"Dean
Stockwell: Interview"
by
Craig Edwards
Psychotronic Video, 1995
Dean
Stockwell was born Robert Dean Stockwell on March 5, 1936, in North
Hollywood. He's been acting in movies
now for more than 50 years. His mother
Betty Veronica was a singer. His stage
actor father Harry Stockwell was the voice of Prince Charming in Cinderella
(50). His younger brother Guy (born in
38) is also an actor.
"My
mother was in vaudeville, but after she had her children, she quit
working. My father had a contract to
make some films at one point, but that didn't work out. He did Oklahoma on Broadway, replaced Albert
Drake in the lead in Oklahoma."
Dean made his stage debut n 1942 in The Innocent Voyage. "My parents were splitting up at the
time. My father heard about this play
that was looking for a bunch of kids, like twelve kids. He told my mother about it, and she, for no
particular reason, decided to take my brother and me down to audition for it,
and we were both hired on and we were in the play. Subsequently, a fellow from Metro Goldwyn Mayer studios saw the
play and they asked me to do a screen test and then I was signed to a contract. I started with a film called Anchors
Aweigh."
Stockwell
played Kathryn Grayson's little brother Donald in Anchors Aweigh, a
splashy MGM color musical starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. It's the one where Kelly dances with an
animated Tom the mouse. The same year
Stockwell was also in The Valley Of Decision, set in 1870s Pittsburgh
and starring Gregory Peck and Abbott And Costello In Hollywood. "The deal with that was, Abbott and
Costello were on the MGM lot, getting into all their antics and stuff. At one point they either ran or walked
through the studio's schoolroom. In
that way, I was in the film, sitting there in the schoolroom with Margaret
O'Brien, and I think Elizabeth Taylor was in there too. She was very gorgeous, she had just finished
National Velvet, so she was very young and very gorgeous. I wouldn't say I had a crush on her, but I
had an appreciative eye for her. The
school was divided into two rooms, with the younger kids in one room and then a
different room and teacher for the kids who were more like high school
age. Elizabeth and another young
starlet, named, I believe Shirley Jones palled around as teenagers, since they
shared a mutual view of the world and it excluded the younger kids most
definitely!"
Stockwell
continued working at MGM until 1950, but for him, it wasn't the dream job it
sounds like. "I didn't enjoy
acting particularly, when I was young.
I thought it was a lot of work.
There were a few films that I enjoyed, they were comedies, they were not
important films, weren't very successful, so I was always pretty much known as
a serious kid. I got those kind of
roles and I didn't care for them very much."
In
Song Of the Thin Man (47), the 6th and final feature of the popular
series, Stockwell got to play Nick Jr., the son of Nick and Nora Charles
(William Powell and Myrna Loy). "I
have very positive feelings regarding both of them, they were very sweet
people, especially Myrna Loy. And that
cute little dog, Asta. I liked that
little dog."
Gentleman's
Agreement (for 20th Century Fox) was another serious film. It was controversial for 1947, with its
anti-Semitism storyline (changed from homosexuality in the novel). Gregory Peck plays a writer who pretends to
be Jewish. Elia Kazan directed. "Gentleman's Agreement, I didn't
like doing at all, because it was so serious.
In other words, when I would find out I was going to do another movie,
my mother would always bring that news to me, and the first question that I
would always ask was, 'Is there a crying scene in the movie?' And there almost always was, and then I
would be totally depressed about that.
I hated the idea of it, but I was under contract and I couldn't get out
of it. And there was very definitely a
crying scene in this picture, and I had to sort of do a little softshoe to
divert the director away from me. He
was coming over to me and saying, 'Try to think of a puppy dying,' and all this
shit. He was from the Actor's Studio,
Kazan. And I just sort of nodded yeah,
yeah, yeah, and then I would go off by myself and irritate my eyes, bring
tears, and go in and do the damn scene.
I didn't want to think about dead puppies, for Christ sake! And I got the idea that Gregory Peck didn't
like working with a kid. You know that
old axiom in Hollywood, 'avoid working with kids or dogs.' For that reason I didn't feel much warmth
from him. From my vantage point, from
reading the material and having to speak the lines, I knew what it was about, and
it seemed like it was something special.
The same thing with The Boy With Green Hair. It had its controversial aspects at that
time."
In
Joseph Losey's The Boy With Green Hair (48), Stockwell is a kid who
becomes a social outcast when his hair turns green. The color release from RKO featured Robert Ryan, Pat O'Brien and
the debut of little Rusty Tamblyn. It
was the first feature Stockwell carried as a star, but he didn't feel any more
pressure. "No, just that there was
another of those damned crying scenes!
That was basically all I was concerned about, I always found that a
difficult experience to have to do."
Some viewers figured Stockwell's hair was dyed. "It was a wig. There were several of them, and they were
very expensive. They were made from
French women's hair and a couple of them were made so they could shave the hair
off. They were a huge pain in the ass
and I really didn't like it. But I did
like doing the movie for the reason that I thought it was an important movie. We had been involved in the Second World War
which had just ended a few years before this.
I had been very aware of the experience of the war from the newspapers
and newsreels and everyone's conversations, the consciousness of it all through
my childhood, so I felt this was making an important statement because it was
an anti-war film. And that's why a lot
of the participants were branded Communists and put on the Hollywood
blacklist. That included the director
Joseph Losey, the producer Adrian Scott and the writer, it screwed up a lot of
lives. It was really horrible. But during the production, I did feel that I
was part of something that meant something to me, it was important."
The
next year (49), he starred in The Secret Garden, as the depressed rich
kid who has been convinced that he's crippled by his depressed absent
father. It's a great looking b/w MGM
movie based on the famous children's book by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Francis
Ford Coppola backed the recent remake).
The excellent cast of the original includes Margaret O'Brien, Herbert Marshall
and Elsa Lanchester. The sequences in
the garden are in color. "More
crying scenes! And temper
tantrums! But I enjoyed very much
working with Margaret, she was a very talented little actress. I thought we worked well together."
Kim (50),
Stockwell's last MGM movie co-starred Errol Flynn. It's based on the classic Kipling novel set in 1880s India. "Kim was great because of Errol
Flynn. I really liked Errol, he was
always very straight with me, not patronizing at all. Very cool. Of all the
people I worked with, he was my favorite, along with Dick Widmark and Joel
McCrea. Those were just wonderful
people." The Richard Widmark movie
was Down To the Sea In Ships (49) from Fox and McCrea starred in Cattle
Drive (51) at Universal.
In
1952, at the age of 16, Stockwell entered the University of California but
dropped out after a semester and a half.
He later told an interviewer that he received a psychological deferment
and stayed out of the service because he was against the Korean war ("I
took drugs, pretended I was a fag." – from an interview by Dick
Moore). He spent several years (as
Robert Stockwell) wandering around America doing jobs including hammering
railroad spikes and picking fruit.
After a few TV roles, he re-started his film career. He was 21.
Gun
For A Coward (57) is a Cinemascope and color Universal
western. Fred MacMurray, Jeffrey Hunter
and Stockwell star as brothers. The
Films of Universal book says Stockwell, "self-consciously apes the late
James Dean." The Careless Years
(57) was a teen romance from United Artists directed by Arthur (Love Story)
Hiller. Stockwell plays a student who
goes off to Mexico with Natalie Trundy so they can marry but her father brings
them back. "I can't think of who
else was in that that anyone would know, I've just lost the names. It was about a boy's school somewhere back
east. Apparently there was a series of
novels about this boy's school. And
this was one of them. I enjoyed it
because there was some comedy in it. No
crying scenes!"
Compulsion (59) was the
first really important grown up role for Stockwell. It's based on the famous 1920's Leopold/Loeb murders, also the
basis for Hitchcock's Rope (48) and Swoon (92). The Cinemascope Fox film was directed by
Richard Fleischer and co-starred Bradford Dillman, Diane Varsi and Orson
Welles. Stockwell played Judd Steiner
(the Nathan Leopold role). "I had
done the play of Compulsion on Broadway with Roddy McDowall. That was a very difficult experience. It was a depressing subject matter, I mean
gruesomely depressing to live through every night. And I was the only one from the cast of the play that was cast in
the movie. I was a little upset at the
way the movie was done. But, you know,
I just did the best I could with my role, and that was that. I spent no time with
Orson Welles. I found him most
disagreeable and very badly behaved to other people, bordering on
sadistic. It was not pleasant at
all." Fox has recently released Compulsion
(on tape and laser disc).
Sons
And Lovers (60) was a British film based on a story by D.H.
Lawrence. "That was a very
delightful film to do. It was difficult
for me because I was the only American in it, and the character I was playing
was really autobiographical of D.H. Lawrence who was like this icon to the
English. And here I am with these great
English actors and I had to affect an English accent for the first time. I brought it off fairly well, I was not
criticized for being an American in it after it was done, so I felt it was
quite an accomplishment. I had a
fantastic time working with Wendy Hiller and Mary Ure and Trevor Howard and
Donald Pleasence, aw, God, they're wonderful people! Brilliant talents. It was
a privilege for me." It was
directed by Jack Cardiff, better known as a cinematographer. "He had done a Smell-O-Vision picture (Scent
Of Mystery) before this and I don't think he directed many more films. He was a brilliant, brilliant photographer,
but I didn't feel he was a director.
Certainly not of actors, anyway.
We would go off by ourselves and work our things out. That happens sometimes."
The
high quality roles continued with Long Day's Journey Into Night (62)
which was filmed in New York City.
"That, again, was a great experience. Certainly one of the highlight films that I've done in my
career. Great writing, on the highest
level, by Eugene O'Neill, and a mind boggling cast, Katie Hepburn, Sir Ralph
Richardson and Jason Robards. I still
pinch myself to believe that I worked with those three people! And the director, Sidney Lumet, was
divine. It was a great
experience."
Stockwell
had married actress Millie Perkins (Diary Of Anne Frank, Wild In The
Country) in 1960 but she divorced him in 62. The former model later temporarily retired after acting in Wild
In The Streets (68) written by her second husband, Robert Thom. After the divorce, Stockwell dropped out of
film work again, lived in Topanga Canyon then Haight Ashbury and hung out with
people like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper. "I did some drugs and went to some
love-ins. The experience of those days
provided me with a huge, panoramic view of my existence that I didn't have
before. I have no regrets." (from an '88 interview in Vogue).
Stockwell
worked on TV but only acted in two more features released during the 60s. Rapture (65) was made in France. "Rapture could have been
interesting but didn't turn out to be that interesting. It was a little film with a girl named
Patricia Gozzi who had a great deal of success in a film (Sundays and Cybele)
prior to this one. I don't think she
went on to a career after that. But I
had a hell of a time working in France.
I loved it! The director, John
Guillermin, was kind of a maniac. He's
known to be a maniac, and he is! I got
along with him pretty well, though.
But, I don't think it was a good film."
Stockwell
was the mysterious, long haired Dave in Psych-Out (68) the AIP LSD hit
directed by Richard Rush and produced by Dick Clark. Although his role was small, he was top billed with Susan
Strasberg. Dave lives in an attic and
is visited by other characters for answers.
"I did not enjoy that very much.
On the positive side, I think that was the first time I met Jack
Nicholson, but that's the only time I ever worked with him. Bruce Dern was on the picture and because of
Blue Velvet, I've been asked if Laura Dern was around the set as a
child, but I don't recall that she was."
The Dunwich Horror (also from AIP) was released in 70. Stockwell starred as Wilbur Whateley (wearing
a mustache). "That was very
amusing. Again, I had a little problem
with the director, Daniel Haller. I
guess he wasn't so bad. I did that very
tongue in cheek, I think wisely so (laughs).
It was kinda fun. I happen to be
a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, and it was nothing like H.P. Lovecraft, so that was a
little disappointing. Kinda sophomoric,
not what you really call a horror film, whereas Lovecraft's writing can be
quite scary at times."
Then
Stockwell flew off to Peru to be in Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. "The Last Movie is still ahead
of it's time, because it's a non-linear movie and I think there's a lot of
brilliant stuff in it. It was a great
pleasure to work with Dennis on it and we had a wild time down there in Peru. I got to see some of the most astounding
places in the world down there in Peru, pre-Inca stone work and so forth, stuff
that I otherwise never would have gotten the chance to see. That's one great thing about my profession,
traveling to locations. Going to Peru
is, well, if you ever have an opportunity in your life to go there, you should
do it because it is absolutely mind boggling.
What stands out mostly is the feeling that one has in a place like that. It's almost spooky. You feel a presence there, almost like a magical
force. It sticks with you in your
life. When you see the works of these
people, and nobody really knows who they were.
They're called Incan, but in reality there are three different periods
represented, and the most amazing is the pre-Inca stuff because it pre-dated
the Spaniards. When the Spaniards got
there, the Inca people didn't know who had made these things. They didn't know! This stuff is more extravagant than the stone work on the
pyramids. It's of a different style, a
more abstract style, it's not geometric.
I'm telling you, there are stones larger than a VW bus that are way the
hell up in the air. It's amazing. That has had a profound effect upon my
life."
It
was not the first time Hopper and Stockwell had worked together. "I had done a television show with
Dennis called The Greatest Show In Earth (in 63), with Jack
Palance. We played these two goofy guys
on it, and that was the first time I worked with him. I had met him even before
that. I had met him while I was doing Compulsion
in 1959. We hit it off pretty well
then, and we've grown closer and closer, we're like best friends."
The
Loners (72), a biker movie, was the last feature produced by the
legendary Sam Katzman (he died in 73).
Stockwell starred. "That
was a mess. Another maniac director,
Sutton Roley. Totally crazy." The Werewolf Of Washington (73) was a
Watergate themed horror movie. "The Werewolf Of Washington is
probably the most disappointing end result of a film that I can remember. The concept of it, and the screenplay for
it, had a brilliant edge to it. It was
satirical, political, funny, witty and wonderful. The problem was the fella that directed it, Milton Moses
Ginsberg, who arrived at the wherewithal to make this film because of the
success of a film he'd made just prior, which was his first. It was called Coming Apart, with Rip
Torn, Viveca Lindfors and Sally Kirkland.
"Torn
played a psychiatrist who was recording with a film camera his sessions with
his patients. And he'd set the camera
up to shoot through a two way mirror.
So the camera was locked off during the whole film. It never moved. And there is nothing of the technique and complexities of
filmmaking involved in shooting a film with a camera that doesn't move. So he went into this next movie, and it
became very clear very quickly on the first day of shooting that he knew
nothing about shooting a movie. So we
had a major disaster on our hands. I
never worked harder on a movie.
Physically it was just punishing.
It took three hours to put this damn werewolf thing on, and two and a
half hours to take it off every day. It
just killed me. And then to see it come
out as a mess was just . . . it was just the opposite of another film I did, Paris,
Texas. I thought that was going to
be a disaster, and it came out great!" (laughs).
None
of Stockwell's 70s movies were very popular or well distributed and some are
extremely obscure. Win, Place Or
Steal (75) is a PG rated racetrack comedy starring Stockwell and Russ
Tamblyn (who had also appeared in Boy With Green Hair and The Last
Movie). South Pacific Connection
(75) from the Philippines is a 19th century period film with Spanish
villains. It stars Roland Dantes (a
former Mr. Phillipines) who specializes in Arnis (stick fighting). Stockwell
co-stars with Nancy Kwan and Gilbert Roland.
"That was a martial arts movie.
You know, there are movies in my resume, a lot of them, the bad ones,
that I had to do because I had to work.
I didn't have any choice in the matter.
It wasn't until Paris, Texas in 1984, through Married To the
Mob in 1988 that I started to have a little choice in what I was
doing. So once in a while I would have
to do something like this South Pacific Connection in the Phillipines
that's lower than a B, it's an F movie."
Henry Jaglom's Tracks ((76) was a very serious movie starring
Dennis Hopper as a disturbed Nam vet taking the body of a friend home on a
train.
In
76, Stockwell met Joy Marchenko in Cannes.
She became his second wife and they had two children (Austin and
Sophia). In 77, Stockwell did
photography for the cover of Neil Young's American Stars and Bars LP. He also wrote a script with Young called After
The Gold Rush. Alsino and the
Condor (81) filmed in Nicaragua, was nominated for the best foreign
language film Oscar. Stockwell played
an American military advisor who befriends a peasant boy who joins guerrilla
fighters. It was a Nicaraguan/Mexican/Cuban/Costa
Rican co-production, directed by Chilean exile Miguel Littin who also directed
Stockwell in Sandino, which was not released.
Wrong
Is Right (82) is a political satire by Richard Brooks. Sean Connery plays a reporter that discovers
that the entire world is run by the CIA.
Ads for the Columbia release featured an H bomb cloud with a smile face
on it. "There was a very
interesting director, Richard Brooks.
God rest his soul. He could be
very tough on people, but he had a twinkle in his eye. And Sean Connery was wonderful. I had a good time with that one. I mean, it wasn't much of a part, I wasn't
getting good parts then. It was a
little part."
Human
Highway (82), is an end of the world musical comedy. Stockwell co-directed with Neil Young and
also plays the owner of a diner and gas station near a faulty nuke plant. Young and Russ Tamblyn are comic, dimwitted
mechanics. Dennis Hopper plays two
roles and the members of Devo move nuclear waste. "That didn't turn out so good. But that was a lot of fun (laughs). That was like getting to make a movie with a bunch of your
buddies and it's kind of dizzy, and you all love it, but then it's done and
nobody else does (laughs). But I love
Neil. Dennis, of course was in it and
Russ Tamblyn, a dear friend. We were
buddies making this movie." Warner
Reprise released Human Highway on tape (not long after it was reviewed
in Psychotronic Video). These movies
(all with political messages that didn't go along with then president Reagan or
the mood of the country) were seen by so few people, that by the early 80s, Stockwell
was actually rumored to be dead.
Actually, he was in Santa Fe, selling real estate and raising his
family.
To
Kill A Stranger (released in America in 85) but
filmed several years earlier was directed by Juan Lopez Montezuma in
Mexico. Donald Pleasence plays a war
hero who is killed while trying to rape star Angelica Maria and his crime is
covered up. Montezuma is known for his
bizarre 70s horror movies (Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon, Sisters Of
Satan and Mary Mary Bloody Mary) but Stockwell wasn't
impressed. "To Kill A Stranger
is very important to me, not for the film itself, but in a certain linkage of
events that happened because I got that film.
Firstly, I got it because somebody else had fallen out of it. I got it out of the blue and zipped down
there to make this film and it was a terrible thing. The writing was awful and the people didn't know what they were
doing. But it was a job, it was a
payday.
While
I was there, I heard that De Laurentis was prepping Dune at Churubusco
Studios with this guy David Lynch. So I
asked the producer of this Stranger movie if he would do me a favor and
introduce me to Lynch, if it could conveniently be set up. He took me over there and we met Lynch in
the commissary. He was having lunch and
I introduced myself to him and told him I was a big fan of Frank Herbert's
books. Now, this was several months
before they were to start shooting it.
And I told him I would love to be in it, but he told me that
unfortunately it was cast. I was very
disappointed and I said, 'thank you, and it's nice to meet you and I hope you
make a wonderful film.' Strangely
enough, I had forgotten that David Lynch had been to my house, in the past and
had shown a film! But this was in the
days when I was kinda wild, and I just didn't remember, I had phased it out of
my head. He showed an early film called
The Grandmother at my house in Topanga.
I had forgotten it totally. So
some time went by and I had come back to the states and I was doing some television
show. And my agent called and said that
all of a sudden some so-and-so fell out of the Dune movie and Lynch
wanted me to do the part! And that
wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been in Mexico doing this other stupid
movie. I called Lynch up and it was
very funny what he said to me on the phone.
The first thing he said was, 'Listen, I want to apologize if I acted
strangely when I saw you in Mexico but I thought that you were dead.' I said, 'Oh, well, I'm not. I'm glad I'm not and I'm glad I'm going to
be working with you.' And I think he
had somehow confused me with that young actor from Shane, Brandon
DeWilde, because he had passed away in a car crash a few years before
that. But it was very fortuitous that I
went down there and did Dune, because then Blue Velvet came from
that."
"There
sure were a lot of talented people involved with Dune. I think Rafaella De Laurentis, it was really
her picture, and I think she approached it, I don't want to be critical of her,
what happened was the film was set up so that there were four units that were
shooting simultaneously. There was the
principal unit, which was David Lynch and the principal actors, at the same
time there was a whole other unit shooting battle scenes with the Mexican Army
dressed up. There was another unit
shooting special effects stuff with the worms and stuff and there was another
unit that was shooting inserts and detail work. And Lynch did not oversee any of the other stuff! And I thought the worms were a
disaster. And that's the major thing in
Dune! And there were Academy
Award winning people doing it! And it
came back dumb. And the battle scenes
were a joke. All these hot, tired guys
out there barely moving. So I think
that was the real problem putting the film together. I thought the stuff Lynch did was fantastic."
Stockwell
co-starred with Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassia Kinski in Wim Wenders' Paris,
Texas (84). "Again, that was
one of those lucky things. I was living
in New Mexico at the time. I had just
gotten married and I had virtually quit the business, because I couldn't get
any work. A few little things trickled
in, like some television shows. Then
one day I heard there was going to be a party after the Santa Fe Film Festival,
which no longer exists now. Dennis was
going to be there, he was in town. I
was very depressed at the time because I couldn't get any work, but I decided
to go into town and see Dennis. And
Harry Dean Stanton was at this party.
And I hadn't seen Harry Dean for ten or twelve years. I sat down and talked to him for a while
then I said goodbye to him and Dennis and left the party and came back home and
was depressed again.
"Some
time went by, like a month and I get a call.
Harry Dean is going to do this movie with Sam Shepard and Wim Wenders
and he thinks I should play his brother in it.
And Wim Wenders himself came to Santa Fe to see me and he said, 'Yeah,
Harry's right, you'll be perfect.' And
that would not have happened if I had not decided to go into town late one
night because of this party. It's weird
how these things work out, it really is weird.
But let me get back to what I said earlier about this movie. I thought this film was going to be
awful. We had a lovely time shooting
it, it felt great and Wim was terrific, but when it was done, I came back to
New Mexico and Wim sent both Harry Dean and myself tapes of a rough cut. Now, some films you can see from the rough
cut are going to be great. But with a
film by this guy, now, this film had no action in it at all. No action, no heavy tension, nothing that
would put you on the edge of your seat, that's for sure. It didn't have any music either. Harry Dean called me and said it looked like
captured enemy footage (laughs), that was his description of it. And I broke down and cried after I saw the
tape. I saw it by myself in a room and
I broke down and cried, I was so disappointed.
But when he finally fine-tuned it, it became magical! Each cut would lead into the next image with
such perfection of timing that it held and held. And it was good and it won the Grand Prize at Cannes. It was amazing."
1984
was a comeback year for Stockwell but one project from that year was from the
bill paying days. Sweet Smell Of
Death was a Hammer studios project.
"That was a TV movie, a whodunit kind of thing. There are certain projects I take more
seriously than others, that I'll lend certain facets of myself to more willingly. And there are others where I'll do my work
in an ultra simple way. Just sort of do
what I feel I'm obliged to do, what I'm paid to do. I don't fool myself that I
can go on a big creative bender (laughs), and there are a lot of those! The opposite side of that is Blue Velvet,
where the guy calls up and says 'would you like this part?' and you can do
anything you want. I made that whole
character up. I did the wardrobe, I did
the makeup, everything. Made it up out
of my own demented head. I knew this
guy should be weirder than Dennis' character.
But it fit the project. I enjoy
watching some of the characters I've done, like Al on Quantum Leap and Blue
Velvet because it's zany, and that's the part of my work that I like the
best. Some writer in Rolling Stone said
about Blue Velvet that I created a new high water mark for alien humor
in that film (laughs)!"
Stockwell
had a great comedy role as Tony "The Tiger" Russo in Jonathan Demme's
Married To the Mob (88) and was nominated for an Oscar. "That's the favorite part I've ever had
in a film. I just felt that that part
was just perfect for me and I had a way to approach it that I thought was just
right and it turned out that way. I
loved Jonathan Demme and he let me run with it and do what I wanted with it and
it was a fantastic experience. And of
course, it was very important for my career.
It was astounding. I got a lot
of recognition. I got the National
Board of Review award, the New York Film Critics award and the Oscar
nomination. Of course, I didn't get the
Oscar, but it was very moving. Some
people might pooh-pooh it and say it didn't mean anything, but it does. It's really gratifying to get the
recognition from your peers."
Stockwell's
brother Guy, another actor who seemed to have disappeared after the 60s,
surprised many viewers when he showed up as the (huge) Mexican circus knife
thrower in Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre (89). Some other notable roles for Dean Stockwell in recent years were
in Coppola's Gardens Of Stone (87) and Tucker: A Man and His Dream
(88), and in two Dennis Hopper directed movies: Backtrack (a.k.a. Catch Fire) (88) and Chasers
(94). He was also in Friedkin's To
Live And Die In L.A. (85), the very popular Beverly Hills Cop II
(87) and Altman's The Player (92).
Meanwhile,
Stockwell became well known to TV watchers as Al on the popular Quantum Leap
which is still showing in syndication.
In a recent TV movie, he even played Madonna's father.
Asked
to sum up his long career, Stockwell puffed on his cigar and said, "It's
been a long hard road. Some parts of it
were pretty bumpy, but the last few years have been pretty smooth. And I can't wait to see where the road leads
from here."
The
End