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Knucklehead

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : After incurring a huge debt with a crime lord, con man Eddie Sullivan (Mark Feuerstein) needs some quick cash. Upon hearing that a local orphanage also desperately needs funds, Eddie convinces the head nun that one of the residents, a gentle giant named Walter (Paul ``Big Show'' Wight), can win the money as a traveling fighter. The nun gives Eddie and Walter one week, and as they journey across the South, Eddie wonders if he can really go through with his plan to keep all the money for himself.

Opened October 22, 2010

Interview with Mark Feuerstein

(Q): I heard that you were a high school state champion wrestler. Was that a part of the attraction for this film?
 
(Mark Feuerstein): Yes, very much. When I read the script and I saw that it was about a fighter and being a fight promoter I liked that it was a part that was different from the part I’m playing on “Royal Pains,” the tv show that I do, and also that it was about the world of wresting. In high school my life was about losing weight to be in the right weight class to wrestle. I did well, I was 25 and 0 my senior year, and I won the state championships, and I was voted most valuable wrestler in all the weight classes. It was really something that I took very seriously, but once I got to college I sort of realized that was no longer what I wanted to do with my life, and there’s not much of a career to be had in wrestling.

That’s what I thought until I met Big Show 15 years later and realized there is a great career you can have wrestling, it’s just no collegiate wrestling, or Greco-Roman, or freestyle, it’s professional wrestling, and you can make a fortune if you’re 450 pounds, 7 feet tall, and a great athlete, and a great presence, like Big Show is. He’s incredibly successful at it. I was sort of fascinated by the WWE world, and the script came along and the director, Michael Watkins, who I had worked with on “Royal Pains” a bunch, was directing, and I said “I love it. Let’s do it. This will be a great adventure.” And it really was.

(Q): I also heard that most of your family happens to be lawyers. How did you actually stumble across acting?

(Mark Feuerstein): I thought I would be a lawyer when I was in high school. I was a student of history and politics, and then I got to college and I continued to study history, and I thought “I don’t know that this is my passion in life.” I actually liked reading poetry and plays and literature more, but it’s because my father and his brothers and even my brother were all on their way to law school or were already lawyers in Manhattan that I thought okay, I’ll just be a lawyer. But then I found acting. I did my first play freshman year in college and I just fell in love with it. And I did 15 plays in college and went to drama school in London and took a risk, took a big risk and took the path less traveled, and it has been a great, great journey.

 (Q): Yeah, it really paid off on that one. So how was it working with Big Show? He seems really fun to work with.

(Mark Feuerstein): We had a great time together. I was a little scared; what would this giant be like? Would he sit on me? Beat me up every day? But he was the sweetest, sweetest man, so gentle, so sensitive, so thoughtful, and he really just wanted to do well. The thing about athletes becoming actors is just like winning a game, they want to win. They want to play as well as they can and as hard as they can and win. So whenever he showed up it wasn’t with an attitude, he wasn’t a spoiled brat like certain actors can be.

He was completely ready to dive in and he was willing to take advice from anyone, and he had a really great cast around him with Melora Hardin and Wendy Malick and Dennis Farina and Will Patton. We all gave him advice and we all told him to just let the you that we’re talking to right now, just let this gentle giant come out, and it’s perfect for Walter, and that’s exactly what he did.

(Q): It really paid off, his acting skills. I was wondering are you afraid of the core wrestling fans?

(Mark Feuerstein): I think the wrestling fans will be pleasantly surprised. They will laugh seeing their Big Show, their menacing, scary giant dressed like a little girl, flying across the theater of a children’s play. It’s all in good fun and it’s not meant to be some expose about transvestites. It’s just about having fun and dressing a big, cute, goofy looking guy in a little six year old girl’s costume because the person who was supposed to play that character didn’t show up.

(Q); Speaking of funny scenes, there’s the catfight between Melora Hardin’s character and some barmaids.

(Mark Feuerstein): Jiggles.
 
(Q): Take us through that funny sequence there.
 
(Mark Feuerstein): That was a really fun scene to shoot. We shot it in New Orleans in this bar that was really like a down home, Southern type of bar, and we created that scene with all these various characters. In fact, Big Show hired his cousin, his band from Nashville, or I forget exactly where they’re from, but somewhere in the South, and they played on the stage in that scene. And so it had this sort of down home feeling to it, and then Big Show and I are doing our homage to the movie “Twins” with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito dressed in the same suit.

And then in walk Melora Hardin looking gorgeous as ever, in slow motion, hot to trot in her little short skirt and her hot looking top – or it’s one piece; one little dress. And then she starts drinking, and suddenly Sister Mary becomes the Mary that might have been before she was a nun. She was a dancer, as she reveals in the movie. So now we see a little glimpse of the Mary that’s not so clean cut. She’s had a little alcohol in her and when Jiggles starts to hit on me Mary gets a little competitive, and then comes the catfight in the mud bowl. I’m never opposed to playing a guy that the ladies have to fight after. It’s fine by me.

(Q): Was that done all in one shot? I’m talking about the fight sequence.

(Mark Feuerstein): It wasn’t all done in one shot, no. To do a really effective kick like that you have to shoot it from different angles and disguise the fact that you’re not really kicking Jiggles in the face, because we want that actress to work again and we don’t want to break her nose. So they shot it from down low, from above, to bury the foot behind her head and then shoot it from the other side behind Melora’s head. If you notice, in that entire scene there are several different sequences.

There’s the moment of me and Paul walking through and the whole bar stopping and then everybody getting back to the music, and then there’s the part where Melora walks in in slow motion, then there’s the part where I leave her because she doesn’t want to dance with me and I dance in the background, and then she has her conversation with Jiggles, and then there’s the part where she and Jiggles challenge each other and she kicks her and that’s a nice little fight sequence, and then we walk out. So it’s really one scene composed of about five different sequences and little scenes.

(Q): There’s also another funny sequence. The fart sequence that Walter made in the bus that seems like a nightmare. I was wondering, do you ever experience a similar nightmare experience like that in life?

(Mark Feuerstein): He did, yes. I don’t know how you knew to ask that question, but you’re very smart. He absolutely did and that was added to the movie when Big Show shared with our writer and producer that he in fact was on one of those big busses, it may have been with the wrestling team, and he was stuck. He was stuck in that little lavatory in the back of a bus and he had taken a major number two, as we say. Let’s say he had eaten a lot of barbeque the day before, and it was very uncomfortable for him, and truly scary, and truly sad for him. It wasn’t just funny.

So when we shot that scene Michael Watkins wasn’t trying to just play to the comedy of it, even though it’s a very funny scene. He wanted Big Show to channel some of the humiliation, and so you’ll see in that scene that Big Show is not just screaming and yelling, he’s actually quite humiliated. And I think as a result of that we laugh but we also feel sympathy for the character.
 
(Q): Right. Could you talk about the collaboration of working with Michael Watkins? You’ve worked with him before so was it comfortable this time around?

(Mark Feuerstein): It was great because I knew Michael Watkins from “Royal Pains,” was had done four episodes together, and we just had a shorthand. I knew what he wanted and he knew to trust me enough to find it along the way. And so whenever he gave a note it was very important, because he doesn’t speak unless he needs to, and he’s worrying more about telling the story with pictures than putting actors in their heads and making them self conscious by giving them too many notes.

He’s a man of few words when it comes to giving actors directions, and many words when it comes to telling the camera men where to put the camera and how to shoot a scene. And I was very happy to work with him again because I love him as a man. We had a hard time in New Orleans, it was very hot and the crews were working very hard, they were long hours, but everybody did the best they could and pulled together and made the best movie we could.
 
(Q): You’ve acted in TV and Movies. Will you continue on that path or would you prefer to do other?
 
(Mark Feuerstein): I love any work I get to do that has good writing and good people working on it. So I’ve done everything from web series to television to theater to film, and I love it all because I love acting and love telling stories.
 
(Q): You’ve done a web series as well? I didn’t know that.

(Mark Feuerstein): Yeah I did a web series called “The Hustler,” and we made a rap called “Lazy Monday,” and I made a rap for “Royal Pains” season one, and season two we made a rap which was really a lot of fun. I helped write and direct it as well and it was a blast. I’m so lucky to be on a tv show like “Royal Pains,” where the writing is so good and I get to play a character that is dramatic, comedic, romantic, and a great doctor on top of all of it.
 
(Q): This is little bit off the topic, but you worked with Mel Gibson in “What Women Want” in almost 10 years ago there. Do you have any thoughts on his current situation? He was recently kicked out of the sequel to “The Hangover” so it’s hard for him to get roles these days.
 
(Mark Feuerstein): Yeah, you know I feel for Mel Gibson because he seems a little lost, and he has been embarrassed in the media by his very loud and violent outbursts, and he has a lot of anger for maybe himself, I don’t know. I loved working with him. He was the nicest man; he couldn’t have been more collaborative and kinder to me, so I have nothing bad to say about the guy from my own experience. I don’t love that he made a movie that didn’t make my Jewish friends and me as happy with his story that was directed against the Jews on behalf of a certain sect of Catholicism that his father has followed for a long time.

I didn’t love the way he spoke to that police officer, I didn’t like the way he spoke to his girlfriend, but another part of me feels like we shouldn’t even know about those conversations and that that’s something he needs to work out on his own, and I hope he doesn’t cause anybody any harm. It doesn’t seem that he has physically, though I think he has verbally, and I think he’s also got some alcohol issues, so I hope he works those out. But I can tell you from working with him he’s the most creative, energetic person I’ve ever had the good fortune to work with, and I just hope that he gets his act together.

(Q) Thank you.

(Mark Feuerstein) Thank you.

End.