Playboy Interview: Elliott Gould

His hair hangs in scrambled ringlets over his forehead and lattices down the sides of a lantern-jawed face. His lower lip protrudes above a cleft chin that will never rival the provocative indentation that distinguishes Cary Grant. His eyes are as large and melancholy as a Saint Bernard's, an animal with which he shares the same shambling gait. In short, he is no one's vision of a matinee idol. Yet Elliott Gould has emerged in the past year as the hottest actor in movies. At a time when the public is demanding reality rather than fantasy on the screen, his spectacular rise exemplifies the changing thrust of the motion-picture industry.

Twenty years ago, Gould's quirky virility and radicalized appearance would have made him, at best, a movie heavy. Today, he's a certified hero among the under-30 group that comprises the bulk of the moviegoing audience. Poster blowups of his shaggy, asymmetric face hang in head shops across the nation alongside those of Abbie Hoffman, Peter Fonda and other pop figures to whom the young have given their cachet of approval.

Symptomatically, Gould's swift trip to stardom has been achieved without the usual hard-sell publicity build-up, the ubiquitous peroxide starlets or the sybaritic life style advertised by movie stars of the past. Gould seems so ordinary and so self-effacing, in fact, that he's rarely recognized in public--even though he has completed six major comedies and one serious film, Ingmar Bergman's "The Touch," in the past two years.

Lack of recognition is nothing new to Gould. For years, his only real identity lay in the dubious distinction of being Barbra Streisand's husband. He married the mercurial superstar in 1963, a year after they met in "I Can Get It for You Wholesale"--a Broadway musical in which Gould played the leading man and the 19-year-old Streisand stole the show in a minor role as his secretary. Until then, Gould had remained on the fringes of show business. Raised in Brooklyn's lower-middle-class Bensonhurst district as Elliott Goldstein, he was guided through most of his childhood and adolescence by the iron hand of an ambitious stage mother, who found him occasional work as a child model, tap dancer and singer. By his early 20s, Gould had done little more than earn a place in the line of chorus boys who overpopulated such Broadway musicals as "Say, Darling," "Rumple" and "Irma La Douce."

After "Wholesale," while Miss Streisand's career was soaring on records and in stage and screen versions of "Funny Girl," Gould labored--and languished--anonymously in her shadow. He made "The Confession," a film that was never released, then appeared in road-company versions of several musicals and returned to Broadway in "Drat the Cat" and Jules Feiffer's "Little Murders," both of which quickly folded. In "Drat the Cat," ironically, he introduced "She Touched Me"--a song subsequently converted by his wife into a 1,000,000-selling record hit renamed "He Touched Me." Gould's subordinate role during their six-year marriage was best symbolized by the birth of Jason Emanuel Gould in 1966, whom the press dubbed "Barbra's Million Dollar Baby," since the pregnancy forced her to cancel $1,000,000 worth of concert bookings.

By the time they separated early in 1969, Gould had achieved some small measure of independence and identity as burlesque impresario Billy Minsky in a mildly successful film called "The Night They Raided Minsky's." But it wasn't until he won the role of Ted in "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" that he really proved what he could do; the part earned him an Academy Award nomination. Before the public ever saw the film, Gould was being ballyhooed on the Bel Air circuit--a cluster of private screening rooms where film makers exchange and view one another's movies prior to release. Producers immediately rushed him into "M. A. S. H.," an anti-military black comedy that returned huge--and unexpected--box-office dividends, and "Move" (previewed in Playboy's October issue), a less successful comedy distinguished largely by Gould's versatile performance. During a period when the nation was finding it increasingly difficult to laugh at itself, he came on as a thinking man's comedian in such films as "Getting Straight," "I Love My Wife" and the soon-to-be-released "Little Murders."

To explore Gould's curious charisma--and the reasons for its wide appeal among the young--Contributing Editor Richard Warren Lewis met with the 32-year-old actor at the Concord Hotel in New York's Catskill Mountains, where he was filming location sequences for "Little Murders," the first project to be produced by his own company. Writes Lewis of his subject:

"At first, Gould seemed uncommonly reticent, almost as embarrassed to talk about himself as he was to be visiting this garish resort--where poolside cha-cha lessons were audible over a heavily amplified loud-speaker system and matrons strolled the grounds in full-length minks, apparently oblivious of the heat. Nobody noticed him as he wandered through the ornate lobbies in unlaced sneakers, rumpled chinos and an old Army shirt, with a panatela protruding from a day's growth of beard. He looked like an overage bus boy.

"Gould finally began to relax during a lunch break we spent shooting baskets on the Concord's outdoor court and recapping last season's Los Angeles Lakers--New York Knickerbockers play-off. Next day, while complaining about his sinus condition, Gould expertly rolled some marijuana in Zig-Zag papers and relaxed on his bed as I pulled up a chair beside him and assumed the analyst's position. Though many actors frequently smoke grass, few are so casual about it. This subject seemed to provide an appropriate point of departure."

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you taking unnecessary chances in smoking pot so openly?

[A] Gould: I know there's a risk and I realize that I leave myself open to harassment. But if I'm not blatant about it, I don't think anyone's going to bother me. If I'm smoking a joint in a car, for instance, I make sure that I don't carry any more than I'm smoking.

[Q] Playboy: We gather you don't place much credence in the opinion of those who feel that grass can be harmful to both the mind and the body.

[A] Gould: If one understands himself, there can be no harmful effects in using it. Marijuana doesn't make me do anything that I wouldn't be capable of doing otherwise. I find it far more pleasant than drinking, less messy and more private. I never had the patience to sit in a bar and drink. Having a joint is far more economical and more immediate. I'm able to switch into certain inner places with marijuana. I've also taken a couple of trips that have been incredible.

[Q] Playboy: Incredible in what way?

[A] Gould: Well, in a way of inner understanding, of recognizing things in myself and things outside myself. Very introspective. Last year, 1 took mescaline and then went to Disneyland, of all places. I sat there for hours and watched the Indian dancers who go on every 20 minutes. They came out of a tepee led by a guide who carried a microphone. I was able to better understand just how crassly commercial their routine was and why it sickened me. It was very illuminating. On the other hand, for pure enjoyment, I went through the Pirates of the Caribbean three times--a subterranean group of tunnels which you ride through on these boats with galley ships firing across you; it was just fantastic.

[A] Coming back from Disneyland that night, I was still smashed, and I put on a fantastic demonstration for myself driving over the canyon roads. Usually, I'm a mediocre driver; I used to think that if anything happened unexpectedly, my reflexes would be in trouble. Not so. I have far better vision when I'm stoned, because then I really have to be driving. I get into the experience of driving, since I'm conscious of a degree of responsibility for being in a state that's different than most of the other people on the road. So I'm steadier and 1 can anticipate almost anything when I'm stoned--unless I get paranoid. I've always been very prone to paranoia. But just by recognizing that, I've been able to eliminate most of my fears.

[A] For example, on this same drive home from Disneyland, there were some papers in the back seat of the car. I remembered having seen a really frightening horror film once where the receipt of a piece of paper meant that some monster would attack you. Before I knew it, I had mentally put a monster in the back of my car that I couldn't see, and I scared the shit out of myself. I had to really assure myself that I didn't want to do me any harm and that what was going on was something promoted by my subconscious.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever use grass or mescaline while you're acting?

[A] Gould: Occasionally, I do smoke grass when I work--but not in situations where I know that I need real concentration. I like to think that no directors I've worked for have known when I've smoked. I would absolutely shit if a director accused me of making an error because I was stoned. I don't consciously smoke it for any special results, but sometimes I consciously refrain from smoking so I'll be sharper. The year I took Barbra to the Academy Awards and she won her Oscar, 1 smoked some grass beforehand--but for a different reason. First of all, I don't like the formality of those kinds of events--wearing a black tie. I was also terribly self-conscious about being with a woman from whom I had just separated and about being among people I felt weird about, people who thrive on the dramatic implications of that kind of situation. I went to give support to Barbra, with whom I was still quite friendly, which made me ambivalent about what I was trying to prove and to whom. So it was a difficult night for me--a trauma. I told a friend that when the television camera panned over to Barbra and me, I'd pull my ear twice, so he'd know I was stoned. That's just what I did, coast to coast. He was probably the only one of the 60,000,000 viewers who knew what it signified.

[Q] Playboy: At the time of your separation from Barbra, you said, "We're no longer trying to save our marriage. What we've saved is a nice working relationship which we didn't have before." Would you explain that?

[A] Gould: It might have sounded like a cliché, but I was trying to say that although we don't agree with each other on a lot of things, I respect Barbra and I think she respects me, and that's a terrific thing to preserve. Barbra and I care about each other a great deal. She's very special to me. But at this point, both of us understand that marriage places you in a very difficult position. Getting married imposes something technical on an otherwise viable relationship, and this often changes things drastically. People shouldn't assume that because they're happy living together, they should get married. As we know it today, I think marriage must ultimately disappear.

[A] The guy I play in I Love My Wife says what I feel infinitely better than I could myself. It's about two people totally motivated by guilt about the 15-year deterioration of a really screwed-up marriage. Now my character's having his first important affair. Before one of his assignations, he tells his wife: "Look, I'm not against the institution of marriage. But when it was invented in the Third Century b.c., the average life span was 30 or 35 years. So it was perfectly normal to live with someone for six or seven years. But now, between Medicare and penicillin and people living to 60, 70, 80--I mean, who can live with the same person for 50 years? It's immoral."

[Q] Playboy: If marriage as we know it is doomed, what do you think will replace it?

[A] Gould: Can you think of a more wonderful idea than people collaborating on living communally? I'm certain that marriage will eventually be replaced by a communal form of brotherhood, rather than remain the outmoded arrangement it has degenerated to today. Neither Barbra nor I really understood marriage and I think our separation, especially because we were dependent on each other, was really courageous, and still is. Because at the moment, we're not divorced.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Gould: Getting a divorce is terribly painful; so is the shame and embarrassment of saying, "Well, let's not live together anymore." It's admitting failure. I wish people weren't so interested in this subject; their interest only helps add to my self-consciousness about it. Ultimately, I guess we'll have to resolve it by getting divorced, but that prospect saddens me, because in a great many ways, I respect what our relationship was.

[Q] Playboy: Are you still able to communicate with her?

[A] Gould: We communicate. But it's hard, man. It's really hard. I've changed a lot, you know, and so has my life.

[Q] Playboy: After so many years of being considered a consort to your wife, it must be gratifying to have succeeded on your own. During your marriage, were you uptight about that secondary role?

[A] Gould: Yes, her success was painful to me, because I didn't have sufficient understanding of myself to avoid feeling weird about it--even though I knew from the beginning how talented Barbra was and I knew that she was ambitious and wanted to be somebody. It was my responsibility as a man to acknowledge that. When Barbra became an enormous celebrity, I tried my damnedest not to take seriously the fact that I wasn't. I could handle the fact that she was getting incredible amounts of publicity--that reporters were constantly around, asking her questions, while I stayed in the background. That was no big thing. What were they going to ask me--how I did in my three-man basketball games? Or what parts I was up for? I didn't want to be asked anything about myself. But when we would be out in public, which was seldom, it was devastating for me. I didn't want to be there. I wanted to go someplace as me. And yet I felt an obligation to attend to my wife, no matter who the fuck people thought I was, Prince Philip or Mr. Streisand or whatever. My name was Elliott Gould, also known as Elliott Goldstein, and my wife was Barbra Streisand, who was very famous, which was an unfortunate burden. I was there because my wife was there, to protect her because she was my woman. Often I had to protect her--from those fucking fan-magazine photographers. They're a part of the continual perversity that goes along with stardom.

[A] We don't have any royalty in this country, so we make kings and queens out of a lot of ordinary people and we hound them just to see how ornery we can make them. It's so fucking ignorant. The better known you are, the more your ass is in a sling. A lot of people want a little bit of flesh. That's why I no longer attend motion-picture social events. That way, I avoid the absolute lice who parasite themselves on the motion-picture business. The movie magazines they work for are worse than comic books. At least in comic books, they're dealing with people that aren't real and can't be hurt.

[Q] Playboy: Many of the movie magazines have compared your relationship with Barbra to the plot of A Star Is Born, in which Norman Maine, the husband of the superstar, who married her when she was unknown and he was celebrated, was gradually eclipsed by his wife. Do you see any similarities?

[A] Gould: Not only isn't it fair or even accurate to draw that analogy, it's terribly obvious. Anyway, my life with Barbra was so theatrical that I don't think anyone would make a movie of it. But whatever, throughout our marriage, as I said a few minutes ago, one of the things Barbra and I always had was a great deal of respect for each other. Professionally, at least. Barbra always honored my opinions and I think I had a lot of influence on some of the things she did.

[Q] Playboy: However much you respected each other, didn't it become increasingly frustrating as Barbra became better known than you?

[A] Gould: Yes, there were many frustrations. Since I wasn't working, I found it difficult to have any identity of my own. For one thing, I had a very mediocre history in musicals. I Can Get It for You Wholesale, the show in which I met Barbra, did run on Broadway for over ten months, and I was the star, but my work could have been better. I was terribly green and I was trying too hard. The other Broadway shows I did folded in record time. So I was employed for only 12 or 16 weeks a year. After I Can Get It for You Wholesale closed, I collected unemployment for a while, but I got terrible anxieties in the unemployment line. I felt like such a failure collecting that $50. I couldn't justify taking it and I hated waiting in line to collect it. Increasingly, through those years, I was becoming conscious of not fulfilling certain things inside me. Fulfillment doesn't necessarily imply accomplishing anything. One can be fulfilled simply by attempting to accomplish something, just by being active. Three or four years ago, I tried developing projects for Barbra's television production company. But that, too, was very frustrating. I had really good ideas that would have worked if they could have been executed. But the television networks were impossible to deal with.

[Q] Playboy: Were you able to get any projects off the ground?

[A] Gould: Zero. I failed completely. The main problem was that I had no track record. I used to deal with all the no men at the networks--a bunch of fucking pigs. I hated them and I hated myself and I hated going someplace with an idea two notches above things that had been done again and again and being strung along and then rejected. All they were interested in was something like something that had worked before.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us about some of your ideas.

[A] Gould: Well, I wanted to do a half-hour syndicated series of award-winning documentaries, French- and Italian-made featurettes, even animated material like the Jules Feiffer cartoon that won an Academy Award in the Sixties--about a baby who got drafted. ABC thought it was too sophisticated. There was another idea for a situation-comedy series about a married couple who spent every waking hour entering contests and never worked, while supporting a son who ran up extraordinary sums on his credit cards. I also created a sitcom called Y. Buy and Son, about a firm that rented anything--even people. That never did anything, either. Neither did The Bumblebee and Captain Everything, which was about two middle-aged guys living in the same neighborhood in New Rochelle, who fantasized themselves as comic-book heroes living in the Forties. Actually, they were antiheroes. The Bumblebee would change into costume and jump into his Beemobile--but it would do only 15 miles an hour. And Captain Everything just screwed everything up. Another one was Harry Egypt, about a gangster in the employ of the establishment. Somebody like the head of Remington, if he got into trouble, would call on Harry to get him out of it. Never sold any of these. And meanwhile, my wife was starring in Funny Girl on Broadway and appearing on the cover of Time magazine. She was the biggest thing in the business and I had all this spare time on my hands.

[Q] Playboy: How were you using it, apart from trying to sell ideas for TV shows?

[A] Gould: I found myself spending a lot of time playing three-man basketball in schoolyards. And I used to gamble on sports events. Pathologically. The first time I went to London, I left owing a couple of hundred pounds on various gambling debts; I didn't have it to pay. At that time, $500 seemed enormous. So I went through some of the best acting I've ever done to escape; made up great inventive tales of why I was temporarily without funds. When I went back, I paid them off--but then I lost a great deal more. Especially on football games. It reached a point where, a couple of years ago, I bet on every game on the boards, thousands on a game. I wasn't very successful. I lost close to $50,000 on the football season before last. The bookies are all paid off now. I knew even at the time that it was ridiculous to gamble. It's such a dissipation of energy to get involved in something like that.

[Q] Playboy: Then why did you do it?

[A] Gould: There's something within me that's very self-destructive. Besides that, I was involved in a business that deals in fantasy--competing with other actors in a very emotional and yet totally sublimated way. Winning or losing a bet seemed to represent a hard-edged reality. Through the years, I would periodically try to stop, but without success. The largest single loss was never that terrible. But I'm fortunate to have finally stopped. Last spring, I watched the Los Angeles Lakers--New York Knicks playoffs without making a single bet on them. I shouted a lot, though. Sometimes, when I really get moved at the theater, I sort of whisper "Bravo" under my breath. With the Knickerbockers I roared and stood and cursed and hollered vulgarities, just fantastic vulgarities. But I didn't gamble.

[Q] Playboy: What stopped you?

[A] Gould: I began to realize that I had nothing to gain and much to lose, which was secondary to realizing that it was psychotic. I learned how to be by myself without having to call this number I know in California to find out all the scores. I recognized the guilt I felt and the phoniness of my pseudo friendships with bookmakers, many of whom are really charming. But I hated owing 'em and I hated losing. I can now anticipate visiting casinos in Europe, knowing I'll be able to play whatever my limit is and then just leave. If I lose my limit in ten seconds, that'll be it.

[Q] Playboy: Was there any deficiency in your life at that time that inspired the gambling?

[A] Gould: Only self-respect. In a way, I had more self-respect when I was a teenager, operating the night elevator in the Park Royal Hotel on 73rd Street. At least it was steady. When I was 18, for God's sake, I felt more wanted. At that time, I was working in Gimbel's, demonstrating a board game called Confucius Say, dressed up in yellow make-up with a big mustache and speaking in Chinese dialect. I was hired away to work in Bloomingdale's, selling boxing equipment. For demonstrating punching bags, I made one percent of the sales plus $11 a day. Those were jobs to fill in between chorus-boy assignments. Six or seven years after that, virtually nobody knew my acting or dancing work, but I'd keep making the rounds, looking for acting jobs.

[A] I used to give really energetic interviews--like, reeking my guts out. I thought I had to leave an impression. So I took a deep breath and performed. Rather than recite my feeble credits, I might fantasize how I came from a great family of interior decorators and go into a number about how I could remodel the producer's office by adding greens and blues to the walls and putting a Regency piece by the window. Playing on my actual failings and anxieties at that point gave me license to exaggerate, justification for being daring and bold. And it worked. I left an impression most of the time.

[A] For Once Upon a Mattress, one of the last shows I danced in, I had to audition for Joe Hamilton, Carol Burnett's husband-producer. He asked me, "What do you do? Do you sing, do you dance?" I was very conscious that I didn't know what I did. I was always embarrassed at the idea of auditioning. It's just not natural for a grown man to go into a room and sing and dance for somebody else. So I said, "Look, when someone says, 'That works,' that's what my specialty will be." It was insufferable to have to categorize myself. I knew I could do anything within reason if only I had the chance.

[Q] Playboy: When did your career begin to move?

[A] Gould: When I started to take my analysis seriously. I was 25 when I went into analysis, but probably 12 or 13 emotionally. Although I felt terribly idealistic, I was immature, weak and scared. And five years ago I started to study acting with Lee Strasberg, which is related to psychoanalysis, because it's all sensory work. The process of analysis, unquestionably, has been the turning point of my life. It's given me a great deal of help in understanding so many things about myself. My work and I are walking advertisements for analysis.

[Q] Playboy: What prompted you to undergo treatment?

[A] Gould: I realized I was getting half a mile out of a tank of gas. I must say here that the uninformed often misconstrue analysis as the panacea for an illness. Like, you take shots of cortisone for arthritis and you go to an analyst if you're crazy. But actually, it's like taking a fine car, a Mercedes, to a technician who specializes in Mercedes, except he services the mind. Better image: It's like you're in a boat on the water, before analysis, and you're bailing it out to keep yourself afloat. You've got to take your boat and beach it for a bit, find out where the holes are and fix them. It's very painful and it's very difficult and there's many reasons for people to say, "I don't want to beach my boat, because maybe I'll never get it back on the water again." Most people are aware that they have problems; they can feel anxieties, things stopping up, but they're embarrassed and afraid to admit that they're closed off. There's a million ways of deferring analysis.

[Q] Playboy: Do you rely on your analyst a great deal?

[A] Gould: Incredibly. I think he's a great man. Paul Simon [of Simon & Garfunkel] and I share the same doctor. Dustin Hoffman introduced us. Paul and I have sort of a similar background, I think, and when we talked about analysis, I could tell that he was somewhat cut off. In his early work, Simon put down analysis. He's just gotten married, so I suspect that his analysis has been really good.

[Q] Playboy: How frequent are your sessions?

[A] Gould: An hour a day, five days a week.

[Q] Playboy: Is it necessary to communicate with your doctor when you're out of town--say, on location?

[A] Gould: Occasionally, I call him, but I can take care of myself now. I don't think I've ever called him because I've been incapacitated. Like most people's, my problems are far more subtle than that. I'm not mentally crippled. Once in a while, we correspond, but I still pay for my time period on his calendar even when I'm away for eight or ten weeks, so it's like still being there, having a commitment. It's terribly positive to do that. Since I've maintained time, even if I'm back in town just for a day or two, I can talk to him for a couple of hours.

[Q] Playboy: What has analysis really done for you?

[A] Gould: At one time, self-discovery was difficult for me. Now it's happening all the time. I'm able to be alone with myself a lot more. I'm less self-conscious about the way I look, which had always bothered me. Several months ago, a newspaperman wrote that my nose was like a pickle but that I was appealing. That didn't disturb me a bit, because through my analysis and introspection, I had begun to understand that how somebody looks isn't particularly important, that the self-consciousness I felt wasn't particularly special. It's a universal problem. It's terribly important to learn that there's nothing wrong with anybody no matter how they look.

[A] Another thing I began to understand about myself is the reason why in certain situations I'm habitually late--even for my sessions in analysis. This is despite the fact that I don't want to keep anyone waiting or to inconvenience anybody, because I have a tendency to be paranoid about what people think of me. It embarrasses me to be late. But when I'm late it's because I'm doing something else; wherever I am, I can't be straight out enough to say I have to leave. I feel that that's being rude, so I stay longer while feeling the pressure that I've got to get someplace else. I've finally come to realize that the one who suffers most from my being late is me. So I've improved a lot in terms of punctuality. And I don't bite my nails as much anymore, although I still chomp on 'em a bit.

[Q] Playboy: Paul Newman also bites his nails. Is that a professional hazard?

[A] Gould: Maybe so. Believe it or not, David Merrick bites his nails. So did Abraham Lincoln.

[Q] Playboy: How do you know?

[A] Gould: I just made that up. But he must have been like the rest of us. Maybe it sounds irreverent, but gosh, can you imagine Abraham Lincoln masturbating? What's wrong with that? I'll bet when he was reading his books on that hearth in Illinois, he unerringly anointed them. He probably put out the fire like that, too.

[Q] Playboy: To return--appropriately--to analysis: Now that you've achieved an identity of your own, why is it necessary to continue seeing your analyst?

[A] Gould: Because I'm still working on many of my old hang-ups, like subconsciously harping on the times when things never connected for me and worrying about whether I'm getting the most out of myself. Along with the recognition, I've also developed a bunch of new hang-ups. For one thing, it doesn't please me when people ask for my autograph. I recognize that it's part of the industry and I'm flattered, in a way. But it's a very complex thing. It's not just a question of "May I have your autograph?" It's people seeing a real person who's represented by work that's on a screen or that they read a lot of bullshitty things about. It can be frightening--being molested by a lot of strangers who want to shake your hand or touch you or want you to say hello to them or want you to thank them for appreciating you. My meals are often interrupted by someone tugging at my sleeve and saying, "Excuse me. Excuse me." It's abusive, in an ignorant and unconscious way. When people ask, I sometimes deny being me, especially to those who take the license of being familiar. The ideal thing would be to be anonymous when I'm not working. I'd like to disappear. When Bob & Carol opened at the New York Film Festival, I felt terribly unpleasant being there. It was like I was on display. It was embarrassing to have strangers watching me see my own film.

[Q] Playboy:Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was the picture that made it big for you. Did you think it would be such a hit?

[A] Gould: Not really. I was just happy to get the job. When the first reviews came out, I had just finished M. A. S. H. and I was about to begin Move. A friend called and read me the review in Variety, which was terrific, but I felt real anxiety from getting this review, because my performance wasn't exactly what I thought it had to be. Somehow, I felt I still wasn't living up to what I imagined people thought was my potential. A couple of days later, I thought, "What the fuck am I competing with? Here I am in a terrific picture, and my part is terrific, and I'm really good in it. I've just finished M.A.S.H. and I'm starting another picture. I have it made. It's ridiculous for me to feel anxiety about it." I began to realize that what I was competing with was some fantasy of what everybody else thought about me or expected of me. I realized that my thinking was terribly distorted.

[Q] Playboy: Were you equally ambivalent about the Oscar nomination for Bob & Carol?

[A] Gould: No, that was like a masturbatory fantasy come true. If I hadn't been nominated, I would have been really disappointed--actually, more embarrassed than disappointed, because everybody told me I was going to be nominated. It's wonderful to be recognized by one's peers, but the Oscars are blown way out of proportion by their pretense and their public relations. I don't care for the whole competitive process and what the industry does with the awards. Many people think it's as important as a Presidential election, but it's only an industry commercial. Besides that, it's a terribly unnatural thing to go through. You're not yourself. I really had a trauma driving there for Bob & Carol. I was afraid no one would mention my name.

[Q] Playboy:Bob & Carol and all of the films you've made since then have dealt with some contemporary social phenomenon or pattern of behavior. Have you deliberately selected that type of film?

[A] Gould: Behavior is what movies are about and socially pertinent themes are the key to a lot of contemporary movies. But there's no real pattern in the movies I decide to do, other than the fact that they haven't been only entertainment films. Each of them has had a concept, a definite point of view. They've been original and a bit provocative. Bob & Carol has a specific message about well-to-do couples in their early 30s: the ignorance with which we deal with ourselves and one another. It shows this ignorance--and a degree of hope--in a very comic way. It deals specifically with two uptight married couples and their reactions to swapping mates. Another of my films. Move, deals with a single uptight couple and their fantasized infidelities. The character I play--Hiram Jaffe--is a sensitive, awkward, confused, yet intelligent guy who isn't getting the most out of himself. I related to all that. He's an adolescent man who isn't equipped to accept the responsibility of having a wife and children. It has to do with his reluctance to grow. I hadn't tried to interpret that kind of role before and I like to create a different character each time I work. The same thing holds true for Trapper John in M.A.S.H.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think made M. A. S. H. such a success?

[A] Gould: The absolute irreverence of its characters toward protocol and regulations, along with the extremism of the film, as exemplified by the operating-room sequences. Audiences retch at the same time they're laughing. It shows real people in real situations. It takes morality and shoves it up the ass of the military, because there is no fucking morality in the Service--despite what we've been led to believe by Hollywood films of the past. I remember loving To The Shores of Tripoli with John Payne and Randolph Scott when I was very young. I recently saw it again on television and now it's like a propaganda movie. John Payne's a playboy and Randolph Scott's a tough sergeant. They turn Payne into a Marine and he goes to Tripoli and kills some people and he becomes a real man. We felt special about ourselves back then, during the War. It was terrific to have an enemy like the Axis, and Hollywood was giving us what we wanted. But times--and enemies--have changed since then. And so have we, thank God. M.A.S.H. is the antithesis of all those War films we grew up with. It's furiously antimilitary, without being antiwar. The lunatic M.A.S.H. doctors function selflessly and magnificently as a medical unit, but they refuse to function as a military unit. They use their captain's bars to stitch up their shoes. They have the military by the balls, because they're doing a great job. Their hatred for the military is what keeps them going. I could really dig that, even though I was rejected for military service. My classification was something like 4-U. It was a sexual deferment because I'd never been laid. All kidding aside, I wasn't very successful with girls when I was a teenager. In fact, I didn't get laid until I was 21. I was really fucked up--or unfucked up. I've talked with my analyst about how I used to fantasize a lot, very surreptitiously. I really denied my deepest emotions. I was aware of recognizing intense feelings inside me, but I didn't know how to channel what I felt. The fear of making a fool out of myself used to traumatize me, so I would go to my room alone and beat my head against the wall--until the first time I got up the courage to do it, which was in a Boston hotel room. I'm thrilled to be able to report that I didn't make a fool out of myself. I never told my draft board.

[Q] Playboy: Trapper John in M. A. S. H. epitomizes, as you do, the kind of believable antihero currently in vogue among younger audiences. Do you ever think about your good fortune in arriving on the scene at this propitious time?

[A] Gould: Categorizing the time we live in by the actors who are playing roles is horseshit. I think that whenever I came into prominence had to do with my finding of myself. It may sound egocentric, but I think I could have made it any time in the past 30 years. In fact, it may have been more exciting to have done work like I'm doing when people were less conscious of labels like "anti-hero." Or any labels, for that matter. If I have to be labeled, the label should be "realistic actor." But, God, labeling is so commercial. I've always resented seeing myself sold commercially. I'm really embarrassed by those big ads for Getting Straight with pictures of me.

[A] But even though I don't like to be used to solicit things, I don't honestly mind it for this picture, because it's a film I believe in. And my performance in it is something I believe in. Getting Straight was a very new kind of experience for me, like taking an emotional high colonic. I had to go into places within me where I'd never been before, and I didn't know what I'd find there. That picture is a wonderful attempt at a personal statement--using a flawed, contemporary hero. The core of the film is that man's desperate struggle for some sort of identity. I think Harry Bailey is one of the most important characters that's ever been on the screen, especially in contemporary times.

[Q] Playboy: Many critics have been less enthusiastic in their reactions to Getting Straight. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "a Hollywood exploitation of urgent truth to serve the cheaper ends of an entertainment ... a patronizing insult to young people on real campuses [that] panders to the tastes of an audience not less than bare bosoms." How do you feel about that judgment?

[A] Gould: It amazes me that so many people attack Getting Straight. They're criticizing not the film so much as the reality of campus extremism shown on camera. Perhaps if the country wasn't in its present condition and the really first-rate universities weren't so terribly threatened, they wouldn't be as uptight about the boldness of Getting Straight. A lot of people have said, "My God, what's going to happen when young people see this film? It's so subjectively pro-destruction, so subjectively pro-student, so subjectively anti-establishment and so broadly anti-faculty." They complain because it's a film that shows the very violence many of us are living with and fearful of. Those who are afraid that the country is teetering feel that such realistic material shouldn't be seen in a commercial medium. Bullshit!

[A] To criticize the motives of the film as purely commercial makes me wonder if those people really know what the fuck is going on in this country. It should be obvious that the film has a vital point to make--that the educational system is old-fashioned and outmoded. Since it's difficult to be objective about a subjective thing, most of the criticism is as subjective as the film. Furthermore, I'm highly suspicious of professional critics, because I think it's so easy to fault things merely to build a reputation.

[Q] Playboy: Whatever you may think of them, many critics complain that Getting Straight shows a stereotyped, cardboard representation of the university establishment. If the picture is as realistic as you say it is, how do you account for this contradiction?

[A] Gould: What contradiction? The picture is an intentionally impressionistic generalization. It isn't meant to be completely realistic. The exaggerated stereotypes that Harry Bailey so desperately wanted to become one of were consciously written that way so we could see them for the clowns they really are. OK, I admit that it's a loaded picture. But isn't it about time there's been a radical loaded picture? I'm tired of seeing John Wayne shoot 'em up in all those typically chauvinistic epics. Getting Straight is anti-chauvinistic. Even if it's not as entertaining as M. A. S. H., I think it sticks its neck out farther. I'm not one tenth as proud of M. A. S. H. as I am of having had something to do with Getting Straight, which really attempted to go someplace that other films haven't; it's so much more articulate and outspoken--and truthful--than the dreck audiences usually get to see. There's a lot of faults to be found with the film, but it soars for me because of what it's attempting to do and the passion with which it does it.

[Q] Playboy: What faults do you find with Getting Straight?

[A] Gould: Well, there are excesses in the film. My character screams a little. I might have shaded it a bit more. Also, there's a scene where this kid is talking to a cop and calls him a pig. The actor who played the cop was an ex-fighter whose nose had been broken a couple of times. The casting was deliberate. I didn't like that. There was another scene where I delivered a karate kick to another cop; it was obvious to me that it was staged and I didn't like it. So there's a few cuts I would make. But I enormously respect the director, Dick Rush. He inspired me to attempt certain things that I would never have tried on my own.

[Q] Playboy: Like what?

[A] Gould: Like the transition in the master's oral examination, where Bailey turns on the professors examining him. That was so wild--a man getting it rammed up his behind, struggling with himself to fight back and finally winning.

[Q] Playboy: What did Barbra think of your performance?

[A] Gould: She thought I was terrific. I know the film upset her, but she was moved by it. She's very critical and bright, and when it comes to acting, she's got a great eye. So I was pleased by her reaction. But it must be somewhat shocking to her to see me do things on the screen that she perhaps didn't know existed.

[Q] Playboy: Did you know that the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures condemned Getting Straight as unsuitable for members of that faith?

[A] Gould: Yeah, and my first reaction was, "Great! It'll be better for business; it'll bring it to the attention of people who ordinarily wouldn't be interested in seeing the film." On the other hand, such action appalls me. It's absolutely ludicrous that any organization should be permitted to condemn any motion picture. The Agnew influence in this country is enormous. But you can't afford to do somebody else's thinking for him, especially in times like these. Audiences should be able to make up their own minds.

[A] The same sort of paranoid do-gooders are wailing about overemphasized sexuality in movies. For God's sake, we've all seen the opposite sex naked. We all know what a cock looks like, what an asshole looks like, what stains in our underpants look like. The whole debate over how far the movies can go in depicting nudity and sexuality is just laughable. But when it comes to the condemnation of something that has political overtones or that uses a political background, like Getting Straight, that's very dangerous. Even if it is terrible and horrible, it should be seen. It's a reality that's got to be recognized. There are so many other things worth condemning.

[Q] Playboy: What, for example?

[A] Gould: Condemn ignorance. Condemn poverty. Condemn bigotry. Recently, I watched a TV documentary called The Eye of the Storm, which blasted bigotry--and beautifully. It dealt with a teacher in the Midwest who teaches third graders the impact of discrimination. Her class is divided into the superior group, called the blue eyes, and the inferior group, known as the brown eyes. After four or five days, when the blue-eyed kids trade places with the brown-eyed kids, each person feels the opposite extreme. I wept for 20 of the 30 minutes to see what these young kids were going through, not understanding what they were feeling, yet feeling something terribly strong. Finally, they came to understand that discrimination is absolute horseshit, an invention of the mind that's practiced out of ignorant fear. What a constructive, creative way to teach that to third graders.

[Q] Playboy: Are you aware of any prejudices of your own?

[A] Gould: Yes, I am. I don't want to be bigoted, but the more I learn about myself, the more I recognize my habit of thinking in anti-Negro generalities--like if I put my hands through a colored guy's hair, they'll come out greasy. I've got to get over that kind of ignorance.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever dated a black girl?

[A] Gould: Yeah. The first time, I was quite curious what it would be like and I realized that I would be conscious of people seeing us, which I didn't like. That's my own paranoia, but I'm aware of it and I was able to deal with it. All of us. unfortunately, have been conditioned with discriminatory generalizations. Like, I leased a house in East Hampton, Long Island, two summers ago and asked the realtor if there was a local agency that supplied household help. He told me it was very difficult to get help, and then he said, "I don't know, some people just don't want to do an honest day's work." He never said Negro, but he meant Negro. I thought. "God. how dare you." That kind of discrimination is really dangerous, because it's everyday discrimination. That kind of conditioning has taken place for too long.

[A] There's a lot of hurt and persecution that whites have been directly responsible for, intentionally or otherwise. Even today, whites still put down many important Negro movements in our country--like the Black Panthers. I find the Panthers enormously courageous; I think they're doing something that civil rights groups find difficult to do--openly express themselves in ways antagonistic to the establishment, as a means to be heard. I admire their forcefulness, which many categorize as overly violent. By psyching a lot of people into being afraid of them, the Panthers have the latitude to accomplish a lot of the work they do--trying to create a nationwide coalition of Negro people. They're talking about things that are basic to human dignity.

[Q] Playboy: How do you account for the fact that most blacks, as well as whites, repudiate the Panthers?

[A] Gould: Those are the Negroes who have reached the middle class and therefore have something to lose. They're content with having accomplished anything after starting out as shitty as they did. As a result, many of them are apathetic and don't want to be involved. For them to endorse a group like the Panthers would be a great threat to their social and economic status.

[Q] Playboy: Have you had much personal contact with middle-class blacks--or with Panthers?

[A] Gould: I know Negro people who have position and I've attended enough Panther meetings to realize that what's said about them in the press is propaganda. The establishment is unfairly persecuting them to keep other Negro people from getting involved and giving them the strength they deserve. I'm no expert about the Black Panther situation; maybe I don't know all there is to know. But my instincts tell me that they stand for very positive, constructive things.

[Q] Playboy: Author Tom Wolfe recently coined the phrase "radical chic" to describe celebrities who endorse a wide variety of fashionable anti-establishment causes. Do you think that term might apply to you?

[A] Gould: I hope not. I genuinely want something to be done so that we can understand the Black Panthers before things degenerate into guerrilla warfare or open revolution. As far as radical chic is concerned, I feel the same way Wolfe does about personalities' getting involved in causes or charities in order to enhance their own images. One of the shabbiest things I've ever witnessed is the way Jerry Lewis represents himself. He blatantly tells you on network TV that he is the epitome of the socially conscious man, a great humanitarian. Entertainers who do something and don't tell you about it are far more admirable than he is. But to be told constantly about what he's done for muscular dystrophy! Lewis obviously needs to be loved by everybody and to have them think he's wonderful. Actually, he's one of the most hostile, unpleasant guys I've ever seen. He's more diseased than the disease he's supposedly trying to combat.

[A] Lewis used to be one of my heroes. When I was a kid, I did pantomimes to his records. He was an enormously talented, phenomenally energetic man who used vulnerability very well. But through the years, I've seen him turn into this arrogant, sour, ceremonial, piously chauvinistic egomaniac. I'm just amazed at his behavior. Mickey Rooney told him on TV not long ago that he had nine children by four wives. Lewis said he had six kids, and then he said, "But I've only been buying from one dealer." Constant self-serving snideness. But despite the excesses of people like Lewis, I feel that if an actor or a chambermaid genuinely feels strongly about something, he or she must become involved.

[A] Like, recently, I've become interested in the situation in Ireland, where a coalition of blueshirts and conservatives has devastated the civil rights of their opponents. I find a great parallel between the politics of Ireland and what's going on in this country. The caste system has caused great injustices in Irish human rights and it's threatening to get much worse.

[Q] Playboy: How did you become interested in this cause?

[A] Gould: A fellow asked me to support a proclamation of actors, artists and other concerned Americans and told me about the various injustices he had observed over there. If somebody like that gets to me and helps me understand what's happening and it correlates with what I feel--or perhaps changes what I feel--I can dig it. But admittedly, I have to rely to a large degree on what I'm told by people who seek me out and on what I've read. It's only recently that I've been interested in finding out about contemporary issues. I never used to read much. Now that I read a lot of middle-of-the-road kind of nothing reportage in The New York Times, I feel more and more that the news media are copping out. We can't even be sure what wars and political and foreign intrigues we're involved in, because we're not told what the fuck is really going on. Nobody knows just by reading the papers; we only see one side of it. The thing I want to do now is to educate myself more. For the first time in my life, I feel capable of being educated.

[Q] Playboy: What was the extent of your formal education?

[A] Gould: Well, I've got a high school diploma--from the Professional Children's School in New York. I've got to say I've come a long way, baby, when I recall Alan Arkin, who attended his son's graduation from the eighth term at P. C. S., wanting to know why I wasn't there to accept the alumni award they gave me. I was unaware that I was getting any award, but I felt guilty and awful, anyway. Then I thought a minute and told Alan, "Listen, when I was late or got caught for throwing erasers and they suspended me and gave me demerits and made me feel like shit, they weren't giving me any awards. Now that I seem to be big in motion pictures, they're giving me an alumni award. So I really don't feel that bad about it."

[A] I have very unpleasant memories of that school, particularly because my education there was somewhat lame--which had to do with my own feelings of anxiety about myself. Since I couldn't cope with the necessity to constantly prove myself on tests and examinations, my marks were totally erratic. I would either fail or do terrific. I would surprise the shit out of my teachers sometimes and then I would disappoint them. 1 didn't understand then why one learns something, other than to get high marks so that you can go home with a good report card. I worried a lot about my inability to apply myself and my lack of patience. The anxiety I felt when I didn't do well was severe. And worrying about the fact that my parents were arguing a lot at that time didn't help matters, either.

[Q] Playboy: What sort of relationship did you have with them?

[A] Gould: Nowadays, I don't communicate with my parents. But then, they loved me a lot; at least that's what they told me. I thought they were Mr. and Mrs. Captain Marvel--until I realized they were both mortal. I was their only child. We lived in a two-and-a-half-room apartment in Brooklyn and I slept in the same bedroom with them for 11 years. I didn't know what privacy was. Twice in the past year, without any ballyhoo, I've revisited my old neighborhood and the apartment building where I lived with them and where they argued and where I got my reference to the fucking world. People of my parents' generation constantly complained. The world wasn't good to them. They lived under enormous pain and stress and, consequently, most of the information they had to offer was be careful, don't trust anybody, you've got to save. Most of my distortions emanated from that apartment--distortions I still don't quite understand and I've blocked out. I stopped in front of the apartment door when I saw it again and remembered a lot of the way I grew up. I would have loved to meet the person who lives there now and walk through it again, walk into the closets and really look at it, touch it, smell it. Then I would love to have paid him for the apartment and taken a bat and just destroyed every wall and every shelf and everything else in it.

[Q] Playboy: Are the memories that ugly?

[A] Gould: It's not the memories so much as understanding now through analysis what I felt: the frustrations, the anxieties, the fears, the dependence, the ignorant assumptions of good and bad. I lived there longer than I've ever lived anywhere. That's the place where I was the most vulnerable, where I began to withdraw and become self-conscious. It's something I'm still trying to change.

[Q] Playboy: What made you so self-conscious?

[A] Gould: I was always very aware that I had a fat ass and that I was too big for my age. I wanted to be tough. I wanted to be Irish and I wanted to be a brawler, but I never really knew how to fight. Within the past four years, not wanting to rely on rage to defend myself, I decided to learn karate. I got quite good at it, because, having been a dancer, my legs were very limber and I could kick really strong and fast and hard. I stopped after I learned enough so I can hurt somebody if I have to. Anyway, instead of being a tough kid, I was taking elocution lessons, dramatic lessons, dancing lessons, singing lessons, lessons in projecting personality. I really don't like talking about it, because it's difficult for my parents to understand how I felt. I hated everything I was doing. The last thing I wanted to do was perform, because I didn't understand the reason for performing.

[Q] Playboy: What were those lessons like?

[A] Gould: The class would rehearse routines during the week, and every Saturday, all the mothers would gather at this studio and watch their children standing in the middle of the room performing material they had memorized while the teacher, Charlie Lowe--who also wrote it--proudly looked on.

[Q] Playboy: Can you recall any of those recitations?

[A] Gould: Some of them I'll never forget. Like:

Mary had a little lamb, some peasand mashed potatoes,

An ear of corn, some buttered beetsand sliced tomatoes.

She said she wasn't hungry, so Ithought I had a break.

But just to keep me company, sheordered up a steak.

She said she couldn't eat a thing,'cause she was on a diet,

But then she saw ice cream and pieand said, "I'd like to try it."

That was with music. I had my own arrangement. Another one was in dialect:

I'ma worka an I worka an I savatwo cows,

I'ma tinka someday I'ma buya dahouse,

But my wife she gotta ona biggaswella head

She say, "Buya da car or I knockayou dead."

But my best one went:

Hello, Hollywood, here I am,

I'm looking for a movie man,

Oh, where is Mr. Warner,

I have to get him in a corner,

I'll show him how I sing and dance,

I hope that he'll give me a chance

To star in Hollywood.

Whoopee, Hollywood, here I am!

That almost sounds prophetic, but it's really pathetic. My mother kept a scrapbook of material like that. Someday, to see the banality of the past, I'm going to use it in a film or something.

[Q] Playboy: What made performing in class so difficult?

[A] Gould: My inner ear really heard what I was saying. Besides that, I didn't have good diction. I was told you had to talk a certain way. Pronounce your Rs. And don't sound like you come from Brooklyn. And I was constantly being made self-conscious about how I looked. I always had to be clean and I was taught that when one performs, one always smiles. I couldn't smile for the life of me when I went out to perform; I was too panic-stricken. I look at old pictures of myself and I understand the torment I was feeling then: at the time, I didn't recognize the pain. Pictures scare me, because they seem to have the power to reveal something. They used to reveal my trying to hide something, my attempting to be something I wasn't. It was as bad as going to a dentist for me to go to the local photographer, who'd document what I looked like. My mother still has these photographs. I've been meaning to take them to my analyst, so that we could look at them together, because it's me and yet it's not me anymore.

[Q] Playboy: You said earlier you've never liked your looks. Why?

[A] Gould: When I was a kid, I didn't look the way I presumed one had to look--like Robert Wagner. As I started to grow into adolescence, I began to think my hair was too curly, that it could never be slicked down like in the movies. And my hairline was too low, so I could never look like a movie star. But I realize now that it's a problem millions of people have--not respecting themselves because they have some ridiculous illusion of what a person ought to look like--or be like.

[Q] Playboy: What sort of performing did you do outside the classroom as a boy?

[A] Gould: A lot of club dates for local organizations that would hire a room for a meeting and afterward have a show. I sang and danced solo or worked with a girl and did old vaudeville routines, like: "Say prunes, baby, and you pucker up like this," or "I'm in a quandary, I don't know what to do, I'm in love with two girls and they both love me, too." Just unbelievable. By the time I was ten or eleven, I must have tap-danced on every marble floor in the Pythian Temple. Occasionally, I would get a flashlight as a prize or a sandwich from the buffet and very occasionally, a couple of dollars. I didn't find out until recently that the guy who was putting on the show was getting paid for us and pocketing the money. At the beginning of my club-date career, I was introduced as Elliott Goldstein. My name was changed for the first television show I did.

[Q] Playboy: How come?

[A] Gould: Because a booking agent said Gould sounded good for show business.

[Q] Playboy: How do you feel about being Jewish?

[A] Gould: It's difficult for me to accept, because the whole Jewish religion is based on fear; it tells you all the things you shouldn't do. That's not terribly positive. I don't disrespect Judaism, but I think the way many Jews practice it is somewhat hypocritical. I was bar mitzvah'd, but bar mitzvah meant to me that I got a recording with my Haftarah on it, a bunch of Hebrew that took me a year to memorize. From the time I was 12 till the day I turned 13, I listened to that fucking record in terror, because I didn't want to stand before my elders and forget it. So bar mitzvah meant nothing to me.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't it matter that being bar mitzvah'd meant the beginning of your manhood?

[A] Gould: At 13, I was supposed to feel like a man? Perhaps when bar mitzvahs were conceived, 13-year-olds were allowed to act like men, but at 13 I wasn't treated like a man and I didn't function like a man.

[Q] Playboy: When did you become a man?

[A] Gould: My first impulse is to say when I got my Academy Award nomination. Actually, it happened a couple of years ago. I never had any doubts that I was a man physically or genetically. But my own feelings about myself were such that I never had any self-respect. I became a man during the stage of analysis when I began to think of myself as an animal with a brain, two balls and a cock, without having to apologize for how I smelled in my armpits or whether I left turds in the toilet.

[Q] Playboy: Do you like your assumed name?

[A] Gould: I'm not particularly mad for it--simply because it's not my name. I'd rather have taken something more colorful--like one of the characters in Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment. But someday I just might change my name back to Goldstein. The movie distributors would blow their minds--and so would my parents.

[Q] Playboy: How active a role did your mother play in furthering your career?

[A] Gould: From the time I was nine, she dragged me around to cattle calls, where they'd be looking to buy a kid. I'd sit in waiting rooms and see other mothers and children staring at me like I was taking food out of their mouths. I always thought the other kids were probably more capable of doing whatever job it was. Besides the cattle calls, my mother had me working for the Bonnie Kid Modeling Agency. I was a standard size eight, so that was good for merchandise catalogs and promotional shows. For a couple of years at dry-goods conventions, I dressed up like a miniature grenadier guard--the trademark for Conmar Zippers--and handed out little Conmar dolls that cry when they're turned over.

[A] By the time I was attending Professional Children's School in the eighth grade, I was terribly conscious that I wasn't making it in this profession. It really didn't help that I felt a great deal of guilt about my parents' spending whatever amount of money it was on my lessons and my not getting much work. My biggest moment up to that time had been appearing at the Palace on a vaudeville bill in May of 1952, when I was 13. I was a shill for Bill Callahan, a terrific dancer who I thought I wanted to emulate. We followed Smith and Dale, so I had a chance to watch them four times a day for two weeks. After their act, I would come out dressed as a bellboy and holler, "Telegram for Bill Callahan! Paging Bill Callahan!" Then the orchestra leader would say, "Hey, what are you doing?" I'd say, "I got a telegram for Bill Callahan." He'd say, "There's a show going on here!" And I'd say, "I don't care if there's a show going on, I'm going to deliver my telegram." The telegram, of course, was in the form of a little song that introduced Bill Callahan.

[A] After my sophomore year in high school, my father bought a house in West Orange, New Jersey, and we lived there for a year. Now I had to take the bus into New York three times a week for my dancing lessons. I used to get bus-sick a lot--especially after I saw An American in Paris at Radio City Music Hall and realized my limitations. It frustrated me terribly, because I saw steps that I could never do.

[Q] Playboy: Was it hard for you to adjust from an apartment in Brooklyn to life in the suburbs?

[A] Gould: As I look back, New Jersey was a turning point for me--especially in terms of athletics. I always knew I had a certain facility for the three street sports: football, basketball and baseball. Yet I never mixed in them, because I always felt that most of the guys in Brooklyn could play ball better than me. In New Jersey, I was less inhibited. The degree of competitiveness wasn't the same. So I became one of the better basketball players, which I dug. I played tackle football for the first time and I was a good fullback. And I found I could really hit well in hardball.

[A] And soon the dancing lessons began to pay off, after a fashion. For a couple of years, my parents had been taking me up to the Catskills on weekends and sometimes for extended vacations. We stayed at second-rate hotels, where the management would hire woebegone performers to entertain the guests twice a night on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. These hotels were so cheap that they often hired fewer than the standard number of acts for the second show. When they found out I could perform, they'd save the money it would take to get somebody else. I used to fill in by doing my silly routines. It was like sticking daggers in me. I'd go on dressed in dancer's high-waisted pants and matching silk shirt, as nervous as Don Knotts, and I'd do my Crazy Rhythm soft-shoe singing number and get off fast. It was excruciating.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you do it?

[A] Gould: I had no choice. My parents wanted me to do it. I didn't know I had an alternative, because I was still overly conscious of the money they'd wasted on my pointless lessons. I thought those performances would in some way vindicate all that. I guess they got a good deal of satisfaction showing off what they had bred. But gradually, as a matter of fact, the act improved to the point where I worked in a couple of neighborhood night clubs while I was still in my mid-teens. Word got around and a tryout was arranged at the Elegante in Brooklyn, a place that was like the top minor-league farm club for a major-league baseball team. I was to come in on Monday, usually a very slow night, and open the show. Tap dancers were traditionally an opening act. Sunny Gale, who recorded Wheel of Fortune, was the headliner. My parents and some of their friends were in the audience, along with maybe six or eight other people. Two tables in the middle and a hack night-club orchestra. I came out and did my couple of numbers paralyzed. Not only was I afraid I'd forget the steps, I was even more afraid I'd slip and fall. I hated every minute of it, but I also knew that my obligation was to give the impression I was enjoying myself. The atmosphere of this second-rate club, the way it looked, the people who were there, the seriousness and intensity of what I was doing--it was a comic nightmare.

[Q] Playboy: What was the result of the audition?

[A] Gould: I never got the job. When it was over, I felt relieved, because the nightclub business was even more bizarre than the Catskills.

[Q] Playboy: You've been filming portions of Little Murders here at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills. Has the area changed much since you worked the Borscht Belt as an entertainer?

[A] Gould: The change has been monumental. As a kid, I was very conscious of the levels of hotels--with, of course, the Concord being the superspa. My family could never afford to stay here, so at the time I was very impressionable about what it represented: status. Now that I've seen it for myself, I realize that most people come here to do nothing else but say they came here. If they don't own one, guests can rent a mink coat, for God's sake, just to keep up with the Schwartzes. The place is like Forest Lawn, it's so put together. Like most resorts, it's full of concrete. There's almost nothing natural. It's absolutely barren, characterless and repulsive. It's like finally meeting someone you've always wanted to meet and when you finally do, you realize that he's even less than ordinary. Or like seeing a beautiful woman and then finding out she's frigid.

[Q] Playboy: Is there much difference between the rent-a-mink syndrome at the Concord and Mr. and Mrs. Gould eating Nathan's hot dogs in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven Bentley, as you used to do with Barbra?

[A] Gould: The difference is that we were honest about it. Barbra is basically a very simple girl, and I'm really as simple as she is. One of our conjugal delights actually was eating Nathan's hot dogs--whether we did it in the back seat of a Bentley or at the mother church in Coney Island. There was also a lot of stupid talk about the refrigerator we kept in our bedroom that supposedly was loaded with blintzes and gefiillte fish. That was bullshit. It was full of Breyers coffee and cherry-vanilla ice cream.

[Q] Playboy: How does your life style today differ from what it was while you were living with Barbra?

[A] Gould: I'm far more interested in comfort, peace and honesty. I'm increasingly aware that a person with the romantic emotions of an actor can be unduly impressed by limousines and living in big places. Show-business glamor is so superficial and dangerous that it can create a competition within oneself to live up to something that's nothing more than an indulgence.

[Q] Playboy: You can't be completely impervious to self-indulgence.

[A] Gould: Well, I guess I indulge myself with grass. And sometimes with food. And last year, there was the summer house at East Hampton. Maybe that was somewhat of an indulgence, because I spent so little time there. It wasn't a necessity. Looking ahead, I want to be able to pick up and go someplace just like that--to Mexico City or to Europe for a couple of days. In the past, I might have gone out and bought a lot of clothes when I felt depressed or anxious. Now I get anxious when I find myself looking for things to buy that I don't really need. I want to indulge myself by not pacifying myself. I used to pacify myself more by biting my nails and gambling. Now I'm in a transitional state where I want to indulge my curiosity to learn things.

[A] At the same time, I've been discovering myself and discovering the life style I'm getting into now. It doesn't have much room for the kind of self-indulgences I was aware of previously. I no longer want to be as conscious of myself as I have been most of my life, nor of what other people think of me. I want to lead a simple existence. I'd love to live on a farm and have a day as full of activity as possible. I want to understand myself and be able to accept myself and respond to myself and to things outside of myself. The best example of simplicity I can give you is the relationship between me and the girl I'm living with. She's not ambitious. She's very interested in primitive, organic, simple things, which is something that I never really knew about. It's been a terrific revelation to me to see that she's not very material.

[Q] Playboy: Why is that so important?

[A] Gould: Because nothing material is truly significant. Yet the whole class structure of America is based on what people make and what people have. That's not right. Part of the revolution that's going on in this country is anti-material, and young people are making a lot of sacrifices to point that out. I'm somewhat of a contradiction to what I'm saying, because I do appreciate tangibles and I'd like to retain the option to have them. Unfortunately, I find that having material things brings with it the pressure of protecting them. I'm sorry to say I've erected an iron fence around my apartment in Greenwich Village. I'm ambivalent about it, aesthetically and spiritually, but the incidence of burglary in my neighborhood is extremely high. A lot of people in New York are prowling around, looking for things. There's nothing in my place that I would deeply mind losing, yet I still must protect myself.

[Q] Playboy: Do you keep a gun?

[A] Gould: No. Whoever keeps a pistol should use it. If an intruder said he wanted something, I'd like to have the opportunity to give him whatever he wanted.

[Q] Playboy: After you'd been married for six years, were there any conscious adjustments you had to make in order to live with another woman?

[A] Gould: It's different, but it took no great adjustment. I must admit that the happiest memories I have of Barbra are when we were living together before we were married. We were very dependent on each other then. We lived together because we wanted to live together, not for any legal reasons. I moved into Bar-bra's apartment, a small cold-water flat on Third Avenue, right above Oscar's Fish Restaurant, in 1962. The bathtub was in the kitchen. One night, we heard a gruesome squealing and scratching. It sounded like a rat the size of an elephant. I looked under the tub and I saw a tail about a yard long with notches on it, probably to keep score of all the people it had bitten. I closed the door and called the fire department. We used to laugh about that a lot. I look back to Third Avenue with sublime affection.

[A] But today, my life is infinitely better. I know more now and I'm far less uptight. To use baseball terminology, I've learned to go with the pitch. I can go to right or put the ball up the alley. I used to hit with my foot in the bucket, and if they pitched me on the outside corner, forget it. I was a patsy for a smart pitcher. Now I'm really loose at the plate and I think I can hit close to .400. The day Jennie moved in--she's the girl who's living with me--she told me: "This is the first day of the rest of your life." It's true. She may be only 18, but she's an exceptional, gorgeous girl who is very bright and sensorially aware.

[Q] Playboy: What does she give you that you particularly need at this point?

[A] Gould: She loves me, for one thing. She's also a very open female, of another generation. In many ways, my youth was somewhat retarded. It's taken me a long time to know what I'm about. By taking the years away, she's a really good foil for me. She contributes enormously. And she's not impressed by what I've accomplished. Which is terrific. She's quite a contrast to what was happening right after Bob & Carol. Several months before I met her, a lot of horseshit press agents kept asking if I wanted to be fixed up with what they called pretty wild starlets--up-and-coming chicks whose names, I was told, the public would soon recognize. I thought that being seen in that context, merely for publicity, went out with B movies about Hollywood. Needless to say, your hero rejected such overtures. I was really embarrassed that anyone would ask me if I wanted to go out with some willing starlet.

[A] When I read that I've been places I've never visited, I'm reminded of the opportunism of people in my field thinking that really means something. I mean, no one's going to get any work from that; it's not going to make you a better actor. It's the old Hollywood crap. I refuse to be a party to that--especially since I've now got a responsive female in my life. I'm really interested in what she thinks and how she arrives at her insights. I can't bullshit her. If I could, I wouldn't like her. Occasionally, I might try, but she doesn't tolerate it, like when I get bad on myself.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Gould: Oh, I tend to get anxious and ill-tempered. I get caught up with myself sometimes and have anxieties caused by simple problems with the plumber, things like that. Like, if I get caught in traffic or if I'm trying to get from one lane to another and I can't, I get tense and it brings out deeper things that I've been feeling. By her very simplicity, she helps keep that in perspective.

[Q] Playboy: Are you able to discuss with her your past anxieties as well as those you're feeling now?

[A] Gould: I do that willingly and thankfully. In fact, I took Jennie with me on the last trip to my old neighborhood. We had a couple of great frappés in the candy store on the corner--Irving's--where I have incredible memories. You can't get the kind of walnuts and syrup they have at Irving's. I guess a frappe would taste better there than anyplace. Nothing has changed in 15 years. Of course, Irving recognized me right away. He proceeded to tell me about some other kid from the neighborhood who's become a multimillionaire. I reminded him how I used to be able to go there and charge my lunch. That was fantastic. I'd walk over from P. S. 247 and have my ham sandwich and Coca-Cola and say, "Charge it, Irving." Irving always sat in the same place at the counter, listening to the Dodgers' games. That's where I first became conscious of gambling on baseball. Right next door to Irving's was a moviehouse where I sometimes used to sneak in through the side door. Two or three times, I took along old cigarettes wrapped in wet toilet paper and threw them down from the balcony. That was a great adventure--until I got hit with one once and realized it was terrible.

[Q] Playboy: Did you go to the movies often?

[A] Gould: I saw every picture that played there. I mean, what could be better than walking off of the hot street into an air-conditioned movie and seeing Humphrey Bogart beat the German army in Sahara? I think I felt guilty about going there all the time and not participating in other things; but the place was like my sanctuary.

[Q] Playboy: Besides Bogart, who were some of your movie heroes?

[A] Gould: Gary Cooper, for one. I don't think Cooper was terribly bright, but he was enormously intuitive. He knew what he was and therefore he couldn't lie. The same with Bogart. Those men were lifelike, not the usual horseshit cutouts Hollywood fed to us. It's a distortion to say that they were bigger than life. You saw the real man. And I used to believe what I saw. What's happening today to some of the big movie stars of the not-so-distant past is really unfortunate. It kills me to see Henry Fonda do those commercials on television. Fonda is a historic motion-picture man, really an individual. A wonderful kind of man. And now to see him as a sacrificial lamb! I'm sure it means a fortune to him, but I don't think it's worth it. I hate seeing him sell.

[Q] Playboy: In the past year, a number of old-guard movie stars, such as Tony Curtis, Glenn Ford and Shirley MacLaine, have made the switch to television. Why do you think this is happening?

[A] Gould: They're desperately cashing in on their old reputations, simply because they can't get films to do. Since the studios are making motion pictures far more economically, there's no place for big stars' salaries anymore. There's no place for big egos, either. Stars who need to be fawned over and impressed with their stature can be a pain in the ass to work with, in addition to causing all kinds of budgetary problems. Modern film making has become so precise and such a collaborative enterprise that superstar vanity can often be fatal to a project.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think the exodus of major stars to television may improve the quality of programing?

[A] Gould: I doubt it. I also doubt that the medium will ever cease being corrupt and condescending. It's fascinating what a destructive force television has been in our society. The evidence is the kind of shows that appear every year. In the past two decades, TV's only gotten slicker and more predictable. It's a medium run by advertising, and anything that's run by advertising isn't going to be truthful. But the viewers themselves are just as guilty as Madison Avenue. Most people show no discrimination about what they watch. The TV set is just something they turn on to keep them company. Keep it on long enough and you get a sense of security from it. I fall into the same trap myself.

[A] Actually, closed-circuit television--in apartment-house lobbies or toilets or department stores--is far more interesting than commercial television. At least it's more real and you're liable to see something honest or thought-provoking. But commercial TV isn't likely to change unless we get programs that have more of a reason for being than just selling soapsuds or jerking you off. Even many of the news programs are suspiciously biased or derelict. There's often a great credibility gap between reality and the way television reports the news.

[Q] Playboy: A Los Angeles TV station recently banned filmed coverage of violent student and civil rights demonstrations, claiming that television has unwittingly helped foment much of the nation's widespread unrest. Do you think that decision was justified?

[A] Gould: No, I think it was absolutely ridiculous--but I can understand the thinking behind it. Most people who watch television aren't prepared to cope with such volatile situations because of their own problems, worries and anxieties. Having to watch extremism at home and the war in Vietnam gives them too many things to deal with. It almost demands taking sides or hiding. Instead of being provoked, they'd rather sit down and see 25 years of I Love Lucy and 165 (continued on page 262)Playboy Interview(continued from page 94) reruns of Debbie Reynolds' asshole. To see the reality of the world--it's mind-blowing.

[Q] Playboy: You've rarely made television appearances, even on talk shows. Why?

[A] Gould: Let's just say I'm biding my time. Ironically, considering my past experiences with the networks, I have been approached to do television specials and guest shots, all of which I've rejected. If and when I do television, it won't necessarily be an entertainment show. And I'd want to create it, produce it--do the whole thing. I'm in a terrific position. Within reason, I can do whatever I want in TV or movies. My company owns some really good properties, many of which we owned before I made it--scripts that I thought I'd love to play but I'd never have the chance to play because I wasn't important enough. Now the studios are so anxious to have me do any or all of these properties that they're willing to commit the necessary money without even reading scripts. But I worry about falling into the trap of doing something I might not be able to pull off.

[Q] Playboy: Having made half a dozen films in the past 18 months, aren't you taking the risk of overexposing yourself?

[A] Gould: If I were being compulsive--working just for the sake of working--then it could be dangerous for me to overextend myself. That's why I won't work on anything that doesn't emphatically interest me. I'm very conscious of having had several hits in a row, but I don't want my success to hamper my ability to do what I please. Even if you stay within the confines of realistic financing and you're trying to communicate something important in a film, that doesn't ensure success. But with those two factors governing, I don't think I can get into very much trouble. No one's going to get scared of losing a lot of money. In fact, the money people might be willing to take more chances than they used to. For my company and me, I've got to know why a picture wants to be made and what it's about and whether its cost is reasonable. All our films will be honest and cheap.

[Q] Playboy: What made you decide to film Little Murders, a play that flopped on Broadway?

[A] Gould: The fact that two of the major ingredients of the movie are Jules Feiffer, writing his first screenplay, and Alan Arkin, the director--both geniuses. Arkin couldn't do anything that was less than honest; his mind is as brilliant as anyone I've ever met. Besides directing, incidentally, he also plays a paranoid policeman who's trying to solve 342 unsolved murders. When I first did Little Murders as a play, I recognized Jules's work as being really contemporary, inventive and original. I thought at the time that the theater form was too sterile for the realistic way it had to be done. The two major characters are a nihilistic, apathetic photographer who takes pictures of trash, and a ballsy girl with whom he's having a relationship. It's about the shadows, the fear, the paranoia and the sounds of the cities we live in and the ways we've adapted blindly to what we take as the norm. And about how we become accustomed to things that we needn't get accustomed to, and how in doing that we become conditioned by our environment. And it's about random violence. It's going to be highly provocative and terribly unnerving as well as brilliantly funny and black and original--possibly too incisive, too brilliant and too sophisticated. I hope not. But at least it's not showing off. It's not going to be "giving the people what they want to see." It's not just a dishonest entertainment film.

[Q] Playboy: What would you consider a dishonest movie--a bloated epic like The Adventurers?

[A] Gould: Believe it or not, I had a ball watching The Adventurers, because it was like most of the movies I've seen throughout my life: unbelievable. I loved going to a drive-in and seeing it. It didn't challenge me, it didn't provoke me and it didn't insult me, because I was conditioned to its whole reason for being. I went with my girl and she fell asleep. The sort of dishonesty I really object to is dishonesty in packaging--and I don't mean the kind of packaging that interests Ralph Nader. Most Hollywood studios are consumed with hedging their bets before they make a picture. Too often, they're overly impressed by star value and they purposely use heavyweight celebrities to sell a picture package; the story isn't all that important. I'll give you an example: George Stevens' last movie, The Only Game in Town. The stars were Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty. It's a tiny little story with a terrific character study of two people. If the film had cost a million and a half bucks and been done by a really contemporary hand, it might have been lovely, instead of bombing out. I can't conceive how that picture could have cost $6,000,000. It goes to prove that two magic motion-picture names mean absolutely nothing today, that somehow an audience will smell out opportunism. But it makes me want to shout some choice obscenities to see a picture involving actors of the stature of Taylor and Beatty being second-billed to garbage like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true, as a New York Times writer reported last year, that you indulge in profanity because you feel that if proscribed words are used often enough, society will no longer consider them profane?

[A] Gould: That's why I love to use colloquial words to color my performances. I can't wait for the time when I can say cunt or asshole or motherfucker as often as I please in a film. Not because I'm trying for any sensational effect but simply because that's the way people really talk. In Little Murders, I was able to ad-lib a colloquialism that I think makes an important scene work. My father and I are standing at a window. We're both snipers. He takes the first shot and he hits somebody. It's a chilling moment. Without telling Alan or Jules, I screamed out of the window, "COCK-SUCKER!" My character had gone mad by this time, and for it to be reduced to that kind of shock language was an inspiration. The word was the emotional outburst of a maniac. I was thrilled to have done it. God, I hope it's still in the film. It will be, unless we have to trade that for something else to get a decent rating.

[Q] Playboy: If you have to trade cocksucker, what would you hope to keep in return?

[A] Gould: One cocksucker for three fucks? Maybe people won't even hear it, because it's like a gorilla screaming. So maybe we'll get by with it. Like, in Getting Straight, the masturbatory thing I do. The director cut away from it at just the right moment. But even implied masturbation was very shocking to some people. Why? Why shouldn't this be on the screen, if films are to reflect real life? Too many people think masturbation is something bad--"It's nasty and it'll stunt your growth, son." We grow up taking our parents terribly seriously and not recognizing the fact that they often don't know what the hell they're talking about. It can be very dangerous to impose your own prejudices, hang-ups and expectations on a child.

[A] A few months ago, I took my four-year-old son, Jason, to the circus. Beforehand, I told him how wonderful it was going to be, because I so wanted him to enjoy it. Well, the greatest show on earth turned out to be like the Concord Hotel. All those spotlights going around in circles and the chorus girls and the fourth-rate interlocutor. There was no magic there. Even the trained animals seemed perverse and totally unnatural. The circus has become so commercial that it's no longer the pure art it once was. I'm sure Jason didn't enjoy it as much as I told him he would, and I think that may have distressed him.

[Q] Playboy: How have you adjusted to being a part-time parent?

[A] Gould: Not very well. It's unnatural to visit your son and it's unnatural for any child of that age to see that Mommy and Daddy don't have a relationship. When he asks why, I think it's important that we don't lie to Jason. I've been seeing him more often lately, but it's very hard. God, it's hard to visit. I find myself wanting to love him so, and therefore going out of my way to be nice to him. But you can really harm children by being overly nice to them, by giving them everything they want. Because they really don't want everything they think they want.

[Q] Playboy: Are you overprotective toward Jason?

[A] Gould: At first, I was. I found myself being a Jewish mother. Every time we walked around, I'd watch him for fear he'd fall. That's not right, 'cause young children do fall, and when they do, they're going to look at you for a reaction. And if you respond with a "I hope you're not hurt" look, it blows their minds; they get very scared and start to cry.

[Q] Playboy: Do you want Jason to turn out like you did?

[A] Gould: God forbid. The thing I want most for my son is that he understand himself and the environment in which he's living. If he understands, he'll never be afraid of anything. But if he doesn't understand, his mind is so fertile that he's going to cut himself off and be terribly anxious about a lot of things--the same way I was. You know, when I contemplate my son's future, I'm really uptight about the volatile state of the world today. And the more I contemplate, the less inhibited I am about moving toward a radical ideology and philosophy.

[Q] Playboy: Radical in what sense?

[A] Gould: I mean that I'm moving toward not being afraid to do something unconventional, even risky, in order to change the things that need changing. In the face of absurdity, there comes a time when you've got to revolt against it. Like insisting that we walk out of Vietnam and say, "OK, we lost that game. We're no longer the champ of the world." A radical can't stay on the fence or be liked by everybody.

[Q] Playboy: According to many polls, the majority of Americans don't really want fundamental social change and, in fact, feel threatened by radical movements.

[A] Gould: They don't know what's best for them. They refuse to recognize the fact that things are always changing in our society, that nothing stays the same. Unfortunately, that head-in-the-sand attitude gives license to chauvinistic bullies like the hard-hats for beating up those they disagree with--especially the young. As a result of such perverse treatment, we're seeing a vast fragmentation between the generations and an incredible consolidation of young people who refuse to be fucked around with any longer. I'm with 'em all the way and I think they can tell that from the kind of movies I've made. Unlike their parents, they want to be provoked, get involved--even when they go to see a film; they want to come away with something more than a good time.

[A] Their parents are happy with placebos like Airport, which is doing terrific business. They want to be conned. They want to be finger-fucked. They don't want to know what's going on. The state of technological passivity in which they wallow is incredible. We've created cars and air conditioners--all kinds of devices that supposedly enhance the human condition. But in so doing, we've depleted the earth and polluted our air and water. And the potential of our own bodies has been diminished by the growth of these creature comforts, which cause noticeable lethargy and apathy. Well, young people see what's happening, and what it's done to their parents and to America and to the American dream, and they don't want it to happen to them. But nothing they've done to reclaim the nation, to make the necessary social reforms, has had any effect--except to get their heads split open.

[A] So we're paying the price for trying to maintain the status quo. Banks and police stations are being bombed. Isn't that sort of clue indicative that some kind of change is essential? The passive among us think not. They've been taught that we'll survive, whatever. They forget that this country was founded in revolution. It's amazing that the revolutionary tradition of Europe now is so much more appealing to young Americans. Come to think of it, most European countries have been, in their time, what we are today. Spain, England, France and Germany took turns being the big power before succumbing. I believe there will be no lasting power until the earth becomes a planet inhabited by a race of equal humans, where there are no more flags.

[Q] Playboy: Wouldn't you concede that the chances of fulfilling such a utopian vision are exceedingly slim?

[A] Gould: If it's left to choice, yes; but it may happen because of a nuclear accident. If 98 percent of the human race were destroyed, those remaining might understand how insignificant the planet is, how insignificant technology is, how insignificant being the world's greatest power is. It's a grim thought, but eliminating that 98 percent may be the only hope of mankind. Considering the way people currently distrust one another, I think it's inevitable.

[Q] Playboy: If you happened to be among the surviving two percent, what would you want to do with the rest of your life?

[A] Gould: The same thing I'm going to try to do if there isn't a cataclysm: use my potential to understand what and who I am and help others understand that we must feel before we can think. If we all do that, perhaps human dignity will start to flourish rather than be suppressed. I also want to keep my body and my mind healthy and open. I realize that my head is still a little crooked and, unfortunately. I'm still very much motivated by my emotions. But I'm really working at getting straight--if you'll excuse the expression--and I think I'm going to make it.