Brion James Interview by Craig Edwards

Brion James has been a reliable character actor for 20 years now. Although recognized by most for roles in BLADE RUNNER and 48 HOURS, he’s been in dozens of interesting movies, usually playing villains (sometimes very funny ones) and nobody could mistake his face for anybody else. He works now more than ever, but ft seems like James is lucky to be alive at all. Edwards interviewed him when he came to Wilmingham to play a role in the recent George Lucas production RADIOLAND MURDERS. James tells it from the beginning.

‘My early life … strange. Grew up in a big family. Five kids. I was born just at the end of WWII. My folks were both working. My dad was running the post office in Beaumont, California, a little farm town out in Southern California. My dad built the Beaumont Theatre in 1939. He wanted to volunteer for the war, but the government to didn’t want him to go into the army, they wanted him keep the show open, and keep people entertains they didn’t go crazy. So I was at the show every night of my life from the time I was two years old. 1947 is my first recollection of being at the theatre, and I was two years old then… saw THE RED SHOES. It was like the film CINEMA PARADISO, I was at the show every night of my life. I stayed with my dad at the projector, and by the age of five I was changing reels. I worked the snack bar and all that stuff. So I grew up with the movies. In the 40s and 50s going to the show was really an event. On Saturdays they had giveaways and prizes and I’d get up on stage with my dad and do the drawings, and my brothers and I would get up and do little talent shows. I loved ft all and I know that’s why I’m an actor today.’

‘I went to college, San Diego State, and took drama and then I took off and traveled for a while … made some money, went to Europe … that was all part of my education. I came back and I always wanted to act. I tried pre-law in college and that was a big mistake. I lasted about a half a year. Wrong! I guess my image was being a trial lawyer, which in a way is being an actor. But seeing some of these guys on TV now, they’re not very good actors (laughs), so I went to San Francisco. I had come back to L.A., but I couldn’t find an acting teacher, so I went to San Francisco and Wnda checked out for a year, became a sorta hippie outlaw. During the psychedelic revolution of the 60s, you know, drop in, drop out, or be in … one of those things. I did all those things.

And then my buddy Tim Thomerson, who’s a film actor (Ed: they were cooks in the Army together), he and I decided to go to New York Years before, Anthony Zerbe, who is a great character actor, told us if you want to be an actor you have to go to New York In those days all the teachers were in New York: Strasberg, Stella Adler, Uta Hagen. All the great teachers were in New York. Nobody was really on the West Coast. So I hopped on a plane with a hundred bucks and took off.

‘Got to New York and ended up being Stella Adler’s servant, along with Tim. Tim, his wife and myself were her slaves basically, in exchange for free acting lessons, which were very expensive in those days, this was 1970-71. Four or five thousand a year, which was like cartoon money to me in those days because I didn’t have a dime! (laughs). That’s when I started doing stand up comedy. Tim and I would go down to the Improvisation, the original one in New York, with Freddie Prinze, and all those guys were getting started. I spent two years studying there. I did off Broadway, off-off Broadway, whatever I could, you know. I got my craft with Stella. She was the best. She was the only person in this country who brought the Stanislavski technique from Russia to here because she went to Europe and studied with him. Nobody else did that Strasberg, all those other guys took a bastardized version of that. Stella taught the pure Method, where Brando learned ft initially and everybody else, she taught everybody from him down. I got the craft, came back to L.A. and did a play with Tim and got noticed from that and started working. And you know, I started out with the one day jobs, ‘he went thataway’ stuff. The old series, GUNSMOKE, THE F.B.I., GET CHRISTIE LOVE, some of those are back now! And I worked my way up. Just hung in there. Now ft’s 20 years later, I’ve got about 70 movies under my belt, about 100 television shows … I feel I’m just getting started!

“I love westerns. I’m really glad westerns are back I basically came to L.A. to be in westerns. It was like a childhood dream when I got to be on one of the last GUNSMOKE episodes. It was one of my first jobs, a day’s work in the Long Branch saloon, with Doc and Miss Kitty. It was great.’ James was cast as bad guys right away. “Yeah, on TV, it was on an episode of GET CHRISTIE LOVE, which was a black woman who was a cop. Because they saw me as a rural, I figured I’ll push that, whatever it takes to get in. So I started playing what I call ‘barnyard heavies.’ I think the first heavy that had an impact for me on television was in ROOTS. I was a slave stealer. I would steal slaves from people, then take them around and sell them again. So that established me as a heavy, because I was a really nasty guy. You know, when you’re whipping people and you’ve got them in chains, people say, ‘Oh, he’s a bad guy,’ and ft caught on. They’re the best parts. I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve played some great villains. And there are all kinds of villains. You know, I never play a villain that I don’t have something I can either do or say so the audience sees there is something redeemable about them. In other words, I don’t want to do evil for evil’s sake. I don’t want to do Jason slasher movies. There’s no point in that. The interesting part of the process is developing the character, you know, why did he become that? Why is the guy a murderer, or why is this guy a pervert, or whatever he is. So that’s the fun part for me to delve into the abyss. And you know, I play out negative fantasies for people. I’m the guy people love to hate, but they love ft. And they always remember the bad guy’ (laughs).

The same year (77) as ROOTS, James was in the LSD horror movie BLUE SUNSHINE and stood out by imitating Rodan. The next year he was in KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK as a security guard at Magic Mountain. His friend Anthony Zerbe plays the phantom who poisons him. “The film that really got me going in the movies as a film actor was SOUTHERN COMFORT (81). 1 played a one-armed Cajun trapper in the Walter Hill film. And that year was a great year, a quantum leap year for me. I did a lot of movies in the 70s, big films, but ft was a few days here, a week there. So I did SOUTHERN COMFORT and right after that I got BLADE RUNNER and BLADE RUNNER is one of the best science fiction movies ever made, it’s a cult classic worldwide and that really took a leap, and then right after that, I did 48 HOURS (also by Hill). So I went from the swamps, to space, to the police station in one year and people at that time couldn’t believe it was the same actor, because when I played the Cajun, I really learned the patois, the accent and I had a beard, people thought they’d hired a guy out of the swamps, which was my intention, because my whole deal when I do accents or dialects is I gotta fool the locals. If I fool the locals then I’ve done my job. If I play a guy in the swamps I can fool a guy in Kansas because he doesn’t know, but I gotta fool the Cajuns. When I did TANGO AND CASH, I played a Cockney assassin and I had an East London guy teach me that accent so a lot of people thought I was English then.’ James was Leon the replicant in BLADE RUNNER. “I love science fiction films. To do those films there are no rules of behavior. It hasn’t been yet, so who’s to say? You don’t have to conform to any kind of rules. The greatest opportunity to do that was on BLADE RUNNER. We were replicants, so we could do anything we wanted. And that’s fun for an actor, because it opens up your imagination.”

ENEMY MINE — with Dennis Quaid
HEAR NO EVIL is a 82 TV movie, worth catching for its cast including Wings Hauser, James, Bemie Casey, Mimi Rogers and even Raven De La Croix. Gil Gerard stars as a deaf cop who battles bikers. By 85 James was playing major roles in many expensive big studio releases including SILVERADO and ENEMY MINE (he was excellent as Stubbs). Two of James’ most interesting mid-80s features though are Paul Verhoeven’s, medieval epic FLESH AND BLOOD staring Rutger Hauer and Sam Raimi’s period comedy collaboration with the Coen Brothers CRIME WAVE (aka THE XYZ MURDERS). James dominated CRIME WAVE as the cartoonish Arthur, the rat-like rat exterminator. James used his own voice but someone dubbed the voice of his partner Codish (Paul Smith). Both of these features were commercial flops but are or should be cult films by now. The reason James had little or nothing to say about these movies and that time period is possibly because of bad memories, or considering the shape he was in, probably no memories at all.

‘I kinda was like Jekyll and Hyde for years, 25 years. In the 60s when pot and all that stuff started coming out, I was a drinker. I was born an alcoholic and an overeater and all those things. I worked in a liquor store when I was 12, so you know I had access to booze very early in life, take the trash out at night, take a bottle with it. Being a different kind of kid, oversensitive and all that, it fixed me. It made me comfortable in my skin, so I’d be like, ‘Oh, I like this,’ and every time I tried something else, ft would be, ‘Oh I like this too – this works.’ So I went from booze to pot to acid to mescaline to coke to heroin over a period of ten years. So I had two lives going. I was an outlaw in my attitudes. I called myself a hippie gangster then, just because that was high drama for me and I needed drama in my life. I wasn’t working yet as an actor, so I liked the drama of getting stoned and they tell me I wasn’t going to come back and I nearly didn’t, but I did. First I partied with it, then I became successful and I was still doing drugs and I got into hard drugs. I think part of it is that I went from fear of failure to fear of success, because it came quick. You know the old thing about the small town boy goes to the big city and gets his butt kicked.

‘I went home once at 31 and tried to kick heroin. I cleaned up, made a comeback, still drinking, and I started doing it again and I got more successful. I couldn’t say no to jobs and I couldn’t say no to drugs. It was great for the in-betweens so I never had to come down, I’d get high from a movie, I’d be somebody else because I didn’t particularly like me, so long as I had a script in my hand, I was okay. As soon as the movie was over, I didn’t know what to do. So I got into the habit of filling these gaps with drugs and alcohol. It got terrible and I tried to get sober for years, in and out of hospitals, jails, methadone programs, all that stuff. And I hid it fairly well, I was functional. I always showed up for work and I was always good. I have that old Irish work ethic, you get up, you go to work, no matter what happens, no matter how you feel. So, I never missed work.’ Editor Note: One actress he didn’t hide it well from was Susan Tyrrell (also in FLESH AND BLOOD). When interviewed for PV (#6) she went on about how horrible he was and said he threw up on the airplane. In a rare case of cutting something from an interview, I doubted and left out her revealing complaints. It turns out she was right (and unfortunately reportedly has a drug problem herself).

‘And it was much more allowed in the 70s. Everybody was doing drugs, so long as you showed up and did your work, they’d use you until you died. And then they’d get somebody else. It’s not that way today. The studios don’t tolerate it. But it all finally caught up with me. Jekyll and Hyde became the same guy. I was 40 years old, and I finally got sober once and for all. It was right after ENEMY MINE. I bottomed out. I was on the street and I was ripping off car radios to get high and I was shooting speedballs – heroin and cocaine – what River Phoenix died of (Note: and John Belushi). I finally just surrendered. I prayed to God for help and I put myself in a recovery house called Studio 12. It was for people in the business and you didn’t have to have any money to go, which was good because I was broke. I started twelve step programs, I don’t name them by name, because that’s against the tradition, but I belong to all of them. I went to all the business meetings. But they worked. And I dropped out of the business. I got scared because I had been successful and I thought if I was sober I wouldn’t be interesting, all those fears, which were unfounded.

‘My first year of sobriety, I did an A-TEAM, that was about 30 days after getting sober. I was pretty shaky. Then I did CHERRY 2000 (PV #12), a little sci fi thing. But I worked my way back up. Since 1985, I’ve done 30 or 40 films. But it was a long process, and it’s a daily process, one day at a time and all that. And it’s not an option for me anymore. I took ft to the n’th and I’m really fortunate and grateful that I’m not dead, because a lot of my pals that I went through this with have either lost their careers or are dead, or both. There are a lot of casualties.” James also worked with his friend Wings Hauser (PV # 3) in NIGHTMARE AT NOON then in two features directed by Greg Brown (aka Gregory Hippolyte). In DEAD MAN WALKING James is Decker, an orange-haired psychotic killer. STREET ASYLUM was the third Hauser movie. STEEL DAWN was a sci fi SHANE copy starring Patrick Swayze with James in the Van Heflin role and Anthony Zerbe in the Jack Palance role.

James was married in 88, then had a featured role in what could have made him the next Freddy Krueger. THE HORROR SHOW was an attempt by producer Sean Cunningham to create a new series with a Krueger-type supernatural killer. Cunningham’s former partner Wes Craven had, of course, created the original NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. James played Max Jenke, a serial killer who returns after being electrocuted (Lawrence Tierney throws the switch!) and goes after a cop (Lance Henriksen) and his family. As in CRIMEWAVE, James used many voices. Two directors (David Blythe and Jim Isaac) worked on ft and the results were a bit of a mess. James appeared in person at the Times Square premiere. He emerged from a limo and entered the theatre after the screening to sign autographs. HORROR SHOW received the expected Fangoria build up and in one issue James said ‘I consider myself a classical character actor like Lon Chaney, Wallace Beery, Charles Laughton. I always like to play bad guys. I’m real good at psychotic behavior.’

“So in the 80s I started doing more and more movies and getting great roles like ENEMY MINE and HORROR SHOW. But since THE PLAYER, when I came out in THE PLAYER as the head of the movie studio, that crossed me over. It took ten years from BLADE RUNNER to find a crossover role. Because you can definitely get typecast in Hollywood and I was a heavy, though my background is in comedy. I’m a comic actor and I love doing comedy. I did a lot of 70s sitcoms, you know, BENSON and all those shows in the 70s and 80s. THE DUKES OF HAZZARD (laughs). So when I did THE PLAYER, people said, ‘Oh, that’s Brion James – he can play an adult.’ And that’s opened a whole new arena for me, and since then I actually haven’t played a lot of bad guys. I’ve played a lot of cops, like in STRIKING DISTANCE with Bruce VVillis, he was a badass, but he was a cop. I’ve done a lot of television films for CBS like PRECIOUS VICTIMS voth Frederic Forrest, stuff where I played real life cops, vath families. I had a family and I didn’t kill them (laughs), that was growth for me! And I’ve been doing more comedies. CABIN BOY with Chds Elliott. And that’s what I’m doing on RADIOLAND MURDERS. This is 1939 radio. I play a character named Bernie who’s the sponsor of this network. He’s this sour old guy who thinks he knows everything. I don’t want to give away what happens to Bernie, but it’s funny, he ends up doing a lot of laughing and he’s not a laughing kind of guy, so…. well, you’ll see.’ CABIN BOY and RADIOLAND MURDERS were both critical and theatrical disasters, but maybe they’ll catch on as video releases. James is in so many new movies that it doesn’t really seem to matter much.

“It’s really been fun for me in the last couple of years to widen out the kind of stuff that I do. I’ve got nine films coming out in the next year, from video movies to studio features, to independents. I’ve got one coming out with Mickey Rourke called THE LAST RIDE, it’s a modem rodeo picture. I play the town sheriff, who’s actually a real good guy.

So my roles have really varied in the last couple of years, more than just villains. However, if a good villain comes along in a script and it’s a place I haven’t gone before, I’ll jump on it, because I still enjoy doing those roles. It’s great because now I can do all these things. The big Hollywood films are great because you make big dollars (laughs), can’t complain about that! But you get a lot more creative freedom in smaller films. More and more the big studios are only making five or six films a year, but now they spend so much money on one film they run out their budget for the year more quickly. Creatively you get to do a lot more on the independents. I’ll put in a lot of work on a big film like STRIKING DISTANCE or a TANGO AND CASH or ANOTHER 48 HOURS.

“Take ANOTHER 48 HOURS (Note: James’ 4th Walter Hill movie). I had a lot of work that Nick Nolte and I did on that movie, six weeks of research and ft was all gone! They cut it out because they just wanted comedy – action – comedy – action, so the story is all gone, which I think is sad. It happens to a lot of big films because the people element comes out. They just want the flash, what’s going to make this movie make money. On the smaller films, they want more stories. I get to do wackier characters, I mean I did this film called FROGTOWN 11 (PV #18) where I played Professor Tenzer and I just got to go all the way out there with this guy! I never get the chance to do that in a big film. I had so much fun and this film had a very small budget and it’s like a little cult film. But to do those kinds of roles, that’s what really excites me as an actor.

‘Along those lines, I did two films this summer. The first is ART DECO, directed by Philippe Mora. I worked with him on A BREED APART a few years ago. In ART DECO, I play Wexler, a CIA guy. It’s all about surveillance, about how we catch this terrorist that’s coming to blow up L.A. Lots of spies, double agents, ft’s a comedy/political thriller. I actually do a scene in the film with Lyndon Johnson. We worked it out, we got some footage of LBJ rehearsing his retirement speech in 1968 that nobody had ever seen, so I matched myself in with ft and they put it together – it was really wild. And I did a film called PTERODACTYL WOMEN FROM BEVERLY HILLS. It’s a PG family comedy with Beverly D’Angelo. I play two characters in this one.

“The independents are out there because they’re making all kinds of product and there’s not so much risk financially. You can do a film for a small budget and if you just want to sell it to video, that’s fine, you’re going to make a profit and ft’s going to go out there. For the most part, a lot of independent films that I do, they say, ‘Well, it’s going straight to video here in the States and it’ll go to Europe as a feature.’ I don’t care. Because you see these films on HBO, Showtime, whatever and you’re going to get more exposure with that than trying to get a theatrical release in 200 theatres. You can’t compete with those big films, so why bother’? It’s all about Video today anyway. You just can’t make enough product to satisfy the demand. So I’m having a lot of fun. If a big film comes along, then I’ll be glad to do it. I like all kinds of movies. And I still do television. I don’t care. I just want to work. I love to work. I want to do 500 movies.’ James has a good start. Some other recent roles reviewed in these pages include: MOM (PV #10), WISHMAN (17), MUTATOR (10), ULTIMATE DESIRES (13), NEMESIS (16), TIME RUNNER (16), FUTURE SHOCK (18), BRAIN SMASHER (17) and THE DARK (19).

‘One thing I’ve gravitated towards is character leads. I’ve never considered myself a leading man, don’t look like one, don’t want to be one. That’s fine wd me. But in the next few years, I’d like to get into the area of stuff that Robert Duvall does, Gene Hackman, Donald Sutherland, Christopher Lloyd, John Lithgow, Brian Dennehy – those guys are character lead actors. And I can do that, so that’s where I’m headed. The movies that I grew up on, the stars were Everyman. William Bendix was a movie star. I love that! In the last ten years, we’ve got the superhero guys. You have to be chiseled out to be a star, but that’s not real life! How many guys look like Stallone or Schwarzenegger? That’s what I love about European films. The main star in France is Gerard Depardieu and he’s just a guy!

‘I want to direct. I’d like to try that on. Not that I want to become a director, I always want to be an actor. I enjoy the process and ft’s a lot easier than being a director, because I watch these guys and they do a lot of hard work. But I’m interested in doing that because I’ve directed theatre over the years and in the last few years I’ve directed some plays and I like ft. The thing I like about directing is, as a director, at least in theatre, you get to experience all the roles and help create them and let them come to life. That’s fun because you can multiply your fun level. So, I want to direct, but not action films or anything like that. Small people stories on the level of say, sex, lies and videotape. I’ll do that, that’s something I want to do. And I was associate producer on PTERODACTYL WOMEN FROM BEVERLY HILLS, so I’ve also moved into that area as well. Producing is nothing more than bringing all the elements together, connecting people and I’ve been in the business for a long time so I know a lot of people in all different areas. I just call them up and say, ‘Hey,, you wanna do this?,’ and put ft together like that.

‘Now, I’ve switched my obsessive/ compulsive behavior to healthy stuff. I go to the gym every day, I run every rooming. I eat the right stuff. I figure, I abused myself thoroughly for 25 years, so if I obsessively take care of myself for the next 25 years, when I die, I’ll be about even! (laughs) One of the main things that got me sober was that I realized that I was going to throw away this acting career that so few people are fortunate enough to get to do. I worked so hard for that. I wanted it to last. I want to act my whole life. And since turning ft around it’s been great, I’ve been married for six years. I’ve got a wonderful wife who’s an actress and I sponsor a lot of people. One person I can talk about who’s not anonymous like I’m not is Corey, Feldman. Corey’s got four years of sobriety, you know he had a lot of trouble. He was a child star, like River Phoenix, but River didn’t make the cut. I’ve been Corey’s sponsor, now he’s clean, he’s working again. He’s completely turned his life around. I speak wherever I can, when I’m not working, so does Corey. So I’m very active on the other side now, giving something back, to be of service to other people. There’s an epidemic in this country and that’s drugs and alcohol. And ft comes from a lot of dysfunctional family life. So it saved my life. I’m really grateful for that, and that I still have the opportunity to act. To me, acting is teaching, whatever I play is like putting on basic lessons for millions of people. It’s a responsibility, but it’s also a great gift. I abused my God-given talents for years and now I want to make the best of them. So it’s all turned around. That’s why I’m very open about it, I’ll talk about it.”