Rodney Dangerfield: Respect at Last
Hot Rodney!
So now it’s Rodney the movie star. Five years ago, last time I talked to him, he was merely America’s fastest-rising old comedian. Now he’s Rodney, summer-film comet. Every time you turn around, the guy’s career goes up a notch.
We’re in the back of a chauffeured stretch with all the trimmings. Bar, TV, phone are all ignored. Rodney is up a big bowl of cereal, fruit and skim milk. He’s on some kind of diet kick, making a stab at health, not too optimistically. “I got no willpower, forget it, will ya? It’s tough, it’s tough, whew.” Same old Rodney music.
For comic relief, the roof window keeps sliding open unbidden as Rodney inadvertently kicks a door switch. “Oh, I guess I did that with my foot again. Sorry.”
Nothing goes right, nothing.
Offstage, he’s not Rodney Classic, not the Rodney of a million stand-ups. He’s not in the familiar dark suit and red tie, tugging at the tight collar, bouncing up and down, squirming, twitching, sweating, all frazzled, raw nerve endings, eyes popping out, mouth machine-gunning misery gags at a whooping crowd. No, he’s a more relaxed model, this Rodney. Casual clothes, easy does it. But the fundamentals are always there. The first-thing-in-the-morning voice, low, guttural, phlegmy, with its New York intonations and the fine comic’s rhythm and timing. And always the tragic world view.
Listen, it’s tough, what can I tell ya, it’s tough, ya know what I mean? Life, whew, it’s a rough one. Nobody has it easy, nobody gets a free ride.
That’s the basic Rodney riff. Rodney’s blues. Lay that down first, that rhythm track for mood, and then all you need to do is add the funny moves and mix in the punch lines, and bingo! You’ve got comedy. No big deal, no sweat. Just took him thirty, forty years to get it right.
I told my psychiatrist I got suicidal tendencies. He told me from now on I have to pay in advance.
We’re driving from New York to Rodney’s house in Westport, Connecticut, an hour and change away. Rodney is expounding on life at my request, but passing through some burg in Westchester, he spots a marquee: Back to School. “Did you see it?” he asks. “Did you laugh out loud?”
Hey, somebody did. Who’d have figured it? Here’s a pleasant little affair with some jokes, some plot (self-made millionaire goes to college to set an example for his would-be-dropout son), a little slapstick, even a little romance. An old-fashioned, gentle comedy with no special effects, crashing cars or piggish sex japes.
Who’d have figured that for a summer hit and Rodney for a matinee idol in Hollywood’s Kiddie Era? We knew he was good for five-minute giggle fixes on Carson, but act? Rodney, where in your long, tortured existence did you come up with that?
“At Vinnie’s Boom-Boom Room! I never went to acting school or nothing like that. Whatever it is. I guess when you’re a kid and you want to survive, you have to learn to act.”
He laughs, without much mirth. And more amazing, what was punchy, paunchy old Rodney doing impinging on Sally Kellerman? Did I really see that?
“I know,” he says. “It’s a strange thing, going to see someone like me and he’s doing a romantic scene. What the hell is his story? What nerve he has! But, uh …” Slight pause. “I got away with it! Ha ha ha ha!”
Rodney’s happy to talk about the movie. It started when Orion Pictures brought him an idea from two writers: Rodney goes to college. He liked it and wrote a minute-and-a-half sample scene that Orion filmed and showed to a convention of theater owners in Las Vegas. They liked it. So work began.
“There were gangs of writers,” says Rodney. “Gangs! The whole thing went on for two years with scripts, you know? Usually, you have a script and then you do the movie. We went backward. We had an idea. Hey, let’s do the movie! Then we have no script. We had starting dates, everything else, but no script Anyway, we got lucky. It came out all right.”
Whew, it’s a tough racket, movies. You’ve gotta be careful, you’ve gotta know what you’re doing. First movie he ever did, The Projectionists, in 1968, was a low-budget job that paid him only $3000 and didn’t make much of a stir. It was twelve years to the next one, Caddyshack, with Bill Murray and Chevy Chase. Rodney kind of stole it, if you recall. Three years ago, he made Easy Money, his first starring vehicle, about a guy who has a year to give up his bad habits to collect a big inheritance. It did okay, but nothing special.
So now he knows something about movies. “I learned that what is important is the mood of a set. If the mood is not right, you don’t get the best work out of the actors, because everyone is tense.” Also, he learned to take his time and wait for the right idea. For his next hit, he’s still waiting.
“I’ve been having offers from everybody. When you suddenly become somewhat of a draw, they’ll put you in any kind of movie. They don’t care if it’s good or bad, just as long as it makes money. You’ve got to try to pick out something that you feel is worthwhile doing, you know? You’ve gotta have the right vehicle.”
The vehicle we’re in now has rolled into Westport, a moneyed, green suburb on Long Island Sound, far from Rodney’s lowly beginnings. Soon Rodney is showing me around his place. If you expected some kind of gaudy star palace, you’d be disappointed. It’s tastefully done, comfortable, light and airy, unpretentious. Showbiz mementos are confined to a small study. He shows me the latest one, a shovel from Back to School, inscribed by the director and the art director: Dear Rodney, We really dig you, man.
The most impressive part of the house is the Rodney Health Club. There’s an indoor pool in a big, sunny, wood-paneled room with a skylight, then another room with a Jacuzzi, plus some workout equipment.
Rodney had all that built. At sixty-four, he’s trying to give his poor old body a fighting chance. Left to his natural impulses, he would overeat, drink and smoke. “I’m a champ at self-abuse,” he says. But two years ago, he went to the Pritikin Longevity Center, in Santa Monica, California — “I’m not a kid anymore, so what the heck?” — to try to kick his two-pack-a-day smoking habit. He did. He also got indoctrinated in the rigors of the Pritikin diet, which can be roughly summed up as follows: If it’s good, don’t eat it He sticks to it … sort of. “You go off,” he admits. “Every day you go off, but it’s a question of how much.”
He shows me a freezer stacked high with full plastic containers. “This is all Pritikin food,” he says. “All different kinds of soup and stuff. It’s good for you.”
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