Playboy Interview: Paul Hogan

It's 7:30 on a rainy New York winter morning. The film crew has already turned an East Village watering hole, Vazac's, into Al's Bar and Grill and crammed the place with lights and cameras. The door swings open and in walks a rugged, compact man with blond hair and a crinkly, weather-beaten face. He wears bush clothes--boots, a black hat and a short jacket of crocodileskin.

"G'day. Name's Mick Dundee," he announces cheerily. He leans back on the bar and gazes around the room. His accent is not from these parts. "I'm new in town. I'm looking for work." He waits, then swivels to face the bartender. "Guess that's enough job hunting for one day."

In real life, Paul Hogan, the actor who created, co-wrote and starred in "'Crocodile' Dundee," the tale of the outback larrikin who invades America, doesn't need any job besides the one he obviously enjoys so much. Why would he? "'Crocodile' Dundee" made $350,000,000 world-wide, and the sequel may generate similar revenue. Hogan's personal cut from the first picture is said to be at least $40,000,000. If you consider that until 1973, he had worked at 30 or 40 low-paying jobs (one of them stuffing corpses in a morgue), it's no mystery why his favorite phrase isn't "I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie" but "No worries, mate!"

Nor, in real life, would Hogan have to introduce himself at most bars in the English-speaking world. Perhaps the most celebrated Australian of his time, he has become, through his films, TV appearances and commercials, an unpretentious symbol of the average bloke everywhere. And a lot funnier.

The Wonder from Down Under was born October 8, 1939, at Parramatta, an outer suburb of Sydney. The family, however, soon moved to Granville, a lower-middle-class Sydney suburb, where he grew up, grew bored with school and quit at 15. While working at the local swimming pool, he met his future wife, Noelene, and they married when he was just 19 and she was 18, with prospects, Hogan later assessed, that were "zero." He didn't do much to improve them.

Four years and three children later, Hogan had become something of a pub-crawling lout. To support his family (eventually five), he worked at odd jobs, his last gig being a rigger on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It offered security, friendly mates and little else. There, high up on the arch affectionately known as the Coathanger, he fought depression and a growing self-hatred by indulging in a natural talent for humor, quips and pontification.

Hogan didn't know it, but those qualities would change his life. In 1972, he accepted his friends' dare to land a spot on "New Faces," the Australian equivalent of "The Gong Show." He wrote in, saying he was a knife-throwing former trapeze artist. The show's producers believed him, and when his turn came to perform, he instead stood on stage and methodically insulted the judges. His performance was a hit; he was invited back and soon was being interviewed on the bridge by a reporter from another show, "A Current Affair," which hired Hogan to do comic commentaries.

He kept his bridge job and worked piecemeal at $40 per TV appearance--amazed that anyone would pay him just for spouting off. Later, Hogan would say that his appeal was that, unlike most Australian TV personalities, who either spoke the queen's English or tried to sound as though they were from California, Hogan sounded like someone you'd meet at a New South Wales pub.

No one thought he would last. But a year later, Hogan won a Logie--the Australian Emmy--for best new talent. Suddenly, drivers crossing the Sydney Harbor Bridge were causing accidents when they spotted him. By then, he had acquired a manager, John Cornell, a Western Australian journalist who'd been instrumental in signing him to "A Current Affair" after his interview appeared and who next pushed Hogan into commercial endorsements. The first try was as a spokesman for Winfield cigarettes. They became the biggest-selling brand down under, and suddenly, Hogan's name and the slogan "Anyhow, have a Winfield" became as familiar as the morning paper.

Cornell finally persuaded Hogan to quit rigging and go into showbiz full time. They landed a contract to produce their own TV specials--"The Paul Hogan Show" (sold later as a syndicated half hour in some U.S. cities). The raucous, irreverent specials quickly made waves. In an episode shot in England, Hogan drops in for an ersatz tea with a Queen Elizabeth impersonator, advises the prime minister on colonial affairs and makes fun of Germaine Greer (author of "The Female Eunuch" and a friend of Hogan's). For another show, he visited Playboy Mansion West. The specials proved so popular that soon Hogan and Cornell had the freedom to do a show whenever Hogan decided he had enough material.

There followed, in relatively quick succession, more TV specials, an ad campaign in England for Foster's lager that increased sales remarkably (he did American commercials for Foster's later), a series of canny spots urging American tourists to visit Australia, the 1986 Australian of the Year Award and a low-budget adventure/romance film about Michael J. Dundee and a lady reporter from Newsday. The film showed how a bit of pure-hearted macho charm transplanted from the outback to Manhattan could translate into box-office heaven.

Hogan has been interviewed twice by Playboy's Australian edition. For this, his U.S. debut, we asked Contributing Editor David Rensin to meet with him in New York while he was filming "'Crocodile' Dundee II." (We also include a few exchanges from the Australian interview conducted by journalist Phil Jarratt.) Rensin's report:

"We conducted our interview in Hogan's caravan, which was parked outside Silvercup Studios in Queens. He appeared after lunch, out of costume, but still wearing boots and a black-leather jacket made from the skin of some exotic animal. The crease in his jeans meant the hotel had been doing his laundry too long. 'I'm lucky to get them back,' he said with a grin.

"It had started to snow. Hogan had never seen snow fall in New York, he said, speaking with that matter-of-fact lilt that has become his--and his country's--trademark. He offered to heat some coffee to keep us warm. He fumbled but finally got a pot brewing. 'I've had a wife since I was 19,' he said, shrugging. 'I'm so lacking in domestic skills that I can't even make a good cup of coffee.' He poured two cups, spilling one.

"I'd expected a man closer to the understated sophisticate of Hogan's tourism commercials than to the Archie Bunker--ish Okker [Aussie redneck] on which he'd made his early reputation. I was partly right. Hogan was mostly soft-spoken, but his tone couldn't mask a laconic wit that was even drier than a martini sans vermouth--filtered through a regular-guy Aussie patois.

"Hogan likes to be in control; yet he does so with a complex, even Byzantine shrewdness. For example, to make the first '"Crocodile" Dundee,' he financed half the film with the help of stockholders. But wanting to be free of their occasional 'gutlessness' and interference, Hogan and Cornell diminished their influence by making deals too quickly for anyone to object. Later, hit in hand, he made another deal with Paramount, leaving him free to follow his comic instincts and make the '"Crocodile" Dundee II' he wanted. That meant replacing the original director with Cornell and writing the script with his eldest son, Brett.

"Of course, one can't fault Hogan for keeping things in the family. Yet it is a clear indication of how single-mindedly the man works. Not that you can tell from the self-effacingly polite and disarming exterior. I began by asking about the 'Dundee' sequel, being shot on the sound stage a few hundred yards away."

[Q] Playboy: When we last saw Crocodile Dundee, he was on a jammed subway-station platform, stepping across the shoulders of passengers to reach the arms of his true love. It seemed deliberately open-ended. Was a sequel being considered even before the huge box-office returns--$350,000,000 world-wide--were in?

[A] Hogan: No, though people think we were bein' a bit clever. But the first movie was almost an introduction. Mick Dundee's major confrontations were with kid muggers and escalators and bidets. It wasn't really an adventure. It was a comedy-romance and maybe a little adventure. It almost seemed like a waste of a character. But that gave it an advantage in terms of a sequel. If the first movie had been like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the sequel would necessarily have been another giant adventure. But since Mick has only sort of popped in, been in New York a week or two and shaken hands with a few people, it's open. So now, in "Crocodile" Dundee II, I get him into lots of action and confrontations with really tough villains.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't Dundee's charm that he was cut from a different cloth from the standard action-adventure hero?

[A] Hogan: The situations he gets into are deliberately traditional; it's the way he gets out of them that makes this different and very, very funny. I gave Mick his head and let him use his outbackness to overcome problems that Rambo and Commando and John Wayne found themselves in all the time.

[Q] Playboy: Are you parodying other screen supermen? Are you slipping in a satirical message?

[A] Hogan: Not really. But I am sayin' you don't necessarily have to take a chain saw to people to straighten them out. I was a bit sick of "How many guys can we kill?" or "There's these brand-new machine guns that fire backward!" or "What about if we used a chain saw?" That's the standard movie-hero approach, and that gets pretty boring. The main thing is, at the end of the film, you should have laughed your head off and feel the same as you did watchin' the first "Crocodile" Dundee: a warm sort of feeling about people. That's what I like.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of critical reaction to "Crocodile" Dundee II do you expect?

[A] Hogan: I expect some backlash about losin' the simplicity and charm of the first one and how I've gone all Hollywood, which is nonsense. The same people who said the first one wouldn't fly because it was too low-key will analyze this one as too aggressive. Then they'll change their minds when it's a success, too, and say it's because I did it without being offensive.

[A] In the end, the public will decide. All the publicity in the world won't carry a film into the third week. The third week, you're on your own. That's the good part about this movie business. You can't force it down their necks.

[Q] Playboy: Wildly successful movies usually result in a couple of years' worth of imitators and spin-offs. Why wasn't that true in the case of "Crocodile" Dundee?

[A] Hogan: The advertising world certainly jumped on it. Everything Australian being sold anywhere in the world has got a suggestion of a crocodile or a hat or a knife somewhere in the background--a vague reference to "Crocodile" Dundee. In films and television, a lot of people have already tried that path and failed. Those failures might have put others off. Anyway, they're welcome to try to copy. Comedy is a hard game. No one realizes that.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying your accomplishments have been taken lightly in some quarters?

[A] Hogan:"Crocodile" Dundee is not a fluke. I've been doin' comedy on Australian TV since 1973. I wouldn't make a sequel if I didn't think it would be at least one and a half times better than the first. And "Crocodile" Dundee II is looking like it might be twice as good.

[Q] Playboy: Why no merchandising based on the original film? Considering the experience of other smash movies such as Star Wars, we might have expected hats, croc-skin jackets and knives.

[A] Hogan: Haven't done any, really. We just have to stop other people from doin' it, because so many things come out with crocodile stuff attached that people assume we're involved in it. But we didn't do it, didn't want to. Don't want to turn Crocodile Dundee into Mr. T, y' know?

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't there also talk of a "Crocodile" Dundee TV series?

[A] Hogan:Instantly. But, no, I wasn't interested.

[Q] Playboy: And will there be yet another "Croc"? Are we witnessing the birth of the Rocky syndrome, Australian style?

[A] Hogan: The original title on the first draft of the sequel was "Crocodile" Dundee--The End, meaning there would be no third, fourth, seventh. I certainly don't want to do a next one. True, I said we didn't plan a sequel for the first one, either. But that first one was made on a very low budget and it was restricted in so many ways. We couldn't do things with the character that we might have wanted to. "Crocodile" Dundee II sort of completes it.

[Q] Playboy: So you'll go on record as saying there will never be another "Crocodile" Dundee?

[A] Hogan: Definitely. There won't be. [Pauses] The only excuse to do a third one would be money. [Laughs] No. There won't be another! Look, if I leave it long enough, I'll be too old to do Mick, anyway. The thing to do is to come up with a better character.

[Q] Playboy: Any ideas?

[A] Hogan: I've thought of a character who will vary from, rather than be radically different from, Dundee.

[Q] Playboy: Aren't you concerned about typecasting yourself?

[A] Hogan: I've already faced that problem. I've been one of the best-known faces on Australian television for years and years and years. So I thought the first movie would be a challenge, because those people knew me as a television comedian and social commentator for so long. The character I played on television, Hoges, was a variation on Crocodile Dundee. And so they accepted it. It would be the same if I went into a new character.

[Q] Playboy: So you don't care that you're doing basically the same character?

[A] Hogan: I'm not Laurence Olivier. If you go to a Clint Eastwood movie, you expect to see Clint Eastwood and you're disappointed if you don't. You don't want to see him playin' a bank clerk. And that's all right with me. I don't have this crisis about being an actor who has to be so radically different every time he turns up. No great interest in it.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Hogan: My Australian television show was a total platform. I wrote it. There was no censorship of any shape or form. When enough tickled my imagination or appealed to me, then I put a show together and just put it on. I had a blank screen contract. So I'm not like a frustrated actor who's been doin' other people's vehicles for years and now, at last, has the opportunity to say something. My very first time on television was me givin' my opinion of what's wrong with the world. So I've had that luxury. There's nothing burning inside me. Besides, I get bored being only an actor. I did an Australian miniseries [ANZACS] that dealt with our war history. And I couldn't handle sittin' around all day in make-up just to jump up once in 12 hours and say, "Look out! Here comes a bullet!"

[A] For 13 years, my partner, John Cornell, and I did everything: write, produce, direct, design the sets half the time, edit, promote the whole sort of package. Same with the film. I'm involved right down to the final mix, how the posters look, how many theaters it's in, what the ads are like. This time, we decided we didn't really need an outside director. Or outside writers. And that's the nearest I can get to directing it myself--only it's easier, because John does all the hard work. If we could, we'd rent theaters, as well, and be ushers and adjust the projector and do all that, because that's the nature we've got.

[Q] Playboy: Obviously, it's a strong relationship.

[A] Hogan: Yeah. We're the godfathers of each other's children and are best friends. We think alike, we have similar attitudes and have never had a real row. If you didn't know better, you'd probably think we were homos. [Laughs] You know--an old married couple that's startin' to look alike. But we ain't homos.

[Q] Playboy: How did you come up with the idea for "Crocodile" Dundee in the first place?

[A] Hogan: I was in New York doing talk-show and radio interviews to promote the Australian Tourist Commission campaign. I was treated very nicely but also like I was a Martian. I guess I was a bit of a novelty because I was Australian. It wasn't just the way I talked, though. It was my attitude toward things. People laughed at what I said I thought was funny, but they also laughed because I was different, so it occurred to me that if people thought I was funny, then they'd split their sides over some of the outback outlaws that I'd struck up in the Territory over the years. New Yorkers would think they were in a time warp if they met some of those blokes; the Territory and New York are the opposite ends of Western civilization.

[Q] Playboy: When you tried to get U.S. distribution for the movie, was Hogan in Hollywood anything like Dundee in New York?

[A] Hogan: Yeah. Though my introduction to Hollywood was with television. Years ago, I sold a cut-up version of some of my old Australian shows. They were going to be broadcast at midnight and such. At the time, we had meetings with high-power executives. But they didn't have any power at all. It was all that lunch thing--talkin' in circles and "Let's do" business and all the clichés and nothing ever happened.

[Q] Playboy: If you were to spoof Hollywood, say, on a TV show----

[A] Hogan: Oh, it's totally spoofable. I might really laugh myself silly. The Beverly Hills Hotel, naturally, was where I stayed the first time I came over. At the Polo Lounge and the pool, I saw guys with a white stripe down their face from holdin' the phone out in the sun. They're talking in loud voices, you know, "I don't want Redford. Tell him to nick off. Barbra Streisand? I won't work with that bitch again!" All loud conversations, obviously with nobody. "I've got this idea I'm working on. It's sort of like a Love Boat, only on land." These guys had 48 pounds of gold chain and bad rugs. [Laughs] It was wonderful. I'd have been disappointed if it hadn't been like that. Full of pretenders and would-bes. But people don't do deals around the pool of a hotel. That's only in the movies.

[Q] Playboy: Was it tough for you to cut through the bullshit in Hollywood?

[A] Hogan: No, not when I was talkin' to blokes who were genuinely in the business, who knew what it's really all about and could say yes to a deal. Then, no problem at all. It's a pleasure, in fact. I can understand, though, that it'd be a tough business to be here with your script under your arm, waitin' in those queues, fightin' to connect with somebody's secretary. I wouldn't play in that game.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have any sort of film model on which to fashion "Crocodile" Dundee?

[A] Hogan: I had models of what to avoid. I wanted nothing in my film where the wound gapes open and blood spurts out. And no attempt to be funny by excessive use of profanity. That's OK only when it's required. And no sex scenes. And no cripple jokes or comedy built on racism. No venom. A happy movie. A couple of critics compared "Crocodile" Dundee to films by Frank Capra. That's nice. But--and this is no insult to Capra--I didn't really know who he was.

[Q] Playboy: Since you're taking some pokes at the American tough-guy heroes and generally suggesting that they lighten up, let's name some names. What advice would you give Clint Eastwood?

[A] Hogan: If he played a hard-working accountant with difficulties at home and psychiatric problems, he might earn the respect of his peers, as they call it. But his fans would hate it and stay away in droves. His fans put him where he is, so ... keep doin' what you're doin', Clint.

[Q] Playboy: Arnold Schwarzenegger?

[A] Hogan: [Pauses] Well, he does do comedy to a certain extent. But as an actor, what he does is subject to the script. So there's not much sense discussing Arnold's point of view. Who knows what it is?

[Q] Playboy: But don't you think his point of view is reflected in the scripts he chooses?

[A] Hogan: I don't think of him as a movie star. Poor Mr. Universe who does a lot of movies where he tears people's heads off and looks like a chimp. I couldn't see him in a musical comedy. [Smiles]

[Q] Playboy: What about Sylvester Stallone? Do you detect any comic potential there?

[A] Hogan: Well, he didn't do too well in Rhinestone with Dolly Parton. If he did comedy, you might have trouble understanding his delivery. But my real problem with Stallone is that I can't understand how the guy who wrote Rocky, which is a classic, is the same guy who did Rocky IV or Rambo II. It doesn't make any sense.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Hogan: His original Rocky was up against it in so many ways. Boxing pictures don't usually work, they don't get a female audience; and yet he made a boxing picture that was so much about the human spirit, the triumph of endeavor. It was warm and it was funny. It was one of the best movies I've ever seen. And now the same guy makes Rocky IV. Something happened. He needs to sit down with a psychiatrist. It's a tragedy. Rocky IV just turned into comicbook politics with the dreaded gray-suited Commies and all that sort of nonsense.

[Q] Playboy: So your career advice to Stallone would be----

[A] Hogan: I don't give advice. I'm just mystified about Sylvester Stallone as a writer. Arnold Schwarzenegger might grow roses and be a stamp collector, for all I know; you get no insight at all into the personalities of people playing roles in movies that someone else wrote. But since Sly wrote the script for Rocky, you think you'd understand the author's values. So it's a great mystery to me how anyone can go from Rocky, which had a simple beauty about it, to, ah, rubbish. If I ever make a "Crocodile" Dundee III full of Russian villains against the free world, or with Dundee takin' to people with chain saws, then I hope someone puts me in a rubber room.

[Q] Playboy: Following that line of reasoning, we must assume that "Crocodile" Dundee accurately reflects your values.

[A] Hogan: To a certain extent. I'm not as wholesome and pure as Crocodile Dundee. Perhaps nobody is. Mick doesn't have a deep, dark secret. And that's probably what makes him what he is. He's as open as a book. He's as open as we'd all like to be. He's pure of heart and takes everyone on face value.

[Q] Playboy: Don't you think, despite your family-movie instincts, that blood and gore and adventure have been what American audiences want?

[A] Hogan: I don't know whether it's what they've wanted or the diet they were served; so many movies were catered to the teenage market that it used to be all you could get. For anyone under 20, American movies were high school's-a-drag dramas and karate-chopping messengers from hell. Adult movies were about middle-aged people dying of cancer or marriages breaking up or financial disasters. I remember thinking, There's gotta be something in between. There was a dearth of grown-up leading men; no one filled those roles that Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart once did, particularly comedy roles. The only grownups doing hero roles are Clint Eastwood and Charley Bronson, and they're not getting any laughs.

[Q] Playboy: Did you consider any other titles for the movie?

[A] Hogan: Honestly? [Smiles] Only one: Buffalo Jones. It was a working title. The Jones was because of Indiana Jones, and the Buffalo was because of some scenes that were once in the script about going on a buffalo chase. It's quite a spectacular thing to watch. You run them down, grab 'em by the tail, run up and tie them and throw them over. But the scenes were too hard to film and the whole idea went by the wayside. Also, the Buffalo name was wrong, because it implies a big sort of oxy bloke. You expect to see someone like Refrigerator Perry. And that's not me.

[Q] Playboy: Your image is that of a pretty competent fellow, both as Crocodile Dundee and as Paul Hogan. What can't you do?

[A] Hogan: Well, I'd starve to death if I had to cook for myself. I'm barely capable of making a cup of tea or pouring a cup of coffee. I also can't sing and I wish I could. I also can't type, but I don't want to. Anyway, I've always believed that if you've got something to say, someone else will type it in. Fortunately, I don't have to do much. It's that old thing of if you're not good at something, avoid it. That's the luxury of writing your own parts. I've no big scenes where Crocodile Dundee has an emotional breakdown and bursts into tears. I haven't experienced that, I probably can't do it and so I don't put it in the script. No ballet dancing, either. However, I do have me swingin' through the air, doing somersaults, thumpin' people and swimming. I can do all that.

[Q] Playboy: Besides the "Crocodile" movies, you've become almost as well known for your various pitches--from enticing U.S. visitors to Australia to hawking commercial products. How long did it take you to get tired of hearing people say, "Hey, Paul, slip an extra shrimp on the barbie"?

[A] Hogan: About two weeks. I've also heard "Anyhow, have a Winfield" about half a million times in Australia. I hear "Have another Foster's" when I go to England.

[Q] Playboy: Since you've written many of those tag lines yourself, do you deliberately go for a memorable hook?

[A] Hogan: No, not really. Quite often, they're accidental. I did know in the first "Crocodile" movie that the line "That's not a knife; that's a knife" would go into the language. And, indeed, I hear that a million times. On the other hand, it's no big deal. It doesn't turn me into a living legend like Don Johnson or Joan Collins. I'm just the "shrimp on the barbie" guy.

[Q] Playboy: Are you planning to continue doing ads?

[A] Hogan: No. I've had success at it, but I don't want to go down as a great salesman.

[Q] Playboy: Well, what do you put on the barbie?

[A] Hogan: Oh, usually Australian beef sausages. Sausages and steak. Not often shrimps. I like them as they are.

[Q] Playboy: Raw?

[A] Hogan: No, steamed! The only things that eat shrimp raw are fish.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you take on the selling of Australia in the first place?

[A] Hogan: Well, the first reason was, I didn't like being mistaken for a Pom--a Brit--when I was in America. That always annoyed the shit out of me. And Americans' knowin' nothing about Australia, that's another reason.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you like the cute koala commercials?

[A] Hogan: I was embarrassed by them. They were pointless and boring. Yet [with an adman's lilt], I thought Australia was a terrific place for an American. My partner, John, said, "You should be sellin' a country, not a product." It was his idea. And then I met the incoming minister of tourism, who mentioned to me that the tourist industry--Americans going to Australia--was practically nonexistent and said, "Would you give us a hand?" And I said yes.

[Q] Playboy: And you give your fees to charity?

[A] Hogan: [Nervous laughter] That's all quiet. [Pauses] How do you know I got paid at all? It's not recorded anywhere.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a problem with that? You haven't taken any fees for yourself.

[A] Hogan: No, I haven't. But nobody was supposed to know what happened to those fees. It came out only when some opposition politician wanted to bring up in parliament that I'd swiped [the money]. He'd read in the papers that I was supposed to have done it for free and said he believed I had received this tremendous amount instead--which was about five percent of what I'd charge to sell beer.

[A] The original proposition I put to the government was that if it put together a first-class campaign, I'd do the commercials for nothing to get it off the ground. I basically said, If you're gonna spend $3,000,000 on it and give me $1,000,000, I won't be in it. If you put $6,000,000 into it, then I'll do it for nothing. I explained that they weren't dealing with some broken-down second-rate presenter who just wanted to get his hand into the government coffers, because, quite frankly, I'd rather not deal with the government. [Pauses] But, yes, I did get the money off them and I did put it to good use. I didn't keep it. There were several reasons.

[Q] Playboy: For instance?

[A] Hogan: I wanted to pull some people into gear for taking the wrong attitude. I was telling some government and advertising people to not fuck around. I felt that I was being treated as if I owed them! It was suggested that "Crocodile" Dundee worked only because of the ads. But those bloody ads ran in only four American states. It was because the movie was such a universal hit that it piggybacked everything else--tourist and commercial ads. They got such a free ride out of the movie that I really resent anyone in tourism suggesting that they've done good by me.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that you're responsible for the Australian tourist boom?

[A] Hogan: Oh, to a great extent. I don't know if it would have been as effective if the minister had used someone else. A lot of experts believed that the way to sell Australia was to promote the falling dollar. I said, "Do you honestly believe that somewhere right now in America, a guy is going home to his wife to say, 'You know that holiday in Switzerland we've been planning for years? Well, the Australian dollar has just dropped another three cents. So we're going there!'" Families plan holidays, and aside from a place like Tokyo being so grotesquely expensive, costs don't come into most conversations.

[Q] Playboy: You're a booster for Australia when you're in the States, but you're not always as reverent about it at home, are you?

[A] Hogan: Nah. Australia is celebrating its bicentennial, which won't mean much to you, but it's the country's 200th birthday. And that whole situation needs sendin' up.

[Q] Playboy: Australian films in recent years have been heavily into nostalgia about Australia's history, haven't they?

[A] Hogan: Yeah. That's why no one goes to see 'em. That's why I avoided that like the plague. Nobody really cares what boring things happened in Australia. A hundred years ago, nothing much happened.

[Q] Playboy: Except that the hero and horse always die. Why? What does it say about the Australian character that so many recent movies have been about wars and tragedies?

[A] Hogan: That the wrong people are making movies. A lot of the people who got into film making should probably be driving buses. It would say something about the Australian character only if the public were flocking to the films where the hero always dies. But if we keep making those tragedy-torn films and the public stays away, then we're not reflecting Australian tastes at all. We're reflecting the opinions of a handful of film makers. So we've got this false image of Australia.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you call Australian directors wankers [masturbators]?

[A] Hogan: No, no. Let's get it straight once and for all. There are a lot of wankers in the Australian film industry, and after I said that, two or three of those wankers jumped up and said, "Well, what about Peter Weir and Bruce Beresford?" naming ones who were successful and weren't wankers. They were hiding their own lack of talent behind people who succeeded. I never, at any stage, said they're all wankers. But there are a lot of wankers there who shouldn't be allowed to make films, shouldn't have access to public money.

[Q] Playboy: You mean because the government in Australia supports film making with tax dollars?

[A] Hogan: Yeah. To get into this thing of money being allocated by a government body is ridiculous, because anyone who's got any real creative entertainment talent is not sitting on some government board. They're not working for the government for wages. I told Phillip Adams, the chairman of the film commission [and interviewer of Hogan for his first appearance in the Australian edition of Playboy], "You and your people are wankers. You take government money; you indulge yourself with it; you make failed movies." And now they're talking about setting up some authority who will decide what films will be made and who will get the money. Well, who are the people they're setting up? People with records as failed film producers! They're going to sit up there and decide whether this kid gets money to develop his script or one of their friends gets money to make their crummy movie.

[Q] Playboy: How much of Australia have you actually seen?

[A] Hogan: Nearly all of it. There are some areas up in the far northwest where I haven't been, but neither has anyone else.

[Q] Playboy: Where do you go for your vacations?

[A] Hogan: Tend to stay home. Used to go to England a lot until I got too well known. Then I started to come over here, to the U.S. I'd bring my whole tribe over and we'd go to Disneyland. But now it's gotten too hard here, too.

[Q] Playboy: Women are among your most ardent fans, and you've emerged as a kind of sex symbol. How do you feel about the comparisons to Cary Grant?

[A] Hogan: [Embarrassed] It's fine to be compared to Cary Grant, who was so suave, so sophisticated----

[Q] Playboy: So tall----

[A] Hogan: Yeah. And a very thick neck. He was someone who could be a leading man and still be funny, and who got better as he got older. But me as Cary Grant?

[Q] Playboy: Can millions of women be wrong?

[A] Hogan: Well, God bless 'em. But the idea of sex symbol has become so distorted. In Australia, it means the latest young star on The Young Doctors or some soap, and it's almost a kiss of death. If some kid has got his TV work as a sex symbol, you know that within six months, he'll be unemployed. And that he has no sex appeal at all. [Laughs] All those things about comparisons to Cary Grant, Frank Capra--they all come from experts later, not from me beforehand. I'm just a short Clint Eastwood with a sense of humor.

[Q] Playboy: Have you had women running after you?

[A] Hogan: Within reason. Yeah. I went through all that in 1973, when I started. I was 33. And, yes, I was a sex symbol for a year or two. But then I was around so much that everyone got used to me. And also, when you're funny and you do a comedy show, people don't tend to associate that with being a sex symbol. I'm not the type that teenage girls flutter over, but women have never found me repulsive and I don't mind it. And because I'm not a smoldering sex symbol, blokes don't get their nose out of joint.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't part of the attraction that women somehow feel both intrigued and safe with you?

[A] Hogan: Yeah. It makes me sort of a boring, stodgy romantic, rather than a sizzling sex symbol. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Speaking of sex, you showed the bare bottom of your co-star, Linda Kozlowski, in the original "Crocodile" Dundee. And you did a little body baring yourself. Between you and Linda, who would you say showed more skin?

[A] Hogan: The crocodile. [Laughs] The feminists sort of leaped on the movie and said, "They shouldn't have showed that girl's butt." I said everyone had seen more of my skin than hers. It was a totally nonsexist film. But they didn't see that.

[Q] Playboy: Was it realistic to show Linda arriving in the outback looking for Dundee wearing a T-shirt and no bra? Is that realistic costuming for an American stranger walking into an Australian rural pub?

[A] Hogan: If someone has that good a figure, yes. No one wears bras up there at that age, and she's of the era that went through the no-bra thing. In Australia, the ones wearing bras are probably over 40 or under 20. But in that 20-to-40 bracket, they went right through the revolution and just don't wear them. A lot should, you know. But that's it. It wasn't even designed to be titillatin'.

[Q] Playboy: On the other hand, you also had your difficult moments. Can you describe the intricacies of doing your first nude bathtub scene?

[A] Hogan: [Laughs] Well, that was exploitation of the male body. That's the kind of thing the feminists should have been jumpin' on. Degradin'! But I did keep me hat over me vital parts.

[Q] Playboy: How does your wife handle all the interest by the ladies and the media?

[A] Hogan: She shrugs it off. We've had a rule since I started in TV that I'd keep a private life, and I've sort of managed to do that. No cameras allowed inside my front fence; I don't do interviews with my wife or my kids. And that's the way I like to keep it.

[A] You know, if a Peepin' Tom asked you some of the stuff a tabloid reporter gets away with, you'd hit him in the face. You've got a pen in your hand, that makes you entitled to be a Peepin' Tom? And where do you draw the line on how much of your private life people should know?

[Q] Playboy: Since Australia is the home of tabloid king Rupert Murdoch, does the gossip press go after you?

[A] Hogan: Not much of the snide gutter press does. I don't really have a deep, dark past people can dig up. Everything I've done, questionable or not, has been well documented. [Pauses] Also, since I had my own television show, if someone fired a shot at me, I could shoot back. Press conferences at home were often conducted in terror, because they all knew damn well that if they asked me a dumb question, I'd let the whole world know it was a dumb question, how dumb they were to ask it, and get a laugh, too. They had to think twice. There has always been this undercurrent of people wanting me to succeed because I represented the average workin' stiff to a certain extent. So if a journalist wrote that I was no good, he was also saying that every boilermaker and fitter and turner out there is no good.

[Q] Playboy: Are you treated as a kind of folk hero?

[A] Hogan: I'm not a folk hero in America. In Australia, a country that's so short of folk heroes--which is another reason I made "Crocodile" Dundee--I probably do fit into that category. But I try not to be too tall a poppy that's just askin' to be cut down. I'm an ironbark tree: an ugly, gnarled old tree that you can't cut down, that you can't burn down. A bush fire goes through and floods come, but the ironbark tree still stands. If you hit it with an ax, it bounces back and it'll hit you in the face. If you attack me, that's what I do. And I did. I used my television show to criticize everybody.

[Q] Playboy: That period of your life has become legendary: how, as a rigger on the Sydney Harbor Bridge, you accepted your mates' dare to appear on a TV talent show in 1972 posing as a knife thrower. From there, you became the proverbial overnight star. All these years later, do you still feel like a rigger?

[A] Hogan: I guess there's some of that, though I wasn't born to be a rigger, either. But some things don't change. I guess that's what gave me an edge when I started on television. So many people who are involved in television--writers, producers, directors--never watch it. They spend all their time in board meetings or being in the television industry. But until I was 32 years old, my only contact with show business was sittin' home watching Archie Bunker or Star Trek or Bonanza--probably 60 percent of our television is American. I didn't watch to see how it was directed. I watched for entertainment.

[Q] Playboy: And you really think you can still speak for the average guy?

[A] Hogan: Yeah. Don't forget; I never stood in the bar and listened to what people were saying. I stood in the bar and talked. Even when I was a rigger, I wasn't gatherin' opinions; I was givin' 'em. That's not changed.

[A] Y' know, I was born sort of average. I've still got a lot of natural blue-collar values, because I was a rigger. I never had aspirations of getting into the entertainment industry. I grew up, had a wife and four kids and appeared to be set in that rut--I might have become a foreman at most someday, or maybe got my own milk run. What was unusual was to switch so radically at 32.

[Q] Playboy: It has been said that you have a very high I.Q.--about 140. Is that why you were reportedly a troublesome kid?

[A] Hogan: That's inaccurate. I do have a strange I.Q. It was 140 in one test and 180 in another. Reporters who've dug back say my schoolmates remember my problems at school, my constant arguing with teachers. And it's true, I did, as a small kid, constantly question everything. They said I was a child prodigy, but I wasn't.

[A] But I did have something that confounded the I.Q. board. There was something wrong with the way I thought. One side of the brain had an I.Q. they couldn't quite calculate and the other side was normal. So at school, I was a bright student at the top of the class who would suddenly end up 34th. I wasn't cut out to be a student. By nature, I was a larrikin kid. I was in trouble a lot. My favorite subject has sport. So I had these confrontations with the teachers.

[Q] Playboy: You were a rebel.

[A] Hogan: Yeah. I left school at 15. I didn't want to be a swat. But they even pursued me after I left, saying I should be a lawyer. But I had found work as a swimming-pool attendant, which was really a good job, until I moved on to something else.

[Q] Playboy: By now, you must be used to some pretty big leaps. Going from being a star in Australia to being one in the U.S. must have been jarring.

[A] Hogan: Well, I do get a kick out of it. But more jarring than the original change? I was makin' $100 a week on the bridge, still travelin' to work on the subway, yet causin' a big stir on TV. To go through that--to be a rigger who is becoming famous at the same time--was a very Rockyesque experience. After that, to become famous in England, then Germany, then the U.S., was comparatively minor.

[Q] Playboy: Minor?

[A] Hogan: Think about it. Being a TV star in one country is no different from being a TV star in ten countries. To go from movie star to rock-and-roll singer to being elected president.... They're all just transitions. But none is as weird as goin' from regular, nine-to-five Joe Rigger, married, with four kids, to TV star in a matter of weeks. Nothing I ever do will be that radical again.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think would have happened to you if you'd stayed on that bridge in Sydney?

[A] Hogan: Oh, I might have jumped off. I was an angry young man. Round about the time I got off the bridge, I was frustrated, short of temper, with a cutting, sardonic wit. I really wasn't that nice a fellow. It was bitterness. I was driftin' from job to job and getting no feedback or satisfaction. I was doing something that I hated eight hours a day just to put bread on the table.

[Q] Playboy: How would you describe your predominant emotional state today?

[A] Hogan: Unemotional. Leaning toward happiness, I guess. I'm boringly sane.

[Q] Playboy: Are you uncomfortable showing emotions?

[A] Hogan: Yeah, sort of.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Hogan: Well, look at Crocodile Dundee. He's not exactly a ball of emotional turmoil. Sometimes--I hope--you can see what he's thinking on the screen. But he's not inclined to jump up and down or scream or burst into tears. No doubt he's like that because I'm like that.

[Q] Playboy: When have you been overjoyed?

[A] Hogan: Good question. I don't remember ever being as excited as I've seen other people be. But I don't seem as depressed, either. I'm basically happy. [Smiles] Any day that I'm in good health and the sun shines. There's hardly a day since 1973 that I haven't felt that way.

[Q] Playboy: Considering the heights you've scaled since 1973, how can you be sure your tastes are still those of the average guy?

[A] Hogan: All I know, and I don't dwell on it too much, is that if I think something is going to be funny, or if I really like or dislike something, most people must, too. So I must be a natural-born common man. It's not something I work on. It's just there. For instance, in Australia, whenever Channel Nine puts on a new show, they ring up my place and say, "How's it going?" I can save them the cost of a survey. If my wife and I and at least three of the kids are watchin' a show, I'll say, "You got a real winner on your hands." If it's only my youngest son or my daughter, I'll say, "Well...."

[Q] Playboy: Let's try out your gut reactions to a few popular topics. Game?

[A] Hogan: OK.

[Q] Playboy: American commercials. Are there any you admire?

[A] Hogan: No. I don't think the standard of commercials here is very high. A lot of them are well made, but they all sort of pitch at the one level. They're all Crazy Eddies.

[Q] Playboy: What about American TV in general?

[A] Hogan: TV is an easy way to pick up on the culture of a country. From what people watch, you can tell what the community is like. If you look at clever shows like Barney Miller or The Cosby Show or Cheers, and you can say, "This is the most popular comedy show," then that's a good sign: Most of the people in this country must be reasonably intelligent. But still, I'm amazed at some of the things Americans laugh at.

[Q] Playboy: For example?

[A] Hogan: If a show's really awful and cheap and nasty--well, a show like Benny Hill, for instance--if it's the most popular one in the country, then you worry about that country. [Laughs] There's an awful lot of people here who just want to see endless tit jokes and nothing else.

[Q] Playboy: Benny Hill's show was often compared to yours. Did you really object to it?

[A] Hogan: The comparisons did annoy me. But Benny Hill just does harmless-Charley sort of smutty nonsense. Runs around chasing girls in suspender [garter] belts. There was a big cry from the feminist movement, I think, when his show came to America from England, about how degrading it was to women. I just saw it again the other night, and it was immediately followed by women's wrestling. There were these really butch birds, in sort of commando gear, beating up on harem dancers and girls in bikinis. And when they were pinned to the mat, they'd open their legs and writhe. And I thought, This is a program that educates the morons in this country to think that if you brutalize a woman, if you beat her up, she'll drop to the ground with her legs parted and sort of writhe seductively. Yet the same silly minds who sat there and condemned harmless, poor, silly Benny Hill for insulting women probably support women's wrestling because men have wrestling, so that's equality.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think TV plays too dominant a role in America?

[A] Hogan: I think America is very image conscious. You almost feel as if people on the street think of themselves as being on camera. Even in the way they cross the road. When you get on a bus, the driver gives a performance.

[A] I did a TV thing once where I went into the street with a camera. In Australia, half the people would say "No comment" and rush away from the camera. But here in the U.S., everybody--from a wino to a grandmother--has an opinion. Quite often, they don't make sense, but they love looking at the camera and talking as if they were on Johnny Carson's show. I wish some of the people at home had some of the American confidence and exuberance but not so much.

[A] Sometimes, I think we should drag the whole Australian population around the world--to America and to England, in particular--and learn from both, then go back and get it right. England, on the negative side, is such a class society. It frowns upon success. There, you should either be born rich or be born poor--but keep your place. If you're born to riches and waste half of it during your life, you've done well. In America, if you start with nothing and you become a huge success, well, then you're admired. But sometimes you're admired when all you've really done is rob a lot of people.

[Q] Playboy: What can Americans learn from Australians?

[A] Hogan: You can learn to relax. There's no atmosphere of tension in Australia. Maybe it's because there are only 16,000,000 of us on a continent the same size as your country. But there's more reality to Australians. There are a lot of Americans who, if you go to their home, you feel are performing a little bit for you. They say all the right things and the nice things. It's better than being abused, I guess. But you don't feel when you've left the house that you know them. If they've said, "Have a nice day," well, they don't really give a shit what kind of day you're gonna have--especially at McDonald's. In Australia, if someone said, "Jesus, I wouldn't wear that shirt if I was you--it's a terrible color," you wouldn't take offense. There's a day-to-day straightforwardness in Australia that's missing in the U.S.

[Q] Playboy: Yet the two peoples are said to be a lot alike.

[A] Hogan: Of course, we're both the new countries. You're 350 years old, we're 200. Both were basically started from the rubbish of Europe. It was all the vagabonds and the rebels and criminals. Only ours were the ones who got caught. You Americans are the ones who escaped.

[Q] Playboy: Let's run a few more quick comparisons. Does Australia have a problem with drugs as America does?

[A] Hogan: Oh, we do have now. But we've always been quite a few years behind. When I was a kid, nobody smoked dope. And even up to ten years ago, you didn't find heroin and cocaine in Sydney.

[Q] Playboy: But now it's spreading?

[A] Hogan: Yeah. I'm told the smack is creeping into Sydney, though I've never met anyone who had anything to do with it. Still, drugs haven't gotten to be a dirty word there--not yet, I mean. So when people talk about Australia being like America in the Fifties, they mean without all those problems. You know, Richie Cunningham's Happy Days. Although, y' know, we had our Fifties in our Fifties.

[Q] Playboy: What were your Sixties like?

[A] Hogan: The same as they were here. Peace, love and brown rice. And Bob Dylan, God bless you and all that.

[Q] Playboy: How do Australians look back on the Vietnam war? Our countries fought side by side.

[A] Hogan: Yeah, we never miss a war--which is very strange for a country always talking about peace and nuclear disarmament. We're the only country in the world that hasn't missed a war since the Crimean. We were in World War One to battle the dreaded Hun. We didn't know who they were or where the Hun came from, only that they weren't going to conquer Australia. We weren't even on their map, and they probably wondered who the guys with the funny hats were. But because we're so far away from the rest of you, it was a chance for our boys stuck on farms to travel and see the world. We were also very good at war, because we lived on horseback and hunted for our food. When we got to Europe, we got a shilling a day and three meals, and all we had to do was shoot people. It was a picnic.

[A] Same with Vietnam. Your poor kids were coming from New York and Los Angeles and being dropped into the jungle on the other side of the world--a place Australians used to go for holidays. Consequently, our kill rate was seven times better than anyone's except the Viet Cong.

[Q] Playboy: Did you go to Vietnam?

[A] Hogan: I tried to. I was too old and married, with three kids. So I was in the supplementary reserve. But I wanted to go, because I'd never been outside the country. I got to go to New Guinea. I was a demolition expert. I was of more use training the younger guys who did go to Vietnam.

[A] I do not regret I didn't go, but at that age, 26 or 27, I thought it would have been great. Y' know, we could never understand why America turned on the kids when they came home. We'd see the crucifying of those guys on television--the spitting on 'em--well, we didn't do that at home at first. But we gradually started to copy it, because we saw enough of it on television.

[Q] Playboy: People have also compared Australia's problems with its aborigines to America's race problems. Do you think your treatment of aborigines is racist?

[A] Hogan: It's not a racism problem. The only reason this seems like a black/white issue is because the aborigines happen to be black. It's more like your problem with Indians. You took their land off 'em and they want it back. The aborigines are our Indians. We took the land and they have these constant protests for land rights. Now they've got back 12 percent of the country--which is not too bad, because they're only one percent of the population.

[Q] Playboy: Are they pleased with that?

[A] Hogan: What they want is to be acknowledged as the original owners of the land and probably for all of us convicts-born to pay them rent forever. I don't think we should pay rent forever, just as I don't think everyone in America should move out and give it back to the Indians.

[Q] Playboy: As Australia's Mr. Everyman, you used to talk often with Australian prime minister Robert Hawke. What were your conversations about?

[A] Hogan: We don't talk that much now. Once, I think he might have perceived me as a threat. We talked about the state of the nation--the kind of stuff serious politicians always talk about. Mainly, he wanted to hear my opinions, because he knew he'd hear 'em eventually on television, anyway.

[Q] Playboy: What about the rumors of your own political ambitions?

[A] Hogan: I don't deny them. I've always leaned toward benevolent dictatorship. I've often alluded to it. Been offered support. But I'm not too interested in being part of the party machine.

[Q] Playboy: We hear about Australian demonstrations against nuclear weapons. Do you believe in the possibility of disarmament?

[A] Hogan: No, but it'll gradually scale down. Americans are more caught up with nukes than we are, because we don't have 'em. See, somewhere along the line, you've got to realize that Russians are people, too. Somewhere over there is a wife cooking the beans, a kid doing his homework, a guy mowing the lawn. He doesn't want to disappear in a puff of smoke, just as Americans don't. Unless you're stupid, you can't think of Russia as your traditional enemy; of everyone there wearing gray suits and red berets and marching like storm troopers. There's grandmas and little kids and babies and rock and roll.

[Q] Playboy: One thing American men are experiencing lately is a certain amount of bashing by women. Is that also going on down under?

[A] Hogan: Yeah, oddly enough. For a country that's traditionally male-chauvinist--always has been, still is to a certain extent--Australia was also one of the first countries in which women got the vote. The women's liberation movement virtually started there when Germaine Greer wrote The Female Eunuch. Even the women's original marching song, I Am Woman, was by an Australian, Helen Reddy. Also, the first women tradesmen were in Australia, though mainly because all the young men got killed off in World War One.

[A] But Australia is still a male-chauvinist bastion. And most of the women sort of like it that way. [Laughs] They run the country the old-fashioned way.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think American men have something to learn from their Aussie counterparts?

[A] Hogan: Yeah. Don't fall for the sympathetic-wimp syndrome. Do the natural thing. It's probably something you can't tell anybody. You can't say, "Act like a man," if he doesn't know. I just roll along, even if they think I'm a chauvinist. That may be one reason a lot of women are seeing "Crocodile" Dundee. If you're a woman, at least you know who Mick Dundee is. You know he isn't going to come dancing out of the closet at night with your underwear on. But he will respect and protect a woman. It's his role. And therefore, to a certain extent, a woman will be capable of twisting him around her little finger. A lot of women sort of like the idea now of never lifting anything heavy in their lives and having men open doors for them--having a man for a slave.

[Q] Playboy: So that's your answer to the question What do women really want?

[A] Hogan: A lot of the liberation thing backfired because women don't really want equality; they want superiority. And in a way, they had it. They did. This is a corny example, but it's a classic. A woman pulls over with a flat tire and goes, "Oh, dear!" And some poor man pulls up and says, "What's up, love? Here, I'll fix that for you." And he gets out and he barks the skin off his knuckles and gets dirty and sweaty and she says, "I couldn't have done it without you," and off she drives. She's happy and he's happy.

[Q] Playboy: Is AIDS having as great an impact in Australia as in the U.S.?

[A] Hogan: We're not as obsessed with it as you are, because we don't have as much of it, I guess. It's still thought of as sort of a homo's disease in Australia. But I guess, as it spreads, the fear will definitely affect people. Anyway, parties aren't the same as they used to be. There's a vibe. [Grimaces]

[Q] Playboy: What's your take on American beer?

[A] Hogan: Well, it's not legendary around the world. I saw a beer someone said was judged the best beer in America. Well, that's sort of like being judged the best steak in Ethiopia. Of course, it depends on what you're used to. Australians think they make the best beer; Germans think they do. English and American beers tend to be dismissed by international beer drinkers.

[Q] Playboy: How much beer can you drink in one sitting?

[A] Hogan: Not much. I'm an average drinker. It's because I do beer commercials that people tend to think I'm a booze artist. I'm not a beer swiller at all. I just like a beer occasionally.

[Q] Playboy: Although, on occasion, you've gone beyond that. We're thinking of a time we heard about in London....

[A] Hogan: It's interesting, that. When I was in London a while back, we'd been filming all day--I think it was a Foster's commercial--and there was a party for the crew that night. Got full of ink and went to bed. Woke up a few hours later numb down my left side and my fingers tingling. I thought: stroke. I thought I was dying. I remember lyin' there in me hotel bed thinking, You can't complain, Hoges, you've had a good dig. I thought, Well, the wife and kids are covered; the trust account'll take care of them. Traveler's checks. I remembered I'd put them under the cupboard or somewhere and they mightn't find them when they found the body. There are a lot of things you've gotta think about when you're dyin'. I got up to get the checks and I was standin' up OK. Then I looked in the mirror and saw this dirty big red line right down my face and body. What had happened was I'd collapsed into bed with me head and arm hangin' over the dressing table, cutting off my circulation. I was right again in a few minutes. I was bloody glad I didn't go and wake everyone up.

[Q] Playboy: Despite all the easy performing you do, there are those who say you're really a shy, awkward fellow who doesn't let down his guard. Now that we're about done, do you agree with that assessment?

[A] Hogan: Well, I don't think I'm awkward. The only awkward thing I did was swing into a wall instead of a window yesterday, and that's because I was sliding down a nylon rope. And shy? No, I'm not really shy. I'll talk under water with a mouth full of marbles, as this tape will show you. I talk, all right. But that's it. You're doin' your job; I'm doin' mine. If I run into you at dinner tonight, I won't be tellin' you about my last project or how good I was and how I got a standing ovation when I did Othello or something like that. [Pauses] Nah. We'll probably just have a couple of beers.

"In movies, you don't necessarily have to take a chain saw to people to straighten them out."