ChrisBauer

first of all, you can obviously write, so i'm not surprised you were affected by 'the wire'. frank sobotka was a real interesting combo of intuitive conjuring and just flawless authorship. thank you for the compliment but i've never been so uninvolved in the evolution of a character. to my mind, david simon, george pelicans, ed burns, rafael alvarez, etc. wrote that season with such a restless devotion to the baltimore waterfront and its inhabitants that all you had to do was tune it in, like a radio station. i just got the hell out of the way and let it unfold. i think for my part i really related to a guy who had fully absorbed working for others as an ethic, but was not raised in a world with much moral sophistication. and as a stubborn pragmatist, he had a plan and stuck to it. but what was exciting was that he had enough access to a sense of soul that he was not blind to the consequences of his actions. he suffered. as far as ziggy's mom goes, i think i recall her in the recesses of my imagination as a sort of pilled out smoker, agoraphobic who never left the flat. he lived like a widower, but she was very much alive. toward the end of the season when Ziggy is in jail, frank says 'leave your mom out of this', and Zig says 'oh, she's out of it, don't worry'. how good is that writing?????? that scene with james ransone btw is my favorite scene i've ever done. it was two ugly people drowning in their human-ness. and yeah, parks and recreation was a hoot. i was out of my league. if they don't ask me to cry or punch someone, what am i supposed to do?

something i found funny was that my 2 year old daughter visited that set for one day. it was the day that they killed me. they had attached a prosthetic wound across my throat to make it look like it had been cut open. unintimidated in any way, she tried to put a penny in it like i was a bank. now that she's a teenager, i think she was right.

not bad. though that question really pisses me off.

after 7 years, there are so many off camera memories from true blood, but having just recently wrapped the whole series, they are all mush. lotta nights. lotta cold nights, to be honest. here's one: one of our directors, michael lehman had a running joke that he thought was funny, which was that he kept telling people he was pitching a story to make andy bellefleur invisible. it was a little annoying how he kept at it, but i remember saying, 'well at least if i'm invisible i'll get invited to a convention', which was to say at the time all the characters who had some supernatural trait were getting flown here and there and paid for their picture, etc. me? never did that. other than that, in the first season we were shooting in shreveport, la on a real southern looking lake, and i met charlaine harris, the author of the books for the first time. i walked into a trailer where they were preparing her for an interview and she said.."well look at you, you must be andy bellefleur. you're exactly how i pictured him'. i was very flattered but greedily replied (because she was still writing the books) "is he dead yet?" i was very happy when she said "no".

working with nic cage is a great memory. i found him to be so genuinely eccentric, but warm and inclusive at the same time, which is one of my favorite combos, and kinda rings my own bell. he had a great sense of humor and spontaneity, which should be no surprise. here's a funny little story: because face/off was such a stunt heavy show, they had to match me to the physical appearance of my stunt double, rather than the other way around. in this case, that meant i had to have….hair because my stunt double had a full gq mop top hair do, and i was a baldie. when we rehearsed the first fight sequence and started going for it, nic had me in a headlock and i pulled away. but my wig stuck to his costume. not knowing i was wearing a wig, he thought he scalped me. actually i was a little humiliated. anyway, he said something i'll never forget when we were shooting that. he had just won the oscar for 'leaving las vegas' and i asked him if it made a difference in his process. he said, "yeah, now directors shoot down my ideas after 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds'.