By Jonathan Frey
“You wanna get nuts? Come on! Let’s get nuts!”
- Michael Keaton in Batman
and, some say, in real life
The lights. The live studio audience. The backstage pre-show pep rallies orchestrated by Penny Marshall. Cocaine. And James Belushi. I’ve made it, but how did I get here?
Standing on the set of Working Stiffs in the fluent repose between set-up and punch line,
(”So I’ll see you at the meeting at 5, Mike. And when will your brother be coming?”…)
27-year-old ontologically-inclined Michael Keaton thought this to himself, probably, or some variation of it.
(…”Well jeez, Frank, I wouldn‘t ask personal questions like that at the meeting, man. I mean, one of those guys‘ll clobber you.”)
Michael Keaton wanted to act so bad he was born with the name Michael Douglas. It wasn’t until years later — after the four semesters of speech studies at Kent State, the failed stab at stand-up comedy, the stint as a cable TV cameraman, the guest appearance on Maude — that he renamed (reinvented) himself after Diane Keaton.
To the chagrin of his supportive family, Michael Keaton has always insisted on comparing his craft to that of his civil engineer father. Step on a movie set and the mantra you’ll commonly hear repeated by Michael Keaton’s inspired co-stars? Acting is like building things.
From “Grand Projet,” his memoir-manual, Michael Keaton’s Recipe for Great Acting:
1. Make blueprints. I’ll say it again and again, people. Make blueprints. Let’s get real here: are you, young actor, boned up on your cyanotype processing? Good. Make (or purchase) vellum drafting paper or, if you’re planning on going Method, some mylar film. A technical drawing of your acting should not — and will not — be pretty. Those are your personal demons mapped out with mathematical precision in white-on-blue right there before your very eyes, bub. My first time out I drew a lioness with the face of a human baby and I was instantly moved to tears and a paralyzing sense of fear. Nothing had any meaning for a while, but eventually Mr. Mom was born from it. You should be able to isolate a waveform-like figure running through your blueprint. This will be your acting register for the part for which you are preparing.
2. 
Construct a scale model of the particular scene(s) you will be acting out. I recommend your diorama be at least ¾-scale but if you’re just starting out in the biz and you live in a tiny hole-in-the-wall apartment don’t be ashamed to use a shoebox. Live in it.
3. Research emotions. You may think you’ve either experienced or encountered, or at least heard tell of all the ones out there. You may have even read a psychology book or a romance novel. But the truth is many ancient cultures practiced expressing emotions that for one reason or another have fallen out of vogue over the centuries and are just waiting to be reintroduced to humankind.
4. We’re shooting now — it’s game time — so I want you to take all your research, remember your waveform, and, in each of your scenes, all of your takes, hit every note you have. Do your best to alternate some of your more restrained and nuanced displays with your raw stuff, and pepper the emotional foundation you’ve created with some killer jokes.
=================
Michael Keaton’s often publicly stated regret of having his best work on Working Stiffs remain unseen (indeed only four of the nine completed episodes of the series aired) at the very least proved not to be fatal. His career segued into films without hitch one, but not without the aid of his co-stars.
Chapter I - Winkler
Upon hearing the news of the impending cancellation the morning before shooting on the tenth and final slated episode of the first season commenced, Belushi scooped up Michael Keaton and, since he was in Keaton’s dressing room at the time, supporting actor Paul Reubens. The three never looked back. Reubens stayed in town, deciding to take up on an offer to perform at his uncle’s cabaret until principal photography began on Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie. Belushi rented a sedan and persuaded Michael Keaton to accompany him to the summer cottage he kept on a commune near Baker, Nevada. It was here that Michael Keaton met Henry Winkler.
Winkler was a boorish man who wore mascara and, even on the days he made his way into town, a knee-length silk robe. He immediately had an odd, infatuating hold on young Michael Keaton, the exploitation of which struck Belushi as abusive. When Winkler demanded freshly squeezed milk, Michael Keaton headed out to the pastures, shirtless. If Winkler spat the milk out and damned it “spoiled,” Michael Keaton smiled at him before going for a second batch.
Belushi watched this all through the bottom of a bottle. Devastated by the loosening strings of the once close-knit bond he shared with his co-star, helplessly bearing witness as his ward and brother fell under the influence of whom he would later describe as “a dandy backwoods succubus,” the burly comic turned to the drink harder than he ever had.1 He feared the worst, that Michael Keaton was an amoroso, a man enamored. One fateful evening Belushi, drunk out of his mind, managed to entice Michael Keaton into his sedan with the promise of stopping by a pumpkin patch for a stroll, as per the tradition of their friendship. They were not on the road very long before the intoxicated driver put his car between two trees and himself in the hospital.
Michael Keaton escaped physically unscathed, but never spoke to Belushi again. Shortly after the accident, Winkler invited Michael Keaton into his quarters and presented him with a screenplay titled Night Shift.
“I want to know what it’s like to be a nerd. I want to know what it’s like to be you.”
The corners of Henry Winkler’s lips remained upturned as they pursed tightly over his acid tongue. His chin was tucked into his neck, and for a moment the supple, painful ecstasy that had dominated the previous months was torn apart by the pit of Michael Keaton’s stomach. The future star of Multiplicity felt exactly as though he was onstage at his former sitcom. Belushi called it “the beast.”
Michael Keaton took Winkler’s small shoulders in his big hands and stared down at the Happy Days recluse, furrowed, before he felt the nudge of bound pages on his chest.2 A logline paperclipped to the front of the script caught his eye:
A nebbishy morgue attendant is convinced by his overbearing, obnoxious partner to take over a murdered pimp’s livelihood and turn their place of business into a brothel. (Comedy).
“So… I’d be you?”
When Winkler heard those words his cheeks tightened and his eyes shut. The grin stayed as he receded inward and upward, joining something big, bright, and mean in the ether of his brain. Michael Keaton looked on quizzically.3
Several hours later: Back at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, California, in a makeshift bar behind the Happy Days set, Ron Howard made drinks for himself and Shelley Long. By Howard’s account, it was here that Winkler kicked down the door, with Michael Keaton in tow.
“I was surprised to see Henry back so soon because we weren’t shooting on the show until later that week,” Howard shared in a recent roundtable interview. “I remember (laughs), I remember he sort of took my drink out of my hand and held it over my head and studied it — in that, that Henry sort of way — and he looked at it and held it like a brandy snifter even though it was an executive glass and he said, ‘Ronald, you like your movie cameras, don’t you, my dear?’ and I knew what he was getting at. I had only directed a picture called Grand Theft Auto and, you know, a couple of television movies, but I was honored and told him ‘Sure, Henry, I’ll do it.‘ You know, ‘Whatever you got I’ll do it.’”
“And you’ll be the whore,” Winkler said somewhere around this point in time, staring at Long. Michael Keaton jumped on damage control, explaining to her that his pansexual associate was referring to the prostitute character responsible for getting the two leads into the pimping business.
Howard continues in his interview: “So he gave me Night Shift right there and I read it over and, of course at first it didn’t make sense to me that Henry wanted to play this mild-mannered timid morgue guy when the other one, the wacky ‘idea man’ partner character [Bill Blazejowski], was — well, albeit as a more socially acceptable version — him. I mean, he was Blazejowski. Then I took a look up at Michael Keaton, who you know is this beautiful man, and I got it. I got what he wanted to do. And Shelley of course accepted the role they offered her.”
1. Firth, Patrick. Belushi, The Other One. Scepter Publishing, 1995.
2. Haggaway, Harry. Henry Winkler -The Unauthorized Life and Times. Parrot & Penguin, 2002
3. Keaton, Michael. Grand Projet. Rogue Sentry Publishers, 1988
© LameMovies.net
Related Articles
No user responded in this post