![]() ![]() There was this-I thought-mistaken notion of rich people. GM: I didn’t care for the experience, quite frankly. How would any of us wind up being actors or artists if he had decided to just straighten up at the age of 5? Or 35 or 55 or 65, for that matter! If you give up the fantasy life, I’m out of business… and who the hell wants that? I’ve known a few men like that, who wanted a 5-year-old to straighten out, which is ridiculous, of course. ![]() But it was fairly predictable what he wanted from the guy: it was a father who was distracted and wanted his son to be a certain way, thought it was nonsense that the kid had such a fantasy life, and one thing and another. Wolfgang just sort of let me do whatever I wanted to do in the character. And when I got word through my agent that this director had asked for me to do this little role in a film that he was doing, I was, like, “When do I show up?” And playing the role was fascinating. Wolfgang Petersen is, as you well know, one of the finest film directors ever, and I had just-well, several months before being offered that role, I’d seen Das Boot, and I was just blown away. GM: Well, that was fascinating because of the director. The oil fields allowed me to be an actor, quite frankly. And at the same time, I was doing those little low-budget films and a little piecemeal work in various and sundry other projects. I mean, you couldn’t make any real money working in that rep company. So it was a strange existence for four or five years, but the oil field work actually allowed me to afford to be an actor. So I was bouncing back and forth between oil field work and doing Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw and Ibsen and things like that. And I worked half the year in the oil fields and half the year in the rep company. By the second year, I was bored with college at that point and I dropped out, and I went to work in the oil fields and auditioned for a place in a reparatory company that was in New Orleans. I started to do it, and then at Ole Miss, where I went to college, I was in a lot of the productions the first year. And I thought, “Hey, this is kind of fun! I think I could do this!” And one of the teachers put me in a play. And then in ninth grade I messed up a knee about halfway through football season and was out the rest of the season, and somebody suggested that I go over to the drama club and help them build sets, because my father had built houses and I had worked as a carpenter. ![]() The first inclination I had about acting was in junior high school and, you know, like any other kid who grew up with the cowboys and stuff like that, I was sort of interested in the movies on that level. GM: Well, it’s interesting: That actually sort of helped me. Again, sometimes in spite of yourself, but it gets done. But just about all of those people have wound up with careers in the movie business… to my mind in spite of Night Of Bloody Horror rather than because of it! We were just sort of stumbling our way into doing what we do, and there’s a certain aspect of that sort of guerrilla filmmaking that appeals to me, because I think a lot of good creative stuff winds up being done. And they had had a little bit of experience in the movie business, but not enough so it showed. It was like one of those Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland “my uncle has a barn we could use” scenarios. ![]() And then through her I got introduced to her nephew, and this guy, he was going to be making this little low-budget film, and we all sort of hit it off, and we wound up making a movie. When they came in, she would do local casting and stuff, and she actually lived in my neighborhood and I got to know her. His aunt Wilma was a sometimes casting agent in New Orleans for films. GM: Actually, it was through the aunt of one of the producers on the film, Al Salzer. ![]()
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