Did you ever work with any of the other actors? Did you do a reading with them?
No. I’ve done that sometimes. When I did “Olive, the Other Reindeer,” Drew and I (spent) five or six days on soundstages sitting on mics and talking to each other. But in this case, no. When I said reading it, I meant going home and reading it over and over.
Was it easier to do it working with Drew than it was to do it all by yourself?
I like it better. At my age, I grow tired of people. Actors always have opinions; I just want to do this for the rest of my days. Wear my pajamas, and I don’t have to put on a hairpiece anymore.
What did you think of the “Daredevil” Director’s Cut that just came out?
I haven’t seen it. Is it like a Special Edition?
Yes, they extended the movie.
Oh, I would imagine it’s longer.
Did they tell you they were doing that?
No, but I’ll still get the checks.
Are you going to do “Daredevil 2?”
Are they doing it?
Not yet.
I don’t know. They actually bought me for “Daredevil 2,” but they have to exercise the option.
Did you do a cameo in the “Elektra” movie?
No, I didn’t. I’ve been getting a lot of calls on that. As I always say, and I really believe this, there aren’t any small parts, only small paychecks. I don’t do cameos unless there’s a big paycheck next to it – a couple of zeros next to that small part.
Have you wrapped work on “The Moguls?”
We wrapped on “The Moguls” a while ago, and I actually did my ADR work for that last week. So that will be coming out in the spring, I think, of ’05. I was doing this movie simultaneously. I’ve been working on “Racing Stripes” through “The Handler,” through “The Moguls,” another movie I did called “Second Best.” It’s really just been this ongoing thing.
What’s “The Moguls” about?
“The Moguls” is a story about – Jeff Bridges plays this character Andy, and these guys that, we’ve all grown up together and we’re all in our late forties, early fifties, and most of us are pretty content with just living in this small town. I play a character named Some Idiot. No, seriously. And then we have two other guys, John Hawkes and [Brad Henke]. They play Mo and Ron and together make Moron. And our hero Andy, his wife loves him but he just can’t hold down a job. He’s a dreamer and he’s gotten our town in trouble. He got us into the dot.com thing. We all raised money and it became the dot.bomb. We bought a racehorse that broke his leg coming out of the gate. We’re always trying to make money, get rich quick schemes, and they always have blown up in his face, but we love him.
Ted Danson plays a character in the story named Moose. He’s gay and everybody in town knows he’s gay. He doesn’t know we know he’s gay, and he wants to be one of the guys, desperately wants to be one of the guys, so he pretends to be straight and mucho. He’s brilliant in it. Tim Blake Nelson is in it and William Fichtner’s in it and Glenne Headly’s in it, and Jeanne Tripplehorn’s in it.
Anyway, the story is that he comes up with this idea that we are going to make – Patrick Fugit plays the video kid across the street, and he’s going to be the cameraman - and we’re going to make, he raises $25,000 and we will make the first feature-length adult amateur pornography movie. It’s like the minute we decide to do it, all hell breaks loose. We can’t get girls to be in the movie. I want to be the writer/director because I took a course once and saw a movie twice. And I just think it’s a wonderfully funny movie. It’s present day.
And they think they’re going to be the first to do an amateur porn movie?
Feature-length, on film. Statistically, the amateur porn business makes $11 billion a year, and Jeff’s got this great line, “And have you ever read a bad review? They don’t exist. They don’t get bad reviews. This is money in the bank, this cannot fail. We cannot fail.”
Speaking of your other movies, are you aware of the following that “The Goonies” still has?
I am, and there is a rumor that we’re doing a sequel.
Maybe with their kids?
Yeah, that’s what I’m hearing. But I’ve also been told that we’ll be back. There are only two of us left you know, Robert Davi and I. Annie (Ramsey) is gone and (John) Matuszak is gone. I haven’t seen a script but they’ve been talking about it for years, Steven and Dick Donner have mentioned it.
I was working at Warner’s and I went on Stage 16, which is the largest stage in the world. It’s the water stage where we did the boat, all the stuff on the boat. I remember my kid was three years old, now he’s twenty-three, and I would just love to be able to be a part of that. And it does have such a tremendous following. I’m actually going to show it at the Richfield Playhouse in February. They have a whole series of films and they asked me, which film would I want to show. I thought, “Why don’t we show ‘The Goonies’ so that we can do it on a Saturday afternoon, and everybody can bring their kids.”
