Keith Carradine Regis Dialogue Formatted

Keith Carradine Regis Dialogue with Phil Anderson, 1991

Phil Anderson: Well anyway, thanks for coming yourself. I want to start, I have a small question and I have a big question. Small question is simple. How did you get involved with the Material Girl video directed by Mary Lambert?

Keith Carradine: They called me up.

Phil Anderson: Why do you think they asked you? What do you think they needed from you?

Keith Carradine: I don't know. I was requested by her ladyship and Mary Lambert, the director. Apparently I was their first choice to play the part, this Howard Hughes-esque character who was supposed to be this mysterious wealthy owner of the studio for which she is one of their stars.

There was something about what I had done, I guess, that they saw, that they thought was right for this. So they called me up and I said, "Yeah. Sure, what the heck?"

Phil Anderson: Well I asked that because who wouldn't?

Keith Carradine: Well, actually, there are a few people that might not.

Phil Anderson: It seems that throughout your career, people seem to think you stand for something. At certain points in your career, you stand for different things. But in this and in many other things, you seem to stand for a kind of purity or a sense of morality, whereas in other times you're quite evil, quite sneaky. You're not on trial here, but I have some character references I found.

There is a current article in American Film about you, based on The Ballad of the Sad Café where the author Will Schneider says, "Carradine relishes a full day on a ski slope, sews is a top-notched kid-sized Spider- Man costume, saddles a horse deftly and rides easily, and hasn't raised his voice at his agent once in their seven-year relationship." Another reference I found that people in your family apparent describe you as the white sheep of the Carradine family.

You're now on Broadway playing a man who was famous for saying, "I never met a man I didn't like." Here's The New York Times two weeks ago, "The tall truths of a yarn spinner, a great American legend." What reviews I found of the Will Rogers Follies seemed to be confusing you with Will Rogers in saying you're just the right person in a moral sense, as well as acting ability to do it.

May 26, 1991 1

Keith Carradine: It's a little weird.

Phil Anderson: Yeah. Well, that's you. Then I found a quote from Joan Tewkesbury who wrote Nashville, which we're going to see next, a clip from it, where she said she based one of the characters in the movie on you. It's not the character that you played, it's the character of Kenny who is a mild-mannered, very pleasant young guy who turns out to be the assassin.

She said here is the reason why she chose it. She said that you were, "One of the most genuinely kind human beings I think I've ever know in my life." Nevertheless, you've played Tom, a self-absorbed folk rock singer/composer who's come to Nashville to record an album, but he's also just decided to break off from this famous trio he's been a part of. Did that feel like ... Did you have any personal associations with Tom for that part?

Keith Carradine: That was one of the most difficult characters I've ever had to play because particularly at that point in my career, I was I guess about only five years into my professional career, still pretty young and very insecure about myself in many ways, about the true nature of my own character, whatever that was. Playing someone like him felt dangerous to me. I was worried about being associated with someone like that. I was worried that people would think that was what I was really like. It made me very uncomfortable to play him. I didn't like him. But that's where Altman was so smart, because what he got onscreen, he got someone who didn't like himself.

Phil Anderson: Well, here is Tom. We've got the clip from Nashville, one of the more famous moments.

You still get royalties on that song?

Keith Carradine: Yeah.

Phil Anderson: Really? Good.

Keith Carradine: I think I just made three or four cents right there.

Phil Anderson: How did you come to the attention of Robert Altman?

Keith Carradine: In a typical way. I had an agent who was trying to get me started and he knew about this picture that was being put together at Warner Brothers, which was McCabe and Mrs. Miller. He had talked to the producer and said, "There's a part in here for this young cowboy that's supposed to come to town. It says that he plays

May 26, 1991 2 a banjo and I've got this client who plays the banjo." Then he called me up and told me about it, and I said, "I don't play the banjo." He said, "Well, you better learn."

Keith Carradine: Some time went by and eventually they arranged a meeting. It was with Altman at his offices in Westwood. I went to the office. Somebody said, "Oh yeah, Bob is upstairs. You could just go up those stairs and take that door there." I walked up, knocked on the door, a voice said, "Come in." I walked in and it was a bedroom. He was standing there opening up this box and pulling up this pre-Colombian sculpture that he just brought back from ... He had been to the Cartagena Film Festival in Colombia and he was opening up this sculpture. I was just about six months out of having done Hair on Broadway. At that point, my hair was down to about here.

He took a look at me and he said, "Well, so what are you doing?" I said, "Well, I just finished doing Hair and I just finished doing my first movie with Kirk Douglas and Johnny Cash." He says, "Oh. Well, we're going to do this thing up in Vancouver. It's not much of a part, but you want to do it?" I couldn't believe my ears. I said, "Well, yeah!" He said, "Well, your hair is pretty long." I said, "Oh, yeah." Because in those days, I thought it was important to have it, my hair. He said, "Well, okay. Why don't you come up and play it?" That was that.

That's the way he works. He spoiled me because I didn't have to perform for him, I didn't have to do a reading or anything. But he basically casts behavior. He'll look at a person and decide whether or not they posses the qualities that he's looking for. That was the beginning of our relationship.

I went up to Vancouver and showed up on the set. He says, "Well, come on in here." He took me into this room, sat me down in a chair and he said, "Okay." This guy pulled out the scissors, and my face just must have fallen and I went ashen. He said, "Hey. Listen, kid. If that's where your ego is, it's in the wrong place." Made a lot of sense.

Phil Anderson: There's a myth about Robert Altman's directing style that his sets were free floating, freeform, filled with a lot of improvisation, very lax and casual. Did you experience that or do you think that's a miscalculation?

Keith Carradine: Well, I think that that's a misimpression that is created by his work process. When he rehearses, when he's putting the scenes together, he encourages improvisation, if that's what you like to do. If you are not comfortable with that, then he just assumed you stayed with the script. But he does encourage improvisation in that regard.

When you're working out the scene, and when he's staging it and deciding where he's going to put his camera, then he encourages that freedom and a maximum of input from actors, whatever they feel about the words that are being said, how they want to move, all of that. Then once everyone's comfortable, then he sets it and it stays pretty much the same. The improvisations aren't really happening on camera.

Phil Anderson: You were fairly new to the business then, but did that feel comfortable for you, or were you scared about having to put more input?

Keith Carradine: It scared me to death. I wanted to be told what to do. I was very nervous about it. I felt completely at sea if I May 26, 1991 3 was having to just make up, because I hadn't studied, I hadn't gone to acting classes where you do that as an exercise on a regular basis. It was all very foreign to me. I preferred sticking with what was scripted. That was fine. That was ... He didn't discourage that either.

Phil Anderson: Nashville was clearly a celebrated project because it was perceived as being his big bicentennial statement, a big judgment on America. At the same time he also used the Nashville scene, which is getting to be fairly popular among the wider public at the time, as a skillet and as a framework. He asked many of the cast members to write their own songs. Of the various Oscar nominations for Nashville, the only winner was you for that song. You got the Best Song Oscar, which is something you're still ahead of Paul McCartney, and Prince and Paul Simone in that respect.

Keith Carradine: It's a dubious achievement.

Phil Anderson: Backstage after the Oscars, I've discovered you admitted that you had written the song three years before.

Keith Carradine: I wrote it when I was 19, actually. This was long before. I wrote it in 1969 when I was living in New York.

Phil Anderson: Did the appearance in Nashville, which was fairly central and fairly significant, did that do anything for your career, for your image? Did people start looking to you for a certain kind of character?

Keith Carradine: Oh, sure. Immediately. As you soon as you succeed in Hollywood, that's all they want you to do, is what you did in that movie. It was a very dicey time for me in terms of trying to figure out how to establish an identity for myself in the community.

Of course, what I did very successfully was establish a non-identity, which is really the hard way to go because if they can't pigeonhole you, if they can't say, "Well, he's such and such," then they don't know what to do with you. As a result, they don't do anything with you, basically, which has as much to do with my career being outside the mainstream as anything.

I worked very hard not to repeat myself. I can't tell you how many scripts I got handed that all started with some guy with a guitar on his back, walking down a dirt road. Oh, that Keith Carradine part. I said, "No, you don't understand. That's not me at all. That's just something I did in this movie," or play the womanizer over and over again.

In fact, it was dangerous because I went right in to do Welcome to L.A. with Alan Rudolph. That was perceived by many to be a replication of this character, when it was actually the opposite, the perfect opposite. Tom Frank was someone who used everyone that he came in contact with, particularly women. The character in Welcome to L.A. was someone who allowed himself to be used by every woman with whom he came in contact. It was the exact opposite, which was what I was excited by the role. I thought it would be an inside joke to do that, but nobody got it but me.

May 26, 1991 4

Phil Anderson: I was speaking from the point of the view of the audience. I can't speak for half of the people in America, but the other half seems to have thought that he worries. He's had this large following of adoring fans, adoring female fans from this point on. Did that truly happen? Many people I know would say, "Oh, Keith Carradine. The women I know, they swoon, they whatever." Did you notice that?

Keith Carradine: You're getting me into a very weird area here.

Phil Anderson: Oh, okay.

Keith Carradine: What I did notice was that because of the success of my music in the movie, I was handed a recording contract by David Geffen and Asylum Records. I went in and recorded. In fact, ABC Records, who were in charge of the soundtrack album for Nashville, didn't like my song and thought it had no potential for radio play. They reluctantly released it as a single, but they did not promote it whatsoever, so that as a result when the song won the Academy Award, you couldn't find it in a record store.

By that time, I was already talking to Geffen, and had decided to go ahead and record with them. Well, of course, the morning after the Oscars, ABC was calling me up saying, "Well, want to do your album." I said, "Forget it, guys."

Phil Anderson: You had your chance.

Keith Carradine: You had your chance. I went to record with Geffen and as a result of doing two albums on Asylum, I went out on the road and toured. On those tours, I was approached a lot. I had a relationship with Cristina Raines, the dark haired girl there in the movie. She and I had been living together for a number of years, so I wasn't that guy. I was not a philanderer. What was real interesting was how many of these people were disappointed by that. They wanted me to be that guy.

Phil Anderson: Well, let's talk about this guy. Alan Rudolph is described as not only being an Altman protégé, but an unsung hero during Nashville, especially coordinating the logistics of a cast that's really 24 featured actors. Then your next project was his debut film, Welcome to L.A., where you play this composer who has just come back to Los Angeles after living in London for three years. We have a short scene in here with Geraldine Chaplin, whom you did many good movies with. Let's see that little clip first.

I want to talk about Alan Rudolph because he's a little bit of Robert Altman's style, definitely works from a different perspective, especially because he writes so much of what he does and there's some great dialogue there. The background to this story was that it's based on this song cycle by Richard Baskin. Baskin himself, there seems to be a parallel in this story. Baskin is the heir to the Baskin-Robins ice cream. Your character, who is the songwriter, is the heir to a dairy fortune. Did Rudolph try to make that a real deliberate connection based on Baskin's experience?

May 26, 1991 5

Keith Carradine: Oh yeah. Yeah, it was all intentional. Yeah.

Phil Anderson: Baskin had gone through an experience like your character does in the story?

Keith Carradine: Yeah, he had been to England, and he had spent some time there, and he had come back. It was fairly autobiographical from Richard's point of view. He and Alan collaborated on the screenplay in terms of that information and tying things together with Richard's music.

Phil Anderson: Now, did the cast listen to these songs as part of the preparation for doing the movie? Were you aware of the information they were going to give to the story?

Keith Carradine: Yeah. They were an integral part of the piece, so yeah. I'm not sure about the cast listening to them, but I obviously spent a great deal of time listening to Richard's music.

Phil Anderson: It also strikes me, it's an interesting group of people involved because you and Geraldine Chaplin, obviously second generation Hollywood, John Considine is in it. His father had been a director. Alan Rudolph's father, I believe had been a TV director. Did you have a sense that you were trying to reinvent some of the Hollywood tradition there? Did you talk about growing up in show business families?

Keith Carradine: Not much. We didn't actually talk about it. I think it was probably just basically pure and simple nepotism. It is and it isn't. It's like you grow up with a carpenter and you wind up being a carpenter. It's all the same thing. It just seems to be an inexorable force that draws you into it.

I've never actually had that conversation with Alan about growing up in Hol ... It's funny, when you're with people that are from your same situation, you don't need to talk about it. The only people that want to talk about it are people that don't know anything about it. When you're in those situations, you tend not to have that conversation.

I had known Richard for years before we were in an acting classes together five years before, six years. Anyhow, like in 1968, something like that. There was an actors workshop that I was in for about three months before I went to New York to do Hair. Richard had been in there. I had known him from then, but we never talked about how any of us wound up doing what we were doing. It was just a given.

Phil Anderson: I did talk to you once before on the phone while The Moderns was coming out and you had said, "Rudolph's message is basically, listen, we're all lucky to be doing this for a living, so we might as well enjoy it while we're doing it." Is that the atmosphere you think gets you going best, or are there other director's approaches that have also encouraged you to do good work?

May 26, 1991 6

Keith Carradine: No, I have never subscribed to the anxiety breeds genius school. I've always thought that was an indulgence. I have very little patience with actors who put everyone else through the horrors, so that they can get to what they need to get to. I think it's just bad manners really.

Phil Anderson: It's fairly lucky for you that you started out with these laid back guys?

Keith Carradine: Well, in a way. The fact is, is that people who are happy can do wonderful work.

Phil Anderson: Why not?

Keith Carradine: Sounds simplistic, doesn't it? But it's true. I have been very fortunate in my own career in that I've only really once worked with a director who was truly miserable and who made everyone around him truly miserable.

Phil Anderson: What movie was that?

Keith Carradine: That was The Bachelor.

Phil Anderson: Oh. Well, we'll talk about that in a minute.

In the same year, you also did another debut picture for Ridley Scott, The Duellists. You got to travel, you got to wear some great costumes. This is based on a story by Joseph Conrad, about two men who have a lifelong feud, largely spiked by the other man, not your character, over some insult that he feels has affected him and it goes on for many years. Harvey Keitel was the other man.

Keith Carradine: Actually based on a true story.

Phil Anderson: Really?

Keith Carradine: Yeah, we didn't know this until Ridley had scouted locations in various parts of France and finally settled on this place called Sarlat, which is the Dordogne region of France. We all arrived in Sarlat and we're invited to a reception at the Mairie, which is the town hall. We went into the town hall and there was a portrait hanging on the wall of a character by the name of Fournier who was the model of Harvey Keitel's character in the movie.

In fact, Joseph Conrad, who had proposed, who had presented this short story among his collected works as simply another piece of his fiction, had lifted an almost verbatim from an account from 18th century France May 26, 1991 7 about this incident that took place. This guy named Fournier who was this notorious fire brand had carried on this duel with this other guy. Fournier was a member of the lower class, who had risen through the ranks of the military to achieve officer status. He had an automatic ax to grind against anyone who was of the aristocracy and had arrived at their officership through the traditional channels, which is what my character represented.

Phil Anderson: Well, we have a little clip from there. It begins with a little statement of principle and then there's a great action sequence here. We're going to show that.

Keith Carradine: That was a good one. I like that movie.

Phil Anderson: Actually, this comes from the middle of the story that the feud continues for several more years, including going to Russia where Napoleon's armies are in defeat.

I have a quick question here. Ridley Scott is well known for liking fog. The scene starts in the fog and then you're riding out in full sunlight. There were a lot of smoke machines at the sites of the set as you were doing that scene, do you recall?

Keith Carradine: This movie was made for 1.2 million dollars. There were no smoke machines. There was a guy with a bee smoker running around. It was hilarious. There would be mornings when ... The very end sequence in the film was a duel between the two of us, a pistol duel. There's a wonderful wide shot of this beautiful valley and this fog drifting through. There's was a special effects man out there who almost had a heart attack that day. He spent so much time running back and forth. He must have run 10 miles that day trying to make Ridley happy.

Phil Anderson: You were describing how the camera operator ... There was a directory of photography who was still on the job, but there was a camera operator who left, or quit, or something, so Ridley Scott took over as a camera operator.

Keith Carradine: Yeah, I think it was an agreement between the two of them. Ridley wanted him to go and he went.

Phil Anderson: Then he effectively directed it from the camera.

Keith Carradine: Yes.

Phil Anderson: Did you find that comfortable or was it ...

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Keith Carradine: I found it a little disconcerting. I don't think it would bother me as much now. I'm a bit further along and I know what I'm about a little bit more. But at the time, it was a little disturbing because I thought that Ridley, since he was operating, he would be looking at more than just what the actors were doing.

Ordinarily, a director is watching the performances and is relying upon the rest of his technical staff to keep an eye on other things. But when he's directing through the camera, that means that he was having to pay attention to whether the shot was working, if anything was interfering with the shot physically or mechanically, as well as watching what the performances were, and watching what the actors were doing, and deciding whether or not they were delivering what he was going to need.

Phil Anderson: Was that the only part you were offered, or was there a chance that you might have played the other parts?

Keith Carradine: I was never considered for Harvey's part.

Phil Anderson: He's another moralist, especially he's almost a little priggish, the way Harvey Keitel is and is extremely. Did you enjoy that aspect of that character, that he has such strong principles?

Keith Carradine: Of my character?

Phil Anderson: Yeah.

Keith Carradine: Oh, yeah. When you're playing someone that's that centered, it gives you a great foundation to play from. It makes things easier because there's no ambiguity about what his position is and therefore what the basis of his emotion might be in any given moment.

Phil Anderson: You know how he's going to react in any given situation. Keith Carradine: Pretty much because he's stuck. He's stuck between his morality and his sense of honor.

Phil Anderson: Did you do much of the horse riding there?

Keith Carradine: Yeah, I did all of it except the jump over the wagon. I had actually been taking lessons for months to do that jump. I could have done it, but in movies they say, as it turns out, they let the other guy do it. Then we went to do the other stuff, the rioting through the trees. We did a lot of those run bys until my horse was pretty well tired out, so they put me in a new horse that I had never been on. That horse immediately took me into a walnut tree, spent the night in a hospital and 10 days on crutches.

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Phil Anderson: Wow. Shooting had to be delayed?

Keith Carradine: Well, the French, they don't cut their horses. They were stallions, both of them. They tend to be a handful.

Phil Anderson: Had you been on horses much before? Or you done some ...

Keith Carradine: Yeah, I had done a lot of riding. I've done even more since. I love horses. I have my own horses now. I love movies that ... I like films that are made outdoors and especially films where I get to be on a horse. It's my idea of heaven.

Phil Anderson: Well, we got another outdoors movie. Not another horse scene, but you ride a horse in this movie, the famous brother project of The Long Riders, widely hailed as having four combinations of brother in here, the Quaids, Carradines, Guests and Keachs.

Keith Carradine: The Keachs. You couldn't be in this movie if you didn't have a brother.

Phil Anderson: Why don't we see the little clip here first. It's a scene where your character, Jim Younger, who's one of the Younger brothers, stands up to some Pinkerton men who have been sent out. It's the first inclination that the gang has that they're being followed or being sought, hunted down as a big reward on their heads. Let's see the clip first.

Keith Carradine: Everybody loves an outlaw.

Phil Anderson: Even among the outlaws, you at least got to be a lady's man a little bit, and had a sense of at least some kind of justice there, avenging your cousin's innocent death.

Keith Carradine: Is that what that was?

Phil Anderson: Well, a little bit.

Keith Carradine: I thought it was just more gratuitous violence.

Phil Anderson: Well, that is my question. You haven't been in a lot of violent films, but you did make two of these films with May 26, 1991 10

Walter Hill and have been in some action scenes. What's your feeling about participating in films that turn out to be fairly violent onscreen? Did you enjoy doing that after the fact you realized that maybe you might not have been associated with that if you had known how it would turn out?

Keith Carradine: Well, there's no way I wouldn't have been associated with that one. I just thought it was a classic tale and it's about American semi-icons, the James-Younger Gang, the opportunity to work with my brothers, which doesn't happen all that often because when you put us all together, it's hard for us to play anything but brothers.

The other film that I did with Walter, Southern Comfort, I thought was a wonderful allegorical, Vietnam allegory. It had a statement to make. I felt that there was a certain justification to what violence there was, although I tend to think that Walter overdoes it. But that's his trademark.

My only prerequisite is if it's a film I'd go to see, and I don't tend to go to those movies, I don't tend to go to violent films, I don't have those appetites. I'd rather see people make love than kill each other. But it depends on what the root of it is, what the basis of it is, and what the ultimate feeling or message is that people are going to take with them when they leave the theater. Film is so powerful as a medium. It has such a power to influence people's thinking, that there's a responsibility that attaches to that.

Phil Anderson: What do you feel people would have been left with in The Long Riders?

Keith Carradine: Well, I would think that it's been a while since I've sat and watched the movie, but I would think that the futility of choosing a course, like the one that was chosen by those people, and that whatever glory one might perceive in that, it's a false glory, it's hollow.

Phil Anderson: Yeah, even the scene begins with your cousin saying he wishes he could be part of this and you’re more or less saying-

Keith Carradine: Yeah, it's pitiful. What he says is pitiful.

Phil Anderson: Was it fun to do this, having all the brothers together, or did it get really complicated?

Keith Carradine: Oh, it was great. It was great. It was like 16 weeks of adult summer camp. It was. I can't describe it any better than that. It was like a boyhood dream come true. My God, to get up every day and strap on your six gun, and you put on your duster, and go out and ride. And they paid us.

Phil Anderson: Let's talk about family a little bit. I read that your brother David wanted to audition for Hair. He brought you as his accompanist and you ended up getting the job.

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Keith Carradine: Yeah.

Phil Anderson: You went to Broadway, being a second generation of the first production on Broadway in Hair. You talked earlier about being in the movies as inexorable. Did you also have that feeling, or did you question whether or not you might want to be an actor? Was there something else you might have done?

Keith Carradine: I had a secret desire to do it as long as I can remember, but I didn't dare admit it because I was afraid of my motives being questioned. There were other things because I knew that I had a knack in certain areas. I had an artistic touch. I was good in art classes in school, whatever that means. I could draw.

I knew I was musical. I started picking up instruments and learning them on my own when I was 12, 13 years old. I started with the harmonica, then the guitar, and then the piano. There were a number of areas that I felt like I could have gone into. I suppose the ultimate reason I chose acting was because it did not preclude anything else. Being an actor doesn't mean you have to stop playing guitar. But if you're going to be a full- time musician, or a full-time painter, then it means that that's what you have to do to the exclusion of everything else.

The wonderful thing about acting is that every time you take on a new role, it's going to take you into areas and perhaps even certain skills, manual or other, that you might need to play that part. So it's a continuing education.

Phil Anderson: Well, your father, it almost sounds like you're reliving some of your father's experience. He's John Carradine, one of the great character actors, great actors in American movies. We have a picture of him, I believe. Apparently your grandparents, his parents, his father was an attorney, poet, painter, and your grandmother was surgeon, and your father was born in Greenwich Village. This is all correct?

Keith Carradine: Yes.

Phil Anderson: Amazing. Your father started out as a painter and sculptor, also a dairy farmer and designed sets for Cecil B. DeMille. You were talking about how your father was an itinerate portrait painter or sculptor, or both.

Keith Carradine: He was a sketch artist. He would do portrait sketches and he worked his way across the country in the early years of The Great Depression by drawing people's portraits.

Phil Anderson: He ended up in Louisiana, apparently.

Keith Carradine: Yeah. He had been in New Orleans and he was working his way west. I think his last stop was Shreveport. May 26, 1991 12

He told me that he spent some time there, and lived at the Y, and drew people's pictures until he run out of clients and everyone had had their picture drawn. His offer was, "For a dollar I will draw your portrait. If you don't consider it a good likeness, you can have it for nothing."

Phil Anderson: Well, good way to live.

Keith Carradine: He never had anybody take it for nothing.

... see the film in February and to be there to promote its release. I hugged him after the screening. I said, "Roberto, you're a pain in the ass, but you made a beautiful movie." It's really wonderful.

Phil Anderson: Maybe we should explain a little bit about it. It starts out seeming fairly morbid, but it ends up being fairly satirical, very funny.

Keith Carradine: Oh yeah. Well it's vintage Schnitzler. If anyone's familiar with his work, La Ronde being something that he wrote, it's wonderful. When Freud was writing clinically about his psychological studies, Schnitzler was writing about the same things, only in fiction. He was putting it into fictional stories.

It's a wonderful, fascinating character study. This guys, he's a piece of work. It's a wonderful film and it's an engrossing film. He's on an emotional adventure through the thing that ... At the end, it's very ... Yeah, the satire is quite rich and it's very amusing.

Phil Anderson: You get to wear all those great clothes too. Linen suits.

Keith Carradine: Not to mention.

Phil Anderson: What do you think that foreign directors seem to see in you. You've worked with so many. Sometimes you play American, sometimes you play foreign characters. Did they ever say why they picked you?

Keith Carradine: Yeah, but I never remember. Maybe on purpose, I don't remember because I'm afraid I'll edit myself in some way or something.

Phil Anderson: Do you feel that they think you're so ultra American in some cases, maybe?

Keith Carradine: I don't think that's it. I think it's something else because I don't think they do consider me ultra American. I guess it depends on what work I've done that they've seen. Some of my work has been very middle of the country, the people that I play, but there are other instances where I'm playing people that are very outside May 26, 1991 13 the mainstream. Personally, I don't know what I am. I grew up in California and I had a very normal childhood, as normal as it can be, being the son of a character actor. I don't know.

Phil Anderson: Well no, your latest film is almost a European film. It's based on a great American book and it's set in American and all that, but it's got an English director, the actor Simon Callow. It's got Vanessa Redgrave playing an American. The Ballad of the Sad Café. How did you come to be involved with that?

Keith Carradine: Well, I was told once again that it was out there. My agent called me up and said, "Here's this film. Are you interested?" I said, "Yeah, let me read it." I read it and I said, "You bet I'm interested. I think it's a terrific script." I already knew that Vanessa was going to be involved and I said, "Yeah, I'd love to do it." He said, "Okay," and then I didn't hear anything for two weeks.

Then I finally called him and I said, "What's going on with Ballad of the Sad Café?" He says, "Oh. Well, they're using Sam Shepard." I said, "Oh, okay," and I forgot out it. Then about a month after that, he called me back and he said, "Well, I have good news and I have bad news." I said, "What's that?" He said, "Well, the good news is they want you for a movie. The bad news is it's Ballad of the Sad Café again." I said, "Oh, that's back. Well, what happened?" He said, "Well, apparently Sam couldn't do it. He was exhausted or something."

I had mixed feelings about it because on the one hand I thought I was desperate to play the part. I thought it was a fabulous role and I thought I'd love to work with Ms. Redgrave. Everything about the project appealed to me, but now I was insulted. But finally my good sense overcame my ego and I chose to do it.

Phil Anderson: Well, your character is Marvin Macy, the man who's responsible for Vanessa Redgrave's character's problem, and then who comes back in the latter roughly third of the movie. Here's a scene.

Keith Carradine: I'm not sure who's responsible for what here. I'm not going to sit back and let you say I'm responsible for her problem.

Phil Anderson: Let's not put blame anywhere. Either way, but here's a scene that you had with her, and also with Cork Hubbard who was her cousin, possibly, a scene of confrontation, where you also get to play the guitar.

Keith Carradine: He's a sweetheart.

Phil Anderson: You mentioned getting to work with Max von Sydow and some of the greats you've worked with. Ron Steiger is in here and of course Vanessa Redgrave. Did it turn out to be as enjoyable as you thought it would be to work with her?

Keith Carradine: Every bit, more so. She's phenomenal. She's one of the great actresses of our time.

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Phil Anderson: The character, he's got some other dimensions here.

Keith Carradine: Oh, he's got a lot of layers because when you meet him, he's the town ne'er-do-well, and then he falls inexplicably and completely in love with Amelia. In an effort to win her, changes his ways utterly and completely, and is accepted by her, and then rather immediately spurned by her, which then forces him into ... or is the catalyst for him to take this journey to the other side of love.

Phil Anderson: Do you think if Marvin Macy here met that young cowpoke from McCabe and Mrs. Miller, what kind of conversation do you think they might have?

Keith Carradine: Very short. Very short. They wouldn't have much to talk about. Marvin never met a man who liked him.

Phil Anderson: The films are getting some good responses. I wonder if you read the press on yourself.

Keith Carradine: I don't avoid it, but I don't seek it out. The trouble with press is it's always one person's opinion. Sometimes that one person's opinion might have great worth because of their background, because of their intellect, because of their… however much they know about the process itself and it could be instructive. Other times it can be very destructive if it's based on things that shouldn't be important, but we're all vulnerable.

Keith Carradine: Criticism, it's a delicate thing for a performer. Sometimes it can help you and it can help you to grow. Other times it can really be stifling and it can really shut you down. The trouble with it is, is that if you're going to believe the good stuff, then you have to believe the bad too. I just assume take it all with about the same grain of salt. As a result, I don't look to find it, to read it. Sometimes it's unavoidable. People are constantly shoving it under your nose saying, "Look at this."

Phil Anderson: Well at the moment, of course, you can't avoid some of the talk about The Will Rogers Follies. Let's talk about that a little bit. We've got a picture of you being Will Rogers here. I don't know if you ... There you are. Your father played Lincoln, your brother played Woody Guthrie, is Robert going to play Bob Dylan or somebody? Here you are playing ...

Keith Carradine: He could.

Phil Anderson: It's nominated for 11 Tony Awards. It's going to open the TV broadcast of the Tonys next Sunday night. It's already won two other major awards in New York Theater Critics' Circle and the Drama Desk. Can you explain the concept of this show? It's got an unusual configuration.

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Keith Carradine: The concept is that Will Rogers, who began his show business career, well he began as a performer doing a roping act, a trick rope act in Wild West shows. Then from there, he went to vaudeville. He became the only performer in the vaudeville circuit who had a roping act with a live horse on stage. Then one night, the horse didn't make it. He was out there with his rope and nothing to do, and he started talking and everybody laughed. Then he realized he was funny.

Well, he already knew he was funny, but he didn't realize he could do it for an audience. He started, that became his act, and then he was discovered by Florenz Ziegfeld whose famous Ziegfeld Follies were in New York and he hired Will. He eventually became a headliner with the Ziegfeld Follies and he spent about 10 years as a headliner with the Ziegfeld Follies. That was what launched him in his show business career, really.

The conceit here is that here it is, 1991. How do you tell a story of Will Rogers in a musical onstage? Well, you get Ziegfeld to do it. The idea is that Florenz Ziegfeld has come back from the great beyond. With him he's brought Will Rogers and other various sundry people from the performer's life. He has, in the form of the Ziegfeld Follies, undertaken to tell the story of Will Rogers. It's a story of his life in a series of sketches, skits, done in the vein of the Ziegfeld Follies.

Phil Anderson: Ziegfeld's present at least as a voice, right?

Keith Carradine: Yes.

Phil Anderson: He's not visible.

Keith Carradine: The voice of Gregory Peck, actually.

Phil Anderson: Ah, great. You sing it to the rafters, right? You sing songs, you dance a little.

Keith Carradine: Yup.

Phil Anderson: You do the rope tricks.

Keith Carradine: I do. I spin a few. Yeah.

Phil Anderson: How long did it take to get the rope tricks down?

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Keith Carradine: About three months of concentrated effort, but I have been working on it since a year ago last December about.

Phil Anderson: Who taught you?

Keith Carradine: I took three lessons from Gene McLaughlin who is three-time world champ and he lives out in California. He's a trick roper and a movie stuntman. He had taught my brother Bobby to rope cows for The Cowboys, Bobby's first movie. He's the guy who taught all those kids how to rope cows. I went to Gene and he gave me three lessons. We've got a real world class rope in the show who's taught me some stuff too.

Phil Anderson: There's a moment in the show, apparently, where you do what Will Rogers did, which is you get today's newspaper, and you hold it up and do a little improvisational satire on that day's events. Is that hard to do each day?

Keith Carradine: Well, it's not ... Very little of it is improve. Some of it is improve. There are a little asides and things that I make, depending on the audience, how they're responding, if they're responding.

I always start that section of the show with today's headline, whatever it is. Sometimes the headlines will lend themselves to comments. One day I picked it up and I opened it/ I looked and I said, "U.S. military developing super nuclear powered missile." Well, it ain't a secret anymore, is it? It's on the front page of The New York Times. I thought that just hilarious.

Phil Anderson: Well do you find that that's an opportunity for yourself to inject some commentary as well, or do you feel that you have to be Will Rogers, what he might say?

Keith Carradine: It's always in the character of Will. It's a wonderful place to be, I must say. Most of the fun of playing the part is to get into that kind of a mental set for two and a half hours. He must have had a ball in his life, that guy. To pretend to be him for a couple of hours a night is really fun.

Phil Anderson: He was much shorter, wasn't he? He was apparently fairly short.

Keith Carradine: Yeah, I think he was 5'10", 5'9", 5'10". I'm 6'1". He was a little ... I'm pretty thin. He wasn't as thin as I am.

Phil Anderson: Apparently, you're not trying to mimic him exactly.

Keith Carradine: I couldn't. It would be foolish to try. I don't try to sound exactly like him. I certainly don't look very much like May 26, 1991 17 him. What I try to do is feel like him and that's what counts, as if the audience is getting a feeling of what it must have been like. I listened to a lot of his radio stuff. There's recordings that you can get. I've read ... There's so much written material that you can get. I looked at a lot of his movies, one in particular to work on the roping stuff.

Phil Anderson: Which one is that? Which movie?

Keith Carradine: It's called The Ropin' Fool. It's one of the three movies that he made with his own money and he went broke doing it. It was a silent, but it had ... He was one of the first people to employ slow motion as a way of enhancing the stunt that you were looking at. There were great slow motion sequences of him doing some of his most famous tricks, one of which was the Texas Skip. I really wanted to do that in the show, and I was having a heck of a time figuring it out. Until I looked at it in the movie in slow motion, then I realized and I saw there was a timing thing that he was doing that I wasn't getting.

Phil Anderson: What's the Texas Skip? How do you ...

Keith Carradine: Well, you have a long rope, and you spin a vertical loop, and then you jump through.

Phil Anderson: Let's get ... We got a cord here. Well, you're on a one-year contract for Will Rogers so people can see you, since it just barely opened, practically.

Keith Carradine: Yeah, we opened May 1st.

Phil Anderson: Almost a year to see you. Will it matter to you if you get the Tony? Do awards like that mean something, what we would assume they would mean to you?

Keith Carradine: If I said it didn't matter, I'd be lying. If I admitted how much it matters to me, I'd be foolish. It would be great to win it. I'd love to win. I don't really hope to. I hope to, but I'm not holding my breath about it because I've got some pretty stiff competition. I don't really ... I think my chances are probably 40/60 at best.

Keith Carradine: The nomination has been a real thrill. What it's done for the show, all of the nominations that the show has received have been just terrific. We're a hit. That's all that matters. We're sold out and people love it. New York has suddenly become a very small town. It's the weirdest thing. You're in a town of eight million people, and you're walking down the street and people say, "Hi, Will." It's really weird.

Phil Anderson: Is it bringing movie offers again? Not again, but ... No, is it bringing ...

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Keith Carradine: Well, nothing concrete yet, but I've got stuff that I'm working on anyway that I would have been planning to do after finishing with this, in any case. But I would hope that something nice would come out of it. If it doesn't, it may be the first time in seven years that I've yelled at my agent.

Phil Anderson: Great.

Keith Carradine: I'm sorry. I'd like to stay, but I guess I have to go.

Phil Anderson: Thanks.

Keith Carradine: Thank you.

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