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What's it like to be back on TV? I love it. The best material is on TV. After I read the script for Shark, I thought, Wow I haven't read a part like this in 10 years. Men in their 50s are typecast as the corporate villain. Shark gave me the opportunity to be a tainted hero- the best kind of hero to portray. It's a golden opportunity for an old samurai like myself. How did you handle the lean years, when you weren't so popular? I didn't mind when I was on the way down, because I always knew I was going to go back up. This mistake people make is that they try to fight it- they do more publicity. Instead I just shut my mouth and stayed away until I became a good idea again. And now I'm coming back big, just like clockwork. Not everything has always worked out, though. Like the set of Salvador. Yeah. There was a scene where a plane flies down the street and starts strafing John Savage and me. The plane was flown by a Mexican air force pilot who didn't speak English. And the stunt coordinator on the walkie-talkie didn't speak any Spanish. We're wired to the street with bullet squibs running up our legs. So if the plane goes out of control, we can't even run away. So I said, "Oliver Stone, we got to get a guy who can speak English." He told me to stop holding up the shot. We got in an argument. What happened? I started hitchhiking to Mexico City, 300 miles away. They put word out that a crazy gringo mass murderer with a .45 was out on the road, so don't pick him up. I'm out there. Nobody's picking me up. I'm belligerent, wandering around the desert. Finally, John Savage flew out in a helicopter and brought me back. Sounds like a bad day. I'm telling you, moviemaking is not fun. We did another scene at the Guatemalan border where a guy puts a gun to my head and pulls the trigger. I'll never forget kneeling there. My hands are behind my back. The guy puts the gun to my head and I hear him say, "Esta un blanca." That's a blank. Oliver tells me to shut up. So I grabbed the gun raised it in the air, pulled the trigger, and the blank went off. I was four seconds from being killed. Didn't you have a real-life close call with the September 11 hijackers? About a month before the attack, I got on this flight from Boston to LA. As I was getting in the plane, I saw these four guys who looked like Palestinian terrorists, straight out of central casting. They were all dressed alike, windbreakers and T-shirts, with no bags. Who flies cross country without any carry-on luggage-no magazines, no books, not even a little bag with chewing gum in it? Whenever the pilot would go to the bathroom, the cockpit would be wide open, and the men would all look at each other. I thought. These guys are going to hijack this plane. So what did you do? I went up to the cabin attendant-whatever the politically correct word is for stewardess-and I said, "It's probably a felony to say this out loud, but I think this plane is going to be hijacked." And she said, "I'm having that same feeling. Are you talking about the four men in the matching windbreakers?" She called the captain but the first officer came out. They both made reports to the Federal Aviation Administration. It turned out that two of the guys I saw were in the 9/11 attacks. Nobody wanted to listen then. They listen now, but it cost them almost 3,000 lives. What's wrong with government? There's no end in sight for this never-ending partisan bickering-it's to the point where we can't do business anymore. There are certain issues where "chat and communication" are not going to work. You're never going to get an abortionist and a person who believes in the sanctity of human life in a womb to agree on a compromise. Are today's men pussies? Look at how men are portrayed in commercials. They're complete bozos. They'll be talking to an insurance salesman and the women is always rolling her eyes because her husband can't understand anything. Well you're certainly a real man. Your cameo on Entourage proves that. When they offered that to me, I thought it was funny, but they left out the fact that I would like beautiful women. James Woods should have a beautiful girlfriend. So I said, "I'll bring my own." I brought in my girlfriend, Ashley, and of course, she walked in, and they went, "Nice choice." Join Hollywood Poker to play online poker against Hollywood's leading man, James Woods
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