Michael Madsen

Well, earlier this year in August I got invited to go to Chicago by a guy who has a chain of theaters called Hollywood Boulevard Movie Theaters. They actually serve food in the movies. You can go in and drink a beer at dinner and watch a movie.

He’s been trying to get a license in California but they just laughed when he tried to get the concept going. But anyway, they invited me there because they got a print of Reservoir Dogs and they showed it over a weekend. David Carradine was there with me. We signed autographs and promoted the screening. They showed Kill Bill 2 and Reservoir Dogs and I got to see Dogs on the big screen for the first time in quite a while. It’s been on TV so many times but that’s really not the best way to see it. It’s really a movie that should be seen on the screen. I forgot how good it is. But it was pretty cool.

Yeah, I do that. I guess I got over looking at myself a long time ago. When I do I look at it, I still think of the very different things that I could have and should have done. But whatever, you don’t want to get too self-indulgent otherwise you’ll end up in an insane asylum or you’ll put a fucking bullet in your head.

Well, I think what happened is when Dogs got made, it had a pretty good cult following and then when Pulp Fiction came out all of a sudden everybody went back and took a second look at Reservoir Dogs. So it became this big thing. But it wasn’t actually global until after Pulp Fiction.

I don’t really have any study skills. I didn’t spend a lot of time in acting classes and I am an impatient fellow. Once I decided I was going to try to be a film actor I pretty much just started doing it without really taking the time to study. Sometimes that really works for people and other times it doesn’t. I know Jimmy Stewart never went to an acting class so I guess I’m in good company there. Quentin let me do pretty much what I wanted to do and that’s why me and him get along and that’s why we understand each other. He never really tried to force me into any certain style. I guess I interpreted what he wrote and tried to bring it to life. There were a lot of adlibs that I did off the cuff.

Well I’ve been amazed at over the years how Reservoir Dogs has pretty much turned into the movie about the cop who gets his ear cut off. It’s really strange. I know Quentin never really intended for that to be the focus of the picture but it ended up that way. When I’m holding it there in my hand and I speak into it, that wasn’t in the script.

I was standing there with the damn thing and I didn’t know what to do with it and Quentin was off screen saying “Throw it, throw it, toss it.” I thought about that for a second and all of a sudden I just spoke into it. It was just a spontaneous thing but I didn’t know if he was going to leave it in the picture or not. There was a lot of stuff like that, that he let me get away with and there were a lot of things I tried to do that he didn’t keep in the picture. Like when Chris Penn comes in, I had a Zippo lighter in my hand and the flame was still lit and Chris leans over and blows it out before he thunders over and starts yelling at Mr. Orange. Quentin didn’t want me to do that so that was out of the movie.

You’ve got to give Quentin credit for reaching up into the atmosphere and grabbing a select bunch of guys that came to his mind for whatever reason. I feel fortunate that I was one of them. I don’t really know to this day why he thought of me. I’ve heard different stories about how he wanted me for Mr. Blonde and I’m not sure which is true. I had worked with Harvey Keitel in Thelma & Louise but my scenes with Harvey in that picture were cut out in the movie for plot reasons or for time or some shit. I was regretful of that because me and him got along pretty good. [Thelma & Louise director] Ridley [Scott] let us make up a bunch of stuff up when we were doing our scenes.

[some crazy loud animal screech] That’s my fucking parrot.

It’s a big red Macaw, he’s driving me crazy. I’m going to snap his neck.

I had one of those too, he was a chimp but he’s gone now.

[laughs] Yeah, I got a fucking zoo over here.

Our scenes got cut out so when I heard that Harvey was attached to Reservoir Dogs it was one of the big reasons why I took the film. In fact, I wanted to play Mr. Pink because he had a lot of scenes with Harvey. But Quentin was stuck on the idea of me being Mr. Blonde and I kept saying “No man, I want to be Mr. Pink and I want to work with Harvey and have more scenes with him and Mr. Pink gets away with the diamonds.” But he didn’t really want to listen to that.

Well the guy’s nuts. Sometimes when someone’s nuts you’ve really got to give him a little leeway. You can’t really be judgmental of someone who’s nuts, you just say, “Well, ok, he’s fucking nuts.” Lawrence Tierney was a big guy and he was really boisterous and he had a lot of bravado and was a tough son of a gun too. He didn’t even want to be an actor. He didn’t even like being an actor. He hated actors but I guess he got stuck in it and didn’t know what else to do. At the time when Quentin came along to get him he wasn’t even in movies anymore. He took a big swing at me one time and missed me by about a couple inches. He took this great big, right, roundhouse swing at me and just missed me; I felt the breeze of it going by.

No, he was mad at me about something. I saw him at the Hollywood Athletic Club and he comes over and he says, “Give me 20 bucks. Give me 20 bucks.” I’m like “What the fuck are you talking about?” “Give me 20 bucks. Come on! Come on! Give me 20 bucks.” I’m like “But Lawrence why do you need it? He’s like “Give me 20 bucks you fucking asshole.” I said, “Lawrence, Lawrence, Lawrence please, what’s wrong?” He said, “Loan me 20 bucks.” I said, “No man, I’m not going to give you 20 bucks.” Then he took this big swing at me and I’m like “Whoa!”

[laughs] I just start laughing and I said, “You’re insane.” Then he comes up and he says, “Listen kid, listen, I’ve got this lawn furniture. Want some lawn furniture?” I’m like “No man, I really don’t.” He’s like, “Take it, take it, take it.” And I go, “No, I don’t want the fucking lawn furniture.” But I ended up giving him 20 bucks. He was a dangerous guy but I don’t think it was malicious. I think it was just the way he was. He was just the real deal.

Yeah, what’s Suicide Girls?

It sounds good. I love the title.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

I’d love to see that man, that’d be really funny.

Well the thing is I’m not a dancer. It’s not something that I do so I didn’t want to do it. I kept saying to Quentin “Can’t I just go over and cut the ear off and just get out of it?” But he says, “No, it has to be this way.” In the screenplay it said, Mr. Blonde maniacally dances around the manacled cop. I never exactly knew what he wanted me to do. I said, “What? Do you want me to be like Mick Jagger? What do you want me to do?” We had like a week of rehearsal before we shot the movie and we rehearsed every single scene and he had everything all laid out so that he knew exactly where he was going to put the camera. Everything was blocked out almost like a stage play so that's when we got to the warehouse and it was time to shoot, everybody already knew where they were going to be. We didn’t have to waste a bunch of time with blocking and figuring out who was going to be where. It was a lot easier for [cinematographer] Andrzej [Sekula] because he had a preconceived idea of how to light everything. But every time during rehearsal when we got to the point where I was supposed to dance, I always asked Quentin to just stop because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I said, “Look, trust me, when the day comes and he’s in that chair, I will do it. Turn that camera on and I’ll figure out what to do.” I really had a hard time figuring out what I was going to do. Quentin let it go and never forced me to give him any idea of what I was going to do. Finally when the day came, I knew what my parameters were as far as where I could move in the room so we just shot it.

I asked him what music he was going to have and he wanted to use Ballroom Blitz. I said, “Well why don’t you play Ballroom Blitz for me on the set and I’ll play the scene to that.” Quentin goes, “Well what I really want is Steelers Wheels’ Stuck in the Middle but I don’t have the rights to it yet.” I said, “Well, what are you thinking?” He said, “Well, I think that if we all say a prayer I’ll get the rights to it, so why don’t you think of Steelers Wheels.” They gave me a little transistor and I put it in my ear and you can almost see it in the wide shot, if you look close. But it’s in my right ear which is why I play the whole thing to my left. But I had a transistor in my ear and they were playing Stuck in the Middle into it. It evolved in the moment and we shot it four times four different ways. I did it once right into the lens as if the lens was the cop. I did it once where it was very gory and you actually see the ear coming off. Then I did it once where the camera pans away and that’s the one that he used in the movie.

I’m the only one from the movie that did a voice in it. All the other guys had their own reasons for not doing it. I wouldn’t try to say why. It didn’t have anything to do with any animosity. There was no money involved either, but I was happy to do it because I’ve got five sons and my boys love that movie and I couldn’t really let a videogame come out without my voice in it, they never would forgive me.

Well it was there in everybody’s imagination. Quentin pretty much told us, “it is whatever you think it is.” Back then he was just a young eager filmmaker. I think he made the exact picture that he wanted to make and you’ve got to remember he wrote Natural Born Killers and True Romance but he couldn’t get them made. People didn’t want to make those pictures. They didn’t want to give Quentin a break. They could care less about him or the movie he wanted to make. Finally he got to make Dogs on a very low budget because he had Harvey Keitel. Whatever they came up with in the videogame is their concept and their idea of what might have happened.

Well I’ve done a lot, but not necessarily the ones I wanted to do. I’ve finally got to the point now, where I’m going to start producing my own stuff. I’ve got a couple of really good scripts. I did one earlier this year in Vancouver called Vice which is a detective drama. I brought in Daryl Hannah and I got Andrzej Sekula to be the director of photography. Andrzej wants to direct now but he came and shot it for me. It is a really dark police drama about a private detective who gets involved in some pretty heavy duty shit. It’s almost like Bad Lieutenant or King of New York. Then I went to Ireland and did a movie called Strength and Honor. I play a prize fighter who killed a guy in the ring and then promises his family that he’ll never box again. Then he finds out his son needs an operation or he’s going to die and the only thing he can do to make the money to pay for the operation is to fight. Vinnie Jones is in the movie so I have this big fight with Vinnie at the end of the film. I was a producer on that too. So that’s what I’m trying to do. I want to do my own pictures and I want to produce my own stuff. I want to just make the stuff that I want to do because I’ve been a puppet for a long time.

First of all I should have really gotten a lot more to do in that movie than I did. The only reason [Robert] Rodriguez gave me the part was because he said that if the film was successful he’d be happy to give me a much bigger role in the sequel. That’s what I was counting on. I was only in Austin, Texas for four days. Most of my scenes were with Bruce [Willis] and we shot those scenes really quick and everybody got to have all sorts of makeup and all sorts of devices to make their characters work but I really didn’t have any of that. I never had time to do any of that stuff because I was cast at the last minute so when I made it to Austin there was nothing for me to do but put on a pair of glasses and a big coat. But if they make the sequel Bob is going to have more to do.

Sure. There’s not a film I’m not proud of.

[laughs] I don’t understand the kid in that movie [Jonathan Silverman]. I don’t know what the fascination is with that. I know that Lou Gossett is a great guy and a wonderful actor. But again it was an interesting role but when you’re the third lead or the fourth lead in a buddy picture, you’re bound to get fucked. When you get yourself into these things and it’s a great character and a good role, you better be careful. If you’re spot on, all the focus of the film will go on that character and the producers really don’t want that to happen so they end up chopping your character, disseminating it and turning it into a little cameo appearance so it doesn’t overshadow the story. I’ve taken some parts to keep a roof over my head and feed my children and I guess that movie would qualify as one of those. But even when I do something like that I try to give it my best but once you walk off the set then they take that thing in the editing room and they can do anything they want to you. They can crucify your performance in the editing room or they can make it better. More often than not they want the focus to be on the good guy and unless you’re a director like Tarantino or Roger Donaldson, you’re going to get fucked. I did my best but they ruthlessly cut me out of that thing. It was a miserable experience.

Yes I just put out a book of poetry this past summer called Signs of Life. It’s a photography book with short stories and poems in it.

The publisher is 13 Hands and they are a small publisher. I didn’t really set out to be a writer, that’s for sure. I have written a lot of stuff and it ended up in a book. The first run of that thing sold out of print and I was really surprised. Red Hen Press just gave me an award of appreciation which they gave to Viggo Mortensen last year. I’m happy if there’s an appreciation for it.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck