Bronson Pinchot Meets World

block that would change TV forever. Whether it was Jim Janisek, the brainchild behind the TGIF campaign, or Nick Backay, a man who went from a writer to the voice of a cat who could somehow make us time travel, we are interested in all the info, and today we're not only talking to someone who was the star of TGIF's first ever anchor, but his legendary run on TV and unforgettable appearances in classic movies makes him a first Ballot

Comedy Hall of Famer. You know him best as Balki Bartolomeus from the Island of Mepos, a lovable goofball who has immigrated to Chicago to live with his distant and unsuspecting cousin Larry. The show ran for eight seasons and it was a massive hit, with Balki becoming the face of the channel, and the ratings were so high they would lead the way on the mission to turn Friday Nights from a TV graveyard to appointment family viewing. And even before Balky touchdown in the US, our guest was

already a bona fide movie star. His first movie ever was alongside Tom Cruise in the seminole eighties movie Risky Business.

up being that's what I'm supposed to be doing. And now what do I do because I don't have any acting training, but that's obviously what I need to be doing. So, uh we were very poor, we were poort so but but I had gotten a scholarship to go to Yale, which I mean, I mean.

learn how to do this? And I said I would. So he created a little tutorial for only just five of us, and he started to teach us how to act. I got into it. So at a certain point, the fine arts department makes you do a portfolio review where you put up all your stuff and they tell you what they think. And I remember very distinctly with what they said. The guy leaned back and he looked at everything and he said, well, it's very exuberant, although heavy handed,

and I guess we'll take you. But this acting crap has to stop. And I thought, what is it? You know, life is just so well scripted. I was like, you're I went an arrogant butt head, What are you talking to? What the hell are you talking about? I'll do plays if I want to. What difference does it make? But

I mean I didn't. It was like done. I don't want you, you know, you're arrogant and uh, anyway, you know, drawing and painting is the thing you do by yourself in an attic, and I'm a very social creature, and he made the decision for me. It was it was a terrible thing to say to a nineteen year old, but a wonderful thing because I literally just was like,

screw you, I don't have anything. No. So fast forward about a year and I did a I did a play by Ian Escoll called The Lesson, which is just a crackpot professor teaching this one student and kind of coming on to her. And it's it's a very weird play. But anyway, the director had come in every single day and just hump. He would just had me get on top of this actress and it was like an acting exercise.

And Maury Yeston was writing incidental music for a play off Broadway called Cloud Nine, and he mentioned, in passing to his students, we're seeing people professional actors in New York, and they're supposed to be funny. They're not. Isn't it a pity? Because I'm sure there's somebody right, you know, within spinning distance who is funny. And his students said, I just saw somebody in a play called The Lesson,

and he's funny. So that the Yeston said well, I'll get him an audition, and he got me an audition site unseen. I went down. They kept me waiting five hours because I was the charity case. But at the end, at the end of five hours, I did a really, really, really a good audition and the casting director kim all the way out of the back of the theater because she's the one that had kept me waiting five hours,

and she said, where did you come from? I said, well, I've been in the lobby for five hours, and she said, well you've you're I didn't. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna see what's up here. So she she took me under her wing. Her her name was Mary Cahoun. She took me under her wing, and she she she brought me to casting sessions. And then I got a play in New York and the producers of Risky Business came see the play and cast me in Risky Business, and then

I was off. And so it it it's that's that's my acting origin story, and that's the that's how it happened, you know. It's I saw Isabella Rossellini on a thing the other day saying that she asked her mother Ingrid Bergman, how do you get into acting? And her mother said, you don't. If it's a calling, it comes for you, which is true because you can knock and knock and knock and knock and knock on the door, but you know, it's like the mailbox opens and somebody reaches out and

pulls you in. And so that's how that's how it happened.

you Imagine with a question mark? And there's a character named Jack who's described as an extremely this is why I said I wouldn't go in it is described as incredibly good looking and gay, and he had just a few lines, and the whole purpose of the scene was for it was nineteen eighty four, for Axel to just be like, you know, kind of beat on him because he was gay and leave. And they came to me and said, we can't make this funny. And I looked at it and said, I wonder why there's there's it's

a it's a one beat. You know, it's one beat. It's it's the main character being kind of like a jerk too. So they said, well, can you can you come up with something? So I said, I don't know, there's nothing really there. But I took a long, long walk with the script and I kept doing it and doing it. I was like, what, And then it came to me that it might work if I did the voice of this Israelian makeup lady that I'd worked with, and also her body language because she had no bones.

So I went and the director, Marty Breast, he really loves actors. He loves them so much that I sat there for three hours. Three hours is a long time, so long, and I sat there for three hours and I thought, I should you know, I've I've been in risky business, and I've been in the Flamingo kid, and why do I have to wait three hours? So I called my agent and she said, yeah, you're absolutely right, you can leave if you want. But I stayed. But

over the course of three hours, I cycled through. I cycled through these these emotions about six times, which were how dare they too? Well? I mean, really, there's a there's a nice couch. I mean, you could go get a you could go get a nature valley. How bad is it to how dare they? I mean, what where? What do you got to do? What are you going

to do? You know? And so by the time I finally went in to see the director, I had cycled through there so many times that I was relaxed enough, even though I was twenty four, to say, so, here's what I got, and this is all I've got. So if you don't like it, I'll totally understand. And if you do like it, then we can talk. I mean. And I didn't say it arrogant. I just was like, this is it. I mean, I didn't say I'd been

here three hours, but that's what I'd cycled through. And I did it, and he said he he went like this, Marty, so shit done? He went I love that, And what would you call him? And I said, I just came up with this name, Sash and so so uh that. So you know, those were the most important eight hours of my life because you have to cycle I think in absolutely everything, everything, whether you're meeting a person who's going to change your life, or auditioning or even sitting

in traffic, you have to cycle through. I shouldn't have to wait. This has been too who are you? Just once you get a few times to what who are you? Then you get to the good stuff. So those were and I think of that now quite often nowadays. I'm sitting on a set and I'm like, oh god, I've been here five hours and they haven't even and I'm like, so, who are you? A big deal? Wait my four hours? Because you're doing a great project and they're taking their time with it, and who are you? Who the hell

are you? And it's a it's really it's really a foundational thing for anything, which is just get to the point where you're like, you're you're a big deal. You know, we're all sitting in traffic, so calm down and mellow out and get over yourself. Yeah.

stingiest gift basket you can imagine. It was a packet of water crackers and apple, a Granny Smith apple, and a little chunk, not even a whole thing of cheddar cheese. And I had nothing else to eat. So every day would I would take a sliver of the apple and a sliver of the cheese and a one cracker and eat it till I couldn't stand it anymore, and then do it again, and the apple was starting to go brown. The movie came out and I a friend said, you've got to go read what they wrote about you in

Newsweek magazine. I said, well, why would they write about me? He said, go read it. So it was a review of Beverly Hills cop and I walked to the supermarket to read it, and then on my way home, a carful of teenagers drove off of a Point Statia Avenue and onto the sidewalk and came right up to like three feet in front of me and jumped out and started hugging me. And that's when they happened.

guy yep my age, so that was twenty five. He was coming down a very steep hill with the sheep, and he was a sheepherder, and he had a book under his arm, and so I thought there's a fair chance he might speak speak English. The people Tom Miller and Bob Boyatt and Dale mccraven had come to me with this idea that I didn't think sounded very good for this TV show about an innocent sheepherder. And I didn't think that I had any business playing innocence. I

thought I was rather sophisticated and urbane. So I said, I said, I don't know about that. But anyway, I ran out of money and I had just met this sheepherder whose dog was named Dog and uh, so I went to a phone booth in Athens and called them and said, do you still want to do that show? I didn't add because I'm out of money.

each other's minds. And I'm not even kidding. If he was sitting right here, he would if you asked us a question, he would know what I was going to answer, and he'd start laughing, and then I'd start laughing at

the fact that that he knew. And we the you know, no speaking would happen that when we when we do Q and A with audiences, we just we just rock back and forth, laughing, and then he has to hold my mouth and explain to them all the all the things that they've missed because someone would just say something like, are you friends in real life? And then I started laughing because of course we're must closer than friends, but I want to say something like like, it's ridiculous, and

then he and so we just laughed. So the whole whatever when we were interviewed, we laughed for ninety percent of it, and he explains for nine percent of it, and I have one or two things to say, and it's so he walked in the room and and that happened, and and then and then we were we were off. But I still what I had missed because then I was really famous. I had not yet had a chance to at all find out how to be a functioning human being. And I also didn't really know what my

process was as an actor. I had no idea, so I didn't know how to be a person or an actor. And then they were in the top ten, and and they were, you know, to me, it's almost like not my life, but more like a movie I saw, because the level of craziness was was was I can't even really quite grasp it now, but I mean it was. It was crazy. And then there were stilly things like I bought my first house I ever bought was the house where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio had moved right

after their marriage. So there were people from Europe.

for sure. I had never had money. I'd grown up on welfare and then been, you know, eating an apple, a Browning apple when the first so he was kind of like taking a toddler and saying, here, you're going to drive this submarine and you'll be fine.

wait for the enchantment to be over. It was just too soon.

something was wrong. Well, yeah, I mean there were police holding people back from coming and giving hugs, and then there were you know, and then there was just a person who was bored by me or whatever the problem was. You know, I started playing the happiest, happiest, most optimistic, loving person alive, and I was the most unhappy.

get help. And by that point I would have if somebody says something that I thought was hurtful or whatever, I would go dark for like three days. And when I say dark, I mean zombie. Wow. So I finally, you know, I finally got sorted out. And then then then I then I started to and enjoy myself and live and do Broadway and do the West End and like, and I was like, oh, is this what it's like? Because markln Baker used to say to me all the time, ro so, just let stuff roll off your back, And

I thought he was making that up. I didn't think that was a thing that a human being could actually do. I thought that was just a phrase. I didn't know that somebody could come up and be unkind or just dumb and that you could let that roll off your back. I thought he was making it up to just get me through the moment. I had no idea people could do that. So that's been really eye opening, because you know,

there's lots of people who were ridiculous. I mean there was somebody once I was getting on a plane and I had lots of suitcases and things, and she ran up just as we were boarding, and I don't like flying. It makes me nervous. And she ran up and said, could you sign this? And I said, I'd love to, but as you can see, I don't have a free hand, and I'm just getting on the plane and I I hope I'll meet up with you again someday. So she's she stood there and she yelled at the top of

her lung as well. I helped. The plane crashes, and so there we all were, Oh my god, And that's you know, that's that's bad enough if you've got if you've got anxiety, if your own you know. Yeah, but that's the kind of thing that happens if you're on people's if you're on people's TVs and you're playing somebody incredibly loving.

never gave up on me. But I'd never socialized. I never, I mean, it all had to be for the character. I wouldn't party, I wouldn't do anything for me. Life was like I had an oxygen tank and I didn't know how long I would be down snarkling, and so I couldn't give any of the oxygen for anything else. Like yes, so just just the way it was, I mean, I look back on it, I couldn't even even with

my family. I would come and I would do Thanksgiving, and one of my brothers would always have a new girlfriend for Thanksgiving and then there'd be a new one for Christmas. Every which meant that I had to make a rule, which was no show biz at all, because at Thanksgiving, I'm gonna have to sit there and talk about what's so and so like, and what's so and so like, and then three weeks later do it all

over again. And I don't like that. No show biz, No show biz so I had I had a million rules because I didn't have the skill set like nowadays. There was a woman on a plane a few months ago and she didn't know who the hell I was. She sit next to me, and a flight attendant came up and said, would you sign this menu? I said shirt, and the woe next to me looked over, like, what's that all about? And I didn't yeah. And then and then somebody else came up and said would you sign

my napkin? And I said okay. And finally the woman next to me said why are they doing that? And I said because I'm an actor. And she said the thing that they always say, well have you ever been in anything that I have seen?

my credits. And I didn't when I was younger. I didn't know that if you just take a breath, something will come to you. That's that's kind of like true but also fun. And we were laughing. We were laughing. She was like, oh, yeah, I get it. Yeah, And if we had the Greens time we chatted, we we've made fun of the movie. We but I, you know, like I didn't know that if you just took a second, the right, the right, and and and and just choice words that let everybody still be a human would come to you.

no there's no passage of time at all. And also I was quite lucky in around two thousand and three, two thousand and four, two thousand and five, as fate would have it, I did two plays back to back where I played multiple characters, and I'm talking about one. In one play, thirty eight different characters, and then right after it a play where I played eight different characters. And in both plays it was male, female, old, young,

in between every nationality, every ethnicity, every everything. And in both plays it was part of the magic of the play that you didn't have. There were no costumes, there were no props. You just transformed. So doing that for three years really expunge the final you know, I used to be the kind of person who would say, well, I'm you know, if you want me to play this seventeenth century musketeer and you don't have the musketeer hat and the exact rapier, how am I supposed to.

I did my version of a home renovation show on the DIY TV where I worked on my own homes. I had half a dozen I would redo rooms, I would redo the whole house using pre Civil War architectural salvage. And it was called the Bronzen Pinchow project. And once in a while they would say, oh yeah, when you went to the salvage yard, you got out of the truck before the truck even stopped moving, and we didn't get a clean shot of that, so let's do it again. And I would say, well, no, that's what I do.

I'm excited. And I got out of a moving truck and they called the Bronzon Pincho Project and it ain't going to get any more bronze and pinch show than that, right, And they'd say, well, the shot is, the SHOT's not cleaned, and I would say, well, maybe you should be readier, because I mean, I wasn't being a brat. I was just there was another time where you know, they move into your house and the cameras are there, they live there.

And another time, these two beautiful like eighteen forties gas lamps arrived and they had been poorly packed and they were broken into a million pieces. But you have a deadline, so they're filming me. I opened the box and I want, okay, get the dealer, you know. I sent an email to the dealer and find out if you ensure them. All right, what are we doing next? And they said, cut, cut,

cut cut. You really need to be a lot more upset, said I just was in real time, just out as Bronson Pincho at my own house, opening a thing in real time, no happening to be what what do you want me to do? Reality TV? That's that's as upset as I have the time and energy to get. That's what you got to be kidding me, Well, we need it, it would be more accident. No, thank you. I actually I had a great I had a great line. He said, we need we need you to be more worried all

the time about something you can pick. I said, well, I'm worried that you're not giving me enough money to do these episodes. And they said no, but but you know, could you can we can we make it that there's a giant storm coming And I said, And the director

loved this so much because he was a goofball. He said that the network said, like, if if you could do like there's a storm coming, or there's a there's a you know, like a building inspector coming or something that just makes it all like worried all the time. And I said, I am not participating in bull crape. The only real stress I have is that they're not giving me enough money to do these rooms the way

I want. So I'm using my own money, so I'm not making any money the real stress and if you don't want to show the real stress, I'm not doing stress. So I'm not participating. And all the crew who all lived up there and would be in the house and they went went you. Did you hear them in the other room say that. Samony would say, do you want to get like chicken salad? And I'm not participating inpating.

It was perfect. It was like no time had passed and the both of your faces just lit up, and there was so much.

has to professional. As a professional, he has to pass that message.

you tell truck is playing. So yeah, I could pretend I'm driving, but then it's time to pull over the car. And I said, oh my goodness, this is stick shift. I don't know how to drive stick shift. And you can't very well pull over in park if you can't drive stick shift. So Tony says, are you kidding me? Nobody elst him. If you can drive, the fuck are you're going to get this stop? And so he was because we were really just so We're way up on mulhalland drive in LA and I'm like, to dude, he's

not my fault. So my hair is black at that point in time. So they hurriedly decide, and I had not been wearing sunglasses. They hurriedly decided the only way out of it is to get this one of the one of the crew who knew how to drive stick They just spray painted his hair black, and then he pulled the car over, and Tony said, does it look a thing Bronson? So somebody said, how about sunglasses? And he said, but he's not wearing glasses in the scene.

And so somebody said maybe Bronson would would pantomime putting on sunglasses and some other part of the scene, and I said, I will, It's fine. So they're they're painting this guy's head. They're painting his head and he's pulling over. Tony is still hyperventilating. The man's head is painted and he's pulling over, and I have nothing to do while I do that, And just at that moment, Madonna cycles

by in head to toe lycra. God, it's never gonna get any more holiday, right, They just they just painted somebody to pretend to be me. Everybody's upset and yelling, and nobody but me sees that Madonna has just cycled by in in like purple and lime green lycra. This is so wonderful. Nobody is paying attention because they're busy watching the man painted to be me and so funny.

three different people. So you have to have three different voices for different sections of the book. And this one is been throwing up all the time, so his voice has to be hoarse, and this one on some different kind of drug. And then you have to be all the characters. And then one character is when when people are around, she's in hiding, so she has a fake Southern accent when there's people around. But then when people aren't around she she's got her own accent and blah

blah blah blah blah. And so it is like, I'm not a big fan of juggling, but when people are really good at it, I'm like, And so it's like that. It's like the kind where you're catching things you didn't even throw. It's like you're juggling and then there's a bird and then there's fire. And it's awfully good for keeping the whole acting musculature super fit because you don't have any time. I mean, I would say really, between those multi character plays and the books, my prep time

nowadays is negative one minute. I because you you know, you think when you're twenty five, well, I have to have an hour in pitch dark with no sensory anything so I can get into this one character. And then you know, after you've done forty eight characters on stages from London, Sacramento, and four hundred and fifty audiobooks with ten characters each, you're like, character boom, It's like what and so I it it has and I do them. I do them all the time, and they keep me

from going nuts in between acting gigs. But it also teaches you something we already all know. You know, if if you and I are going to take a friend out to dinner, and it's a very important thing, and one of us dropped the ball and forgot to make the reservation, we will look at each other and go all right, the person doing the reservations that they look like they like guys or girls. In fact, they like guys, Bronson,

So I will go up and be so flirtatious. I will get us at table, because the stakes are life and death. And if we decide that they like girls, you'll go up and be like ah, and you will just do it right. You do it all the time. You you act all the time in life all the time. My mother, you know, was in a she had an operation once since she was she had to go to a rehabilitation center. And I had bought a house, but I knew my mom would disapprove, so I hadn't. I

bought it in my sisters name. And my mother looked at me on the pillows and went, tell me the truth, look into my eyes and tell me did you buy that house? And I said no. And so when the when the stakes are high, we all act all day long with no prep at all, you know, or if you're trying to get a toddler to eat their yogurt or whatever, and just do it. And so if you do doing the audiobooks reminds me like, dude, you don't need, you know, to be like one guy dying on the

battlefield and his best friend holding him and crying. You don't have time you like do a prep for each character. You cry, and then you say it will be all right, and then you cry and then you die and then you say, oh my god, my friend died. Now I'm crying, and then you just do it. Yeah, and and so it's it's the it's the acting gym. It really is

the acting gym. And it makes me chuckle a little bit when people say, Okay, I'm sorry, I've got to stop this conversation out because in three days I'm doing the scene. I'm like, there are three days you don't need it, But that's what it does for you. Plus there's you know, there's people that are bed ridden or

they're on a twenty hour trip or whatever. And I always think, okay, so I'm just gonna do this in such a way that you'll laugh or you'll cry or you'll forget you know that you're on up a big long and it's it's marvelous. It's really fun, and it's so intimate because most acting, even if the camera is okay, so this this phone here is like seventeen inches from my face. But when you do an audio book, I'm speaking into a mic, I like the mic really close.

So my mic is like there, I like it. I like the you're too young to remember Tom Jones, you guys.

going to get, even if you're lovers. Even if your lovers you have to back up a little. It's like you're it's the most intimate.

he was kind of hard on the British explorer. He kept saying all the way through the book, if he had been less stuffy and less British, he would have understood this, this, and this. So he was kind of hard on the British explorer, and it just as it happened. The very last page of the book was the piece of paper they found in his frozen hand when they found his dead body, his frozen body, he was writing with a pen in his tent and he froze to death.

So the very last page of it was this entry from his diary saying, I know people have found fault with me, and I know I haven't been the best. But for the love of God, whoever finds this way, you please please take care of my wife and children. And so my voice I broke down reading it and I said to the engineer, do not you don't you dare ask me to do another take of that that

because that is what he was feeling. And so the audiobook version of this book, where the British author was kind of ragging on him, he gets the last word, please please think of me with humanity. I mean, I choked up thinking about it. And that's like I didn't really change it. It's just the last word is by this man who died as he wrote these words. No matter what you say about him, he actually is having the last word because it's an audiobook and you can't

it's wonderful. That happens quite a lot in audiobooks. Is a quality that may or may not have. Either it's in the book, but it becomes much more luminous, or it's kind of not in the book but there's no way around it, and that's it's kind of neat, that's wonderful special, or or sometimes there's like in a mystery, you know, there's there's a there's a character with an identifiable accent, and he's actually the murderer, and at a crucial point of the book, he comes up behind the

main character and says, now, I've got you. Well, on the page, it doesn't say who it is, but if you're doing the same voice you've already created, then the listener does know who it is. And that's fun. It's like whoa, it's it's suddenly in three D. This isn't this is what you isn't what it would look like on the page. My favorite example ever was there was there's a book that ended with this guy. He's getting stabbed and he's he makes his way into a building

and he knows he's dying. So he's crawling across the floor, dying of blood loss, and he's trying to stay aware and alive until he reaches the phone and he's talking to himself and talking to himself, and finally, right in the middle of a sentence, it stops and the rest of the page is blank, so that you understand reading it that he has died of blood loss. That's it doesn't say he died of blood loss. He just stops thinking. And so it's very, very meaningful on the page. You

see this blank page. So I did it like that. I just stopped right like that, and the note came back from the proofreader. The thought seems unfinished.

it's still there. Yeah, So I mean nothing.