Shaquille O'Neal may or may not become a star of the big screen, but the man knows what he likes in movies. As he reveals in his own home entertainment center, it isn't II Postino.
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Have you ever seen a person consume an entire chicken, spread across two sandwiches, in a span of about five minutes? It's an awesome sight. So awesome, in fact, that I stop banging around on Shaquille O'Neal's pinball machine--a Superman number from the '70s with lots of drop targets--just so I can witness the spectacle. No talk, all action, dressed in his standard garb of knee-length gym shorts and a cutoff sweatshirt, smooth-headed Shaq savages his sandwiches with guilt-free gusto and only the occasional grunt of conversation. It's a pleasingly fowl-splattering contrast to the typical Hollywood actor, who'd be doing invisible stomach crunches while downing an ugly tofu-and-sprouts concoction.
At 7'1" O'Neal ranks as the largest human being I've ever seen up close, and is surely one of the largest human beings ever to attempt movie stardom. His Hollywood ambition is, by the way, the only reason he is humoring a journalist who knows less than the average person about basketball and wants only to talk about movies. Ignoring the fact that nearly every other jock-turned-actor--people like Ken Norton, Rosey Grier, Jim Brown and even (no, make that particularly) O.J.--has found a home in my local video store's remainders rack, the Orlando Magic basketball star thinks he has the chops to make it on the big screen. To date we have seen him in countless commercials (charismatically flogging everything from Reebok sneakers to Taco Bell burritos) and the feature film Blue Chips, in which he played a lot of basketball, indulged in loads of mugging, and attempted a minimal amount of acting. This summer he'll be put to a sterner lest when he stars in Kazaam and doesn't have Chips costar Nick Nolte to back him up.
Considering that O'Neal plays a ghetto genie who materializes from a boom-box, you have to appreciate that O'Neal is taking a gimmicky risk that could turn out to be an express ticket to Brian Bosworthville (if you don't remember the annoyingly cocky, spiky blond-haired Bosworth, check your cable listings at 3:00 in the morning, which is when the former football player's howler Stone Cold tends to air).
What, I wonder, leads Shaq, a $25-million-per-year product endorser nonpareil, to stake his reputation on a movie with a high concept so thin that it would leave Don Simpson reeling in his casket? Is it that he harbors a life-long obsession with the great fantasy factories of Hollywood? Does he have a childhood dream that must be lived out at any cost? Well, no.
"Starsky asked me to do it," Shaq flatly states, perhaps condescending to someone who has to ask this question. Like, don't I understand the intricacies of showbiz? Don't I know that when Starsky calls you'd better answer? "Paul Michael Glaser showed me the script that he had commissioned." Now Shaq smiles, as if he is trying to sell me a taco burger. "Plus it's another opportunity. Gotta take advantage of all good opportunities. You'd do the same thing, bro'."
"What kind of opportunities is Hollywood offering you?" I ask.
"I'm about to sign a five-picture deal with either Warner Bros. or Disney," he tells me, hinting that Tinseltown treats its people better than the NBA docs. "During Kazaam I told Disney that I wanted to shoot baskets, and the next day a hoop was up."
"Only a hoop? I heard that an entire basketball court was constructed for you."
"That was for Michael Jordan," Shaq explains. "He did a movie on the Warner Bros. lot and they built him a big dome, a gym, a weight room."
"Don't you keep your perks apace with Jordan's?"
"I don't worry about anybody else's deal as long as mine is good," Shaq tells me, "Nick Nolte made more for Blue Chips than I did, but I was happy for Nick. I've never been the kind of person to go in there and say, 'Nick got $6 million, so I want $10 million.' It don't make sense to me. Anyway, $6 million is really the same as $3 million. We've all got the same cars, the same suits, the same houses."
Shaq's manse is located in a wealthy gated community near Orlando and boasts gymnasium-height ceilings, marble everything, and a topiary giraffe on the front lawn. What I'm interested in, though, is his very serious-looking video room. As we passed by it on the way to lunch in Shaq's kitchen, I saw that it has a burgeoning collection of tapes and laser discs, a massive screen (complete with velvet, ruby-colored, bijou-of-your-dreams curtains that close across it) and a remote that looks like it belongs at Cape Canaveral.
"So, you like movies a lot, right?" I ask, trying to get to the matter of how Shaq's tastes run in cinema.
"I like movies," he says. "Especially the funny ones."
"What are the movies that really crack you up?"
"Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Ace Ventura; When Nature Calls," comes the immediate reply. "Jim Carrey, he's the man. I met him. It was cool. In fact, Ace is what the team loves to see when we're on our plane."
Shaq has finished his sandwiches and his private chef now hands him a plate of fried, puffy-looking things that resemble matching chicken Kievs. Shaq pushes them away.
"What videos do you look at before a game to get revved up?'" I ask.
"Movies that children can't watch," he shoots back, flashing a huge smile. "I like The Untouchables, The Godfather, action. I really like the scene when the Family's sister gets hit by her husband and the gangster guys come back and beat him up. That kind of shit is what I like."
O'Neal has a wall of windows that look out on a lake. Right in front of them is a huge rubber alien from Alien with a studio logo at the base ensuring its authenticity. "You must love the Alien movies," I say. Shaq shrugs. ''Aliens was great, but I love Sigourney Weaver. Love her. She's beautiful."
I ask if he's met Sigourney and Shaq tells me that he hasn't, then wonders whether I've seen Best of the Best 2. Huh? "It's an American karate picture with Julia Roberts's brother. And there's this actress in there with red hair and gray eyes. She's gorgeous..." His voice trails off in an uncharacteristically dreamy way. "I just want to meet her."
"Who else turns you on?"
"Can't say," he tells me, eyes sliding in the direction of his trim, demure girlfriend, who's silently eating a green salad around the bend from us at the kitchen counter. "She wouldn't like it." He checks to make sure that she's absorbed in a soap opera playing on the TV, then acknowledges, "The other women that turn me on? I've already met most of them and shook their hands."
"Nothing beyond shaking hands?" I ask.
"I just like to meet them. That's it." Shaq looks momentarily concerned about being overheard.
"So, what else scares you?" I ask, indicating with a glance that maybe the girlfriend is item number one.
"I ain't afraid of nothing, bro'," he replies.
"Not even in movies?"
"What's scary to some people might be funny to me. I laugh at Pumpkinhead and all the Freddy Krueger movies. Freddy has some great one-liners. In one of his movies, I think the third one, this girl is watching TV. Freddy's face comes up on the screen, and he says,"-- now Shaq's tone gets comically guttural--" 'Welcome to prime time, bitch!'" Shaq's own interpretation of Freddy leaves him in hysterics.
When the laughter subsides, I ask Shaq which video he owns that he wishes he'd been in. "Terminator 2," he answers right away. "I would like to have played the guy who goes after Arnold." Now he leans close to me and gets mock serious. "I know that Arnold Schwarzenegger is scared to do Terminator 3 with me. He knows that I'll beat his ass. I wanted to do it with him, but he said no. He's scared of me." Shaq slips into TV-wrestler delivery. "Arnold, I want to get you!" Back in his regular voice, he adds. "I also want to do a movie with Stallone. I haven't met him yet. But I throw things out there and hope that somebody will write a script for us. Stallone's the best; Schwarzenegger's the best. Together, we could all make a lot of money.''
"Don't you think that guys like Stallone and Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal are pussies in real life?"
"No. I met Steven Seagal. He grabbed my wrist and did some of his karate shit on me. I couldn't get out of it. Let me show you." Shaq puts his enormous hand out as if he wants to shake. Against my better judgment, I put my hand in his. Seconds later, a flash of pain shoots up from my wrist and I am down on my knees, getting a good look at the kitchen's parquet flooring, "Seagal's a tough guy," he says as I get up and dust myself off, acting like I meant for this to happen. "Wesley Snipes is a tough guy, too. Somebody was messing with a girl at a club in L.A. and Wesley almost let the guy have it. But I'm not a fighter, bro', I'm a lover."
"OK," I say, changing the subject to something less likely to leave me with a set of handicap plates. "Tell me the videos you watch when you want to remember the movie star crushes you had as a kid."
"I liked all the 'Charlie's Angels' girls and Tatum O'Neal. I really dug her tomboy attitude in The Bad News Bears. Plus I liked Diana Ross in Mahogany, Thelma in 'Good Times,' and, believe it or not, I used to really have a thing for Laverne on 'Laverne & Shirley.'"
I'm flashing back on how the "L" embroidered across Laverne's sweater curved around her breasts when word comes that a camera crew has arrived from some Save The Earth organization. They want to shoot Shaq making a Public Service Announcement that will run on Earth Day. O'Neal sends one of the half-dozen or so members of his staff to deal with the earnest greenies, and proceeds to lead me through his living room. One side of the room has a little area occupied by comfy-looking chairs and sofas. The other side features highly angled, tightly stretched leather furniture and a neat collection of African art and sculpture. Together, they seem to represent two sides of Shaq's personality--the soft, goofy side that you see in commercials and the intensely focused side that allows him to decimate basketball opponents at will. A small space off of the living room is devoted to a blackjack table complete with personalized chips.
"Have any movies inspired your decorating tastes?" I ask, looking around. O'Neal squints at me dubiously, then gestures toward a glass-topped conference table that's been sandblasted green and could easily accommodate a dozen for dinner. "I saw that in New Jack City and decided to get it," he says, adding that he's a big fan of gangsta rap and gangsta movies, ticking off Juice, Boyz N the Hood and Nick Gomez's ode to carjacking, New Jersey Drive, as a few home video faves. "Jersey takes place in Newark, where I grew up. That movie was cool, but I never saw any stuff like that there." He adds that he's been catching up on golden era blaxploitation as well as the recent stuff. "I haven't seen Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song yet, but I saw Superfly the other night. I watched it with my cousin Ronald and we thought it was good."
As we mosey outside, over the manicured grounds of O'Neal's home to a spot underneath a big oak tree on the waterfront, I try to imagine Shaq going to see a movie in a theater, and instantly understand why he needs his own home entertainment center. Never mind his fame, the guy's height and width alone must make it supremely uncomfortable for him--or anyone behind him--to occupy a seat at the local cineplex. He acknowledges that this is so, and reveals his simple way of dealing with the dilemma of watching first-run motion pictures. "I rent out the entire theater for $2,100."
"What have you gone out to see lately?"
"I brought a couple-dozen friends to see Don't Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood and From Dusk Till Dawn. I like vampires--it's a homeboy thing, you know? For a while The Lost Boys was my favorite video."
"What are some of your other favorite movies to rent?"
"I thought Brian Bosworth's movie was pretty good. For some reason, though, Siskel and Ebert and all of those guys didn't like it. That's why I think it's time for new critics. I want to do something called The Homeboy Review Network. Me and one of my boys, we'd review movies for everyone, not just for Wall Street types like Siskel and Ebert do."
At this point, Shaq takes his place under the tree, wails for roaring buzz-saws to subside (he's having a 10-car garage added to the house), and does his PSA. Two takes later--after making a couple jokes about "killing birds because they shit all over the place" -- it's a wrap. Shaq gives a couple autographs, and as the cameraman begins to break down the equipment, Shaq's trainer strolls over and announces that it's time to exercise.
Following them into a glass-walled room loaded with treadmills and Lifecycles and weight machines, I ask Shaq if he'll be able to continue the interview as he lifts. "Of course," he says, sliding onto a Nautilus-type machine and proceeding to bench-press 325 pounds over and over again.
I spy a pair of tattoos rippling on his biceps, the more prominent of which features a crown with a fist through it and the letters TWISM emblazoned below.
"What does TWISM' mean?"
"The World is Mine." says O'Neal. "Everybody who works for me has one, Even the white boy." He's referring to his personal assistant, Dennis Tracey, who does not strike me as the tattoo type, which I note to O'Neal, who concedes. "Well, he has his on his leg. So you can't see it."
The other tattoo on O'Neal's bicep is the Superman "S" logo. He explains that this one is slightly prophetic. "Right now we're looking into a script called Steel," he tells me as the 20-pound weight plates rhythmically clank. "If you're into the Superman comics, you know that when he died four different people said they were him. One of them is a big, bald-headed black guy called Steel. It would be a dream come true."
O'Neal admits to a lifelong obsession with the Man of Steel. "Superman and The Incredible Hulk are what I like: David Banner is cool." He hesitates for a beat, leading me to believe that he's about to reveal something amazing: "Here's my new nickname: Elliuqahs Gates Banner. Elliuqahs is Shaquille spelled backwards, Gates is because I'm as rich as Bill Gates, and Banner is because I'm as strong as The Hulk." This cracks up Shaq's trainer (who's been dubbed Ayatollah Dirk De Niro--don't ask why). "So," I say. "What movies do you watch, Elliuqahs, when spirits are not so high as they are now, when you need to be cheered up?"
"The Frank Drebin movies," he says, maneuvering onto another weight machine. I draw a blank.
"You know-- Naked Gun. I enjoy stupid movies like that. All the Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez movies also."
This leads to a conversation about an evening that O'Neal spent on the town with the notorious carouser Sheen. "Charlie's cool," O'Neal says, insisting that they had a quiet dinner and discussed sports memorabilia.
"Me and Dirk," he says, gesturing toward the trainer, "we drove around Sunset Boulevard, checking out ladies wearing fur coats in the heat. He'd see them, and yell out the window, 'Animal killer!' They just looked at him and got into their cars." He considers this for a moment, then quietly adds, "L.A.'s nice. I have my attorney's house on the beach and a gym to work out in when I'm there. But it's different from any other city. Everybody acts like a star."
Back in the house, O'Neal leads me past the rubber Alien, which I now notice is bookended by a Superman mannequin and a life-size, black-caped character from Predator. We head for a second-floor trophy room, which is filled with memorabilia of acquaintances ranging from Michael Jackson to Hulk Hogan. "I want to turn this into my own Planet Hollywood," O'Neal says.
"What objects are you after?"
"I like Herbie from The Love Bug. I'd get Herbie the Love Bug out here and set him down right in my living room, I'd also like to ge some of the robots from Star Wars."
Now we head into O'Neal's home theater. Standing around, appearing unsure of what he needs to do in order to satisfy the final requirements of this oddly sports-free interview, O'Neal tells me that he has only a few more minutes to chat. He points upstairs, yawns, and explains that he had a long practice session this morning and needs to nap, In a minute. "Do you invite people over for video-viewing parties?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "I don't want a bunch of people in here, tearing my house up."
Noticing a high ratio of kung fu flicks in his collection (as well as Reservoir Dogs, Dr. Giggles, Total Recall, Mobsters and Rapid Fire), I ask O'Neal who he turns to for his regular doses of martial arts kicks. "Here's one that I like: Jackie Chan in Five Deadly Venoms. I prefer the Asians 'cause they do things that the Americans can't do. They get real high when they jump, they talk funny, act funny. What more can you want?"
Just as O'Neal is beginning to show me the techniques he's learning for pulling punches for the movies, a whining alarm begins to reverberate through the house, perhaps saving me. Annoyed, O'Neal steps back from the fight lesson and strides out of the video room into a hallway. He faces a wall-mounted, button-festooned box that controls his home's alarm system. As if attacking a minibackboard, the basketball star crashes all of his fingers upon every button. But it's to no avail. Finally he shouts, to no one in particular, "Turn the fuckin' alarm off!"
Ayatollah Dirk De Niro materializes and asks what's wrong, as if he can't hear it himself. "Yo, man, unplug that shit," O'Neal says coolly. "You can't just unplug it." Dirk De Niro tells him, a hint of pleading in his voice. "You got to cut the wire."
O'Neal tells him to cut it, and Dirk walks off slowly, sullenly muttering, "I don't want to electrocute myself."
Over the annoying screeeee-screeeeee, I ask Shaq if he ever loses his temper.
"Never," he tells me, clearly preoccupied, "It lakes a lot to get me angry." Clearly.
"You have such an amazing life here," I say, gesturing around the room.
"My life?" Shaq says, over the din. "It's OK. I'm just lucky."
Then without another word, he hustles off--to cut a wire or pull a fuse or whatever it takes to stop the infernal wail of his burglar alarm. A moment later there is silence. O'Neal doesn't come back. He's gone off for his afternoon nap.
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Michael Kaplan interviewed Pamela Anderson Lee for the Jan./Feb. '95 issue of Movieline.