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Talking Pictures: 'Great' expectations
Actor Jeffrey Weissman has shared the stage with a few Buck Howards...

by David Templeton

"I remember hearing once that when Elizabeth Taylor was making the Flintstones movie, she insisted on having her dressing room painted purple," says Jeffrey Weissman. In between bites at San Rafael's Il Davide restaurant, actor/writer/teacher/director Weissman is verbally dissecting his favorite moments from the new film The Great Buck Howard, which we've just seen around the corner at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center. In Howard, a perfectly cast John Malkovich plays the title character, a once-famous magician—excuse me, a once-famous mentalist—dreaming of a comeback while reading minds and predicting the contents of purses at a series of small, rundown theaters across America. In one of Weissman's favorite scenes, Buck's new road manager (Colin Hanks, son of Tom Hanks, who has a potent cameo in the film) is shown exactly how to treat the facility managers of these small-town venues. In Buck's case, this treatment amounts to making sure that the facility managers have attended to every single advance request made by the performer, including adherence to a clause in Buck's contract requiring a bottle of Scotch to be waiting in his dressing room. "It's a fact of the industry," points out Weissman, "that movie stars and other 'celebrities' are ranked according to how much they can get away with demanding from those they work with. The bigger the star, the more ridiculous the request that a producer has to agree to."

Weissman (check out his site at www.jeffreyweissman.com ) knows what he's talking about. A working actor for most of his life, Weissman has had roles in dozens of films, from the forgettable (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Johnny Dangerously) to the famous (Twilight Zone: The Movie, Pale Rider, Back to the Future II and III, in which he took over for Crispin Glover as Michael J. Fox's father, George McFly). A master at making a big impression in a small part, Weissman is also a hard-working stage actor, with a string of appearances at large-scale theatrical events and amusement parks. Locally, he often appears at the Dickens Christmas Faire, and last year had an active part in the eye-popping Polar Express Ride at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. Over the years, he's worked with a stunning list of performers and actors from Clint Eastwood and Bette Midler to John Lithgow and Michael Keaton. His recent film Corked—a "mockumentary" about the Sonoma County wine industry—was completed last year, and is now looking for a distributor. A quick online perusal of his IMDB profile also shows that he has played Groucho Marx in a number of projects, and once played a character named only A--hole, that in an episode of the series The Man Show. He once even played a mentalist not unlike the poor, forgotten Buck Howard, though in 1900s attire. That was last year, as a snake-oil type con artist at the Mysteries of Olompali event at Olompali State Park in Novato.

"As entertainment, hypnotism is such a beautiful art," Weissman says, recalling the scene in Buck Howard where Malkovich attempts to put hundreds of people to sleep, all at once. "When I was 11 or 12," he recalls, "I remember being hypnotized by a mentalist who'd come to our school in San Diego. I was one of the volunteers who'd agreed to be 'put under.' So I went up there, was hypnotized and was told to sing Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz by Janis Joplin. He told me to sing it as if I was Donny Osmond—and I remember him pulling me out of the trance right as I was finishing the song, and I was so startled to hear myself singing in front of everyone that I dropped the microphone."

"Must have been a fun moment for that audience," I remark.

"Oh, they loved me," Weissman laughs.

As for The Great Buck Howard, Weissman now counts himself as one of Buck's new big fans.

"I personally loved it," he says. "I loved it, and I would recommend it highly to anyone, but then possibly not everyone would get it. I think anyone who's ever been involved in show business would get it, but the layman down the street might find it a little strange." A major theme of today's movie, he goes on to mention, is the desperate need of some people in show business to hang onto whatever little success they've had, trying optimistically to stage a rebirth of some kind. "It's very smart, this movie," Weissman says, "in recognizing that those kinds of rebirths do happen, and in showing us how that rebirth can happen, usually by the forgotten person accidentally falling into some new piece of popular culture."

"Any examples?" I ask.

"I remember running into Danny Bonaduce, years after The Partridge Family," he says, "when Bonaduce was managing a sushi place in Hollywood. I said, 'Danny, what are you doing here?' and he was the same, determined, slightly pushy, sweetly obnoxious character we all know and love him to be. But he'd fallen out of popular culture. He was a footnote, and it wasn't until he beat up that transsexual prostitute a few years later that he suddenly fell back into popular culture. And it relaunched his career! He was offered a radio show, and before long he had his own TV show on the air. It was amazing—and it was all accidental!"

Though Buck Howard doesn't beat up any prostitutes, he is definitely a prickly personality; but as tough as he is on publicists, producers and talk-show hosts, when it comes to his audience, the faithful few who still remember him, he is 100 percent professional.

"It seems that a lot of these show-biz types, more than anything else, just want to be loved and appreciated," I suggest.

"I think that's true," Weissman says. "Do you know about the Motion Picture Hospital in Woodland Hills, where a lot of the old-time movie stars have spent the last days of their lives? I used to go there when Universal Studios would send me there to entertain the residents, and it was there that I became friends with Anita Garvin. Remember her? She was a very big star and an extremely talented comedienne. She played in several of the old Laurel & Hardy films. When I met her she was 82 or 83, and she was living there at the home. She was so wonderful, and so delightful. I loved going out to talk to her.

"One day I went to visit her," he continues the story, "and she said, 'Guess what? I just got off the phone with my fan club in Sweden!' She had a fan club, people who still remembered her, and she was just glowing. Her life was enriched again, and she just emanated this incredible energy and joy. Someone like that, someone who'd spent their life giving so much of their talent and time, and was now essentially forgotten, to someone like that, a little attention and appreciation means so much. It's important not to forget the Anita Garvins of the world—or the Buck Howards."

Contact the writer at talkpix@earthlink.net

Posted by Natalie Kravetz, a resident of another community, on Apr 11, 2009 at 7:55 pm

As a long time friend of Jeffrey's, I am always struck by his sanity and wit. The grace he lives his life with is a joy to behold, and I wish everyone could have a friend like this. He's a gem.

I absolutely love the come-back phenomenon of which he speaks - almost every day, there's an 'Oh, yeah, I remember that guy!' moment. Far from being has-beens, many of these folks have devoted their lives to something they are passionate about - and would do no matter what.

Great article!