20 Questions: Judge Reinhold

Although cursed as an infant with the sober countenance of a jurist--hence the courtly moniker--Judge Reinhold, at 30, has lightened up considerably and managed to become the most affable galoot in movies today. One critic suggested that he is a pixilating cross between James Stewart and Donald Duck, the strongest evidence of which has been demonstrated in such films as "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Off Beat," "Ruthless People," "Beverly Hills Cop" and, most recently, "Vice Versa."

Contributing Editor Bill Zehme infiltrated an on-location film set in Chicago and hunkered down for conversation in the actor's so-called trailer of love. Zehme reports: "At the time of our interview, Reinhold may have been the only judge in Chicago not under indictment. Judge is understandably sick of the fuss over his name. Still, I had to wonder, If he looked like a judge as a tot, what did he think he resembled these days? 'A child actor,' he told me, grinning his omnipresent grin."

1.

[Q] Playboy: A movie executive has said that part of your charm emanates from the way you project your imperfections. Do you have any imperfections you'd gladly give up?

[A] Reinhold: [Laughs] You mean physical? When I was a kid, my mother had my ears pinned. I understand why she did it--I really looked like a cab with both doors open. The great thing about it was that I got to wear a turbanlike bandage to school for a week. I told everybody I had a brain tumor; I got a lot of mileage out of that. When the bandages came off, though, the ears were still as big as before, except they looked as though somebody had pasted them back. My mother thought she'd ruined me for life and fainted in the doctor's office. I remember the doctor saying, just before she passed out, "Oh, well, he'll grow into them...."

I'd give up my Adam's apple. It has a way of leading me through life that I don't much like. And I've been concerned about my Joe Palooka chest. I'm Mr. Torso, you know? Marty Brest, director of Beverly Hills Cop, told me I was a terrific actor from the neck up. I could do a nude scene only in a comedy; otherwise, the sight of my body might throw the drama off. It's tough, because when you start getting lead parts, all you can think about is how much you don't look like Robert Redford. I guess I'm slowly defining my own brand of smoldering sexuality.

2.

[Q] Playboy: As unlikely as it may seem, we suspect that you're the product of a warped youth. Accurate?

[A] Reinhold: [Grinning] Yeah, I was the guy selling pot in the parking lot at my senior prom. All the other kids were in the agriculture clubs and I was growing contraband. That was in a little Southern town, Fredericksburg, Virginia, where there was really all the time in the world, with nothing to do. The only recreation was mindless cruising. My first car was a '63 Chevy station wagon that I called Ramona, because that's the sound it made. Farm use was painted on the back. It was right off the set of Hee Haw. I was in a Neil Young phase.

For entertainment, there was a big Marine base nearby. Every night, Marines would drive up behind me and my long-haired friends at red lights and start screaming sexual come-ons at us. Some of them, even after we turned around, thought we were just ugly girls. It was when they weren't shocked that we really worried.

3.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think women see in you?

[A] Reinhold: [Flustered] Gee, I don't know--maybe a sappy sincerity? I was the Alan Alda of my high school. Unfortunately, I was the nice guy the girls would complain to about their asshole boyfriends. The only girls I got at that time were kind of screwed up with emotional problems. I was a glib guy.

Now they probably see me as accessible and fun. I mean, stewardesses are hitting on me in airplanes! I have to say that it's very thrilling to get attention from women. It's completely superficial. And very gratifying. You know, it's one of the tragedies of my life to realize that now that I'm famous, I find myself not only married but in the middle of the AIDS epidemic. My wife is pleased. [Laughs] It's just awful timing. Isn't it terrible that the Eighties could possibly be remembered as the era in which when you slept with somebody, you slept with everybody she'd slept with in the past 15 years? [Grinning] I mean, they may as well be in bed with you. But you don't even get the benefit.

I'm looking forward to the equivalent of V-E Day when they finally find the cure, and people will be fucking in the streets.

4.

[Q] Playboy: As a former resident thespian there, would you regale us with tales of the Burt Reynolds Jupiter Theater in Jupiter, Florida?

[A] Reinhold: Well, it was an apprenticeship program, and basically, I'd do bit parts and serve cocktails. Burt called it paying your dues. We called it slave labor. But those were great days--I was about 20 then. If I was lucky enough to have a couple of lines in the first act--and they happened to be funny lines--I'd make 50 bucks in tips, serving drinks at intermission. For particularly bad performances, we'd get the bartender to make the drinks stiffer. We had this idea that for fun, we'd just nail the plates to the tables and hose them off before the show. It might have goosed the presentation a bit.

But there were several recurring nightmares. Every night, toward the end of the last act, some drunken broad, who wouldn't accept the fact that Burt was 3000 miles away in California, would start screaming, "Where's Burt?" That always heightened the drama on stage. During the hot summer months, when everybody else left Florida, we'd get these busloads of Miami geriatrics who'd sit there with hearing aids and docile smiles. The standard line among the actors was, "Why doesn't somebody bury them before they start to smell?"

I lived right above the theater, and on one night I'll never forget, I was just finishing making love with a comely fellow apprentice. Amazingly, we reached the crucial moment virtually at the time the second act ended, and there was this thunderous applause. It was just one of those memorable episodes in your life when the timing is incredibly perfect, like in a movie.

I'll tell you, another memorable night of mine was when I had to drive a famous gay actor to the airport. Well, we'd been driving along and he seemed to have been, like, (continued on page 142) Judge Reinhold (continued from page 125) flirting with me, much to my chagrin. And as we drove through these orange groves, a wonderful cloud of orange Fragrance wafted in through the windows. He sniffed and asked me, "Ooh, what's that?" I said, "It's the orange blossoms." He said [slyly], "I thought you'd farted." And I'm, like, watching the road signs, thinking, Thirty more miles, 25 more miles....

5.

[Q] Playboy: What were you thinking about during your famous masturbation scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High?

[A] Reinhold: [Grinning] Oh, you'll never know. My wife asked me that, too. And I said, "You, of course." But she'll never know, either. Actually, I remember not realizing the true implication of what I was going to do that day in the bathroom until I was there kneeling on the toilet. The director, Amy Heckerling, said to me, "Just treat this as your first real love scene--only it's with just yourself."

Yeah, the "flogging the dolphin" scene has gotten me into some pretty embarrassing situations since. I was waiting to board an airplane, standing in line with, like, 200 people. These two GIs walked by me and one said to the other, "There's that guy who jerked off!" It was like they'd just seen me in a bathroom on the concourse.

[Sighs] My mother and I have yet to talk about that scene. Also, it's the only time I was ever grateful my dad died before I made my success.

6.

[Q] Playboy: The dream sequence that preceded that scene had you in black tie embracing a topless Phoebe Cates as she emerged from a pool. Was that the privilege most guys think it was?

[A] Reinhold: I felt extremely fortunate. It was just astounding. You know what, though? At the moment, when it goes on, you just feel really embarrassed. It's rumored that George C. Scott, when he had to get into bed with an actress for a love scene, told her, "I apologize if I get an erection and I apologize if I don't." I'd love to know if that story's true. I can relate.

But Phoebe found new respect for me, because after the desired effect, I put my arm up--she thought to shelter her nudity. But actually, I did it so that I wouldn't be upstaged. As it was, that was a pretty paranoid day for her. There were photographers on the roof. She was getting a little tired of being exploited. As a result of that scene, most guys in America have the idea that maybe I did sleep with Phoebe. I have to tell you, I enjoy that speculation.

7.

[Q] Playboy: At what moment did you stop being gullible?

[A] Reinhold: I still am. If I weren't working now, I'd be bitter and angry. But as long as I'm working, it's tough to get jaded, though I remember an experience that made me feel less gullible. I was sitting down at the Universal casting office, which is unique, because instead of separate offices for different shows, everybody sits in the same room, waiting to go in to different auditions. So you sit there with seven vikings and three fat women and so on. I happened to be sitting next to this guy, laughing at all the different types waiting together. Then I realize that the guy I'm sitting next to is Tom Hanks. It dawned on us that we were both a type, too. The same type. Fortunately, that's the only time we've met. I haven't seen him since.

8.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us your cinematic dreams.

[A] Reinhold: Oh, you know what? I do have those dreams, it's true. For instance, I'm dying to do one of those surfing process shots, where I'm riding the surfboard, my hair is not moving at all and you can almost see someone off camera throwing water on me. That's a big Hollywood dream of mine.

I also want to do the scene where you're supposed to meet the girl at the Berlin train station. You see her at one end of the platform and you're at the other end and, as you start walking toward each other, the SS men come and grab you and you have to march right past her without looking at her, or else they'll grab her, too. That's a great scene. I've seen a couple of versions and they are really hot.

I have a great album I listen to all the time of cowboy-crooner songs. It always makes me want to ride off into the sunset on a horse, whistling. That's another of my big movie dreams. I don't need the girl here. I just want to whistle.

9.

[Q] Playboy: You're 6'2?. Burden us with your sartorial plight as a "big-and-tall man."

[A] Reinhold: My father was 6'4? and I didn't want to be that tall. I did everything I could to stunt my growth, but it didn't work. My wardrobe options are hopelessly limited. Forget hip clothes from Melrose Avenue or English clothes, for instance. And shoes may be my biggest problem. I wear a size 13. Now, if I do see a shoe I like and I'm lucky enough that it comes in my size, it never actually looks like the one I saw in the window. It looks like a kayak. On me, cowboy boots look like two pontoons; Converse high-top All Stars make me look like I'm from Ringling Brothers. My favorite pair are bowling shoes that I stole from a bowling alley. I went in with shitty shoes and I thought it was an even trade. I'm sure they didn't.

Hats, too. I tried wearing a beret and I looked like a horse's ass. I fancy myself as a guy who looks good in hats, but my wife assures me I look like a complete and utter fool. She begs me not to wear them in public. She does, however, allow me to wear my hats at home. I have a Stetson that I like to wear around the house, buck-ass naked. She finds that endearing.

10.

[Q] Playboy: You and your wife lived together before getting nuptial. Who brought up marriage first and what changed when you married your roommate?

[A] Reinhold: What changed? Well, the bathroom doors were already open before we got married. People like Dr. Ruth are saying now that you should keep the door closed, that there's a dangerous possibility of getting too familiar, which could diminish sexual attraction. I hope that's not true.

I recently asked Carrie why she thinks we've been together for six years, and she said it's because she has a bad memory. She has been very patient with me, because--as much as I love her--after about two years of marriage now, I'm just getting comfortable with the idea. Sometimes I become paralyzed with a fear of becoming like Carl Betz on The Donna Reed Show. It doesn't have to be that way. I realize that I'm projecting my ideas of what marriage is onto our relationship, instead of just seeing that it is unique on its own. It's the specter of marriage that I'm trying to get past.

So it probably will sound strange to learn that I proposed to her. I was doing a film in Toronto and she was working in Europe. We were both pretty miserable in our own respective ways, and I proposed over a transatlantic phone call that had a terrible echo. She heard me three times. She thought I was repeating, but I swear it was an echo. All she said was, "Oh, boy, this is how it starts." She, too, had a healthy caution about getting married, but she also knew she wanted to do it very much. She was scared and thrilled. When we got back together, I told her I was kidding. But she held me to it.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Divulge your secret talents.

[A] Reinhold: I can laugh like Ed McMahon. You gotta hear it. [Demonstrates at length, sounding as though he had coughed up a lung] It's accurate only when you feel like you've almost induced a brain hemorrhage. I did it on The Tonight Show and Ed was a good sport about it.

Let's see. I can also execute amazing U-turns anyplace. What else? Something I like to call power lounging. It's basically state-of-the-art flipping of the TV remote control to find just the right crummy movie. Always knowing who makes the best pizza to be delivered. Chasing your wife around the house. Yep, power lounging--that's my sport.

12.

[Q] Playboy: We understand that your first job in L.A. was selling frozen yogurt to the stars. Would you reveal some celebrity flavor biases?

[A] Reinhold: I'll never forget: Sean Connery would just say, "I'll have the peach." I always prayed that he didn't want chocolate, because the nozzle on the yogurt machine was cracked and the stuff would come out looking like rolls of shit. When Robert De Niro came in, I wanted to be straight with him, since I admired him so much. But it was painfully obvious that I was in awe of him, because I told him, "The peach is pretentious. The chocolate is mundane. The brownies are stale." He said, "I'll take a brownie." It cost 75 cents and I rang up $75. I made him so nervous he never came back.

But most of my customers were pregnant women and people in Gucci jogging suits who instead of working out would just come eat yogurt. That would be their workout. I remember writing to my friends back East that I was working in a yogurt store in L.A. They just shook their heads and said, "He's gone, he's gone."

But it was my little store: I opened it up in the morning, full of neighborhood pride. I was like Mister Rogers--Mr. Smoothee. The only unseemly thing that ever happened was the day this crazy man came in. He started slapping the faces of imaginary women lined along the wall. My lady customers were really petrified by him, and so was I, because the guy was psychotic. I told him people were asking for him outside and he left. I locked the door and called the cops. I'm sure he was an agent, right?

13.

[Q] Playboy: In Vice Versa, you play a dad for the first time. Have you noticed any real paternal instincts rumbling inside?

[A] Reinhold: It's funny. I started getting them during the production. I have a great relationship with Fred Savage, the ten-year-old boy who plays my son. So much so that I began getting these feelings every once in a while of just wanting to protect him and take care of him. They are new feelings, I assure you. I am petrified of having kids, because I want to do it well. Carrie says I'd probably steal their toys. She may be hinting that I'm immature. I relate to kids on their own level. My kids will probably grow up reckless but with a great sense of humor.

My father was 56 when I was born, so we didn't play a lot of football. He was a lawyer--humorless and very impatient. I walked on eggshells a lot. It was kind of oppressive in the house. I have a bad self-esteem problem and my father probably facilitated it. To this day, I don't relax well. He once looked at me very seriously when I was about 15 and had whipped cream smeared all over myself. He said, like really checking me out, "You'd do anything for a laugh, wouldn't you?" I've never forgotten it, because it's true. I don't have to prove myself anymore.

But the thing I did love about my father was that he cut a pretty romantic figure, to my way of thinking. He came from the Gatsby era. He graduated from Harvard Law School in the Thirties. He was a gentleman farmer and had a great presence in the courtroom. It was an unspoken thing, but I think he did appreciate my becoming an actor, because he thought it was almost his legacy, that I inherited his capacity to--I don't know--pull people in somehow. I think he was proud of that.

14.

[Q] Playboy: What advice would you give the Brat Pack?

[A] Reinhold: Well, that's dangerous. I know them and they really resent the sobriquet. I guess my advice would simply be: Dress down.

15.

[Q] Playboy: Does it ever amaze you that you're in the same business as Jerry Lewis?

[A] Reinhold: [Laughs] I have a great story, which I'm sure is apocryphal, told to me by one of Jerry's former writers. This was when Jerry was really young and used to play practical jokes. He called up all of his writers at, like, three o'clock in the morning and screamed, "I got a great idea! You gotta come ovah here right now!" They go over, open the door, and in the dark, they see him standing on the kitchen table, naked, with a match in the hole of his dick. He lit the match and went, "Look!" He got them out of bed for that.

When Ruthless People opened at a film festival in France, I got a call from reporters there who said I was being compared to Jerry Lewis. And because this was France on the line, I considered it a terrific compliment, what with all the regard they have for him there. But his is really the antithesis of my approach to comedy. I love comedy that comes out of a situation, not a slapstick routine. There's a certain finesse I try to muster that doesn't look like I'm doing it for the camera.

16.

[Q] Playboy: With a nod to the deodorant commercial, give us your version of the three nevers in Hollywood.

[A] Reinhold: OK. First, never ride behind somebody who is making a deal on a car phone. Second, never seriously say, "Let's do lunch," or people will think you're a real garbanzo. And finally, never, never make fun of a movie you're watching if you don't know who's in the theater with you. Odds are that the guy sitting behind you worked on it. Real embarrassing.

17.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us your favorite actor jokes.

[A] Reinhold: I've got a few. What's the difference between a dead dog and a dead agent on the highway? There are skid marks in front of the dog. [Laughs] In a similar vein, here's an infamous actor joke: This actor comes home, finds the door wide open, looks around and sees that the place has just been devastated. He walks upstairs to the bedroom and hears a noise coming from the closet. He opens the door, and there's his wife--beaten, bruised, tied and violated. He pulls off this piece of tape from her mouth and says, "Who did this?" She says, "Your agent!" And he says, "He came to the house?"

A struggling-actor joke: There are three new arrivals in heaven who find, astoundingly enough, that their stature up there is decided by how much money they made down on earth. Which is kind of discouraging to realize. Anyway, Saint Peter asks the first guy how much he made, and the guy says $300,000 a year. Saint Peter says, "Oh, you must have been a doctor." The guy says, "That's right." The second guy says he made $175,000. Saint Peter says, "You must have been a lawyer." He says, "That's right." A third guy says, "I made $4752 last year." Saint Peter says, "Oh, is there anything I might have seen you in?"

Here's my favorite one: A director and a studio executive are walking through the desert, trying to find an oasis for a movie location. They finally come across one and it's just this idyllic setting with a spring burbling up the most beautiful, clear water. Suddenly, the studio executive pulls out his pecker and starts relieving himself in the water. The director sees this and says, "What do you think you're doing?" And the studio executive says, "I was just trying to improve it for you."

18.

[Q] Playboy: What's more challenging--comedy or sex?

[A] Reinhold: Comedy is more of a challenge; sex is a relief. They can mix, though. Humor in sex is it! Completely. Sometimes, I have to try real hard not to start laughing hysterically. Like the second after an orgasm, you sometimes look down to see the ridiculous position you're in, and that's always extremely amusing. Before I got married, some girls found that charming and other girls found it really upsetting and obnoxious that I would burst out laughing. Sometimes, I'd really try hard not to. I mean, I'd get really red in the face. But it seemed so funny, when that animal passion leaves you and you're suddenly just--an animal.

19.

[Q] Playboy: How strange is your fan mail?

[A] Reinhold: I got my first letter asking for money, which was pretty funny. It came from a family in Tennessee who wrote that they thought I looked like a real nice guy and that they needed a new roof and could I please send money and not let them down, because they were sure when they saw me that I was for real. I didn't feel like I had to go that far to prove that I was sincere.

I get a surprising amount of mail from Japanese girls, more so than from American girls. Fast Times was huge in Japan. And their letters are beautifully poetic. One wrote, "I would drown in an ocean of your smiles." I remember just staring at that for 20 minutes, astounded.

20.

[Q] Playboy: What's the most pain you've endured on camera?

[A] Reinhold: Oh, there's been a lot of pain, a lot of bruises. But that's what comedy is all about. If I go home with bruises, I feel like I've done my job. Really, I don't mind it. Plus, I get some sympathy from my wife.

My scenes with Bette Midler in Ruthless People probably were the most painful. She throws herself into a take with such abandon that sometimes she doesn't know how involved she gets. Bette really grabbed my hair and kicked me in the shin, hard. And the scary thing was, I knew she was gonna do it--I know her. But I tried not to anticipate it and, sure enough, goddamn it, she grabbed my fucking hair and kicked me in the shin. But I got her back: In another scene, I had to lie on top of her on the kitchen floor when she was pregnant. She was freaked out about it.

You know she plans to do a sequel to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? She wants to call it This Is What Happened to Baby Jane. She told me it was just so that she can say the line, "Eat your rat, Blanche!"

hollywood's favorite galoot explains the problems of big feet, the joys of power lounging and the special thrill of masturbating on camera

"I have a Stetson that I like to wear around the house, buck-ass naked. My wife finds that endearing."