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Acting & Entertaining!

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I have performed voice work since my teens, first on radio on KCRW in Santa Monica, and during live narration of my friends' films screenings.  

I have always had a blast doing voices for projects.

In the early- mid 1980s I was part of the legendary loop group, 'Custom Looping' working with improvisation talents such as Nicholas Guest, Archie Hahn, Tracey Newman, Lee French among others. We voiced booth background and principals on movie and television projects: Heathers, Loverboy, The Best Times, Crime of Innocence, Last Resort and Meet the Applegates. I also have extensive experience in automated dialogue replacement (ADR) for my own work on several films that I co-star in.

Here's some voice work I did a few years ago, playing three characters in a comedy 'The secret Lives of Bacteria' (pts 1 & 2)!

Marcus & Jeff
SavedByTheBell GIF
Comedian

Comedy Improvisation

I have been playing in the improvisation sandbox since my early days working the streets of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in 1973, where I would stay in character for 8 - 10 hours a day. Creating characters; their history, mannerisms and relationships, then building and filling out performances with script, bits and improvisation. 

 

I began playing with other improvisers on stage jamming with great talents from the Groundlings and Second City in the early 1980s. 

 

I played with the Comedy Omelet, Micetro, LA Connection, among others. When the Comedy Omelet folded after a few years of public performances, I invited a number of the players to form the Flying Penguins. Acting as artistic director of the Flying Penguins we performed for several years. In 1988 the Penguins were invited by Dan O’Conner to be the Varsity Players of newly formed Los Angeles Theater Sports, (now also known as Impro Theater), out of who’s ranks came several of the players that went onto Who’s Line Is It Anyway, and several legendary television writers. I also appeared in many shows with Ellen Idelson’s Kidprov, a totally improvised show for children.

I was invited by former Committee member Beans Morocco to join the Second City Alumni Jam at the Ashgrove, playing along side some of the biggest names in improvisation.

In NorCal, I helped form 6th Street Improv in Santa Rosa, and I did a short stint as artistic director, producing short, long form, and Theater Sports shows.

For several semesters I taught Improvisation at Sonoma State University. And supported the students’ improv group ‘Improvaholics’.

Also, at Universal Studios in Hollywood and Osaka, Japan, I taught performers improvisation for work in the parks.  

I helped form the Evil Comedy Group, which still performs shows regularly at the Arlene Frances Center.  

I started North Bay Improv in Novato, doing shows often with special guests from the San Francisco and North Bay Improv community. 

I produced a few ‘Best of Sonoma County Improv’ shows, that received acclaim from both audience and the press. and I produced a fundraiser for my wife, Kimbell Jackson’s health fund, when she was struggling to pay for her treatment for five brain tumors from cancer, which included five Bay Area improvisation troupes and a host of improv legends.

I participated in the early days of the Leela Improvisation Center, and during the pandemic I played in virtual improv shows with Jay Sukow, Bingewatch and Moment Improv.

I appeared with Marcus Sams performing with him in a two man improvisation show to an ecstatic sold out audience. The photos from it are here in .gif form.

I have used my improv muscle in many of my film and stage appearances, heightening and adding to material. In fact in the films ‘Corked!’ and ‘Nobody’s Laughing’ I used a good deal of improvisation. 

Characters

Characters

Hollywood Classics

Hollywood Classics

I began playing Stanley Laurel for Universal Studios Hollywood in 1987, Charlie Chaplin in 1988, Groucho Marx in 1989, and I play Larry Fine, Mark Twain, Doc Brown among other characters.

 

I try to do accurate depictions, playing close attention to posture, voice and characterization, using the lines and actions that made these greats fan favorites. 

 

I've played Laurel for numerous Sons of the Desert conventions (the official Laurel and Hardy fan club), and Robert Marx (Zeppo's son, pictured in the collage with me and my troupe), said I was his favorite Groucho impersonator.

 

In the collage of photos you can see me in action as all of these Hollywood Comic Icons. (As Larry & my Stooges team with Iggy Pop on his 60th birthday)

 

I am available for your event to bring hilarity and entertain for a memorable time for all.

Entertaining 

over the years!

Stage Work

Stage + Theatre

Stage Work

On stage, I’ve co-starred in over 100 plays, joining Actor’s Equity in 1988 when I was cast as Rodrigo (Stanley Laurel) in Babes in Toyland for California Music Theater in both Orange County and Pasadena, the show directed by Toby Bluth, also starred Robert Morse and Peter Mark Richman. In the review by Los Angeles Theatre critic Tom Hatten, he said that because Ed Bell’s and my performances as Laurel & Hardy were so outstanding, our names would become household words. 

During my early years on stage I played Charles Condomine in Blithe Spirit, The Dragon in the Timid Dragon, several summer children’s theatre productions: The Breeman Town Players, Peek-a-little Talk-a-lot, and The Me Nobody Knows. On the Me Nobody Knows in 1972, I met the girl that would eventually become my wife Kim Jackson, who worked on the stage crew.

In high school I was reviewed very favorably by character actor Fritz Feld in my first Shakespearean role as Launcelout Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice. Other Shakespeare in school; As You Like It, Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, and as Falstaff in Henry IV part 1. I played Daniel Berrigan in the Trial of the Catonsville Nine, and was lauded by Jane Fonda. Other productions included Alice Through the Looking Glass, Mephistopheles in Faust, John the Witch Boy in Dark of the Moon, and at the Morgan Theatre in The Menachemus Twins directed by Bruce Kimmel, with Diana Canova. At UCLA I played Little Little Chap in Danny Rosenblatt’s production of Stop The World I Want To Get Off with Joyce DeWitt. And Nick In A Thousand Clowns. 

In 1973 I began playing faire at the Southern Renaissance Pleasure Faire, immersing into character for 8 - 10 hour days. Over the years I was a chair bearer for Queen Elizabeth’s Court, a Fool, Christopher Marlowe, English Country Dancer, Swordsman (playing Benvolio), Sword Dancer in the Death of John Barleycorn, a Groom in Lord Burleigh’s Household, played on stage in a parody of the Tempest, countless improvised shows on stage and in the streets, and I led Children’s interactive improvised tales. I also performed at the Northern Pleasure Faire, and eventually moved with it to the San Francisco Bay Area to get more training at the American Conservatory Theatre. I attended ACT’s MFA program in 1981, and continued intermediate studies at SFSU.

Shows at San Francisco State University included; Lonestar, Cloud Nine, Hamlet, The Tiny Closet, Case of the Crushed Petunias, The Shadow Box, Romeo and Juliet, and Offend The Audience.

In Hollywood I played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Sir Andrew Aguecheek at Teatricum Botanicum, and began working with Improvisation with players from Groundlings, Second City and other troupes, eventually formed into performing company the Comedy Omelette, which after disbanding after a few years, I formed The Flying Penguins, and in 1989 the Penguins were invited to be the heart of the newly formed Los Angeles Theatre Company. Through the years I’ve been a player with several groups, check out my Improvisation page for more. 

I played Theo in [sic] for the Sonoma Actors Theatre’s first production in the brand new 6th St Playhouse in Santa Rosa. Feste in 12th Night (and during the pandemic I played Sir Toby Belch with The Show Must Go Online), The Matamore in Tony Kushner's adaptation of Corneille's The Illusion, I was nominated for a Bay Area Theatre Critic’s Award for my performance as Igor in Spreckell’s production of Young Frankenstein the Musical directed by Eugene Abravya. As a variety performer I have created hundreds of performances for corporate gigs and private parties as Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, Stanley Laurel, Larry Fine and original characters; The World’s Worst Waiter, Lobsterman, and others. I’ve played Harliquino, Capitano, Pulcinella, and Pantalone in several Commedia del Arte troupes; LA Del Arte, Tutti Frutti Commedia, and with the Heart of the Forest Renaissance Faire as Pedrolino in ‘Shrew!’ In Dennis Freeh’s reuniting of the comedy troupe ‘The Esoterics’ I was multiple characters in two runs of their Just For Laughs. The second run created a scholarship for OSU Theatre Dept.

In the San Francisco hit immersive show ‘The Speakeasy’ I played an aging vaudevillian, singing, dancing and doing classic routines ‘Niagara Falls’, ‘Beau Brummells’ and others. 

Then I played Parry, the role Robin Williams made famous, in a production/fundraiser, (for Robin’s favorite charities), of The Fisher King at the Magic Theatre.

In Living History shows, I have played snake oil film flam man, Dr Cornelius Poindexter, purveyor of the Miracle Elixir, and the irrepressible Mark Twain. Check my Living History page for photos and more. As a certified docent for Columbia State Historic Park, I lead town tours as Twain.

And I recently played three roles in Sierra Repertory Theatre’s hit production of ‘Clue’.  

TV

Television

The first time I was on Television, I was very young, and it was on the local evening news, when I was photographed by television  cameras watching a kinetic art installation at the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art. 

Then, I was on the news again many years later when I helped a crew of local citizens do a ‘clean up’ of a local duck pond in Playa del Rey. I liked the attention, especially learning that I was helping with storytelling in news-worthy stories.

 

Yet, because I was kept from acting professionally as a kid, it wasn’t until I was a young adult, and ‘had an agent, landing auditions for roles on TV that I began getting work...

 

My first guest star role was in the ‘Filming Raoul’ episode, of the first season of Scarecrow and Mrs King, Kate Jackson’s first solo starring series after the co-starring in the hit TV show, Charlie’s Angels. The episode ended up being the second highest rated episode of the season, and I had friends and relatives call me from around the country to commend my work.

I recall that to get my character (Scotty)’s abduction by kidnappers and stuffed into the trunk of a car taking over a dozen takes, due to plane, train, automobile noise and other technical issues. Not too good for my claustrophobia. In the montage of photos, you can see ‘Scotty’ in his red wind breaker jacket. In 2024 I was a special guest for the Scarecrow and Mrs King 40thanniversary fan convention, and was reunited with Bruce Boxleitner and members of the series cast. I recreated Scotty in a fan written script reading for the con, that delighted the several hundred fans attending.

I also had a very memorable role as Screech’s guru, The High Geek, in the fantasy episode ‘Rockumentary’ of the hit show, Saved By The Bell. I donned buck teeth, had a fright wig pile of high hair, and wore super thick glasses, doling out life advice and a magic retainer for good luck, to the long suffering Screech. 

Sadly, actor Dustin Diamond has passed away before we could appear together at a Saved By The Bell fan con to reprise our scene. Photos of the character and others are in the montage.

 

A special memory for me was when I was guest cast as a rival contestant to Dick Van Dyke’s character on Diagnosis Murder. Because I have played Hollywood comic icon Stanley Laurel since 1987, and Dick was very close friends with Stanley, we had much to talk about. We spent all of our time in-between scene work talking about his times with Stanley, Buster Keaton and his works on his legendary career. 

Other Television appearances include as the messenger bringing big news to Patrick Duffy’s character in one of the final seasons of Dallas, as Chip & Pepper’s network boss in NBC’s Saturday Morning Cartoon Preview Spectacular, as an assistant to Jeffrey Tambor’s chief editor role in the ‘Rakers’ episode of Max Headroom, as a key witness on Divorce Court, as Asshole #1 (the sensitive one) in the sketch ‘Assaholics Anonymous’ on The Man Show.

 

In 2010 I was cast a Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain in Mark Twain in the Holy Land, a dramatization of his trip on the first commercial cruise line out of New York harbor to Europe and the Holy Land. When Twain returned from the trip, he bought back the articles he sent weekly to five newspapers, and combined them to create his first and best selling book during his lifetime, ‘The Innocents Abroad’.  The film shot in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and myself with a small crew spent two weeks shooting in Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee and elsewhere. The film, after 10 years was reedited, renamed Dreamland: Mark Twain in Jerusalem, and released by PBS, with narration by Martin Sheen. The story of my journey is linked at the bottom of the page, and I tell the stories of how we got ‘un-gettable’ million-dollar shots by pure luck and perseverance.

I have had appearances in multiple national and regional commercials for IBM (Santa), Publix (Conspiracy), PiP (Resumes), Mitsubishi Trucks (Soak It Up), Cadaco (Flappin’ Chicken), Ameritech (Train), Jack In The Box (Hot Dogs), Charity Car Donation (PSAs) and others.

 

I’ve also appeared on dozens of television shows as Stanley Laurel, Carlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx for Universal Studios Hollywood. . . Circus of the Stars, The New Candid Camera, The Country Music Awards, Wallace and Ladmo, and in Australia, on Agro’s Super Sunday Show among them.

Films

film list

War Games

In San Francisco 1982, I attended an "open call" for a major motion picture where I was singled out by director, Martin Brest, for a screen test for the lead role in War Games. Going up against some of the top talents in Hollywood, as you can see from the call sheet for the screentest. The result was my return to Hollywood, for a 20 years working on studio films.

Martin Brest & Jeffrey
Films

Pale Rider

My first theatrical agent was a go getter. Her name was Paula Cedar, and she’d come out of William Morris NYC office and opened her boutique agency in Beverly Hills. Being very efficient she was on top of the pulse of new talent and what was casting in Hollywood. I had casting directors complain about her, how she was always calling and on their backs, about what they were casting. I even had Michael Chinich at Universal complain to my face that she’d called a dozen times about me getting to audition for a one line role in Louis Malle’s ‘Crackers’, which I got, so there’s proof her method works.

She’d call around weekly to the studios’ casting departments to see what they might be casting that didn’t come out in the Breakdowns, the service that tells agents, managers and actors what is being cast, and what types they are searching for.

Paula called Warner brothers Pictures casting, and asked what they were casting that week that may not be in the Breakdowns, and Phyliss Huffman in Marion Dougherty’s office said she had a young male support role in the new Clint Eastwood western that they had planned to cast from their own talent files. Paula asked for a description of the role in case she had someone to fit the bill on her roster…a description came, and she thought of, and suggested me.

As the story goes, Sean Penn’s very talented little brother was at a Malibu party, where he met Clint, and he told him that he wanted to work with Clint. Clint sent Chris the Pale Rider script, offering him the role of Eddy Conway. Chris threw it back, saying he didn’t want to play a good guy, that he’d prefer to play a bad guy. So Clint moved him to the role of Josh LaHood, a character that attempts to rape Megan Wheeler (played by Sydney Penny) and tries to strong arm Preacher (Clint Eastwood) into leaving town. Thus the actor cast as Teddy Conway (Chuck LaFont) was moved to the role of Eddy Conway, leaving a last minute cast hole of Teddy. Paula opened the door for me to come in, and Phyliss likely knew my work from the episode of Scarecrow and Mrs King I guest starred in from the previous year. And other castings had known me from auditions for Honky Tonk Man and Ladyhawke.

I knew that when I auditioned I needed to cry on cue. Having studied various techniques of acting, I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. I had a lock of my beloved grandmother’s hair in my pocket (she’d encourage me to go for my dream of becoming an actor, when my parents were telling me not to), I had done my Meisner ‘Fantasy Charging ’homework, and I also used exercises from ‘the Method’ with sense memory and emotional recall. I was going to cry on cue come hell or high water. 

The audition was conducted by producer Fritz Manes, who put me on tape to send to Clint, who was already in Idaho in preproduction. And the audition went well, I cried on cue, without anything but the script’s words driving the tears on cue.

A few days later I was on a plane headed for ketches, Sun Valley, Idaho to play cowboy with a fantastically talented cast in director/actor Clint Eastwood’s return to westerns, ‘Pale Rider’.

 

 

When I got to see the ‘new town’ set, I realized that the art director on the film had made a wonderful choice by building practical built structures on the top of a mountain. So wherever cinematographer, Bruce Surtees set his camera, he have either the Salmon River, White Cloud or Sawtooth Mountains as breathtaking background. The only downside of this was the weather. The buildings were strong, so they didn’t fall down, but we were at the mercy of exposure to extreme tempratures due to the location, and with the wind chill, the temperature was often -10 degrees. Mercifully, production brought in heat cannons that the cast would huddle around in-between takes.   

 

I chose to make Teddy a bit of a want wit. He wore a belt and suspenders, and fished with no bait, nor had much going on in his head. I had his legs go out from underneath him when he got excited…when I checked with Clint on this, he said he liked it, but none of the three or four times I did it stayed in the film. 

 

I made fast friends with Doug McGrath (original casting for Spider was Rip Torn, but for some reason he couldn’t do the shoot0, and Doug was superlative as Spider, and a very fine human being. often offering me advice as an actor, making a living was hard and he encouraged me to hold on to my pennies, because he knew jobs were few and far between.

And Chuck LaFont, who played brother Eddy, was a treat to work with. He had a fine stage acting background, and we together conspired what our characters did to bring life to them on screen. We both added colors by making them a bit more simple minded, and thus very emotive during the action of the film.

 

 

I had mutual friends with Academy Award nominated for ‘Diary of a Mad Housewife’ actress, Carrie Snodgress, and we hit it off right from the start. I often would decompress from the day’s shoot with Carrie, and a few times I had to talk her off the edge from quitting the movie. She saw her character, Sarah Wheeler, as a more aggressive protector of her child and her man, played by Michael Moriarty.

She felt that she’d fight to keep them out of trouble, and she wanted to show that through he action, but she kept getting shut down by Clint and Michael, and she was furious. I would buy rounds of fruity cocktails that would help her unwind, and let her vent, and she’d calm down, and decide to give it another day.  

 

Michael Moriarty was a very kind man to me. Always a good listener (which I later learned is why Clint cast him over many other ‘name’ actors for the role of Hull Barret), always with a good word of encouragement, and a heavenly father blessing after each meeting we had, I thought him a wonderful spirit. 

During the rehearsals of Michael’s first fight scene in town, apparently some of the actors were fooling around, and Michael ended up breaking three fingers on his left hand. He quit the film, and it took Clint several days to get him back on set. Michael was understandably upset, not only because of the unprofessional fooling around during a rehearsal that needed to be choreographed, but he had been commissioned to compose a symphony and the breakage of his fingers would severely handicap him.

I understand that Clint got him a Melodica mouth organ, so Michael could still compose in his dressing room, using his one good hand. If viewers look at his hands when Hull Barret returns from town, you will easily see that bandages on the broken fingers.

 

There weren’t many other injuries during the shoot that I recall, except a major one when Clint was riding his beautiful horse through the snow covered forest, he apparently stepped in a gofer hole, and fell on top of Clint, who suffered a broken collar bone. Thus Clint in pain while acting and directing in often freezing weather.  

 

I presented to Clint a French postcard with his image from High Plains Drifter on’t to sign for my niece. He was surprised to see it, and asked where to find it, I told him, and gave it to him, and had him sign another. 

​​​​​

 

I brought my first wife in for a visit during the shoot, and her first day, we had lunch with Clint, and the day before he’d fired the caterer. The lunch my ex-wife, Clint and I enjoyed together, prepared by the new caterer was steak and lobster, which was cooked perfectly, on the top of a mountain, while it was snowing. I offered to Clint, “Nice weather”, to which he said, “I didn’t expect it to be snowing in October”. I stuck my foot in my mouth a few times with Clint. 

 

We had production shut down for three days due to a blizzard, wherein much partying took place.

I knew we had my biggest emotional scene with Spider’s visit to town with his giant gold discovery in hand, and luckily my heaviest emotional stuff had a few days of other coverage to shoot first.

 

And this brings me to the one time I got into the director’s face…Clint learned from Don Siegel, director of Dirty Harry, who learned from famous western director John Ford, to roll the camera on rehearsals. Which often made for more natural performances, and sometimes would save on film, in that if you got what you needed in the rehearsal, you din’t need to even do a take. This came into play during the scene where Daddy (Spider) gets drunk and goes into town with us boys. It took us three days to get the whole scene, and the first day there was snow on the ground, and it was sunny out. The second day it was grey and a blizzard was blowing, and the third day the sun was out, the snow had all melted, so production had to bring in the artificial oil based snow makers. You can see the different weather in the the scene in the cuts from us boys screaming “Daddy!” on the porch of Blankenship’s Mercantile, and when it cuts back to Daddy in the street, and then, after Daddy is shot between the eyes, when we run to him, and cry over his dead body, the snow is picked up by the wind in large chucks and blown away. Anyway, on the third day, when we discussed Eddy and Teddy getting from the mercantile to Daddy’s body in the street, we’d agreed to blocking, with Chuck going to Daddy’s head, and when we did the rehearsal with camera rolling, Chuck went to my agreed upon spot, and I had to switch directions, and take Chuck’s spot at Daddy’s head, but I slipped on the oil based fake snow, almost kicking poor Doug in the head. I didn’t break, and kept the scene and emotions going in spite of the missed blocking. When I heard Clint call cut and say “Let’s move on”, I got into his face, explaining how Chuck didn’t hit his mark, and how I had almost kicked Doug’s head, etc., and Clint said, “No, it looked good, we’ll just cut from your face.”, which meant, I had the close up. I wasn’t going to argue with that.  

In Spring of 1985, I climbed the Pale Rider billboard on the Sunset Strip (I was pretty excited to be co starring with Clint Eastwood in his return to Westerns).

The Twighlight Zone

Reminiscences:

The first co-staring role I was cast in Hollywood was in the Twilight Zone movie by the director of Mad Max; Fury Road, George Miller.  As you may know, Twilight Zone the Movie had the terrible tragedy on the Landis set, which broke Hollywood's collective heart, and opened the discussion of drug abuse on set, and child labor abuses. the two children that were decapitated along with Morrow were on set way over the legal time allowed by union rules. The powerful producers had to face some serious accountability.  

The audition for me, came three months after the accident.  I thought the movie was dead in the water, but my agent explained that because the accident took place on the last day of shooting the Vic Morrow segment, Landis could cut the segment to tell the story, and exec producer Spielberg decided he was going to finish the film with the remaining three segments.

My audition was more interview than needing to prove my acting prowess.  George didn't have all of the characters fleshed out, and I was asked to bring in a joke to tell for my audition. I think my hiring was based more on my relationship with the director. George Miller, had made his first big film Mad Max outside of Hollywood, and it was his calling card into the industry.  He later would go on to direct great films; ‘Road Warrior,’ ‘Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome' ‘Lorenzo’s Oil,’ ‘Babe’ and others. 

I did my research for the audition, I called up my very funny step-grandfather, who was a jokester, and asked him to give me his best jokes. I called friends and asked for their best jokes. I practiced a few jokes and went in and as it turned out, the jokes were superfluous. It was the rapport with the director, talking about the excitement of being on a Hollywood Studio lot, the beautiful starlets strutting their stuff to the gawking male laborers, and the swarming activity on the Warner Brothers lot that thrilled him that started our conversation, and because i adore being on movie lots, we hit it off well. It a good thing to be a great actor, and cry on cue and so forth. But a lot of directors need to feel they like you and that you’ll get along.  So I was cast, and started work on the remake of 'Nightmare at 30,000 Feet' with a great ensemble cast.  J.D. Johnston, Abbey Lane, Charles Knapp, I got a call at the end of the summer of ’82 to go audition for George Miller (director of Road Warrior & the Mad Max movies) for he was directing an episode of Twilight Zone movie.  I was shocked, because the terrible accident that took the lives of two young children and Vic Morrow (Jenifer Jason Leigh’s father), I thought had ended that film entirely...but apparently Steven Spielberg decided to finish the film and release it.   My audition consisted of a meeting with casting directors Mike Fenton & Marci Liroff, and George, a lovely short Aussie with a child-like wonder at the realm of Hollywood where he had just become head of the fourth part of the film that he cast John Lithgow as the lead in the remake of Nightmare at 30,000 feet.   George had me tell a joke, since there wasn’t any developed dialogue for my character yet.  I told the rude riddle; “What part of the vegetable is inedible..?  A: The wheelchair.” George laugh heartily, but I could see Mike & Marci didn’t care for it.  So I gave them one I got from my paternal step-grandfather Al Binder. “A little jewish kid comes home from school excitedly tells his grandfather that he saved 25 cents by not taking the bus to school and running along side it.  The grandfather pats the kid on the head, and takes the money from his hand and says, “Why didn’t you save 1.25 and run along side a taxi?”  They giggled at that one, and all was better. 

I recently starred in an indie film (Savior of None), co-starring with Vernon George Wells, who co-starred as "Wez" in George's Road Warrior (part two of the Mad Max trilogy), and he told me that George had him tell a joke as his audition, too. I got the call to wardrobe.  But Marci didn’t know I hadn’t been SAG, so she wrote the mandatory letter to SAG, which explains that out of all of the talent they auditioned, (both union and non union) I was the best candidate for the role.  I could’ve saved her the trouble by remembering I was a must join from the Sgt Peppers work, but it was done.

The set was filled with really great spirits. George Miller is a lovely director.  I grew fond of the actress playing my newlywed wife, Margaret Beasley (later Ferron), and other cast members, Abbey Lane, Donna Dixon, Charles Knapp, Spazz Attack (yes that was his name) sweet folks all.  I heard a great tale from one of the extras who was Uncle Milton Berle’s brother, Jack. The tale was about when Al Capone insisted that Milton play his club in Chicago in the ’30’s and Milton turned him down.  When Milton arrived at the airport, Capone’s boys kidnapped him at gunpoint and forced him to play his club.

John Lithgow was fascinating to watch.  He’d get pumped up for the freaked out performance..and he’d lose his voice (twice I was going to have lunch with him, the 1st time he was called back to set to do the ‘eyes popping’ out of his head frame that you can see if you freeze frame the film right after he opens the window shade when the creature is at the window, the second time my acting coach had come to visit me at the studio, and John was going to lunch with her & me, but his voice was so far gone from screaming, that he graciously bowed out) John turned up at a few different places I worked as a cook, and my co-workers were always jaw dropped in shock when John would call me by name.

Few people know that Larry Ceder (from Deadwood) played the creature on the wing of the plane. There were many fine talents on the film; the lovelies, Abbey Lane and Donna Dixon (whom I adored) and J D Johnson (who is also in Pale Rider) were great folks to work with, as were the crew and cinematographer Alan Daviau, who shot ET. it was one of the first films Garrett Brown brought his Steadicam to work on... it was a big 60- or 90-pound monster back then, that he ran up and down the aisles with. George Miller was also elated, because on the shoot, it was the first time that a video could tap the camera and show what he was shooting on video playback—which has been common for a long time now, but in 1982, it was a revelation. George would let us come up with bits and lines, and often we'd shoot and it'd stay in the film. George Miller is a really great director to work with.

During the shoot I got cat scratch fever…

During the night after my second Twilight zone Movie shoot day, I woke up around 3:00am with a kitten hanging onto my lifted arm (my girlfriend’s cat had just had kittens), and I recall sleepily taking the kitten’s claws out of my arm, putting the kitten on the floor, and returning to sleep.

The next day, Allen Davie set the camera where my character was sitting, and I spent time in the rear of the plane mock up. This is when I came to hear the stories from Spazz Attack, and Jack Berle previously mentioned. I developed a sore lump under my skin on my elbow which I was concerned about, Jack Berle noticed, and said that’s probably cyst, just rub it and it will go away. I rubbed it, and it shortly developed into two lumps. The next shoot day I had a lump in my arm pit too, with red lines running up my arm, and I was feeling woozy. I canceled my planned lunch with John Lithgow, and headed to the Warner Brothers Studio Nurse, who sent me to a nearby Doctor’s practice. After examination, she had me pull down my drawers, and gave me two shots of penicillin in my butt. Why, you may ask, did I need two shots? Because, said the doctor, the red lines running up my arm toward my heart was blood poisoning. I literally had Cat Scratch Fever. I returned to the shoot, feeling even sicker than before, with orders to take it easy and to keep a hot pad wrapped around my arm. The shoot continued, and with the growing rocking of the plane to signify the intensity building of the storm we were flying through, on top of the requirements of reacting with all my fear turned up, I was a bit of a mess. Which I think worked. 

I had rescheduled my lunch with John for the next working day, and as we were on our way to the studio commissary, John got called back to set to shoot the ‘one frame’ of his eyes popping out of his head (you have to freeze frame the film just after he pulls the window shade up to see it clearly. The next shoot day I had my beloved acting coach, Jackie Benton visiting for lunch, and invited John for a reschedule yet again. He was willing until lunchtime, he explained with all the screaming he had to do, he was losing his voice, so he had to back out. I never got to have lunch with John, but ironically he showed up the following year at the Hard Rock Cafe where I was working, and was very cordial and friendly when we met. My co-workers were in awe that I knew John. He then showed up a year later when I was slinging burgers at Radion, an industrial malt shop I was cooking at. "Jeffrey!" he said, "you turn up at the most unusual places. I asked what brings you here? He replied "Burgers for the kids!"

Attendee panel closed