Happy Friday to you, readers! Well, how else do I say it….thanks AGAIN to the Social Media world of Twitter and an unexpected “Follow” I received some months ago on my account from another established actor, I of course had to look him up and hence discovered he was about to be in a highly anticipated comedy sequel, “Dumb & Dumber To“. So, arrangements were made, the call was placed, and I ended up in yet another absolutely entertaining and enlightening look into the world of motion pictures via a wonderfully patient, articulate, and genuine-hearted man who is so thankful for the opportunities he’s had to date and still to come. Therefore, I give you my interview with the wonderful Mr. Steve Tom.
One Film Fan: The story so far, how were you first drawn to the acting profession? When did it become evident that acting was going to be your career choice?
Steve Tom: Oh, well, those are two very different things. I grew up in an, at least partially, acting family. My mother’s mother, my maternal grandmother, was very much into the theater when she was younger. She played a very young ingénue’s mother, that ingénue was a woman by the name of Grace Kelly. She played Grace Kelly’s mother in a New York production of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” and was very much involved in the theater. She studied with the GREAT drama coach, Madam Maria Ouspenskaya. So we played theater games and did things like that when I was young and growing up. Then when it came time to go to school, I thought “Well, you know, that may not be the best career choice to make” so I went into electronic journalism and mass communications and was in the radio business for years and years and years working for NBC in Chicago. And then I eventually left Chicago and moved to San Diego and did the same thing there. I had a voiceover agent who let me know one day that there was a television movie being cast in San Diego and they were looking for a guy to play a detective. So I said “Oh! Oh! Let me audition! I can do that!” She said “No, no, no. You’re a voiceover person, you’re not an actor. Oh well, the hackles on my neck went up and you coulda, I mean, I was upset. So I harangued her and wedeled her and vexed her into finally surrendering and she sent me to the audition, but she said “If you don’t book this, then don’t ever ask me to do this for you again.” I said “Ok” and I DID book the role as the detective in that TV movie, and I did another one and then another one and a couple of series that were filming down there. And I realized that that is really what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do it in San Diego, I had to move to Los Angeles, so that’s what I did in 1995 and haven’t looked back. And I’ve been the luckiest guy in the world.
O.F.F: How did you further learn the art (ie: mentors, influences)?
ST: Well, there was no ONE person in particular. Instead, I used everybody that had been in this business one more day than I had as a mentor. I watched everybody, I learned from every single person I worked with on a set, good AND bad. Because there are certain things you don’t want to do on a set as well as a lot of things you DO want to bring to a set…and I learned from EVERY single person. Yeah, I think ALL actors should go to a set and be completely open like a sponge, ready to absorb whatever comes their way.
O.F.F: Having spent much of your initial career with TV series roles, how was it to begin moving into major film roles, such as “The Kid”, “First Daughter”, “Seven Pounds”, “The Campaign” and working with the likes of Bruce Willis, Katie Holmes, Will Smith, and Will Farrell?
ST: Well, the first thing I had to remember, and be reminded of by a lot of people, is that they’re just actors who are showing up to go to work on the same set that you are. They may be making a little bit more money than you are, but that’s essentially the only difference. So it wasn’t…I mean… there were nerves of course sometimes until you find out that even THEY don’t remember their lines, even THEY stumble over words, time after time after time. Even THEY get frustrated. So once the playing field was kind of leveled like that, it became much less daunting. I love television, and I still do lots of television, but I did at one point want to, as you said, transition into feature film work. And you know, it was a struggle. If you haven’t done any feature film work, casting offices are reluctant to bring you in to audition for feature films. But, you know, it sort of took care of itself over time and smaller, tiny roles gave way to larger roles and larger roles. And now, this role in “Dumb & Dumber To”, a supporting lead, is so far my biggest feature film role and probably the most fun I’ve ever had.
O.F.F: So, onto your current project, “Dumb & Dumber To”, coming out November 14th nationwide……What drew you to this film or how did this opportunity come about?
ST: Well, it took a long time. It was a long road this film had to go down before it became a movie. Nobody wanted to, most of all Jim (Carrey) & Jeff (Daniels), to make a sequel just for the sake of making a sequel, and sort of rehash old “Dumb & Dumber” jokes in a new film that really had no purpose. That’s one of the reasons why it took so long. Mike Cerrone, Sean Anders and Bennett Yellin who wrote this film (and Bennett actually wrote the screenplay for the original “Dumb & Dumber”) put together a script over a period of time that is just wonderful, in my opinion. It very skillfully and deftly spans the gap between “Dumb & Dumber” and now “Dumb & Dumber To”, and explains what the guys have been up to, and why we haven’t seen them together for so long, and it just sort of seamlessly transitions from one into the other. AND it’s also a great story, too. Anyway, I got a call from the casting director, Rick Montgomery, I think in the spring of last year sometime, April or May, and he said that Peter & Bobby Farrelly, who were big fans of mine from the work I did in a series on HBO called “Funny or Die Presents” for Will Ferrell, wanted to know if I would be interested in being a part of this new sequel. And…”you can send me a script if you want to, but don’t waste the postage, dude, because I’m IN! I am IN, absolutely!” I was all excited and then a week later, Warner Brothers, who was the studio backing the film and the distributor, decided they just didn’t want anything to do with the project and they dropped it! And I thought, “Oh, man….I get THIS close to something so iconic and it blows up!” So we were sort of back where we started from, back to square one. Then, a couple of months later, Universal came along and said “Whoa! Are you kidding me?? If Warner Brothers doesn’t want this SURE THING, then we’ll take it, and we’re excited to take it.” So, Universal jumped on board along with Red Granite Pictures…Red Granite is wonderful, they have a reputation for picking up these odd little films nobody else seems to want, like “The Wolf of Wall Street”, and turn them into great successes. So we’re confident that will happen here, too.
So we’re back on track again and finally I auditioned in about August of last year…everybody had to audition…and it was the worst audition of my life…WORST audition of my life! Every technical problem that COULD have gone wrong went wrong. I won’t run down everything that happened but suffice it to say, I walked out of the room feeling like I was a crash test dummy for the other actors still waiting to go in. And I KNEW I wasn’t going to get this job, and I KNEW I screwed up my one big opportunity to work for the Farrelly Brothers and be in this amazing motion picture. I was blowing smoke out of my ears, I was SO mad! And then about three weeks later, maybe a month later, I got a call from my agent that I was the Farrelly’s first choice to play the role of Dr. Bernard Pichlow. I said, “You know, you just called Steve Tom. Who did you REALLY mean to call?? Because you couldn’t be talking about me!” And she “No, no, no. Yes, it’s Steve Tom I’m talking to and you’re the first choice! It’s not over yet. We still have to get Producer approval, we have to get studio approval”…and that took a couple of weeks. Finally I was on a plane flying to Atlanta to start filming and you could have knocked me over with a feather. It goes back to something my Dad used to say a long time ago, and he used to say “You can’t feel your own handshake”. That’s kind of a weird way of saying, as I learned later, would that we could see ourselves as others see us. And the truth is, we can’t most of the time. They saw something in my audition, Peter & Bobby Farrelly saw something there, that they liked. A particular choice that I made. In fact, when we were filming, I pulled Peter aside and said “Why….why am I here? Why did you choose me? There were a lot of great actors out in that room waiting?” And he said “You know, you brought something to one particular exchange with your (film) daughter, Penny, in the audition. No other actor did that or brought that to the audition process.” So, that’s how I got chosen. Lucky for ME! (Laughs)
O.F.F: Tell us about the character, Dr. Pichlow, you play in it.
ST: Dr. Bernard Pichlow is a brilliant, but pretty eccentric and quite reclusive scientific genius who lives up in, I think, Vermont where his mansion is. Twenty years ago, he and his then wife, who is now deceased, adopted a tiny baby girl that was given birth to by a woman named Freda Felcher, who was referred to in the original movie, as someone whom Harry had kind of a semi-anonymous hook-up with inside a funeral home. So it turns out she got pregnant and she had a daughter and sent Harry a postcard which, since he hadn’t checked his mail in twenty years, all of the sudden found out that he had a child. And his search for that child was very, very important to him and it came at just the right time because Harry needs a kidney transplant. And what better person to give you a kidney than a blood relative. So the guys go off on a wild road trip to find Harry’s daughter, and that road trip takes them to my house where me and my wife Adele, played by the BRILLIANT Laurie Holden from (AMC network’s) “The Walking Dead”, are there, and we’re there by ourselves because our daughter has gone to a big scientific conference in El Paso to accept an award on my behalf. So, that starts the road trip all over again. And there’s all kinds of twists and turns in the story and (laughing), I’ll tell you, if anybody thinks that this is going to be another “Dumb & Dumber”, rehashes of old jokes…no, no, no, no, no! The writers forged new ground in absolute stupidity in this thing and it is absolutely great! There were some gags that I was watching during the premier that just had me HOWLING! And I read the script!!
O.F.F: How was it acting alongside Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels?
ST: Well, my first day on the job was spent with Kathleen Turner in a broom closet! We have a little tiny scene toward the end of the film, but it took a while to shoot it. I was the luckiest guy in the world, because I got to spend a day in a broom closet with the door closed getting to know Kathleen Turner, and I’ll tell you she is a thoroughbred. It was great to be able to spend that time with and work with her. But once we got around Jim and Jeff….Jim and Jeff are interesting guys. They’re the perfect yin to each other’s yang. Jeff is very soft spoken, he’s a musician (he plays guitar), I don’t know if a lot of people know that. Between takes, during scene set-ups, he’ll just take his little travel guitar and go off and find a quiet place away from the set, plug in his earbuds, and just sit there and strum the guitar. Very, very low key. While Jim, meanwhile, is kind of RUNNING around the set, bouncing off this wall and that wall, being crazy and hilarious, and then they call us to set and begin working. BUT, the one thing I will say is that I learned the importance of being absolutely, positively, 100% PRESENT in the exact moment that we were working. Because if you take a little mental vacation and Jim goes off someplace that you weren’t expecting, it’s almost like being on a horse! You’re kind of loping along and everything’s nice and pleasant and you’re kind of not paying attention. Then all of the sudden something spooks the horse, and the horse goes one way and you’re going the other if you’re not paying attention. You had to be RIGHT THERE and ready to go wherever he would take you. He only did that a couple of times, because believe it or not, the scenes were pretty well scripted and structured, and in a lot of them there was some physical choreography that we had to pay attention to, so….but there WERE those moments where you never knew what was going to happen, and it was usually something good.
O.F.F: And I am guessing it was the same working with the Farrelly Brothers, who are true masters of this style of offbeat comedy?
ST: Absolutely! There’s a scene at the very end of the film in a Men’s room where (Adele) Laurie Holden has us all at gunpoint, and the tables are sort of turned on her at the same time. Then all of the sudden, I appear from out of nowhere, and I give this big speech that sort of ties up all the loose ends in the film, and reveals the details of her evil plot. And I was giving that speech, I gave it all I had, I was playing it for everything I had in me, and then all of the sudden I hear “CUT!!! CUT!!!” and these little footsteps. Around the corner comes Pete Farrelly and he says “STEVE! You’re killing me! You’re killing me! Come ON! It’s the end of the movie, people want to go out and pee! Speed it up!!” I said, “Pete! Come on! It’s my ONE big moment in the film!” He said, “Good! Make it a short moment! Make it faster!” So I did. And that’s like Jeff Daniels….Peter was giving him some direction, and Jeff said “Excuse me! I just won an Emmy.” And Pete said, “Great. More butt crack!” (we’re laughing) NO respect, no respect whatsoever.
O.F.F: What other projects, film/TV-wise are on the horizon?
ST: Well, there’s a great project that’s around the corner that we’ll start working on in March of 2015. It’s a six-part mini-series that is a production of Will Ferrell and company. He actually did one earlier this year, and it aired on IFC, called “The Spoils of Babylon”. There was a great cast there, Kristen Wiig, Toby McGuire…Val Kilmer and I played a couple of Army generals…just a wonderful cast. It was a very offbeat, loving homage to the big, bloated, expensive, cheaply produced mini-series of the 70’s and 80’s, like “Rich Man, Poor Man”, “The Thorn Birds” and all that stuff. The ratings were so great and it was so popular that IFC asked Will to do another one, and so that’s what’s going to happen. Matt Piedmont will be back to direct, Will of course will be back as Eric John Rosh the drunken sot of a novelist who writes these “Spoils” books. This one will be called “The Spoils Before Dying”, sort of a big, film noir detective story, and I will be teamed up as a detective with the wonderful…oh, sorry, I can’t tell you who it is. I CAN say that Kristen Wiig is back, and it’s going to be spectacular. Really looking forward to getting started on that.
O.F.F: I would guess you feel a true sense of accomplishment when completing any film/TV role, but does it ever just feel like your job at times and that’s it?
ST: Um…honestly, no. I can’t say that it does. I have those feelings before I actually arrive on set sometimes. But once I’m there, once I’m with other actors who love doing what we do so much, as much as I do, then everything changes. It turns into the absolute BEST job in the world. I couldn’t be any luckier. I don’t think ANY of us could be any luckier to do what we do and be able to entertain people, to maybe make somebody in the audience think about something in a way they hadn’t thought about before, or just take away somebody’s troubles of the day and make ‘em laugh like hopefully we’ll do in “Dumb & Dumber To”. This IS the best job in the world and I’m so lucky to have it.
O.F.F: Do you consider how a particular film (or show) might impact (or DOES impact) those that watch it? Does that reaction (or lack of reaction), whether good or bad, affect you in one form or another?
ST: Just in that sense, yes (as stated above). I hope we have done something that is meaningful or entertaining to people. Beyond that, no I don’t think about what anybody thinks about anything. It’s an imperfect art, and I don’t like to spend a lot of time looking back or paying attention to people’s opinions particularly, because you know, there are going to be unkind things said, that’s just part of the business, and you can’t let that define your path IN the business. So I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that.
O.F.F: What is YOUR favorite film of all time? Why?
ST: Oh wow…my favorite movie. Ok, I think I am going to have to say Ridley Scott’s Director’s Cut of “Blade Runner” is my favorite, favorite movie. It is just such a visual feast, I love the acting. Rutger Hauer’s speech at the end of his life in the rain is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen on film. Yeah, so it’s “Blade Runner”.
So as you can see, just a great, easy-going actor who was a total pleasure to speak with and gain insight from as to the business that is Hollywood, all while maintaining that ever elusive face that I always wish to “see” when interviewing…the human one. You can follow Mr. Tom via his Twitter, Website, and Facebook accounts. And THEN…..GET ready to GET DUMB on November 14th, world, as the complete and utter INSANITY that IS “Dumb & Dumber To” hits theaters nationwide. You can read my REVIEW of the film HERE.
As always, this is all for YOUR consideration and comment. Until next time, thank you for reading!
