Danny DeVito: Little Big Man

Q: Does anybody on the set ever give you advice when you're directing?

A: Not if they're smart.

Q: Did you ever think, when you were a kid, hustling pool, that you'd one day be in the position you're in today?

A: I always thought when I was a kid, "I think I might be able to do that." I loved the experience of the cinema. It got dark, and you lived other lives. It was wonderful. I went every Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine.

Q: You were pretty much a street kid from Jersey. Did you do a lot of hanging out and practical jokes?

A: There were a lot of characters in my life in Asbury Park. We were always cutting up.

Q: It wasn't all clowning though. Didn't you lose some friends to heroin overdoses?

A: A couple, yeah.

Q: Were hard drugs ever a danger for you?

A: No, I never considered it. I thought too much of myself to ever do anything like that.

Q: Did you also have fear instilled in you by the nuns who taught you?

A: That was in grammar school, from kindergarten to eighth grade. Immaculate Heart Sisters. They were very strict. Most of them were from Brooklyn--they were tough nuns.

Q: Did they ever slap you when you got out of place?

A: Oh yeah, you got smacked all the time. We used to cut our hair real short, crew cuts, when we'd go to school, because they couldn't pull your hair back.

Q: Didn't your mother want you to be a priest?

A: Every Italian mother wants their kid to be a priest.

Q: Was sex something you learned about early?

A: When you're hanging out in the pool hall, you talk about nineball and doing it. That was like the main topic of conversation.

Q: And when did you do it?

A: When did it happen, you mean? My early teens.

Q: Do you remember who it was with?

A: I remember her name but I'm not about to tell you. Men don't want to say the name of the girl, come on.

Q: How good a pool player were you as a kid?

A: I could run 60, 70 balls when I was 16. Now I can't see, so I can't play.

Q: What's wrong with your eyes?

A: [looking at my glasses] What's wrong with yours? I've got these five-and-ten-cent magnifying glasses, otherwise I can't read.

Q: You and your sister were hairdressers. When you decided to give up the beauty business, did you talk to your dad about what you wanted to try next?

A: Yeah, I said, "You know, this is not working out, I'm gonna go to New York and become an actor." He said, "Great, go, shoot your best shot."

Q: Your dad died about nine years ago. Do you think of him often?

A: I loved him very much and I miss him. I'm sad that he didn't get to see my children.

Q: But he did get to see your success. What did he think of it?

A: He loved it. He got to see "Taxi" and all that. And he came out to California then. Our first house was being remodeled so we rented a house up in Benedict Canyon. He was thrilled. He came from the streets. And here he was sitting out on the lawn of this house with this beautiful view over the mountains. He'd get up very early in the morning, sit out there with a cigarette.

Q: Well, that couldn't have been more different than when you first came out to Hollywood. Wasn't that when you hoped to audition for In Cold Blood?

A: Yeah. I read it in installments in The New Yorker and I said, "I gotta go meet [director] Richard Brooks." When I arrived in California, the part was already cast with Robert Blake. Now I didn't know anything about Hollywood: My image of Hollywood was Beach Blanket Bingo, a lotta dames in bikinis and pool parties. And the Hell's Angels movies that Jack Nicholson was in. So, I got off the plane and got on a bus and I went downtown, 'cause I figured this is where they make movies. It was desolate. I mean, downtown L.A. any night is like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I asked some security guard, "Where do they make movies out here?" He said, "That way," and pointed to Hollywood. So I got another bus and I went to Hollywood and stayed for a year and a half. I couldn't get arrested.

Q: Did you call your friend Michael Douglas?

A: Yeah. I talked to him and he said, "Come on up." He was going to college in Santa Barbara. I said, "Okay, I'll take a bus." Did you ever take a bus to Santa Barbara? My God, it stops every 14 feet. It took me three days to get there.

Q: Your friendship with Douglas began in 1966, didn't it?

A: I went up to the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theater Center [in Waterford, Connecticut] to do this play and he was out there working on the amphitheater, digging with some others. I thought, these guys must be the actors, they're digging. So I went over there to see what was going on and somebody suggested a beer run. Michael had a motorcycle and I said I'll come and carry it. We went and that was it, we became very good friends.

Q: When you went out to see him in Santa Barbara, wasn't he living in some kind of commune?

A: He was living with a bunch of people on a mountain. It wasn't like the streets of New York, I'll tell you that. You couldn't swim in their pool because they hadn't cleaned it in I don't know how many months. There was moss growing up from the bottom. However, they did dive in every once in a while, which I didn't do.

Q: Because of the moss...or because of the nudity?

A: Yeah, they went bare. They wouldn't swim with a bathing suit on, God forbid. I mean, please. This was like, very, very enlightening for me. Any place you went with Michael you took your clothes off and you swam. It was the big thing in the '60s.

Q: Did you ever overcome your shyness?

A: One time, we went to a friend's house and I was feeling pretty good. We all took our clothes off and we were swimming. There were a bunch of people there. I looked over and there was a scuba tank. I had never done this before, right? So I took the scuba tank and they showed me how to work it and I strapped it on and dove into the pool and lay there looking at everybody swim. I was down there for quite a while. It was a great, great experience.

Q: A far cry from where you came from, where, as you once said, "you never saw anybody naked unless you put your eye to a knothole of the girl's locker."

A: Well, certainly at the Monte Carlo Pool Hall in Asbury Park you didn't swim naked.

Q: So after 18 months in L.A., you returned to New York. And soon after, you're onstage and Rhea Perlman catches you and, what? Falls in love?

A: It was in 1970, when I was doing The Shrinking Bride in the Mercury Theater. Rhea was in the audience and I was spittin' on swans, playing a demented stable boy. We had coffee after at The Cookery and listened to Alberta Hunter and that was it.

Q: She moved in with you two weeks later?

A: Two weeks later, yeah. But she lived in Brooklyn, understand? So I didn't know whether she was movin' in because I had the apartment in Manhattan or what. But we worked it out.

Q: Only took 11 years.

A: We took our time gettin' married. It's like Guys and Dolls.

Q: Why did you decide to get married?

A: We wanted to have a family and kids, so we decided it would be a good idea.

Q: How hard was it for you when "Taxi" was cancelled? The way your career has since blossomed, is it still a bitter memory that the series ended, or are you happy?

A: No, I miss everybody very much. I feel empty in that area. You're with people for five years and you have very close relationships with them and then somebody has the ability to cut them off... We had a good group of people, that's what you miss.

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