200: A Giant of an Episode

This is Jess Weixler and you are listening to Movie Meltdown. I should go higher with that. Hi, this is Jess Wexler and you are listening to Moving Well Down. Too much? No, you can never do too much on this show.

You've not seen it. You've finally found the place where you belong. Where's the tea? Where's the tea? It's showtime.

The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian.

I'm Greg. I'm Fred. And we are standing in the lobby of the Village A Theaters here at the world premiere of Symbiosis. Symbiosis. If you're not familiar with it, well, you probably don't know Bo.

Our own Bo has directed, wrote, I believe, I don't know, he's made himself a movie, basically. And taken tickets. And is now selling tickets. Selling tickets in front of his own movie. How cool is that?

It's pretty awesome. So we're at the world premiere here. We're going to go see it on the big screen, which is pretty impressive. I mean, I don't know very many people that have directed a movie, and I got to see it in an actual theater. So that's pretty awesome for us.

Yeah, I was just comparing it to the mural downtown at the theater on 4th Street. The Palace? Yeah. Yeah, it's Peter Bodner painted it. And he painted D.W.

Griffith in the ticket window of the theater. It's kind of a funny thing. That's pretty awesome. That's who I would like in my theater. If you were hiring somebody to work in the theater.

Have you ever noticed when you go in, they have a different person... like, sell you the ticket and then somebody else tears it. Like, I want to apply for the tearing the ticket job. Because your resume could just be any piece of paper. Maybe you have a test. Can you tear this ticket?

How about paper? How about multiple tickets? No, no. I think what you do, you walk in to the job interview with your resume, tear it in half, and drop it on his desk and walk out the door. I actually think I saw a comedian do this somewhere, and it was like, Why is he ripping us off?

It's like, can you sell the ticket and Tara? Not without help. I'm going to have to have an assistant. Movie comedy. Any other poignant insights?

I'm waiting to see if he's not busy. Let's go bug him. Okay, Beau, you're at your world premiere. Did you ever think you'd make it to these heights of stardom? The heights of Village 8?

You mean... Well, I was skeptical for a long time, but Fred, he inspired me. Well, you can laugh about it being Village 8, but it's a lot better than Village 1. That's true. That's very, very true.

You shared the marquee with Butter. Yeah, I did, appropriately enough. Bottom tier, bottom tier. So, in actuality, how long have you worked on this thing? I wrote the script from April till May and filmed it from May till July and been editing it pretty much.

Up until last week. Awesome. Last second, piecing the last bits together. Neurotic, over-obsessive tweaking. More like it.

Nice. Hey, look, Ben's here. We're recording. Ben, say hi. We're recording.

Say hi. Hi. What, sir? Movie meltdown group's loitering around in the lobby. We should ask somebody who they're hiring.

So I'm very excited for this after seeing the Eraserhead trailer before coming here. Eraserhead-esque trailer. How about you guys? It's a pretty awesome trailer. I told him that.

It's a very awesome trailer. Definitely. So anyway, we're piecing this together as a little intro. I just thought it would be fun to come out to the premiere and introduce this week's episode. But this episode, we've got another special guest.

It's sort of come together recently, and I end up talking to Richard Keel, who most of the world probably knows as Jaws from the James Bond movies. Looking at his list of movies, he's done a lot of stuff for years now, so it's It's kind of interesting, and I wanted to see what his take on this whole crazy career he's had. So, yeah, I thought that would be kind of a nice guest to throw into this show. So, yeah, we will take a break here. When we come back, we will talk to Richard.

I want you to be free. Don't worry. Bye. Bye. Drive away your worries and cares at this drive-in theater, where you will see the finest motion pictures of all time, soon to be released.

Drama, comedy, adventure, excitement, something for everyone. Here's a brief glimpse of some of the truly fine pictures we've scheduled in the near future. From ancient Genesis to the modern screen is the name written in blood, Eegah. If I could just call you. On the phone.

The coat of the ghost, that's the sign of the toad. Nobody lives on the Brownsville Road. Thrill to the newest recording star, R12 Jr. Oh, they're screaming this way. See ravishing Marilyn Manning in a thrilling, chilling story.

The last of the prehistoric giants sees his first girl. Curious newsmen search deep in giant country for the last of the ancient cavemen. See a tough giant, tamed by the soft hands of his captive woman. See him sacrifice his ageless beard. For her love.

Then lose her to a boy in a dune buggy, escaping a burning desert. Iga's primitive passion was love or kill. Hear Iga talk, the ancient language of love used at the beginning of time. Hello, I'm Jim Cogan. And I'm John Wisby.

And this is a promo for the Crash and Burn movie podcast. Every episode, we pick a theme and review three films each that we like, but fall within that theme. And then we also take a classic B-movie or some other film that's good for the wrong reasons for our so-bad-it's-great slot, and we rip the piss out of it. So that's the crash and burn movie podcast every fortnight you can pick it up at www.crashandburnmoviepodcast.co.uk there you can subscribe to the rss feed you can subscribe in itunes you can stream or download the previous episodes you can like. Us on.

Tweaked Audio, your source for high-performance, noise-reducing earbuds. Available in three styles and seven colors, durable and designed to sound great for both music and those chatty podcasts, like the one you're listening to now. Tweaked Audio earbuds come with a one-year warranty, and now there's a special deal for Movie Meltdown listeners. Just go to tweakedaudio.com, and when you check out, enter the discount code MELTDOWN. Then you'll get 33% off and free shipping.

Tweaked Audio. Sounds better. Hello, this is Caroline Munro and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. Music What's part of your problem? You know, you.

Haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles. Are answered in the movies. And now, on with the show. The End.

People, you know, with you people probably, I think you even mentioned, you know, they always sort of ask you your height and start with that as sort of the thing. I think I kind of wanted to get into it a little before that. Like early on, when exactly did that kick in? I mean, were you sort of normal sized as a child? I was normal sized up until I was about 12.

Interesting. And in between 12 and 14... I had this humongous growth spurt that was caused by a benign pituitary tumor, which has been treated, and the excessive growth hormone has been stopped. But that time, I grew like crazy. I guess at that point, when that hadn't even kicked in, was the entertainment industry something you were already interested in?

No. I was... hoping to be an attorney. My dad died when I was 19. We had a family business. It was in the middle of the 1958 recession.

The street in front of our family business had been torn up for a fuel line for almost a year. It really put us out of business. My mom had to go get a job, and so did I. And everything cost so much money at that time. They didn't have all these big and tall shops.

So like suits and sport coats and long-sleeve shorts had to be tailor-made. They were quite expensive. And I had to have a bigger car, and I couldn't fit in the average car. And I had to have a king-size bed. And at that time...

You almost had to be a king to afford one. So I was. Trying to figure out what I was going to do, and my aunt said, why don't you get into the movies? It made sense to me, so I went after that. Was it something you were interested in, the acting of it, or in the performance end of it, or was it just a job?

Just being able to walk into a store and be able to afford to buy a sport coat or a suit. or a car, or a king-size bed. And, you know, just a means to an end, really. Yeah, I guess the industry was a little different then than it is now. Of course, yeah. As a matter of fact, when I was trying to break into the movies, it was in the middle of a writer's strike.

So it was, you know, the wrong time. And I didn't succeed. And I had to take a regular job, uh, in sales. But soon after I took that job, I was doing quite well at it. I got a call from a producer that had been told about me by a horse wrangler who was going to be working on a pilot this producer was doing.

And I ended up getting a part in the pilot. Was that one of the earlier, like Rifleman? No, it was... based on the comic strip character, the Phantom, the, uh, the guy with the, uh, the gray suit, uh, kind of like Superman. Yeah. Yeah.

The mask and the ring. Devil dog. Yeah. And, uh, you know, the pilot didn't sell. And in the meantime, I, I got a, uh, a role as a lead heavy in a TV series called Klondike.

And, uh, it started, uh, James Coburn, and Ralph Tegger. And I had a really good part. I had the title role. Bare Knuckles and Bagpipes was the title. I played Def Brannigan, a barnstorming bare-knuckled fighter who was going through the Klondike, taking on all comers.

And then that same year, I did Rifleman and Thriller and some other shows. I mean, at that point, had you done any training in acting, or was it something you were just sort of going on instinct? Well, I did some training as I got roles. Like for Thriller, I got help doing an English Cockney dialect, where I played an actor who pretends to be a master of sticks, along with Henry Daniel, who's another actor who pretends to be a basil bud. or Squire Moloch, and we scare the living wits out of this Englishman and try to get his estate. Yeah, that was a good show.

Yeah, it was. You were in a lot of classics at that point. I mean, even to touch on some of the TV, you were in one of the classic episodes of The Twilight Zone. What was that like? Yeah, I was actually in the middle of doing a rather exploitation movie called Egox, And the producer of that was kind enough to let me off for a week to do Twilight Zone.

And it turned out to be, like you said, one of the classics. Was Rod Serling on set at that time? No, everybody asked that. No, Rod Serling did not produce it or direct it. He simply wrote them and hosted the show.

So he did all of the hosting all at one time. And then I guess, was that one of the first times you ended up with a lot of makeup? Yeah, you know, a thriller, there was some makeup involved with that, but The Twilight Zone was more of a time-consuming makeup. And then you mentioned Eegah. I guess we wanted to touch on that.

What was your take on that one? Well, you know, it was a cult classic. It actually did quite well at the drive-ins. At that time, they had double-feature movies playing at the drive-ins. And they were all sort of like B movies or C movies.

And I learned a lot from doing E-Guy. I learned a lot about Panama and acting and being entertaining and humorous. And I also learned from the producer a lot about promoting movies, which I was able to use over the years. And what he showed me was that If you had a movie and you walked into a TV station or a radio station or a newspaper office, they would do a story on you because they were in need of stories. If you were there locally, they would take advantage of that.

I was able to do that over the years with the James Bond movies on both The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. They sent me out for maybe four or five months on The Spy Who Loved Me and about 10 months on Moonraker with my whole family, promoting the movie all around the world. So it was very valuable, what I learned. Yeah, I mean, you got such a following, and some of it from the different versions of it. Have you watched, like, the Mystery Science Theater or all the other, you know, versions?

Yeah, I like the Elvira version the best. I like her humor. Yeah, but it's funny how it's sort of, carried on through the generations. We've got somebody on our show that has a daughter, and she was like seven years old, and that was her favorite, was the Iga, and she would like over and over watch it. It's amazing.

I have a couple three-year-old grandsons that enjoy it a lot as well. Yeah. They're just fascinated by it. Look at some of the other ones here. As far as House of the Damned, how did that come into play yeah you.

Know that was just a movie to pay the rent and I really you know didn't care that much for the role but years later I saw it for the first time it wasn't that bad you know it had kind of a pathos about it yeah it was kind of sad so yeah Yeah. And then, I guess not too much longer, again, just to veer into TV again, you ended up on Gilligan's Island, which I'm a huge fan of the series. What was it like being on that set? Well, you know, the people were real nice. Bob Denver and Don Wells, I remember quite well.

I also remember we shot that in the winter season, And I had to go into the lagoon. It was like freezing cold. And they gave me like a pint or a half pint of brandy. And I drank the whole thing down. I was still shaking.

They have you doing a Russian accent on that. Was that the first delving into accents? Yeah, that was another thing. I would get help with stuff like that when I would have a dialect to do. I went to...

I'm trying to remember, Robert Eastman, the dialogue doctor. Yeah, yeah. And the producer of EGOT helped me, and I used his tape recorder. I bought a book called Foreign Dialects from the Pickwick Bookstore in Hollywood, and another one called American Dialects, because we have unique sounds anywhere from people that live in Montana to, you know, Georgia to Boston, Connecticut, New York. They all sound different.

It was helpful. Sort of learning as you go. That's interesting. I actually bought some Shakespeare records. Even though I knew I would never play Hamlet, it still was good to try it and work at it and try to improve your diction and your ability to do different things.

As you went into it, was it something you were getting into the acting more? Is it something you wanted to pursue and be that lead actor and get to that point? Or was it still just kind of a job? As I got into it, well, first of all, I was encouraged by an English teacher, Mr. Greeley. who knew that I hated English and told me how I could get out of it.

I could take two years of speech and one year of journalism. All those things helped me. I learned that I could be humorous and could write some comedy material. I went into it with that in the back of my head. When I would get a good role, I would actually run a full-page trade ad or two, maybe one in Variety or The Hollywood Reporter, and bring it to the attention of the industry.

And that helped me a lot. You know, people began to realize that I was more than just a giant or, you know, a monster. Yeah. Before that, could you feel like resistance as you would go in and people not seeing you as, you know, taking you in those type of roles? Yeah, I saw that the industry, you know, wasn't all that creative, you know, You know, when there were shows like The Untouchables, and you would think that a gangster would want to have the biggest bodyguard he could find.

You know, so I felt like I was a natural to play that role. And, you know, there were westerns like Gunsmoke and, well, The Rifleman, you know, where the leads were pretty tall. And they really needed to have somebody even bigger, you know, to be the heavy guy. I'm just going to look ahead here, and something like The Longest Yard. I guess that's moving into kind of a more normal, you know, than just kind of playing in the sports realm.

Yeah, The Longest Yard was a big breakthrough movie for me. Just prior to The Longest Yard, I did Skidoo with Otto Preminger. And I was selling Lincoln Mercury cars quite successfully. investing in real estate. I was selling real estate on the side and doing quite well. I did that movie, Skidoo, for Otto Preminger.

He was a very passive-aggressive sort of personality. When he interviewed me, he was very, very gracious and very nice and said that he had followed my career and respected me as an actor. It And all the things I'd heard about him being a sadistic, horrible guy, I couldn't believe until I got on the set and watched him totally intimidate the leading ladies, Carol Lindley and the gal that did, I'm trying to remember the other big star's name, but He wouldn't allow either one of them to wear any makeup, and he was constantly screaming at them. I did a scene with Jackie Gleason and Frank Gorshin. Frank Gorshin and I were trustees, and we brought Gleason into the prison.

At mess, we're eating Dinty Moore stew, and Pemmage is making us all gobble it down. And there's an actor named Michael Constantine. All these actors are very, very good. You know, Frank Gorshin, Jackie Gleason, Michael Constantine. And there was a new actor who had just won a Tony Award on Broadway the year before named Austin Pendleton.

And in the middle of the scene Austin was doing, Preminger literally screams at him. You want to be an actor, you must act. You stink. Can you imagine that? I mean, this guy was like so totally taken back.

And apparently as a young kid, he had gone through stuttering and through therapy had gotten over it. All of a sudden, he was back to stuttering. And he was... I don't understand... The motivation.

And Gleason said, the motivation kid is to do this freaking thing and get the freak out of here. Gleason couldn't stand it, and he could just hardly wait to get out and finish it. Well, it's funny. I actually run across Gadoo and was watching it, and it's such a weird tone. What exactly was he trying to do in that movie?

Because it's very different than most movies. Would you ever see the movie? Yeah, yeah, I actually just. Yeah, it was like... It wasn't funny.

It was pathetic. It opened in Westwood in L.A. on a Wednesday at that time. They open movies on Wednesdays. And it closed on Friday. I think there were like nine people in the audience when I went to see it on Wednesday.

And myself and a friend were two of the nine. And by the time the movie was half over... there was only myself, my friend, and one other person in the theater. And apparently that was a critic because the review came out the next day in the L.A. Times saying the only thing that Preminger accomplished in his movies could do was making a bunch of very old actors look very, very old. You know, he wouldn't let them wear makeup.

And he had become weird. I mean, he was a fantastic director in his heyday. I mean, he did Forever Amber. He did Laura, you know, a great black and white mystery movie. And he did Exodus and The Man with the Golden Arm and The Cardinal.

You know, he was great. But it just seemed like he had gone off the deep end. And I actually... I thought to myself, if this is the big-time movies, who needs it? I'm going to stick with real estate.

I'm making good money and make a career out of that. And then The Longest Yard came along. And I could see the potential of being in that movie. I knew that I should be in that movie. And I couldn't get an interview.

There was a casting director, a lady from New York, And she wouldn't, first of all, you know, you had to be a legitimate stage actor in order to get her attention, one. And two, she'd been told by Robert Aldridge, a former All-American football player, that she was only to cast football players, people that had a lot of football experience. And I didn't have that. And so I couldn't get an interview with the director. And my agent was affiliated with two other agents and shared an office.

This other agent, my agent was Herman Zimmerman, and his associate, Steve Stevens, had been a casting director and had cast a film for Robert Aldridge. And he said, I can get him in to see him. And so he... made arrangements for me to meet Al Ruddy, the executive producer. And Al Ruddy was like six foot eight. And I kind of intimidated him a little bit, I think, because he was kind of a slight guy.

He wasn't real big. And he said, well, what the F is going on with you? And I said, well, I'm here meeting with you, Al. That's what the F is going on with me. And he kind of felt like I did, that I should be in the movie.

And he said, well, I think that Robert, Bob should meet you. And so I got in to meet Robert Aldridge. And he was trying to dissuade me. I had this line of patter all built up. I had a friend that... that knew this really well-known football player.

I can't remember his name right now, but I'll think of it in a minute. This football player with some friends would play a little touch football in the park, like on Sundays. Oh, John Brody. My friend made arrangements for me to participate and be you know, out there and play touch football with him. And so Robert Aldridge said, well, you know, what's your football experience?

I said, well, you know, high school I played football. And, well, what about in college? Well, no. Well, any other? I said, well, you know, I kind of scrimmage a little touch football on the weekends every now and then with Brody and the boys.

He said, Brody, are you talking about John Brody? I said, yeah. He said, I'd like to see that. So I said, well, you see how, he said, the next time you're going to be doing that, let my secretary know, and I'll come out and watch you. He said, look, Richard, he cut to the chase.

I think he knew that this was a line of BS, and he said, this is not going to be a real fun movie. We're going to be in a little tank town on the road to Florida and Georgia, and there's absolutely nothing there that's like maybe... some motels, a couple of restaurants, a Western Auto, a bank, and the JCPenney's, and that's it. And it's a dry county that you can't drink or anything. And he said, we're going to be scrimmaging from the very get-go, and we're going to be cracking helmets and popping bodies. He said, it's going to be painful.

He said, you think you can handle the pain? So I took a little chance, and I shifted into my acting mode, and I said, is it okay if I hurt them? And it kind of caught him by surprise, and he took me seriously. He said, no, no, we don't want you hurting anybody. It's just a movie.

So when I called, I made arrangements to... to do the text football in the park with John Brody, and I called the secretary. And she said, well, he was out of town that weekend scouting locations. But anyway, I got invited to do an around-the-table reading at Paramount Studios. And some of the people that were there that read did not end up in the movie, and others did, and I was one of them. I remember the guy that... was playing the manager and the reading around the table was the guy, Wilford Brimley.

Now he's oatmeal, but he's in a cocoon. I don't know if. You remember that commercial he did. They didn't like his reading. Anyway, I'm sitting there and they start passing the scripts around.

I've yet to see a script, so I get handed a script and it says Samson on the front of it. So I dig in the script, and I start looking for Samson. And it describes me as a former Mr. Ford, a bodybuilder, a weightlifter. And I look next to me, and there's this guy with his huge biceps and muscles.

He's obviously a bodybuilder. And I look at his script, and... I'm trying to remember the name of the character. But anyway, the character that he was given to read was the guy that killed the steers, the cows for slaughter in the slaughterhouse with a sledgehammer. And I'm thinking, you know, I think they got this mixed up.

I think he's supposed to be Samson, George Samson, Grenada, former Mr. Florida, the way he lived here. And I was supposed to be this other guy. So I mentioned this to the first assistant who had passed out the scripts. He said, no, no, no.

You're Samson. He's so-and-so. Okay. So I read it, and apparently I did a fairly good job. And they hired both of us.

But anyway, the guy who was the weightlifter, when we got to this little motel town, he was all upset because the weights... his set of chrome weights got lost. You know how the airlines will lose your luggage. And he was losing millimeters of body by the day. And he was all upset. And then the first day of scrimmaging, he gets a big black and blue bruise on his bicep.

And now he's really upset. He borrows a car from the motel manager and drives until it runs out of gas and hitches a ride and uses his round-trip ticket to go back home. So now that guy is gone. And it sort of incorporated his part and my part together and expanded my role. And.

When I did the scene where my nose gets broken by Shockner, by Bob Tessier, and Burt Reynolds fixes it, Robert Aldridge came up to me and said, Richard, you were terrific. He said, I love what you did. He said, especially all that ad-lib acting you did. He said, wow, that was great. He said, you know, but you stopped.

I hadn't said, cut. And he said, you stop. I said, well, I thought the scene was over. And he said, look, I want you, all of you, I want you to do it over again. You guys just, whatever comes to your mind, you know, whatever ad lib you feel like saying, do it.

And let's just roll it until I say cut. And so we go for the thing. And it was a lot of fun. Everybody's just having a great time. And I'm just ad libbing like crazy. and I think Burt Reynolds fixes my nose, and I say, how do I look?

And he says, oh, you look better than I do. It was like really fun stuff, and he did it on purpose. No, he didn't. Tell him you didn't. Anyway, when the scene was over with, Robert Aldridge said, everybody gather around.

He said, everybody gather around. He wanted the crew and the cast all to gather around. He said... Richard here just did a terrific job on that scene, and I think he deserves a big hand from all of us. And he started applauding.

So I went from, you know, Otto Preminger being a guy whacking people with a stick to a director, a man's man, a former All-American football player who knew how to get things out of people using a carrot instead of a stick. He would... he would say, give the boy a good bar, you know, he would have the cameraman put a check on the magazine, if he did pretty good, and a good bar if he did great, and then I got the applause. So, all of a sudden, I've got confidence, I really like this guy, I'm able to talk to him, and I'm able to share with him what I learned and some fifteen years before that, making TV shows and movies. And that was that you don't look big necessarily just because you're seven feet tall.

If you're standing next to a guy six feet two and you're seven feet two and they shoot it flat, it's no big deal. You look a little bit taller, but no big deal. They have to exaggerate it with camera angles. And I know that's what they wanted, and I suggested that they put me on an Apple box and shoot with the camera from a low angle on close-ups of me from Burt Reynolds' point of view from way down low. And then shoot over my shoulder across my face with me standing on the apple box looking down at birds.

And I suggested to Robert Aldridge that he look in a camera lens and see what it looked like. And he said, you're right. That's how we're going to do it. And so that was the beginning of a whole new era for me and being able to make suggestions and do ad-lib acting and I was successful with that in the spiral of me. The character became very, very likable, and I came back to do another one in Moonraker.

It all started with The Long and Short. That's definitely getting into the Bond roles. I guess you'd been familiar with the Bond series, I'm assuming. Oh, yeah. I'd seen every Bond movie, starting with Doctor No. and I particularly liked, you know, Goldfinger and, uh, Thunderball.

Uh, you know, they were, uh, fun movies for young guys, uh, uh, you know, all these beautiful women in bikinis and stuff. Cars and gadgets. What young guy wouldn't like Bond, you know? Well, as you were watching them, were you thinking, you know, maybe, uh, did you see yourself sort of, you know, that'd be. A good role?

No, no, you know, I mean, that was before, you know, uh, The very beginning of it was before I was even in the business. No, I had no idea. I loved the Bond movies. When I got a call one day, I was doing the Silver Streak at 20th Century Fox. I had a good role in that.

I was playing a normal killer that had some dialogue. He killed people with a gun. I got a call from my agent, Herman Zimmerman, saying, Cubby Broccoli wants to have lunch with you tomorrow at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Can you get a long lunch? So I said, who's Cubby Broccoli?

And I didn't know who that was. He said, the James Bond producer, like I should know. And I said, oh, yeah, that would be great. And I said, yeah, I'm sure I can. So I went to the.

Either the production manager or the first assistant director, and said, Cubby Broccoli wants to have lunch with me tomorrow at the Beverly Hills Hotel at the Polo Lounge. Can I get a long lunch? And the guy, you know, he knew who Cubby Broccoli was. He said, oh, Cubby Broccoli, of course. And he said, you know, how about two hours?

Well, that dude, I said, yeah. So I drove over there, and I met Mr. Broccoli, who sounded, what he talked like. The Godfather. I mean, he was really Italian, and he had that sort of gravelly voice, sounding like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.

I kind of got turned off by the description of the character, though, because he said, well, first of all, he said, I've got to tell you, I've already interviewed David Prowse. And I knew who David Prowse was, that he was the guy inside the Darth Vader suit that you couldn't see that had the voice of James Earl Jones. And, you know, so I'm thinking, well, you know. And he said, this character that you would play would have teeth maybe like tools, maybe like pliers, or maybe like a shark. But the teeth would be made out of steel. and he kills people with him.

Oh my God. You know, I've worked so hard to get to do more normal roles like Reese in The Silver Streak. I've turned all this kind of stuff down recently and I try to turn my back on playing monster roles, and this sounds like a monster role. And they're talking about an actor that you couldn't even see in the Darth Vader suit, who didn't even speak his own lines. Now, my first reaction was, no, I don't want to do this.

But the other thought was, well, wait a minute, Richard. It's James Bond. Maybe there's a way to make it work. And I took a chance and I said to Mr. Broccoli, I said, well, Mr.

Broccoli, first of all, whoever you hire, whether it's me or somebody else, I believe that you do need an actor to play this role. Because a guy that kills people with his teeth, with teeth like tools or a shark made out of steel, could become over the top very quickly. Yeah. And I said, if I were to play the part, I want to give this character something to work against that to make him vulnerable, to make him have character idiosyncrasies like perseverance, like frustration, vulnerability. And, you know, I said, because I really don't believe that in real life that killers are stone-faced killers.

I think that they have a girlfriend, they have a a dog or something. You know, they're human beings. And I want to play them with a little bit of humanity. He said, Mr. Bronco said, I like that.

He took his Bond movies very seriously. Yeah. And he realized that I took my acting very seriously. And that, that, you know, I would contribute something to this character. He said, what are you doing for dinner tonight?

Yeah. And I said, I think, what did you have in mind? He said, I'd like for you to come to my house. I'll give you my address, and if you make it around 7, I'd like for you to meet my wife, my family, and the writer. So I did, and they all liked me and approved of me, and I got the part.

So how much did you sort of help create, or at least sort of tweak the character of Jaws? Yeah, you know, and I used what I had learned promoting these movies, some of which were panned by, like that Science Fiction Mystery Theater. I think I had three of them. One was called The Human Duplicators. And, you know, I very successfully promoted that film in Chicago and Toronto and kind of kicked it off.

Yeah. So when I arrived in England and started working on the Spy Who Loved Me, one of the first things they wanted to do was they wanted to do a photo shoot with me and Hervé Villaché. And I said, well, is Hervé in the movie? No. I said, well, you know, it's kind of circusy.

You know, you got the giant little measure guy. Yeah. You know, he's not in the movie. I think we can do better than that. And so they were kind of ticked off at me because I think they'd already flown him over.

And I just didn't really think that that was something I wanted to do. And fortunately for me, they had all the photo editors from all the English papers and the European newspapers come to Pinewood to look at what was then the biggest set ever built on Pinewood, the submarine set, the supertanker set. And so all these photo editors were there. And I was walking with my little two-year-old son, who was holding onto my little finger as we're walking along. And one of the photo editors was with the PR director with United Artists.

And he said, who's that? And the PR guy, he said, he's one of the featured characters in the movie. He plays a character named Jaws. And the photo editor said, is that his son? He said, yes.

And he said, well, if you would give us a worldwide exclusive on it, I'd like to get a picture of him with his son, just like that, holding onto his little finger, and put it on page three. which this is the guy from the London Daily Mirror, and page three is reserved for bare-breasted, beautiful women. And half the guys in England, at least if they don't buy the newspaper, they look at it and turn to page three. And Jerry Durow, the PR guy, said, well, I can't give you a worldwide exclusive, but I can give you one for England. And we'll get a photographer out also to take a picture for the rest of the world. Anyway, not only did it end up on page three, but on the front page up in the masthead where it says Daily Mirror, there was an insect with my hand and this little hand holding onto my little finger and it said, Super Dad and Son, see page three.

So that happened. And then when we did Moonraker, I remember our middle son was born in Paris while we were filming the studios in Paris, and he was born at the Hotel Americano in Neuilly, and he was a little tiny baby. I remember my oldest son was all excited about having a brother he could play with until he saw him, and he was so disappointed because I was holding him in my hands, and my hands were huge, and his little baby was really tiny. But it made a great picture. Yeah.

And I was telling Saul Cooper, the PR guy on the movie Moonraker, about it. And he kind of ignored me. And I said, it would be a great human interest picture, Saul. And he just ignored me. And so I had flown my mother-in-law and her husband over to help my wife with the baby.

And I had her take a Polaroid. with me holding the baby with my huge hands. And the next day I took the Polaroid in, and they have like bars in the studios in Paris, and Saul was at the bar with a journalist, happened to be a journalist from the Daily Mirror again. And I said, here's what that picture looks like, Saul. and I put the picture on the bar. And the journalist from the Daily Mirror said, Mr. Cooper, if you give us an exclusive on that photo worldwide, I'll put it on page three.

It's a great photo. And again, you know, Saul said, well, we're going to take a proper picture tomorrow with our own photographer, and I can't give you a worldwide, but I can give it to you for England. And, uh, So it ended up again on page three of the London Daily Mirror, where usually the bare-breasted women go. And, you know, it just showed that you can do something that has human interest, and you don't have to resort to cheeky stuff. And it shows you marketing yourself and your movies.

That's impressive, too, for a project that was that big, that you're kind of... Taking the reins at times, yeah. I had a lot of experience doing that, and, you know, I learned from my father that you had to sell yourself, and, you know, I used to run these full-page ads that, you know, he impressed upon me, you know, Henry Ford's motto, nothing ventured, nothing gained. You know, you have to invest in yourself sometimes, and his other motto was, the harder I work, the luckier I get, you know, and so I worked at it, and I invested in my career, and... I remember we got a call from a publication called Fonds de Marche, which is known as a real tabloid type newspaper in Paris, and one that you want to avoid.

And, you know, people that are desperate for publicity will get, you know, whatever publicity they can get, you know, that's sleazy and bad. They wanted to do an interview with me, and... My experience had been, I had been interviewed and had photo sessions with the Star several times, the National Enquirer several times, and even the Globe, Midnight Globe. And they were all very positive and very good stories and very good photo layouts. And it was because I impressed upon them that my family was very important to me and that I You know, I was not interested in off-color, sleazy publicity.

And if they could keep it positive, I'd be happy to cooperate with them. And so I knew that this Franz DeMarce, they would do a story regardless of whether they interviewed me, and it wouldn't be good. So I said, okay, we'll do the story, providing that you give us a letter from your editor saying, stating that you won't publish it without our approval. And so they came out with a journalist and a photographer, and the letter said that they would read me the story over the telephone before it was published. Nothing about approval.

You know, I guess they think that all big guys are stupid or something. I said, no, that's not going to do, guys. And so they got the editor on the phone. And he said, look, we have to have an angle. We have to have a hook.

That's how we, you know. I said, let me ask you this. Who's your readership? He said, middle-aged women. I said, look, I'm here with my wife, my two children.

I'm having a third child here in Paris. You know, I've got my mother-in-law and her husband here helping out. You know, I think that that would be of interest to a lot of middle-aged housewives who wish they had a husband like that. The guy said, well, you know what, you're right. So they did a really great story with some great photos.

And, you know, their headline was a little bit, you know, I think it was Richard Keel without his wife, he would be nothing. But that was okay. It was still a very positive story. But I, you know, so I was able to do a lot of publicity all over the world for the first film. And I think that helped me get, you know, come back in the second one.

Yeah. Were you, it was originally, he wasn't supposed to make it through that first. Movie and they. No, I was supposed to die. Yeah.

They changed that because you were just kind of working so well or. It was going really, really well. We were getting a lot of positive responses in the dailies from the crew and the other actors. The character was entertaining. Roger Moore was actually helping that along by playing to the Jaws character and making him more fun and um and the stunt coordinator the late Bob Simmons uh had a weekly production meeting the one thing that the Bond films do that I think helps them a lot is that they'll have weekly meetings and they'll look for suggestions from their department heads and uh a lot of times they have ideas on how to save money and uh For an example, they rehearse stunts when you're not working as an actor in the scene over there.

They build a mock-up set like in the train, and they'll do all that train fight thing with the stuntmen and the actors like myself. And it seems at first a little boring, but then you start getting ideas on how to improve it, make it better. And by having these production meetings... They come up with ideas that really work, that save a lot of money. Like in the Silver Street, they shot the train sequence in the daytime and all the scenery going by in the background, and they had to match everything.

So when they did a close-up or reverse, they had to have the plate and the projection, the back projection, the same exact place so that it matched when they went to a close-up. And it was tedious and time-consuming and difficult. where in England, they shot it at night, the scene in the train, and they had this thing going around and around, and it had little holes in it with light behind it, so little lights flickered in the background, and that was it. And they didn't have to worry about matching anything. It went so much faster. But anyway, Bob Simmons, the late Bob Simmons, the stunt coordinator, said, Cubby, are you sure you want to kill Jaws off?

And Cubby said, well, of course. We always kill the villain. See, I wouldn't have been nice if you would have had the option to be able to bring our job back. He said, Bob, he said, you know, Jaws gets thrown in a tank with a shark. What are you suggesting?

And Bob Simmons said, he kills the shark. And Cubby kind of laughed and said, I don't know. And Bob said, why don't you shoot it both ways? That way you have the ability to make a choice. And he said, that's a good idea.

So I found out from my agent that they were going to hold me over one extra week when the whole film was completed and shoot this alternative ending where I survive. And then towards the end of the movie, that extra week put us into my wife's ninth month of pregnancy. And they wanted her to either fly back before then or agree to stay in England and have the baby in England. And she didn't want to do either one. She wanted to be home, and she didn't want to fly back without me.

And in order to shoot that alternative ending and hold me over, her first week of her ninth month, Cubby Brockley flew his own personal physician, first class, paid him to fly with us in case she started labor. Yeah. That's the kind of a great guy he was. He was like a great father, a great figure to our family. A terrific guy.

But anyway, the alternate ending, I didn't know whether I was going to live or die. And prior to the big premiere, I got a call. They wanted me to come out to a special blue-collar screening. And by blue collar, there weren't going to be any directors or actors or writers or producers, just working type people like the construction people, the, um, the property people, uh, the security people, maybe some secretaries, uh, and their wives and husbands and children. And, uh, And they said, we want to sneak you in the back.

We don't want anybody in the audience to know that you're there, but we want you to see this movie, but now that it's done, we'll give you a little advanced screening of it. So I get out there, and they sneak me in the back, and all the lights are out. I'm in the very back row. And when the movie is ending, and the underwater city's all blowing up, and... You know, I've been thrown in the tank with the sharks, and everything's coming apart, and it's taking forever.

And Bond and Anya are trying to escape. And I'm thinking, well, I guess I'm done for. I guess I died. All of a sudden, they show the surface of the ocean. and Jaws pops out of the water and starts swimming to the shore. And the audience went nuts.

They screamed, they applauded, they cheered. And all these MGM, UA people are looking back at me with big smiles on their faces, knowing, having seen it before with an audience, test marketing, that was the reaction. They wanted to see... how I reacted to it. I was just blown away. What a pleasant surprise, you know, from a part that I almost didn't take to doing something that was so popular and so well-received.

Yeah, yeah. He became such an iconic character just sort of in pop culture at that time. Yeah, you know, and it was, you know, Jaws has been voted several times that the most popular villain and the most popular Bond character. And, you know, it's just incredible, you know, after all these years and all the, you know, 50 years of Bond, that I've become a Bond icon. Would you have liked to have brought him, well, maybe not even him, but have gotten a chance to work with? the different bonds as you went down?

They kind of rebooted it lately. Would it have been interesting to work yourself into one of those movies? Yeah, I think it makes it fresh and keeps it from being boring. I thought Casino Royale was a great movie and I'm looking forward to this one. I'm sure it's going to be really, really good.

Skyfall. Jaws being such a huge character Did you worry at the time that it was going to be hard to get away from that as far as finding new roles and trying to break away from it? Yeah, a little bit. What I learned, it's like the girl, the character in Oklahoma who sings, I'm just a girl who can't say no. She gets typecast, right?

Mm-hmm. The way you avoid being typecast is to say no. And. Um, you know, I was, uh, uh, asked to do, uh, the Austin Powers movies as sort of a Jaws sort of character. Yeah.

A comic. And I, you know, I didn't do it. Uh, first of all, I didn't do it because I thought it would be, uh, a knife in the back to bond and, um, to, you know, it would, it would have, uh, turned me into, you know, that Jaws character, period. And, you know, so I did films like Force 10 from Navarone, where I played a Chetnik, who's really a Nazi sympathizer, a real evil guy who beats up women and is nasty to young boys, but pretends to be a partisan and fool the Allies into thinking that he's a good guy. And then I did.

I did films, So Fine with Ryan O'Neill. I did a movie in Rome called The Humanoid, sort of a spaghetti Star Wars, which was a lot of fun, which also starred Corinne Clarie and Barbara Bach. You know, these films would not have happened without the James Bond, Jaws character having played those roles. Yeah, I was just watching some of the Humanoid lately. I was going to ask about that.

Where did that get shot? Was it Italian? Yeah, well, you know, you figure Force 10 from Navarone had myself and Barbara Bach. And so you have to kind of figure that was because of the Bond film for both of us. And then, you know, Humanoid had Corinne Clarie and Barbara Bach and myself.

So you've got to figure it's because of the Bond films. I did two films in Taiwan, one in Hong Kong, which was the biggest grocer of all time up to that point in history in Hong Kong. And then did all kinds of commercials, Greco Milk for Japan, Sharp Electronics for Japan, drill bit commercial for drill bit high speed carbide drills in Lyon, France. I did When We're Smiling, the beautiful teeth people for Teledyne Waterpik. I did Mug Root Beer and PepsiCo's Mountain Dew commercial.

And I did for England Shredded Wheat, and, you know, all these were because of the Bond film, so, you know. And they were all different, and certainly I wasn't in Jaws with any of them. Funny that you'd worked in the middle there with Harrison Ford, because that's sort of like the same thing he found himself in, in these iconic roles and then trying to not be typecast as that. Yeah. But I think that Harrison did a great job.

You know, particularly I liked... Sabrina. Yeah, yeah. I thought it was better than the original movie. He definitely broke out of even his comfort zone and started doing stuff.

That was very different. Regarding Henry. Yeah, that was a really different turn for him at the time, yeah. Yeah, you know, I think he's an underrated actor. Another guy is Robert Redford.

I mean, you know, just the look that he gives Barbra Streisand and the way we were, you know, when he sees her, you know, he's married to somebody else and you know, could it have been? It was great. You know, when you're a pretty boy, it's kind of like with Roger Moore, you know, it's difficult to be taken seriously. So I've never had that problem. I'm always taken too seriously.

It's hard for me to tell a joke. People are afraid to laugh. Oh, I was going to look at some of the other ones. You also worked with Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider. What was he like?

Yeah, and again, I mean, that's totally different from Jaws. The only thing similar would be that I wasn't totally bad. You know, when it came to watching the young girl get raped, I put a stop to that. Or when they were going to shoot Clint in the back with the rifle you know I pushed the gun down you know so I think that came about both those scenes because of you know what I had done in Moonraker and people liked. It what was he like as a director he is a.

Really good businessman he he's known in love by Warner Brothers for bringing all of his movies in ahead of schedule And under budget. And, you know, it's a little bit different working on a Clint Eastwood movie than, say, a Burt Reynolds movie. In a Burt Reynolds movie, everybody has a motorhome. Everybody has a golf cart. And in a Clint Eastwood movie, you don't have either one.

But, you know, he's really a nice guy. He got our family a condo in Sun Valley that would sleep about 15 people. Wow. And we were able to have friends come up and stay. And I remember one week, the friends went out to the location, and they were having the catered lunch with us.

And Clint came over and introduced himself. He said, hi, to our friends. I'm Clint Eastwood. Like they didn't know. And I thought that was really, really big of him.

To me, it showed a lot of class. Definitely. One of the other ones I wanted to touch on, The Giant of Thunder Mountain, that's one you actually wrote and produced. Yeah, I co-wrote it with a guy named Tony Lozito, and I wrote the original story, and then co-wrote the screenplay, and co-executive produced it. I probably did 75% of the executive producing.

Selected the main actors, and we had some good ones. Jack Dillon was sensational in it, and I selected and helped to design the sets, and they came out really well. What made you want to move into writing and producing, and what led you into that? Well, you know, it was just... producer friend of mine had come up with a story idea and, uh, you know, it wasn't something that really appealed to me. And then, uh, he, uh, the writer that was working on it came up with a kind of a story idea about a giant.

And I just thought it could be executed better and, uh, written better. And, uh, you know, uh, we, we, uh, We bought the basic idea and took that and expanded on it. It was a movie that was about prejudice. It was based on my real-life experiences of how little children would be totally unafraid of me. Right now on my Facebook page, on the Richard Kiel page, there's a photo of a five-month-old baby in my hands and my arms.

He's absolutely totally unafraid. And it shows how parents will start teaching young kids to be afraid of the strangers and big people. I would find myself in a supermarket checkout line and maybe a little girl, four, five, six or seven years old, fascinated with me. maybe she would look at me and smile. And if I smiled back and the mother saw that, she would grab the little girl and protect her from the giant. And it's because of, it's not as much now as it was 20 years ago or 30 years ago, but things like the Frankenstein monster with the little girl, or of mice and men, all of the giants were, the big guys were stupid and they were killed, you know, little girls by accident or whatever, you know.

And it's kind of like, you know, I want to dispel that. And it's kind of like the historic novel I wrote, Kentucky Lion, the true story of Cassius Clay. Yeah. Roots did a great job of painting all the people in the South as being whip-wielding monsters that raped black slave women. What I came to find out was that only 7% of the people in the South owned slaves, and that the other 93% were adversely affected by slavery.

So, you know, to me, when I have a chance to write a movie or a book, you know, there's an opportunity to bring out the truth and to get people to look at things a little bit differently. I try to do that. And it's an interesting way to go about it, to deliver it to kids at that point when they're still kind of, you know, accepting of all that. Yeah. Yeah, I was, you know, I have four children.

My children are the love of my life, and I have... six grandchildren. And they love me. The little one, Cadence, when he comes through the front door, he always runs to me and jumps on my lap. Papa! Papa!

And I find that that's the case. And big guys are usually pretty pussycats. You know, they They don't have to prove that they're tough. And it's usually the guy that's like 5'6 that has the chip on his shoulder. And the guy that has a little bit too much to drink that's 5'6 is the one you have to watch out for.

Well, and then the only other thing I was going to say, at Thunder Mountain, forget James Bond, you get to fight Bart the Bear. I mean, that was amazing. Yeah, right. Yeah, well, you know, of course I didn't actually fight the bear. The owner's trainer did that.

But, you know, they put my close-ups. I did have to whack him with a balsa wood log. And he just loved it. He wanted to fight with me. How much planning did you have to do, especially being producer on that one, in dealing with bringing in Bart?

Well, with Bart, you know, he was a lovable bear that was being fed ripe figs and Hawaiian punch in big-gallon tins. They would throw him salmon, fresh salmon, figs, and a big can, one of those 32-ounce cans of Hawaiian punch. And he would chop it with his teeth and tilt his head back and go, go, go, go, go, Hawaiian punch. And he was always, like, burping. And they kept him so full and satisfied that he would never want to, you know, eat a human being.

And, however. uh... when it came to the little girl and even to me uh... like when he started to move towards me uh... when i was uh. When i hit him with the uh... balsa wood log uh... you know it was all in front for him and uh... however they grabbed me and pulled me underneath the hot wire and they wouldn't let the little girl go anywhere near him uh... so you know he was still a wild animal and The trainer, Doug Seuss, did have scars all over his chest and body from the huge nails of this Bart the Bear. Bart not trying to hurt him, but just being playful. Just being huge, yeah. Yeah, I mean, he could swipe your head off with a single blow.

Yeah, but turned in some amazing performances. It's funny how well-trained he was. Yeah, he was really well-trained. I'd seen him in the movie The Bear. And when we were putting the movie together, some of the people, in order to save money, wanted to use a different bear in the stuntman.

I said, well, you know, we know that Bart can do it, but we don't know whether this other bear can do it. So if you want to, you know, Mr. Stuntman and second unit camera guy, if you want to fly to where this other bear is and do a bear fight. So I can see it, you know, but we're not going to do it on the day and hope for the best. I don't want to see people going to the hospital.

You know, the guy didn't want to do it, so we ended up paying the money for a well-trained bear. Well, I guess the other one I wanted to hit on was you had a pretty big resurgence there in, in a whole new generation with, with Happy Gilmore. Uh, how did that come about? You're absolutely right. Uh, I think it came about because, uh, the, uh, uh, the Longest Yard movie, uh, and, uh, uh, oh, the, the star of Happy Gilmore.

Adam Sandler, yeah. Adam Sandler, uh, he liked, he loved that movie, and of course he did a remake of it, but, uh, and, uh, So he wanted me to be in the movie, so I didn't have to interview for it or anything. They just hired me and cast me. And it's become my second biggest fan base. Young people coming up and saying, you can count on me waiting for you in the parking lot.

Or, your ball struck my foot. Or, you forgot your nine iron, you know. Hold still! You know, they know all these lines, and it's just terrific. And now I'm getting the young kids from playing the voice of Vladimir entangled.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I've got some great posters that feature that character and the leading man, and, you know, of course, they recognize that character, Vladimir, immediately, and... It's a very well-done movie, very popular with the young kids and their parents and grandparents. Yeah, a whole new area to move into doing voice work. You're doing that and video games and stuff like that.

Yeah, and I've been very fortunate, too. I've done, I think, three or four video games, everything or nothing. And I did... Bond, Legends, The Moonraker Mission, which is almost like a movie. That should be out any time now.

Maybe it is out. Well, I know you've mentioned a few different movies. I know we just sort of like to touch base with people and see what they like in their personal life and what you like to watch as far as movies. Are there, you know, something you've seen? Well, you can tell, you know, I like movies like Regarding Henry.

Mm-hmm. My family accuses me of being a guy that likes chick flicks. Nice. I, I find myself watching, uh, Hallmark and the Lifetime show because I, I just happen to like, you know, old fashioned romance and, uh, uh, as opposed to strictly, you know, action, uh, CGI stuff. And, uh, so, you know, movies like, like that, uh, would be Sabrina regarding Henry and Casablanca.

I saw one recently on the airplane called The Five-Year Engagement, which is pretty good. Did you have anything new coming out that you wanted to tell people to look for or spread the word on? Yeah. We started a project called Overlord, which originally was going to be for television. And along the way, some investors saw some of the scenes, and I play an intellectual badass in it who is a handicapped guy who lost the use of his legs trying to save the women and children from the aliens who actually kill his daughter.

So it's a very dramatic role. And the character I play, Kaiser Revac, has a big international... and very wealthy and uses his money and all of his energy to try to destroy the aliens before they take over the world. And it's a great part. Anyway, it's being made now as a movie movie and I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, Overlord will probably be towards the end of next year, the first of the following year. before it hits the screen.

But who knows? But the director is a terrific director. I've worked for some of the best. I've worked for Arthur Hiller, who directed Love Story. And I worked with a guy that did Golden Pond when he was doing The Wild Wild West.

I was in that. And this director that's directing Overlord is, uh, a really, really, really good director. I would put him right up there with, uh, the best. Very cool. Well, uh, did you want to have people come to your website as far as finding you for appearances or anything like that?

Yeah, I do. Uh, and, and, uh, it's, uh, you know, www.richardkeel.com. All right. Richard Keel is all one word. And we have people come out and find you and, uh, see you at the conventions.

And, uh, you know, the, the, uh, the autograph shows have been very, very, uh, popular and a lot of fun and meet a lot of fans. Yeah, I even go to the Star Trek, uh, convention in Vegas every year. Yeah. Even though I wasn't in Star Trek, um, because of Moonraker and the Twilight Zone, the fans, you know, love me there as well. Yeah, yeah.

There's a big fan base out there for it, so. Yeah, well, Yeah, I'm very fortunate. I did a lot of different stuff. And so there's some people that want a photo signed from the monkeys. Yeah.

You know, somebody else from I Dream of Jeannie or Gilligan's Island or the Wild Wild West. You know, so there's something for everybody. And, of course, we have several photographs from Happy Gilmore and a whole bunch from James Bond, some really good ones. Yeah. You know, Cannonball Run with Jackie Chan.

I've got a shot with a couple of other icons. Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin. Picture with the two of them. Nice. When I did Cannonball Run.

Yeah. Or Cannonball Run 2. Yeah. So, yeah, we'll tell people to go check out the website and find out where you'll be and go out there and see you. Yeah.

Well, we appreciate that. And, yeah, the... I've never seen an autographed show that had so many different actors from all types of, all kinds of genre as this fanboy exhibition. Yeah, yeah. And they do have something for everybody there as well.

Cool. We will definitely check it out and, yeah, tell everybody to come out and see you. Yeah, we'll look forward to it. Stop by and we'll fix you up with an autographed photo. Sounds good, sounds good.

Alright. Well, thanks for talking to us today. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Somebody goes, and the next day he says, I'm really sorry, I was.

Rude the other day. I'm 23 years old and I'm still embarrassed that people see me buying three. I had a pretty definite vibe that I was gay. And I was like, man, being. Born at Wild and Woolly, and I was driving my kids home, and I'm like, I'm pretty sure they would.

I mean, why wouldn't they? And they said, you should call them an ass. I mean, it would make sense. They have every single movie ever made. Wild and Woolly.

That's true. I get home, and I'm about to call, and then. My daughter says, you should call and say your wife wants to know. And she was not. And I'm like, okay, okay.

Hi, my wife was wondering, do you have gay porn? And they go, yes, we do. Tell your wife that. They sounded pretty, you know. She is in for a treat.

I can't wait until they get here. Why do you think it's called the Holy Holy? Holy Holy, yes. It all makes sense now. It's weird that my daughter dared me to do that because I was just talking the other day.

My wife never dares me to do anything. Finally, the first time we were out for a walk. And at this house, it's like the house number is 908, and they have pumpkins with numbers written on them. But because they're setting them up the steps, it looks like 809. They've got their address backwards.

Because it's 908. Yeah. And then they go 809. And I said, do you dare me to switch it? Make it right?

Yeah. It's like the first time you've ever said yes, I dare you. Okay. So I switch it. The next day we walk by again and they've moved it back.

Because they're stupid. They walk by and they're like, wait a minute. I think it's because they're terrorists. That's the only explanation, clearly. All right, so thank you to Richard.

We're still loitering out in the lobby here, so we're going to wrap things up. But thank you to Richard for talking to us. We're actually going to go see him, so you should too. He's going to be at Fanboy Expo in Knoxville, Tennessee from October 26th to the 28th. So head on over there and go look for Richard and tell him you heard him on Movie Meltdown.

Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week. Same geek time, same geek fee. Thanks for listening. Tracks ahead were long and strained.

We were riding on the desert wind. We were pulling in the spiritual. distance getting closer every minute we saw the lights spiritual shining getting closer every minute then. We skipped the rails then. We started to fail then we folded up Like a giant on the land. I want to walk like a giant on the land.

When I'm looking right in your eyes And hearing your happy laugh When I'm seeing your blue eyes shine And hear your happy laugh So the moment came and the big sky rained down Like a giant on the land. It's so good to see NC-17 movies. That guy right there. They're trying to smile, but something is just. Yeah, the rabbit.

They're wearing something unmentionable under their clothing. They also have a fistful of butter. That's all it is. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com.

Talk hard!