20 Questions: Tim Robbins

I would hope the nuns would be proud of the way I turned out," says Tim Robbins of his grade school teachers. Maybe yes--maybe no. He garnered critical acclaim for his portrayal of the morally flawed movie executive Griffin Mill in this year's hit "The Player." On the other hand, the actor's long-standing but clerically unsanctioned relationship with actress Susan Sarandon recently produced a second child.

Son of folksinger Gil Robbins of the Highwaymen ("Michael Row the Boat Ashore), Robbins opted for drama and honed his acting skills in New York City schools and street troupes. He studied theater at UCLA and began a steady rise through television and on to good notices in films such as "Eric the Viking" and "Jacob's Ladder." Until "The Player," he was perhaps best known for his co-starring role with Kevin Costner--and Sarandon--in "Bull Durham."

The low-key Robbins denies that he's now coming into his own, despite heading the stellar cast in Robert Altman's Hollywood satire and making his own debut as writer, director and star of "Bob Roberts," a fictional documentary of a right-wing businessman and folksinger who's running for the U.S. Senate.

Contributing Editor Warren Kalbacker met with Robbins in Greenwich Village, where Robbins grew up and now maintains a home with Sarandon and their children. "Robbins has plenty to say about acting, politics and raising kids. But he warned me he might have to rush off to the hospital," Kalbacker recalls. "The baby was due at any moment and Sarandon could interrupt with a call that she had gone into labor."

hollywood's reluctant player on child rearing, garter belts and the secrets of a good pitch

1.

Playboy: When you recently screened Bob Roberts for a film-industry audience, you sported a sharp double-breasted suit. In addition to being a writer, director and actor, have you assumed the role of a player?

Robbins: Yeah, I was wearing a player's suit. One of the real pluses about The Player was that I actually got to wear nice suits for the first time in a movie. I got to keep all of them, too. Alexander Julian specially made them.

I'm not naive. I am involved in this business. But I don't think I'm a player. The Player himself was actually quite kind. When I was researching the part of Griffin Mill, I was given the opportunity to sit in on a creative meeting with vice presidents of a studio. You have to be on your toes as a player. Even your mistakes are plotted. I've seen some pretty transparent spontaneities. Players never put themselves out on a limb. If they're going to say something critical, they know the majority of the room is going to agree with them--or be pretty sure that the person who wields the power in the room is going to agree. Since The Player is a success, a player will say he loves that film. If The Player had been a failure, you would not hear the end of the derogatory remarks about that movie.

2.

Playboy: You've sipped one brand of mineral water through a couple of lunches. Don't you share Griffin Mill's passion for sampling designer waters?

Robbins: No. A screenwriter lays down a spine and the stronger it is, the more liberties that can be taken with it. In The Player we had a good script and Altman encouraged experiment, oddity and absurdity. A couple of those things, like the water business, grew out of this freedom. How's that for a diplomatic answer? I can't say I thought up too many bits because Michael Tolkin, who wrote The Player, will get angry at me.

3.

Playboy: You've publicly expressed your desire to keep Griffin Mill out of your home. Can you give us the Tim Robbins Hollywood shark repellent?

Robbins: [Laughs] Live in New York. New York is a more honest place to live. Los Angeles is very segregated, depending on how much money you make. You could live there and never have to see any poverty. You get in your car, go to your office in Beverly Hills and go home to Bel Air. You don't see much. In New York, there is no escaping reality. You walk out your door and see the great swirl of humanity, all income levels, all races.

4.

Playboy: How does growing up in Greenwich Village differ from being raised along Main Street?

Robbins: I saw things a lot of kids never see. It was a wonderful circus. My father ran a funky basement club. I heard Dave Van Ronk and Eric Andersen and Livingston Taylor and Seals and Crofts when they were starting out. I saw Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor. I saw intellectuals, freaks, hippies, drag queens. I saw the emergence of a very flamboyant gay culture, Eastern religions, swamis and fake swamis, parades of masks, wild theater. I would love for my kids to see all this. It's healthier for a child to see everything from the start. When I was nine I knew what a junkie was. And I knew that I didn't want to be one. One of the benefits of living in a city is that you know where the bad areas are, you know what to stay away from. You can recognize a con man or a shill right away. I would be much more frightened in the suburbs because the effect is not so immediate. It's much more subversive. How do parents know where the drugs come from in the suburbs? That's why we live here. You shouldn't shelter your children from anything. It encourages more questioning and more intelligence. Your kid sees something and wants to know what it is, and that's positive.

5.

Playboy: As the offspring of hip parents, were you genetically disposed to inheriting liberal political views?

Robbins: I wouldn't consider my parents to be radicals or activists, but they definitely helped shape my opinions. It would be interesting to find out whether my father had an FBI file. I wouldn't be surprised if I had one. I remember my mother coming into my room one morning and saying she wanted me to be very proud of my sister--who was away at college at the time--because she was arrested the day before for protesting the Vietnam war. As a kid, I had been involved with peace demonstrations and day-care centers and women's rights and so on. For a good deal of the time, I was more concerned about getting to my softball game and being a regular kid. I was an altar boy at St. Joseph's. I got to carry the crucifix and the candles. The thing I remember most about it was serving at funerals and trying to crack up the other altar boys. We sneaked Communion wine, we stole unconsecrated hosts. That was a big score. In my life there was a period of apathy and overall disregard for current events. Between Watergate and the election of Reagan, I was much more interested in getting drunk and getting laid than in reading a newspaper.

6.

Playboy: Did the playground sports of the Village help you prepare for your pitching debut in Bull Durham?

Robbins: When I auditioned, the director made me pitch to Costner. I had a good arm. We used to play hardball in an unkempt lot filled with bricks and broken glass. The game would usually end when we broke a window. I played third base. If you play third base, you have to have a rocket. So I knew I could throw fast, but the real trick is the control. What you saw is the best of my pitching. I did get my fastball up to about eighty-five miles per hour. The trick is the curveball. I'm most proud about throwing a real good curve on camera. I had the form, but I never understood that real power-pitching is not in the arm. It's in the legs, it's in the push-off from the mound. That's something I learned from Bull Durham.

7.

Playboy: Did Tim Robbins and Kevin Costner make a good battery?

Robbins: It was a good working relationship. When my pitches were over the plate, he could handle them. But there were a fair amount of balls over his head. It was a super fantasy camp. Neither of us wanted to cheat it. I wanted to throw the perfect strike, and Kevin wanted to hit home runs on his own. During a great deal of that film, the director was trying to rein in our egos. At times he had to tell us, "Guys, this is only a movie. We can fake things here."

8.

Playboy: Was donning a garter belt in Bull Durham a small price to pay for the thrill of throwing a good curveball on camera?

Robbins: I have no opinions about garter belts. If it pleases you to wear them, then go ahead and wear them, male or female. The only reservation I had about doing that scene was the temperature at the time. I was out on the mound at four A.M., pitching basically without any clothes on, and it was very cold.

9.

Playboy: You triumphed at Cannes with a best actor award for The Player, but you didn't linger. Robert Altman read your acceptance speech. Don't you take compliments well?

Robbins: I had about forty interviews a day: "Well, Tim, you're the best actor in Cannes. How does that make you feel?" Well, that question is framed in fantasy and makes me uncomfortable. The cyclone of interviews went nonstop for seven days. We had translators, but there is a whole trip to doing interviews with people who don't speak English. I did some interviews with Italian journalists, and I checked the newspaper the next day--I had someone translate it for me--and I hadn't said anything they quoted me as saying. Not a thing. The best part of the festival for me was walking down the Croisette one night and meeting a couple of film fans from Germany. Just people who were there for the right reason, to see as many films from as many countries as they could. And I probably talked with them for about an hour.

10.

Playboy: Will you join the debate about whether or not Thelma & Louise has a happy ending?

Robbins: It has a happy ending in that it was the ending that the filmmakers wanted to do, and they were allowed to do it. Thelma & Louise is a really good movie. At the time it came out, there was a lot of talk about it bashing men. It bashes idiots, it doesn't bash men. If you're a man and you're offended by this film, then you're obviously part of the problem and should be uncomfortable with the movie.

11.

Playboy: Robert Altman has dubbed you a director to be reckoned with. How did you make that known on your first effort, Bob Roberts?

Robbins: Before the film was sold to the distributor, I got final cut. My philosophy is, don't take no for an answer and be willing to sacrifice your entire project for freedom. I've never worked on a movie where if at some point the director hadn't put his foot down, he would have been trampled. On my first film, I saw a director deck a producer. I saw another director throw a producer against the wall and, with his forearm against the producer's neck, say, "If you ever fuck with me again, I'll kill you." From then on, he was left alone, and he made a damn good movie. I'm six foot four and a half and I have a temper. It's reserved for very important issues. If someone is asking me to make an artistic concession, then I'll become a madman.

12.

Playboy: What awaits those who aspire to become studio executives?

Robbins: Hollywood is not filled with schlockmeisters who wouldn't know a good film if it smacked them in the head. There are an awful lot of intelligent, well-educated people in positions of power who know what a good film is and know what it takes to make a good film. However, in order to get to a place and a position where they can singlehandedly green-light a film, they make a lot of compromises. If you go out on a limb too early in your career and the film falls on its face, you can kiss your rise goodbye.

13.

Playboy: Can you account for your overnight success after a decade-long acting career?

Robbins: Maybe I'm a slow-growth investment rather than a fast killing. I've done a good ten years of work and people are noticing a couple of good films that I've done. It's a crapshoot whether a movie's going to be successful or not. No one had any idea that The Player was going to do any business. But it was an opportunity for me to work with Robert Altman, one of the few geniuses in the American cinema. A lot of people saw Bull Durham, so consequently that's who a lot of people think I am. Fewer people saw Miss Firecracker, which I did right after Bull Durham, where I played a character who was just the opposite of Nuke Laloosh--an intelligent, passionate, poetic madman.

14.

Playboy: Did Susan Sarandon recognize you as an intelligent, passionate, poetic madman?

Robbins: You'd have to ask her. These things are very private and should remain that way. I never want to get into a situation where someone I love reads about a feeling I have when I have never expressed that feeling to that person.

15.

Playboy: Pass on a few nuggets of advice to fathers of young children.

Robbins: I certainly don't allow plastic AK47s in our house. As a child I was not allowed to play with guns, but I did create guns out of sticks. Kids are going to do a lot of things that you're not necessarily crazy about. But if they know deep down that that's not your favorite thing, somewhere along the line they'll have to ask those questions of themselves. Disposable diapers are important if you travel, but at home one should try not to pollute. Try to avoid junk food. There are clever alternatives. We have these Tupperware molds that you fill with fruit juice. The kids think they're getting Popsicles.

16.

Playboy: Didn't you go to Hollywood at a rather young age?

Robbins: One of the best things that my parents did for me didn't seem so at the time. At seventeen they told me they'd pay for two years of college and I would have a home during the summer for the first two years. But when I was nineteen, I was out of the house regardless--the key was taken away metaphorically. It was harsh but good for me. I moved away from home and went to Los Angeles. I joined the Teamsters Union and worked at a warehouse. I got my own apartment off Hollywood Boulevard, renting a room in a house full of juvenile delinquents and thieves. They were always operating scams. This elderly woman who ran the house was either crazy or incredibly brilliant. I never figured out whether she was the Fagin of these thieves. I lost money, mostly. I didn't have many personal possessions. Just because I grew up in New York didn't mean I didn't have my own growing up to do. There was a different kind of criminal element in Los Angeles. It had a totally different face to it.

17.

Playboy: For viewers who may have missed you on television, what were the sordid details of your entry into that mass-entertainment medium?

Robbins: I didn't aim to be a movie actor. It was always my idea that when I graduated from UCLA, I would go back to New York and either start a theater company there or join one. I auditioned for St. Elsewhere. They were looking for a psychopathic terrorist and there was something about me that translated into that character. I was bedraggled and I was a punk. I had a New York attitude, so I didn't want to be this stupid, grinning fool. I was on the second, third and fourth shows. I got to spit in someone's face and be rude all the time. My character was your typical TV terrorist, angry and without any point of view. I was handcuffed for the whole thing, kept in a locked ward. I found that I could make a living playing criminals and psychos. That convinced me to stick around L.A. But I also used the money to fund my theater, which I continue to do.

18.

Playboy: Pitch us the Bob Roberts concept.

Robbins: You put a guitar in Ross Perot's hands and give him some Retin-A treatment and you have Bob Roberts. Same with Bush, for that matter. Or Clinton. Approach it from a whimsical point of view. I want it to be as much Spinal Tap as Don't Look Back. This movie is about the corruption of the Republican Party and the corruption of the Democratic Party. It's not partisan. The approach is entertainment. People are fed up with the whole political system. It's important not to glamourize or romanticize the left-wing point of view. I don't like to be preached to. I don't like blanket descriptions of evil. Actually, I never pitched Bob Roberts. All meetings were set up on the assumption that the person interested had read the script.

19.

Playboy: Will you be disappointed if Bob Roberts goes to video soon after theatrical release?

Robbins: We're talking with some of the distributors about keeping the movie in a continued release--you know, not to release the video for an entire year. I want discussion, arguments, laughter, collective laughter. I don't want the audience to miss the communal experience of the film.

20.

Playboy: You claim Bob Roberts is not partisan. But isn't the right-wing title character inclined to offer a fascist salute?

Robbins: Oh, God, it's frightening. I tried to make the salute as ambiguous as possible. Kind of a strong wave, let's say. With a smile.