I Smell Pop Culture: Cop Rock

we love it. But sometimes you gotta go a little deeper. So here's what we're doing. We're picking out some of our favorite pop culture references from the entire of Gilmore Girls, and we're going to explore them on a granular level that you can only do with a podcast. We're going to talk to the people that made these pop culture references into a piece of pop culture. We're going to talk to the stars, the writers, the producers, the singers, We're talking to them all baby, And this week we're

doing something really really exciting. This is This is something that you may or may not be familiar with, a little show called cop Rock. I know what you're thinking, what's cop Rock? What is that? Imagine if you watched Law and Order, but then they started sinking Broadway level, Broadway level songs, Broadway level productions, television drama at the highest level. This is truly a big swing. And if there's something I love, it's a big swing. I love

big risks. I love when people try a crazy idea, and that is what they did with cop Rock. This show premiered on ABC in nineteen ninety. It ran for eleven episodes. It was canceled, It was abruptly canceled. It was not met with with good reviews. This show was truly bizarre, but an incredible show nonetheless. And here is why it connects to Gilmore Girls. We're going to season five, episode thirteen, Wedding Bell Blues. This is the cold open

before the theme song plays. Laura is at Luke's. They're talking about his boat. You know, he's trying to buy stuff for his boat, and he's getting really frustrated because he's talking to the guy from the catalog and everything's on back order, so he's really frustrated, as Luke tends to be, and he tells Laurai he's going to come by later to work on the boat with what he has. You know, he's waiting for a bunch of stuff to come in, but he's going to come by and work

on the boat. And she says, yeah, that's fine' Rory spending the night. We're having a cop Rock marathon. And then they talk about some other stuff, and then before Lorela leaves the coffee shop, Luke says, hold on, did you say cop Rock marathon? And Lurlai says, yeah, I got them all on tape, trying to figure out you seeing me? So Laura La big cop Rock fan. She has all eleven episodes on tape. You can get all eleven episodes of cop Rock on a DVD from Shout Factory.

This show has a cult following now. People love it. I love it. I watched a lot of cop Rock prepping for this. I admittedly I did not know what it was until you know, I was doing research for this show. I love Coprock. I am a huge cop Rock fan. Now I hope you are too. We're going to talk to one of the stars of cop Rock Peter on Aroti. He played Detective Vincent LaRusso, who's kind of the de facto main character of Cop Rock. He his storyline is kind of like a main thread throughout

the eleven episodes. And if you see him, google Peter on Arotti if you can't place his face. He has been in everything. He has been in Swat, he was in This Is Us, He's in Good Fellas for Crying Out Lad. This guy is so cool and he's done so many incredible things in Hollywood, and I'm so interested in his perspective about what it was like to make something like Cop Rock. What was it like to go into this like dramatic police procedural, but then also have

to learn singing and dancing in certain cases? And how do they make this show? How is this? Randy Newman wrote all the songs for the pilot. Randy Newman's in the theme song. They had incredible people working on this show. I can't wait to hear about it all. We're going to talk to Peter Onati here in just a second, and I hope you stick around because it's real. It's a lot of fun here on I smell pop culture. We're having a blast let's do it. Hey, everybody, it's

I Smell pop Culture on the Iamlin podcast. We're so excited about this. We're talking to one of the stars of cop Rock. Peter Onoati is with us. Thank you so much for doing this. Peter, it's so nice to meet you.

years in the business world. Anyway, I get out here and my then agent, Kay Lieberman and now manager because she took over. A managing company called me and said, you sing right, I go no, no, I'm you know. She goes yes, you do you sing? I said, well, I sang at a couple of my friend's weddings from college and you know, a couple of family friends. I said, but no, I'm not a singer. You know. She goes no, you sing? I said, Okay, I sing, you know. And

so I get this audition for cop Rock. And the funny thing was my wife grew up in Santa Barbara. She's good friends with a guy who was probably I think he still is or was the longest running phantom on Broadway, Howard mcgillan is his name. Incredible voice, incredible musical actor. And Howard came out from New York and had had an audition from this before I ever even heard of it, so I, you know, didn't pay any

attention to it, you know. And I went off to do a movie with Nick Cage and Tommy Lee Jones and Sean Young called Firebirds. When it came back from that, I got this audition for cop Rock. And so the scene was actually the scene in the pilot where I testify in court. And it was a great of course it's Botchko. So it was the great writing, you know.

And after I did that, you know, they called me back again and had me read it again, and then they said, okay, you you know, we need you to sing, and I went okay, I said, you know, I had only done one actually singing audition in New York. This was before I was in the business. While I was still at McCall's magazines. My wife got me a singing audition at the Public Theater for something called Lenny and the Heartbreakers. And it was so embarrassing, that's a but.

So I didn't know what to do. So I picked Uh. I picked a really simple song that I knew, an old song blue Monday from from uh a Fats Domino.

was great fun to do. And so I get another call back to do it again, and Randy Newman was there because Randy Newman did the music in the pilot.

blow his head off. Yeah.

I shipp back up at one point and say that during the audition process they called me back and said and wanted me to read for the captain, which Larry Joshua got. Larry Joshua accomplished musician he had who was in a rock band. He has a great voice, that great gravelly voice that he is, And so I went great, because this is a regular role, right, didn't get it,

didn't didn't do it. And then they, like I said, they gave me the russo and that all worked out and then it was it was funny because I was the last one of the original ensemble to sing. I didn't sing till the fourth episode. Wow, two more songs, Yeah, two more songs and the rest of it, and it was it was hard. The first one where I sing, I started in a holding cell outside the court.

So but it all worked out. It was it Actually, I don't really like my voice that much, but the song, the the theatrical nature of the song really worked well for the piece, uh, you know, and so that that was kind of cool.

a gangster. Right. Well, he was an actor, but he was a good actor, but he looked really looked the part. And he had a job downtown LA in a play. So he left before we finished the scene because he had to get done, and you know, and so they shot one, just one thing on my side, and then I get off and I get out of the shower and I go in and I put my clothes on the I'm driving out the prison. And they got him

bent over the car, his own car. They got him bent over, and they're frisking them because he was so late for his call time that he went in his prison guard. He drove his own car, right, and he looks at me and he goes, Peter, tell him, who I am. I I never seen a guy before. Come on, come on, I said, no, no, come on, guys, I said, you think a guy would drive out in his prison outfit? And he said and his prison guards go, oh yeah, they would, you know. But oh, I scared the ship

out of him, I know. But like guy, I could I could not take advantage of that, right, And he I think he barely made it on time, all because because the prison was like out in near Santa Clarita and he had to go all the way to downtown. Lad is half hour call. So that was kind of funny. But that was sort of the you know, the craziness

surrounding that first number, you know. And and then the other one was when I'm about to go to jail and it's my birthday and they gave it this jazzy bluesy number where the stripper comes and she's dressed like a cop, and man, I tell you, I honestly God. Now it's thirty what thirty two years later, and I have done a lot of work. I've had a couple of my own series. I just came off big splashy

series and swat and everything as a regular. I don't think I've ever had a more wonderful creative challenge than that show. You know.

we did it at Carnegie Hall. They bring the whole cast out and introduce the stars to all the potential advertisers right and to your affiliates and everybody else. It's a big deal. It's a lot of fun. Well, the one out in LA, because I wasn't a regular. I didn't go to the one in New York. But I went to the one in LA because they had made me a regular in the meantime, and I was sitting at a table with the affiliates of Sioux City, Iowa. Okay,

Now these are the affiliates. These are the guys that want you want to love your program because my show Pop Rock is at ten o'clock show and that leads into their news. They don't want to lose any audience. Right, oh yeah, Well the four Tops sang and that was the same year the Twin Peaks came out on ABC, So it was Twin Peaks, it was cop Rock, it

was you know. So we're at these upfronts for Top Singing, and they showed the last scene of the pilot episode of cop Rock, which is Kathleen Wolhoyd singing a Randy Newman lullaby to her baby and selling it for two hundred dollars drug money into adoption. I'm telling you, you look at this thing. You look at it, look at it on YouTube. I don't think there's a better moment in television. I really don't that moment. Know, there was a bunch of Coprock moments that didn't work, but that moment,

and you could have heard. You could hear it. You could have a pin drop, right yeah. Well, this guy from SIUs City, Iowa leans over the table and he goes, oh hell, she wouldn't sing when she sells her baby. And I went, okay, we're screwed.

about it, and you know, and that was it. But that was his twin Peaks, cop Rock, all that stuff was him when he was head of ABC, you know. And uh and so even he remembers it. It's probably his biggest failure too. But uh but it was uh uh yeah, and and I you know, oh god, there

was it was. And here's a very interesting thing too, or at least I find it interesting now because I've been into business for a while and I had never really I I had never really done summer stock, you know, where people know each other for the whole summer and they do all different roles and they're hanging together. I never did anything like that. I went from the world into acting and and started to work, you know, so

I never did all that other stuff. In other words, I did I had no binding history with the people I was working with. I didn't know how to socialize in that atmosphere. But the amazing thing about cop Rock was that people showed up on their days off to watch somebody else sing, or somebody else's number or big scene. That's most we were. And that's when I say now that I've never seen that in any other cast, whether it was my own show or somebody else's show, I've

never seen that happen, you know. And here's here's the phenomenal thing about Copyright that no one knows. Every one of those songs was recorded live. Not one of them was looped or anything else.

guarb I was miked. The camera dolly was on, and on the dolly was a little speaker with you know, with the background music for I Can't Keep a Good Man Down, the same thing for the for to Live and Die a Cop and the last one, which I forget, I forget the name of that one, but no, it was all live, and there was a big recording truck outside the soundstage, and if you had to do it over, you'd do it over. In fact, a friend of mine, Stephen DePaul, became a very prominent director in television, has

written a couple of books. Now. He was one of Bruce Springsteen's roadies Wow. But he was also friends with Billy Finkelstein. They had gone to college together or knew each other, and so Billy hired him as a producer on cop Rock because he knew that end of things. And Steven came into me one time. I forget which song it was, I'm pretty sure it was to Live in Die cop and he said, not one of those

takes is different. I went, yeah, I'm sorry man, He goes, no, no, no, that's good, you know, I said, oh okay, I said, because in acting you want to do a little if the director wants you to do, you want to get a little difference. And he sad you. I goh shit, I'm sorry, and he goes, no, no, no, I can blend anything. I take a piece of anything, because they're all the same, you know. I didn't know that was a good thing,

you know. And yeah, and oh man, it was. I can't think of a bad moment except when Steven came in and said we were canceled. You know, I really think although I and I remember saying to Steven and to Greg Hoblett, hey, why don't we this is my MBA in marketing, right, And that's exactly what they called me onto. I said, why don't we do this? Why don't we film one of the songs from the upcoming episode? But let's put I was friends with Paula Abdul at

the time. All right, let's get one of these Let's get Paul Abdul to do a song one week, Let's film that song ahead of time, let's release it on MTV and say this is what's coming up on cop Rock. And they're like, shut up with your NBA marketing bush. I'm like, no, man, I said, come on, you know, let's you know, And I'm telling you I think that would have saved the show. Yes, you get Paul Abdul, you get who the hell else was around that? Do you know that you can? You can find this on YouTube.

There are two numbers that Cheryl crow sings background in what Yeah. Cheryl Crowe is on cop Rock.

songs both won the Academy Award. And then there was a whole bunch of other writers that were great too. And the other cool thing was that there was a lot of session singers in town here that never got their faces on camera, you know, and all of a sudden, you know, here they are like singing in the background, popping up. Carl Anderson, Carl Anderson, rest in peace. Carl was the judge in the pilot episode where they sing that Randy Newton that silly song. He's guilty, Judge, He's guilty.

R Carl is the judge. Carl played Judas in the movie Jesus Christ Superstar.

You get a copy of the song to learn? How did that work?

That's all that's insane and everything recorded like we said live. So my preparation didn't change at all from my preparation to do a character. You know, whatever it is in my background that I could call upon, and for this I could call upon a lot. My uncle, Pat Depalmer, was the chief of police in my hometown. My father was a part time cop when he was younger. You know, I have a lot of there. Both were marines, you know, I got all kinds of that stuff in it. None

of them sang. But the thing that I found, which was a great it was an acting lesson for me, was because I wasn't that confident of my voice. I knew I could carry a tune, but I wasn't like Anne Bobby or Paul mccrane or any of these guys who could sing. And I had trained voices, you know, I had to bury myself in my character. This was really my character's inner voice singing out. So I wasn't performing some of those some of those numbers were performed

like musicals and had dancing and stuff. Most of my numbers were quite introspective and really voices of the inner character,

you know. And and so it wasn't that hard to prepare for because I didn't because I have to tell you something in my mind, people like Anne Bobby who've done musicals and stuff, there's a switch in your body as an actor that you have to be able to flip to do a musical, to be able to blow away all reality and to overact and to do I don't know if it's called overacting, but to really really present.

I don't know that I have that talent. But like I said, Aunt Bobby could, and you know, and and a few other people you know who had performed, know even as even as rock musicians, you know, like Larry had, Larry Joshua had a band, Jimmy McDaniels hit a song already in theater, Paul mccrane of course fame. Yeah, yeah, you know, he's brilliant, and you know, so so so my preparation and plus the fact that I was not

that accomplished an actor. I've only been into business a couple of years, so I I had to depend on my own natural process and just make the music fit in to that, you know, And so it did I think it fit in? Well?

Her and her partner meet me Freeman, were nominated for an Emmy on the first show that they wrote on here in Hollywood, which was in Living Color.

lesser role. It was like a private investigator, you know that work for Charlie Howell and the firm. And then I got a call from somebody else to do another lead. So I called Stephen back and I go, hey, you're my mentor. These guys are all calling me about doing leads, and you want me to do this secondary role. I said, would you consider me for the lead? He goes okay, you know, And so I came in and I read,

and I loved the law. I had two semesters of law undergraduate and two semesters in graduate school from my MBA. I loved the law. I just was not as conscientious an individual to go to law school and study I could. One of my best friends in college, his name is tom Vinaski. Tommy and I were co captains of the football team. Tommy was from Shamokin, Pennsylvania. Cole Town boy. Yeah, nothing but football and.

interesting me. I loved it, you know, And and so Stephen had me read and then then it looked like, yeah, I got it. Right, and then they're looking for the female lead and they can't find the female lead. So Greg Homlet, who was Stephen's best guy for he did all his pilots, calls me up once. He says, what do you think about Mario Humingway? And I said, well, I said, that would be an incredible thing for the you know, for the commercial success of the show. You know,

screw you and your NBA shit. You know, come on, guys, you asked me.

And to be able to to actually, some of the best lawyers are actors, so to be able to be an actor playing a lawyer who's being an actor in a summation speech was really cool, you know. But It was brutal, sometimes these couple of pages of summation speeches that you had to memorize and stuff. But I loved it and I loved it, and that show in particular Civil War, because it was civil law, it was about family law. It was really, really, really visceral in the

way it tore people apart or put people together. And years after that, I do this regular benefit in Omaha, Nebraska, so far away from me culturally and philosophically, with wonderful people. Even years after that, I've been doing it for twenty some years or more. Actually, people will come up to me and cite particular episodes of Civil Wars because maybe they were going through a divorce at the time, or a custody battle, or caring for an elder parent. Whatever

it was. Really it was another show that was beyond its time. It was very hard. Network almost put it on because it was so dark, you know. Uh. In fact, the pilot episode, the pilot episode had to be reshot okay, because my scenario was I was defending a guy whose wife asked him for a divorce. He was he was a schmat the guy he was in the you know, in the uh uh in New York in you know, the garment district. She was young and she was taking advantage of him and everything. And you know who played

the guy who? Jerry Stiller.

gotta you gotta do another story. So they ended up filming another story where I'm defending a woman who's who's who's divorcing her husband, and her husband is played by Dennis Franz and Dennis is possessed by Elvis, and he was talking like Elvis, and he says, I love you silly. She goes, my name is not silly. Your name is not Elvis. It's Murray Seidelman. You're a coffee salesman, you know. And it was so wonderfully dramatic and poignant, and of course Dennis fran.

of NYPD down to my trailer. He says, read this, tell me what you think. So I read it and I said, well, the lead character has an Irish name. Are we not working together anymore? He said, screw you. You got your own show. And we had not been dropped yet. We were still waiting to see if we had gotten picked up. And sure enough, we got dropped right after, you know, and I said, you so. But but Stephen was wonderful to me. You know. I spent

a lot of time before he died. I spent some time with him and and his wife, his ex wife, Barbara. I was friends with her, and we go and see her she's she's gone now too. Barbara died a couple of years ago. But they were real, real cheerleaders for me coming in. They didn't know who No one knew who I was. I mean, Jimmy McDaniels came off a Broadway to do cop Rock, Paul mccrane, you know, fame

and everything else. Ronnie Cox established you know, a terminator or whatever else he was in, you know, and Bobby had come off Broadway, so they didn't really know. They actually thought, I think that I was a Shakespearean actor that they'd never heard of. I know Shakespeare from my left arm, you know. In fact, one time I was just telling a friend of mine. We were filming Firebirds with Tommy Lee Jones, and the two of us were stuck.

Tommy Lee and I were stuck in the eight by eight camouflage net while Nick and Sean were filming because there were cameras going from like a mile around. Tommy Lee says to me, I won't direct you as Yago. I said, okay, I had to go home and figure out which Shakespearean play Yago was in. So like I say, oh that's good, I'll do that, you know, Yeah, sure, I can't. But so so I'm kind of theater a literate. I you know, like I said, I got my I

got my I got my actor's equity card. My first actor's equity job was in the original play Talk Radio on Broadway.

because I had some voiceover work. I was and then and I said to my commercial agents, I said, do I really want to do this? I mean, you know, I'm making thousands and thousands of dollars doing commercial Why do I want to do this public theater things. They went, are you out of your mind? Public theater? You go do that job. We'll get you commercial work. You just go do the job at the public. Right. So I had one scene on stage. The first opening scene is

me and Zach Grenier. He's the financial guy and I play his engineer. And then I go off and I did like four other characters, you know, some of which I actually created. I brought to Eric came back and asked me, well, here's the audition was. So there was this guy. My wife loves this story. My wife and I used to go on west Ford Street in New York to this little place called the Bagel Restaurant, and every time we get in there, it's a guy would Our waiter would come up and he go, how are you.

I've got Philadelphia accent, I've got Pittsburgh accent. I said, you know, I want to do truck you want he said, I want to do truck driver. I said, well, let's do truck driver with a Pittsburgh accent, you know, which I just did. And this is us. I was pretty much the only one that was allowed to do the Pittsburgh accident because it came through pretty well. But I, you know, I went to college with those guys, you know,

spent time, you know, drinking and everything else. So so that was a character that we kind of created together. The bad thing was when Oliver Stone was auditioning for the movie. You come in with you bring three characters that you're going to do. So I came in. He said, well, what characters you want to do. I said, well, I'm gonna do Glenn, and I'm gonna do that. He goes, well, we already have a Glenn. I went, how could you have a Glenn? I The reason Latino is because I

did it that way. How the hell could you have a Glenn?

being Goodfellas. You have such an incredible role in Goodfellas. Did you film that before Cop Rock or act.

scaring her in New Jersey. So we moved out to LA And it was a good time to do that because I had work and I wanted to move to LA anyway, because that's the next best place to go for your career. So I was on Kate Now. The very last day of shooting Kate Nolly last night was a Thursday night, and we shoot in front of a live audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater, which is now the David Letterman Theater. They want to go to, Okay,

whatever it's called now, it's the at Sullivan Theater. Man, it's where the Beatles were in Elvis and.

and Rockefeller Center at twelve thirty for Goodfellas. So I called my wife and I said, I hope the babies laid because I would be okay. So, now here's the funny part. At that time, Scorsese was hiring for the small roles like I got real mob guys or cops who chased real mob guys. So we all had the same scene to read, and he if he liked you, he would just pick a roll for you, you know.

So I'm not nervous enough. Now. I'd only been into business a few years, and I was used to doing what I did in the business world, which was to try and make the meeting mine. You know, then how would I make the meeting? Mind it's a commercial addition to a little something extra or whatever. So I'm going in the sea scorsesey, I'm like, hell, am I going to do that? Right? Well, it dawned, doesn't it that my grandfather last name is the exact same spelling without

the s scot Ace. Okay, So I go in and I make up a story for Scorsese. He goes, you want to? I said, before we read, I need to ask you if we're related, because I said to my grandfather, Dana Tho Scorta as I said, I'm going to read for the great director Martin Scorsese today, and my grandfather said, wow, things way have a cousin a one time, we should take the S out of the name. Scorsese goes, really, really because we can't find our relatives. I'm going, oh,

I'm screwed now. I made the whole thing up right. So I go, uh uh, well, where are you from? He goes, uh, We're from Sicily. I go, no fucking way, We're not Sicilian. What are you? I go, well, we're Napolitans. He goes, hey, you guys drink too early in the morning. You want to do that? I go, yeah, let's do it. I read the scene and I got a roll.

and Jerry goes, he was in Goodfellows. I goes, you weren't good He said, yeah, he said. I said, well, I'm the bookie that turns him in and that they throw to the lion. They tried to throw the lines. He goes. He goes, you know, he goes, Henry Hill before he he died, painted a whole bunch of scenes from Goodfellas, I said, and he said, I think he painted that scene right. So I go back to pick up the pictures and he's got a photo of Henry Hill's painting of my scene. Whoa, Now it looks like

a third grader did it? Okay? So I go online and I find the original one, and I want to take a chance, but I can turn around. I've got the original Henry Hill painter of that scene, you know, here in in my office.

And so there was a really embarrassing part, you know, when they're punching me, you know, and I have to sell the punch, you know, to sell to make the stunt work. So they're filming from the front windshield, windshields out, they're filming and they're hitting me, and I got to go back, and I got to go back like this, Well, when you do a violent action at the time, I was studying martial arts, you know, there's sound with the violent action. Well I couldn't KII and I was like, god,

you know, I couldn't. Well, I go back to friggin third grade. They go action and I go like this, They go cut. The sound man comes over, he goes, you don't have to put that, we can do it later. I'm like, oh fuck, I'm so oh my god, you know, and so that was part of it. And I was talking to Ray, and here's interesting thing.

He's Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Ray Liota, Tom Mollis. I said, okay, I get it, never mind, but yeah it was. And Ray grew up only a few miles away from me too, some New Jersey, I think. And I grew up in Boomton, New Jersey. And although if you live in Boomton, you say bouton.

sheet or something. And Michael knew because Michael and I had done an improv workshop together where I had lifted him up over my head like this, because I wrestled in high school and in college, is you know, And so he thought of me right away, and he just called and offered me to roll. So we're looking at all these positions and stuff like this, and it happened to be my forty eighth birthday. And Kim looks at me and says, thank you for doing it. She goes,

you wouldn't believe some of the guys they get in here. Sometimes. She goes, I'm so happy to have a real actor. Blah blah blah. I said, Kim, it's my birthday and I can't think of anything better than the bank five times, you know.

maybe I liked it. I go, well, I hope you do, because we got another four hours of this shit and we kind of stayed friends, were in touch once in a while, and there was an article actually out about the top one hundred guys she had six with and I made it in dinner under fifty I think something

like that. But it was great. It was great fun, and I wish it had lasted more because she was great and I got to the show right around you know shows when I did Kate Now, it happened to when shows go on for a while sometimes camps sort of developed. I don't know why. Maybe some of the actresses or actors want more lines. Could be anything political or set wise or whatever it is money I but

camps developed, you know, same thing. I'm Kate Nelly. Susan and Jane were best friends when they started the show. When I finished the show with them, they were friends, but they weren't as close as they were in the beginning. And I don't think anything to do with either of them. I think it's some people came in to run the show that Jane didn't like, and Susan was like always happy, So it's gonna work out. It's gonna work out, you

know whatever. But camps developed, and in I sense that when I got to Sex and the City too, you know, so that's all right. My camp had Kim Coatrell.

this movie. It's a mad, mad, mad mad world. They're like, what the hell is it? Out of here? Right? Or you know anything? You know, even Young Frank is that they all go back to now they're like that, oh Young frank'sty Oh that I go. Yeah, now, you know.

I've ever done. He goes, I don't think I'd want to do it again.