Timothy Bottoms: The Hollywood Interview

TIMOTHY BOTTOMS GETS HIS POUND OF FLESH
By
Alex Simon

Timothy Bottoms became an overnight sensation at the height of the so-called “Easy Riders and Raging Bulls” era, after landing the leading role in The Last Picture Show (1971), Peter Bogdanovich’s film about the social and sexual rites of small town Texans in the early 1950s. Internationally acclaimed for his portrait of Sonny, a sensitive kid struggling to find his way in the harsh landscape of post-war America, the then-twenty year-old Bottoms suddenly found himself not only in-demand as a rising young star, but a major celebrity, as well, with younger brothers Sam (who co-starred in The Last Picture Show), Joseph and Ben following in their older brother’s footsteps, making names for themselves on stage and screen. Bottoms reprised the role of Sonny for Picture Show's 1990 sequel, Texasville.

After another triumphant turn with the lead in James Bridges’ The Paper Chase in 1973, Bottoms (by his own admission) made some bad career decisions and by age twenty-six, found his career starting to flounder. Despite the fact that never achieved the iconic stardom of his Last Picture Show co-star Jeff Bridges, Bottoms is one of the lucky few in the acting community who has worked consistently since his film debut in 1971, racking up an impressive 113 credits (according to the Internet Movie Database). Today, Timothy Bottoms spends most of his time on his sprawling ranch property in Big Sur, California, where he trains wild horses.

Bottoms’ latest turn is in Tamar Simon Hoffs’ Pound of Flesh, available on DVD and Blu-ray from Odyssey Moving Images, co-starring with Malcolm McDowell, Angus Macfayden, and Dee Wallace in a story about libidinous nefariousness on a contemporary college campus. Timothy Bottoms sat down recently to discuss his four decade career. Here’s what followed:


Let’s start by talking about Pound of Flesh.

Timothy Bottoms: I guess it was three years or four years ago my manager called me and said there was an opportunity to make a picture in Washington directed by Tammy Hoffs and starring Malcolm McDowell. Malcolm and I had done a picture before for Playboy, kind of a racy thing. My manager said I’d get fifty thousand dollars. Then it all fell apart because Tammy had a problem with the Teamsters or something. Then Tammy said she had another movie she thought I’d be great in, but they could only pay me eight hundred bucks. (laughs) And that’s about what I made. So she got it together and we shot it in L.A. I had a lot of fun on that picture. About a year later, she called and said “We need to spice this up and I’d like you to shoot a nude scene.” I wasn’t married at that time. My wife had asked for a separation and divorce, so I said okay and we did a little frontal nudity and it was a little racy. I’d never really done a nude scene before. And they edited the scene so it was a really integral part of the picture. Tammy’s great, kind of like a second mother for me, in many ways. When I go down to L.A., if I have opportunities for work, I usually stay with her and Josh, her husband. I just love her dearly.


Timothy Bottoms, Whitney Able and Malcolm McDowell in Pound of Flesh.

You and Malcolm McDowell both became stars the same year, in 1971, you with The Last Picture Show and Malcolm with A Clockwork Orange.

I always enjoy being with Malcolm, whether we’re sitting and chatting or acting together. We don’t really talk about the past too much. He’s a friend and he rings me up once in a while for parts. I have yet to visit him in Ojai. He was going to teach me to golf and I was going to teach him to surf, but so far that’s never materialized.

Let’s go back to the beginning when you were growing up in Santa Barbara. How did you become interested in acting?

My dad loved music, and always played guys like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin, there was always music in the house. He would sing all the songs. I would find myself singing with him, either at home or when we were fishing. I actually thought for a long time that I would be a fisherman. In school I was a shy kid and I had trouble reading. I was put in this special reading class where you had to read out loud. Back then our teachers all smoked, and she went out for a smoke break, said “Timmy, just keep reading,” and then she left. I found myself reading the book and before I knew it, I was standing on top of her desk and all the kids in the class were howling. She walked back in and just stood there. The bell rang and the kids left, she said “Timmy, just stay there.” So I stayed on the desk. She said “I want you to go meet a friend of mine who teaches an acting class.” She didn’t chew me out, or tell me to get the hell off her desk. She looked at me, smiled and said “I think you need an acting class.” So that’s how it began. I was about twelve or thirteen. By the end of high school, I’d been in over fifty stage productions, toured Europe singing with a choir, performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. When I got out of high school, I thought I’d be a veterinarian.

Bradford Dillman.

I understand you had a pretty amazing acting mentor at Santa Barbara High.

Yeah, Bradford Dillman was my teacher. He was married to Suzy Parker, who was one of the most beautiful women in the world. Brad was great. After I did one of my last shows, a man came up to me after the performance and said “You’re really good. I think you can make it in Hollywood.” His name was Robert Raison, and he was one of the most powerful agents in the business, represented Dennis Hopper, Jane Wyman, all sorts of people. He was Cole Porter’s right hand man for many years. The first thing he sent me on was a TV series called “High Chaparral,” which was a big hit. Back then, you didn’t do TV and movies, it was one or the other. I wanted to do movies, and I told Bob this. Movies were just magic for me. Lynn Stalmaster was the casting director and they shot a test of me, where I did great with the horses and the rifle. I got to do a scene with Cameron Mitchell, the star of the show. I guess they loved me, because they offered me $7,000 a week with a twenty-six week guarantee.

That would be good money now.

Yeah, and this was in 1970. My dad made about $14,000 a year then. So, of course, what did I do? I turned it down. (laughs) I could care less about TV, man. I wanted to do movies. They were like “Kid, we spent twelve grand on that test. If you turn this down, you’ll never work for us again and you’ll never work at Warner Bros.” (laughs) So I laughed, got back in my Volkswagen and drove home. My mom couldn’t believe her ears when I told her. I made a lot of mistakes in my career, you gotta understand. But that’s just who I am.

But then fate seemed to cut you a break.

Yeah, I got a call from my agent, who was still really pissed at me, who said that he had this project that was really controversial, written by and going to be directed by Dalton Trumbo. That was Johnny Got His Gun and it was my first movie. Of course, this was at the height of the Vietnam war and an anti-war movie set in WW I was the last thing most studios wanted to touch.

Bottoms with Dalton Trumbo on the set of Johnny Got His Gun.

Tell us about Dalton Trumbo.

He was a great guy, a wonderful man. He’d done time in prison during the Red Scare of the 1950s because he’d refused to name names. Then Kirk Douglas hired him to write Spartacus and his career was back in the sixties. He wrote Lonely Are the Brave, lots of amazing stuff. Great writer. So I figured this was my shot, an independent movie. I hustled to the audition, it was on Sunset Boulevard, I remember, and I got stuck in traffic, was late. I ran in, and they tell me I’m not on the list. I just lost it, thinking I’d blown it again, and the guy at the desk took pity on me, took me into a room, made me a sandwich and gave me a Coke. Then this old man walks in the room and he just looks at me. He’s got nicotine stains all over his beard, his teeth, his fingers. That was Dalton. He looked like a real character, what you’d have imagined Samuel Clemens might have looked like. Dalton was a little guy, but really intense, super intense. So another guy hands me some sides and tells me to study up and come back in a few days. I go back and of course I got lost, showed up late, and there were a lot of guys auditioning for that part: David Soul, Peter Fonda, who’s a great guy. And we wound up shooting tests all day. I was the youngest by far, the only one not living in Hollywood and the only one who wasn’t the son of a big movie star or a seasoned actor. They all knew what they were doing and I sure didn’t. For some reason, at the end of the day, Dalton said “I want you for the part.”

You and Trumbo became close?

Yeah, I wound up living at his son’s house for a while, so Dalton and I hung out a lot. One of my most vivid memories from that shoot is the day we were doing a scene where my character is in the hospital, horribly wounded with no arms or legs, and a rat is chewing on his head. Jesus Christ shows up to speak to him, and who’s playing Jesus, but Donald Sutherland! I had just seen him in Robert Altman’s MASH and just thought he was terrific. I became good friends with Donald and with Elliott Gould and with Jason Robards, who played my dad. What a cool guy! Great sense of humor. He showed me how the plastic surgeons put his face back together after that car accident he had in Malibu that nearly killed him, told me so many amazing stories.

And with that, you were launched.

Yeah, before I knew it, I was meeting with Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, Peter Bogdanovich, and Polly Platt for The Last Picture Show. They cast me without an audition and wanted me to play the Dwayne part, but I didn’t want that part. I didn’t identify with Dwayne. I identified with Sonny. Everybody in the movie talked to Sonny. He was the listener. Then Jeff Bridges got the part of Dwayne. We all know his history. He’s made lots of good choices in his career.

Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges, The Last Picture Show.

Did you guys become friends?

Yeah, for a while, then we lost touch for a few years. He moved to Santa Barbara and bought Kenny Loggins’ old place. I didn’t know that at the time and I was working the hills around Kenny’s house. I was trying to take some livestock through the area and got caught up in the brush and who should appear, but Jeff! He didn’t recognize me. I was wearing dark glasses and a baseball hat. He said “Hey, what are you doing? This is private property.” I said “Yeah, I know, but there’s a public easement through here.” He says “Yeah, I know.” And he still doesn’t recognize me. We had just done Texasville fairly recently. So he walks up, puts his arm on my mule and says “Where can you ride around here?” So I look at him and say “Anyone ever tell you, you kinda look like that famous movie star, Lloyd Bridges.” He rolled his eyes and says “Tim! Is that you?” (laughs)

Let’s talk some more about The Last Picture Show. I understand it was a very tough shoot.

Yeah, Johnny Got His Gun and Picture Show were back-to-back. I went from one production to the other, literally, for the whole duration of the shoot: flying back and forth from Texas to L.A. I worked seven days a week for about nine months.

Look at it this way, if you’d said yes to “High Chaparral,” you probably wouldn’t have gotten either one of those movies.

Yeah, that’s for sure. Although I’d probably have a boatload of money and a western television deal, but who knows?

I’d rather have those two movies as part of my legacy than a boatload of money. But that’s just me.

Yeah, you’re probably right. A lot of the stuff that made people tons of money were flash-in-the-pan movies and TV shows that have been forgotten.

Including “The High Chaparral.” Aside from Cameron Mitchell, I couldn’t tell you who else was in it.

Yeah, absolutely right.

George Hickenlooper.

I re-watched George Hickenlooper’s documentary, Picture This, about the making of Last Picture Show and Texasville last night.

(laughs) Oh, George. I hired him to shoot that. He was a craft service guy on a Roger Corman movie I was doing. He told me he’d gone to Yale and wanted to make movies and I had this idea for a documentary and he said “Let’s do it,” and then he ran away with it. We helped him again when my brother Sam turned him on to Francis Coppola for Hearts of Darkness and also gave him The Big Brass Ring. He had an ego, this guy, and he used people as stepping stones, literally stepped on them. I don’t sue people, unless you’re threatening my land or hurting my family, so I just didn’t have the energy to go after him. I put $75,000 of my own money in Picture This that I still have yet to see. I wasn’t going to do Texasville unless I could do that documentary. It was very important to me.

There was another documentary on the Criterion DVD called The Last Picture Show: A Look Back, where they interviewed every principal from the film except for you. What was that about?

I don’t know, considering the whole story is about Sonny. It’s vindictiveness, I guess.

What I noticed in both documentaries, though, was how much each of you seemed to still channel your characters from Picture Show while you were talking about them. You came across as very melancholy during your interviews in Picture This, and you certainly don’t come across that way now. Jeff Bridges seemed to be channeling Dwayne, Cybill Shepherd with Jacy, Cloris Leachman as Ruth, and so on.

Yeah, and in many ways I think that’s who we all really are. Art and life imitate each other, which was my whole point behind the documentary to begin with.

Eileen Brennan, Sam Bottoms, Timothy Bottoms--The Last Picture Show.

It was a tough shoot on many levels. First, you fell in love with your leading lady, Cybill Shepherd, who rejected you and had an affair with the director, and your folks were splitting up at the time.

Yeah, that’s why Sam came down to the set originally. My mom had her hands full and it was a tough time for the family. Sam was extremely sensitive.

That came through in his work. He was a fine actor. I was so sorry to hear about his passing.

Yeah, but he kept everything bottled up, held it in and I’m convinced, the more I learn about cancer, that it really manifests itself. You’ve got learn to let stuff go, man, or it’ll kill you.

I get the feeling from both you and Peter Bogdanovich, whom I’ve interviewed a couple times, that there’s some residual anger there between the two of you.

There’s no residual anger from my end. I just lost complete respect for him during the Picture Show shoot. Polly Platt, who was his wife at the time, was an integral part of that picture. She had one baby and was pregnant with their second daughter all during casting. She loved Peter so much. She took care of him and made all the decisions for everybody. She was such an amazing woman. All us kids loved her dearly, like our second mom, just took care of everybody. Peter was always on the phone with Orson Welles, who I think was giving him a lot of advice. From what I could see, the guy who was really running the show was the cinematographer, Robert Surtees. He was the man and I don’t know why he wasn’t given the Academy Award, because he was the guy who painted the pictures. He was the one that wanted to make it look like Hud. So when Polly went off to have her baby, I started to hear all these conversations about him and Cybill. My mom and dad were going through a divorce, which was really devastating to me. My parents were my heroes and when you’re a child of divorce it just tears you up inside. It’s like a death, like losing someone really close. So when I saw this happen and when Polly found out, she was just floored. I hugged her and held her, held the baby. I threw Peter up against the wall at one point, grabbed him by the lapels and told him what an asshole he was. I was a pretty strong kid and he was a really skinny, lanky guy. He responded by telling me he was going to destroy my career. I was seriously going to kick his ass. How can you be so stupid? You’ve got this amazing wife who just adores you, is always telling you how wonderful you are. You have these two beautiful little daughters and you’re just going to throw that all away? So that’s what happened.



Okay, that makes sense, then.

Here’s something else really heavy: I gave Dorothy Stratten her first job in Hollywood. I had an affair with Dorothy while I was going through a divorce with my first wife. It was up in Vancouver while I was shooting The Other Side of the Mountain Part 2. The first assistant director asked who I wanted for a stand-in, because Marilyn Hassett and her husband were always yelling that I wasn’t attracted to her. So I picked the prettiest girl on the set, and it was her. We spent three or four days together. I had to ask her mom permission to take her out. And who was there holding onto her mom’s apron strings, but Louise, Dorothy’s little sister who Peter married years later, when she was exactly the same age Dorothy was when Peter hooked up with her. So I know in my heart that he made Dorothy’s estranged husband just feel like a piece of shit. And he shouldn’t have done that to some hillbilly hick from Vancouver because guess what? He decided to blow her brains out and then killed himself. And I believe that Peter is really responsible for a lot of that.

When did you find out that she and Bogdanovich were together?

Not for a long time. And I was hanging out at the Playboy Club and the mansion a lot in those days. Then the invitations stopped coming when my pictures quit being hits. (laughs) I saw her photo there one night and never put two and two together. I never told Peter about me and Dorothy when we were doing Texasville. But one night he said to me, “I want you to see this picture that I did a few years ago.” And it was They All Laughed, which was Dorothy’s last film. And Peter was sitting right behind me during the screening, with Dorothy’s little sister, who he was trying to make look just like Dorothy. Talk about weird circles, right? Oh, God…Sorry, there’s a lot of pain there still.

Dorothy Stratten, 1960-1980.

It sounds like it. Sorry if it brought back bad memories.

No, listen, it’s all in the past. I’m in a very happy place right now. I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years, but I’m still here and I’m living on the ranch that I discovered when I was twelve years old. My life’s really come full circle. I’m working on having it turned into a private wildlife preserve. Not many people are asking me for film work anymore because of rumors and all sorts of bullshit, but you know what, I’m happy. As far as Hollywood goes, I’ll work if someone I respect asks me to, even work for free if I believe in the project, but I don’t go chasing it anymore. I’ve seen it change so much over the years and I don’t like what the business has become. I don’t like how people treat each other and how rumors start and get out of control and the idea if you’re out of the “in” crowd you’re not employable.

Your next film was Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing.

Yeah, nobody saw that but I was so excited to be working with Maggie Smith, who I still think is the greatest actress in the world. I had actually met her when I was a kid, several years earlier, working at the Ahmanson Theater. This was right after The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Bottoms with Maggie Smith--Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing.

I had no idea it tanked at the box office.

Yeah man, just disappeared. Alan J. Pakula directed it. Maggie Smith was the star. Alvin Sargent wrote the script. Geoffrey Unsworth shot it. Makes no sense. But shooting it was four months of just amazing times in Spain and I got to pretend to make love to my favorite actress.

Let’s talk about The Paper Chase and James Bridges, who I think is a very unheralded great director.

Jim was terrific. He and his partner, Jack Larson, who played Jimmy Olsen in “Superman” on TV, were really dedicated artists. It was very important to Jim that he write and direct every picture he did. He always told me that: “I can’t do anything unless I write the script.” He would also work on his scripts with the actors. He never pushed anything on me or gave me line readings. He wanted us to be as comfortable with the script as he was. What a nice human being he was.



How well did you get to know John Houseman?

(laughs) My senior year at Santa Barbara High School, I had the opportunity to audition for Julliard. I did and I got turned down by John Houseman. (laughs) And I wanted to go there so bad! So quietly in my mind I’m thinking ‘I’ll show him,’ right? So Jim and I went to meet him for dinner and he’d read the script. And I had casting approval. He looked at me, and I realized he didn’t remember. He asked me my name, I said ‘Timothy Bottoms.” He said “Oh yes, fine young actor. Fine young actor.” (laughs) Jim asked him how he liked the script and John replied “I think I’ll do it.” I had to bite my tongue because one part of me really wanted to tell him “no,” just like he had to me years earlier, but of course, I didn’t. I swallowed my pride. (laughs) He was a really nice man, actually. We spent a lot of time talking theater together. After the movie, I hooked him up with my agent, Bob Raison, and he did very well. Years later I told John about the Julliard audition and we had a good laugh. He said “Your destiny obviously laid elsewhere, my boy.”

Your agent, Robert Raison, seems to have played prominently in your life at this time.

Yeah, he was a very famous guy and was the first guy to go from agent to manager. He takes the heat for all managers to this day. (laughs) He died down in Mexico, of AIDS. When Bob wanted to become a manager instead of an agent, I refused to stay with him because I wasn’t interested in that kind of relationship. So he said “Okay, see ya.” And that’s when my career really went south. I had no one to protect me. I had no idea how important an agent was. Once again, you don’t understand these things as a kid. That’s why, when you look at movies today, all the same people are in the same movies over and over again. They’re usually repped by one of the handful of really powerful agents in town. And that’s why they’re not bringing in anybody new. The agents and the distribution companies run the business. They make the stars, not because they’re all incredibly talented. They’re molded and shaped into products, the same thing, over and over.

And they keep remaking the same movie over and over, too.

Yeah, my brother Sam always said that. He was married to Laura Bickford, who’s an independent film producer, and has worked a lot with Steven Soderbergh. “It’s all remakes now, Tim. Everybody’s just remaking the same old crap. Somebody should remake Lonely Are the Brave.” I thought that was a great idea, so I called up Michael Douglas, who said that his dad had just sold the rights back to Universal. I tried to get a hold of Frank Marshall, who’d gotten his start on Picture Show, but he and Peter were still really tight and Frank, I guess, still has a burr up his ass about me. Wouldn’t return my calls. He’s a very powerful producer now. It’s too bad, you know? You could remake it almost anywhere: here, Argentina, Mexico. If you’re going to remake something, remake movies like that.

When I look at your career, while you didn’t become the huge star they were building you up to be, you’ve also worked pretty non-stop since 1971, making you one of the lucky actors out there.

Yeah, I made a lot of choices, good and bad. I’m working with a good guy now. We just have a handshake agreement, no contract. It’s like when hunters would approach a rancher back in the old days and ask “May I hunt on your land, sir?” The rancher would show them where they could go. They’d give each other a handshake and bring ‘em a bottle of whiskey in the wintertime. And that’s the way it should be.

Timothy Bottoms relaxing on his ranch in Big Sur.