Stephen Tobolowsky is the actor who has been in everything. Now he's branching out into documentaries.
The majority of people I’ve interviewed have had a fairly standard way of speaking. I’ll ask them a question, they’ll answer that question (or, in certain circumstances, they’ll answer the question they’d rather have been asked) and we move forward. Save for the insanity surrounding conversations with actress Bai Ling, this is the way my subjects and I have communicated. I’d hazard a guess that it’s the way that 99% of the populace communicates too. Actor Stephen Tobolowsky operates on a much different level. Just as Keats would write in iambic pentameter, Tobolowsky talks in stories.
Discussing why he occasionally works on student films, Tobolowsky launches into a story involving Imaginary Heroes’ director Dan Harris.
Talking about what makes a good casting director, Tobolowsky tells me about eating dinner with director Alan Parker (there is a correlation between the two... there always is).
Attempting to explain what makes a good co-star, Tobolowsky good-naturedly relates a story how actor Harvey Keitel would steal his character’s good lines of dialogue on the set of Thelma & Louise. "Ridley [Scott] came up to me before a scene and said, ‘Harvey wants to improvise.’" Tobolowsky was fine with that until he realized that by ‘improvising’ Keitel meant that he was going to take Tobolowsky’s lines. "They were good lines," he acknowledges, "but Harvey’s character was coming from a diametrically opposed position to mine."
Delving into the art of improv and thinking quickly on your feet, Tobolowsky conveys a story about how he had to convince actor Steven Seagal on set that there wouldn’t be "bad karma" if Seagal continued killing evil-doers on-screen. Tobolowsky recounts, "Steven said that he had big doubts about the project. He said, ‘It needs to be more spiritually involved." Tobolowsky holds up his hands and says, "I said to him, ‘Steven, as a serial killer, I cannot help my behavior. It’s important for you to take me out because that way I have a chance to [be at peace] and not hurt any more people.’" Tobolowsky pauses a beat and delivers the punchline, "So then he shot me."
Tobolowsky’s stories aren’t simply reserved for the recorded portions of our talk either. After our interview concludes, Tobolowsky, his good friend, cinematographer Robert Brinkman and I are sitting around a table in Tobolowsky’s house chatting about past girlfriends and the follies of youth. Tobolowsky begins recounting a story about how he auditioned for–and landed–a part in a play because he wanted to meet one of the female cast members. In the telling of this particular story, Tobolowsky leaps from his chair and starts acting out his part in the play, singing, dancing and riding an imaginary horse around his study. I watch in amazement, not only because of Tobolowsky’s near one-of-a-kind story telling abilities, but because he is singing lines that he had to learn more than twenty years ago.
It’s hard not to be captivated by the man’s energy, wit and humor. And since he’s blocked out an entire afternoon for me, I am only too happy to let him wax on at length. His stories came at me so rapidly and contained such a high concentration of entertainment value and comedy, there were times where I felt as though I was privy to a great one-man performance show. Tobolowsky’s ‘act’ peaked during one of his favorite stories, a story that he uses to illustrate the fact that he really has been a part of almost every project made; a notion that is backed up by his lengthy, lengthy filmography: Tobolowsky has appeared in more than 145 projects in the last 15 years.
"I was in Vancouver and it was like Dorian Gray to the max," Tobolowsky begins. "They only had four stations at the hotel that I was in and I was on all four stations in various stages of baldness. I was in an early TV movie I’d done and I had a lot of hair and big glasses. I was doing Seinfeld and I was thin then. I was in Thelma & Louise and an ABC thing where I was older and wore glasses and was a principal of a school"
Explaining away his presence in so many projects, Tobolowsky smiles and admits, "Choosing projects falls into two categories: affairs of the heart and affairs of the pocket book.
I am not the only person to have noticed Tobolowsky’s penchant for passionate and well-versed storytelling. Frankly, it’s hard to be in his presence for more than a few minutes without picking up on this. Having known Tobolowsky for many years, Brinkman decided it was high time to share the joys of the Tobolowsky tales with filmgoers. And thus the non-fictional film Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party was born. Directed by Brinkman, the film follows Tobolowsky on his birthday as he relates metaphorically important and humorous stories to both the camera and his party guests.
When I first saw the marketing materials for Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party, I laughed out loud. Not because the poster is overtly funny, but because the project signifies that Tobolowsky has not been contained by the world of feature films. In a unique twist of fate, the man who has appeared in everything is now branching out into the documentary film world.
