20 Questions: John Larroquette

Actor John Larroquette is best known not for the many possible misspellings and mispronunciations of his surname (it's pronounced lar-o-ket) but for his pernicious portrayal of Assistant D.A. Dan Fielding on "Night Court." The role has earned him so many Emmys (four) that he declines to let himself be nominated for a fifth. Speaking of fifths, for many now-forgettable years, Larroquette downed great volumes of the liquid variety. He quit that method of self-destruction and since has done work in films ("Stripes," "Blind Date" and, currently, "Madhouse"), TV and on stage, and occasional noodling over novels and screenplays on his home computer. He also collects books. So what is it about this man for all seasons that allows him the luxury of playing a sleaze while retaining his likability? While talking in Larroquette's trailer on the set of "Madhouse," Contributing Editor David Rensin thought he overheard a clue: "This is the sexiest man in the world," a robust blonde visitor said with absolute certainty. "All women want to fuck him."

1.

[Q] Playboy: Your bio lists a broad range of credits, from Baa Baa Black Sheep to Stripes, from Kojak to Twilight Zone—The Movie, from Night Court to Blind Date. What do you imagine goes through a casting director's mind when he says, "Get me John Larroquette"?

[A] Larroquette: Hmm. Now that we've lost Pinky Lee, and Bert's so busy with Win, Lose or Draw, the next image that comes to his mind is this flat mug of mine. "We need a mug! Is there someone in town who has a good mug?" And they think of Larroquette. The success of Night Court has helped, plus my being a journeyman actor. And before that, I suppose I played a sort of young, confused neighbor kind of person. In 1975, I had a short-lived experience with George Peppard on a series called Doctors' Hospital that lasted only thirteen episodes. I was one of those young, confused interns who gave compassionate looks to terminal patients and filled Peppard in on the complications when he walked into the room: "Left hemispheric contusion with a subliminal contraception and a subdural hematoma." I thought the last was a diving device, invented by Jacques Cousteau. In the end, it all boils down to the five stages of an actor's career: "Who?" "Get me John Larroquette." "Get me a John Larroquette type." "Get me a young John Larroquette." "Who?" Fortunately, I seem to be in the second phase, at the moment.

2.

[Q] Playboy: What do you like most about your face? Least? When does it work best for you?

[A] Larroquette: I like my nose least and my eyes best—though it's tough to look around my nose to find them. I feel like a rhino sometimes. My nose is too bulbous and lacks definition. Perhaps it's because it was almost cut off in 1980, during the shooting of Stripes. I ran down a hall and hit a door that was supposed to open. When I hit it, it didn't. There was a window in the door, and my head went through it and I just about cut my nose off. That changed its shape. My face worked best when I was a kid, because I could summon a dog or baby-seal look that made people say, "We can't kick him again. It's just pitiful."

3.

[Q] Playboy: The name Larroquette is both a tough spell and a tongue twister. What are some of the more memorable ways in which it has been botched?

[A] Larroquette: The most common mistake when people write it is to leave out the first R. I'm sure it was originally LaRoquette. A teacher in high school pronounced it "lar-OK," on the theory that it's Chevrolet, not Chevrolette. I was too stupid to complain. I've also heard "laro-kwet" and "laro-ka-tetty." "Larocutey" is also one of my favorites. One that I actually used for quite a while was "la-rocket." Johnny LaRocket. I'll be interested to see how you spell these.

4.

[Q] Playboy: You've won four Emmys in a row, from 1985 to 1988, for playing Dan Fielding on Night Court. Where do you keep the awards? Are you nervous about a possible fifth?

[A] Larroquette: They're all together, like the Rockettes, on the mantelpiece. I'd never seen statues above a fireplace before, and I thought, Gee, that seems like a real interesting idea. Right next to the four girls, I have a picture of two derelicts on an old Pepsi bus-stop bench; filthy, sitting there smoking cigarettes, bottles sticking out of their pockets. The yin and yang of my life. As for number five, that's a fairly complicated issue. To be considered for an Emmy nomination in the performing categories, one has to submit one's own work; in other words, I'd submit a Night Court episode I thought really showcased me. I didn't do that this year. I didn't, selfishly, want to hope I'd win again and have somebody else's name announced. After the first one, I thought the odds for two in a row were OK; it has happened. I was sure I wouldn't win the third. I thought Tom Poston had it. I was convinced the fourth one would never happen. It gets to be like DiMaggio: How many innings can you go? I thought it would be nice just to retire undefeated, with a streak.

5.

[Q] Playboy: Justine Bateman told us that she never wore underwear when she was doing Family Ties. Got any Night Court secrets you'd care to spill?

[A] Larroquette: Well, I do wear underwear on Night Court. I guess the only difference is that it's Marsha Warfield's.

6.

[Q] Playboy: What's Dan Fielding's pre-bed toilette?

[A] Larroquette: He probably spends a lot of time giving himself a good pedicure, getting all the day's cheese out of his feet from pounding that legal beat. Talks to himself a lot in the mirror before to psych himself up: "You're the best, babe, the absolute best. Hey, she's yours, absolutely yours." Probably has a few oysters. [Pauses] Hmm. New York doesn't have great raw ones, so I suppose he has tins of smoked oysters in his bathroom cabinet. Finally, a line of musk down his spine to try to arouse the animal in him.

7.

[Q] Playboy: Describe unctuous.

[A] Larroquette: A person who has just stepped on a skunk and whose hands are covered in olive oil.

8.

[Q] Playboy: Betray Richard "Bull" Moll's love secrets.

(continued on page 164) John Larroquette (continued from page 105)

[A] Larroquette: A good supply of artichoke hearts and a dark and stormy night. [Smiles] I can see you want me to explain. He uses the artichoke hearts as an aphrodisiac. It's an ancient English custom. And the dark and stormy night is because that's probably the light he would feel best in.

9.

[Q] Playboy: What sexual warnings did you get at Catholic school that you've since discovered were valid?

[A] Larroquette: Before I answer that, let me comb the hair on my palm. Unfortunately, I won't really know if they were right about most of the stuff until I die. Grammar school was all nuns, and we never talked about sex. They didn't even seem much like women to me, so it never entered my mind that they would know anything about it. When I got to Holy Cross, which was all Holy Cross brothers, they concentrated on violence more than sex—by demonstrating the best way to bruise an arm or to tweak an ear, or to cause welts to form on a ten-year-old boy's throat. The hand, not the ruler, was the weapon of choice. I had a math teacher who with the nails of his ring finger and thumb would grab the smallest amount of skin he could on your ear lobe and just start squeezing and asking [in a whiny voice], "Why didn't you do your math homework? That's not very good." I'm sure there was some sort of subliminal programing going on: They could tell you anything in that state; it would lie in your unconscious mind, and at some point in your life, you might wind up in a bell tower and wonder why.

10.

[Q] Playboy: You lost your virginity in a New Orleans park, and you had the Heimlich maneuver performed on you in Toronto. Compare and contrast the two.

[A] Larroquette: The difference was that on the former occasion, I was in the rear position, and on the latter, I was in front.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? How did you react when you could get blackened food at places like Denny's?

[A] Larroquette: The answer to your first question is yes. It means that at four o'clock in the morning, you can't go out and get a great po' boy. You can't walk fifty feet from your apartment and be in a place where some one-hundred-year-old black guy is making love to a saxophone, and you can't sit for an hour as the sun comes up and listen to him talk to himself through his reed. It also means being able to take a shower, towel off and stay dry.

I was glad to see the city's unique culture recognized, even though you could get a blackened taco at Taco Bell. But generally, I was very cynical and, at times, violent in restaurants that claimed to be Creole or Cajun. My wife refused to go out with me after a while. This was years ago, when I was still drinking. I would set myself up for it. I would go in and order food to be an asshole. It was my plan to show people how stupid they were. Of course, most of the Cajun food you could get in Los Angeles was like Creole gone MGM. It was all beautiful and pretty—but too spicy. As with Vietnamese food, with Cajun food, the spices are put on the table and you can help yourself. There's something about the water, too. You can't duplicate the mud from the Mississippi, and that really has a lot to do with the way things taste.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Describe a hangover in the most complete terms possible.

[A] Larroquette: It would be like the story of a man waking up in bed, nude, with his eyes resting on his cheekbones, turning over in bed and seeing another man. Trying to push his stomach back down from his throat, he wakes the other man up and says, "I don't know where I am; I don't know why I'm here; I don't know what I did, but I have to ask you a question: Last night, did I perform a homosexual act?" And the other man looks at him and says, "No. Liberace performs a homosexual act. You just sucked my cock."

13.

[Q] Playboy: What's your most memorable line?

[A] Larroquette: In Stripes, when I was looking through my binoculars at the ladies' shower, I said, "I wish I was a loofah." Ivan Reitman, the director, said, "What's a loofah?" Yet it stayed in the film. Now people regularly walk up and say, "I wish I was a loofah." Humor is often just how a word sounds, regardless of its meaning. In a movie I did last year, I even named a secretary Loofah.

14.

[Q] Playboy: You collect rare books. Tell us how you go about it.

[A] Larroquette: I collect mostly modern first editions. I pick particular authors and try to get an entire collection of their works. I find myself buying some stuff just because it may be a good price at the time, or I see something signed that's nice. The person I have a fairly definitive collection of now is Robinson Jeffers—almost all of his stuff in galley form and very rare first forms. A lot of his stuff is so old and wasn't made very well, except the special publications. And it seems like I concentrate—unintentionally—on authors whose names begin with the letter B: Samuel Beckett, Charles Bukowski, Anthony Burgess, William Burroughs. Samuel Beckett is the author who started me collecting. I was doing a play and happened to see a collection of his works by Grove Press, a limited edition they put out in 1970 of all of his stuff.

15.

[Q] Playboy: How do you wake up?

[A] Larroquette: Reluctantly. When I'm first waking up, it's like floating up through that M. C. Escher world. I haven't really emerged from under the surface yet. Anybody could stick ice picks in my nose, and I wouldn't be able to stop him. On location, I always make my wake-up call a half hour before I have to get up. At home, it's easy to wake up when my two-year-old has the first two knuckles of his index finger up my cranium. I roll back over and I just, you know, cuddle myself. I love being in that state of half-consciousness. I spent most of my teenage years that way, so it seems appropriate that I would have a penchant for it. What usually happens is that I will sleep until the last possible minute, and then in a panic jump out of bed, get into the shower, get ready and leave. Even then, I will not really be awake. I prefer to wake up with my wife's coming upstairs in the morning with a huge pot of Darjeeling or English breakfast tea, some scones and strawberry jam and butter, the morning paper and just a little petroleum jelly.

16.

[Q] Playboy: When's the last time you bit the hand that fed you?

[A] Larroquette: Probably as a d. j. in New Orleans in the late Sixties. I didn't have the most well-defined work ethic at the time. I had a job at a radio station, and I decided that I wanted to go to Colorado and I didn't inform them of such. I finished my show, said good night to the relief jock and said, "I'll be in early in the morning, because I have some commercials to do before my show," and the next morning got into my car and left for Colorado. I owe them an apology. So to Joe Costello at WRNO in New Orleans: "Sorry, Joe, I won't be in for my show today."

17.

[Q] Playboy: What would you title your autobiography?

[A] Larroquette: A working title has been I Didn't Mean It, Really. Sid Caesar already took one that was apropos: Where Have I Been? But now I have a new one. I was standing with my wife one night with a group of people—my agent, my publicist, my assistant—who were all females. My wife looked at me and said, "This is when you're happiest, isn't it, when you're surrounded by all your tarts?" So I thought a good title would be Parts and Tarts: One Actor's Life.

18.

[Q] Playboy: How do you measure success on a good day and on a bad day?

[A] Larroquette: On a good day, I measure success by being able to finish the day realizing that I didn't truly offend anyone and I didn't take advantage of anyone, and I gave some part of myself to whatever process I was in that day—be it work or play. And on a bad day, I measure success by the number of zeros on the check.

19.

[Q] Playboy: Describe Dan Fielding's dream date.

[A] Larroquette: Probably a cross between Brigitte Nielsen and an industrial vac.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Your mom was in labor for seventy-two hours when she had you. What do you get her every Mother's Day to say thanks?

[A] Larroquette: New underwear and diamonds.

the sultan of smarm describes the hangover from hell and the pleasures of the industrial vac