[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
What are you talking about?
Oh, that s right, Tony said very plainly. You guys
were away. The circus was coming through town, and they
had a flatbed truck with an elephant chained to it. The
truck went around a curve too fast, the elephant leaned off
the edge, and a Greyhound bus hit him and killed him.
Tony shook his head in sadness. They had a funeral for
the elephant. There was nothing to do so everybody at-
tended the funeral.
"
Leaving Catch-22 was almost as difficult as getting off of
Hell Is for Heroes. Dick Benjamin, Paula Prentiss, and I
were riding in a car to Hermosillo to catch a flight back to
Los Angeles. We had been on location for two months
straight and couldn t wait to get back to a choice of restau-
rants, the possibility of an earthquake, and gridlocked traffic.
Suddenly a helicopter buzzed overhead and then started
circling low in front of us, clearly indicating that we
should pull over. It either meant that Dick or I had to re-
turn to the set, or that we were being held up by some very
wealthy bandits. Turned out, it was the former.
I should ve followed Art Garfunkel s lead. After shoot-
ing his scene, Art explained to Mike Nichols that he
I Shouldn t Even Be Doing This! 155
*
needed to be back in New York for an important obliga-
tion. Probably a concert in Central Park with Paul Simon.
He asked Mike for a specific date that he could leave, so he
could notify the folks in New York.
Mike explained that he needed to check the film before
he could release Art to make sure he had the scene. The
film would be sent out that day, but being that it was a Fri-
day, the editors wouldn t look at it until Monday. They
would develop it on Tuesday and cut it on Wednesday,
meaning that it would be flown back on Thursday. This
timeline meant that Mike would watch it at the end of the
shoot on Friday.
Upon hearing that he was required to hang around for
another week, Art returned to the hotel, packed his bags,
and called a cab. When the cab arrived, he instructed the
driver to take him to the airport in Tucson, which was 200
miles away. Art volunteered to pay the fare both ways. The
Mexican cab driver smiled and hit the road for what would
be his last fare before retiring in the lap of luxury.
We never saw him again.
"
But serving under Pirosh and Nichols was better than
working for Alex Segal, who directed a terrible movie
made for television that I starred in with Jill St. John and
Jean Simmons called Decisions! Decisions! You see, I
learned from Johnny that if you are going down, you take
everyone with you.
On the first day of shooting, Segal and I were walking
and talking about the script. The people who put up the
156 Bob Newhart
*
money were Hollywood neophytes who had made their
money somewhere else and decided that it would be fun to
make a TV movie. They were very nice people, as they al-
ways are. Look who they got as an assistant director, Se-
gal said. This guy has been after me for a long time.
It wasn t long before I became the target of Segal s
paranoia. A couple days after Ginnie and I spent a pleas-
ant evening at his house, we were shooting a scene in
which I was in bed wearing a full-body cast. Following
Segal s detailed instructions, the prop masters spent an
hour putting me in the cast and hoisting me onto the hos-
pital bed.
The moment they finished this process, Segal barked:
Okay, everyone . . . let s take lunch.
"
I don t go through an Actors Studio process of finding a
character. In the Actors Studio, they teach what s known
as method acting. They instruct you to build a history of
your character going back to its childhood. Someone took
his rubber ducky away from him in the bathtub when he
was five, therefore he s homicidal. Or if you are going to
play a garbage collector, you volunteer to ride around with
your local waste management crew. If a script is given to
me that is humorous, I find where the joke is and I figure
out how to get there.
The closest I came to method technique was using the
traits of some of my friends from the routines that I cre-
ated. The submarine commander became the basis for sev-
eral jobs I held on the big screen because he was the
I Shouldn t Even Be Doing This! 157
*
perfect representation of the Peter Principle (you rise to
your level of incompetence), as well as the ultimate bu-
reaucrat who just wants his one final mission to go right so
he can retire.
In the movie In & Out, I played a high school principal
who was very close to the submarine commander. The
principal s entire professional life had been very simple
and unexciting. As his name, Tom Halliwell, conveyed, he
had been principal for years and all had gone well. He was
nearing a smooth and easy retirement, and then all of a
sudden along comes this shocking question about a popu-
lar, veteran teacher: Is he gay or isn t he?
The idea for the movie came from the speech that Tom
Hanks gave when he won the Academy Award for best ac-
tor for Philadelphia. I m not sure who keeps track of such
statistics, but I m pretty sure In & Out is the only full-
length feature film based on an Oscar acceptance speech.
That just goes to show you how good a public speaker [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl chiara76.opx.pl
What are you talking about?
Oh, that s right, Tony said very plainly. You guys
were away. The circus was coming through town, and they
had a flatbed truck with an elephant chained to it. The
truck went around a curve too fast, the elephant leaned off
the edge, and a Greyhound bus hit him and killed him.
Tony shook his head in sadness. They had a funeral for
the elephant. There was nothing to do so everybody at-
tended the funeral.
"
Leaving Catch-22 was almost as difficult as getting off of
Hell Is for Heroes. Dick Benjamin, Paula Prentiss, and I
were riding in a car to Hermosillo to catch a flight back to
Los Angeles. We had been on location for two months
straight and couldn t wait to get back to a choice of restau-
rants, the possibility of an earthquake, and gridlocked traffic.
Suddenly a helicopter buzzed overhead and then started
circling low in front of us, clearly indicating that we
should pull over. It either meant that Dick or I had to re-
turn to the set, or that we were being held up by some very
wealthy bandits. Turned out, it was the former.
I should ve followed Art Garfunkel s lead. After shoot-
ing his scene, Art explained to Mike Nichols that he
I Shouldn t Even Be Doing This! 155
*
needed to be back in New York for an important obliga-
tion. Probably a concert in Central Park with Paul Simon.
He asked Mike for a specific date that he could leave, so he
could notify the folks in New York.
Mike explained that he needed to check the film before
he could release Art to make sure he had the scene. The
film would be sent out that day, but being that it was a Fri-
day, the editors wouldn t look at it until Monday. They
would develop it on Tuesday and cut it on Wednesday,
meaning that it would be flown back on Thursday. This
timeline meant that Mike would watch it at the end of the
shoot on Friday.
Upon hearing that he was required to hang around for
another week, Art returned to the hotel, packed his bags,
and called a cab. When the cab arrived, he instructed the
driver to take him to the airport in Tucson, which was 200
miles away. Art volunteered to pay the fare both ways. The
Mexican cab driver smiled and hit the road for what would
be his last fare before retiring in the lap of luxury.
We never saw him again.
"
But serving under Pirosh and Nichols was better than
working for Alex Segal, who directed a terrible movie
made for television that I starred in with Jill St. John and
Jean Simmons called Decisions! Decisions! You see, I
learned from Johnny that if you are going down, you take
everyone with you.
On the first day of shooting, Segal and I were walking
and talking about the script. The people who put up the
156 Bob Newhart
*
money were Hollywood neophytes who had made their
money somewhere else and decided that it would be fun to
make a TV movie. They were very nice people, as they al-
ways are. Look who they got as an assistant director, Se-
gal said. This guy has been after me for a long time.
It wasn t long before I became the target of Segal s
paranoia. A couple days after Ginnie and I spent a pleas-
ant evening at his house, we were shooting a scene in
which I was in bed wearing a full-body cast. Following
Segal s detailed instructions, the prop masters spent an
hour putting me in the cast and hoisting me onto the hos-
pital bed.
The moment they finished this process, Segal barked:
Okay, everyone . . . let s take lunch.
"
I don t go through an Actors Studio process of finding a
character. In the Actors Studio, they teach what s known
as method acting. They instruct you to build a history of
your character going back to its childhood. Someone took
his rubber ducky away from him in the bathtub when he
was five, therefore he s homicidal. Or if you are going to
play a garbage collector, you volunteer to ride around with
your local waste management crew. If a script is given to
me that is humorous, I find where the joke is and I figure
out how to get there.
The closest I came to method technique was using the
traits of some of my friends from the routines that I cre-
ated. The submarine commander became the basis for sev-
eral jobs I held on the big screen because he was the
I Shouldn t Even Be Doing This! 157
*
perfect representation of the Peter Principle (you rise to
your level of incompetence), as well as the ultimate bu-
reaucrat who just wants his one final mission to go right so
he can retire.
In the movie In & Out, I played a high school principal
who was very close to the submarine commander. The
principal s entire professional life had been very simple
and unexciting. As his name, Tom Halliwell, conveyed, he
had been principal for years and all had gone well. He was
nearing a smooth and easy retirement, and then all of a
sudden along comes this shocking question about a popu-
lar, veteran teacher: Is he gay or isn t he?
The idea for the movie came from the speech that Tom
Hanks gave when he won the Academy Award for best ac-
tor for Philadelphia. I m not sure who keeps track of such
statistics, but I m pretty sure In & Out is the only full-
length feature film based on an Oscar acceptance speech.
That just goes to show you how good a public speaker [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]