"If you can get a character that people identify with you, you’re the luckiest human in the world. You’re Zorro, you’re Captain Kirk, you’re Rocky, you’re James Bond. And you’re Mahoney!" That's what William Shatner once told Steve Guttenberg, who plays Mahoney in the beloved Police Academy movies.
The 63-year-old actor hasn't just been identified with Mahoney, though; it's the entire warm simplicity and PG-13 comedy of his 'regular man' persona that people identify with Guttenberg. This was cemented by a slew of highly successful performances in '80s movies culture couldn't live without —Three Men and a Baby, Cocoon, Diner, Short Circuit, and the Police Academy series.
Steve Guttenberg Still Wants to be Really Good
That's why it's so jarring to see Guttenberg in the new film Heckle. He opens the movie in a whiskey haze, yelling at his wife, cigar in hand, "Hey, I said I want you to take a f***ing shower, I didn't say I want you to answer the f***ing door." Those are only two of the possibly hundreds of f-bombs Guttenberg angrily, drunkenly hurls at people in this dark little indie thriller. He plays Ray Kelly, a vicious stand-up comedian who largely appears in flashbacks after dying in the very first scene, and thus haunts the movie with his presence.
Heckle isn't the only odd, incongruous character Guttenberg has played recently; he plays a psychotic, ridiculously bewigged criminal in the British film Original Gangster. It's an interesting change of pace for the actor, who still has the drive to be the best that he can be even after 45 years in the business.
I started out wanting to say "look at me." That's what most actors are all about. Look at me. Look at what I can do, look how interesting I can be, look at how unrecognizable I can be, look how I can make this character seem real, look how I can just transform myself into this person. And even my own family will say "wow, I couldn't believe that was you." That's the start of it.
But then it becomes, "Wow, I want to be really good." I want to look in the mirror and say you did a great job. I want to look in the mirror and really like the character that I built, the time I put into it. So, there's a great deal of satisfaction when you build something from nothing, and it becomes alive, and he's real, and that character becomes a real person. That is exciting to me. That makes me feel that's my chosen profession. That's what I've done.
On Typecasting
Typecasting is an interesting thing. Some people take the aforementioned Shatner approach and love creating a character who becomes synonymous with them; there's a lot of satisfaction in being identified with a character who has entered the pop culture lexicon. Other people are disheartened and disturbed by being so closely associated with one character or a character type; John Boyega, for instance, has called "being in a big franchise" like Star Wars "kind of like luxury jail sometimes for an actor when you want to do something else." Guttenberg navigates a line of appreciation through each side of the argument.
When you're good at one thing you're asked to do that a lot; when you're younger, you do these things because you're running around, and you're getting work. Then, when you get older, it becomes a job, and you support your family with it. If you make great ice cream, they want you to make great ice cream, but if you say well I also make terrific pastries, they go, "well, we have somebody else for pastries, we want your ice cream." So you just have to make that ice cream interesting.
It's important to move about your career and do things that interest you because you think to yourself, "let me show myself that." So that's what I like to do, I like to try my best at making myself challenged, and see where that'll take me. It's pretty terrific. It's a great way to live.
A Darker Guttenberg
Guttenberg definitely faced a challenge when deciding to play Ray Kelly in Heckle. Most of the time, villains in the movies are either laughably exaggerated and unrealistic or psychologically complicated and with a certain sense of humanity and empathy. It's rare to see an antagonist in a film who is flat-out morally repugnant, without an iota of humanity and no redeeming value whatsoever. That's what got Guttenberg so interested.
I'm always fascinated by evil people. Why are they evil? What made them so evil? There must be some self-loathing in there. There must be some intricate, complicated psychology that says "I'm not good enough to be around pleasant people, so I am going to make their life miserable." There's a lot of self-loathing, and I was looking for a character that I could explore those psychologies, and Ray Kelly came up.
Not that he's entirely a method actor, but going to such a wicked place was a difficult challenge for the actor, not just professionally but also mentally. He spent a lot of time driving around the block after shooting was over each day, allowing time for his "brain to remind itself, that's not real." Ray Kelly is a relentlessly dark, malicious, and cruel character, but one that Guttenberg recognizes in the industry he's been a part of for 45 years. "Show business attracts sociopaths," he says.
I think he's absolutely real, really. I've seen that sort of comic on stage. Where he's so angry, angry at the audience, angry at everyone, he hates himself so much. But he's got to make a living. So he goes on stage, and when he has the opportunity, he'll just be vitriolic [...] You'll laugh, but it's an uncomfortable laugh, knowing that there's a madman on stage.
The Kinder Guttenberg
Guttenberg doesn't seem to be one of them; he actually is more akin to the characters from the '80s he's been identified with, a warm and funny but now wiser man. At 63, he is taking care of his parents, having moved himself and his wife to Arizona in order to be closer to them (and his sister) and to give them the care they need.
The acting career has been long and incredible, but unlike his character Ray Kelly, Guttenberg loves having a family now, and prefers spending time with them to the machinations of show business. He wistfully and almost melancholically comments on what he'd tell himself if he could go back to 1978 before it all happened for him.
I would have said to myself, "Marry your first girlfriend that you fall in love with. Have some kids. Have a normal family." What I did instead, was I enjoyed the movie star life. I didn't settle down and get serious about my personal life. That's what I would've said to myself.
What a different world it would be. Heckle is available on VOD and Blu-ray.