Bronson Pinchot, man! Probably doing his thing, cashing some nice residual checks, and then one day the AV Club comes along and is like, "Bronson! Would you like to do an interview, now, for some reason?" And he says, "Would I! I've got a shit-ton of stories about how homophobic Tom Cruise used to be and the nasty thing I said to my Perfect Strangers girlfriend once!"
Really, you should go read the whole thing, but here are some select, juicy morsels.
On working with Tom Cruise in Risky Business:
We thought Tom [Cruise] was the biggest bore on the face of the Earth. He was tense and made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, "You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?" I mean, his lingo was larded with the most... There was no basis for it. It was like, "It's a nice day, I'm glad there are no gay people standing here." Very, very strange...Years and years later when people started to torment him with that, I used to think "God, that's really fitting, because he tormented a lot of people as a 20-year-old." He made such a big deal about it.
On shooting Courage Under Fire with Denzel Washington:
That was a low point, because Denzel Washington was behind the incredibly cowardly bullshit of "This is my character, not me." He was really abusive to me and everybody on that movie, and his official explanation was that his character didn't like me, but it was a dreadful experience...Denzel Washington cured me forever of thinking that there is any amount of money or anything that could ever, ever make it okay to be abused. The script supervisor on that movie said it's like watching somebody kick a puppy. He was so vile.
On Perfect Strangers:
I discovered my inner physical comic there, because I felt that the writing was weak. I mean, I received my training in Shakespeare, Shaw, and Beckett, and all of a sudden I'm doing this stuff, like... What the hell is this about? Who cares? And then toward the end of the show, you know, just being really brittle... The girl that played my girlfriend came in one day and was in a snotty mood, and I stopped and said, "You can get a stand-in to rehearse her scenes, and she can come in later." I regret that, but there was crap like that.
On his newfound candor:
One of the most freeing things about not being on a primetime sitcom that's aimed at children is that you don't have to edit so much. My God, back in the day, it was implicit that if you wanted to keep your job, you won't say anything about anybody or tell the truth about anything. I did this Rolling Stone interview once, and the guy began the interview with a description of me talking about my ideal weekend, which was to fuck until the skin came off my dick. And I read that, and I think to myself, "You really needed not to be saying stuff like that." But I was so desperate to express myself...And now, I can say the truth of the matter is that some of these people are jerks, and some of these people are gods, and I don't know why certain people are protected. Some people are so nasty. I don't know why.
Bronson Pinchot, everybody!
Bronson Pinchot [AV Club]