Joel Murphy

Because they secretly hate children and happiness, every year Hollywood studios unleash terribly clichéd Christmas movies in an effort to cash in on America’s collective holiday joy. While occasionally these movies turn out well (like Elf and … um … did I mention Elf?), for the most part, they are unwatchable crap.

It’s the same themes every year, either some jackass hates his life and hates Christmas, but magically finds redemption and happiness thanks to the help of some divine intervention (A Christmas Carol, It’s A Wonderful Life, Family Man) or a series of “wacky hijinks” befalls the protagonist, almost ruining Christmas, but in the end everything works out just fine (Home Alone, Jingle All the Way, Christmas With the Kranks).

When I’m looking to get into the Christmas spirit, I don’t turn to any of this generic Hollywood garbage, instead I turn to the one movie that timelessly captures the true spirit of the season – Die Hard. So, in an effort to bring a little sunshine and happiness to your hectic holiday season, I am bringing back a special feature to this column – the Old School Movie Review (here are my reviews of Footloose and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). So put on your Santa hat, kick off your shoes and start making fists with your toes, because it’s time to head into Nakatomi Plaza …

If you are unfamiliar with the plot of Die Hard, then frankly, there is something wrong with you and we can’t ever be friends. But, just so we are all up to speed, here is a quick recap – New York City Police Detective John McClane (played by Bruce Willis, who at that point was best known for his role on Moonlighting) flies out to Las Angeles on Christmas Eve in an attempt to reconnect with his estranged wife Holly Gennero (Bonnie Bedelia). McClane is picked up in a limo and heads to his wife’s Christmas party, which is being held at Nakatomi Plaza, a state of the art skyscraper with several floors under construction.

Before John and Holly have much of a chance to work things out, a group of terrorists, led by Hans Gruber, take over Nakatomi Plaza and use the party guests as hostages. However, the “terrorists” turn out to be a gang of thieves interested in stealing millions from the building’s vault. McClane manages to sneak away undetected and proceeds to kick ass, taking down the terrorists one by one, ultimately saving the day and his marriage in the process.

It’s a pretty simple idea, but one that works to perfection. What makes this movie is Alan Rickman’s portrayal of Hans Gruber. Rickman makes such a terrific villain and his character is the perfect foil for John McClane. And, while everyone remembers Bruce Willis’ classic line: “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!” (voted #96 on Premiere magazine’s “100 Greatest Movie Lines”), to me, the best line in the film is Rickman’s deadpan delivery of: “Now I have a machine gun. Ho! Ho! Ho!”

Die Hard is quite possibly the best action movie ever made. It has a great setup, a lot of kick ass action sequences, just the right amount of humor and an outstanding hero and villain. The movie even has the clichéd commanding officer who is upset that McClane isn’t following standard police procedure (played flawlessly by the late Paul Gleason). It’s a movie formula that has been copied countless times, but none of the imitators can quite live up to the original Die Hard.

Besides, the climax of the film (hehehe, I said “climax”), when a bloodied, disheveled John McClane stumbles into the room where Gruber and one of his henchmen have guns drawn on Holly and John manages a “Hi honey” is one of my favorite scenes in any movie I’ve ever seen. The aforementioned “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!” exchange between Grueber and McClane that ensues is just classic.

That being said, having seen the move about a million times, there are a few things about it that are less than stellar. For instance, while suspension of disbelief is required for any good action movie, the scene where McClane ties a fire hose around his waist and jumps off the roof of Nakatomi Plaza just as a bomb goes off is completely ludicrous (although sadly, this improbable scene would later be topped by the scene in Die Hard With A Vengance where McClane and Zeus climb down from a bridge onto a boat using the cable on the back of their SUV and, more recently, the scene in Live Free or Die Hard where McClane is able to blow up a helicopter using a car).

Also improbable is the terrorist group itself. While most of the terrorists are Eastern European bad asses, there is randomly an Asian guy who enjoys eating Crunch bars, a Southern redneck who they have pose as the front desk clerk at the plaza and a nerdy Cosby-sweater-wearing black guy played by Clarence Gilyard Jr. (of Walker, Texas Ranger fame) who they use to hack into the security system. It’s hard to imagine where this Eastern European gang would have acquired these three men (especially Gilyard’s character, who seems far too nerdy to hang out with such a cool terrorist organization). This was in the days before the Internet, so it’s not like Hans Grueber could just put up an ad on Craigslist looking for thugs from different walks of life in an effort to make his gang ethnically diverse. Were all of these guys in the same bowling league? Did they all meet up at some crazy Hollywood party? I need answers.

Another problem with the movie is that while the action scenes and the plot are mostly timeless, there are a few things about the movie, which was released in 1988, that make it seem incredibly dated. For starters, the security system that Gilyard hacks into is comically low-tech (I think most iPods are more complex than Nakatomi’s security system was). And the cocaine-snorting, weasely character Ellis is definitely an 80s creation. But the two most glaringly out of date aspects of the film are Bonnie Bedeila’s terrible perm and the character of Argyle, McClane’s limo driver, who is the kind of over-the-top black stereotype that would cause Al Sharpton to protest the movie if it was made today.

There is also an unintentionally hilarious aspect to the film, which is the love story. Most action movies tack on some lame love storyline in an attempt to woo female viewers. Die Hard doesn’t really have much time to develop the love plot between John and Holly since the two characters spend the majority of the movie separated from each other. However, there is a secondary love plot in the film – one that no one really talks about – and that is the obvious love connection between John McClane and Sgt. Al Powell (played by Reginald VelJohnson). Sgt. Powell is a cop stationed outside the building who communicates with McClane throughout the film using a walkie-talkie and gives him words of encouragement like, “We’re all pulling for you.” Powell even defends McClane’s actions to Paul Gleason’s character with his impassioned, “The man is hurting. He’s alone, tired, and he hasn’t seen diddly-squat from anybody down here. Now you’re going to stand there and tell me that he’s going to give a damn about what you do to him, if he makes it out of there alive?”

Willis and VelJohnson have a remarkable chemistry together and McClane honestly seems more excited when he heads outside the building and sees Powell for the first time than he does when he is finally reunited with Holly (granted, when he sees Holly, Hans has a gun to her head and McClane is bloodied and beaten-down, but still). You may think I’m reading too much into things, but if you’ve ever seen Die Harder (and, if you have, I’m sorry), then you saw how gay for each other they were in that film.

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if someone made a movie filling in the gap between Die Harder and Die Hard With A Vengeance that revealed that the reason John and Holly’s marriage fell apart a second time and he ended up back in New York was because he left her for a short fling with Al Powell, which ultimately failed when Powell got married, had several children and moved next door to Steven Urkel.

Unintentionally gay undertones and bad-Cosby-sweaters aside, Die Hard might just be the best action movie ever made and it is certainly better than the standard Christmas fare. So instead of watching those scary Claymation Rudolph movies this holiday season, why not pour some egg nog and have a Die Hard marathon? (Side Note: This year’s Live Free or Die Hard, just released on DVD, is the best film in the franchise since the original.)

Yippee-ki-ya, motherfuckers!

Random Thought of the Week:
Santa Claus impersonators in Sydney, Australia have been told they can’t use the phrase “Ho! Ho! Ho!” because it is offensive to women. A grown man in a red velvet outfit gets children to sit on his lap by offering them presents and they are offended by the “Ho! Ho! Ho!” line?

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

Similar Posts:

• Murphy’s Law – Old School Movie Review – Footloose
• Murphy’s Law – Old School Movie Review – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Murphy’s Law – Coping with Christmas
• Hobo Radio 70 – We wish you a Merry Christmas
• Review – 12 Rounds: Extreme Cut (Blu-ray)

Chuck Bartowski may moonlight as a government spy, but he still has to work a day job at the Buy More. And while his government handlers may be a bit difficult to deal with, luckily his Buy More boss Big Mike is a bit more down to earth.

Playing Big Mike is Mark Christopher Lawrence, an easily recognizable character actor who has appeared in a variety of television shows, as well as the cult classic mockumentary Fear of a Black Hat. We recently talked with Lawrence about Chuck, the Tijuana Boys Club and the possibility of a NWH reunion.

Where are you originally from and where do you call home now?

I’m originally from Compton, California and I call San Diego home now.

How exactly did you get into acting, and when did you decide this is what you wanted to do for a living?

Wow, it’s a long story. I grew up in Compton, as I said. My English teacher in the 10th grade and she actually ended up being my English teacher for all three years of high school taught speech and debate and she ran a speech team for my high school.

I was playing football and in my fifth period class I had a teacher who was the football equipment manager and he was the drafting teacher. And I wanted to really be an architect and so me and two other friends would get there early and we were way ahead of pretty much all of his classes in drawings and all of my work was A/B work. When grades came out, I had a D and I was shocked.

I went and told my mother, so we went to the principal to have a conference with this teacher, brought my work in and basically, his thing was he thought that I talked a lot in class. And, what it boiled down to was that he didn’t like football players in his class because he sees them after school and that was the thing. And so I got out of his class, I was totally disillusioned from wanting to be a draftsman, architect and all that and I didn’t have a fifth period class. My English teacher said to me, “You can take my fifth period class,” which was the speech and debate class.

Once I was in there, she said to me, “You can’t pass this class without going to tournaments.” And I did that and loved it. From there, she talked me into doing a play – she was also the drama teacher. And our school was a small school in comparison to other schools, so we didn’t have a theater. Plays were produced in a double room sort of configuration – two rooms that didn’t have a wall between them. So in the three years in high school, I did two plays. One of the plays we took to the literary Olympiad and I won best actor in the Compton Unified School District.

And then, I went to college at USC on a debate scholarship and at that point I decided I was going to be a lawyer. Clearly, debate was the tool that was going to teach me to do well in court and I took a voice class for speaking and centering and the professor talked me into the acting program at USC and at that point I was already a junior. So I auditioned probably thinking that I wasn’t going to get in because it was one of the harder programs to get into in the country at the time and I got in. And they put me in as a sophomore, so it added two years to my graduation.

That same year, I started working professionally. Clearly, the bug had bit me at that point and there was no looking back.

Once you made the decision to go for it, how tough is it to break into the business?

I was in the program – that same year, I started doing an underground play called Tracers, I say underground in that it wasn’t part of the school curriculum, so we would put it up in a different building every night and it got to be so huge that the security guards would tell us what buildings we could use – you know, “If you got to this building at such and such a time, you can set up your lights and all that stuff and do your play here.” And so, it became a huge thing that lasted all semester. There were several letters that we sent out just trying to get a little funding to help this thing along to draw some attention to the play itself.

And, in the process, what we did was send a letter to John DiFusco who originally wrote the play and was in it off-Broadway. He and Merlin Marston came to see our first preview of the play and Merlin asked me if I did Shakespeare. I said, “Yeah.” So he gave me an address, which was the address to the Los Angeles Theater Center, which at the time was being run as a theater company. So I go over, do the audition and get a job and proceeded to do probably 10 plays at the Los Angeles Theater Center between that audition and the year after I got out of college. So theatrically, I worked right away. And then the next year, one of my debate coaches was friends with an agent and he brought her to see me in a play at USC and she said to me, “Come and meet me at my office tomorrow, we should have a conversation.” We talked and she became my first agent, sent me out the very next day for a part on Hill Street Blues and I was hired. So I started working immediately.

Here’s the thing that I always tell kids – if you’re going to be an actor, know that there are going to be good times and bad times. Before I got home from the audition, the message was already on my machine that I had gotten this job.

So then, after every audition for the next year, I rushed home to check my machine – and I didn’t work again for a year. And then it hit me, which was great.

It was the best thing that could happen to me because now when I go to auditions, I let it go. It’s like I do it, if I get it, I get it. If I don’t, I won’t.

So now I go to an audition and I’m very comfortable with the fact that I may or may not get this job. No matter how well I do, sometimes it has nothing to do with me.

You have been a bit of a journeyman actor, appearing in small roles in a variety of popular television shows, including Seinfeld, Murphy Brown, Martin, Malcolm in the Middle and 3rd Rock from the Sun. What was it like appearing on so many different popular shows and what stands out to you from those experiences?

I think the thing that strikes me about my career is that I haven’t been sort of pigeon-holed as a certain type. I’m truly a character actor in that I’m not just the guy who plays the drug dealer or the pimp. Early in my career, I think part of it was that at the time that’s the sort of thing that was available to black actors, but at the time, I had such a sort of baby face and such a likeable demeanor that even if I go in and knock that audition out of the park, they look at my face – in fact, Gail Levin said to me one time, it was a part for a drug dealer in some gang movie, she said, “Clearly, you were the best actor in the room, but I just want to hug you. So they’re going to go another way, but we wanted to tell you that, wanted to let you know that it has nothing to do with your acting.” I was like, “Okay.”

So, I think it’s been great that I haven’t had to play the drug dealer or the pimp again and again and again and again and it opened up doors to me to play things that are real life characters that you would see every day because not every black person is a drug dealer, not every black person is a pimp. So the experience has been wonderful in that it allows me to really stretch and grow because every time you do the homework to learn about what this character does or who this character is, you’ll learn something that you didn’t know. And so, it’s been fabulous.

You played Tone Def in the underrated film Fear of a Black Hat. How much fun was it working on that film?

Fear of a Black Hat is probably the only thing I’ve ever done that I watch and I have no regrets. Sometimes you watch something and you go, “Ah, I should have done this, I should have done that, I should have said this line like that,” and I watch that and just laugh every time.

It’s funny, Rusty Cundieff and I are still good friends. We’ve been friends since the 11th grade. He was a frat brother of one of my mentors. In fact, he and I just got back from D.C. doing one performance of his play Black Horror Show and he and I were actually talking about possibly touring during the strike as NWH. Right now, we are kind of looking at colleges and seeing where to go. We screened Fear of a Black Hat here in San Diego at UCSD last semester and the response was so huge that we thought, “Wow, there’s a whole other generation of people that are starting to see this movie,” so we thought while the writers’ strike is going on, it could give us something to do.

We’re seriously rolling it around – trying to figure out how to do it. My original idea was, “We should do Fear of a Black Hat the musical and put it up like a play.” Then that morphed into, “Let’s just tour,” which morphed into, “Well, we could tour and kind of have some theatricality by adding in some sketches that sort of resemble what these guys are like in the movie.” And then we decided we’d have to travel all these people, so what we’ll do is maybe shoot some sketches and then as we do numbers in the show, we’ll show a sketch, then do another number. We’re still working out the details, but I think it’s going to happen. We’ll probably call ourselves FNWH – formerly NWH – because we don’t own those characters.

How did you land the role of Big Mike on Chuck, and how was the character explained to you initially?

Well, it’s interesting – Chuck came along right at the end of this past pilot season and I was up for a series regular on about five other shows and Chuck wasn’t my highest priority in studying for because it was just a guest spot with possibly reoccurring.

It was literally within the last week and a half of pilot season, all of the sudden I was out every day going to producer, the next day going to studio, next day go to network and it was five pilots and right away two of them got weeded out. Then I was down to three and then Chuck came along and my agent said, “Well, it’s just reoccurring, but you should just go in there anyway.”

So I go in, do the thing – I didn’t even read the script. I just read the sides and just from what was given in the sides decided that I knew who this guy was and went in, auditioned and actually, when I went in to read, I read for the role of Harry Tang.

So, I finished up these other auditions over the next week and a half and then I was sort of in vacation mode. I was like, “Okay, I’m going on vacation – get out of here and I’m going to let this crazy sort of half-baked pilot season go,” because I had all of these pilots rolling around and dropped them all.

So then, I get a call, “Hey, they gave you a job on this thing Chuck. It’s not the role that you originally read for; it’s the role of Big Mike.”

I was like, “Oh, okay.” So I literally came in, worked one day on the pilot, drove to San Diego that night at like three in the morning and was on a plane to Maui at 6 a.m. out of San Diego, so I had to drive home and fly. I really just let it go, I didn’t even think about it.

Then, March rolled around and I thought, “I wonder whatever happened with that thing Chuck – if it got picked up or not?” And then, June rolled around and then I get a call, “Hey, we’re going.” And all of the sudden, there was this job with Big Mike and I hadn’t seen the pilot because I was in Maui when they did the screening. My first day on the set, Adam Baldwin asked me if I had seen it. I said no, se he went and got a copy and I watched it in my dressing room and I thought, “Wow, this is a really interesting and funny script.” Because I hadn’t read the pilot. And it was all of the sudden looking like a piece that had legs. I said, “This thing could probably go.”

The opening night, Peter Roth was there, he’s the head of Warner Bros. Company and I know they had a bunch of other shows that were opening that same night. I was like, “If he’s here, this show is high on his priority list.”

And, all of the sudden, it sort of did what it does – the writers have been writing really funny and interesting things, which makes it easy as an actor when you don’t have to make something funny. So I really started getting into the role of Big Mike and each episode when a different writer would come in with their script to shoot, they all kept saying to me, “Wow, we love writing for Big Mike. You’re really great in it.” It’s been a lot of fun, because you usually don’t hear that. Writers kind of stick to themselves. It was great to sort of get this feedback.

For me, I’m going to do my best anyway, but once you hear that somebody is really taking an interest in your work, it really makes you step up even more. The stuff that they’ve been giving me has been getting really funny and a lot of fun to work on.

Big Mike and Harry Tang are two of the best characters on the show. We were really sad to see Tang written out of the show.

He’s on the show Dexter and they didn’t want to share him. He’s just a great guy and really just a great actor, so it was kind of a bummer.

Do you have a favorite episode so far? If so, why is it your favorite?

I think my favorite episode hasn’t aired yet, so I probably can’t talk about it. But you learn something about Big Mike that seems to be out of character and it’s really funny. It’s hysterical. When you find out what it is, it’s like the last thing in the episode and it’s hysterical.

How will Chuck be affected by the writers’ strike?

Our writers worked really hard to finish the order. The first order of Chuck was for 13 episodes and so they worked really hard and finished the order so that it could be as seamless as possible and then they came in and apologized and said that they have to do what they have to do. I write as well, so I clearly understand it. I’ve also been on the negotiating team with SAG and AFTRA for the last contract that the actors had with the producers, so I know what they’re up against and don’t envy them at all.

So yeah, it’s going to affect Chuck – once we finish the next two episodes, we’re down until the strike is over. So hopefully, that doesn’t affect whether or not we’re picked up for the back nine. And all indications seem like it should be okay for us. Our numbers are pretty good and it seems like the network really likes the show, so we’ll see how it goes.

You also appeared as Mr. LaMarr on an episode of Heroes this season. What was that experience like for you and will we be seeing Mr. LaMarr again in any future episodes?

It’s funny that you mention that because Dana Davis that I’m in that scene with, she auditioned during pilot season with me for one of the pilots that I was up for series regular for and she was auditioning to play my daughter – my 16-year-old daughter. And clearly, she’s a woman, she’s a 28-year-old woman, but when I saw her at the audition, I thought she was a kid. She had a little Catholic school outfit and a little backpack and standing next to the other kids, she looked like a kid.

And then, when I saw her at Heroes, I was like, “Okay, clearly, you are a woman. That’s a purse, not a backpack.” And she starts laughing. She and I have talked recently and she said that her character is still working at the Burger Bonanza, so there’s a possibility that I could end up over there again, but really the role itself is kind of a nothing role, it doesn’t really go anywhere.

Both Chuck and Heroes are action-packed shows, but in both shows, you have played a store manager. We know you’ve got more to offer than your mild-mannered manager role suggest. Do you ever wish that you were the one kicking bad guy’s asses and who do we need to talk to to make it happen?

I do get a little action in Chuck, there’s an episode that we shot where there is a small action sequence that involved a stunt and I suspect that because they know that I’m pretty physical and can do physical comedy and I’m very athletic for my size that I suspect that the character will have more fun stuff to do.

And sure, you always want to be the guy the show is about but I understand the business and I understand that I’m a character actor and I understand that they hired me because I’m funny, as opposed to sexy. Even though my wife thinks I’m sexy.

We’re surprised that the ladies didn’t go for the pimp outfit you wore on the show.

(Laughs.) Yep, I got about 20 phone calls when that aired.

How often do you get recognized in public?

Every day.

What role do you usually get recognized for? What types of people approach you?

Most of it is people not really knowing where they know me from. They’ll go, “Tell me what I’ve seen you on.”

“I don’t know what you’ve seen.”

Or, sometimes people think that they know me. They’ll go, “Hey, where’d you go to school?” or “Where do you go to church?”

In fact, one of my good friends, she and her husband were misplaced by Katrina and I actually met them in TJ. So now they’re really good friends of ours and she’s a professor at San Diego State. When I met her, that’s what she said to me – she said, “Wait a minute, why do I know you?”

I said, “You probably saw me in a movie or TV or something.”

She goes, “Nah, that’s not it.” (Laughs.) Her husband just started cracking up.

He goes, “That is.”

So literally, everyday. When I leave the house today, I expect if I go to the store or if I go to the gas station, somebody is going to recognize me and they may not know why, but it will start a conversation.

Do you enjoy that?

Yeah, as long as people are respectful and talk to you. You know, sometimes people just kind of stare at me from a distance and it makes me a little nervous. I grew up in Compton, so if someone is staring at me, immediately I’m getting defensive.

So, it’s fun sometimes – especially when other people who haven’t seen it before.

So you can kind of show off a little bit?

Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. I was doing a play at the San Diego Rep a few years ago and me and this guy Fernando went upstairs to the food court and I got stopped like 20 times and we got back to the theater, Fernando was going, “How come you don’t have this guy’s picture on the poster? Everybody knows him.” (Laughs.) So it was pretty funny.

What goals do you have set for yourself? Where would you like to see your career go?

I think early on I said that I want to be in that group of actors who you see all the time like J.T. Walsh, somebody like that, where people don’t necessarily know who they are, but they recognize them and then the people the do know who they are really like their work.

I just want to have that career where I can always work, I’m just floating from one thing to the next so that you don’t get into that rut of “Man, I wish I had another job” because early in your career, it’s so much of that that you have to feel like there’s got to be something better. So far, I’ve been very lucky to float from, if I’m not doing a movie or TV, I’ll get a commercial or I’ll do some voiceover or a play. I’m also a standup, so I’m always floating from one thing to another. In one respect, I’m doing what my goal was, but on the other side of it is I think when I’m working in film and TV, I just need to get to that point where more people are calling me and I’m not jumping through all the hoops.

What do you do to unwind when you are not working?

Tequila and cigars. A couple of my closest friends, we have a club called the TJBC – the Tijuana Boys Club. We consider ourselves tequila aficionados and cigar aficionados.

So what are your brands of choice?

Well, I’ll tell you, by far, my favorite tequila, not necessarily my favorite brand, is Jose Cuervo De La Familia Reserva. It’s Cuervo’s family reserve. Every year, they get a different artist that creates the artwork on the box that it comes in – it’s a wooden box – and then the bottle is like a really dark green bottle and the tequila has sort of an oaky flavor to it and it’s really, really smooth, it’s very high end. It kind of reminds you of a Cognac. It’s really awesome. If you’ve never had it, treat yourself. Costco sometimes has it for like $70 and it’s worth every penny.

And I’ve had tequila that – down here, there’s a place that has hundreds of tequilas. And they have one that’s 600 bucks. So one day, I said, “You know what, I have to know.” And so I got a shot – a shot of it was $30 and it was okay. It wasn’t in the ballpark of Familia Reserva.

And cigars, I was definitely a Rocky Patel Vintage series kind of guy. He does the Vintage 1992s with a 60-ring gauge and that was my favorite cigar until recently, on my birthday, my friend Aaron gave me a Gurkha Fuerte and that is fastly becoming one of my favorites. I think my top three in cigars would be the Rocky Patel, the Gurkha Fuerte and then La Gloria Cubana Series R.

What would you do for a living if you never got into acting?

I think if I would have never gotten into acting, had I never taken that voice class, I’d probably be a lawyer today. If my career were over today, like if I got punched in the throat or something and couldn’t speak, I think I would go with costuming.

Is that something you’ve tried before?

I like to shop and I like to design. I started doing my own clothes – designing my own clothes and going to the tailor and having them put things together based on kind of what I had in my head. And I started doing a very small boutique business of it with big guys who were friends with, you know, “Hey, you don’t have to wear just jeans or just suits. You can wear other stuff that’s nice.”

Tell us something most people don’t know about you.

Most people probably don’t know that I volunteer – I’ve sort of adopted a school down in Palo Cedro called Willow Elementary and over the past few years I’ve taken to them people from different walks of life to show the kids there that you don’t have to be a drug dealer or the next Kobe Bryant to better yourself. For instance, I took them a master diver, one of five black master divers in the Navy ever – Mike Washington. I took another guy, Tony Washington, whose actually Mike’s son, he does animation work for Sony. I took them a financial planner. Just so that they could see that there’s other things – you can be happy without being a millionaire.

Most people don’t know that because I work in LA and the people I hang around with here in San Diego are very, very close friends, so the two sides of me never really meet.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy, November 2007. Chuck airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. on NBC.

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Jim and Pam’s relationship may grab all of the headlines, but any real fan of The Office knows that the show’s true power couple is Michael Scott and Jan Levinson. Playing Jan on the show is Melora Hardin, who luckily is much more grounded than her character, who continues to spiral out of control. We recently talked with Hardin about The Office, the writers’ strike and what it feels like to have almost been Marty McFly’s girlfriend.

Where are you originally from and where do you call home now?

I was born in Houston, Texas and I live in Las Angeles, California.

We know that you began acting at a young age. How did you get into acting and what are some of the biggest challenges of being a child actor?

I started acting professionally when I was six. My parents are both actors and my mom and dad would go into their commercial agents and take in new headshots and things like that. One day, I went with my father, I was about five, and his agent said, “Oh, aren’t you cute? Do you want to do this?” and that put the idea into my head. From then on, I was tugging on their sleeve begging and begging and begging until they finally said okay. And they secretly had a plan that they would let me go on 10 auditions and then if I didn’t get anything, they would ease me out of it, but I got the first thing I went on, so their plan was promptly ruined.

We always hear about the crazy stage parents, but you had the opposite.

I did, I did. (Laughs.) Because they know what it’s like because they were actors, you know? But they were always really working actors. My dad is a well-known character actor, his name is Jerry Hardin. As a good friend of mine said, they call him “That Guy,” you know, when you see a movie and you go, “Oh, that’s that guy.” (Laughs.) So you definitely recognize him, he’s definitely a That Guy.

And my mom was an actress, that’s how they met – they met doing regional theatre together and then moved to LA and my mom quit acting and became sort of my stage mom and then took her with me to work and stuff. Also, she then became an acting teacher and became quite well-known as an acting teacher for young people. She had Molly Ringwald and all of the Phoenix kids and Ross Malinger and Kellie Martin. She just returned to acting for the first time in 30 years to be in my film that I just directed

We heard a rumor that you were originally cast to play Jennifer Parker on Back to the Future. Is that true?

Yeah, I was. It was a real small part in the first one and then a bigger role in the second one that Elisabeth Shue ended up playing. When I got it, it was a two picture deal, so it was going to be both films and Eric Stoltz was originally cast to play McFly, so I was going to play his girlfriend. And then they let Eric Stoltz go and I was too tall for Michael J. Fox. They called me in very regretfully and said that it wasn’t going to work out, which was sad. I was like 17 and, of course, shed some tears over that.

Now that it has become such an iconic movie, do you ever wonder what would it have been like to have been in it?

Sure. I guess it had the potential to kind of change everything for me, but I don’t know. It didn’t really do anything for the girl who played the small part and then was recast.

Especially since she’s “the girl who played the small part.”

(Laughs.) Exactly. So, I don’t know. I don’t think it would have been bad for me, that’s for sure. But who knows how good it would have been.

It definitely would have been a different movie with Eric Stoltz instead of Michael J. Fox.

It sure would have.

You were cast as Trudy Monk on the show Monk. Will you be appearing on Monk again in future episodes?

I just did another episode; let’s see – six or seven days ago, so yes. I will be. (Laughs.)

Do you have any theories on who murdered your character?

I just like to be on that show, I love working with Tony Shalub. He’s such a nice guy. I don’t know. I’m curious, just like everyone is, but I guess I’ll find out when everyone else does.

How did you land the role of Jan on The Office, and how was the character explained to you initially?

Well, it was on the pilot and it was a guest star possible recurring character at the time. I went in and I got the material and I read it and I felt like, “I can connect to this.” So, I did it, I could feel in the room that they really liked me. I got the part and I guess when I was on the set, it was kind of like – they had taken that character from the BBC version and Greg Daniels, he’s our exec producer and creator of the show as it stands here in America, he didn’t want it to be the same character. He wanted it to be the character that I had created and I had never seen the BBC show until I got The Office – he didn’t want us to look at it until a little later, so I didn’t really watch the BBC show until sort of the end of the first season.

So I guess it was sort of like she was his boss and she was kind of a tightly-wound boss, she needed to be a great “straight man” for Steve Carell. I hooked into her really well and that’s kind of how we played her, but we knew on the pilot that there was something special about the connection between Jan and Michael and just sort of the chemistry, I guess, that works with Steve and I because we made jokes. Steve Carell, Greg Daniels and I were sitting around having lunch one day and kind of making jokes about, “Wouldn’t it be funny if this thing goes to see Jan and Michael hook up at a convention or something?”

So it was that early on that you talked about a romance between the two characters?

Yeah, I think we just knew. We just felt it that there was something going there. So that was kind of what we did, we went down that road – I think hilariously. I think just the way she has unraveled is kind of like the writers seeing something in me that I bring to the part and then me taking what they give me and being surprised by what they give me and it’s a wonderful dance, kind of a collaborative little dance that we do together.

Where do you see Jan going from here? Do you think she will eventually get her life together and have a new career or will she continue to unravel?

I think she’s going to have to eventually get it together again and get herself back in the work world, but I don’t really know in what respect that’s going to happen, but she definitely has to do that.

Do you have a favorite episode so far? If so, why is it your favorite?

I love the “Cocktails” episode. I thought it was really awesome when they go to the boss’ house for cocktails. I thought it was really, really interesting to see Jan kind of be both repelled and drawn to him for his bad behavior. I thought that was really good. And then, also, the director was J.J. Abrams and I loved working with him. And just a lot of good meat on the bones for me to sink my teeth into.

How often do you get recognized in public and what types of people approach you?

I would say quite often, but people are very – like, I was walking out of California Pizza Kitchen yesterday and I saw this girl look at her boyfriend and gesture as I was walking towards them and he very casually looked at me. They obviously recognized me from the show, but they were pretty mellow about it and I guess if I hadn’t been looking right at them, I probably wouldn’t have known that. But yeah, I think that most people are very casual about it, maybe excited. They like the show, people really love the show, so I think that when they see me, that makes them think of the show that they love.

You recently attended a convention for The Office in Scranton, Pennsylvania. What was it like to be around so many fans of The Office and do you see these conventions becoming regular occurrences, like Star Trek conventions?

It was pretty intense. I mean, we were shuttled around with police escorts all through the town, sirens blaring, bodyguards from the limo to the hotel, screaming fans on the side of the street, people waving, 4,000 fans at a Q&A that hung on our every word and then on Saturday night I sang in front of 1,500 screaming fans, so it was pretty surreal to be honest.

But people are just really into the show. They stood in line for almost an hour and a half to do autograph signings and you know, just very respectful, there was like no pushing and shoving of each other. They were very sweet to each other and they were very excited to meet us. There were only a few that were shaking so much that they could barely shake our hand, but for the most part everybody was pretty grounded and really excited about the show and really excited about meeting us.

Do you think that like Star Trek conventions, 30 years from now you will still be signing autographs at Office conventions?

(Laughs.) God, I don’t know. Thirty years? Well, I guess Star Trek conventions; those have been going on forever. I mean, SciFi has a way of generating itself because there is always some new SciFi show that everyone is in love with. So, I don’t know. The Office is pretty unique. I don’t know if there’s going to be enough for it to go for 30 years, but I do think it will go for a few years for sure and if it does go for 30 years, that would be pretty miraculous. I guess I’d be shocked and pleased by that.

The Office has shut down production because of the writer’s strike. What is it like to suddenly find yourself in such an unsettling situation and what do you see happening with the show once the strike is resolved?

I think it’s a really important thing that the writers are doing, which would come up for the directors and the producers and the actors anyway. And we, as The Office, have seen the future in the sense that we have webisodes right now that are streaming on broadband on the Internet that people can go and watch and they are calling that promotional material, but they’re running ads on it and they’re making money off of that – NBC and the studio. And we were paid zero dollars for that. We also won an Emmy for that. So that’s the kind of stuff that they’re making revenue on that and we’re not seeing any of it and they wanted us to do more of that, calling it promotional material and that’s just not what it is.

A writer had to write that, actors had to come in and get in makeup and hair and wardrobe to act that and learn their lines and a director had to direct that and a DP (director of photography) had to shoot that and lights had to be turned on – that means crew had to come. A lot of stuff had to happen for those webisodes to get made and nobody made a cent on it. That’s just not the way it should be. So, I do agree with them that they need to be looking at the web because the web is the future of this business and nobody really knows exactly how deep those pockets are going to get, but eventually things are going to change and the way that we watch television today is virtually over soon.

In any case, I think everybody is running scared and everybody is pissed off at each other and unfortunately they are miles apart right now. So, I just hope that they can get closer together and resolve this. It will be resolved eventually and I hope it gets resolved in favor of the writers for the web. I think the writers have taken everything else off the table except for the web and that really is the most important issue. And I think that the studios need to be reasonable about it.

What they are saying right now is, “We don’t know.” Well, I feel like, if you don’t know, then make a date for the next 10 years, “We’ll meet once a year for the next 10 years and reconsider this issue every single year for 10 years.” I just think that would be very, very reasonable, very fair and I think that they don’t want to do that because they’re a big business and they want to make as much money as they can and they don’t care about how it affects everyone else.

I feel like the strike is really unfortunate because I think it affects all of the people who are not affected by the reason for the strike, but are affected by being out of work like the hair and makeup people and the craft service people and the loaders and all of the crew. It’s just really unfortunate for them and it could be really damaging for them if it goes on for too long.

So I guess I’m not really too worried about myself in the sense that I know the show will come back. I know that we are one of their biggest hits on NBC. They’re not about to just throw us in the trash. I think they are definitely very aware of the revenue we are bringing in and the fact that we are well-loved and critically-acclaimed and bringing them Emmys and bringing them awards. You know, it’s bringing a lot of class and a lot of clout to their network. So, I’m sure that whenever the strike’s over, we’ll be back to work and hopefully, I think everybody hopes, the writers included, that it will be sooner than later.

With the strike going on and The Office shut down, are you suddenly left sitting at home or do you have other projects lined up?

I have a singing act that I’m doing in January at the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood, so I’m working on that. I’m also a singer and a songwriter. And I have a big Broadway director that’s directing me in that named Richard G. Alexander, who just got back from directing Barbara Streisand’s European tour and has directed Bette Midler in Carnegie Hall and Bernadette Peters in Carnegie Hall – major, major people. So he’s directing me and we’ve already sunk money into publicity for this and so forth. I know some fans have already bought tickets to come out and see me – airline tickets, literally flying from other places to come see it. So I’m working very hard on that and making that the best it can be. It’s coming right up now on the fourth, fifth and sixth of January.

And there are other things that are percolating because there were things that were written before. So, if one of those things comes through and I end up working during the strike, that would be great to.

What can fans expect from your musical performance?

Well, they’ll get to know me a little bit. I’ll talk a little bit and I’ll be singing a lot. I’ll sing four or five of my original songs and I’ll sing songs that they might potentially recognize and it’s going to be a really fun night. I think it will be really beautiful music and a little bit of talking and good food and I think a good time.

What are some of your musical influences in your show? What type of songs do you perform?

The stuff that I write is stuff that sounds kind of old, kind of like 50s stuff, that sounds a little bit like Doris Day, Julie London, that kind of vibe. But it’s all original stuff. And so, it will have that and there will probably be some other recognizable things, maybe something from Broadway or a couple of things from Broadway, maybe a couple of things from the pop world. So, sort of a little milieu of things.

You recently directed the one-woman show Strip Search and the movie You. What made you decide to try your hand at directing and do you see yourself doing more of it in the future?

The one-woman show thing happened because my friend Adria Tennor wrote a show. We actually met in a writing class probably 10 years ago – a one-person show writing class – and we remained friends and I liked her writing, she liked mine. So she continued on with her one-woman show, writing it over the next nine years I think and would invite me to these little showcases she would have for each piece as it kind of came to life and the last one that I came to was sort of the show finished writing-wise, but she kind of stood up and just said it, did it and at the end she asked for comments and I gave her some comments. She called me the next morning and said, “I loved your comments. I thought they were amazing and I wonder if you would consider directing my show.” And I said I would actually. I thought about it and I said, “Absolutely, I’d love to direct your show.” So that was how that happened.

And, I’m also a dancer and it’s sort of about a woman finding her sexuality and becoming a woman through taking this strip class. I thought that we had a lot of different things that we could kind of come together on and I helped her choreograph the dance that she ultimately does in the show. We just had a lot of fun, we were a good team, I think.

The movie You came about because many, many years ago I did a little independent movie and the director just happened to be horrific and I kind of was helping out with some things because this director was so bad. So the producer kind of came up to me in the middle of it and said, “Wow, you’re really amazing at this. You should really direct.”

I said, “Oh, uh – I don’t know.”

He said, “No, you have a real gift. You have an iron fist and a velvet glove. That’s a thing a director needs and you really have that.”

So I said, “That’s lovely.”

That was many, many years ago. And my husband is a writer and has written many scripts and he’s also an actor and he came back from being on location doing a show and had written this script over three days, which is very unusual for him. He usually writes things over many months, if not years. And I took it with me to I think get a manicure-pedicure or something and I was reading it and I had to leave because I was crying. Tears were streaming down my face as I was reading it. So I came home and I said, “This is an amazing script and I need to direct this if you’ll allow me to.”

And, he’s like, “Well, it probably needs a rewrite.”

I’m like, “Nope, I don’t want you to change anything thing, it’s perfect the way it is and I want to direct it and I want make it.”

And he said, “Great.”

So that was that. And we kind of went through many incarnations about how we were going to get it made and we ultimately did it ourselves and it’s finally finished as of about a week ago and I definitely plan on directing more. I have to say it was a hugely fulfilling and satisfying experience to feel like all of your gifts are needed and wanted and required in every moment of every day. It’s kind of a good feeling to feel used up at the end of a day or the end of a movie. (Laughs.) So that was great and I definitely plan on making more movies and my husband and I plan on making more movies together and I’d like to direct more. But I’m not going to really pursue a television directing career and that kind of stuff. I would like to direct an episode of The Office, but I’m not really that interested in having a full on directing career.

What do you do to unwind when you are not working?

I’m a dancer. So I take dance classes and I hang out with my kids, I have two little kids – two and a half and six. I spend a lot of time with them; they’re a lot of fun. We do crafts together and we play and they dance for me and we dance together and go for walks. And I like to see movies, I love movies. But that’s kind of it. And hang out with my husband.

Would you like to see your kids end up as actors someday?

I don’t really care. If they would do that and that would make them happy, then I would say for sure do it. But I wouldn’t ever push it on them. I really do think it’s a tough career. I think it’s a perfect career for me, but I’ve seen a lot of people have a lot of hardship with it. I always say to people, “If there’s anything else you can do and be happy, do it. If this is the only thing you can do and be happy, then that’s the reason to do it. Otherwise, don’t do it.” So I would say if they were just so passionate that they feel like this is their path and they have to do this, then I would say do it. For sure, I’d support it 100 percent.

Both our daughters are in our movie. My daughter Rory was four at the time and she actually has quite a big part and she’s fabulous in the movie. So she’s already a little actress. And the little one was a baby when we did it, so she didn’t really know what she was doing. (Laughs.)

What would you do for a living if you never got into acting?

Probably, I did consider at one time being a choreographer – having a dance company. I also considered – I sort of like the idea of traveling the world and being a writer, sort of writing about wherever I go. Kind of being like a real-life gypsy. I thought that would be very interesting. But probably, I also like psychology or therapy; I might have been a psychologist of a therapist of some kind potentially.

Tell us something most people don’t know about you.

There’s probably a lot of things. I don’t know. I guess that I like to hang out at home with no makeup and my sweats, t-shirts. I like to do housework and clean and be with my family.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy, November 2007. For more information on Melora Hardin or to purchase tickets for her singing act “At The Water Cooler” or copies of her CDs, visit Melora.com

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Joel Murphy

All of you hardcore CNN fans out there, I have some sad news for you – CNN is fake. It’s scripted. The outcomes of their stories have been predetermined.

I know this is probably hard for you to believe. Your natural instinct will be to dismiss these claims. Trust me, I can relate. When I was a young child, I was a huge wrestling fan and I remember that my parents would scoff and tell me that wrestling was fake. I argued with them vehemently.

How could Hulk Hogan lifting Andre the Giant over his head be fake? Was I to believe that a boot to the face followed up by a legdrop wasn’t enough to keep a grown man down for a three count? I mean, Hulk Hogan was in Rocky III for goodness sake and he sure seemed to be legitimately roughing up the Italian Stallion with actual wrestling moves. And, I don’t even need to mention No Holds Barred, a movie that was so real, the tensions on set leaked over into the wrestling ring and Hulk Hogan actually ended up wrestling a match against his costar, Tommy “Zeus” Lister.

But eventually, I learned to accept the stone cold truth – the outcomes of wrestling matches are predetermined. The two grapplers in the ring are following a script and, if everything goes right, at the end of a match, neither one of them will actually be hurt. In time, you will learn to accept the fact that CNN is fake as well.

Ironically, it is professional wrestling that helped to prove just how fake CNN actually is. Capitalizing on the national attention given to Chris Benoit’s death and Congress’ probing into the WWE’s wellness program, CNN recently aired a special called Death Grip: Inside Pro Wrestling (which, as you can tell by the title, totally was not a piece of sensationalistic garbage). As part of the program, they interviewed John Cena, a popular wrestler who is a former WWE Champion, and asked him, point blank, if he had ever used steroids.

Cena’s immediate reply was, “Absolutely not.” He then followed that up with a three minute answer about the steroid problem in wrestling. CNN removed the “Absolutely not” response and took part of his three minute answer out of context, so that when he was asked the steroid question, his edited response was: “People conceive things because performance enhancing drugs have got the spotlight. It’s a hot thing to talk about. I can’t tell you that I haven’t, but you’ll never be able to prove that I have.”

WWE was of course pissed and they released the unedited footage from the interview on their website, which sheds some light on the comment CNN took out of context. I’ve watched it and it seems like Cena misspoke and meant to say “I can tell you that I haven’t …” The rest of his three minute response talks about how all athletes are put under a microscope these days and that anyone who excels at any sport will be accused of using steroids.

His immediate follow up to the “I can’t tell you that I haven’t, but you’ll never be able to prove that I have” comment was: “I can take a million tests; I can pass every one of them. As soon as I pass it, there’s some other guy on the other end saying, ‘Oh, there’s masking agents, there’s this, there’s that.’ I know the arguments because I’ve been in the situation.”

Once WWE released the unedited footage on their website, CNN immediately backtracked and added additional footage from Cena’s response to subsequent airings of their Death Grip special. Which, much like when a newspaper prints a retraction, won’t get nearly as much attention as the original airing of the CNN special did and most people who watched the original airing will probably go on believing that John Cena uses steroids.

If this wasn’t a special about professional wrestling, the fact that CNN got caught editing footage would probably be a national story. CNN is generally considered to be a trustworthy news source, so hard evidence that they intentionally doctor interviews to tailor stories in whichever way suits them seems like the kind of story that CNN’s competitors would have a field day with. But, since the victim in this story is a professional wrestler, the story hasn’t really made its way into the news cycle.

The sad part is, an alarming number of professional wrestlers do die at a young age and it is something that should be looked into. But, it should be looked at objectively. It seems CNN took the easy way out – already knowing the story they wanted to tell before the cameras began rolling and perfectly willing to edit footage in a way that best suits their predetermined story.

Vince McMahon has a fetish for large muscular men (after all, he once tried to start his own bodybuilding league – a project that tanked harder than the XFL). While wrestlers in the 70s and 80s were often flabby, in recent years McMahon and company have increasingly began hiring performers who look muscular over performers who actually have in-ring talent (performers like Chris Jericho and Mick Foley being exceptions to the rule). So, of course, many guys looking to make their way into the WWE were willing to inject steroids to get their big break and it seems like McMahon turned a blind eye to the drug use.

However, despite his on-screen persona, it does seem like Vince McMahon legitimately cares about his performers and I truly believe that the deaths of Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit weighed heavily on his heart. When Guerrero died, McMahon instituted a wellness program to test his performers for steroids and other drugs. After Benoit’s murder/suicide and the public scrutiny that followed, McMahon revamped and strengthened the program. In addition to a 30-day suspension, WWE now releases the names of any wrestler who has a positive drug test. They have also released several performers who have tested positive more than once, including Booker T and Chris Masters (the latter being the poster boy for Vince McMahon’s muscle fetish).

McMahon can be a stubborn son of a bitch (his refusal to fix the problems with his current TV programs despite poor ratings and his refusal to let ECW, a brand Paul Heyman created that Vince bought out, be what it used to be, instead turning it into a watered-down copy of every other WWE show being two shining examples), but it certainly seems like he really is trying to clean up his act. I believe the Wellness Program is legit and that the WWE will slowly weed out the problem performers.

The problem is, once these wrestlers get fired by the WWE, they will either go to TNA or the independent wrestling circuit. TNA, WWE’s biggest competitor, has already hired a number of wrestlers that WWE has fired for wellness issues, including Booker T and Kurt Angle. An alarming number of wrestlers do die at a young age every year, but the majority of them aren’t working for the WWE at the time of their deaths.

So, while everyone is quick to vilify Vince McMahon, they are missing the bigger picture. McMahon and company have even gone as far as to send a letter to every former WWE employee offering to foot the bill if the former employee would like to check into rehab – a story which has gone widely unreported by the media.

But again, wrestling is an easy target and it’s much easier to get a bunch of bitter, ex-WWE employees like Chyna and Marc Mero to bash the WWE on your “news” program and to take John Cena’s comments out of context than to actually do an intelligent piece about the real problem in professional wrestling. Wrestlers are dying and everyone has heard of the WWE, so why not blame them for everything instead of actually being a responsible journalist?

For all of you non-wrestling fans out there (who probably stopped reading this column after the second paragraph), I don’t expect you to care about this story. I know that professional wrestling is looked at as a “male soap opera” and that you look down on me for being a fan. I don’t consider wrestling to be high art; it’s simply a fun distraction to help me get through the work week, no different than any of the crappy reality shows or trashy primetime dramas that you watch. I don’t expect you to care that wrestlers are dying or that the media isn’t properly covering this story.

What you should care about though is that even CNN, a network that most people trust to be fair and unbiased, was willing to edit footage to suit their agenda. Don’t be naïve and think that this is the first time they’ve done something like this. Who knows what other stories they’ve twisted and what other interview subjects have been made to look like a fool. John Cena was lucky enough to have WWE.com release the undoctored footage – not everyone is so lucky.

So continue to watch CNN if you want. But, just realize that much like Monday Night Raw, the program you look down on me for watching, everything you see on CNN is just as fake. As for me, I’m going to continue to watch wrestling. And, I’m going to continue to get my news from The Daily Show. Sure, all of the news on Jon Stewart’s program is scripted, but at least he’s up front about it.

Random Thought of the Week:
Does Milo Ventimiglia sign a Matthew McConaughey-style contract demanding that he be shirtless in every single episode of Heroes? Having his shirt burst into flames after Veronica Mars electrocuted him was the most unrealistic thing on Heroes this season since Claire and West’s love story.

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

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Most people know Mark Brunetz as the energetic designer on the Style Network’s top-rated show Clean House, but his roots in Hollywood actually run much deeper. Brunetz started his career working on Jane Fonda exercise videos, then branched out into producing movies with his friend Sandra Bullock. And while he may have found himself a great gig on Clean House, Brunetz spends his nights wishing he was a racecar driver.

We recently caught up with the multi-faceted designer to talk to him about his career, his clients and his blue-collar roots.

We know that you are originally from Cleveland, Ohio. What was it like growing up there, and where do you call home now?

It was fantastic growing up there. I think anyone will tell you that if you migrate west and mix your life with people on the west coast, you find that the Midwest really instills roots in people. It teaches you values. I grew up in a small neighborhood, so the idea of being very community-oriented was a great asset to who I am today as a person, as well as in my career. My family moved from Cleveland to Raleigh, North Carolina when I was 13. Back then, that was a big move. They pretty much established themselves there – all my siblings, my mom, everyone is there. My grandparents were my last ties to Cleveland, but they have passed away. There has been a question of Clean House doing a makeover on the road in my hometown, and the network asked me “Where would you call your hometown?” I would have to say that even though I am originally from Cleveland, I would consider my real home to be Raleigh, because all of my family is there.

At what point in your life did you decide that you wanted to pursue a career in design?

This is actually my third career. My first career was in exercise physiology – that is actually what my master’s degree is in. My first job out of college was with Jane Fonda. At that time, in the early 1990s, I brought her to step videos. Although I actually don’t talk about this much, I am actually in those videos, teaching with her, so there are two videos that live out there that I am on camera with her, teaching. It seems so long ago! I was working with Jane Fonda and the number one fitness company in the world at that time. I had launched a cable network called Cable Health Club, now called Fit TV, I was traveling all through Europe training instructors, had products on QVC, and I felt that I had done everything I could possibly do in fitness. I just got really burned out on it. So, at that point, I went into my second career.

Sandra Bullock is someone who I knew in college. At the time, she was coming off the movie Speed, which was of course a huge hit. She wanted to start a production company, so with my experience in doing video production with Jane Fonda, she asked me if I would start the company with her. It was a big leap, since I had only been here in LA two years, and had gone to school for exercise and all that. But I knew I wanted to work in entertainment, and, if anything, that is what working on Jane Fonda’s videos taught me. I knew I wanted to work in the lifestyle genre where I could create products that improved people’s lives and empowered people to be the best that they could be.

So we started a production company, Fortis Films, and had a deal with Disney. Over the next five years, I headed her development and we did nine studio films. My first film with her was While You Were Sleeping, which remains one of my favorite films, for a lot of reasons. It was shot in Chicago, which I love, and it is just a very sweet film. It was at the beginning of Sandy’s meteoric rise, and it was just a good group of people making a great film. After we did nine films, including a couple at Sundance, we brought on the George Lopez Show, which Sandy actually executive produces. So I sort of ended my film career in a producer deal to develop television shows, which is what I decided to get into. For me it was like an exit strategy, because I realized I wanted to do what I love, and I didn’t love working in film. There are so many people involved in the process of making a film that it is very difficult to feel like you are actually a part of it and that you are actually contributing – that was something I felt was missing in my work.

I actually grew up in design – my mom is a very successful and established interior designer in North Carolina, and my grandfather, from Cleveland, custom-built over 50 houses by hand in his lifetime. So my entire childhood was entrenched in walking construction sites, going to flea markets with my mom and really learning at a very early age about different styles of furniture, such as turn of the century, vintage, modern, all of that. When I really took a hard look at my life, coming out of film, I knew that the thing I had always loved was some form of design. It was sort of in my blood. At the time I wasn’t even positive that it was going to be interior design specifically – I just knew that I wanted to utilize my gifts in the area of aesthetics.

I was actually in the Hollywood Hills, talking to a friend about a mohair throw, and I made the mistake of opening my mouth and saying to her, “Well, if I lived here, this is what I would do,” and she hired me. It was just my calling, I guess. I thought to myself, “I can do this. I’m ready.” So I started working on her house. At the same time, I took a job at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, where I designed some very high-end events for Daimler Chrysler, Coca-Cola, Bacardi – million dollar events. It taught me very quickly how to manage big budgets, how to work with clients, and it really reinforced my ability to design and accomplish projects. That was really my entrée into the professional aspect of design. Cut to six or seven years later, today, and I have now done over 25 houses on both the east and west coasts, a couple of restaurants, and over 100 episodes of television. So, that’s sort of my three careers.

How did you land the job on Clean House, and what has it been like working on that show?

At that time, I didn’t even have the desire to be in front of the cameras, so this was all very serendipitous. I was actually in a tile store on Melrose, and I met a sales associate there. A couple of days later, some producers from MTV came in to the store, and they were looking for a young, hip designer. The sales associate told them about me, and I ended up doing a pilot for MTV called CribCrashers, a spinoff show of Cribs. After that, some executives over at the Style network asked me to do some episodes of the show called AREA, where we had two days and $2,500 to make over a room. I ended up doing 15 episodes. At the time, Clean House had just launched its first season and was struggling. The designer on the show ended up leaving to do another show, and my tapes were handed to the network. I got a call one day, and they loved my work and asked me if I would consider doing the show. At the time, I hadn’t even heard of Clean House. I knew they were going to bring on a new executive producer, so I thought that the show could really find its legs. And here we are – the show is getting ready for its 100th episode. We’re in our sixth season, and it is the number one show on the Style network. Niecy Nash is fantastic to work with, and we have assembled a really great team. We have amazing chemistry, and completely love and support each other.

TV design is different than private design. You are designing under the gun, time wise, with very little money (since our money really is contingent on the yard sale and any gifts that are given), and there is more than one client – you’re got the homeowner, the network, and the viewer. It’s a constant dance between keeping your finger on the pulse, continuing to build the library of what people can see and are inspired by, but at the same time making everyone happy. I consider that my talent.

How tough is it for you to come up with design ideas for the families on the show – do you worry about their reactions to your designs?

It’s not difficult – I have a really good sense of people and their space. I ask them a lot of proprietary questions, such as “If you could go anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would you go?” or “If you died and were reincarnated as a piece of furniture, what would it be?” At first you might think, “Wow … what’s that really going to tell me?” but your answer says a lot to me as a designer – it says a lot to me about your use of color, how you like to live in your environment, your feminine side … it says a lot. For me, your answer is a well of information. If you ask a client ten of those types of questions, you can just nail people.

We actually did an episode of the show where a lady hated everything we did, and she singlehandedly taught me something very valuable in my career. When I do my design work, it is specifically tailored to that person – it is not about me. There is no Mark in the design. It is truly about the person and how they want to live in their space. When I do my design, and it’s done, and we’re getting ready to reveal, I feel as though I’ve done everything I possibly can. I’ve given my best effort, I’ve listened, I’ve held their hands … I’ve done everything I can do to create the optimal environment for them. So at that point, I close the book. Sometimes it’s great – people cry, jump up and down, tell you what they don’t like or they are even like this particular woman, who had a meltdown. As much as I appreciate the acknowledgment, it’s kind of the icing on the cake at that point. The cake is baked. It’s done. And that is a hard lesson to learn. I spent many a season going home at night thinking “Is she going to like this?” or “Why did I put that color on the wall?” pacing and beating myself up. At a point, I realized that if I don’t get behind my work, no one else will.

One of the most memorable episodes of Clean House was when the crew remodeled the home of host Niecy Nash’s mother. What was it like filming that episode, and how did Niecy handle it? It seemed a lot more personal than the show’s other episodes.

Yeah, it was definitely more personal. We actually had to play different roles. Niecy is usually the one who sits down with the homeowners and does the moment of truth of “Why are you living like this?” That was my job on this particular show. In the episode, I sit down with her mom and she tells me about losing her son, Niecy’s brother, and about how she has dedicated her life to the non-profit organization she founded based on his death. It was really more emotional than any other scene I have done, because I felt like I was right there with her. It’s so easy to walk into someone’s home knowing you are going to leave five days later – you’re kind of detached. But in this episode, with Niecy and her mom, I was just so in for the ride. That is the only reveal I actually cried at. During the reveal, she looks up at the drawing her son had done of himself that I had framed and hung on the wall above the chaise lounge. We actually didn’t get the chance to say this on the show, but that picture was discovered in his locker a week after he was shot. It had so much poignancy and meaning. I really wanted to frame it and place it in such a place that when she sat on her chaise, she would be able to look at it and really appreciate it.

Clean House is in its sixth season. How much longer do you see the show running, and how much longer do see yourself being a part of it?
I have to tell you, Clean House is an anomaly in the both the makeover and reality television genres. Our numbers and ratings continue to climb, and there is continued interest in the show. I would have to say that we are still continuing to find our legs, and, with the network’s permission, I see it going on for another five years. Some makeover shows have crashed and burned, because they were kind of based on a fad, like, say Queer Eye. Queer Eye was a great show – a fantastic show – but it’s kind of this really hip, trendy idea, like “we have a queer eye, and we’ll decorate your place.” How long can that idea drive a show? But then you have a show like Extreme Home Makeover, a show that absolutely shot for the moon and accomplished it. As a result, what else can you really do in the makeover genre? You will see new shows pop up here and there, especially on HGTV, because that is their business, but at the end of the day it is truly reinventing the wheel.

Our show is truly one of the only shows that takes what I call a voyeuristic view at people’s obsession with clutter. The executive producer on our show doesn’t even like makeover shows. She’s from COPS. So, all of a sudden you have this absolutely fresh voice going, “We just want to get in there and shoot it in a very photojournalistic style, and really tell the homeowner’s story.” I always say that the real star is not us. It’s not even the homeowners! It’s the clutter. I think for that reason alone, our show is going to continue to pave the way in the genre.

As far as my involvement, I am on contract until April 2008. This will be my third renewal, and of course the network wants me to stay, since it has been so difficult to put together a strong team. But I think, like anyone, I will consider my options at that point. Chances are good that I will continue to do Clean House, since I love the show so much, and I love the people on the show, but I will know in April.

With all of the television shows you have done, including Clean House, do you still work with private homeowners?

I do, for two reasons. One, private clients are my R&D. I am very selective, and I take on maybe one or two projects a year. Right now I have two, but they have been going on for maybe two years. With Clean House, the rooms we make over happen in a day, and we are really asking the homeowners to wrap their mind around something that I would typically take eighteen months to do with a private client – it’s really the distilled version of what I do in real life.

What do you do to unwind when you are not working?

Well, I love to travel, which is hard since we have been shooting straight for the last two years. But I did manage to make it Barcelona and Paris in April, and I spent a week in each of those cities. And I love, love, love cooking, and food. I’m a huge, huge, huge fan of food. My family has had five restaurants, so I grew up around food, and I absolutely love it. I cook a lot of Mediterranean-style food. I can actually chop for an hour and go into my zone. And I have two dogs, a pitbull and a terrier-dalmatian mix. So I spend a lot of time with them. They keep me busy!

How often do you recognized when you are walking down the street? What types of people approach you in public?

Well, I do get recognized quite a bit. In L.A., I think everyone is sort of jaded. It’s more like they kind of look at me and wonder who I am, and they think they know me, but they are probably never going to actually say anything to me. But you know it happens. When I am on the road, I get recognized a lot, by people from all walks of life. I seem to be big with people in the young business professional demographic, as well as with moms. Moms just love me. I get a lot of fan mail. I probably get close to a thousand emails a week from what seem to be mostly moms, telling me things like “you’re adorable, you’re cute” and I really, really love that stuff. And I do respond to all my emails. The number one question people ask me about Clean House is “Do people really live like that? Do they really have that much clutter?” And it’s totally true – they really do. I think that is the thing that shocks most people. On the other side of that, and why I think our show resonates so much with viewers, is that we’re a nation of clutter. Research indicates that two thirds of the country suffers from clutter, on some level – whether it is a junk drawer or an entire storage unit full of stuff they have had for 20 years. From a television standpoint, viewers are just shocked, like “Okay, maybe I have a messy bedroom, but really, how can these people live like this?”

When you are working with a homeowner on the show, or with private clients, are there times when they want something that you just think will look absolutely heinous?

Well, yeah. There are. I do have clients who, I swear, I am not sure why they hired me, since they are just basically going to tell me what they want and what they think should happen. And I think that my instincts are to really honor that, and at the same time remind them that I am a partner with them, like their “design coach.” It’s a partnership to create the best environment possible. When you have a teammate, you treat everyone equally and respect their opinions. But at the end of the day, it’s their house, and they have to live there – if they want a citrus-orange-colored, high-gloss floor, then, well, that’s what they’re going to get! My job is just to work around that. Something that I have learned in my career is that design is not an absolute – it’s much like beauty, in that it is completely in the eyes of the beholder. And hey – when this person walks in their house and what they see inspires them, empowers them, lights them up, excites them, then what can I do to change that? Who am I to say that that shouldn’t be used? I think the trick is to integrate it, and make it look the best that it can look.

You also have a line of home furnishings on the Home Shopping Network. What inspired you to create your own line?

Really, it was the demand. From an external standpoint, people asked me, “Where can I buy the stuff that you work with?” And then from an internal standpoint, from a professional standpoint, I realized that as exciting as it is to be on a television show, if it’s not driving something else, then it is just that – a television show. Most people would think that would be enough, but for me, personally, there was just a missing opportunity. The personality and celebrity-ness, if you will, that I have developed and created on camera is in itself like an infomercial, or what we call a media driver. It’s constantly reinforcing my image and my stamp and my beliefs. So people think, “I like that guy. I want a piece of him.” So, we needed to create products that people would have in their homes and that were reminiscent of the work that I do. The key strategy to my line is affordable luxury. Without a doubt, my goal is to create luxurious environments inexpensively.

What do you think you would be doing for a living if you weren’t working in design?

Wow! I actually ask that question of my clients! Hmmm, let me think. Well, I have to tell you that I ask my clients what their secret passions are – the ones they never talk about. And in asking that question, I always reference my answer to that question, which would be driving a racecar. Last Sunday, I actually went to the L.A. Motor Speedway and drove eight laps in an Indy 500 car, and got up to 150 miles an hour. It was exhilarating! I really want to go back. So, if I wasn’t working in design, I would probably be an Indy 500 driver traveling all over Europe doing races.

Tell us something most people don’t know about you.

I really am a blue-collar guy. I have walked the red carpet at the Oscars, I have flown in private jets around the world, I’ve had carte blanche at all the studios – I feel like I have lived such a privileged life. But at the end of the day what matters most to me is where I came from and who I spend my life with. Probably half of the emails I get from people say, “I wish I could afford you, I know you’re working with all the stars,” things like that. But, really, if people only knew that the projects I choose, the charities that I work with and the people that I involve in my life are so … basic. And simple. I think that would be the one thing that people probably, truly, don’t know about me.

You mention charities that you work with – what are some of those?

I work with quite a few. I just recently did a huge event for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, a big silent auction for the owner of the Hurricanes in North Carolina. I work a lot with cancer-related organizations. I have also been very involved with the City of Hope out in California and with Meals on Wheels, with the American Wine and Food Festival with Wolfgang Puck. I have also been involved with the Trevor Project, which is a project designed to counsel at-risk youth, and also Greenpeace and Kids and Pets. All these charities are ones that are really near and dear to me.

Do you have any other projects you are working on?

I am actually in the middle of writing two books right now – I definitely think that being an author is going to be my next career. One book is about people’s obsession with clutter – it’s kind of like Chicken Soup for the Soul meets the television makeover genre. It’s sort of hip and cool, but really gets to the heart of what is going on in the country. The second book is more design-oriented, and addresses design myths.

I am actually also involved with another show on Style, Clean House Comes Clean, which is a behind the scenes look at Clean House. I am a consulting producer on the show, and really inspired it to happen – there’s so much of the process and what happens behind the scenes at Clean House that never gets told on our show because we only have an hour.

The network green lit 10 episodes, and we shot all 10. The show actually premiered in August to the second highest ratings at the network for a premiere show, so we’re really excited. And getting back into the producing seat, behind the cameras, is really exciting for me. So, yeah, Clean House Comes Clean usually airs after Clean House on Wednesday nights.

On November 7th, we are running two back-to-back shows – one deals with my top five greatest design challenges, and the other deals with the top five most difficult homeowners. So make sure to check that out!

Interviewed by T.D.M., November 2007. For more information on Mark Brunetz and his design work, visit his official site.