If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor (47 page)

Several
Brisco
directors went on to get involved with
The X-Files
and my former makeup man, Kevin Westmore, was on board, so it had the feel of coming home again.

I had met David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson doing promotion for our respective shows years before. David and I shared a plane flight to a sales event in Chicago. At that point, he wasn't the TV veteran he is today, and he leaned over to me during the flight.

David: What the hell are we supposed to do at these promo things?

Bruce: What do you mean?

David: Like, are we supposed to be funny, or charming, or what?

Bruce: A little of both, I guess. I think we're just there to press the flesh.

David: I feel like such a jerk.

Bruce: Hey, be glad you don't have to walk around dressed like a cowboy...

Gillian Anderson and I met copresenting an award to some TV sales guy. I didn't take the event too seriously and wore a cowboy hat with my tux. The script they wrote for us was awful, like they usually are at award shows, so I tried to con her into doing some old routines.

Bruce: Hey, Gillian, let's do some of those ten-gallon hat gags, what do you say?

Gillian: Why would we want to do that?

Bruce: Well, this isn't exactly the Oscars. I thought we could have some fun with it.

Gillian: You can do what you'd like. I'm going to read my copy and get out of here...

She must have thought I was an alien.

44

QUEST FOR THE HOLY GRAIL:

GRABBING AT "PHANTOMS"

Recently, while responding to e-mail on-line, I got an instant message from a fan.

Fan: Bruce, how do I become a famous actor?

Bruce: When I'm famous, I'll let you know...

Fan: Seriously, how can I?

Bruce: Shoot a president.

Fan: What?!!

Bruce: Do you want to be famous, or do you want to be an actor? They are two completely different things.

Technically, to qualify as an actor, you could stand in your living room and recite the phone book to your cat. If you want to be a movie star, that's a whole new game with its own set of rules.

A movie star can't
just
be an actor, because in the truest sense of the word, an actor can be a man or woman, old or young, overweight, balding and unremarkable and it wouldn't really matter -- as long as they could act.

A movie star, conversely, doesn't have to be that good of an actor, or even master the English language, as long as they possess qualities that separate them from the herd.

Some movie stars, and I'm using this obnoxious term only because it's so familiar, get by on sheer charisma, that great indefinable thing, or an astounding physique, but more often, it is a combination of pleasing physical characteristics, a basic acting ability, and a hell of a lot of drive. Actors who aspire to rise above the level of community theater, local commercials, or a syndicated TV show must apply themselves on a multitude of levels.

The first thing they must do is "look" like a movie star. If you're out of shape, you'd better renew that lapsed gym membership. Teeth too yellow, or crooked? No sweat, a trip to the local cosmetic dentist can fix that. If you wear glasses, just run down to the optometrist and get those contacts, or better still, get laser surgery to "permanently" solve the defect. While you're on the laser kick, maybe it's time to clean up some of those scars, warts and blemishes that have been haunting you for years -- God forbid that movie stars should look like the rest of us.

Personally, I've always been amused by the fact that some of Hollywood's most renowned tough guys such as Bogart, John Wayne, and Burt Reynolds all wore toupees. Alan Ladd, a leading man in the forties and fifties, was cast opposite short starlets to mask his own diminutive stature. Ronald Reagan wore glasses. Clark Gable had smelly dentures and pinned his large ears back. I'll tell you, all actors should be grateful for the day when Sean Connery, one of the manliest men of the silver screen, removed his toupee for all the world to see.

Even with all the effort actors go through to perfect their bodies, it's nothing compared to what they do to be "discovered." When not at the gym, or the tanning salon, actors are networking, and Hollywood parties are an obvious starting point.

I saved a phone message from an ex-Michigan friend after he had been in Los Angeles for a couple years.

Bruce, hey, this is Nathan. Listen, I'm having a party this weekend and I'd like you to come...

In Michigan, the message would have ended there, but not in Sporeville, USA -- it continued:

...We got some great people coming... some
really
great people...

Nathan proceeded to name the luminaries he had "confirmed," as if I had to be "sold" on the concept. I didn't go, and it wasn't because his party wasn't good enough, it was because he never once mentioned that it might actually be fun.

By the time I tried to be a movie star, I had already been an actor in about fifteen films. More than anything, I was curious to find out how hard it would be to punch through the glass ceiling of film grades and exchange my B-grade status for a big, shiny A.

Jeffery Boam was one of the executive producers of
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
He also had a day job as a big-shot Hollywood writer who participated in the
Indiana Jones
and
Lethal Weapon
series, among others.

His latest project, for Paramount Pictures, was a film adaptation of the pulp fiction hero, the Phantom, and he contacted me about the possibility of playing the lead role. With the help of my clever manager, Robert Stein, we began the journey on foot to see what we could see.

Our first meeting was with the designated director, Joe Dante. He was bright and pleasant enough, and we enjoyed a spirited conversation, but Joe wasn't where the buck stopped to get this role -- not by a country mile. This was evidenced by the fact that he didn't even wind up directing the film.

Next on the list were the Paramount executives in charge of the film. These meetings are always short and produce little in the way of substantive conversation, largely since actors and executives don't have much to say to each other.

Executive: So, Bruce, you like the project?

Bruce: Yep. Sure do. It looks like a lot of fun.

Executive: We're really excited about it.

Bruce: I can understand that. It... looks like a lot of fun...
(Didn't I already say that?)

Meetings like that are more about the executives looking you over to make sure you have all your limbs and can string a full sentence together.

The real test was to make an impression on the film's legendary producer, Robert Evans. A fixture at Paramount since the seventies, this once-powerful man was behind classics like
Chinatown
and
Marathon Man.
To catch his interest, I had to come up with an "icebreaker," some sort of conversation starter.

I dug through a
Who's Who in Hollywood
book and found out that he was once, like me, an actor. Rumor had it, he had been hand-picked by actress Norma Shearer to play legendary producer Irving Thalberg in the Lon Chaney biography,
Man of a Thousand Faces.

That's obscure enough,
I figured.

Robert Evan's face lit up the moment I mentioned this film from forty years ago. He waxed nostalgic for a brief moment, and it seemed to relax the atmosphere in an otherwise tense room.

Ironically, the last person I met with was the casting director -- someone who, under normal circumstances, I would have met with first. As an actor, the ability to do an end-run around someone who has the power to stop your forward momentum is a huge victory. I must admit, I was undeniably cocky by the time I sat with her.

The next and last phase of this campaign was the screen test. My manager got his hands on the number of the actress who would play opposite me. Normally, I wasn't expected or even advised to contact her, but nothing about this was normal, so I gave her a ring and weaseled my way into rehearsing with her.

No studio in their right mind would screen test just one actor so, in my case, it boiled down to two people -- me and Billy Zane. Since the desire was to create a franchise out of this character, the project must have gone out to every "bankable" hero type in town but for whatever reason, Billy and I wound up on the ticket.

Like the network test I had to do for
Brisco,
a contract had to be negotiated in advance. This grueling phase didn't take long, but the trick was to dig up every contract I had ever signed and find every "perk" I had ever received. Negotiating with the studio's business affairs department (AKA, lawyers) wasn't that big of a deal as long as you could prove that you had already gotten everything you were asking for at some point in your career.

Finally, the schmoozing and strategy ended, and I found myself on the Paramount lot. I signed my contract in a makeup bungalow and walked into stage #21 to face the one-eyed monster. The shoot itself only took a couple hours and I left without fanfare.

Waiting for that big call is where you second-guess yourself to death and play all of the "would have/should have/could have" games over and over. I had two choices: wait by the phone and be tormented by every ring, or get as far away from it as I could. I chose the latter, and wandered the hills behind my house in southern California until the big verdict came down about thirty-six hours later. Paramount had found their man and it was... Billy Zane.

Do not pass Go. Do not collect $100.

I was surprised at how well I took the news. It was more of a relief than anything, because I was tired of all the games I had to play to get that far. To quote Rocky, I "went the distance," and it was good enough for me.

45

THE HIGHER THE BUDGET, THE LOWER THE PART

The Phantom
proved indelibly that I was not in a position to barge into Acme Studios and insist that they offer up a fat role in their next summer blockbuster. It seemed that my lot in life was to either have big parts in small films or small parts in big films. I do work in the realm of fantasy, but I haven't lost touch with reality.