“Dante’s Picardo”

Published in Activate!, v. 4, Issue #3, Fall 2000

Of course, there is no film called “Dante’s Picardo” in which Robert played a role (or anybody else for that matter). Rather the title is a pun that occurred to me as I was reviewing all the films that Robert has made with director Joe Dante and thinking about the connection between the two. From Picardo’s biography in Microsoft Cinemania 96 we find that “Picardo pops up frequently in small bits in features, especially in the works of genre specialist Joe Dante including (his debut) The Howling, Innerspace, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and Matinee.” However, that brief statement only hints at the number projects that Picardo has done with Dante and at the relationship they share.

This article, in part, results from an interview for which I wrote the questions, but due to scheduling constraints, Robert conducted himself with Dante. Robert quite convincingly played me, an unfamiliar interviewer while Dante less convincingly pretended as if he wasn’t being interviewed by his good friend and colleague Robert. Listening to the tape of the interview is completely hilarious. The two are clearly old buddies who have spent a great deal of time together. During the interview they were cracking jokes, ribbing each other and generally cutting up with private in-jokes and references to situations only they know. Virtually every interview question I wrote elicited some form of gag answer before it got a serious one. Both of them spent a great deal of time laughing about the questions, the answers and the stories they brought out.

However, before we talk more about the connection, we need to determine who Joe Dante is. Cinemania tells us that “Joe Dante makes witty genre movies and TV projects that are obvious by-products of a youth spent watching too many old movies on TV.” His credits as a director include Hollywood Boulevard (1976), Piranha (1978), The Howling (1981), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Gremlins (1984), Explorers (1985), Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), Innerspace (1987), The ‘burbs (1989), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Matinee (1993), Runaway Daughters (1994 for TV) for which Dante was nominated for a Cable Ace award, The Second Civil War (1997 for TV), Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy (1998 for TV) and Small Soldiers (1998). The biographical note from Baseline's Encyclopedia of Film is even shorter saying that Dante is a “former Roger Corman protégé who has directed several films produced under the auspices of Steven Spielberg. He is best known for the enjoyably satiric GREMLINS movies.” Baseline’s goes on to say, “Dante’s films display a proficiency with special effects and a fondness for pop culture references, in-jokes, cameos and interesting character actors.” Some of the trademarks associated with Dante films include:

· Always casts Dick Miller in a cameo or supporting role. His films are therefore good for playing the “spotting Dick Miller'” game.

· Frequently has films/TV shows within the movie in various scenes with themes similar to the movie. Matinee was completely built on this premise as it is set in a movie theater and one of Robert’s roles in Explorers was in a movie being played at the drive in theater.

· Frequently references Warner Bros. cartoons

· Frequently casts Robert in supporting roles or cameos. This was in fact, the genesis of my “Brief Appearances” column for Activate!

In reviewing Robert’s brief appearances in films over the last several years, I noticed that Dick Miller and Robert were not the only actors appearing in a number of Dante’s films. Dick Miller has been in every movie that Dante has directed with the sole exception of the Twilight Zone. He and Robert played garbage men in a rare screen appearance together in The ‘burbs. Robert has been in ten of Dante’s fifteen films. His appearances in Explorers, Innerspace, The ‘burbs, and Amazon Women have been reviewed in earlier issues of Activate!. Belinda Belaski was in nine Dante films. She played the widow being pestered by Robert in the uncut version of Amazon Women. Kevin McCarthy was in five Dante films including the major villain role in Innerspace. Archie Hahn, who might be best remembered for his role in Spinal Tap, was in three Dante films including the role of Belaski’s dead husband in Amazon Women. Finally, William Schallert has two credited and two uncredited Dante film appearances. Observant Trekkers will recall that Schallert played the role of Nilz Baris in the classic Trek episode Trouble with Tribbles and reprised the role in the DS9 episode Trials and Tribble-ations. Dubbing this group, the “Dante Players” my interview script asked Dante what lead him to cast this group of actors in so many films. Consistent with the wise-cracking already going on between himself and Robert, Dante started by saying, “These are basically unemployable people and I, being a kind of open-hearted kind of guy, I’ve always felt a need to try keep these people working. You know some of them have children and certain medical conditions.” After a quick disclaimer to assure us that he was kidding, he continued more seriously, “When you work with people who you like, you want to work with them again. People get attached to one another and you develop a sort of a shorthand, and [a] trust factor. These are among some of the best actors in town.”

So, is Robert appearing in Dante’s films a kind of in-joke, a running gag for Hollywood insiders like the “spotting Dick Miller game” or is it something more? Robert explains, “Joe often casts friends in roles, actors that he has worked with before that he enjoys working with, and kind-of lets you create the part. He just asks us every time. Whenever Joe does a movie now, it’s assumed that Dick and I will be in it.” Robert continues, “It’s something special about Joe, that gives him a sense of continuity and family in what he does to have those familiar faces pop up.” The sense of family and continuity is now an important piece of Robert’s career as well. He says, “Sometimes the roles are significant and sometimes they’re small. It doesn’t matter to me any more. If I’m available. If there’s any way I am available or can be made available, I do it, and love it. It’s like going home being on one of his sets.”

That’s where they are now, but how did all this begin? Robert was performing a role in Tribute, playing Jack Lemmon’s son, a role he had created in a Broadway production and was doing again in Los Angeles in the summer of 1979. During the Los Angeles run, Dante come to see the play. Two or three months after that, Robert had stayed on in southern California to see what work opportunities he could find here and was called in to audition for The Howling. Robert and Dante met for the first time at the audition. When I asked Dante what lead him to cast Robert for the film, he began with another joke, “Bob was the only actor in town that would let us cover his face with plastic. It didn’t matter if he could act or not. It’s so hard to find somebody who will undergo this kind of torture!” The serious answer followed, “He was so good in the first reading with the casting director Susan Arnold, that he did the scene that he does with Lee Wallace in the porno booth, and he really creaped her out to the point that it became obvious the this was going to be the creapiest actor we could find to play this part. And he was brilliant.” One role lead to another and another and eventually Robert’s place in the Dante players was secured.

In addition to the on-going series of smaller roles, Dante gave Robert a leading role in an Amazing Stories episode he directed called “Boo” (1986?). The story had basically the same plot as Beetlegeuse (1988). Robert describes his role, “I played a sleezy porno producer who moved into a house which was haunted by these two sweet ghosts who were so offended by me and the likes of my pornographic actress wife that they decided to scare us out. But they were such unscarey ghosts they didn’t know how to do it.” He says “That was quite a fun role. I think he gave me that role as payback for all of the grueling makeup I did in Explorers.” Robert’s fans can be on the lookout for this episode, which Robert says is rerun occasionally on the SciFi channel.

Based on Robert’s description of his work on Dante films, Dante seems to give the players a great deal of license to create and improvise within the framework of his films. The interview script asked Dante if he did this to let the group have fun, if it was a useful creative tool for getting new and better ideas for the films, or if he did it for another reason. Robert and Dante were cracking jokes before the question was even completely asked, then Dante answered, “Usually there’s no film in the camera when I let them do that stuff because you really don’t want to waste a lot of film on some of the improvs that these guys could come up with!” Of course, that was just the joke prelude to the real answer, that Robert contributes significantly to the films by supplementing the written roles with improvisation. This creative process is especially successful for Robert when he has props to work with. Dante said, “If you give him an interesting prop, he’ll come up with a character bit to go with it. Bob is the kind of guy that could take a day going through all the different possibilities for eyeglasses he could wear for a character, but he’s not doing it just because he likes eyeglasses, he’s doing it because each pair of eyeglasses says something different about this character.” He continued, “The Cowboy in Innerspace comes to mind. The amount of schtick that Bob added to this somewhat non-PC character was some of the funniest stuff. The drawing with the hair drier, the song, and all that stuff was all his idea. When you’re working with people that have good ideas, or better ideas than yours, you’re crazy not to let them try them all. Most of the time, they end up in the picture.”

Even when his schedule doesn’t allow him to appear in Dante’s projects, Robert takes the time to go on Dante’s sets for the fun of it. In a recent example, the Osirus Chronicles, a science fiction television pilot that Joe directed for Paramount, Robert, obviously, could not be in it because of Star Trek Voyager. “But” Robert says, “I did make a cameo appearance in their dailies.” He then relates the story, ”I walked on in my Star Fleet uniform, I walked through their set, while a scene was being shot. Rod Taylor of The Birds fame says, ‘Are you the bathroom attendant?’ because of my Star Fleet costume. I said, ‘I most certainly am not. I am the emergency medical hologram from the Federation Starship Voyager. Is this the bridge, I’ve never seen it before?’ They looked blankly at me and I said, ‘Uh, what show is this?’ He said something, then I said, ‘Oh dear,’ and walked out.” That piece of film exists somewhere. Whether or not it will see the light of day or not at some convention or not is still to be determined.

Along with the silliness and wisecracking, there is a serious side to the relationship between Robert and Dante. There is a point where all kidding aside, and despite the potential business ramifications, they are serious about commitments to each other’s work and will look out for each other’s best interests. During the time that Star Trek Voyager was being cast, Dante was producing a film called The Phantom in which Robert was scheduled to perform. Robert says that he almost did not audition for Star Trek thinking that he’d already told Dante that he would do the Phantom. He recalls, “I called him on the phone and he said, ‘Look there’s a chance that this movie might not even happen or it might not happen with me,’ because he was having disagreements with the studio about the film. You have to go after that other opportunity. You owe it to yourself.’ So, he basically cleared the decks ethically for me to go ahead and look for this other role which would have conflicted with his offer.” Shortly thereafter, Dante withdrew from the project as well, but without him releasing Robert earlier, we might never have seen The Doctor as we know him. Robert views Dante as one of the few people in the business who despite responsibility for projects costing 35 to 40 million dollars, is “the kind of friend that is interested in my well-being, my happiness, my continued employment more than simply whatever he may want to use me for.”

The last question in my interview script was an open ended request for a good story or anecdote about Robert for us Trek fans, and was intended to give Dante a chance to recall some gem of a story about Robert. The question seems to have stumped them both for a while and they even turned off the recorder for some time to think about it. The story is not fun so much for it being a good anecdote with a punch line or surprise ending like I had expected from a pair of professional storytellers, but rather another chance for them to wander off on a tangent that only they know is there.

Dante: The Howling was made very quickly and the hours were very grueling. (Note: Much of the high jinks of the filming is documented in the apparently expensive and difficult to find laser disk version of The Howling which includes footage of the cast and crew talking about making the movie.) I remember in the middle of the night we were shooting the big transformation scene that occasionally involved Bob and occasionally involved heads that we had previously sculpted. We had these balloons under his clothes so they could be inflated. Unfortunately, sometimes the balloons were so inflated so that they would pop out like giant bubble gum wads and so Bob began to sing “Old Man River” while this was going on. Every so often, I wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of “Old Man River”… That doesn’t really add up to much of an anecdote, does it?

Robert: I like it. That and the fact that I had 8 kids off camera inflating me at the time with rubber hoses and some of them would blow harder than others so this arm would blow up more than the other arm and [Joe laughs]. Then I had the big bladder on my neck and when the guy blew that up – and he was one of the most earnest blowers – he would blow it up and the bladder would immediately cut off all my wind supply and I couldn’t communicate to them to stop doing it because I couldn’t speak. So I would just sort of gag in place and wave my arms until they realized…

Dante: “Oh Bob’s in trouble!” [Long pause] You had to be there. That’s what it is.

Then after another pause, and still laughing, he concludes, “Rubber hoses. Bladders. It always comes down to that doesn’t it.”

A hundred years ago they would have done Vaudeville together – today they make films. Rubber hoses, bladders, middle-of-the-night strains of Old Man River and all.