Lost in Conversation | Bill Mumy - Ep. 21 - The D-Con Chamber

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm really, really, really excited to meet mister Moomee. To
be honest with you, I you know, I didn't grow
up with Lost in Space in England. I think it
probably played there, But I wasn't aware of this man's
extraordinary career and just the depth of it. I mean,
he's been working for sixty four years, since he was

(00:24):
six five or six, and he's never stopped. And the
interviews I looked at, and you looked at some too,
and he's clearly a very cool cat. And you know,
he's one of the lucky ones that you know, didn't
get fed up by the whole.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
No, he didn't.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
And you know he's somebody who is continually continuously working
on different projects. I mean, you know that we get
twenty four hours a day and he gets twenty six
for some reason, know what it is.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
He's an extraordinary accomplished musician. He writes books, he writes
comic strip stuff, He.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Write voiceovers, got a great voiceover career.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
God knows, we didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
You know, he was the voice of bud Ice, the
voice of Twigs, the voice of it goes on and.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
On it does.

Speaker 4 (01:12):
He did all those biographies.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Fifty sixty biographies I know, enviable, and he's got two
lovely kids and grandparents and lives.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Next door to Ira Stephen Bear.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
Do they get that well done?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
But this is pre name is the killed me.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
This guy is going to have so many stories for
us and you all, and you're really going to enjoy it.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
It's going to be great. The show has been done
since your Phasers the fun you.

Speaker 5 (01:54):
Full trip trip trip trips in DCM with.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
It's the ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Trekky's and trekkers.
Welcome back to another episode of the dcon Chamber. I'm
your co host, Dominic Keating, joined as always by my
fellow co host, my old cast mate, and my bestie

(02:22):
in all the world, mister Connor treneer Is.

Speaker 5 (02:26):
I've often been.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Heard to say that there really isn't an actor whose career,
dead or alive that I'm not jealous of, and.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
This guest today is no exception.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
He has a career that spanned now over six decades.
I mean, that's just when you wrap that round your head,
he's uh, he's an absolute natural and I've seen several
interviews of late and he clearly is one of the
coolest cats on the block without further ado from so
many shows, four hundred shows, eighteen movies. He writes books,

(03:06):
he writes music. He's had more bands than I've had
hot dinners. Mister Bill Moomy is in the house.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Heh. Guys, thank you for having me along, sir.

Speaker 5 (03:15):
I'll try to dispel all of the yes.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 5 (03:18):
So let's go back to the beginning.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, you grew up a rancher's son in the San
Gabriel Mountains in San Gabriel's.

Speaker 5 (03:29):
That's what Wikipedia says. Yeah you, but it's not quite right. No,
it's quite right.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Tell us this because you I mean, how does a
rancher's son from anywhere get into this business at six
years old?

Speaker 5 (03:41):
Well, okay, Dominic, here we go. My dad was a
very successful rancher in Bishop, California for about thirty years.
He was big man in Bishop. When his marriage in
Bishop ended after twenty some years, he he married my
other and moved to Los Angeles in nineteen fifty one.

(04:04):
So I never lived in Bishop or lived on the ranch,
but I would go up there for several weeks every
summer or eastreet.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
Fish there in the summer.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Very nice Bishop, I know, it well, because I go
through that. It's a mammoth, yeah, and it's a lovely
part of the world.

Speaker 5 (04:18):
Well, before I was any kind of actor, I mean,
which is going way back, like three or four years old, right,
but I would go ride in the Labor Day parades
with my dad because my dad was like the celebrity
in Bishop. So I have videos somewhere and photographs of
me riding on one of my horses, one of his horses,
you know, through the Labor Day parades, looking like a

(04:38):
cowboy and being very proud to be with my father,
who was full of these great Western shirts and everything. Anyway,
my mother's doctor moved his practice to San Gabriel during
her pregnancy. We lived in Beverly Wood and which is
a mile south of Beverly Hills, and that's where I

(05:01):
was born. But my mother's doctor had his practice moved
to San Gabriel. So I was born in San Gabe.
We're having a baby, Okay, we're going to the doctor
having the baby. We had the baby, We're going home.
I never slept in San Gabe.

Speaker 4 (05:15):
Rian, right, So that's where the Wikipedia.

Speaker 5 (05:18):
That's where Wikipedia is. I thought Wikipedia was all true. Well,
I mean you know there is some truth within that statement,
but I never lived or hung out and sence.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
So the family had no particular connection. But your grandfather
was bela Lagosi's.

Speaker 5 (05:32):
Agent, no close close my grandfather, my mother's father, Harry Gould,
was an agent in the thirties and he mostly handled
writers and directors, but one of his acting clients was
Boris Karloff, and he had he had gotten Boris Karloff
the audition for Frankenstein. He negotiated that deal. Boris Karloff

(05:57):
was his most successful on camera agent. Boris Karloff gave
his my grandfather and my mom and her sister two
Scottie Terriers as a Christmas gift one year. They were
very close. I never knew my grandfather, he passed away
three years before I was born, but I have always
felt very connected to him. I really feel like Harry

(06:20):
has kind of been there, and I'm one of these guys.
I enjoy going and this is going to sound a
little micawber, but I enjoy going to the cemetery for holidays, birthdays,
things like that.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
I go here, wished to hang out as a kid,
I did.

Speaker 5 (06:38):
I go there for my relatives, but well.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Like wise, and I lost both my I lost my
dad young and my grandmother very in the same year.
And then my mom call and I and I there
is there's some solace, there isn't there about. I was
just listening on CACRW the other day. There's someone's just
made you know, the twenty two best cemeteries to visit
in the world before you die, And I guess that might.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Be number one.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, I'm sure you know in the Forest Lawn and
the one in Paris and you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
Well, my my family are all at Hollywood Forever there
here by Gower and and Santa Monica Boulevard. Are you
really are You're just Hollywood. I'm a local. Believe how
Hollywood through and through your law.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
You know, it's amazing. And you're not my mom.

Speaker 5 (07:28):
Again, my my connection to my grandfather is certainly a
Hollywood connection. But again I didn't know him. But my
mom worked as a writer's secretary at twentieth Century Fox
for eleven years before she got pregnant with me, So
before she met my dad, married my dad and had me,
she was at the studio. She was very much she

(07:49):
was very comfortable at the studio, very much understanding of
what the business really was, wasn't intimidated by it, wasn't
impressed by it. And when I was four, Uh, I
broke my leg jumping off of bed, pretending I was Zorro,
who ended I guy my dad, I mean, and I

(08:13):
broke my leg. I hit I hit this Winchester toy
rifle that was made out of real good old Yeah.
I smashed my my my bone and so I was
in a cast for several months. It was a big cast,
and all I could do was sit around my house
and watch the Mickey Mouse Club and Zorro and Superman
on TV, and very passionately, and this is true. You know,

(08:35):
I said to my folks, I want to get inside
the TV. I want to be like Superman and Zoro.
I want to be I wanted to be a superhero,
which I got to be a couple of times. Did
in terms of Will Robinson, in terms of Anthony Fremont,
and to a degree in terms of laneer On Badina,
and I got.

Speaker 6 (08:53):
My cape and your comic writing your comic.

Speaker 5 (08:56):
Well that's a whole other appendage of yeah. But anyway
that you know, my dad was almost fifty when I
was born. My mom was forty one years old.

Speaker 4 (09:08):
I was an old child.

Speaker 5 (09:11):
You know, and they listened to me, and I think
my dad's attitude was, if you want it to my mom,
if you want to take him, if you want to
see they want to do this, you have to be
with him. It's not like we're going to farm him out,
but he really wants to if you want to check
it out. And so she put me on a They

(09:32):
put me on a television show called Romper Room, which
was where civilian kids got to be on TV and
being like a preschool arena, I remember, and I stayed
there for a couple of weeks. Usually a kid came
in and did one week on Romper Room, and I
stayed for a couple of weeks. I was and her
logic was great. It was like, well, let's see how
he reacts being under lights with a camera in front

(09:55):
of him. Does that make him go Hell, I want
to get out of here? Does that make him go Hi?
So so I had a good time on Wrapper Room,
and then you know, you just can't escape your destiny
that acting in TV and doing that all that stuff
that I did as a kid from five to.

Speaker 6 (10:12):
Was there an agent and for sure, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (10:14):
But not for rapper Room. But I mean after that, yeah,
there were yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
I saw an interview you were giving, and Connor and
I have discussed this too. You know, there's a difference
between being a craftsman and an artist.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
You can learn how to be a craftsman. You can
be taught the craft.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
And I've seen, we've worked with actors who yes, yeah,
they went to drama school and they know how to
hit a mark and they can remember the lines. And yeah,
that's about as much as you can say about that.
I'm watching you in episodes of the Twilight Zone when
you're seven to ten and you're in that scene Bill,

(10:53):
and you are an artist and you are living with
adult with Jack Klugman. You're acting the pants off with
Jack Clevebman.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
He's ripping you.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
Up in his arms and twiddling you around and you're.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Not phased, you're not You're just and he sets you
down on the spench there in.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
The play in the.

Speaker 5 (11:15):
Amusement amusement part, and I'm like, wow.

Speaker 6 (11:19):
And your eyes are alive.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Your eyes are alive, You're not phased by Grandma in
the telephone episode.

Speaker 5 (11:27):
I always found it very easy and I can't really
dissect this. But I always found it very easy to
believe what I was doing right.

Speaker 4 (11:41):
And you never trained obviously, you didn't go to No
I did dramas.

Speaker 5 (11:45):
I didn't go to drama school or anything like.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
Do you ever go to druma school after being a
child actor?

Speaker 7 (11:49):
No?

Speaker 4 (11:49):
You just learned on set.

Speaker 5 (11:50):
No, you know. I just have always been able to say, Okay,
this is a situation I'm talking to a carrot, right,
or this is the situation I'm with my dad and
he's I mean, whatever it was, it was easy for
me to just to just to absorb it and be there.
I think it was Jimmy Stewart when I was Stuart

(12:14):
upped my game a little bit when it came to
listening to other.

Speaker 4 (12:17):
People, right, did he?

Speaker 5 (12:20):
I mean he was great. I mean he was maybe
the best of the best. And I have worked with
a lot of iconic you know, Golden.

Speaker 4 (12:27):
Age, a lot of people.

Speaker 5 (12:30):
The list, I'd have to read it, you know, because
it goes it's it's a big list. But one of
the things I think that that is important to remember
is I had no clue what their resumes were. The
only people I ever worked for or with as a
child that I was intimidated by and impressed with was

(12:53):
Walt Disney and Loose Little Ball. Because Lucy was Lucy.
You escape Lucy on TV. You saw her, you wanted
to or not. She was incredibly iconic, and Walt Disney
was Walt Disney. Right. My world was about the Disney
Club and Disneyland and Walt Disney. Those were the only
when my mom would say to me, oh my god,
you're working with Claude Rains. What did I know. I

(13:16):
hadn't seen. You're working with franch aw Tone. Oh, Billy,
you're working with Franchise. I remember she was so impressed
that I was working with franch Autne. I didn't know
franch aut Tone was. So The point was, it didn't
matter if I was working with Gene Kelly or Chloris
Leachman or I mean again, we could do this right
some iconic, some iconic name, or another kid in a

(13:40):
Disney movie. They were just zare on camera, speed rolling action.
I'm just doing the thing with these people.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
Did you ever reach a point where you developed some
sort of technique? I mean, I ever, I think most
people have something, and I have taken lots of classes
and looked at several techniques, and really Cagney's technique was
the only one that really stuck with me.

Speaker 6 (14:02):
Which was hit your mark, open your face, and tell
the truth.

Speaker 5 (14:09):
That works. I worked with a director named Norman Tokar
who did the first one hundred episodes basically of Leave
It to Beaver, and he had been a child actor
and he was the first time I worked with him
was in a Disney feature film called Sammy the Way
Out Seal with Mike McGreevy and Angillian Robert Coulp pat Berry.

(14:31):
And we worked on that movie for almost three months,
and I had done quite a bit before that. But
before every before calling action, Norman used to lean down.
He was a very short man. Norman used to lean
down and just say to me very quietly, okay think.

(14:52):
He used to just say things, well, I gotta be
honest with you. I know this is a very minimal
reality to admit evil of me. But I would do
that on Babylon five. I would do that on Deep
deep Space. The camera would roll and I would remind myself, okay, think,
just think where are we be there? Where where are

(15:13):
we be there?

Speaker 2 (15:15):
You were?

Speaker 4 (15:16):
You very good at knowing your lines.

Speaker 5 (15:19):
I knew everybody.

Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yes, you knew everybody.

Speaker 5 (15:21):
I knew everybody.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
I think that's a very important ingredient to the naturalness
of thinking.

Speaker 5 (15:27):
I knew everybody.

Speaker 4 (15:28):
Doesn't have to be struggling for any of that.

Speaker 5 (15:30):
No, every Look, everybody has their gift. Whether you're seven
or eight and you're a little league picture and you
can throw a strike, or you can draw a horse
that looks great, or you can memorize a script in
an hour. And I could memorize a script after I
heard it. After I heard it, I could read when
I was six. You think I could read a Twilight

(15:51):
Zone Alfred Hitchcock script. I couldn't read a bit of school.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
God bless on that.

Speaker 5 (15:55):
I mean, I mean, I'm God, But I mean after
I heard a script, you could just hear it.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
It was.

Speaker 5 (16:06):
It stuck with me, right, And you got the bone,
baby I do. I mean I accepted that as something
but I could do. Lucky you found it early and
in a professional way. I mean, I think Conor and
I I mean, if we're going to both have that bone.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
I got an education that was I was meant to
be a lawyer or something professional. It took me until
I was twenty six to decide to.

Speaker 4 (16:30):
You know, this is what I want to do. And
I have some regrets about that.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
You know that I didn't, you know, get in earlier,
go in earlier and just get on with it. Well,
I don't have any regrets about What about the educational part?

Speaker 5 (16:44):
Did you feel hated?

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Did you go because I know you went back to
Fox he fell in love with Angela cart right, Well, yeah,
that I did. You went back to How was it
going back to public school having been on TV for
ninety six episodes?

Speaker 5 (16:58):
Well? That was That was heinous.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
It must have been.

Speaker 5 (17:00):
And I'll tell you what was. What else was heinus?
Was whether I was seven on a Twilight Zone or
fourteen on a Disney movie or Lost in Space or
anything else. You go out and you block a scene
with a director and a cinematographer, right, they call second
team and the scene is being lit.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
I was always sent back to school, rushed by.

Speaker 5 (17:24):
The second assistant director into a trailer outside the stage,
or for twenty minutes. It had to be two math.

Speaker 6 (17:32):
It couldn't be eighteen number two in your hand.

Speaker 5 (17:35):
It had to be twenty minutes. And I was compelled
to completely shift my brain from I'm going to go
in there and I'm going to wish him into the cornfield.
Or I'm going to go in there and I'm going
to save the day from an alien grandma, right, whatever
it might be. I had to shift that to like
the capital of Nebraska is. And I always hated that.

(18:01):
Now I didn't hate the teachers, I didn't hate school,
but I hated having to shift my brain to that.
I wanted to sit in my little chair that said
Billy Moomey, and I wanted to be with my fellow
actors ready to do that. And then I would be
pulled out, Okay, we're ready to shoot. You know, its
first team. I'd be brought back to the set. We

(18:23):
would shoot it and depending on who I was working with,
it would be one take, maybe two. We'd get it
done quick.

Speaker 4 (18:29):
And Harris, well, one take one is John, that's.

Speaker 7 (18:32):
Why you very very very good, said, that's why you
think that that there was more of you all in it,
because look, we can have these two cats show up,
do our scene and one take and two for safety
and then carry on.

Speaker 5 (18:46):
I mean that was true. Whether that was the motivation
for the way the show turned, I can't say, but
I can say that they definitely could count on Jonathan
and I getting it done right and getting it done
quick all the time. We never messed it up.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
A cool kid who was very happy in what you
would call adult company.

Speaker 5 (19:04):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, we live in
this politically correct world now, and some of that is
a good thing, and some of that is way over
the top, and it's going to find.

Speaker 4 (19:15):
It's going to redress, it will rebalance itself.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
I won't go into specifics, but the things that I heard,
the joke that really was I was privy to be hearing,
not they were necessarily even told to me. Yeah, they
were told me while I was there. The things I
saw were unbelievable. Well, I mean, was mom with you

(19:39):
on set? My mom was always with me until I
was sixteen, and then my best friend who was eighteen,
became my guarden.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
You got in the bad news, but you never succumbed
to any of the hollywoods, you know, disaster stories that
you never got into.

Speaker 5 (19:53):
I got lucky. I could have been, like I say,
when we were a Hollywood show.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
And no disrespect to Danny Bonaducci, but you know his
story is not the same.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
No, and bless his her.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
He's come through it.

Speaker 5 (20:04):
And I like Danny. We've been friends for a long time.
I mean we don't he's not in my phone book,
but we hang out when we're in the same place.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Do you do you know a lot of the guys
at that time that were child actors?

Speaker 5 (20:15):
Yeah, yeah, I know them all. It's a very interesting
club club because even if you didn't specifically interact in
a show with those people, and you come across them
and you meet them, you're there in the You're in
that little club. You are one of the few people

(20:35):
that understands what it was like and how it went down,
and the hours and you get it. And I like
that club.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Friends with Angela cart right, she was there that weekend.
Last weekend it.

Speaker 5 (20:51):
Was Angela and I are very close. We collaborate together.
We don't see to eye on everything, right, but in
sixty years you could check off just about every box
that that relationship has has been.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
She's moved back to England now, No, she lives in Texas,
so she does now.

Speaker 4 (21:07):
I thought she went to Chesha.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
She lives in Texas.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
Now, what do you attribute to your survival as a
young actor and carrying on and having a career and.

Speaker 6 (21:18):
Being a normal ish human being.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
It's not an easy track for a child actor to
manipulate or maneuver.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
That to navigate those waters. Yeah, good parenting, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (21:32):
Good parenting. But I think one of the main I
don't think about that very often because it's just my life,
so it doesn't But I think I've always found an
appendage of art to slide into when one of those

(21:55):
was closing. Now, I never felt type cast as a
kid because after Lost in Space ended, I kept working
very prolifically until I stopped working at seventeen for a
couple of years to devote those two years to me
what I thought was going to be, you know, like
in a Crosby, Stills and Nash kind of band. That
didn't turn out to be the case, although I don't

(22:16):
regret those years. And then I went back into it
as in Papillon with McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, and that
was an interesting perspective to go back at nineteen because
the last time I had done it was at seventeen.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
You jailed Papion?

Speaker 4 (22:31):
Were you a jail bird in Papillon?

Speaker 5 (22:33):
Yeah? I got my head blown off early in that film,
But I was there for about two and a half months.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
The world had changed in terms of filmmaking, and like
you know, when you're when movies like Papillon began coming
out and versus what were being made in the fifties
and early sixties.

Speaker 5 (22:47):
Well, sure, sure, but I think one thing that's very true.
And I don't like to get egotistical about this, I don't,
but here's the truth. Before I was an adult, if
they couldn't get Ronnie Howard, they got me. And I
don't mean that did you know that? Of course? And

(23:13):
Ron's a great guy, you know, I mean he was.
He was locked into the Maybury world for so long
that you know that I have extra you know. Look,
he got the courts of Vetti's father, and I got
deer Bridget whatever. He got the music man, and I
got blessed be or whatever it might be. But when

(23:33):
you were of that age, mm hmm, that was they
really wanted me or Ronnie or But when you become
an adult, the pool to pick from suddenly is huge, right,
So I found that interesting. Papillon was the first time

(23:56):
I had ever been on a project for a long
time and largely cut out of the final film. I
only saw it once, which was at Samuel Goldwyn Theater
for the cast and cruse screening.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
That moment when the only time I'd seen it. It was
like a couple of movies where I was like, I
took dates to them. I'm like, they cut me out
of it.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
Mostly.

Speaker 5 (24:16):
Yeah, I wasn't surprised. We were. We were filming that script.
We shot it in sequence. Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the screen,
was dying of cancer, and it was page after page
of it was if they had shot what we if
they had edited what we shot, it brought a four
hour movie. I don't think it was a mistake to

(24:37):
trim what I was in down significantly, but it was
the first time, right that I was relegated to a
reasonably status in something I had worked on. It was
a bit of a rude awakening, it was. But anyway,
we went going back to what you were saying, Uh,

(25:01):
I worked in music, then I worked in I started
writing comic books. Then I started writing television shows, you know,
so then I started producing. So I've always been able
to kind of hopscotch around the world of art and
entertainment and be able to uh not send my.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
Kids to school and truly not pitcheonhole yourself. You've got
you know, you're not You're not You're not reliant upon
Oh I'm an actor.

Speaker 5 (25:29):
You also look, let's be honest, a lot of actors
from the era I worked, and if I told you
the kind of money I made on Lost in Space
or something like that, you guys would your eyes would roll.
It's nothing. It's it's a couple of dinners at Musso Frank.
I mean, it's per episode. It's not a lot of
money anymore.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
In those days, we.

Speaker 5 (25:49):
Got paid for the first six runs of every show.
It's probably run six hundred times every episode. I'm not
bitching about it. But what I'm saying is my parents
did not need the money I made as an actor,
so they didn't take it. My dad bought property for me. Goodness,

(26:10):
So I've never I know, I never screwed you over.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
That's another thing.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
No, No, Britney spiz his dad and yeah, yeah, no.

Speaker 5 (26:17):
My parents were never guilty of that. And some parents
weren't guilty of it. They just needed it, you know,
like there's if you're under eighteen, there's the Jackie Coogan law,
and you're allowed to take I believe it's correct me
if I'm wrong, sag. But I think it's either fifteen
or twenty percent that is put away for the child
until they become of age. So that means the parents

(26:40):
can take basically eighty percent of your salary and live
on it if they need to. So some parents I
know did need to live on it, but mine didn't.
And so I've never had that hunger of you know,
am I going to be able to live comfortably?

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Now?

Speaker 5 (26:58):
I've always lived, ever been rich, but I've never been.

Speaker 6 (27:03):
But you've made a living at this.

Speaker 5 (27:04):
Oh no, I've made a good looking, very good. So
I've made a good living.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
I'm not.

Speaker 5 (27:08):
I'm not, but you know, compared to people that are
rich rich, I've never been rich. But you know, I
don't know anybody anymore.

Speaker 6 (27:13):
What was your first car?

Speaker 5 (27:15):
My first car was a MGBGT.

Speaker 4 (27:18):
Oh well, well, well how old were you?

Speaker 5 (27:19):
Seventeen sixteen? Fifth less mate?

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Love it? Love it?

Speaker 5 (27:23):
Yeah? It was a great little British car. Oh, great
little car.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
I think it was not as lost on me as
you know, as you say, when you when this didn't
wasn't working out, you went to this and you your
comic book, you know career with Miguel dream Walker, and
you know you've did some You've done some amazing comic
book stuff.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
You were in Rascal, which.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Was Sterling North's big novel, you know, Memoirs of a
Better Time? He wrote the first dire Tribe about how
comic books were just destroying the American youth's mind.

Speaker 5 (27:57):
Are you aware of that? No worth them? Seduction of
the Inn that Miguel named the band That's Brilliance.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Frederic Whorton wrote this whole essay about the destruction of
the American youth's mind. I have to say I giggled
out loud when I saw those two connections there.

Speaker 5 (28:17):
Yeah, I didn't know about the Sterling Northington. Yeah. Norman Tokar,
who I mentioned earlier, who had directed Sammy The Way
Outs heel directed Rascal as well, and he and I
became friends many years later as adults. I remember the
only time in my life I ever drank real moonshine
was with Norman at his home in Hollywood.

Speaker 4 (28:40):
He was dating is that when you came up with
acid the trip dog trypto?

Speaker 5 (28:45):
Yeah, could have been. He was dating my friend David
Joll his mom and anyway, Norman broke out this bottle
of moonshine. I never it was just totally clear.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Boy, Oh I'm.

Speaker 4 (28:59):
Telling moonshine for the first time, which.

Speaker 5 (29:02):
Is one and only time I ever had.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
On your ass.

Speaker 5 (29:06):
That was like something you know, Boris Karloff would have
put into the right into the Frankenstein juice. So yeah,
you know.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
You've been Steve and Ira Bear's neighbor for forty years,
so you know, deserve a.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Medal for that. Oh, I love I, We love Ira.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
And then of course he puts you in Deep Space
nine in a seminal episode.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
AR five five eight.

Speaker 5 (29:31):
Uh, you get killed in it?

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Now? Am I right?

Speaker 1 (29:34):
He's saying that he came rushing down to the set
and said Star Trek killed Will Robinson.

Speaker 5 (29:40):
He did? Is that the.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
Story he did?

Speaker 5 (29:43):
Ira had offered me. We wrapped up Babylon five right
as they were a few months shy of wrapping up
DS nine, and there had been with the fans, there
had been a bit of you know, rivalry and odal
shine is Babylon five, but you know, there was this
kind of bad blood between the fans on that and
as soon as I finished Babylon five, Ira had offered

(30:06):
me a really nice guest shot on DS nine, but
it was an alien.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah, and you've done five years is that I've.

Speaker 5 (30:14):
Done five years in your prosthetic makeup, And I have
to tell you I wouldn't. I don't mean to sound fabulous,
And it's not like you're in Afghanistan, you know, with
a big pack on your back or anything. I get it,
but I wouldn't want to do that again. It was hard.
I mean, it's well you're in general compared.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
To Will you tell a story a little bit about
when you discovered the actual tasking of what it meant
to put that makeup on you? Oh, because you were told.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
I was skinned just my skin does not like it,
and I would be ravaged. I did it twice on
our show and it took me two weeks. My skin
just was red like a bleach of peacon and you know,
it was nasty.

Speaker 5 (30:57):
Yeah, I'm very fair skin.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Irish in and they just pissed off told I went
into I.

Speaker 5 (31:03):
Went into audition for the part of Lanier on Babylon
five in nineteen ninety three, and my wife and I
had booked a holiday and we were of course you
go to holiday and we were going. We were going
away for a few days and my agent called said, hey,
you got this audition. It's for a sci fi show.
And I said to my agent at the time, I said,

(31:26):
we're going out of town. And my wife Eileen, who
God bless her, she's just the best. We've been married
thirty eight years. And my wife Eileen said, oh, let
me change. I can change, let me change the dates.
Maybe this will be something good. Go. I said, okay,
so I got these sides. I didn't there's nothing visual

(31:47):
to see. I get these sides. I know he's not
a human being, but I see who he is. I
go in there and I play him as a cross
between David Carrodine is Cain in Kufu and Will Robinson.
I play him as like naive but centered and zen.

(32:09):
I do the audition, I come home and one thing
I've learned over the decades is you know, you got
to let that stuff go. You have to you have
to wash that off. You can't sit around and go,
am I gonna get this? Am I gonna get this?
Did I get this?

Speaker 2 (32:22):
No?

Speaker 5 (32:22):
No, no, no, you do an audition, that's it, it's over.
I didn't get it or whatever. I'm not thinking about
that anymore.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
If the phone rings whatever.

Speaker 5 (32:29):
Yeah, So the phone rings, right, and and I'm told,
which I hadn't been told on the audition, I'm told
it's a cast regular. I thought it was just a
guest shot, right. I thought it was going to be,
you know, six days. Well, yeah, I go, oh, it's
a cast regular. Oh okay. And I say, but this

(32:51):
guy's not human, right, No, he's an alien. I go,
what's he going to look like? And and my agent
who was And I don't I'm not going to name
him at the time, but you know what, after many
years of being a child star, the level of representation
I had was not exactly high. On the totem phone.

(33:12):
This guy just wanted to book the gig. I can't
blame him. I go, what does he look like? He goes, well,
I don't know. So one of the few times I've
ever done this in my life, I called a producer.
I called John Copeland. Strazinsky was the creator and executive producer,

(33:32):
but John Copeland was the producer. He ran the show.
I call him on the phone personally, Hi, I hear
you want to We're gonna trying to make a deal here. Yeah, great,
what does this guy look like? And I need you
to know I won't wear lenses. It's just my thing,
you know. I mean some people on the cast had
reptilian lenses and I can't. I can't stick lenses in

(33:55):
my eye. I just maybe I can, but I've never
have and I don't want to. So I said, look,
I'm not gonna I don't know what this guy looks like,
but I'm not going to wear lenses. And he goes, yeah,
you don't need to wear lenses. I go, okay, I go, so,
riddle me this. How long am I going to be
in the chair? He goes, about an hour? Those were
his words to me, verbatim. About an hour. Okay. I

(34:18):
turned to my wife, who was pregnant with our daughter,
and I say, well, he says, about an hour. It
can't be that bad. I had done Lost in Space.
You know, I was there when they did Planet of
the Ape. I mean, I know, makeup right, I go,
it can't be that bad. She goes, oh, honey, you know,
do it. It'll probably go six episodes or something. Just

(34:38):
do it. You know it'll be good to get back
on TV. You'll like it. So I close the deal.

Speaker 6 (34:45):
I go in on your own.

Speaker 5 (34:47):
No, no, I mean I tell the agent to close
the deal. But I mean, I you know, I had
talked to John said about an hour to my ears
from his mouth to my ears. My wife said, let
you know, go ahead, and I said the agent, okay,
make a deal. So I go in for the first
day and I'll make this short. But the first thing
I do is I'm sitting in the chair and an

(35:09):
actress who was booked to play a character named Natos
who was like a lizard woman has a total meltdown
and says, this is I've just sat down in the
makeup chair and this one regular or this is she
was a regular, she was booked to be a regular,
and she's going, I can't do this. I can't, I can't,

(35:33):
I can't and she quits.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
She walked out.

Speaker 5 (35:36):
She lizard, I'm like ten minutes in the chair, Okay,
now jump ahead. I'm done. Four hours and twenty minutes later,
four hours and twenty minutes later, I can't do this. Well,

(35:57):
I've got a bone on the back of like a
shell bone on the back of my neck. I can't.
You can't do this. If you can't do that, for
like nine or ten hours. You're going to become at
a certain point, you're going to become aware of the
fact that you can't do it, and that's all you're
gonna want to do. So four hours and twenty minutes,
I watched this woman, she freaks out. Another actress, I

(36:19):
swear to god was there within an hour. Who stayed right,
Julie Caitlin Brown.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
Yeah, right, she was on that wasn't she was?

Speaker 5 (36:26):
Yeah, Julie came in after this gal freaked out. This
lady freaked out, and she stuck it out for as
long as they had her there. But I went four
hours and twenty minutes later and I went.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
In makeup.

Speaker 5 (36:39):
I probably shouldn't be. Yeah, it's so long ago. I'm
really I can say this because but it is true.
I always say too much. I went to Joe Strazinski
and John Copeland and Doug nat Are, the producers of
the show on day.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
One, played them back to the tape.

Speaker 5 (36:56):
I went, I went, I asked to see them privately
on day one and I said, look, you said this
was going to take an hour. It took four hours
and twenty minutes. I'm I'm not going to not honor
our agreement. I said, but I got to tell you this.
I said, if you think or have plans for this

(37:18):
guy to be the guy, I said, don't, I said,
because I can't do this every single day. This guy
can't be the guy.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Now.

Speaker 5 (37:30):
There is no reason for anyone to believe that they
ever had plans for Laneer to become the guy. And
Joe said to me in that meeting, some shows you'll
work one day, some shows you'll work every day. I said, okay,
all right, And between the makeup people at Optic Nerve

(37:51):
who did the alien makeups, they got it down to
two hours.

Speaker 4 (37:55):
Which is not horrible.

Speaker 5 (37:57):
No, it was. No, it's not horrible. But I'm grateful
I stayed there for five seasons, one hundred and ten episodes.
I'm grateful I was a part of Babylon five. I
think it's an important, groundbreaking, really impressive show. I have
a lot of comrades that are no longer alive that
were on that show and had.

Speaker 4 (38:16):
A lot of respect that show.

Speaker 5 (38:17):
Yeah, but I wouldn't want to do it again, you know.

Speaker 4 (38:22):
And it's also the taking off of that Oh yeah,
it was.

Speaker 5 (38:26):
The worst part I would get. Look, I had a
three year old, four year old son, and an infant daughter.
My daughter was born at the beginning season two. I
would get up and I would have to be in
the makeup trailer at like four forty in the morning, okay,
and i'd get home around seven thirty at night.

Speaker 4 (38:44):
You're missing childhood, but yeah.

Speaker 5 (38:46):
The worst. But in the morning at four forty five
or whatever it was, I would make these in the
trailer was Peter Jurassic, Mira Furlan, Andreas Katsulis, and me basically,
and I learned very early what music they accepted and
appreciate it. And I would make these two hour setts

(39:06):
of mixed music. And it wasn't you know Hendricks, It
was like Charles Brown, or it was jazzy blues.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
It's a lot of jazz music.

Speaker 5 (39:16):
Right. So you can sit there and kind of do
this for a couple hours while they do that. But
then when you wrap out, then you go back into
that trailer and you're sitting with two washcloths covering your
eyes while they're peeling foam rubber off your face with

(39:36):
these solvents. Honest to god, I mean, they did the
best job they could. They were all good people, but.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
I don't want to just it's a long five years
paid all right.

Speaker 5 (39:50):
They were it was never a network. They're always an underdog.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
And as you say, it's not carrying, you know, a
pound backpack.

Speaker 5 (40:00):
If I were, if I were a fireman or an
elementary school teacher, I knew what I made on Babylon five,
I would go, how dare you complain about that? But
if you know what somebody was making on another show
at the same time, we go, wow, you were a chump.

Speaker 4 (40:14):
But we do what we do.

Speaker 5 (40:16):
We do what we do. And everybody there was talented,
very talented, and and and nice. We were completely isolated
for five years. We shot in a hot tub factory,
shot valley, just auditioned out there.

Speaker 6 (40:30):
You shot out there as well.

Speaker 5 (40:31):
We never ever left. You never went to lunch they had.
It was catering and that was it. That was our
little kind of in the back of a garage. It
was down in the alley at the end of a
cult to sack down a little road by a freeway,
and it was a hot tub factory that had been
turned into a studio and they did a fine job.

(40:53):
But listen, if you grew up at twentieth century Fox
or Paramotel sad he had to stop multiple times simply
because horns were honking on the freeway. Yeah. Yeah, we
had that big earthquake in ninety four, that's.

Speaker 4 (41:09):
When we arrived.

Speaker 5 (41:10):
Yeah, we had to evacuate that facility five, six, ten
times a day for a couple of weeks because of aftershocks, right, Yeah,
and things were swinging like crazy, so we'd all have
to go out, we'd have to leave. We'd get out,
we'd be out there and people from other buildings in

(41:30):
places on that little block would come out.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Staring at.

Speaker 6 (41:38):
And it was like, Oh, you guys doing some kind
of strange porn.

Speaker 5 (41:41):
What's going on there? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (41:43):
I was telling car a funny story because I arrived
two days after the North through there skate to emigrate
to America to come to get into Holli you.

Speaker 5 (41:50):
Know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
And I was living on a commune in Malibu, and
I had shipped a electric blue sixties kick Car VW
Doom Buggy from London, which.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
Was my right hand drive.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
I'm driving to an audition for Babylon five really within
days of arriving here, and I've got Larry the surfer
who was the guy next door to me on the
commune who was just coming for the ride.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
And we're down at one oh.

Speaker 4 (42:14):
One going making our way there, and.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
There are people waving at as Puris, and we think
it's because it's the electric blue car and the Doom Buggy.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
And then suddenly a lick of flame.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Shop and I turned around and my whole fking engine
the oils caught on fire, and the whole of the
back of this engine is on fire.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
And by the time I.

Speaker 5 (42:36):
Got to that audition, it had started raining. There was
no roof.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
I'm soaking wet, I'm covered in Greece and I didn't.

Speaker 5 (42:44):
Get the job. Oh ya yo. That was my first
was a schlep from Melburn.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
That was a slep from Mallow.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
That was my first audition in l I love the
story that you tell because.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
We've talked about this a lot, which was the notion
of ad libbing or being word perfect on DS nine
and you I love this story.

Speaker 6 (43:06):
Please please tell it.

Speaker 5 (43:07):
Okay. So, as I had said, even as an adult,
I'm very good at learning my lines. It's easy for me.
I had this guest shot on Deep Space nine. I
played a human and a star fleet guy and I
knew my lines and we start. I gotta say this,

(43:28):
this was the last season of Deep Space nine, and
that crew were running on fumes. They had been working
crazy hours all the whole scope of that show, Babylon five,
even with the makeup. We never had forced calls. It
was a very well produced in terms of like you're

(43:49):
in it this hour, you're out at that hour. We
didn't have force calls.

Speaker 4 (43:52):
They didn't have money to burn, so they were on.

Speaker 5 (43:55):
Deep Space nine, which I think I was a seven
or eight day shoot. For me, I think I had
six forced calls, made more money on that than well.
They Ira and and everybody treated me like a rock star.
They were really generous and they were really kind. It's

(44:16):
a beautiful double banger trailer. You know, you got the
beautiful billing we're paying you top of the show. And
for me, I'm driving through the paramount line, you know,
back into a real studio, and uh, it felt really good.
It felt really good to be back on a real love.
So we're we're blocking the first master scene on day

(44:39):
one of this episode, and I'm working with Nicole de Bourg.
Uh and and there's a scene where we're doing tech
talk and we're talking about aligning some you know, pharmistet
to the Goobli guck, and the line as written was
that ought to do it. And every time we rehearsed it,

(45:01):
I was saying, well, that ought to do it, right,
I was saying, well, that ought to do it. Well,
that ought to do it. That ought to do it.
However I said it, I was saying, well, before the line,
so we break to light it. Second team comes in,
stand ins come in and the script supervisor whose name

(45:24):
escapes me at the moment, but really profession I don't
know it was.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
She was.

Speaker 5 (45:30):
It was like twenty six years ago, I can't remember,
but she was very nice and she was very pooped out,
and she came up to me and said, are you
changing the line? And I said, what do you mean?
She goes, are you? Are you changing the line? Because
if you're changing the line, I have to call and

(45:50):
I have to get it approved. I said, what do
you mean, what's the line? She goes, the line is
that ought to do it? I go, well, aren't I
That's what I'm saying. Aren't I saying the line? She goes,
every time you've said the line in rehearsal you have
added a well, and that has to be approved. And
I thought I was being punked by Irah. I thought

(46:10):
I was being punked. And I was like, come on,
and she was like, not on the show. Look Bill,
I'm tired. I'm tired. And if you're going to say well,
it has to be approved and I got to get
approval for that. And I said, so you're I said,
I'm sorry. I apologize. I didn't mean to change the

(46:33):
script because you could tell she wasn't. She was like tired,
and this was the way it was.

Speaker 4 (46:39):
This is my bagel time.

Speaker 5 (46:40):
And so I said, I said, so is this It's
it's completely like this. It's Shakespeare. It's every line only
as written, and she said yeah. And I thought that
was ridiculous. I mean, it's one thing to change a line,
and it's one thing to go off. It's another thing

(47:03):
to just like go well to do it, you know.
And I didn't like that. It put this thing in
my head that is very very very rarely there, which
was I'm seeing the printed line before I delivered it.
You know, I'm seeing it not wanting to screw it up,
not wanting to get hurt, you know, I'm not wanting

(47:25):
to get on anybody's bad side. But I'll be honest,
I think it's not. It took me a little bit
out of of a couple of those scenes where Okay,
it says this, say this.

Speaker 6 (47:38):
And then you asked Ira, Well, I did ask Ira,
if you if?

Speaker 5 (47:42):
Later I said, you know what was his reaction? He goes, yeah,
that's the way it is.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
Was that coming from him or was that coming from
is that's coming from Rick and the higher Rick that.

Speaker 5 (47:54):
Rule?

Speaker 1 (47:55):
I remember, you know, I did one of our early
takes when I quite a speech and I nailed it,
and I was waiting for cut print moving on, and
they were go again, and that's.

Speaker 4 (48:08):
When jan came up to me.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
She says, said, Dominic he said, if instead of Anne,
you said instead of if?

Speaker 4 (48:13):
You said, oh wait, you're kidding, right?

Speaker 5 (48:17):
She went on this show.

Speaker 4 (48:20):
Yeah, it was a muscle.

Speaker 5 (48:21):
It was strange because even on Babylon five, the only
times that I had difficulty with Lanier's dialogue was when
he was speaking in Mimbari, right, which was a language
language that you know, Joe had kind of formulated verbs
and nouns and things too, and you know, you have
to learn gobbledygoop. I mean, it doesn't make any sense.

(48:44):
You're just saying this alien language. And that was the
only stuff that they were like, no, you you got
to say it this way. But otherwise there was always
a little play in any of our dialogue, not that
anybody was, you know, consciously looking to change it, but
if you were in the moment and you were having
moments feedback with the other actors, things would get tweaked

(49:07):
a little bit. And that was never a problem on
Babylon five. But wow, is that an adjustment.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
You don't nine from the experience with Jonathan on Lost
in Space, where.

Speaker 5 (49:18):
He every every line of Smith's from almost the middle
of the first season on for another eighty episodes or
whatever it was. You know, as I said, I would
learn I learned everybody's lines, because that was just how
the si Yeah Will.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Smith I heard when he when he was on the
ball at show, he because he was so inexperienced, he
learned everybody's lines. And he actually actually be treated because
when he was not speaking, he'd be mouthing their lines to.

Speaker 5 (49:49):
Oh, that's bad, that's bad. The only person who ever, uh,
how can I say it? Busted me and it wasn't busted.
Edge caded me about that. About doing that was Cloris Leachman,
and it was very early. The first show I ever
ever starred in was an episode of the Loretta Young

(50:10):
show that Chloris was my mom in, and then the
next show that we worked together five times, and then
just didn't you. I mean, what a gift, What a gift?
What a gift? What a gift?

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Yeah? Love truly.

Speaker 5 (50:24):
I mean just she's just a class you know, she's
unbelievable talent, unbelievable talent. And what a character. I mean
quite a character. Anyway, we were doing It's a Good
Life the Twilight's on episode and I knew everybody's lines.
That's just you were.

Speaker 4 (50:40):
So good in that.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Thank you. I mean, I mean that holds up.

Speaker 5 (50:43):
It really does. I can look at that and say, yeah,
he was okay good. And Chloris in rehearsals was forgetting
her lines, just as we know we're rehearsing. She was
forgetting her lines, and I kept telling her what they were.

Speaker 4 (50:58):
How beautiful did she take on bridgual?

Speaker 5 (51:01):
Yes, she got to a point where she took me aside.
Two things she taught she taught me I was seven
two things she taught me. One was she said, I'm
She said, when I don't know my lines, you don't
have to tell them to me because I'm searching for
something and let me find it without you helping me.
And I said, okay. And the other thing she taught

(51:23):
me a smart ass, well in essence, well, I wasn't
being as smart. The other thing she taught me was
when when it was time for coverage and I was
off camera doing her off camera dialogue for her close
ups or a two shot or whatever it might be,
she came. She took me aside, and she said, when
you do off camera dialogue, do it as real, do

(51:45):
it as good as you do it on camera. Because
I wasn't at seven you I mean, I wasn't consciously
not I don't know, I can't that was you know.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Isn't that funny because as a seven year old, I
think I might have just instinctively done it. And that
was when I started out as an actor and not
I did. I remember my first early TV jobs, I
was giving it all away in the wide shots.

Speaker 5 (52:09):
Yeah, by the time they.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Got because I was the guest star on by this
time they got to me at midnight to do my
close up, I'd add seventeen cups of coffee, smoke thirty
five cigarettes, and I was just wasted and looked like,
you know, a piece of crap.

Speaker 5 (52:23):
I always gave my all in the master. Yeah, and
sometimes by the time you get to coverage, it's it
was a little it takes a little while.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Took me a while to get educated to that. So, yeah,
that was nice that she said, you know, give so
she taught me. I mean, that's proper acting.

Speaker 5 (52:38):
It wasn't busting me. It was just letting a seven
year old in on some rules that I appreciated learning,
and I never did it again.

Speaker 4 (52:46):
I loved how you talked about.

Speaker 6 (52:49):
Doing a scene and you just have it in your head.
It's part of the whole deal where you know you've
got to run over there behind that rock.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
Yes, and then you realize after a couple of shots
at that okay, that's seventy yeah, right, and then but
that's still playing in your head while you're trying to
be alive in the whole thing.

Speaker 5 (53:09):
That's part of the craft. That is part of the
that's that's part of the craft of television. You know,
maybe on stage or you can get but when you're
lit to get from here to there, find it and
you have to find your mark without doing that. It's
just an automatic thing that I learned, you know, early
on to do. I don't know if I'd be as

(53:30):
good at it today right now, I know.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
I mean, you look and it's part of it is
is you just tell yourself, I'm going to be good
at this. I'm going to be confident if if you
go in there jumping with nervousness.

Speaker 5 (53:44):
I never I never was insecure when the and I
always liked it when we were on a bell and
the light and we were working the going to school part,
the waiting around, that was the work, the the we're
shooting a scene now that you know action can that
was the good part. The fun that was the that
was the real That's why I wanted to do it.

(54:05):
I wanted to get in the TV and that's what
I was doing when that was happening. Otherwise, you had
to entertain yourself other ways. As a kid, when did
we When did you pick up the guitar?

Speaker 4 (54:13):
And when when did that talent show itself as well?

Speaker 5 (54:16):
And ten I started playing did you ask for a guitar? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
I I had. I had a guitar when I was
like eight, and I didn't take to it. And uh,
it was the Kingston Trio. It was focus, it was

(54:37):
folks because you were folky, weren't it was a snob
that was a huge folky snob, and.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
It took kinds of the cartwrights. I sort of introduced
you to, you know, spoonful and.

Speaker 5 (54:48):
Well I I was. I had a Music has been
so important to me, even as a little kid, like
when I was doing the Ozzy and harriets with Ricky
Nelson and stuff like, I would just love to watch
him and James Burton and the band do their lips
thinking stuff that was great and that was inspiring. And
I was nine or ten when we started doing that.
That was right before I started playing. But I even

(55:09):
from the beginning on the pilot, I had a record
player in my dressing room and so I lost in space,
and so Angela, Mark and Marta and of course me
would bring records in. And when I was in school,
Mark or Marta would go into my trailer and they
would listen to the albums that they brought in.

Speaker 4 (55:30):
So we're obviously older and you know, so you'll go.

Speaker 5 (55:33):
I got a great I got a great education from that.
Marta especially. I have to say Marta brought it because
remember we were at sixty five we started, So she
brought in the Birds right off the bat. Right now,
I was this Kingston trio, Folky Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul
and Mary. I was real folky. That was where that

(55:54):
because I wanted to learn how to play all those
folk songs. And before that I loved the Jan and
Deine and the Beach Boys and a lot of pop music.
But it was folk music that told stories that really
that's what That's what resonated so powerfully with me and
made me want to learn how to do that. So
when Marta brought in the Birds and Dylan stuff, but

(56:15):
I knew who Dylan was, but she brought in birds
and Dylan stuff, and that was a.

Speaker 6 (56:20):
Huge You didn't know Roger mc McGinn at that time.

Speaker 5 (56:23):
No, he was still Jim mcgwin then, was he. Yeah. Anyway,
Marta brought that the folk rock in, which really opened
a huge gate for me. Mark brought in Richie Haven's
and show tunes stopped the world. I want to get off.
Used to listen to Anthony Newley a lot, and then
Angela brought in every single British invasion band you can

(56:44):
think of. I mean, it's not like I wasn't into
the Beatles. I mean I watched that Sullivan with everybody else.
But I mean, you know, she brought in the Beg's
and Donovan and Herman's, Hermit, all that stuff. She brought
in to lives tiny Tim That was a little later,
but anyway, it was. It was nice to get everybody's

(57:06):
input into my musical stuff. So I was playing at
ten and I brought my guitar with me every day.
It was in my dressing room. I was always practicing.
That was my personal little passion. And we're shooting.

Speaker 4 (57:19):
Did you have a tuota?

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Oh? Someone to show you.

Speaker 5 (57:21):
I took lessons once a week. I came to my house.
Frank Giovanni, Italian guy, had a baton. If I played
it right, he kissed me on the cheek. If I
played it wrong, you hit my hand.

Speaker 4 (57:31):
Ha ha true a good CHESSU wit and I took.

Speaker 5 (57:34):
Lessons from him for about almost two years. And then
he said I can't teach him anymore. And I got better.
I got another teacher, but I was real serious about learning.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
And you play everything. You play mandolin, I play a lot.
I play percussion, I play keyboards.

Speaker 5 (57:49):
I played bancho bass. I play a lot of bass, guitar, bass, keyboards,
I can play drums.

Speaker 4 (57:54):
Super envious mate, Well, it's no. It takes hard work
and diligence.

Speaker 5 (57:59):
I mean, you know, and it takes the time put
the work in as a kid, and working with a
lot of great musicians over the course of my adult
life is certainly a great way to help to say that.

Speaker 4 (58:11):
You missed the childhood in any respect.

Speaker 5 (58:14):
No, I would come home before Lost in Space, during
Lost in Space, after Lost in Space. I would come home.
Might be six thirty or seven o'clock at night. We
lived a mile from the studio. When I was doing
Lost in Space. I used to ride my bike. You
were fox right, Yeah, And I lived in Cheviot Hills
from ten on. Anyway, I would come home. My friends

(58:36):
were there, we'd go toss the ball around, we jump
in the pool. Was there any envy between them and No?
I still have the same friends that I've had for
sixty years, sometimes more than sixty years. And I mean
I have other but a lot of my inner core
group are people I've known since I was a little boy,
and none of them ever treated me.

Speaker 4 (58:58):
I've teased you about it, No, it busts your app bulls.

Speaker 5 (59:02):
I remember one time I was probably eight, I don't
know what. I was working on, a ticklish affair or
something with Shirley Jones, gig Young. I was working on
something and I was eight and my friend who I
speak to regularly, Jeff Kalmick, well I've known since I
was three. Jeff and another friend of his name Kenny Borden. God,

(59:25):
I haven't thought of that name. They were using me
as a rope to play tug of war, and they
they split my lip. And that was the only time
that my mom said, you can't. You can't split Billy's lip.
He's got to be on camera tomorrow. You can't hurt him.

(59:48):
And I remember that that conversation. I remember that moment
of like, you know, what do you mean? They can't
split my lip? But I understood, yeah, you can't really
split my lip.

Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
That was too much.

Speaker 5 (01:00:01):
That was like the only time that it ever really
affected that. Any of my friends kind of went like, oh, yeah,
he's kind of different like that. But see, I had
started in public school and until Lost in Space, which
was the until Deer Bridget, because that was a continuation.
I stayed from Deer Bridget through Lost in Space. So
until the fifth grade, my career was in and out,

(01:00:25):
in and out, in and out of public school, Canfield
Elementary School. Uh so you had to learn how to
but they navigate. Ever, But everybody in that school from
kindergarten through the fifth grade were used to me coming
and going right right now, Maybe they a few of
them have said to me fifty years later, Oh, we

(01:00:48):
watched you on TV. You know you were you were
something special. But when I got there to play handball,
was however it was? It was you know, I got
a slicer on you movie. You know they're a good
hamball play. There was no special treatment going back to
public school right after Lost in Space wrapped hell because

(01:01:11):
I was fourteen years old. First of all, you're fourteen
years old. What kind of a creature are you? You
have no idea? You're neither man, nor fish nor foul.
Girls look like women. You look like a little zip
faced kid. Your voice hasn't changed, you know, it's a
big difference. And I had been Will Robinson right for

(01:01:31):
a long time, so every and it was a big school.
It was a high scho ninth grade, so everybody either
wanted to be my friend because I was TV boy,
or they wanted to kick my ass because I was
TV boy, or they wanted to flirt with me because
I was TV boy, or they were friends of mine
that I knew from kindergarten who were learning how to

(01:01:53):
reconnect with me because I was TV boy. And everything, no,
only with a few people, and everything was really really
hard because I wanted to not be I didn't excuse
the expression. I didn't want to be a pussy. You
can't push me around. But I didn't want to get
into a fight. I didn't want to get my ass kicked,

(01:02:13):
and I didn't want to hurt anybody. So I had to.
I mean, I tried to run as fast as I could.
I tried it. No. What happened was I formed a
rock and roll band. I got an electric guitar, and
the band started at the quad and at the after
party things at the gig, I mean, at the school
and the auditoriums and things like that. And once even

(01:02:35):
the guys who wanted to kick my ass once they know,
oh he can play right. The band that I had fourteen,
I mean we you know, we could play. I mean
we weren't great, but we weren't bad. So that changed everything.
The rock and roll music in public school saved my.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Ass as a musician. Guitar player, string player. Who's your
favorite guitarist?

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Oh, is it.

Speaker 5 (01:03:04):
Possible not number one? Because there's all different. I mean,
you look, way Chad Atkins played was unbelievable. But then
you turn that into somebody like Zallyanovski from the Love
and Spoonful, George Harrison, people who served the songs really well.
But then you know, like Steve Lucather is one of
my best friends. I couldn't do what he does in
a million years. You can put a chart and see

(01:03:26):
sharp and you know, seven eight in front of him
and he'll just read it beautifully.

Speaker 6 (01:03:31):
I remember, right Clark, Dwayne Alman, Dwayne I knew Dwayne Alman.

Speaker 5 (01:03:35):
June Lockhart brought the hour right the Almond Brothers band. Okay,
this is just a great story.

Speaker 6 (01:03:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:03:41):
June Lockhart, who always loved rock and roll. I mean,
she's got this image of Lassie and lost in space.
She was always the mom she was. She's a rebellious,
rock and roll, romantic gal. One day she had a
part at her own home and this band, the Hourglass,

(01:04:03):
played and it was Dwayne and Greg Almond, and there's
There's Pete somebody else who went on to a lot
of stuff was in that band, and it was the
foundation of the Almond Brothers band. But it was a
little more iron butterfliesh it was a little more psychedelic. Yeah, no, right,
So they came first, We went to their house and

(01:04:26):
they played this party and it was like wow. Then
they came to the set to visit us while we
were filming, and there's pictures of us with them. But then,
and this is nineteen sixty seven, this is the Summer
of Love. June takes me first summer of love. June
takes me and Angela to the Whiskey of Go Go,
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, when Jackson Brown was still in

(01:04:49):
the band Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Speaker 4 (01:04:51):
Child Still isn't he Jackson Brown?

Speaker 5 (01:04:53):
At that time he was a founding member of Yeah
Yeah Dirt Band and Hourglass At the Whiskey, I'm thirteen
years old. You got in at thirteen? There wasn't there
wasn't a nagel, No you could get in. But there
we were. And God loved June. God love her for this.

(01:05:15):
We're backstage in the dressing room and there's this great,
great I have it somewhere. It's there's this great picture
of me, Angela and Dwyane Almond. I'm wearing any root
coach jacket, right. And it was a good one. It

(01:05:36):
wasn't that she was a good name. I like Sogan Kahn.
It was a good neay room, dark dark burgundy with
a gold Ney row thing killing it. Angela's in like pigtails,
looking eighteen and she was fifteen. And Dwayne with his
chops and everything, he's just sitting there. He looks pretty

(01:05:59):
toasty and he's just sitting there kind of like looking
at Angela like whoa. But in this picture I'm talking right,
And I remember I was talking to him about guitars,
like do you know the Kingston Trio? Do you know
how to play MTA? Like you're worried, man, I can
play all those songs.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
He's just like kids.

Speaker 5 (01:06:20):
He's just like yeah, okay, yeah, oh look at that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
It was.

Speaker 5 (01:06:28):
It's a great photographs and it's a really nice memory.

Speaker 4 (01:06:31):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 5 (01:06:32):
Yeah, because I really that's what I was doing. I
was talking to him about guitars and folk music. That's
really beautiful. It's just kind of drooling over this fifteen
year old beauty.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
You ended up having a mad love affair with her
in the end, and you Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:06:44):
We were a couple for a couple of years. A
couple of years.

Speaker 4 (01:06:47):
It was sat around the corner from each other.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
Just now.

Speaker 5 (01:06:50):
We collaborated on a lot of We wrote a book together, yeah,
the memoirs. She's done the design and artwork for a
lot of my CDs and the new one which is
coming out in a couple of weeks, Wonderworld. She designed
that with a fourteen page booklet. And yeah, we're very
close and we you know, there was there was a

(01:07:11):
time when we didn't connect for about fifteen years. That happens,
you know, things ended, and it was like, how did.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
It come back around then?

Speaker 4 (01:07:18):
After that?

Speaker 5 (01:07:18):
Sort of was it?

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Did you read it?

Speaker 5 (01:07:20):
It was lost in space? It was it was the connection,
the initial reality of these personal appearances together. And I
had been doing conventions sci fi and comic book conventions
and stuff from the late seventies on, but in nineteen
eighty five. It was the I guess the thirtieth anniversary

(01:07:41):
of Lost in Space or something. It was like that
twenty I don't know what it was, but twentieth, I
don't know. It was No excuse me, I apologize it
was nineteen ninety because Guy Williams passed away in nineteen
eighty nine and he couldn't be a part of these things,
and you know he I don't want to know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
I saw I saw Jonathan talk about that, you know,
because he he lost his place in that show.

Speaker 5 (01:08:01):
Didn't they totally Yeah, But let me let me say
this about that. There's a lot of people that think
there was acrimony and not a good vibe on the set.
That's not true. Guy who was cast to be the
star of the show in an adventure show became maybe
the fourth banana in a fantasy, campy kind of comedy show.

(01:08:25):
But what he always enjoyed was he made the same
amount of money if he had to work six days,
five days a week, or if he had to work
two and a half days a week. It's like, I'll
take the check, I'll sit here in my trailer, I'll
play the stock market, I'll talk to him. I mean
he was.

Speaker 4 (01:08:41):
Not pissed off.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
No, I think.

Speaker 5 (01:08:44):
I'm sure agents went to Irwin Allen and said this
or said that about how they were maybe happy with
the flow of the way things had changed. But on
the set everybody got along. Now, Guy and Jonathan didn't
sit and eat lunch together, but there was there wasn't like,
oh it's aunty, No, they were fine. The whole cast

(01:09:04):
was reunited at a convention appearance, a Lost in Space
reunion thing in Boston, and there were literally like thirty
five thousand people just for the Lost in Space cast,
And that was a really nice bonding, rebonding of our family,
our little Robinson and Smith family. And you know, Angela

(01:09:26):
and I had been separated for a long time, and
it was you can't deny all that we went through,
and nobody needed to. She's married, I'm married. Everything's cool
in that arena and humans.

Speaker 4 (01:09:39):
We were the only acknoledgy.

Speaker 5 (01:09:41):
She was the only person I went to school with
for four years. I was the only person she went
to school with for four years. We both went through
the experience of starring in a show that thirty million
people watched every week together. We had a lot of
incredible bond, a lot of discoveries, you know, and then
that first love thing. I mean, it was a very

(01:10:01):
it's a very intense relationship and.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
It's lovely that it's that you still know each other,
I mean, you know, and then there's in this extraordinary
journey on this planet that we call life to have
that as a you know, a long lasting.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Memory.

Speaker 5 (01:10:19):
And yeah, my connections with with people that I have
been close to continue.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
You've been incredibly fortunate, Bill, Thank you, I agree, thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:10:32):
Luck often.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
We had Nick Meyer in the chair the other week,
who directed some of the Star Trek movies, and he
had a lovely quote from about Napoleon and ask you
about a general that he was being proffered that he
was a very good generally, So I know, I know
he's a very good is he lucky?

Speaker 4 (01:10:49):
And I think you've been incredibly lucky.

Speaker 5 (01:10:52):
Mate, I would not deny that at all.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
Incredibly talented and very hard working and prepared, and that
it's pretty surely getting to know you.

Speaker 4 (01:11:02):
Thank you pass across again.

Speaker 5 (01:11:04):
Thank you has been an.

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):
Extraordinary, very fun chat.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
You're When I saw you in several inter years, I went, guys, yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:11:15):
Well I appreciate that and I'm flattered. And you know,
it's nice to know that things that you are a
part of in it, sometimes a small way, sometimes a
big way, continue to resonate with with people. I mean,
that's that's a nice feeling, isn't it. It really is,
it is.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
And we feel the same way about the little little
interjection in the Star Trek in a world and uh
that that we it'll be remembered.

Speaker 5 (01:11:45):
Yeah, and that's a that's a that's a good thing.
That's a real good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
But that's being too prideful about it. It's it's not
a bad thing.

Speaker 8 (01:11:51):
Yeah, yeah, God, thank you, thank you Yet

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Stam

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Lost in Conversation | Bill Mumy - Ep. 21

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Lost in Conversation | Bill Mumy - Ep. 21