You might know Tobin Bell from playing the brilliant Jigsaw in all six Saw movies (despite having died on-screen a while ago, Bell's still managed to keep reprising the character and does so again in the installment out next Friday), but there's more to him than that role -- a lot more. As it happens, the Actors Studio veteran has built an interesting career out of small parts in some of the biggest movies and TV shows of the last few decades (including Tootsie, Goodfellas, The X-Files, ER, and The Sopranos), and as a natural raconteur, he's got a lot of stories to tell about each of them.
When I had the chance to interview Bell, I asked him an obligatory few Saw-related questions (for those, stop by next week), but what I really wanted to talk about were his on-set stories from some of those pivotal productions. As it turns out, that's what he wanted to talk about, too.
You've done so much more than Saw. Tell me when you got started.
I played background parts in New York for thirty years. In the the late seventies and early eighties, I played background roles in thirty movies...Woody Allen movies, Scorsese films, you name it. Whatever was being shot in New York, I was doing stand-in and background work because I wanted to be close to the camera, I wanted to see what was going on. For example, if you look at Sidney Lumet's film The Verdict, I worked for two weeks as a courtroom reporter in the trial. There couldn't have been a better opportunity to watch Paul Newman, James Mason, Sidney Lumet...you're sitting there twelve feet away from these people!
So that was a great opportunity, it was like watching theater. They built this courtroom in Queens, and I would take the subway out to Queens every day and sit and watch these guys work. Sidney Lumet talking to Paul Newman, "When you say that, I want you to turn this way, but not too much. Make sure you've got your light." You learn a lot watching that, because so much of what you do in film and television is technical. You could go to acting class until you're blue in the face, but when it really comes down to it, you'd better have that acting training where so much of what you do is actually technical.
Did it demystify the profession to see Paul Newman hitting his mark and executing camera turns?
It doesn't, because the trick is for Paul Newman to be able to be Paul Newman and do all those things at the same time. All it does is it teaches you how to be able to juggle. Actors have seven tracks going in their minds: They've got all the research they've done for the part, then they have whatever the director asked them to do, then they've got what the departments like special effects need them to do. Being there didn't take anything from me, it gave me an idea of what to expect. I've seen perfectly good young actors come onto set, and they just get eaten alive by the absence of freedom.
You also had a very tiny role in Tootsie, which was a famously contentious set. What was that like?
What's interesting is that you can have a set that's very calm, very smooth, very cooperative...and end up with a terrible movie. And you can have a set that's really horrible as far as relationships and volatility, and come up with a great movie. Sometimes that energy gets infused into what ends up on film -- it's interesting in that way. Sydney Pollack directed Tootsie; he also directed The Firm, in which I played the Nordic. You know, when you're talking about Tootsie, it's the tip of the iceberg, because those other twenty-nine films I did aren't even on the IMDb.
So how did Tootsie end up there?
I think Tootsie is listed because if you ever look at the film, Sydney used me for one very long cross where I walk up next to Teri Garr. He wanted to get from one side of the ballroom to the other, so he used me to carry the shot: He tracked with me through the crowd, past the principals, through everybody. Frankly, I had never seen the film -- I mean, I saw it when it came out, but that was so long ago. I said [recently], "I've got to look at Tootsie again," and I saw how long he used that shot for and how featured I was in it. I understood why it ended up on the IMDb thing.
Were you there for any of the arguments?
My experience on that set, I wasn't privy to any of that contentiousness. The contentiousness that you're talking about is the kind of thing that makes for a great film, because most of what you're talking about happened between Dustin [Hoffman] and Sydney. Dustin is very demanding, in a good way. He's a perfectionist and he has very strong inclinations. Part of the reason that film was getting made was because he was in it, and he took responsibility for what he was doing. So he and Sydney got into it sometimes about certain interpretations.
How did you find Sydney to be?
Sydney Pollack was a fabulous director and actor, so when he called my agent and offered me the part of this Nordic guy in The Firm...I knew that he knew my work, because I'm a member of the Actors Studio in New York and I've done a lot of work there. He'd seen me in Mississippi Burning, and although I didn't have a big part, it was a pivotal role. He tended to reuse people, and since he had used me in that long tracking shot in Tootsie, he must have remembered it! In the editing room, you look at that stuff a lot.
You talked a little bit about very technical acting ability, which I would imagine gets a workout when you appear on a sitcom. You did a guest spot on Seinfeld where you played a record store owner. Can you tell me about that?
Loved working with those guys. All I had to do was react! "Don't turn the magazine you're reading on their lines." You're talking about the very specific things you can and can't do, like you have to turn the magazine pages at a very specific time so that you don't interfere with the sound guy. I had to jump over a counter, and that could only be done at this one exact moment. So those are the constraints of an actor.
Working with those guys was a delight. Unlike most of the other half-hour stuff I've done, where most of the control is in the hands of the writers and producers, these guys were the producers. Jerry, the guy who plays George, Kramer, Newman...these guys had a lot of clout on that set, and what was beautiful about it was that we'd get halfway through rehearsals and Jerry would say something like, "You know what? That's not funny. What would be funny is if we did this..." and they would change it. For actors to have the ability and the power to make constructive changes in dialogue and the script, and to make it more human and funnier as a result, I loved it.
You were also on ER as it started its fifteen-year run.
Yeah, I remember doing that episode of ER as a doctor. I don't remember exactly what the hell I was doing in the scene, but they decided that they wanted one of those long walking shots down the corridor, so you're talking and you're walking at the same time. Another perfect example of technical constraints.
You were around during the beginning stages of the "TV talk and walk"!
"Don't walk too fast! Don't walk too slow! Can we put something on Tobin's feet, because they're banging on the floor too loud?" Working on ER...it was a hot show at the time.
You were in the second episode ever.
Yes, the second episode. It was also one of the very first big hospital drama shows, so they were working very hard to create this reality thing. Around the same time, they came up with another show...oh, Chicago Hope! Which I also ended up on, the next season. Had a much more interesting role on Chicago Hope, really liked that guy. He was both poetic and terminally ill.
You and the terminally ill characters! What about The Sopranos, which you also had a role on?
That was an amazing show, terrific writing. I came in and played the commandant of a military school, and Tony's son had fucked up in school and so the family came to this military school for a tour. I interviewed the kid, and then I interviewed the mom and dad. It's kind of a fascinating juxtaposition to Tony's life, and it gave me the opportunity to work with two amazing actors. I cannot remember...what is the name of the actress who plays Tony's wife?
Edie Falco?
Edie Falco, yes. She's so amazing on the new show Nurse Jackie, also. I remember the script supervisor telling me, "You know something, Tobin? I saw Edie Falco four years ago when I was doing the crummiest movie of the week for Universal. She was playing a nurse and she came on and had one line, and she just lit up the screen. That was four years ago, and I knew that she was a giant talent from that one line. And look where she is today!" It's pretty fascinating.
You've done something very similar from the little roles you've played in your career.
Well, yeah! It just goes to show you, it's not the amount that you speak at all. It's not about the number of lines that you have, it's about what you contribute to the story and how you go about doing that. Sometimes that's not verbal. In the first Saw, I laid on the floor covered in blood for three weeks! I think that's powerful. I think sometimes you dissipate power from the way you speak. You don't have to talk a lot in a piece of art in order to be critical to the story. That's background, too. I mean, I walked down the street with Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard for King of Comedy. If you look at background actors, they create giant reality in films. What would Dog Day Afternoon be without those crowds outside?
So you never ran into actors who issued commands like, "Background actors can't look me in the eye?"
Yes, I have -- but even more interesting is that actors have talked to me, actors I respected, and they said, "What did you do today?" And I'd say, "I went up and worked on Manhattan, the new Woody Allen film that's shooting." "You are? What are you doing?" "Well, I'm leaning up against a building as they go by." And they said, "You mean, you were doing extra work?" "Yeah." "Oh, well I could never do that. I really can do more than that. I'm better than that, and I'm waiting to be the main guy." I really understood where they were coming from, this place of ego, that they'd be minimizing their talent by doing something less than what they were capable of. I never viewed it that way, though. I viewed it as an opportunity to make $150 a day doing something that I cared a great deal about, where I could learn. They were gonna pay me to learn and reaffirm in me what I thought I could do?
Hey, I'd take $150 to walk around on the set of King of Comedy for a day.
Exactly! I was 180 degrees away from what they were talking about. Yeah, there were some demeaning times where you'd be herded into a room with hundreds of people and the principals were eating certain food and you were eating something else, but it didn't matter, you know? Just for those moments when you would get close to the principals and you'd see what they were doing, where you'd know these people aren't walking on water, they're just putting one foot in front of the other and saying their lines...it never seemed to me to be a deterrent in any way.
Did that help you once you finally started getting cast in films?
One of the first speaking roles I had was in a film called Svengali, with Peter O'Toole and Elizabeth Ashley. I was a waiter, and I had about three lines. And I was ready! I had been around people like that, and I knew they were just actors. All the work I had done, it was all there, and I felt like I knew all the mechanics. I didn't know everything, and boy did I learn a lot doing crap. I did a lot of pretty bad stuff...soap operas, you name it. But you learn just as much doing bad things as you do when you do good things. In fact, sometimes you learn more because you have to make it better.
You know, I really enjoyed talking to you.
Me too!
I'm just glad I didn't get asked, "What's it like to be the next icon of horror?" I never know how to answer that.