a concerned passerby, who asked Greg Kinnear if he was okay after he was mugged. But it ended up getting cut.

After one more visit to
Can’t Hurry Love
, where apparently I hadn’t offended Nancy McKeon, I read for Harry Anderson at
Dave’s World,
which proved to be the only glitch in the
Seinfeld
afterglow.

I had always heard Anderson’s previous show,
Night Court
, along with
Cheers
mentioned as unpleasant sets to work on. But I had even known Harry Anderson before he hit it big. We had done a club in New Jersey together, and whenever I bumped into him, he’d quote one of my jokes that I’d long forgotten. (“My uncle died and his goldfish flushed him down the toilet.”)

I had worked for the producer of his show on five previous occasions. I have never auditioned for a producer I had worked for so many times for such a little part. All I had to do was say something like, “Bring the truck back this way.”

I wasn’t thrilled about having to audition for this guy, but what the hell. Before I even started, Harry Anderson said in this arrogant way, “I already know how you’re going to do this.”

I smiled, said something brilliant like, “Oh, yeah.” After not getting the part, I wish I had said, “If you know how I’m going to do it, then why did you bring me down here in the first place?”

The
Seinfeld
exposure also gave me the opportunity to audition for a part in the Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage movie,
The Rock
. According to the sides, the character sounded like a feminine hairdresser, cowering in the corner when he saw that he was in a violent situation. “Don’t hurt me. I’m just the barber,” he said, shivering and crying. It didn’t seem like something I could do. A friend convinced me that I should prepare the material and do my best. He said that, true, I probably couldn’t play the hairdresser in the cliché way it was written, but my take on it could be pretty interesting.

In the crowded audition waiting area, I noticed that a lot of the other actors looked and carried themselves more like the typical way you’d picture this guy. When it was my turn, I explained to the casting director, who was putting us on film for the producers, that I had prepared a voice, an inflection, which perhaps would be a little different than the typical gay hairdresser. She told me that she would like to hear me do it as myself too, and would record both versions on tape.

The first version I did just as myself. After I finished, she said, “Very good, now do it in your other voice.”

I didn’t get the part.

Toward the end of the 1996 TV season, I auditioned for several pilots but didn’t land any. The activity from
Seinfeld
was starting to slow down.

21

THE BREAKOUT FILM THAT ALMOST BROKE ME

I
was beginning to get a bit more than disenchanted with my second agency. I started to think about moving on. I remember standing around for almost forty minutes waiting to ask one of the agents if they had seen me on
Seinfeld
. I wanted to know if they had any ideas how to parlay that into something bigger. At the time, all of the agents had newly acquired headsets. It was hard to tell if they were on the phone or not. I’d enter one of their offices to say hi and they’d shoo me away like I was a filthy pigeon that had just landed on their table while they were trying to eat.

Something was amiss with the agency. New assistants and agents were always coming and going, and I wasn’t thrilled with the constant lying about procuring me work that I’d landed without their help. There was a growing seediness about the place. I’m glad I moved to another small agency when I did. A few months after I left, the agency fell apart because the owner had embezzled all of the remaining clients’ money. Somehow, this guy avoided jail time.

Right before the agency’s demise, one of the agents told me that the producers of the new show
Suddenly Susan
had asked about my availability for a two-part episode. Gary Dontzig and Steven Peterman, the two producers I had worked for several times on
Murphy Brown
, were running the show. I was a bit panicked because there was a conflict. I had just committed to doing a role in an independent film.

“Damn, I’m not available,” I glumly told the agent. After agonizing over this missed opportunity for several harrowing moments, I instructed the agent to call them back for more details. I wanted to know if this was something that I just could not miss. Was it going to be a possible recurring role? Was it in the office? Was it being offered without my having to audition?

I had fought so hard to get involved in this little movie like my life had depended on it. I wasn’t sure if I could get out of it, or if it was worth it after what I had gone through. I knew someone involved with this independent film who told me about some of the parts that were being cast. Danny Aiello and Sally Kirkland were set to star in this yet-titled film. I was seduced by the part of a mob guy. Back in 1996, when this script came my way, quirky, gritty independent films about hit men were the rage. I fantasized about having the standout role in this cool film that people were lining up at all the art-house theaters to see.

Actually, it wasn’t really a mobster movie, just a girl’s coming-of-age film. A high school girl gets in trouble when a prank she plays on a guy goes awry and he ends up dead. My character was just in four scenes as the boyfriend of the sister of one of the girls.

When I first read the script, I was ecstatic about the possibility of playing this particular mobster. I felt that I had to do whatever it took to make this happen, because the chances of me playing that sort of role anywhere else were slim. Considering how nervous and meek I am, me playing a gangster would be the most unique cinematic casting in history and, as a result, my career would take off as never before. It wasn’t as if I were shaking anyone down or in any dramatic action shots; I was just referred to as that mobster guy. But the words “Gangster!” “Independent Film!” and “Stand-out Part!” blinded me.

But there were a few problems with this small film. The person I knew who was involved said it had such a low budget, all they could afford for the small roles were locals around the Boston area where it was being filmed.