Kickin' it Old School - 80s Pop Culture
One dude's point of view on popular culture with special attention paid to the great decade of the 80s
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Kickin' it Old School - 80s Pop Culture
One dude's point of view on popular culture with special attention paid to the great decade of the 80s |
 Blog For Free! Archives Home 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2012 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2011 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2010 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2009 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2008 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January My Links Old School's "80s Interviews" Summary Old School's "80s Related Articles" Summary Old School's "Top 10 List" Summary Stuck in the 80s Popdose Like Totally 80s The Interactive 80's Network The Retroist Pop Candy Culture Brats Child of the 1980's.com UK 80sNostalgia.com Slicing Up Eyeballs The Great 80s Blog Branded In the 80s Best of the 80s Fourth Grade Nothing blog Retro-Awesomeness 80s Blog Retro-Daze Pop Eighties Blog I Miss The Old School Blog Rediscover the 80s blog Under Scoop Fire! Return to the 80s blog The 80s Man blog Forgotten Flix 10% Nerd It Goes to 11 Cult Film Club Big Twinkies by Joel Poirier Imdb CBS Sportsline Wikipedia You Tube List of the Day blog tBlog My Profile Send tMail My tFriends My Images Sponsored Create a Blog! 
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I grew up on military bases in the US and then mostly Europe, Germany, Holland and the UK and my parents always insisted we went to church. If there was a church choir, the choir master's eyes would always light up when the Leskanich girls walked in (all 5 of us) because we almost make an instant choir. You could expect to be at one base for two to three years so the turnover left a lot of church choirs low on singers at times.
How did you end up having your name featured in the band's name? Please also tell us about what Kimberley Rew brought and meant to the group. 
but only Attic Records in Canada responded with an offer. Consequently, although they were based in England, Katrina and The Waves' first album Walking On Sunshine was released only in Canada. The band would eventually sign an international record deal with Capitol Records in 1985.
I thought the "whoa oh" bit was way too high but Kim kinda pushed us all. Honestly at the time it was just another song and one that never went down well live when everybody was waiting for us to get off so they could hear Blue Monday. I said to Kim "that Sunshine song keeps going through my head" and he thought it was a good sign. The 1985 version differed in that Scott Litt, a fresh-off-the-rack record producer added the drum intro which, together with a hot summer, made it irresistible for radio DJs.
When we got signed for an international deal by Capitol Records out of Los Angeles, they wanted to go with "Do You Want Crying" as the first single. Capitol sent out a sampler of four tracks and all the DJs said, "It's the Sunshine song because we can talk over the intro and it's got the right energy for summer". 1985 was a very hot year for English artists breaking in the U.S. and it was a scorcher everywhere in the States that year so the song was at home on the airwaves. It was a case of right place at the right time with the right song. 
although I was independent and had lived on my own for six years in the UK, the success threw me outta whack. I was lucky to be in a band of guys and have a female manager who always took good care of me and stepped up whenever they could to support me and help me cope. But the reality of it is, the press really only want to talk to the girl and all the focus was on me. I felt uncomfortable with that and then, when I realized I had to step up and be the "star", it turned me into a real nightmare for a while so it was hard to find the balance.
We didn't really know how important (or viewed) the video would become and you can see we are not that bothered and keep making stupid faces to each other. At the end of the song I am only shaking my head a lot to hide the fact I didn't bother to memorize the last outro bit of singing.
want to hear this music again as I thought a lot of it was quite pompous and took itself way too seriously. The same as for the clothes! Now it's just nice for me that people still want to hear it and I kinda like a lot more of the music more than I used to. I was a bit of a snob and thought only the old music of the 60s and 70s was any good. These days 80s music IS the old music. Ha, ha!
Ellie Greenwich and I've got my own band in the UK plus a lot of other great bands I work with all across Europe. Although this is still my living, there is more focus on fun and enjoyment and if it's not then I won't do it.
This time that awesomeness is Michael O'Keefe. He is probably best remembered as "Danny Noonan" in 1980's Caddyshack which continues to be one of my favorite comedies of all time. Some might not remember that prior to that he received an Oscar nomination for his role as Robert Duvall's son in 1979's The Great Santini. O'Keefe has worked steadily since in film and television as well as stage taking on both comedy and drama in well over 100 roles and counting. Find out a little about him, making Caddyshack and more as we get on to some selections from my interview with Michael O'Keefe...
What do you remember about going through all of the Academy Awards hoopla and all of that positive attention? What can you tell us about your experience working with Robert Duvall?
What do you remember about the audition process? You seemed like one of the only characters who could really swing a golf club, did that play any role in you getting the part?
But over the years it has gained an increased following and is now considered a cult classic. I consider it one of the funniest movies ever made and I am certainly not alone in that opinion. It was directed by Harold Ramis and co-written by Ramis along with Doug Kenney and Brian Doyle-Murray. The film was shot over 11 weeks during the autumn of 1979 and starred Chevy Chase, Ted Knight, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray as well as Michael O'Keefe. O'Keefe plays caddy "Danny Noonan" who is trying to earn enough money so that he can go to college and ends up facing some women problems and rising to the pressure of a high stakes golf match. Here is the original trailer for Caddyshack...
What can you tell us about Knight and your experience working with him?
made the cast and crew present on the closed set for your love-making scene with "Lacey" remove their shirts to help make Cindy Morgan feel more comfortable. Can you confirm that story?
Harold Ramis and your experience working with and being directed by him?
So, when it finally took off we were all amazed. 
Jack Nicholson and in 1987's Ironweed you even played his son. What can you tell us about Nicholson and your experiences working with him?
When I decided at about the age of 20 or 21 to pursue acting full time, I told my father. He then made a deal with me that if I got a job within a year, then I wouldn't have to go back to school. He insisted I get a job, so I started taking these workshops at Second City in Toronto. It's a long story, but I started working as an extra on SCTV and I met Bernie Sahlins, the producer at Chicago's Second City, I asked him if he had a job available, he said he did, I waited two weeks and he never called me. I told my parents that I had a job offer, borrowed my Dad's credit card and I went down to Chicago. At the same time, I had been working on getting my American citizenship because my mother was an American. I auditioned for Second City Chicago on August 4, 1978. The same day they offered me a job. I called my mother and she told me that my passport had arrived in the mail, so I figured that was my ticket out of Canada. I worked at Second City in Chicago for eight years. I toured for three years and was in the main company for five. That's really where I learned how to act, how to improvise and how to work.
Second City was originally John Candy. He really was a wonderful person and obviously a great performer. Sadly, he is missed after dying way too young. He was also a really, really good teacher. I would say, first and foremost, John Candy. He was working on SCTV in Toronto, so he wasn't in the company. When I went down to Chicago, the ones I worked with in my main stage company were Richard Kind, Isabella Hofmann, Meagan Fay, Mike Hagerty, Jim Belushi, Lance Kinsey, Tim Kazurinsky, Mary Gross and many others. There were many names. There were lots of others who are famous, but famous more for creating shows and producing and not necessarily famous as actors.
The Blues Brothers and a bunch of others came in. As luck would have it, John Hughes wanted to meet a lot of local actors. I didn't know who John Hughes was at the time, so I did a little bit of research. I found out that he had worked in advertising, he obviously worked on the National Lampoon and he'd written some great stuff for the Lampoon. I had some friends who were hip to that and that were total "Lampooniacs". I went in for the audition and Jackie Burch was the casting director for what was going to be Sixteen Candles. And I just did a kick ass audition. I am not sure what the Ryszczyk's were supposed to originally be like, but I think that after they saw me they changed the temperament of the family and went more ethnic deciding them to be more Italian-American. I think initially they were thinking in a different way for the family, they saw me and liked my audition so much that they tailored the family more around who I was. The Ryszczyk's became who they were, a sort of dubious-where-they-got-th eir-money-from ethnic family who had definitely a different slant on things compared to the Baker family. It sort of fell together as these things tend to do. 
He was a very difficult guy to communicate with later on in his career and after he stopped working because he was elusive. Many people who knew him better than I did have talked about his elusiveness. When I first met him, he was very, very engaging. He was totally into his work. He really knew that he wanted to do these movies. He was a man on a mission. He had written so much and he was so hell-bent on getting this stuff down on film the way he wanted it to be that there was a specific nature to his game. I could see that his wife, Nancy, was very, very supportive of him. He had a very tight group of people around him that worked for him. There was part of John that ruled by intimidation. I think that he was somewhat passive-aggressive in his behavior. He would never tell anybody anything negative directly, but you would hear if somebody fell out of favor or if something wasn't working through his minions. He was very specific. He had a very tight relationship with Anthony Michael Hall, as you might imagine, who was basically his alter-ego. John was really kind to me.
I remember the first scene where I come in and they are all in the library. I am emptying the garbage can and I say "Hey Bri" and "That clock's 20 minutes fast" and that whole sequence. There was a moment in that sequence that, after shooting eight or nine takes, John asked me to improvise since he knew I was from Second City. That we could come up with stuff on the spot is one of the reasons he liked working with me. An example of that which ended up in the film is during the scene in the basement with Vernon, I came up with the line "When I was a kid I wanted to be John Lennon". That's my line. What John would let me do and what we had a really great time doing was improvising. There was a moment in the scene in the library when I looked at them all and, before I say "That clock's 20 minutes fast", I tell them where I think they're all going to be 30 years from now. It was a great improvised speech and lasted two to three minutes of solid screen time. We shot it and I thought that maybe it would be in the movie. Dede Allen, the late great film editor, put her arm around me and said, "When I cut Gene Hackman out of Bonnie & Clyde..." and I stopped her asking her what she meant. She said, "That whole thing you did here, out. This whole thing you did there, out." So basically I improvised a lot of things with John that didn't make the final movie which was disappointing, but at least we had the actual opportunity of doing it.
I can't say that I really knew the guy because I found him to keep himself very much behind a facade. He protected that part of him. He was very observant. He had a very good eye and when you were around him you sort of felt like you were being scanned into his computer. If you met with his approval, that would be a good thing.
They did shoot for a week or so, maybe less. But Rick insisted on playing the part with a big set of gold teeth, a chain with a wad of keys hanging between his legs which he would play with provocatively and a thick Russian accent. He wanted to do it as sort of a broad SCTV type of character that he was prone to playing. John went with it for a few days, but then he asked Rick if he had read the script because this guy was supposed to have gone to this high school. So they had a definite parting of the ways. I was in New York at the time working with Second City off-Broadway at The Village Gate. Long story short, I'm flown back to Chicago the next day and started working on the movie. An offer was made directly to me and nobody else was being considered for the part at that point. After Rick Moranis was let go, John just got in touch with me. I have to admit, I was initially disappointed when I heard they were shooting The Breakfast Club and I wasn't involved because John had said during Sixteen Candles that he had a part for me in his next film. So he had talked to me about "Carl the janitor" and he had sort of promised it to me. But as much as anything gets promised to you in show business, it gets taken away just as easily. When I read in the trades, literally the day before I ended up getting the part, that they were shooting it in Chicago I thought, "Well, there that goes." It was Kismet, fortunately for me, Rick Moranis and John had a parting of the ways, so I came in and started working.
I had a little bit of a stylistic clash with Paul Gleason who played "Principal Vernon". We ended up becoming friends later and I went to his funeral [he passed in 2006]. I liked Paul a lot, but initially he was a little bit tough on me and didn't necessarily like what I was doing. John [Hughes] did like what I was doing. We shot the scene in the basement where I see him going through the files and he was improvising a little trying to extend his screen time in a way. John asked me to cut him off by just saying, "50 bucks". If you look in the movie and see Paul's reaction when I say "50 bucks", he is really actually pissed because I'm cutting him off. After they yelled cut, he even started pushing me and we almost got into a little fight there. To let you in a little behind the scenes, there was slight tension between us that is evident in the film. When he goes, "Carl, don't be a goof", he's also laying it on John Kapelos the actor to not be a goof. For some scenes, you shoot one actor's lines straight on and then come around and shoot the other actor's lines. In another case, we shot Paul's lines first and then they came around on me. 
John started to ask me to do something different visually and Paul said, "If I would've known he was going to do that, then I would've done something different, so you have to come back and re-shoot my lines." John said that we didn't have the time and it wasn't necessary to do that. So there were incidents like that with Paul. Paul Gleason was good friends with Robert Duvall and there was sort of a machismo in the way he worked. It worked perfectly for the part of the principal. A lot of Paul Gleason is in that character. He was kind of a no-nonsense, jock, not much of sense of humor, old school guy. It all worked out in the wash.
Her father is a jazz musician and I believe he is blind. I remember Molly's sister, too. Molly had a really strong support group around her. I remember Michael Hall, of course especially in Sixteen Candles but also in The Breakfast Club, just how bright and amazingly funny he was. I really, really liked him. It was obvious that he and John had a kinetic relationship and they were close, close, close. You know Judd Nelson is only a few years younger than me [Kapelos was 28 years old and Nelson 25 when The Breakfast Club was released] and he was playing a teenager in the film while I was playing an adult. Judd's still pretty much the same guy. I saw him recently and he hasn't changed much. He still has that "John Bender" teenage rock n roll rebellion aspect to him. I don't know how well that ages, but that's another story. I never really got close to the guys on the set because by the time I got there they were already pretty much a unit. They all kind of looked at me askance. When I shot The Breakfast Club, I literally found out where the janitor's room was at the high school we were shooting at and I hung out there. When I'm working, I like to stay quiet and focused, although I do like to chat with people at times. I really, really liked all of them. 
I particularly liked Ally Sheedy. Ally was very smart and, you can tell by some of the work she's done since, very intense and very focused. I really liked the conversations and discussions we had. I remember specifically going out for a walk with her around the high school and having a really good talk. These weren't life-long bonding experiences. Working on a film is somewhat like working in a gypsy camp. You make friends quickly and you're lucky if you keep in touch with them over time. The fact of the matter is that I really, really enjoyed working with all of these kids. There was never a moment where they behaved in a negative way. There was a time when I made a joke about Martin Sheen in front of Emilio Estevez not knowing that he was his father and he sort of gave me an icy reply. I think that maybe he and I had the least friendly relationship, but it certainly wasn't unfriendly. He's just a pretty intense keep-to-himself kind of guy and I don't think we had any personal chemistry as it were. You know it's funny, my recollections of these actors is that they will always be young in my brain and when I see them now, I go "wow!"
it was a good movie when it came out. I didn't realize that the quality of the film was going to be as high as it was, as strange as that is to say. I mean there were production aspects, Johnny Corso's set, Universal's publicity, the whole nature of the movie. I think that The Breakfast Club is, rightfully so, a classic film now. I do believe it has stood the test of time. There are so many from the 80s that just do not. One of the main reasons I think the film works is because it's honest, it doesn't pull punches and it was one of the very first films that talked to teenagers on their own level, it didn't talk down to them.
Ferris Bueller was an odd experience because he was sort of counting on me to be something and I think I kind of let him down or the part wasn't constructed well enough. I played the cab driver that drove them all throughout the downtown area, but they edited the part right out of the movie. I don't think the part was well-conceived or necessarily well-written because it was sort of thrown together at the last minute. I think in that regard, if I really look back at it overall (and I have never really said this to anyone so this is your exclusive), maybe after that moment he decided he would move on to a different group of actors. Maybe there was somewhat of a break point that happened there. Because he then did go off and work with different groups of actors and his success was such that John had anybody in Hollywood he wanted to work with. He developed long-term relationships with other actors like John Candy, of course.
The story goes that he was shooting a film, it was the last night of shooting and he wanted to go an extra shot but the studio shut down the set. He was so upset that he literally went to the airport, got on a plane, flew back to Chicago and never came back to L.A. Whether that story is true or not, it sounds pretty dramatic. I think that it might be at least partially true that he left L.A. and never really came back to Hollywood. He really felt, and I think this might be part of his naivety and his ego at play, and always believed that his creative ideas took precedence over any economic factor or sanctions a studio might put on him when making a film. In other words, he felt that money was beginning to trump him too often. Those controlling the money in Hollywood were becoming too intrusive into his world. John had a real healthy image of himself. 
You know, he had a big ego. I think it was indulged and, in a lot of ways, he and Hollywood did not understand one another on a basic level. That's my take on it, humble though it may be.
Next to that would be The Boost [1988] which was with James Wood and Sean Young. Those are some of the other films that I have particular pride in.
I did my short film Commentary about three years ago which went to Sundance. I'm in the process of prepping a film that I'm going to direct called Palmerston Avenue and another one called The Visiting Professor which we are developing the script for. So I want to direct and do more of that in the near future.
