In this special episode of the Full Cast And Crew Podcast, we interview Lee Wilkof, an actor and director whose career on stage and screen has spanned more than 42 years.  He graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1972 and has more than 101 IMDB credits as an (and counting) and has garnered Obie and Drama Desk Awards and a Tony nomination on Broadway. 

Lee is a charming and self-effacing guy who we were thrilled to nerd out with about his journey through Show Business and his great anecdotes about so many of the people he's worked with over the years.  One of our favorite episodes to date on the podcast and a special chance to go behind the scenes of 40 years of stage and screen history, filled with great advice for actors and human beings.

In this episode (as a thunderstorm briefly rages dramatically outside the FCAC studio) Lee shares with Chris and Jason stories about:

The origins of Lee's directorial debut/cautionary tale of the acting life 'No Pay, Nudity' (13:40), the vibe and characters hanging around the old Actor's Equity Lounge (14:40), meeting Nathan Lane as young actors in NYC in 1972 (16:50), a clip from 'No Pay, Nudity' featuring Nathan Lane and Jon Michael Hill ('Eastbound & Down', 'Elementary') (25:00), some George R.R. Martin stories (30:45), 'Silence Of The Lambs' co-star Ted Levine (34:15), Loudon Wainwright III playing a character loosely based on Stephen Sondheim (42:20), Joel Higgins and 'Silver Spoons' (47:25), inadvertently insulting James Lapine and 'Into The Woods' and then making up for it with a self-effacing letter (49:22), Jeff Perry as Mr. Katimski in 'My So-Called Life' and presence in the Columbo Cinematic Universe (55:20), National Lampoon's 'Disco Beaver From Outer Space' (57:25), Influential show 'The Present Tense' and Roger Ailes trying to manage a young Lee Wilkof, who got  as six-paragraph rave review, and Obie and a Drama Desk noms (59:16), Getting cast in the 'Animal House' tv spinoff 'Delta House' and being told to "town it down" (01:02:48), Dressing room 'Hart To Hart' chats with Natalie Wood and RJ Wagner while Stephanie Powers was not warming to Lee on-set (01:04:00), Lee's 'The Gong Show' appearance and getting gonged by JP Morgan while a struggling actor in LA and waiting for his big break and getting two pilot offers in one day (01:08:14), Bob Newhart reportedly not being thrilled with Lee as agent Elliot Gabler on 'Newhart' (01:14:08), working with Madeline Kahn (01:17:05), a 'Hunter' (Fred Dryer, Stepfanie Kramer) clip featuring Lee (01:18:23), Lee on the difference b/t guesting and being a regular on a TV series (01:21:57), working closely with Tim Blake Nelson ('O Brother Where Art Thou', 'The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs') (01:23:44), doing 'Ally McBeal' and a falling-out with David E. Kelley story (01:24:15), being a series regular on the iconic 'Max Headroom' ABC series (01:25:55), Steven Bochco's 'Cop Rock' and Lee convincing the director he didn't blow a take (01:28:45), doing 'Beverly Hills Buntz' (01:35:17), Lee tells us what he'd watch on tv in our 'Latch Key TV' segment (01:38:59), having Thanksgiving dinner with Gary Oldman and Dennis Hopper but not M. Emmett Walsh, sadly, on the set of Mick Jackson's 'Chattahoochee' (01:42:10), meeting Cary Grant in 1985 (01:45:00), Watching "Ghoulardi" as a kid growing up in Cleveland (01:49:20), On not being cast in the movie version of 'Little Shop Of Horrors' (01:51:00).

Connect with Lee online:

@leewilkof on Instagram

Check Out Lee's IMDB Page:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0929502/

Watch Lee's Directorial Debut 'No Pay, Nudity':

https://www.amazon.com/No-Pay-Nudity-Francis-Conroy/dp/B01MQU3H9M

The 'Hart To Hart' Stanley Friesen Comp Reel we play in this episode: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MecYgXiEfaY

Chuckler Comedy on Facebook.

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This week on the Full Cast And Crew Podcast we cruise the rain-slicked early 90's NYC streets and track down Paul Schrader's (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, American Gigolo) 1992 film 'Light Sleeper'. Fittingly, we're releasing this one at 2:43am on a Thursday morning, with our ears still ringing from the sound system at Area and our noses numbed with bad decisions.

A Manhattan drug dealer with a wealthy clientele, John LeTour (Willem Dafoe) reevaluates both his trade and his life after discovering that his supplier, Ann (Susan Sarandon), is planning on quitting the business. When John runs into his old flame Marianne (Dana Delany), he sees reconnecting with her as a way to change for the better, but she is reluctant to rekindle the romance. Complicating John's life further is a series of drug-related murders that has the police pegging him as a suspect.

Schrader called 'Light Sleeper' the last of his "Man In A Room' movies, along with Taxi Driver and American Gigolo; movies about isolated, alienated men occupying their single-room apartments and going slowly crazy with the dawning awareness of the dissatisfaction and ennui they are feeling.  Despite that wrist-slitting description, 'Light Sleeper' features some pitch-perfect performances from Willem Dafoe, Sarandon, David Clennon, Victor Garber, Delaney, Mary Beth Hurt, Jane Adams, a young Sam Rockwell, and David Spade as "theological cokehead".  

'Light Sleeper' is like transporting yourself back to NYC in the late 80's and early 90's.  The restaurants, the coke, the bullshit clothes.  But all that is viewed, almost in real time, with an acerbic, probing eye that lets no one off the hook.  Featuring a soundtrack from The Call's Michael Been (1983's MTV-staple 'The Walls Came Down'), 'Light Sleeper' might not be a movie you're familiar with unless you came of age in the movie theaters of the 80's and 90's, but it's a perfect period piece and prescient about the downfalls and lies at the center of a life among "the beautiful people", with a sense of possible redemption at the end in the most unexpected of places.

More about Light Sleeper here. 

Paul Schrader's IMDB page here.

Light Sleeper Full Cast & Crew page here

Cinematographer Ed Lachman's IMDB page here

Full Cast And Crew Podcast page here.

Accompanied by their children (Dana Barron, Anthony Michael Hall), Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his wife, Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo), are driving from Illinois to a California amusement park. As Clark increasingly fixates on a beautiful woman driving a sports car, the Griswolds deal with car problems and the death of a family member...and a dog. They reach Los Angeles, but, when Clark worries that the trip is being derailed again, he acts impulsively to get his family to the park.  

Vacation's IMDB Page:  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085995/

Chevy Chase Wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevy_Chase

Harold Ramis Wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Ramis

Subscribe to Full Cast And Crew Podcast here.

The understated, minimalist 'Flash Gordon' showed admirable restraint in scenery, costuming, and acting.  JUST KIDDING, it's a completely over-the-top circus spectacle of indulgence and various aspects of a film crew working on movies with vastly different tones except they're all working on the same movie.  But FLASH means a lot to a lot of people, notably middle-aged white men who were 6 in 1980 and who embrace this movie tighter than they clutch their ticket to Autograph Alley at ComicCon to get a signed pic of  the guy who played '3rd Hawkman In Attack Scene' for $25.  So we try and plumb the depths, such as they are.  

Local Hero is a 1983 Scottish comedy-drama film written and directed by Bill Forsyth and starring Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson, Fulton Mackay and Burt Lancaster. Up-and-coming Houston oil executive "Mac" MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) gets more than he bargained for when a seemingly simple business trip to Scotland changes his outlook on life. Sent by his colorful boss (Burt Lancaster) to the small village of Ferness, Mac is looking to quickly buy out the townspeople so his company can build a new refinery. But after a taste of country life Mac begins to question whether he is on the right side of this transaction.

We turned 40!  OK, 40 episodes but still, from the comfortable vantage point of wisdom and jaded experience, we look back on Bob Fosse's groundbreaking autobiographical takedown of the myths of himself, 1979's 'All That Jazz'.  Featuring the innovative "Fosse Time" editing, more iconic imagery (or "pretty pictures" as Fosse would call snapshots of his choreography) than you can shake a bowler hat at, and and unforgettable, iconic performance from Roy Scheider in yet ANOTHER role he lucked into (See our Jaws episode for the other).  ALSO: Rants n Raves, Headlines, and Latch Key TV for your listening pleasure.

More cigarettes were consumed during the filming of Barbet Schroeder's 'Reversal Of Fortune' than during the filming of George Clooney's 'Goodnight And Good Luck'.  And that's saying something! Also: WOW that Felicity Huffman cameo hasn't aged well, has it?  Oh the irony.  Ron Silver acts the hell out of a pair of  eyeglasses, and Glenn Close is unreasonably good in a movie that's often as odd as its subject matter.  Ginger Prawns for everyone.  We still can't figure out who Bill Camp is in this movie; making Uta Hagen play the Maid role; and Fisher Stevens in the Ur-Fisher Stevens role, Julie Hagerty steps out of the Airplane! Cinematic Universe and MUCH MORE!  

Public Enemy's churning, propulsive 'Fight The Power" was like a Batman logo swirling in the air across America in 1989 as Spike Lee's 3rd feature 'Do The Right Thing' hit theaters to the kind of fearful white fright and tut tutting from "thinkers" and reviewers too hidebound in their own bubble to receive this transmission from a filmmaker perfectly formed to speak in his films in a way no mainstream writer and director had to date.  Hugely popular, controversial, conversation-starting 'Do The Right Thing' is a landmark American movie.  But it's also hilariously funny, remarkably even-handed and without conclusive answers in a way that still feels incredibly brave and realistic.  Pitched in a heightened color-scape and with indelible performances from a fantastic cast, 'Do The Right Thing' more than holds up today; it reminds us just how far we haven't come as a Nation in subsequent years.

1987's 'Robocop' is a brilliantly dark and funny social satire about a far-off time when powerful corporations have undue influence over society and overly-militarized police forces terrorize innocent civilians.  GOOD THING THAT NEVER HAPPENED!  We dive into Paul Verhoeven before Joe Ezsterhas got his hooks in him and 'Showgirls' became synonymous with 'career-ending bomb', and not in a good way. 

2004's 'Mean Girls' was a 'Heathers' for a new generation and was directed by the brother of the guy who wrote 'Heathers' which is so weird, right?  Featuring a star performance by LiLo, SNL alum Tim Meadows' best film work, and Tina Fey's brilliant script, 'Mean Girls' redefined the High School Movie and we give it its due with return Friend Of The Pod Alex Potter, who comes back for her 2nd LiLo film (catch her on our The Parent Trap episode) and also gives us her Latch Key TV takes and much more.