A Killer Performance with Steve Guttenberg

Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm heart Radio podcast. All right, so excited for this bonus wind down episode because we have Steve Gutenberg coming on the show and our movie Kid Up by Killer The Heather Robinson Story premiered on Lifetime Now you can stream it wherever you stream on I believe Prime, so check that out. But he is lovely and I cannot wait to dive in

Hi friend, Hi, ma, You guys look good and.

So do you. Are you in New York right now doing press for the movie?

Yeah, yeah, it's been going great.

I'm sure you've been doing some stuff and getting We're getting great reactions and people are people are loving you, by the way, there's so many you have, so many fans, so many people who love your work, love your music, and it's really cool to hear that, you know, and uh, and I'm proud that we're working together and it's it's a really good thing. And people love the trailer and they love the one sheep and it's going great.

Yeah, it's going really good.

I love that.

I thought was excellent.

Yeah, the trailer's good.

Traila was really good.

Wasn't it really good? It was? Yeah? How were you two? And how's the family? How the kids?

Yeah, everyone's good, everyone's really good.

Good.

I went off to do a movie in Kentucky, so we just got back from that. He's been, you know, grinding and doing his training with clients and so it's been a it's been it's been a good a good year so far.

It's been it's been good.

Yeah, you know what, that's the top of the line when you can say it's been a good year so far, that's a ten out of ten.

Yeah, I know. But it's interesting because of how the year started, you know, especially for you, because I remember turning on the TV and when the fires were happening in Californian and the Palisades, and I'm like, oh, there's Steve Guttenberg, you know, and it's like, that was not a good start to the year for so many people.

And no, it was very tough.

And it's going to take a long time for the Palisades and for Altadena to come back but it will.

It will.

Everyone is resilient and very hopeful, but the reality is it was a huge natural disaster. Yeah, and six thousand homes were burned in Palisades and more and more structures and staying with Altadena. So you have let's say there were four people in each home, you have twenty five thousand people in each town being displaced.

It's rough.

It is very rough. And there, you know, when you have six homes, it wasn't like a forest's burning. You have concrete burning, literally, you have metal burning, you have plastics, you have Tesla batteries burning. There's a ton of toxins in the air and in the ground. So there's lots to do, you know, environmentally, there's lots to do. And psychologically, yeah, well.

I remember when you were in West Virginia you had a cough and you're like, this is from the fire. And that was in March, and so I'm curious has that gotten any better? And because I don't think people realize that, I mean, you were literally, you know, ground zero in there, and then all the smoke and inhalation that you had from that, I mean you were cough and a bunch from it. In March.

Yeah, have the cough for one hundred days. Wow, one hundred days since the fire, and it's gone. I don't have it anymore, thank God.

It's that lead that leads me to a quick just a quick comment. And so so I look through when I met you a couple of months ago, and you know, you know how much a fan I am of yours, and.

I was so excited and so was I when movies I.

Let you do, didn't I When you met me, you.

Did not Your aura and energy is exactly what I thought it would be, so it was it wasn't a surprise. But anyway, So what my point is when I look at your Instagram, I love all the kind of motivational and inspirational stuff that you're doing right now because you're you're sharing stories and experiences from your from your life and you're kind of opening yourself up and putting yourself in a position where you're sharing your feelings on Instagram.

Thanks so much. They started out with my dad was a few years ago and he was in the hospital.

So during the day, you know, my sister and I would have to take a break, you know, uh, you know, we'd swimch off and walk outside, get a cup of coffee and sit outside.

And there are always people during the day to talk to. But we would sleep there in the mid and in the middle of the night.

If you you can't sleep, you go outside and there's nobody there to talk to. So a friend of mine said, you know, talk to the internet. There are other people who will talk back, and they did.

You know.

I would get on there and say, hey, you know, I'm taking care of my dad and whatever I would talk about, and they would say, Wow, I'm taking care of my mom, I'm taking care of my son.

I'm you know, I'm working late at the office.

I'm you know, I'm a janitor, I'm a I'm a truck driver.

And this is what I do in the middle of the night.

So it was a way of communicating and then it sort of got into I would record these little musings about life.

But what I really believe in my mom.

We used to tell me was that a mother in Nashville is the same as a mother in Jordan, and a mother in la is the same as a mother in Moscow, and mechanics and teachers and all of us, all of us human beings are the same and we have the same thoughts no matter where you live, we're human beings.

And we have.

These these normal thoughts about the practice of living. So I just started talking and it's sort of morphed into that and it's just as much for me as it is for everybody else to sort of say what I'm thinking about and see if anybody else is thinking. It's sort of like when I would talk. I have a lot of buddies, you know, women friends, men friends, but sometimes with men friends, you know, it's like you kind of you know, you'll say, hey, do you different, has

You know, yeah, I think there's such you know, benefits, you know, again, because you're same thing, like, you know, we I've openly shared things on Instagram, and it's it's helping people. And the other side of that is it does open the door for people's opinions and not so nice comments and and so I don't know if you've experienced that piece of it through sharing, but I still think that regardless, it's that's what I'm like because the

Yes, you know, I can put on a new outfit which I think is really cool, great jacket, pants and everything, and I have ninety nine people say how great it is. And there's a homeless guy sitting on the just drank a bottle of vodka, and I walked by him. He goes, that outfit looks terrible, and I'll think, to myself, what are you talking about. I'll say to him, we're talking about I just bought this. It's a great new shirt and pants and a great jacket. He goes, doesn't really match.

Of vodka, And that's the guy you're listening to. But we as humans, we do that.

You know, we're attracted to drama, We're attracted to the dark side. So I do find that eighty percent of the comments are good comments and then twenty percent are you know, deranged or or you know, not constructive and and a little mean.

But that's actually how life is.

Life is supposed to be eighty percent great and twenty percent hard. I think that's the way God made it, so it sort of works out in everything. And I think in the morning, you know, you got to wake up and say, I choose happy, and I know that you know, there's going to be twenty percent not so great. But it's not supposed to be eighty twenty, like eighty percent horrible comments and twenty percent great. You know, it's supposed to be eighty twenty.

And I like the eighty twenty. That's that's a nice rule. Are you happy that social media wasn't around when you were back in the day doing you know, the two men and the baby's and that it takes too, like are you are you happy that you lived in I think you're the success and the rise of your career wasn't in social media times.

Well, I'm glad there were no no, no techie phones when I was a kid that I would, you know, go out in the street and play stickball and kickball and baseball and football and ring a libo and you know, and live a normal life without these phones. I think these phones and social media is terrific because you can you can educate and entertain with them, but they have changed the timber of the psychology of the planet, and

You know. I'll look at someone social media and.

I'll see everybody in like, all dressed in white and their house is white in the Hamptons and it's a mansion, and the kids are running and the husband saying about the message is such stank, so blessed. And I look at them and I'm like, you, man, I'm not blessed like that. You you know how happy you bastards are, you know? And then I'll realize, wait a minute, dude,

Well, that's just like one, you know, one part of their lives, you know. But you have to be so compared. A friend of mine always says, compare and despair.

You know, Steve, is this the first time that you have played the role of a murderer?

A murderer?

I love your Scottish accent when you do.

By the way, you have the greatest voice. You got to do, you gotta do something you do. You have the most beautiful voice.

Let me think here, No, I did play a murderer in a very small horror movie out of Brussels. I shot in Brussels and it was a job. You know, I went there to work and it never went anywhere. And I've been a villain.

I've been a pedophile in Veronica Mars pretty good.

You know. She was a mean Las Vegas hotel owner in Ballers.

I remember that.

Yeah, yeah, putting Dwayne you know Dwayne Down and I.

Did when I when I.

Was eighteen or seventeen, I did a show called Family, which was many years ago, and I played a very bad kid.

So I and on stage, I've played villains.

But you know, as an actor, I think you only get to play a serial killer basically once in your life. And and and this was a great opportunity. I'm so grateful to Lifetime for you know, for choosing me and offering me the part. Because you know, as actors, we like to work first of all, and then when you get it, you know, you're given a certain amount of equipment. You know, you look at Robert de Niro and he looks like an Italian mafia boss.

So what does he get? A lot of.

Mafia boss guys and a lot of you know, a lot of mafia soldiers that's a big part of his career, or tough guys. But every once in a while you see him do meet the fockers or the intern where he's this, you know, a father or a sweet older man trying to help a you know, a young lady find her way. So we're actors and we love to bring out our toolbox.

You know.

I always say, like, if you're an architect and all you do our barns and people go, oh, I want you to build an apartment building, but I know you can't.

You go, no, I can. I just have made my living building barns.

But man, I can building you an apartment house and knock your socks off, so you know, and then long wood away.

I'm really grateful for this part.

Yeah, and then you were so in on being like, hey, I want the mustache, I want a mustache, I want this. I want to be able to have, you know, like you were. You know, I was hearing those discussions when when they were doing my putting my bangs on. But yeah, you know, Steve is like really invested in wanting to change his look. And I think that was really cool because you were truly invested in creating a character.

Yeah, so much of what we do is physical. You know.

I tried to create a walk and a posture and cadence of talking and the look, you know, shave my hairline back and put the mustache in the glasses and even make my skin have eggzema, you know, those like little red dots on it, and it really changes not only your look, but how you feel when you're acting. That equipment. I remember years ago I worked when I started, I was eighteen, and I worked with Larry Olivier who said, use a fake nose as much as you can fake teeth wigs.

You know, you'll love it, and the audience will love it. They'll see something different. We love to see people popping up different holes. You know, when you see a friend all the time is in sweats and T shirts and you know, never does her and all of.

A sudden you go to the wedding, you know, a wedding or an event, and she's all dolled up. You're like wow, you know, you get a real kick out of that. So same with actors. And Olivier was a huge proponent of fakery.

And you know, and and when I was very young.

I took it to heart, saying, she can you know, unless you know, you're doing a picture or a movie or a play where they go, we just want you to look like you. And that happens a lot when you know, producers kind of want to emulate the successes you've had. We no, no, no, we don't want that fake nose. We want you, you know. And and that's a different ballgame. But I was so grateful to the producers and our director, you know, yeah, yeah, I mean, Marty was great and the Tanell brothers just great to

Yeah, I mean I love them. That was the second time that I got to work with them, and they were great. And it was funny cause Stacy or their you know, the makeup girl, she was like, hey, you know, we're not going to be able to do your typical beach curls. I'm like, no, I don't want that, Like I'm excited to, like, yes, change it up. This is where this is going through eras of or different decades from the eighties to you know, the two thousands and

Yes, that's that's our job to to bring all our tools out and figure out, Okay, how do I I'm going to decorate this house?

How do we decorate this house?

You know, we usually do ten paintings those kids with the big eyes, but I don't want to do that on this one.

Let will you allow me to do something new? You know, and and it's terrific.

You know, I'm sure that you know, as you said, you know, we as actors, we we.

All enjoy it.

And I'm sure that every actor, no matter where you are, you know, you get a chance to play you know, mercutio or something. You know you want a different look or you know you want to play you know, you know, uh, you know, you know make in the Scottish play you know, you want a different look. You know.

Uh, it's cool. It's really fun to play. To dress up. That's what we do, right, we dressed up.

So we were having a Steve Guttenberg weekend in the house the other the other weekend because I've been introducing the kids to movies that I watched when I was around my daughter's age, and so one of my favorites

You didn't give me usually yet I get paid like the fan fan stuff.

It was like twelve dollars and I never got it. Just yeah, okay, I was like twelve dollars.

I was like, I'm a really big fan and I'm just going to get that out by the way. And I love a love your movies. And then of course, you know, he was a big on Police Academy. But is there a movie you look back and go like that that was special or that that connection was special doing that movie.

I don't I don't have a favorite. You know, I love them all.

I love the experience of working, of meeting people, of becoming intimate with them in conversations. You know, you become you know, it's a really it's a really great part of our job that we of all we're pretty sent All actors are sensitive and that like if you know your two plumbers that you get to a building and you got to fix a leak, you.

Know, how you doing? How you doing? You know, you just get to work. But what we do is we start to find out, you know, oh, what's your husband like, you know, and where do you live?

And you know, where do you come from and what do you do? And this is what I do and this is where I come from, and you exchange intimacies

Wow, you're like me too.

Wow, you you know you like musical You know you like musicals, So do I, you know, and and so I enjoyed.

I've always enjoyed every job. Had one job.

In Spain where the director was lusting after my girlfriend, so I thought he was weird. And that was the only job where I'm like, this guy's really weird.

But you know, it was one of those, you know.

So I've watched a lot of like true crime stuff and serial killer stuff that sounds weird and it sounds a bit dark. But how much I'm always interested, right like you are obviously top of your profession. How much work and research, Steve, did you put into the real John Edward Robinson. What were some of the things that you did so that you could maximize your craft?

Thank you nice for asking.

I spent a lot of time looking over newspaper articles, magazine articles, from television and video on him and on people discussing him, on Heather, on his wife is some of his kids, and and after about an hour and then then about his actions, and then after about an hour and a half of studying, I had to take a break.

It was so painous. His life was so disgusting.

Beyond disgusting, so low that I sort of had to clean out after about an hour and a half and watch some Seinfeld and just just you know, go back to the real world. I don't think it's good for anybody to spend too much time.

With undesirables. Although you know, my dad was a cop, and.

You know that's what they do all and it creates a certain type of person. It really affects you. I'm very, very cognizant to not let it affect my outside life because I don't think it's fair for my family and friends to deal with me saying, oh, I can't talk to you now because I doing my research. I'm a serial killer and I'm all screwed up, so I try to just clean it off at the end of the day.

But the research was rough.

Did you ever talk to Heather.

No, I didn't speak to anybody nobody at all, and I kind of didn't want to.

I just I don't know. I just didn't think it was something I needed to do. Yeah, you know, did you speak to anybody?

I didn't know, but I did on my previous one was a true story, and you know, I remember talking to Marty because she directed that one. Too, where it was like, okay, she said she wasn't emotional in the scene, and she was. She's like, but you also got to play it how you would how you think it should be played too. So it's like meeting it kind of in the middle. And so sometimes where I want to honor their story, it's also you're telling a story too, you know, and what would be coming up for you.

Yeah, I kind of wanted to make a painting of the experience rather than a photograph. And that's why I didn't want to look just like John. I wanted to create my own look of somebody who's so disturbed. What would that look like? And I kind of felt the same thing about my relationship with Heather and relationship with you and the relationship with my wife in that I wanted to create a painting of it. I wanted to put it through a few prisms, not just a straight photograph.

I'm reading this thing right now, where it's basically A jury found the man guilty on three counts of capital murder in two thousand and two, and he was sentenced to death. He later admitted to five additional murders in Missouri as part of a plea agreement, and received five life sentences his prison in prison. But I just saw a thing like kind of where is John Edward Robinson today? And it says he remains in prison, has and has

I did some research on that too.

Okay, do you have any like can you help me understand that piece? Or like, is he just trying not to be sentenced to death?

Or in our country, the way the legal system works is you could sue your couch if you think that the couch is hurting your back, and do you the reason that your postures and correct just because of your couch.

You could sue the company that made that couch. You're allowed now, whether the court takes it and decides it's all right, that's one thing. But you're allowed to sue anybody. For you sue the guy who sells pretzels, on the corner because you don't like the look of his pretzels reminded you of a terrible experience, and you can sue him.

You know, if your coffee is not is too hot, spills on your lap, you can sue the company for too hot coffee.

That McDonald's lawsuit, Yeah right, yeah, yeah.

So with with appeals, you can appeal anything.

Now, whether the court takes it seriously or not. That's another thing wild.

I mean, he killed eight women in Kansas, right.

And he's allowed to be that's the law. You're allowed to appeal.

That's because that's for the innocent man who actually they say killed all those women and he didn't, and he's in jail and he's allowed to appeal, and that appeal proves that somebody else did it and then he and then he can go free. And that's really what it's for. It's for the innocent, you know.

Yeah, it's the So when I was reading up a little bit about it's the scheming side of it also, I mean those those are the actual mothers of the women, which is disgusting. But there's the scheming side of it, where he was his own brother that he took money from yeah, yeah, and say that was the money for the baby when obviously we knew, we know where the baby came from. But to do things to that extent to your family members as well as strangers of people that are in your.

Cuckles, it's just like and then for that brother too, for his head to spend like what like not knowing you know, that's just that's tough, and that's got to be it's got to be hard for you to then play that kind of character and then separate because you were such a good man and he was such a bad man. And then like, obviously it's your craft and you're but it's also it's I gotta imagine that's tough too, Like you're not playing a great human.

You know.

The research and the thinking about it was tough. Yeah, But the playing it, you know, the acting it in it, you know the scenes we did, the scenes I did with Rachel.

I enjoyed it. I loved it. I had a great time. It was so cool to play not that to play you know, this true life character, but to act and to use my.

Skills and to see what I can do different and how do I become believable And at the end of the day. It's always been easy for me to hang it up and it's gone. And there were moments when I really thought about him and what he did, and I felt the scene where I murder head. There's mother in the in the in the motel that was terrible, you know, now that you bring it up, you're right, that really bothered me a great deal. We were, you know, there was a small crew in the motel room. I

Ah. That was terrible. That was terrible.

M h I can't wait to see the movie.

Mm hmm.

You like it was you know, Marty did a great job on in the Tinnels, you know, and all of us actors. But it was a good movie, you know, and it directed really well. The music is excellent. I thought the production value was high and being every all the actors were seamless.

You know, you never saw anything other than realism. It was good. It was a good little movie. And I think it's gonna make some noise, I really do. Well.

Everyone watched Kidnapped by a Killer The Heather Robinson Story. It has aired on Lifetime, but you can stream it now. Not by a Killer, The Heather Robinson Story. Steve, you were a pleasure. It was a joy to work with you. I mean, you're you're a force. So thank you for I was. I was honored to be in a scene with you.

So I was too.

You're a really great actor, and you're such a great couple. You know, you're you have such love for each other. It's so beautiful to see because that's what the world is about you know, and you have a great family, and you know, you move to Nashville and you're making a great life and you're you're both are working and contributing.

So and I can't wait to come down there at Nashville and see you guys.

And the invitation is there, and we're gonna, you know, maybe well we'll find you a nice little Southern girl for you. Steve.

Hey, you.

Don't worry. I remember our talk. I'm trying to I'm trying to match make don't you worry. I'm not. I have you right here in my brain vibe. I might have mentioned you to a girlfriend the other day. So I'm just saying, you know, I've got you. I've got you in mind, one of the best, so you deserve the best. Is as all I'm want to say.

Thanks. I love you guys. Thanks for thank you for that.

So nice to see you.

Great to see you both. All right, Chad, soon talk to you.

By loving so much amazing, all right, everybody will watch Kidnap by Killer. The Heather Robinson story disturbing, but so proud of Heather for letting us share her story and giving her a voice in the tragedy that was her mom, and and all those women so stream watch and support Heather