Are you having more fun today making movies or do you miss the days when it was “art?”
I’ll be honest with you. I was a little too precious the first 20 years in my career. It was a matter of life and breath. I worked in terms of supporting myself, how it mattered to me, how I felt about it. It was my life’s blood. Then it got a little casual and it got a little more fun. Before if you give your heart and soul to it every second, every day, you’re going to get tired and get beaten down.
So I learned to have totally humor about it all and to enjoy the perks. When I work with anybody today, who has a movie, has a play, has a TV show, it is their child…it’s their baby. It is their world. You have to treat it like even though it’s just another job for you, it’s somebody’s baby and you have to act like that. And if you don’t, you’re totally disrespectful. You cannot act that way with people. You have to respect their love. And so I had the best time traveling the world, being part of all these different love affairs of other peoples and making them happy. Yeah. It’s fun for me. I love it.
Your career sounds like a roller coaster with the highest peak, in the beginning, had to be Star 80. Would you consider it the pinnacle of your career in terms of craft and intensity?
Yeah, it was a hard movie. But Bob Fosse—that film is the best docudrama ever made. And I can say that without it being an opinion. It’s a fact. It is better than In Cold Blood. It’s better than every docudrama ever made. That’s the best one. We shot everything where it really happened—the exact location. We shot it in the room where he [Paul Snider] murdered her [Dorothy Stratten]. I mean everything was authentic. Bob Fosse was a brilliant maniac. And he was without a doubt a genius. Oh my God. Magnificent man.
So what was, what was it like coming off of that and then finding the next job?
It was, I think my fourth or fifth film, I’d ever made. So, he spoiled me early. I was only 25. I turned 26 on that movie. I was already spoiled at 26 years old. I had worked for the two best of the modern-day directors Hal Ashby and Bob Fosse, in my opinion. Those guys rock. Oh my God. They were fantastic artists.
“…he stood up dancing and he goes, “Yes! I’m making a great movie.” I started to cry, I was so proud.”
When working with Bob Fosse did you get a sense of his Broadway background and choreography when he was directing you?
Oh yes. Sure. I never told him this, but it’s true. I snuck into dailies one night and I went up to the projection room cause I was not allowed to see dailies. I was pissed and I want to see the work. I probably snuck in there ten times over the six month we shot the film. One night I was up there watching and the lights were all out. They came on and he stood up dancing and he goes, “Yes! I’m making a great movie.” I started to cry, I was so proud. Because there’s all my work there he’s watching. It made him stand up and made me so happy.
Were you very confident going into shooting Star 80?
Not at all. Because that part, if you don’t play him like a real lost human being, who doesn’t know he’s lost. You’re just gonna play the cliche. And once you play the cliche, there’s no backing out of it. You’re stuck with mediocrity and it’s forever. It’s on film. I had to live the part. I lived apart through Fosse. He guided me through every nuance, every detail. Every turn of the head was all from him because I said to him every day, my first thing is, “what do you want to see today?” I want to see A, B, C, and D. if I don’t get D, I don’t want C. and if I don’t get C, I don’t want A, unless you give me B.
It was all very precise. Yeah. And we knocked it out of the park. Dude. It’s the best docudrama ever made.
When Star 80 came out, it was the beginning of the VHS and video store revolution. As a kid, my dad would rent every movie he could get his hands on and Star 80 was the one that left such an impression on me. This is probably the most intense movie I’ve seen him.
You know, who never got credit and she was magnificent? Mariel Hemingway. That was the hardest part to play on the planet because of the nudity, she had to get breasts because she had no breasts at all. The character Dorothy Stratten was a Playboy model and known for our breasts. She had to get breasts. So she got them and the pressure playing that part was immense. I was always impressed with her as a person in that movie cause she was magnificent. She also did Personal Best and she’s always, never really gotten the credit she deserves. She killed in Star 80. But I was such a distraction, cause I was such a bad guy who was so much fun to watch. I got to steal the movie, but that’s because when Bob Fosse was making the movie and he liked the dark side.
