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Laura Dern and Alexander Payne: An actor-director marriage made in heaven
Laura Dern and Alexander Payne: An actor-director marriage made in heaven
©by Leo Adam Biga
A version of this story appears in my book Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film
Doing some more proofs and edits to the new edition of my Alexander Payne book reacquainted me with this piece I did about the close friendship and great working relationship the filmmaker forged with Laura Dern when making his debut feature Citizen Ruth. The two remain chums 20-plus years later. Payne brought her to Omaha for a Film Streams Feature Event that saw him conversate with her at the Holland Center. She’s come back to Omaha at his invitation a few other times as well. In the interviews I did with Payne and with Dern for this story I probably dug deeper than I ever have before or since in fleshing out the collaborative director-actor dynamic. I share the story with you now. As the story reveals, it turns out Citizen Ruth might have never happened if Dern hadn’t fallen in love with the script and championed the project. What was origially called The Devil Inside was going nowhere until she fought for the part and once she got it she fought for the project. Indeed, Payne credits her for getting it made. In my opinion, her performance is one of the bravest pieces of acting I’ve ever seen by a major female lead and the film remains the most raw and real, if not the best, of Payne’s work.
NOTE: The new edition of Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film releases September 1. It is the only comprehensive treatment of the Oscar-winning Payne in print or online. It is a collection of articles and essays I have written about Payne and his work over a 20-year span. I have basically covered him from the start of his filmmaking career through today. The book takes the reader through the arc of his filmmaking journey and puts you deep inside his creative process. There is much from Payne himself in the pages of the book since most of the content is drawn from interviews I have done with him and from observations I have made on his sets. I also have a good amount of material from some of his key collaborators.
I self-pubished the book in late 2012. It has received strong reviews and endorsements. I am releasing a new edition this summer with the help of a boutique press here, River Junction Press, and its publisher Kira Gale. The new edition features major content additions, mostly related to Payne’s Nebraska and Downsizing. It will also feature, for the first time, a Discussion Guide and Index, because we believe the book has potential in the education space with film studies programs, instructors, and students. But I want to emphasize that the book is definitely written with the general film fan in mind and it has great appeal to anyone who identifies as a film buff, film lover, film critic, film blogger. It has also been well received by filmmakers,
Kira and I feel hope to put the book in front of the wider cinema community around the world, including producers, directors, screenwriters, festival organizers, art cinema programmers. We feel it will be warmly embraced because Payne is one of the world’s most respected film artists and everyone wants to work with him. People inside and outside the industry want to learn his secrets and insights about the screen trade and about what makes him tick as an artist.
When Laura Met Alex: Laura Dern & Alexander Payne Get Deep About Making Citizen Ruth and Their Shared Cinema Sensibilities
Published in July 10-16, 2008, Vol. 15, 20, issue of The Reader
Citizen Stirrings
When Alexander Payne and Laura Dern chat on the Holland Performing Arts Center main stage July 13 for Films Streams’ first annual fundraiser they’ll naturally get around to Citizen Ruth. The 1996 abortion comedy he co-wrote with Jim Taylor marked Payne’s directorial debut and Dern’s portrayal of title character Ruth Stoops earned her critical acclaim.
What the pair may or may not discuss is how pivotal their collaboration proved.
Sixteen years ago Payne was still an aspiring feature filmmaker. His UCLA graduate thesis project from a few years before, The Passion of Martin, turned heads. The newcomer showed enough promise to land a studio development deal, analogous to a college baseball star getting drafted by a major league franchise, inking a fat contract and getting assigned to the high minors.
But he hadn’t broken through yet. He and Taylor did finish their abortion comedy script, then-known as The Devil Inside, that fall. They were trying to get it set up for Payne to direct. The script made the rounds, generating heat, but nobody wanted to finance it. Too risky. Too political. Too controversial. It didn’t help that Payne was untested in features.
Cut to Dern, by then established as an edgy screen actress for bare-her-soul performances in Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk, Peter Bogdanovich’s Mask, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. She was already Oscar-nominated as the free spirit title character in Martha Coolidge’s Rambling Rose, for which her mother, Diane Ladd, was also nominated. Her acting genes extend to her father and fellow Oscar nominee, Bruce Dern.
Reminiscent of a young Barbara Stanwyck in her ability to play innocence and guile, sweetness and toughness, Dern was a catch for any director. Payne was a big fan of her work but never thought of her for messed-up Ruth Stoops. He probably didn’t think he could get her. That changed when, unbeknownst to him, Dern’s then-beau, actor Jeff Goldblum, got ahold of the Devil script and gave it to Laura.
“And I just was obsessed the moment I read it,” she said by phone from the L.A. set of a short film she’s appearing in. “I just forced their hands.”
Shared Cinephile Leanings
What did she respond to so strongly?
“Well, in terms of the material,” she said, “it’s a very unique and hilarious and extremely honest voice about this country and about what happens when you get two opposing sides in America, on any subject frankly. And the idea of putting this not just flawed but impossible protagonist at the middle of it is just completely genius. I felt I had something to bring to it that was unique.
“My love for finding empathy and voice in untenable human territory made me determined to force myself on them. I could love nothing more as an actor than one specific challenge, which is finding an empathetic place for a character we would ordinarily have disdain for, and Alexander happens to love that, too. Alexander, Jim (Taylor) and I have the same sensibility and that’s a very rare thing to find.”
Studio execs often express dismay at Payne’s unsympathetic protagonists. “My response is always, ‘It hasn’t been cast yet.’ I think it’s the actor who brings the humanity and the sympathy to that part,” he said. “Yeah, of course, how the film is directed and the tone contribute also, but that’s the actor’s job – to bring us a really full human person, and I’d like to think that truth is always sympathetic.”
“And the goal probably isn’t finding the sympathy, the goal is finding a multi-dimensional authentic person,” Dern said. “Everyone is filled with their own dark and light places.”
She said the sensibility she and Payne share derives from their cinema weaning.
“Alexander and I both grew up on the humanist films from the ‘70s. In the ‘70s there was a blossoming of the auteurist view and in the very specific way directors worked with their actors to find a singular voice. I think probably because humanity was the goal. The bottom line is it’s up to your actor to find the humanity in a way that can only happen through behavior. That was the focus those directors had and it seems to be such a focus of Alexander’s work as well.”
Putting Herself On the Line
The only other time Dern’s gone after a role so aggressively, she said, is Rambling Rose. Her commitment to Ruth changed everything.
“Laura’s presence helped finance the film,” Payne said by phone from his Topanga Canyon, Calif. home. Her involvement also lured other cast members. “I know Laura’s presence helped woo Burt Reynolds. These things catch their momentum however they catch their momentum. The script opened doors and then Laura liked the script and then the snowball stated growing.”
Finally, Payne secured the financing, which, he added, “was still hard to get even with Laura attached. This film almost wasn’t made.” He said it was only by the slimmest of margins the money came through.
Few besides Payne and Dern know how close it all came to not happening and how long it took to be realized.
“We finished our first draft in the fall of ‘92 and I wasn’t shooting until fall of ‘95,” he said. “I was so frustrated I left L.A., in a kind of self-imposed exile, wondering, What does it take to get a film made?”
Without Dern the project might have died or at least been delayed and Payne’s dream to direct deferred. When she signed on he recognized his good fortune.
“Yeah, and the exciting thing was that she kind of came after me,” he said. “I had lunch with her and she evinced such enthusiasm for the part and understanding of the role that she was the one.”
To help make the small-budgeted indie pic feasible Dern agreed to work for SAG scale along with everyone else.
“Here she was a big movie star coming to Omaha, Nebraska to play a pregnant drug addict,” he said. “She was getting, I don’t know, four thousand dollars a week or something, so that proved she was there because she wanted to be there. It wasn’t for any other reason than for the pleasure, for the joy of it.”
Said Dern, “We were all there for our passion and it made for an incredibly creative and professional experience for all of us.”
On the set he soon discovered her reputation for putting herself out there, on the line, totally exposed, for her art is well deserved.
“Yeah, that’s where she’s most comfortable,” he said. “She gives one hundred percent to the role.”
A Safe Place
Ruth Stoops is among many roles in which she’s gone to emotional extremes and done provocative scenes. There’s no holding back. No hedging or softening. She lays it all out to see. She clearly enjoys pushing boundaries.
“I mean, for whatever reason it is my favorite thing to do,” said Dern, who won her legal emancipation from her parents at age sixteen in order to pursue her craft full-time. “And I have a feeling that being raised by Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd had something to do with it, both in my film life and in my life. I definitely seek it out.”
Before she can put herself out there she has to feel she’s in good hands. Despite Payne’s inexperience, she felt protected.
“I must say I had implicit trust in him. I never questioned him. I don’t think I ever will. I believed in him and I think like we felt we knew each other, and that’s a bond where you can’t go wrong. That’s some kind of innate knowing. If there was a feeling out process it was really just – What do you like? How do you like to work?
On that level. Just on the day to day things.”
Payne said it’s inevitable a director and a lead actor size each other up.
“Oh yeah, you know I was so happy she was going to be in my movie but still the director thinks, I hope this person doesn’t screw up my movie,” he said. “And the actor might think, Who’s this director who’s going to screw up my performance?”
In their case, he said, it helped that she’d checked his work out.
“She liked The Passion of Martin, my student film, so she did her homework in watching that.”
Still, he was a newbie. He soon found out about her astute grasp of cinema.
“Of course she was justifiably concerned as to who my other partners were going to be – who my cinematographer was, my editor…because that’s the thing, she really understands the filmmaking process and how it’s not just about the actor or the director,” he said, “it’s about everyone involved. It’s such a huge effort. And she really gets all of that.
“So, yeah, she wanted to know she was going to be placing her hard work in safe hands and I think once she felt that, then she was able to give her all. And once I felt she was going to give me what I wanted and even more, then I felt safe, and then we just skyrocketed.”
Dern had a hand in a key crew member coming on board.
“One thing that worked out really well on the film – it both made her feel safe and it began a friendship and a professional collaboration that lasted through three films – is that she introduced me to Jim Glennon, the cinematographer” he said.
Jim had shot her in Smooth Talk, her kind of star-making film, back in ‘85, and she recommended him. I went to meet him, if nothing else just as a courtesy to Laura, thinking, Well, I’ll be able to tell her I met him but I didn’t like him. And I adored him, and so that was a right move in many ways.”
The late Glennon went on to shoot Payne’s Election and About Schmidt.
In Synch
Payne and Dern meshed in that way only two artists who respect each other can.
“Look, we worked together extremely well,” he said. “It’s one of the richest collaborations I’ve ever had with an actor and I was so happy it was happening on my first feature film. We really got in tune with each other pretty early on and we really felt a partnership.
“I mean, when you make a film your production designer is your partner and your cinematographer is your partner and your editor is your partner. And it’s nice when the lead actor is your partner in the same way and it’s not somebody you have to handle or manipulate or anything.”
For her part, Dern said, “I consider one of the best moments of my life was working on Ruth with Alexander. I had been acting for sixteen-seventeen years. I’d worked with extraordinary people, for sure. I think that speaks so much to his innate abilities and instincts.”
The comfort level she felt with him and Glennon helped her tap into an aspect of Ruth and women like her she feels deeply about.
“One of the things I always loved about Ruth, why I felt like I understood her so completely, was that Ruth isn’t just a character trying to find her voice but she’s a character who doesn’t now she’s entitled to one, and I long to play women who are in that struggle,” Dern said. “I think Rose in Rambling Rose is similar that way.
“And I know they’re the two that have probably penetrated my heart the most as characters I really love and find really relatable for women in this country. I really crave playing women who are on that discovery.”
Mutual Admiration Society
Payne said Dern’s commitment to craft isn’t a self-absorbed ego trip. She’s not just concerned with her own performance but with contributing to a fully realized film.
“She gives a hundred percent to the role and she also is a good kind of team captain for the entire cast,” he said. “The rest of the cast look to the lead actor – how is he or she feeling about the film…and she always had such great enthusiasm and professionalism.”
Payne couldn’t have asked for anything more. But he got it. When he and Kevin Tent were editing the film he got another glimpse of Dern’s cinema savvy.
“She has such a knack for film acting. I mean, many months later when I was editing I would talk to her by phone or she would come by the cutting room and I’d say we’re cutting a scene a certain way or she’d see how a scene was cutting and she’d say, ‘You know, I think in that shot on take three I did something kind of interesting. You might want to take a look at that.’ She had a prodigious memory for what she did in what scenes and what other actors did.
“I’ve read recently about her performance in Recount. That she would do many scenes three ways – underplayed, over the top and then kind of neutral, so that Jay Roach, the director, would have choices to calibrate her performance in the cutting room. And that’s just like textbook Laura. She understands film to the nth degree. She knows it’s about editing and she gives you choices in editing.”
Payne went on to have the same experience with Jack Nicholson on Schmidt.
“Oh, yeah, that’s the kind of actor you want. Everyone has to understand it’s not about what happens on set, it’s about what you harvest on set to get to the cutting room.”
For Payne, Dern’s enduring gift was the example she set “that one can work the way one wants to, which is with a real sense of partnership with the lead actor,” he said. “That it really can be the way it should be. And have fun. I mean, we all had a really good time making Citizen Ruth. A really good time. She’s a blast. I’d like to think it set a tone for what the rest of my films have been.”
Both would like the opportunity to work together again.
“We’ve definitely talked about,” Dern said.
“I’d love to work with her again but I haven’t had a part for her,” said Payne, who doesn’t know yet whether his upcoming film, Downsizing, may include a role for her. An original screenplay written with Jim Taylor, Downsizing’s described by Payne as “a large-scale, possibly ‘epic’ comedy that uses a science-fiction premise as a way to paint a fairly large satiric mural of today’s world.”
Just as Payne surrounds himself with a family of film artists on project after project, Dern enjoys longstanding collaborations.
“I’m a big believer in it and I feel like I have found a tribe of people I’ve worked with over and over again, someone who gets you, and you feel like you can do your best work with someone who gets you.”
The two know each other so well, he said, he’s not preparing copious-James Lipton notes for the Holland event but rather winging it. “I mean, look, all we have to do is start talking and it’ll all come out.” Maybe he’ll wear his lucky Ruth pants, white jeans whose pants leg was torn by a dog that bit him on a location scout.
Missing Jack Nicholson: A Reflection
Missing Jack Nicholson: A Reflection
©by Leo Adam Biga
A version of this story appears in my book Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film
Does anyone else miss Jack Nicholson? He has not been in a film since 2010 and I think the cinema landscape has been poorer for it. He is not officially retired. Some reports have indicated he cannot remember lines anymore but he has gone on the record to say his mind and his memory are not the issue, rather he’s simply taken time off to live life until a project comes to him that inspires him. His filmography is as rich and deep as any actor’s ever. While I am not entirely sure he is a great actor, he is certainly one you cannot ignore or dismiss because of the sheer force of his talent and personality and because he has been in so many great films. He makes bold and usually great choices in the parts he takes and in the way he interprets the characters. He is as great a star actor as there has ever been in that sense. Anyway, in proofing and editing the new edition of my Alexander Payne book I came upon an essay I wrote about Jack and his place in film at the time he was making About Schmidt in Omaha under Payne’s direction. In doing so. I was reminded of his absence and I felt compelled to post the piece here.
NOTE: The new edition of Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film releases September 1. It is the only comprehensive treatment of the Oscar-winning Payne in print or online. It is a collection of articles and essays I have written about Payne and his work over a 20-year span. I have basically covered him from the start of his filmmaking career through today. The book takes the reader through the arc of his filmmaking journey and puts you deep inside his creative process. There is much from Payne himself in the pages of the book since most of the content is drawn from interviews I have done with him and from observations I have made on his sets. I also have a good amount of material from some of his key collaborators.
I self-pubished the book in late 2012. It has received strong reviews and endorsements. I am releasing a new edition this summer with the help of a boutique press here, River Junction Press, and its publisher Kira Gale. The new edition features major content additions, mostly related to Payne’s Nebraska and Downsizing. It will also feature, for the first time, a Discussion Guide and Index, because we believe the book has potential in the education space with film studies programs, instructors, and students. But I want to emphasize that the book is definitely written with the general film fan in mind and it has great appeal to anyone who identifies as a film buff, film lover, film critic, film blogger. It has also been well received by filmmakers,
Kira and I feel hope to put the book in front of the wider cinema community around the world, including producers, directors, screenwriters, festival organizers, art cinema programmers. We feel it will be warmly embraced because Payne is one of the world’s most respected film artists and everyone wants to work with him. People inside and outside the industry want to learn his secrets and insights about the screen trade and about what makes him tick as an artist.
Being Jack Nicholson
Published in the April 5, 2001 issue #57 of the Omaha Weekly
Bigger Than Life
With filming proceeding in earnest on Alexander Payne’s latest made-in-Omaha film, About Schmidt, real and imagined sightings of its world-famous lead actor, Jack Nicholson, are no-doubt filtering-in from starstruck citizenry. Not since Sean Penn stirred things up here with his directorial debut, The Indian Runner, largely shot in and around Plattsmouth, Neb., have locals been as frenzied about catching a glimpse of some celebrity.
The fuss is well-merited this time. For as great an actor as Penn is, Nicholson is a star on the order of the old-time greats. A genuine Hollywood legend. From his trademark shades to his romantic intrigues to his public indiscretions to his classic rebellious roles to his three Oscars, he is everything we want in a star. Cool. Sexy. Enigmatic. Independent. Well-respected. Justly rewarded. With greatness in our midst, now is as good a time as any to consider just why he looms so large in our collective movie consciousness.
The mere mention of Jack’s name conjures a portrait in rascality. From the devil-may-care glint in the eye to the sardonic smile to the sarcastic voice, he is the lovable scoundrel of our imagination, saying and doing things we only wish we could. He is, like the best screen actors, a romantic projection of our liberated inner selves. The sly, shrewd man on the make. The ageless rebel. The unreformed rake. The eternal carouser. The agitator who stirs things up. The sharp-tongued wit cutting people down to size. The volatile time-bomb ready to explode.
In an amazing display of durability he has gone from being the embodiment of the rebellious 1960s and 1970s to essaying the angst of that same generation now grown old and disillusioned in the wake of chasing love and money and happiness in all the wrong places. At a pudgy sixth three, he shows the wear-and-tear of a sometimes hedonistic life. After all, he came to fame and fortune just as America entered the indulgent 1970s, emerging from the limbo of the B movie fringe to the heights and perks of major Hollywood screen stardom on the strength of remarkable performances in a string of fine films made between 1969-1975.
Nicholson was launched from obscurity into the front ranks of the industry with his scene-stealing turn in 1969’s Easy Rider as a conventional southern lawyer gone-to-seed and turned-on to the counter-culture by hippie bikers Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda. More memorable roles soon followed. Think of the best films of the 1970s and ‘80s and Nicholson appears in an inordinate number of them: Five Easy Pieces; Carnal Knowledge; The Last Detail; Chinatown; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; The Missouri Breaks; The Shining; Reds; Terms of Endearment; Prizzi’s Honor. As disparate as these films and their stories are, the characters Nicholson creates are largely variations on a theme, namely, a man fighting alone to protect his identity or independence in the face of forces he cannot hope to defeat. In one way or another he is playing the existential modern man trying to save himself amid the complex crush of the system or society or fate or nature.
Unlike many contemporary actors, Nicholson, even in his early groundbreaking work, brings a weight to his performances only gained from years of working at his craft and from living a full life away from film sets. Like the great actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age (Tracy, March, Cagney, Bogart, Gable, Mitchum, Lancaster, Douglas) you get the sense he has been around the block a few times. That he is not merely an actor, but a complex human being with a rich personal history behind him. Besides technique, it’s what lends his performances a certain credence and gravity you don’t find very often these days outside warhorses like him, Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, James Caan, Sean Connery, Morgan Freeman and a few others.
Nicholson captures our fancy with the combination of his snake oil charm, angry defiance and fierce intelligence. Behind that leering smile lurks something wild and dangerous and mysterious. It helps account for his appeal with both men and women. In classic rebel tradition he is the iconoclast or nonconformist at odds with the world, raging against the tide. He is the master of the slow burn and of the sudden violent outburst.
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Signature Seventies Roles
Each of his signature roles from the ‘70s features scenes in which he acts out a full-blooded tantrum, from his famous table-clearing tirade at the truck stop cafe in Five Easy Pieces to his confrontation with a bartender in The Last Detail to his brutal interrogation of his lover in Chinatown to his fighting back against brutal guards in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His star making turns in the ‘70s found him working on the very edge of his craft, daring to go for deep emotional truths and idiosyncratic behaviors that reveal vital shades and nuances of his complex characters.
In Bob Rafelson’s 1970 Five Easy Pieces Nicholson is frustrated former concert pianist Bobby Dupea, a man weighed-down by the burden of expectation from his well-heeled family. He finds relief from the pressure of conformity by running away from the classical music world to work in the oil fields, where he is just another hand looking for a paycheck and a good lay. Ironically, his constant flight from his past leads him right back to where he started – to a family he can neither ever quite measure up to nor escape.
The 1971 Mike Nichols-directed and Jules Feiffer-penned Carnal Knowledge finds Nicholson as the callow Jonathan, who tries negotiating the attitudes, mores and politics at work in the male-female dynamic during the dawn of the sexual liberation and feminist movement. No matter how the times and the terms of engagement change, he is still a predator and women are still his prey. The finer points of relationships seem to bore him. Emotions scare him. For men like him, love, commitment and communication are mere decorative foreplay for making it.
In Hal Ashby’s 1974 The Last Detail Nicholson stars as foul-mouthed, free-spirited Everyman Billy “Bad Ass” Buddusky, one of two career sailors reluctantly escorting a fellow sailor to prison. What is supposed to be an uneventful transfer over to authorities turns into a wild romp when Buddusky and his mate grow fond of the young, naive prisoner (Randy Quaid) and decide to show him a good time en route. Nicholson’s tragic-comic performance never misses a beat.
In the Roman Polanski-directed and William Goldman-scripted Chinatown (1974) Nicholson lends his interpretation to the classic private eye with a stunning evocation of Jake Gittes, a cocky and seedy PI haunted by a love gone bad. When he stumbles onto a new case with giant implications for arid Depression-era Los Angeles, he finds himself sucked-into a whirlpool of deceit by a femme fatale (Faye Dunaway) he can’t resist. By the time the chips fall where they may, Gittes is a broken man undone in the same Chinatown district that undid him once before.
Forever cementing his rebel image, Nicholson plays Randall P. McMurphy with the sensitive brio of an underdog beaten down by an uncaring system in Milos Forman’s 1975 adaptation of Ken Kesey’s counterculture novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It is the kind of martyr role that all of the great screen rebels – from Cagney to Garfield to Brando to Clift to Dean to Newman to McQueen – have portrayed.
Later Work
Nicholson achieves a tour de force in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 version of Stephen King’s The Shining by brilliantly detailing the mental breakdown of writer Jack Torrance, a tortured man caught in the grip of some awful supernatural force compelling him to kill his family in the eerie isolation of the Overlook Hotel. In a performance that is by-turns finely controlled and manic (“Here’s…Johnny”) Jack displays astonishing range and courage by essaying a madman you loathe but pity too.
Terms of Endearment casts Nicholson as retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove, a man used to having his way with the ladies. Playing his age for a change, he strikes just the right note as an aging Lothario who meets his match in the figure of neighbor Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine), whom he eventually beds but not without making a commitment to her. Both Nicholson and MacLaine won well-deserved Oscars for their strong supporting performances.
Besides these stand-the-test-of-time roles, Jack’s given compelling performances in otherwise flawed films like The Fortune, The Last Tycoon, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Border and Heartburn. By the time he reached icon status as the guy with the wink in his eye, he parlayed his legendary facade into some made-to-order parts where he hammed things up, including a horny Lucifer in The Witches of Eastwick, a pompous Joker in Batman. an egomaniacal colonel in A Few Good Men, and a bigoted curmudgeon in As Good As It Gets. His recent collaborations with actor-director Sean Penn have seen a new, more mature and darker Nicholson emerge. In both The Crossing Guard and the current The Pledge he plays damaged older men seeking catharsis in extreme circumstances but instead finding only more pain. Gone is the impish and ironic persona of the younger Jack and in its place is a restless, brooding character that could very well be Bobby Dupea or Jake Gittes twenty five years later.
Jack as Everyman Warren Schmidt
Now, About Schmidt offers Nicholson yet another chance to play out the secret anxieties, regrets and desires of a man his own age. The character of Schmidt is a bitter Woodmen of the World actuary retiree undergoing a crisis of conscience in the aftermath of his longtime wife’s death. As the facade of his well-ordered world crumbles around him, the repressed Schmidt must confront some uneasy truths about himself. His struggle to make meaning of his life propels him on a road trip across Nebraska during which he comes into contact with an odd assortment of characters. With his feelings reawakened, life becomes an adventure again rather than a burden.
The passive title role of the Alexander Payne-Jim Taylor penned script they adapted from the Louis Begley novel and from an early, unproduced Payne screenplay appears in some ways a departure for Nicholson. But the implosion of his character is actually in line with the roles he’s played for Penn.
As usual, Payne will try to extract the humor from what promises to be a sharply-observed story of loss, loneliness, introspection and discovery. The vulnerable figure of Schmidt offers a ripe and fitting part for Nicholson at this stage in his career. However the film turns out, Nicholson is sure to deliver the goods under the direction of Payne, who is known for eliciting strong performances from his leads.
John Beasley: Living his dream
In the pantheon of Nebraska born and bred actors to have made it in Hollywood and/or on Broadway, and there have been more than you think, none have really ever kept much of a close relationship with this place other than Henry Fonda, Robert Taylor, Dorothy McGuire, Julie Wilson, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, and Marg Helgenberger. Some more recent players who have kept the home fires burning are Gabrielle Union, Yolonda Ross, Kevyn Morrow, Randy Goodwin, and Stephanie Kurtzuba. But only John Beasley has never really left Omaha. The others all picked up and went off to pursue their careers and thus their connections to Omaha became relegated to occasional visits. A notable exception is Randy Goodwin, who recently moved back to Omaha while continuing his career as a film/TV actor, producer, and director. Meanwhile, Beasley has maintained his residence here the entire run of his now 25-plus year career as a busy film, television, and regional theater actor. He operated his own theater in town for several years. He appears in indie Nebraska films. He’s now producing two movies with Nebraska connections. He’s doing what Alexander Payne has done by not only keeping Omaha his home but by doing work here. John has definitely contributed to the theater and cinema culture in the state. Though it’s the last season for The Soul Man, the popular TVLand sitcom he’s been a regular in from the start, he recently finished the pilot for a new CBS sitcom Real Good People and he’s part of a large ensemble cast in the coming Fox event series Shots Fired. Then there are the two feature films he’s producing – The Magician and East Texas Hot Links. John’s good friend and former teammate Marlin Briscoe of Omaha is the subject of The Magician. I’ve written a lot about John over 15 years and this is my latest piece to tell his engaging story. It will appear as the cover story in the May 2016 issue of the New Horizons, the free monthly newspaper published by the Eastern Nebraska Office on Aging. Should hit newstands and, if you get it delivered, your mailbox around April 29-May 2.
John as Barton Ballentine in The Soul Man
John Beasley: Living his dream
©by Leo Adam Biga
Soon to appear in the May 2016 issue of New Horizons
Following a dream
Omaha’s John Beasley (Rudy) came to film-television acting late in the game. After all, he was pushing 50 when he broke through. But he used that late start to hone his craft on stages in Omaha, the greater Midwest and the South.
Besides being a familiar face in front of the camera, John’s a producer on two feature film projects, including the story of football legend Marlin Briscoe. Before making history as the NFL’s first black starting quarterback, Briscoe starred at Omaha South and at then-Omaha University, where Beasley was a teammate in the mid-1960s.
The performing bug bit as a youth for Beasley. At Technical High School he won prizes for oral interpretation and acting. He didn’t pursue the profession awhile because he had a family to support.
“I’ve always been content and confident I could have made it as an actor years earlier. But I wasn’t ready at that time to do what it would take,” he says. “I mean, I had a young family that I was raising, and I love my family. I love the time I spent with them. And if I had started this (career) earlier I would have lost all of that. I have no regrets.”
Growing up without a father, he made sure he was there for his kids .
“My father was never around. But he taught me a lot by not being around. He taught me to be the father I didn’t have.”
John’s sons, Tyrone and Michael Beasley, both actors, appreciate his being there.
“Our father taught us how to be men by showing love and always being present and always showing interest and making sacrifices for the family,” says Michael, whose wife Deena Beasley is also an actress.
A path of his own
John Beasley’s path to stardom is not so different than fellow Omahan Nick Nolte’s. They both used regional theater as their springboard. The difference is Nolte never acted on an Omaha stage and his screen work began in his early 30s. By contrast, Beasley did an Army hitch and then worked regular jobs through his mid-40s. His wife Judy was a medical secretary. He was a Union Pacific railroad clerk and custodian, a Vickers machine operator, a North Omaha jitney driver and a Philadelphia waterfront laborer. He always did theater on the side.
“I was content, even when I was a janitor, because I was doing what it is I love to do — the theater. There were people who looked down on me and I always said to myself, ‘Well, just wait. I know who I am, and pretty soon you will know who I am.’ I’ve just always felt I could do whatever it is I wanted to do.”
His confidence was well-founded, Royal Shakespeare Company members he trained with in Omaha encouraged his talent. At local theaters he broke casting barriers by winning roles not traditionally given actors of color. He then tested his wings outside Omaha, earning parts at regional theaters, Between his “life experience” and theater chops he preparec himself. “I’ve paid my dues, and I know that,” he says. “The foundation was already set.”
Nothing was guaranteed though. Michael says his father didn’t let on what a risk he was taking.
“He never let us know when there was struggle. As an actor you never know when your next paycheck is coming in. He always sheltered us from that. A lot of friends and family thought he was crazy for going after his dream as an actor.”
Michael admires his persistence.
“My father would drive sometimes through blizzards and sleep in the car to auditions in Minneapolis and Chicago. He asked my mother to give him three weeks to try and live his dream. He booked a job within that time period. Now the rest is history. He is my modern day hero.”
Judy Beasley never really doubted her man. Besides, she didn’t wish to stand in the way of what she considers his “God-given talent.” She says, “I believed in him. We all have gifts and he obviously had that gift and when you have a gift you should use it.” She says when he did achieve fame “there were things to work through and we did.” She enjoys the red carpet events but she also likes their life away from the spotlight doing “home stuff.” She’s not surprised her two boys followed their father as actors since “he’s in them, he’s a part of them.”
She views what’s happened to her and John as “a blessing,” saying, “I thank the Lord all the time.”
John and Judy on the red carpet at the BET Awards
Once he finally went for a full-time acting career, he was ready. “When I went out to act I wanted to be actor, I didn’t want to be a waiter, so waiting tables was not in the cards. I wanted to be a working actor and I’ve been a working actor all my career. I mean, that’s all you can hope for. Stars come and go – I’ve been working for a long time.”
He’s been a regular cast member on the TVLand series The Soul Man starring Cedric the Entertainer and Niecy Nash from its 2012 start. He earlier had a recurring role on Everwood starring Treat Williams. He’s appeared in scores of TV dramas, including HBO’s highly praised Treme. His cinema work ranges from blockbusters (Sum of All Fears) to action pics (Walking Tall) to indie projects (It Snows All the Time).
While many others have come out of Nebraska to find acting success in Hollywood, Beasley stands alone for always keeping Omaha home.
“I live in Omaha, yet I just finished a five-season series in L,A, and I did four years on Everwood. I’ve worked on some really large films. I’ve done every CSI series.”
John as Troy Maxson in Huntington Theatre (Boston, MA)
production of August Wilson’s Fences
Taking from life, making his mark
When he made his initial splash in the early 1990s alongside Oprah Winfrey on Brewster Place and in the movie Rudy, he was past leading man age but right on time to be a wizened, gritty character player. He’s continued making his mark portraying authority figures – fathers, judges, ministers, detectives, military officers – and Everyman types.
He came to Hollywood with something no actor can buy – rich life experience. He’s packed a lot into his 72 years.
“Done a lot of things, man,” he says, adding that he draws on “every last bit of it” for his craft.
Should the fame ever go away or the acting offers stop, he’ll be fine.
“I know it’s going to be okay because I’ve lived that kind of life. I was a longshoreman in Philadelphia. I was a gypsy cabdriver in Omaha.”
Growing up in North Omaha he got to know black sports legends from the community – Bob Boozer, Bob Gibson, Gale Sayers, Johnny Rodgers. In Philadelphia he worked at a TV station that broadcast a show whose guest stars – Sammy Davis Jr., Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Muhammad Ali among them – Beasley met. “It was very exciting for me.” Meeting Ali was a particular thrill.
“I had two encounters with Ali. The first was at that TV station, He was banned from boxing and claimed to have a license to fight in Mississippi. He came to do an interview. I went back stage and Ali came up to me and said, ‘I’ve seen your face someplace before, but I can’t place the cemetery.’ I didn’t say anything and he said, ‘You must not have heard me.’ I said, ‘I heard you and you’re not going to have to go to Mississippi to get a fight if you keep talking like that.’
“The next time I saw him was in a little gym down in North Philly. On this black radio station he had goaded Joe Frazier into coming down to fight. By the time I got down there the place was packed. There was no way I was getting in. But then the news crew from my station arrived and one of the guys said, ‘Grab the sound equipment,’ and we went up to the second floor. Ali and Frazier were talking about taking the fight to a city park. Ali didn’t have anything to lose but Joe was the champ. Then Frazier’s manager, Yancey Durham, came in and told Joe to put on his clothes and go home. That was the end of it.”
Beasley got close enough to the fracas he could see Frazier genuinely disliked Ali and took The Greatest’s barbs personally. Beasley appreciated the high drama and did what he’s done since childhood – file away the colorful characters and incidents for his art. Coming from a family of storytellers, it came naturally. With his facility for spinning yarns and assuming identities, he bluffed his way into TV and radio jobs and ingratiated himself wherever he went, including some tough spots along the way. All of it taught valuable survival skills.
“I’ve seen the rough side of life too, where I thought maybe I might not make it out alive, but I always did. It’s always turned out. But you’ve got to stay the course and you’ve got to believe it will work out.”
Even in a sitcom like Soul Man, Beasley brings a gravitas rooted in real life. His Barton Ballentine is a retired preacher who checks his son, a former hit singer turned preacher, played by Cedric.
“What I do is I ground the show in reality because that’s the way I act. It allows the other actors to be able to go over the top a little bit, to play for the laughs. I don’t play for the laughs. I treat this character just like I would an August Wilson character. In fact. one of the characters he’s patterned after is Old Joe from August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, the show I was doing at my theater when I got the call for this (part).”
In the moment
In the hands of less life-tested actors, many roles could be easily forgettable. Only Beasley makes them indelible. Think of his work as a preacher opposite Robert Duvall in The Apostle. Even in scenes with the masterful Duvall Beasley holds his own delivering a depth of character and truth seldom seen.
“I knew when I read the screenplay what he was looking for and I just knew I was the only one that could do it,” Beasley says. “My ability to create a believable character honestly is really the hallmark of what I do. I try to be as honest in my performance as possible as opposed to trying to be someone else. I look at how would I react to this same situation. I’ve always gone inside for my characters.”
Beasley felt a deep kinship with Duvall.
“Nobody is as believable as Bobby Duvall,” he says. “Always in the moment. In fact, when we did it, he said, ‘Big John, don’t be afraid to say anything, don’t hesitate, you’re not going to throw me.’ In other words, if I improvised something he’d go with it in the moment. I think if you’re in the moment it’s always going to work for you.”
Robert Duvall as The Apostle
Two decades later Duvall still enjoys recounting the answer he gave people who inquired about the then-unknown Beasley.
“They’d say, ‘Where’d you find that nonactor?’ I’d say. ‘Well, that nonactor played Othello at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.’ He’s a good actor that guy.”
Actually, Beasley played other roles at the Goodman, just not Othello, but he did essay the Moor at Omaha’s Norton Theater.
Duvall is a big football fan who knows enough Husker gridiron lore to describe Johnny Rodgers as “one of the greatest college football players ever.” Duvall was excited to learn Beasley’s not only from the same hometown as the Heisman Trophy winner but knows him personally. Recalls Duvall, “When I said, ‘I want to talk Johnny Rodgers,’ Big John said ‘I don’t want to talk football, I want to talk theater.’ He’s a fine actor and a good guy. Give him my regards.”
Beasley’s work in The Apostle got singled out by The New York Times and other major publications. The performance helped make his reputation in Hollywood,
Then there’s the short but telling screen time he has as a Notre Dame football coach in Rudy. His character starts out wanting no part of Rudy but by the end he’s won over by the kid’s heart.
Marlin Briscoe
The Magician
Rudy is one of two hit sports movies, along with The Mighty Ducks, he made. Now he’s producing a new sports film The Magician, going before the cameras this fall. The project is a personal one because he goes back a long way with its subject, Marlin “The Magician” Briscoe. The nickname arose from Briscoe’s knack at quarterback to improvise when things broke down. At the most dire times, he’d make a memorable pass or run and lead an improbable comeback.
“He’s ‘The Magician’ for a reason,” Beasley recalls. “When I played with him I saw him in difficult positions, where you thought it was over, and he’d be in a crowd on one side of the field and the next thing you knew he’d be on the other side as if by magic. And it carried over to his life. Just when it looks like he’s down and out he comes back.”
Between Briscoe’s junior and senior seasons he suffered a broken neck in a pickup basketball game that could have easily ended his playing days. Only he came back to earn All-America status. Over his career he set 22 school records. Earlier this year he was selected for induction in the College Football Hall of Fame. Many believe his selection to the Pro Football Hall of Fame is only a matter of time because of the color barrier he broke in the NFL.
A South Omaha street’s named for him and a life-sized bronze statue of his likeness will be unveiled next fall at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. His life is worthy of a movie, too, because it is equally historic, heart-breaking and inspirational.
Briscoe signed with the Denver Broncos in 1968 as an all-around athlete. Once he reported to camp the club wanted him to play defensive back though he intended to play quarterback and had a contractual agreement he be given a tryout. Reportedly, Briscoe out-shone his competition behind center, yet when the season began he was confined to the secondary and not even on the depth chart at quarterback. In a time rife with racial prejudice, bigotry and myths, many coaches and executives believed blacks did not possess the attributes to be signal-callers at the professional level.
Then, fate forced itself upon Denver as one by one its QBs got sidelined by injuries or poor play. Pressure from media and fans grew to give Briscoe a shot. Finally, six games into the season and Denver off to a 2-4 start in which he saw limited action but still helped the team pull out a win, he was given the reins. He ran with them to set club rookie records with 14 touchdown passes, 1,589 passing yards and 309 rushing yards in leading the Broncos to a 3-5 mark as the starter.
He expected to be in the mix for the job come 1969 but instead found himself shut out of the QB race. Then he found himself traded to the Buffalo Bills, where in order to make the team he had to learn a new position, wide receiver. He not only learned it well enough to make the squad but mastered it to become a starter and All-Pro. His next trade proved fortuitous when he landed with the Miami Dolphins and helped them win two straight Super Bowls.
He played for a couple more teams before retiring. Life after football began well but by the 1980s he fell deep into the spiral of a hard drug addiction that eventually cost him his family, his home, his money and nearly his life. Once he hit rock bottom he called on the same character traits that allowed him to get out of tight spots and to surmount hurdles on the playing field, only this time the stakes were much higher – regaining his sobriety and sanity.
Lyriq Bent (Book of Negroes) will play Briscoe on-screen. The script is by Gregory Allen Howard (Remember the Titans). Beasley and two Omaha partners in his West Omaha Films, Terry Hanna and Dave Clark, are partnering with producer Doug Falconer (Forsaken) on the $20 million budgeted project. Some exteriors may shoot here but most of the film is expected to shoot in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
This labor of love has been in the works a decade. Beasley says he stuck with it because “Marlin Briscoe is a friend, first and foremost, and it’s a great story.” When Briscoe was still mired in addiction, Beasley never lost faith in him. “When he was on drugs for years people would say, ‘Did you see, Marlin?’ ‘Yes,’ I’d say, ‘but Marlin will be back.’ He lost everything but still he came back..”
Indeed, Briscoe’s greatest feat of magic became saving himself and finding new purpose in life serving youth. The movie is based on the book, The First Black Quarterback, he wrote with Bob Schaller.
East Texas Hot Links
The other film Beasley’s helping produce, East Texas Hot Links, tells the story of black men going missing in the South. A bloody day of reckoning comes at the local hangout run by Charlesetta. Themes of community, loyalty, betrayal, revenge and racism run through this drama that builds tension until the violent purge. Eugene Lee adapted his own play and will direct. A-list actor Samuel L. Jackson is executive producing. Omaha-based Night Fox Entertainment, whose president, Timothy Christian, is an Omaha native, is financing the project.
Beasley produced the play at his own theater.
“It’s quite a story. It’s a great ensemble piece,” he says. “It goes along as kind of the quiet before the storm and then everything breaks loose and eventually there’s a shootout. Eugene Lee had The Twilight Zone in mind when he wrote this.”
Thus far, Beasley adds, the cast includes Wendell Pierce (The Wire) and Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction). Several other familiar names are being sought. He says his Soul Man co-star Niecy Nash “would be perfect as Charlesetta – she could really carry it.”
Once the cast is complete, the film is slated to shoot in Omaha and Los Angeles, either late this year or early next year.
Building a Nebraska film culture
The addition of Night Fox Entertainment and other production companies in Nebraska signals a growing local film scene. Beasley does what he can to encourage this momentum.
“I like to help out the young filmmakers in the area,” he says, though he adds, “Sometimes I do some things I regret doing. I’m kind of a soft touch. I should tell these people to go talk to my manager but they call me on my cellphone,”
He takes far less than scale for these projects because he knows what’s it’s like to be hungry.
“I know when I was coming along there weren’t many opportunities for film here and now that the film community has grown some and there are a lot of young people trying to do some things I’ll lend my talent as much as I can.”
There’s some self-interest at work, too.
“I do want to do films that i can include my actors in. That was probably the main reason to get into producing – to provide a vehicle for not only myself and my boys but also the actors I’ve developed here.”
John, middle seated, from The Soul Man
Bread and butter
Beasley’s bread and butter projects come out of Hollywood. Soul Man provided steady work and further enhanced his screen image. It was a positive experience.
“Behind the scenes we always had a great set, a welcoming set. No tension. And that says a lot about Cedric and who he is because the player in the number one position kind of sets the tone, He was also the co-creator and an executive producer, so he had a lot of say.”
Beasley is a big admirer of Niecy Nash, who played Cedric’s wife and his daughter-in-law. He says the actress best known for her light comedic roles (Reno 911) turned heads with her serious work in the HBO series Getting On. He calls her performance “real, raw, believable – I’ve been saying people have got to see her, they don’t know the Niecy Nash I know, and now everybody’s discovering her.”
Seeing the show end is not easy. He says at the wrap following the final episode’s taping “tears started to fall because after five years on a series you become family. You know the people behind the camera, in front of the camera, That was kind of a difficult day for us.” He leaves with upbeat feelings. “They were always good to me and they always let me know I was an important part of what was happening.”
There were some bumps in the road.
“The first season the writers really understood who this character was and I got quite a bit of screen time. They always told me they loved writing for me because I always make it work. After the first season we lost a lot of writers because of budget cuts. The second season they brought in new show runners and I got less storyline. In the third, fourth and fifth sessions we had different show runners altogether and these guys really didn’t know who Barton was.
“Some things they wrote for me I didn’t particularly care for. But when we’d go through rehearsals Cedric would say, ‘Circle that,’ meaning let’s take that back to the writers. There was one episode where they had Barton being disrespectful to his daughter-in-law. I said, ‘I’m not going to say that line because he wouldn’t say that.’ The writers understood. They knew that I knew the character better than they did.”
Beasley stays true to his principles in whatever he does. “The thing I’ve told myself is that I will never do any character that doesn’t have dignity. Regardless of who you are, you have to love yourself, you have to have some kind of dignity. If a character doesn’t have dignity then I don’t usually get called for it because that’s not in my body of work.” If someone were to ever demand he portray something not right in his eyes, he says. “I can walk away. It’s not an ego thing with me.”
Having a series end a long run is nothing new for him. It happened with Everwood. Beasley prefers to look at things optimistically “The end of any project is the beginning of another thing.” In this case, it led to taping the CBS sit-com pilot Real Good People from the power team of Stephanie Weir (The Millers), James Burrows (Will & Grace) and Greg Garcia (Raising Hope). The series stars David Keith and Julie White as a Texas couple. Beasley plays a denizen at a cafe they frequent. “We shot in front of a live audience and it went really good. The producers really liked me a lot. It’s a funny show. They’ve put some money into this one. It will probably go in production in July and air in the fall.”
Beasley went up for a new Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy) project he didn’t get but was offered the role of Mr. D in the upcoming Fox event series Shots Fired starring Richard Dreyfuss, Helen Hunt, Stephen Moyer, Stephen James, Sanaa Lathan, Aisha Hinds and Trtstan Wilds. Taking its lead from racially charged police shootings that inspired Black Lives Matter, the series looks at the aftermath of such incidents in a Southern city. “I’m in demand right now,” says Beasley, whose son Michael was up for a part in the same series.
John in the Huntington Theatre production of Fences
Theater
Aside from TV-film work, theater’s always on his mind. “My first love is theater,” he declares. His John Beasley Theater & Workshop found a niche doing the work of August Wilson (Fences). Beasley acted-directed there and brought in guest actors. He and his son Tyrone Beasley, who was artistic director, trained many first-time players.
“I’m thinking about doing another play in Omaha because I’ve got some players here I’ve developed that are pretty good actors and I’d just like to see them do something. I want to do August Wilson. I still think Omaha doesn’t know about August Wilson. I love his work because it’s a true reflection. I know these people.”
The late Wilson wrote a much-heralded 10-play cycle about African-American life that Denzel Washington is adapting for HBO. Beasley is a leading interpreter of Wilson, having appeared in several productions of the artist’s work at major theaters in Chicago and Atlanta as well as at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. He landed his Equity card playing Troy Maxson in Fences at the New American Theatre in Rockford, Illinois. Years later he was to reprise the role in a Broadway-bound production before Denzel got cast.
Beasley thinks enough of the Wilson canon he mounted all 10 plays at his theater. He feels forever indebted to the artist. “I owe so much to August Wilson. He’s been a big part of my career. He wrote some roles for middle-aged black men I can do the rest of my life.”
One thing Beasley’s not prepared to do is to have his own theater again, at least not right now.
“Running a theater myself was quite a burden. I didn’t have a strong board. They didn’t raise money and so I underwrote most of the things we did. I don’t want to go back to that. One production I can handle. I think I can find the sponsors for it and I think i can do it without it coming out of my pocket.”
Midwest values
He’s among a long line of locals who’ve gone on to screen and stage success. He feels the city’s strong theater scene helps propel some people. Besides, he says, “There’s a lot of talent here.”
He’s worked with some fellow Omaha talent on screen, including Gabrielle Union in Daddy’s Little Girls and Yolonda Ross in Treme. Closer to home, he worked with Camille Metoyer Moten on the short Tatoo and with TammyRa’ Jackson on the short Second Words.
He feels Nebraskans stand out in film-TV circles on the coasts because of their Midwest ethos.
“There’s a different value here. When you’re out in L.A., it’s a whole different climate, it’s a whole different deal. I’m well-liked on the sets I work out there. I’m pretty laid-back too. I’m known for being a nice guy and very considerate and very compassionate.”
He’s comfortable in his skin and talent. “My work speaks for itself and I don’t have to impress anybody.” He feels he’s improved with age. “My concentration’s gotten even better. I’m even more aware of my presence and I look more and more for the subtle things. I want you to maybe see what I’m thinking without beating you over the head.”
Michael Beasley
Malik Beasley
All in the family
He’s pleased his boys followed his lead. Tyrone is respected for his stage and screen work here. He’s on the artistic staff of the Rose Theater. Michael Beasley is a busy TV-film actor based in Atlanta. He was a fine athlete who played hoops in high school (Omaha Central), college (Texas Arlington) and professionally (overseas). His son Malik was a Blue Chip prep baller who this past season became a one-and-done phenom at Florida State and declared for the NBA draft. John has enjoyed his grandson’s coming-out party. During Malik’s banner FSU season he often posted about his on-court exploits.
“It’s been great. I went down to see him in Tallahassee for their last home game. I flew in the night before. He’d not been scoring much the previous few games and I said, ‘Tomorrow, I want you to show out,’ and he did show out – he scored 20 points for grandpa and his team beat Syracuse. It was a great comeback for him.”
Hoops runs in the bloodlines.
“I’m told my father was a really good basketball player,” John says.” I never knew that side of him.”
Acting is in the genes, too. Malik and his sister Micah grew up on sets their father and mother worked on. They visited some of grandpa’s sets as well. John Beasley says whether an NBA career works out for Malik or not, he has the skills to succeed in acting. “He’s very talented.” He says being around lights and cameras is why Malik is “so grounded – he’s been there before,” adding, “He knows what celebrity is and handles it very beautifully I must admit.”
Meanwhile, John Beasley’s actively seeking a project he and his sons can do together. “I’ll find something, even if we have to write it ourselves.”
All in all, he says, “I’ve just been blessed. It’s been quite a ride.”
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