THE JON "UNCLE RICO" GRIES REAL RIVALFISH INTERVIEW

Jon Gries, the man behind two classic characters from classic comedies allows Rivalfish an hour of his vice-filled life to chat about being fired by Ice Cube, banned music videos, jogs with Willie Gault, and dating Springsteen's sister. Did I say "vice-filled?" I meant "productive, accomplished, and interesting." Parts 1 and a 2 of a 2-Part piece (The whole damn thing).

RIVALFISH: Before we start with the brain busters, I want to ask about the two parts of your past that are most fascinating to me.....directing gangster rap and playing Lazlo Holyfield in the 1985 classic, Real Genius.
JOHN GRIES: Yeah, I was Lazlo. That was a historical event, that was a long time ago.

First of all, what the hell where you doing down there in the closet, er, basement, er, room below the closet. I spent countless hours checking to make sure my closet didn't have a passage way I was missing out on, and fantasizing about if it did. Also, whatever happened to the kid who played Mitch?
Exactly what he ended up winning in the long run.... filling out those contest forms. All those little machines were filling out the forms that won me all the prizes in the end. And in the end, I scored Sherry Nugil, the genius groupie, who was originally going for Kent and Mitch, the arch-nemesis of Val Kilmer's character. She was played by Patti D'Arbanville. A little side note about her is that, for a long time in his heyday, she was Cat Steven's girlfriend, and he wrote a song about her called "Lady D'Arbanville."

We may run a sports blog but we are all music junkies over here at Rivalfish. That's our truest love, next to riding our bikes down cobblestone roads.
Well, you know every sports personality and athlete that I've met is a music freak. My uncle is actually a musician in your hometown of Chicago. His name is Charles Gries but he goes by the name "Buddy Charles." They've made a day devoted to him at Wrigley Field. I think Mayor Daley has actually named a day after my uncle.

Yeah, great about your uncle and all, and I've definitely heard much about him around here, but still, whatever happened to the kid who played Mitch?
Mitch grew to be 6'5". Ya know he called me about two years ago to get together, and I heard that he sings in a band, he's still an actor. When we did the movie, for his age, he was a pretty big kid already. The kid had clown feet. He was on his way somewhere to a height we knew none of is would get close to. Except for maybe Robert Prescott, who played Kent, who was about 6'3".

Yeah, good ole Real Genius. That's a real gem. I was so disappointed with some of my Rivalfish staffers that were unfamiliar with the movie that I fired them from their volunteer positions. When I was a kid, I was a little dweeb, and Real Genius and Weird Science were my two favorite movies.
Nice. Real Genius knocks the crap out of Weird Science, but that's just my feeling.

The other aspect of your past that I idolize is the little-known fact that you were a gangster rap music video director in the late 80s. Who were some of the artists you directed, and of those, who was the biggest posturer. Who acted like a thug on camera but a blueblooded aristocrat as soon as the cameras stopped rolling? Easy. Ice Cube. Ice Cube is a very intelligent man. Back in the day when he was still trying to get himself established, he was a guest on one of the videos I was directing. It was a video called "Pay Ya Dues" by a group called Low Profile. I ended up doing three of their videos. That was DJ Aladdin and WC. WC, I guess is now a big record executive. I don't even know what his name actually is. The funniest thing is, I recently got asked to be the host, in character as Uncle Rico at somebody's party in Las Vegas. So I went up there and bumped into WC and Ice Cube, and I started doing his rap. I worked on his video for so long in the editing room that I knew it by heart and I still do it from time to time. So I walked up to him and started rapping it to him, and at first he didn't know who I was because it's been since '87 we've worked together.

WC's posse was Coolio, Ice Cube, and a couple of other guys who I don't remember. We were pretty close for a while. I think Coolio was fresh out of jail when I was hanging around him.

While you have seemed to age very wellafter seeing those pictures of you playing Lazlo, Coolio certainly has not. A couple years ago, a friend's fraternity hired him for about five grand to perform at one of their concerts, where he sat around with a bunch of white kids and taught them how to roll better blunts and do the Crip Walk. I hear he didn't look healthy.
Well, he was already older than the other guys. Let me tell you something though; his original music he was doing back then was so ahead of its time. He was doing what was essentially jazz and poetry. His music was certainly not going where these guys were with their gangster rap. You have to remember that at the time, the gangster rappers and the hip-hoppers really did not get along. They were two separate camps. Hip-Hop guys were the guys who had the weird fades, whose heads looked like wedding cakes or roads going around Italian mountains. The gangster rap dudes did not go for those guys.

In fact, I almost had a showdown on one of my sets once, because my producer called all the wrong kinds of people to work on the shoot, so instead of gangster rap type extras, all these hip hoppers showed up. The gangsters came up to me and told me if those guys didn't get out of there, they were going to have problems. Somebody was going to get shot. We had to get the hip hoppers off the set and out of there as quickly as possible..... and pay them all.

So, back to Ice Cube. He had this thug demeanor around his homies. But I ended up having this meeting with Cube at Priority Records to do a long-form video for his hit song "Rollin' with the Lynch Mob." He liked my work. In the meeting he was not inclined to talk "gansta," or whatever. I felt like I was talking to an English businessman.

I end up putting my foot in my mouth, though. He wanted to do the video like it was an action movie you'd see in the theatres. So I said "That's really cool. What I'd also like to do, since it is about drive-by shootings, is start flashing pictures of actual children who've been killed by stray bullets." It didn't go over well. Meeting adjourned. When I got home the phone was ringing, and it was his guys saying that Ice Cube would "no longer be requiring your services." I think I went a little over the line. I suggested something a little too heartfelt and socially conscious.

The author Tom Robbins once said that "Nostalgia is the peach fuzz on the hard ass of history." Your character in Napoleon Dynamite was heavily obsessed with the past. What experiences are you most nostalgic about in your career and in your personal life?
I'd say, without question, it's sports. I did not even have to assimilate a different nostalgic experience to play Uncle Rico. I could go directly to my history in sports. Sometimes, as an actor, in order to achieve that kind of experience, you'd have to tap into something else, some other comparable life experience. But I could go right to sports.

I think that's the beautiful thing about Uncle Rico that a lot of men relate to. I sit around sometimes and replay the highlights, in my head, of great plays I've made in various games of baseball, football, or whatever. I think, "Oh man, that was a nice diving catch back when I was 19, playing ball." And I had always felt, in real life, that I could have been a pro football player. Unfortunately, I was not big enough, and as a result I thought better of jacking up on steroids or working out all the time. Cause, you know, I was faster than anyone I knew. SoI think I could have been a great D-back or wide receiver. I had the good hands, the speed, and I know I had the moves.

I had people throughout my life challenge me to races. When I was on the Martin show for two years, there were always black guys working on the crew, built like sprinters, tall and lean. So when the topic of sports would come up and there'd be this bald white guy talking about how fast he was, they'd be like "AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH yeah right," and challenge me to race. Nobody beat me.

Damn, you could've been the next Tim Dwight.
I could have been. And I ran with Willie Gault once, just messin' around, and when he decided to take off on a sprint, I stayed right with him. He turned around and said, "Holy shit, you were right with me. Jon got some wheeeeels."

So you lived for a while in Topanga, CA and in the forthcoming film, Car Babes, you worked with Ben Savage, who once dated Danielle Fishel of "Topanga" fame when they worked together on Boy Meets World. Savage is reportedly a big Springsteen fan, did he force the Boss down your throat on set or try to claim he had naked pictures of Topanga?
No, I didn't even know those things, and honestly I thought he was gay. NO! Just kidding [laughs, don't worry Ben].

Actually, I met him once, and I thought he was gay too.
[laughs harder, uh-oh Ben] He could tell me all the stories about Springsteen he wants, but in 1985 I dated his little sister when she was living in his back-house. She was 11 years younger, and Bruce was more like a father to her than a brother. And so when she was living in his back-house, and I was dating her, or more like banging her, I'd stay over. He'd be up in the morning, sitting on his back stoop, and I'd walk by and he'd say [in Springsteen's voice] "hey Jon, what's going on?" We'd sit around and talk, and he was always a pretty humble and funny guy.

When I first met him it was right when Real Genius had just come out on video, and his sister told him about it. So he looks me in the eye and says, "hmmm, is that right? Real Genius. I'm going to rent that tonight. " And he actually rented it that night. The next day I was sitting up in his sister's room and he ran up the stairs yelling, "Hey Jon, hey Jon, I checked out that movie you were in last night. It was incredible, you were so good." He said he was going to watch it and he watched it. He wasn't talking out of his behind.

Damn, you do a good Springsteen. More recently, you directed a music video for the up-and-coming Mere Mortals (http://meremortalsmusic.com/video). What first attracted you to the band and what music videos have most influenced you, aside from the obvious Aha - "Take on Me?"
Actually, the video that influenced me the most, my favorite music video of all time, is "Smack My Bitch Up," by The Prodigy. That video, more than any video I've ever seen, blew my mind. I've never seen a video that good. That was the video from the perspective of a character in the video. The camera was this person's head in the video. The person wakes up, gets dressed, goes to a party, goes to the bars, gets drunk, is totally out of control, grabs women's tits, gets in fights, pulls the turntables onto the dance floor, gets kicked out, and smashes the car into someone on the way home. Then, it shows the person sitting up, and it's a woman. I just thought it was awesome.

So, anyway, I ended up with the Mere Mortals because, believe it or not, I play in a band myself. I'm not trying to be a recording artist, but it's my passion, my love. Maybe if I was 22-years-old I'd being going harder at it, but it's an age-oriented business. So I've been making an album for a while, and going and taking guitar lessons with Axel, their lead singer. I actually found his name on a flyer on a telephone post. At one of my lessons, I let him know that I wanted to hear his music, and he gave me his EP. It was really good, so I checked them out live, and offered to do a video for them with film cameras. The real deal. They were blown away.

Aside from yourself, what are your thoughts on actors/athletes turned musicians? Who can pull it off and who should knock it off? i.e. Jared Leto, Russell Crowe, Bronson Arroyo, Keanu Reeves,etc.
I would offer up all kinds of harsh opinions, but I don't know any of their music. For instance, Russell Crowe, I have heard sings horribly. But I think Russell Crowe is an amazing actor, so Dude can do anything he wants. Master and Commander is one of my favorite movies, and by virtue of how awesome Russell is in that alone, he can get away with anything he wants. I don't know much about Keanu Reeves other than that he plays bass. I don't know if he sings or he's just off to the side playing his bass. If that's really the case, that's pretty cool, you know what I mean? Actually, you know who else is a really good musician? Vincent Gallo. He did all the music to his most recent film, Brown Bunny. He has a band that tours. I've known him for a long time, as we were really good friends back in the '80s, and even back then he had this amazingly elaborate recording setup at his place. It blew my mind when he'd play old jazz songs from the '30s and sing like a crooner.

Is he as creepy in real life as he seems in every movie he writes, directs, and cast himself Lead in?
I think Vincent Gallo is a walking "performance piece." He's not unlike Crispin Glover [George McFly from Back to the Future]. Crispin Glover is definitely putting on a show. They're these people who decide that they're going to devote their life to creating a persona, living by that persona, and making a performance piece out of it. I've known Crispin for years, and at first he was just this normal kid... who then just got weirder and weirder and weirder. He seems to have cultivated his weirdness. Vincent, on the other hand, I think goes for his own "odd-ball" thing. He's a really charming guy. Really charming and really smart. But you can't have a source for that image if you don't have a little bit of it really there. At the same time, I totally relate to him in an odd way. I really do. I think that he's a really talented guy. I think that he gets skewered for his take on life. I personally didn't really like Buffalo '66.

[INTERRUPTING] No offense to him, but I think that's a terrible movie. It insists upon itself.
That's exactly right. That's a perfect way of saying it. It insists upon itself. I didn't like it at all. But I really did like Brown Bunny.

I haven't seen it. I've just heard about the "blow job" scene.
Yeah, the blow job. There was something about Brown Bunny. It's like this long game he's playing with the audience. Then you finally get to what the story's all about, the surprise in the story, it's really pretty..damn good. It's like a movie from a great genre in '70s film that truly captures the vibe of those times. And essentially it's just a movie about a guy driving across the country spending a lot of time crying.

Here's the best thing about Vincent Gallo; he really loves money. I don't think he's afraid to say it. He got a deal from Miramax to make Brown Bunny, and I think they gave him a lot of money to do it. Then he went and made it on a shoe-string budget and pissed off a bunch of people at Miramax.

What is the one most influential live music experience of your entire life? How high were you?
I've been lucky. I've seen some great shows. I've seen Zeppelin twice when they were actually Zeppelin. My brother actually used to play with Keith Moon, and through him I met John Lennon one day and didn't even realize it. It was during his "lost weekend" period when he came to Los Angeles and he was hanging out with Harry Nillson, Alice Cooper, John Sebastian, Mickey Dolenz. Moon and all of them came in the studio to jam and record some music. And this guy comes in with dark glasses and long hair and a big beard and stands off to the side with Nillson, and I say what's up without realizing it was John Lennon. Then I stand a few feet from him the entire day and nobody tells me it's Lennon.

A couple of years later I ran into John Sebastian at a guitar store, and I walked up to him and said, "ya know, I met you once when I was 14 and you were making a record with Keith Moon," and he goes, "sh*t, I was only there one day. You were there on that big day. That was the day that Lennon and Nillson came out...." And there I realized I had spent a day in a room with John Lennon and not realized he was there. But that's still not the most inspired I've been at a live show. I've had a few that are up there. The most inspiring was seeing Humboldt Pie's goodbye show at Long Beach from the side of the apron. Stevie Ray Vaughn playing live would have to be my second, about a month before he died; it actually gave me goosebumps. It's not one of those post-mortum feelings either. And to make a perfect circle, I saw a Neil Young do a show at the Greek theatre where he walked out onto a stage without a band, to ten guitars and an assortment of instruments. He played the whole show going from instrument to instrument playing every part himself.

Uh, so which were you the highest at?
Oh yeah, definitely the Humboldt Pie show cause I was still in high school. I stopped getting high out of high school, er, well not really. I actually still got high sometimes into my early twenties, until I was living in New York as a busboy with a suitcase trying to become an actor and I didn't have time to get high.

I hear you recommend Nikka Costa's tunes. I listened to Nikka Costa's album last night and it made me wonder... Do you think female vocalists are sassier and more forceful when engaged in a domestic discussion? She sounds like she could beat me in a fight of any kind. Do you think she'd marry me?
First off, she's 5'1". And she's probably one of the most emotionally and spiritually adjusted people I've ever met. She knows herself really well, so to get her pissed off and freaked out would take a lot. She has an engaging laugh and she's always using it. But if she were to get into a domestic squabble, I'd have to say it'd be like "Vavoom" from the old Felix the Cat. Unfortunately for you, she's married to Justin Stanley, who was Beck's guitar player for a while.

Well I'd bet my fiance's fertility that you just went over all 36 of Rivalfish readers' heads with that Felix the Cat reference, but I wikipedia'd it and it seems both funny and culturally insensitive. Of All the famous artists her father exposed her to as a child, who's influence do you hear the most in Nikka's music?
Probably Sly and the Family Stone. Definitely. She's gotten a raw deal. She'd be a monster star if it wasn't for Virgin Records. While she was at Virgin, they had four different presidents. Every time she'd be in the middle of a project, a new president would come in. Well, you know how it is in the music business [actually I have absolutely no idea], it's so ego-driven. No one wanted to push someone else's project, so they'd make her start over under their direction. Finally, she'd resist and finish the record, and the new guy wouldn't push it out of spite. It happened to two different albums. She begged to get off of Virgin and they finally let her go. They finally realized that this poor girl wasn't getting a fair shake, and let her go to a label that's really going to know how to promote her.

Ryan Bingham is also someone you recommended, so I listened to him last night while organizing my sweaters by color and cut. His voice is alluringly haunting, and his songwriting is, to put it simply, "radical." It seems like he's one big Soundtrack-placement away from hitting the big-time. What do you think it's going to take for a true talent like Bingham to explode and earn the living he deserves for being so damn talented?
I like to describe his voice as "100 miles of unpaved road." I'll tell you what; right now he's been playing shows in Los Angeles and New York. I was just out there with him when he played a show at the Whitney Museum with for this artist named Kiki Smith, who's the "next big thing." When you do a show at the Whitney, one of the most prestigious museums in the world, you are doing a pretty important thing. Bingham turned the room full of monied, Eastside, uptown patrons of a museum into a total barrelhouse. They were going crazy and buying his home-studio-made CD.

It's just a matter of time, and you can see the groundswell of excitement, particularly with the girls. He's an ex-bull-rider that was recruited on a scholarship for college because the school had a good bull-riding program. He rode competitively for years, and then drove to LA in a car with all of his stuff and his drummer. He showed up at a house of a girl I know and we ended up jamming for three hours, so I got him a gig with a guy I know. Another gig came out of that gig, and another out of that, and so on. I let him sleep on my floor for months. But like I said, it's just a matter of time before the right company comes and scoops them up. Thankfully they have a good lawyer.

We are putting together a "50 Greatest Cover Songs" article, and I'm soliciting you for some celebrity additions. And I already have listed the best gangster rap cover, Snoop's version of "Lodi Dodi." What are some of your faves?
Alright, I'll give you a couple right now: The Pretenders doing "I Go to Sleep." It's written by Ray Davies of the Kinks. "Without You," because I love Harry Nillson, without question is a great cover. How about Crosby, Stills, & Nash doing "Woodstock?" Those are some great songs and some great covers.

By the way, I saw Snoop Dogg live and it was great. Really a great live show, and totally instrument-driven. I was in shock, really.

To end things on a happier note, you were on Seinfeld in a ton of scenes with Michael Richards. We all know what happened to him. When a comedian goes to an extreme of offensiveness that seems indefensible even in the most ironic and satirical lights, what's it take for him to come back to public acceptance.
He's done. It's like Jimmy the Greek. [On a 1988 NFL Today broadcast, Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder said "During the slave period, the slave owner would breed his big black with his big woman so that he would have a big black kid—that's where it all started." They then replaced him with a non-idiot.] I think he thought he was doing a funny comedy bit. He probably had just seen Borat, and thought he would make some big crazy statement and be funny, and he was anything but. I think it was obviously in really poor taste. Could he recover? I would be surprised.

Yeah, it seems that in today's society it is still more acceptable to hate Jews than it is to hate Blacks. How sad and ridiculous to hate either! Why can't we stick together and all focus on hating people with Lupus and little boys with two dads?