Okay first things first. The audition. As I recall, this was just after Turner and Hooch, and was the same casting office. Judy Taylor and Mike Fenton. I went into the office and Paul Verhoeven, the director was there, bubbling over in Dutch enthusiasm, as is his way. He introduced himself and then took the script from me and proceeded to …

This was my second time working with Tom Hanks. Although Roger Spotiswoode directed, I was hired by the film’s first director, Henry Winkler (with whom I worked on Mr. Sunshine in 1985). We shot my scenes in Pacific Grove, on the Monterey Peninsula. Very nice. I love the area, so I got a nice week-long vacation out of the deal. …

Mr. Sunshine was a Mid eighties Sit-com Starring Jeffrey Tambour as Paul Stark, a blind, divorced, English professor. John Rich, who directed many of The Dick Van Dyke and All In The Family episodes directed. He and Henry Winkler Produced. And I played Warren Leftwich, Paul’s accident-prone teaching assistant.  

“Hey, Mistah Cawnbeef? Whatcha lookin’ faw down theah? Buried treasure?” I’m in three scenes in this movie, playing Claude, one of the Moron Twins, a simple New England seaman hired by Walter Kornbluth (Eugene Levy) who is searching for evidence of mermaids. My partner in moronity is Jeff Doucette. And of course the beachcomber who happens to wear a tuxedo isTom …

My second film. Straight off the Mississippi, and into an honest to god Western! Belle was played by Elizabeth Montgomery. I played her troubled, jealous son. Didn’t like the men she was sleeping with. Shot her dead. Contains some of the worst western dialog in cinema history. My favorite line (I actually got to say this): “Guns are fer killin’, Ma. …