Q: A lot of actors seem almost defensive when they talk about their profession. The veteran Jack Elam, for instance, once insisted that he approached every role only as a paycheck.
A: I hope he didn’t mean that. I think he’s full of baloney. More likely, he just didn’t want to reveal how important it was to him. One of the greatest guys in the world, Jimmy Caan, is always saying acting isn’t important to him, he can‘t take it seriously. But then you watch him prepare for a role and deliver on the preparations and you know how crucial it is to him. It probably goes back to that old attitude that actors were sissies or something, so a real man couldn’t possibly be serious about it. Load of crap, but the residue from it is still around, so some people are a little wary.
Q: And yet you also get more actors today talking about the techniques and aesthetics of their business.
A: Yeah, and most of them should just shut up. The women I don’t mind so much because every once in awhile one of them will say something interesting. But the men? They’ve made three movies and done two plays and suddenly they’re going on television to tell you what their great insights into the craft are. That James Lipton thing on the Bravo channel, for instance. It’s supposed to be about the Actors Studio, but half the people on it have never seen the inside of the Actors Studio. They’re just names Lipton needs to attract money. That’s okay, but don’t pass this fraud off as what the teaching principles of the place have been. You can tick off on one hand the number of those guests who really know what Stanislavski is.
Q: How important was the Studio for you?
A: How about everything? When I was going there, you’d get four applicants accepted out of maybe 400. Strasberg was my mentor, and when I won his acceptance, I finally felt like an actor.
Q: And yet you’ve never stopped writing, either.
A: When all is said and done, an actor can only see a play or a film through his own role. That’s his job. And to me nothing can replace the give-and-take with the other actors on a scene-by-scene basis. But sometimes I want more than that. I want to be the general up on the hill seeing the whole battlefield. And this was a problem when I first went to Hollywood.
Q: In what way?
A: Well, the first movies I made were with actors and directors from the old guard. People like Burt Lancaster and Anthony Quinn came from the studios, where there were stars and there were extras and nobody in between. They didn’t mean it in any vicious way, it was just the way they were trained. When I tried to be more than that and tried to interest producers in a screenplay I’d written, you’d think the walls had come down. Melvyn Douglas, who was practically a history of Hollywood, told me I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere under the old studio system, that I would’ve been all but outlawed for daring to think beyond my actor box.
Q: One of your pet projects was a film you wrote and starred in in 1978 called Uncle Joe Shannon, about the relationship between a trumpet player and a boy. It was treated somewhat mercilessly by the critics.
A: Forget the somewhat. It was bombed to hell. But after Rocky I had a lot more accessibility to studio offices and I used it. I don’t regret that. I did it and I got killed. I’d rather do that than the way some actors seem to think only about protecting themselves.
Q: As in?
A: Well, go back to the Actors Studio. More than once I’ve wanted to do plays there, but they’re always thumbs down. No productions here because this is a school and we don’t want critics, they’d tell me. Mind you, this is the place that always claims some derivation from the Group Theater, when Strasberg and (Elia) Kazan and all those others were willing to take risks to make a buck. Maybe it was because a lot of them were immigrants and already knew something about what a real risk meant. One time I got involved in a play I wanted to do at the Studio, they said no, so I took it to Joe Papp at the Public. He liked it, and we agreed we’d get this big name to do it. The big name says great, but no critics. What the hell is that? How dare he not have the balls to do it! He eventually did it, but he really had to have his arm twisted. I just don’t understand that mentality. I like working in a minefield. You want to tell me Uncle Joe Shannon is garbage? Okay, tell me. Just be polite telling me. But this other stuff of trying to insulate your reputation — I have no idea what that’s about. What kind of a reputation are you supposed to be protecting?
Q: Any glance at your credits would make it clear you’ve never worried about that.
A: What can I tell you? The place that makes cassettes hasn’t done more straight-to-video than I have. Nobody sets out to make a bad film any more than a cop sets out to be a bad cop. Life can just grab you at times. In some cases, I’ve needed the money real quick. In other cases, I’ve liked the idea of shooting abroad. But most of all, I guess, I’m a bad guy to be left alone and I have a colossal ego when it suits me. If I read this thing and it’s garbage, I tell myself I can straighten it out, make it great. Then when you’re finished, reality sets in with the marketing and the distributing and you end up at Blockbuster instead of at the multiplex.
Q: Does it bother you in any way that for many people you’ll always be “Paulie” from the Rocky series?
A: It might if I thought that was true all the time, but I don’t. Okay, sure, more people come up to me or just shout out on the street something about that character. I was in a restaurant in Los Angeles recently where this group of Russians, including the guy who’d come over to fight for the cruiserweight title, insisted I have a drink with them. Of course, they wanted to talk about Rocky, but they also started in about Back to School, the comedy with Rodney Dangerfield. They identified me with that as much as Rocky. So I guess the answer is, as long as I’m getting different characters thrown back at me, I’m okay with it.
Q: How does somebody who wears New York so visibly get along living in Los Angeles?
A: He doesn’t. I don’t really belong out here. I just moved here to raise my daughter. You can take the New Yorker out of New York and all that. I lived everywhere in the city. Ninety-fifth and Fifth, a boat in Port Washington. My restaurant, Il Bruschetto, is in the Bronx. I’m no cop, but I still consider the city my real beat.
