Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (25 page)

All I’d done on
The King of Queens
was an off-camera voice-over part. I hardly knew Kevin James, but he set it up so I wouldn’t have to go through the ordeal again of having to read in front of the close-eyed producers. I had an audition scheduled for
The King of Queens
when I bumped into him at
Everybody Loves Raymond
’s 100th episode party. I mentioned I was auditioning for his show and he said he’d put in a word. He did and they called and said the part was mine because Kevin said it should be. I have been in many situations where stars I’ve come across say they’re going to do something and they don’t. I don’t hold grudges. I understand they have a lot on their minds, so when someone comes through like Kevin did, it’s a rare unexpected surprise.

It was a fun scene. Kevin was driving his crappy car to a fast food drive-through. I played the voice of the guy taking his order, talking through a plastic clown and then I ask him to please move his car forward. But the car breaks down. Kevin goes crazy when I keep saying, “Please move the car forward,” so he takes a bat and pummels the taunting plastic clown.

When I showed up to record the scene, I got
The
King of Queens
mug and a nice card from Kevin thanking me for working on the show. It was also signed by his costar, Leah Remini. It’s never happened that I have gotten a gift the week I am working. The gifts are usually given out at the wrap, Christmas, or show’s anniversary parties. I went to Kevin and told him how much I appreciated it and he told me how much he appreciated me being on his show.

Then around the holidays I got a big box. I was a bit puzzled as I opened it and saw a top-of-the-line leather baseball jacket with
The King of Queens
stitched on the back. And there was a note from Kevin and the other producers wishing me a happy holiday.

I hadn’t even been invited to their Christmas party. Usually those big presents are for regular cast and crew or for those that are at least recurring members of the show. I actually bumped into Kevin James soon after at a movie theater and thanked him. He said he loved how the episode came out and really appreciated that I was on his show. This was personal. It was a lot more than a hat you get when you leave a party.

Then I made a mistake. I was on a first date with an actress new to L.A. She was wide-eyed and ready to make it big. We met by the tennis courts near my house. We played and then it got chilly, so I ran up to my place, looked for something to lend her, and spied my new jacket. Hey, this might impress her as well as keep her warm, I thought.

We had dinner at my favorite Chinese restaurant. She seemed a bit disappointed when I told her I wasn’t really a celebrity.

“But you were on
Raymond
. I saw you on that show.”

Actually, sitting with her, I in fact did feel what it must be like to be a celebrity: she was only connecting to the part of me that had been on TV, not to me at all.

I walked her to her car and I knew she wasn’t really into me, but I was in denial. I still was hopeful we’d see each other again. I wanted to seem cool and calm, so I said, “It’s cold, hold onto the jacket. Why should you have to drive home being chilly?”

The next day I called and she didn’t call back. Finally we talked and she said she was leaving town. Then she mentioned she had a boyfriend. I mentioned my jacket and she said, “Yeah, it looks good. I like it. Yeah, I’ll get it back to you when I get back in town.”

I wish I was more spontaneous. I hung up and it took a while for me to realize I should have demanded the jacket back right that second. I called but got no answer. I waited a few days and I called again and got no response. I was freaking out.

I had lost jackets to women before. I don’t understand that pattern of mine. I had lost a baseball jacket to a woman back in New York. Again, we didn’t even date. She tried it on, thought it looked cute on her, and asked to borrow it. Again, wanting to seem like the guy who is cool and uncaring, I said sure. Then I could not reach her. I had lost a leather jacket to a woman who I dated. I could get that back, but once the relationship got weird, I didn’t want to call.

I didn’t know exactly where she lived. I only knew the block, but I was going to get that jacket back. If I had to, I would walk up and down her block until I found her. I would hang out at The Groundlings, the improvisational theatre I knew she studied at. I would get that jacket back! There was no doubt about it.

Not only did I love it, but the gesture from the cast meant more to me than anything else. It couldn’t have been a more personal gift even if Kevin James had delivered it to my place himself. Just as he had made a point to tell the producers to let me have the part, I’m sure he also made a point to include me as one of the special guests to receive the jacket.

It turned out I was paranoid. She was away and finally did call back later that night when she returned. I didn’t have to do all those crazy balls-to-the-walls antics to get it back. But I would have.

I am now obsessively careful with my cast and crew leather jackets, especially my
King of Queens
one. When I see an attractive woman wearing an oversized leather film or TV show baseball jacket, I wonder what poor lonely shnook got taken for it.

32

THE QUENTIN TARANTINO DELUSION

E
very character actor, me included, has the Quentin Tarantino fantasy. We hope that something iconic we appeared in has stuck with him, and he’s been dying to think of a way to use us in some different inventive way in one of his cool, gritty films. Of course this started with John Travolta after he played Vinnie Barbarino in
Welcome Back, Kotter
. He was in the slow part of his career when Tarantino revived him and starred him as a lovable hit man in
Pulp Fiction
. (I’ve never met a hit man face-to-face, at least that I know of. I’m curious if they’re all so charming and love spouting off about pop culture.) Many of us fail to acknowledge in our delusions that Travolta already was quite a star, when he was “revived,” but maybe there are reasons we have this fantasy. Besides Travolta, Tarantino also sought out the late David Carradine from
Kung Fu
, and Michael Parks from
Then Came Bronson
, for
Kill Bill
and gave them a big boost.

But my favorite story of a Tarantino revival was of Robert Forster. Forster had a bit of a career for awhile in the ‘60s and ‘70s as a tough guy hunk in such films as
Alligator
,
Medium Cool
,
The Black Hole
, and
Avalanche
. And then, like many a career, his plummeted. He’d get bit parts in films, but then told me he went for over 300 auditions without booking a role, so he stopped auditioning. He figured if someone wanted him, they’d give him a part.

Part of his routine was having breakfast every morning at The Silver Spoon on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. Before he became a success, Tarantino came into the diner, recognized Forster, and proclaimed he was going to put him in one of his films some day. Though Tarantino’s passion for Forster was unmatched, it still had to be the right film. Forster came close to getting a role in
Reservoir Dogs
, and then years later Tarantino came back into the diner and gave Forster a copy of his script for
Jackie Brown
. A few days later, Tarantino asked what he thought of it. Forster said he loved the story, but didn’t see any parts he could play. “I was thinking you could be the bail bondsman,” Quentin offered.

“No way they’re gonna let me play a major role in a studio film,” Forster replied. (Pam Grier, who played Jackie Brown, also thought there was no way a studio would let her star in a major film.)

“They’ll do whatever I say they should do,” Tarantino said. Forster excelled in the part and ended up getting nominated that year for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards. He never thought it would happen, but Tarantino had resuscitated his career

“I got them in the late innings,” he’d say.

Before I fell in love with Forster’s story, I fell in love with
Jackie Brown
maybe for the same reason. It starred two middle-aged people in a love story. That was so rare. I loved Forster’s portrayal of a macho yet sensitive, burnt-out bail bondsman. But what I love most about Tarantino are his interviews, or any chance I get to hear him talk about what he loves to do. I love what he said about
Reservoir Dogs
: “People said they’ll never let you do that. Who are ‘they’? If you say a ‘they’ you create a ‘they’.”

I have coffee every morning at Hollywood’s Farmers’ Market with a table of older character actors and directors, which includes acclaimed director Paul Mazursky. He’s known for some seminal movies like
Blume in Love
,
Next Stop, Greenwich Village
,
Harry and Tonto
,
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
, and
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
.

The guys at the table banter, tell bad jokes, commiserate about their medical aliments, and talk about the old days. One day Mazursky announced that Quentin Tarantino was going to make a visit to our morning table. It turned out Tarantino was a big fan of his. I had a gig on
Wizards of Waverly Place
the day he was going to stop by, and I was so excited that the table read was scheduled for later in the day and I’d have the chance to meet him. He was probably the one living person I was most excited to meet. And part of that excitement was the hope I had that being a TV and movie junkie, he would know and love me from
Dumb and Dumber
or
Seinfeld
, or maybe from some crazy obscure little thing. Just him knowing who I was would be so thrilling. But of course, there’d be that other dream that I’d get to play a hit man, or a cop, or Steve Buscemi’s brother.

I approached the table, and there he was! I sat down while he was in mid-conversation talking about
Inglourious Basterds
. No one introduced me. The guys asked him questions about how he found the “Jew hunter” for the film. I butted in and asked if Colonel Landa let Shosanna escape and knew he was sitting next to her drinking milk later on. “No, no,” he said, pointing his finger. “I don’t give away movie secrets.” The guys asked more questions about the film. Tarantino told veteran actor George Segal that if
Inglourious Basterds
had been made when he was younger, he would’ve cast him as the “bear Jew.”

I was thrilled to be hearing him talk so passionately about his films and explain things he had probably explained a thousand times in interviews. But he still didn’t acknowledge me whatsoever! He knew Ronnie Schell, an eighty-year-old character actor from
The Strongest Man in the World
, a cheesy Disney TV movie. He knew Jack Riley from
The Bob Newhart Show
and
Spaceballs
. But me, no clue! I told him how much I loved his quote that “if you say there’s a ‘they,’ you create a ‘they’.”

When it was time for me to go, I said I was working on
Wizards of Waverly Place
. He told me to say hi to “they.” I headed off and hoped for the thing every journeyman actor hopes for: that the next Quentin Tarantino, who hasn’t made it big yet, will keep me in mind when he casts his movies.

33

TWEEN STAR

I
was off to the side on the set of
Wizards of Waverly Place
. I was playing a doorman of the apartment building Selena Gomez’s character lived in. My character was supposed to break up a noisy party of zombies, wizards, vampires, and an ogre. My line was “No loud parties, and not only that, you didn’t invite me, and I happen to be the life of the party!” And then I had to do a demented little dance showing how “wild” I was.

Selena was teaching me how to do the Dougie, the popular dance. I cupped my hand under my chin, and then swayed and contorted my lanky middle-aged body to the side as I said, “Lean and brush. Lean and brush.” I felt like Gumby with the wires removed from it. Selena laughed. Of course I wasn’t supposed to be good. I was just supposed to do a moronic version of it.

After scores of traditional, multi-camera sitcoms of the nineties seemed to have vanished, my guest star life revived with the emergence of Disney and Nickelodeon cable series. Though dying on network television, multi-camera sitcoms were huge with teenagers and preteens. I ended up deriving more joy than ever from being the guest star guy for kids. All the parts for adults usually were buffoonish and cartooney. But that was fine because I felt the kids appreciated me ten times more than even the most diehard
Seinfeld
and
Friends
fans did.

From just one appearance on
Drake & Josh
playing Foam Finger Guy, I achieved rock star status with kids, I still have to this day. I loved working on these kid shows because for the most part, they didn’t have that self-important pretense network adult sitcoms had. Sometimes, however, the material may have been a bit too over-the-top silly, and not the most sophisticated, like on
Cory in the House
when I was involved in a foodfight and had to slip on a custard pie, or on
Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide
when a kid had gas and we had to duck from the smell. They were all fun, stress-free times, except for two situations on
Hannah Montana
that nearly caused me to have a nervous breakdown.

The first time my agent called saying they wanted me to audition for
Hannah Montana
, it was early in the show’s course, and it was not the hit it soon became, or perhaps I wasn’t as aware of its strength when well-meaning friends insisted I had to audition for it. I looked it up on IMDb and saw it was run by my old boss, Steven Peterman, who I worked for years earlier on
Murphy Brown
and
Suddenly Susan
. They wanted me to read for the role of a man wearing a silly moose costume complete with antlers, and do corny moose puns ( “Moose Springsteen, I love Moosey.”)

At that stage in my career, I couldn’t bring myself to be the middle-aged guy walking around the set in my moose costume while the bratty stars of the show pushed me out of the makeup chair because they had important things to do. Simply put, I didn’t want to do it. I knew too well that if I just came out and said to the producers, “No offense, but playing a moose wasn’t something I wanted to do,” they wouldn’t understand. They’d be offended. Okay, if it were in a Coen brothers movie, yes, I’d gladly put on the antlers.

Every writer and producer thinks their stuff is phenomenal and would take it a little personally if I passed. Since I didn’t want to burn a bridge with these producers, I lied. I said I desperately wanted to read for that fun part, but I was doing some animation voiceover work. Being brazen enough to say you don’t want to do it never works and only causes you more headaches.

“When are you doing it?” they persisted. “We’ll work around your schedule!”

So I had to lie some more. Not only was I having all these “appointments” all over town, being the in-demand Hollywood guy that I was, but I went back to stand-up comedy. I said I was headlining on the road. And that still didn’t stop their persistence. “What are your dates? Maybe you can fly back and we’ll squeeze the scene in on one day!” Then one of the writers somehow got my phone number and asked what was going on. I told him I was about to leave the country where I’d be telling my jokes in Canada for an indefinite amount of time.