THE THING ABOUT VILLAINS

These days, Ronny Cox will do an acting job he’s offered, only if it doesn’t interfere with his first love, music. The man who squared off with an Appalachian banjo boy in DELIVERANCE, and played villains deliciously in Paul Verhoeven’s ROBOCOP and TOTAL RECALL, now enjoys nothing more than sharing his songs and stories with a live audience. Roel Haanen talked to the 83-year old actor-singer-songwriter-storyteller in September 2021.

How did you get through the pandemic?

I’ve been pretty much sitting here at home. I did a show right before the pandemic hit, with Nashville players. I’m really proud of that show. We filmed it with a live audience and we spent the last year or so getting it ready. It’s now out on the market. It’s called Songs, Stories and Out & Out Lies.

I’ve been watching some YouTube clips of your music and I discovered a lovely song called The Dutchman, which I had never heard before. For a second there I thought it might be about Paul Verhoeven, but it’s this really sweet love song.

That’s one of the great songs. It was written by Michael Peter Smith. He’s dead now, but we were really close friends. If you listen to the song, it’s about an old couple. But when Michael was young, he had an even younger sister who went out with a Dutchman. When Michael started writing the song, it was about two young lovers, but it changed to an old couple. It shows you how a piece of art can shape itself. 

When you were young, were you simultaneously trying to get a career as a musician and as an actor off the ground? Did you love both arts equally?

I wanted to be an actor since I was thirteen, but I had been playing music ever since I was a child. Where I grew up, it was only nineteen miles away from Norman Petty Recording Studio. I was actually there when Buddy Holly cut Peggy Sue. I even recorded there once. When I was in high school and all through college, I had a rock & roll band, called Ron’s Rockout [chuckles]. Three of us in the band were brothers. My older brother Rick was the bass player, my younger brother Mike played lead guitar and my best friend was the drummer.

I was a theatre major in college, but music was always there. My first film, DELIVERANCE, I got in part because I could play guitar. That was instrumental, pun intended, in me getting that role. When my acting career took off, music was taking a back seat. It wasn’t until I did a TV show called Cop Rock, which was a big flop, that I realized how much I missed music. I had had a really successful career as an actor, so I decided to turn down acting work for a while. I went to Nashville and managed to get a record deal. It was not a successful record, but I’m proud of it. It took me another five years or so to find the folk music community, which is more my kind of music. For a number of years I split my time between acting and music, but about eight or ten years ago, it dawned on me that while I love acting, and while I’m good at it, I don’t love it quite as much as music. This is why: with acting there is, and must be, that imaginary fourth wall. You have to stay in the framework of the piece you’re doing. With my shows, they become a shared experience. As soon as they open the doors, I meet the audience as they come in. I will have had a conversation with everyone in the audience before the performance even starts. I want it to be intimate and personal, like when we were kids, sharing music and stories with family and friends on the porch or in the living room.

I’m not rich, but I’ve enough money. I’m not worried about big paydays anymore. My wife died several years ago. So, I’m mainly doing the thing that gives me the most pleasure, which is playing music for people. If that sounds a little too altruistic then I’m sorry. But it’s true.

If you say the folk music is your thing, then playing with David Carradine on BOUND FOR GLORY must have been really great. 

Absolutely. To this day, Hal Ashby is the favorite of all the directors I’ve worked with. I loved doing the film. I’m friends with Woody Guthrie’s daughter Nora and his son, Arlo. I’ve played Woody Guthrie music all my life.

The Dueling Banjo’s from DELIVERANCE, did you know how to play it? Because on the soundtrack it’s not played by you, right?

That’s right. Here’s the thing about that scene: I didn’t play it in the movie either. I played a match-and-playback. They prerecorded it. When they roll the camera they put the music on and I move my fingers to match the music. The reason we did it that way, was because the young boy, Billy Redden, couldn’t play the banjo. That’s not even his left hand. It’s not even real strings on the banjo.

Since I did play guitar, John Boorman wanted me to play it in the movie. If I had done that, it wouldn’t have been a hit record, because I’m simply not a fancy bluegrass picker. But John Boorman wasn’t interested in making a hit record, he just wanted to show this savant kid showing up this amateur guitar player. I would have to go into Atlanta, which was ninety miles away, to do the recording and I would miss canoe practice and a day of rehearsal. But since the kid couldn’t play, I would have to match the playback anyway. So, they got Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel to play the piece. But John Boorman still wanted to be able to cut to somebody playing the right notes. So, Steve Mandel taught me that song note for note. If you look at that scene, every time they cut to my fingers, they are playing the exact right notes. It gives authenticity to the piece. So, the question: Did I play it? Yes. Is that me on the soundtrack? No. Did it cost me millions of dollars? Yes. [Laughs]

But you did get yourself on the cover of that bestselling soundtrack.

Exactly! Also, if you recall, there’s a scene where Drew, my character, is sitting around and playing a song called Moonshiner’s Lament. That’s actually me singing and playing there. After the movie was shot, they gave me that guitar. It was a cheap Epiphone, while the one on the recording is a fantastic Martin guitar. I still have that guitar. I’m looking at it right now.

One more question about DELIVERANCE: that shot where you’re in the water with your arm wrapped unnaturally around your head, was real right?

Yes. I had a slight case of polio when I was young. I’m old now and I can’t do it as readily as I used to, but my shoulders would come completely out of place. I could take my right hand, put it over my neck and take something out of my pocket on the other side. I could also clasp my hands in front of me, step through them and bring my hands and arms back over my head without letting go of my hands. Really freaky things. The way it came about in DELIVERANCE was, when my character Drew is found dead in the water, the initial idea was that he was face up with his eyes open. So, I was being fitted with false eyeballs. While they were fitting me, I said to John Boorman: You know, I can do a really weird thing with my shoulders. I showed it to him and he almost fell down. He thought it was the greatest thing he’d ever seen. Afterwards, we read learned treatises about the symbolism of Drew’s guitar hand being broken!

The young make-up guy, Mike Hancock, who went on to have a great career, had very little to do on the film. He put some blue make-up on my shoulders to make it look like bruises. Everybody thought he did my arm as a special effect. They would come to him and say: Mike, how did you that arm in DELIVERANCE? And he would say: trade secrets. [Laughs]

Let’s talk about Paul Verhoeven for a bit. When he cast you in ROBOCOP, did you audition for him? How did that go?

I went in to meet him and audition for it. The thing was: I wasn’t that knocked out by the script. It’s a wonderful film, don’t get me wrong, but it’s primarily wonderful because Paul put all this stuff in the movie that is not in the script. I heard that Paul had met with Kurtwood Smith to play Dick Jones, but he chose me instead.

In many ways, ROBOCOP was as big a boon in my career as DELIVERANCE was. In DELIVERANCE I played a guy with some sensitivity, it somehow got equated with weak. For the next ten or fifteen years, I was being cast as Mr. Boy Scout Nice Guy. If the role had any balls or anything, I could forget it. I was a soft actor. Now, I’m delighted that I can play sensitivity, but it was frustrating to me that I, as an athlete and a former marathon runner, was not getting certain parts because I was seen as a soft and sweet guy. So, when the role of Dick Jones came along, one of the things that really appealed to me, was the chance to not play a nice guy for once. And this is the genius of Paul Verhoeven: he knew of my career and he wanted to play on that image. Paul’s idea was that when I came on screen, there was some residual goodwill given to my character by the audience. Therefore, when Dick Jones comes on, everyone thinks: Oh, here’s a nice guy. And then when he isn’t a nice guy, it makes him twice as evil. That’s the brilliance of Paul Verhoeven.

Had you seen any of his films? Like THE FOURTH MAN or FLESH + BLOOD?

Of course, and SOLDIER OF ORANGE. And I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of his volatility, but it never manifested with me, ever. Not for one second. We never had a cross word between us. You know, Paul has a PhD in chemistry. My wife also had a PhD in chemistry. There was an intellectual connection between us. [Actually, Verhoeven studied math and physics – Ed.]

So, when TOTAL RECALL came around, was it a given that you would be playing Cohaagen?

No, no, no. When we wrapped ROBOCOP I thought it was a one and done. At that time, TOTAL RECALL was being made by different people. I don’t know if you know this, but they tried to make it in Australia with Ridley Scott as a director and Patrick Swayze as Quaid. They actually shot for a short period of time. I think they figured like: Holy crap! We’re not going to be able to even stay close to the budget. So, they pulled the plug on it. When Paul Verhoeven came in, it was already the most expensive movie ever. It cost about a hundred million dollars, which was outlandishly expensive for the late eighties.

Dick Jones and Cohaagen are both villainous roles that look as if they were much fun to play. But can they also be tricky? In the sense that you can take it too far? Because you have to stay sinister and menacing, even when you’re having fun with the part.

They were two of my most favorite roles to play. The thing about villains, is that these guys don’t think of themselves as evil or sinister. They think that if everybody could just see the truth as they see it, things would be fine. The key to playing those guys, is finding everything that’s good and admirable about them and play those to the hilt. I try not to play the sinister parts, because that comes through anyway. Less is always more, so you’ll seldom see me overacting.

That scene in the bathroom in ROBOCOP, where you pull Miguel Ferrer’s hair. That’s such a great scene.

Miguel adamantly – and I mean adamantly – did not want me to grab his hair. He said: Don’t do that! Don’t dare do that! And I said: Why not? I knew it was right to do it. Everybody else knew it was right to do it. And he said: You don’t know what I’ll do. I said: Listen, I’m an actor, you’re an actor. Whatever you do, is gonna be fine for the scene. Reluctantly, we did the scene that way. Well after the fact, Miguel told me he was glad I talked him into that. In many ways me grabbing his hair was the key to that scene.

I’ll tell you another little sideline about that scene. ROBOCOP was a low budget film, for all the special effects that were in it. We were constantly on the edge of the budget. On two or three separate occasions, they came to Paul and to Jon Davison, who was producing, and they were running out of money. So, they said: Cut together some of your best scenes, because we gotta have something to show the money people. So, they cut together that scene of me pulling Miguel’s hair and telling him: You just fucked with the wrong guy! And they showed it to the money people, to keep them satisfied.

So, after ROBOCOP and TOTAL RECALL, what happened to the offers you got as an actor?

Once I played Dick Jones, I got offered everything! There was a time between the mid-eighties and the late nineties where I was in every movie made. I don’t mean to sound egotistical, but I just was. I went five years without a single a day not having a job as an actor. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t work every day. But once I finished a film, I already had another film to go to. Although I never became a big star, I was considered one of the really good actors in the business. There are certain actors who always play to their screen persona. That has zero interest for me. I wanted to play different characters, which I now had a chance to do, after ROBOCOP and TOTAL RECALL. Dick Jones just opened all these doors for me.

Did you stay in touch with Verhoeven after TOTAL RECALL?

No. Because we hardly ever socialized when we worked together. But in those days, that was true of every movie I did. I was off to something else and they were off to something else. That’s the bad thing about the movie business. You’re thrown in with a bunch of people for three or four months and you become really close, in many ways like family. And then you’re off to other places. Sometimes it’s years before you see them again. If this sounds like bragging, then I’ll accept it, but these days, when I step onto a movie set, all the crew guys come up to talk to me. Because I’m always the crew’s favorite actor. I really hope I don’t sound like too much of an ass. But the reason is, I found early on I can’t spend any time in my trailer. Having a huge trailer is part of being an actor, but being inside one always hurt my concentration. It got me out of what we were doing. So, I spent every day and all day with the crew. That way you learn the shorthand. You become one of them. I’ve had lighting guys come up to me and say: Hey Ronny, move over just a bit. The light is better if you’re there. Stuff like that. Over the years you get close to those guys. The sad part is that you go your separate ways afterwards. That’s the drawback of this business.

I’ve read that you don’t have much patience for the method style of acting.

I don’t and I’ll tell you why. If these actors that claim they have to become this character in order to play him, why does this character still have to hit his marks? Why does he have to say his lines as written? It’s hubristic bullshit. Yeah, you have to find the core in yourself, so that the character can move through your impulses. But there are so many other things. Am I hitting the marks? All that stuff. I read about an actor – I won’t mention his name – who said he hadn’t spoken to his daughter for three months because he was working on his role. Hubristic bullshit.

But when you started out, doing theatre in New York in the early seventies, wasn’t the method just about everywhere?

Oh, yeah, yeah. There were all these guys doing the method, but it has always been bullshit.

By the way, I started my acting career doing theatre in Washington DC, at Arena Stage, which was a highly respected theatre. My wife Mary was doing her PhD at Georgetown University. After six years we went to New York where I did Broadway and Off-Broadway and Shakespeare in the Park and stuff like that. Mary was doing a four year post-doctoral fellowship at Sloan Kettering, one of the most prestigious cancer research organizations in the world. I was married to a really, really, really brilliant woman.

THE MIND SNATCHERS was a play before it was a movie. You played the same role on stage, right?

Yes. What a terrible title that is, by the way. It was called The Happiness Cage on stage. In many ways that was my big break. We did it in New York with Joe Papp, as a workshop. Only ten performances. I did it originally with Marty Sheen in Christopher Walken’s role. I must have had two hundred phone calls of agents and producers. Dropping names here, but Tennessee Williams’ agent, Ms. Audrey Wood, came to see the play one night. Afterward she came backstage and asked me: Young man, who is your agent? I told her I didn’t have an agent. She said: You do now. She got me signed. When John Boorman came to New York looking for good, unknown actors, it was Joe Papp who recommended they see me.

You worked with a lot of actors at the beginning of their careers, like Christopher Walken, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Eddie Murphy, Sharon Stone. Did you see their star potential at the time?

Oh, Sean Penn! I knew right away. In many ways he is America’s greatest actor. He’s fabulous. But there were a lot of guys… I think THE ONION FIELD made James Woods a star. It was also one of Ted Danson’s first roles. Ned Beatty, his first film was DELIVERANCE too. He and I had been cast independently of each other, but we had been best friends for seven or eight years. We had done twenty plays together. Yeah, I’ve done many films with young actors. I did a film called GRAY LADY DOWN in which Christopher Reeve played a part. While on that film he tested for SUPERMAN.

You’ve done quite a number of horror and sci-fi roles in your career. One of them was THE BEAST WITHIN, which is such a weird movie. What are your memories of making that film?

Yeah, Philippe Mora directed that. We shot it in Jackson, Mississippi. We had a good cast and a good time making it. I don’t know if you know this, but I have three or four songs in that movie. They used them as source music. I wrote a song called The Beast Within. Les Baxter was the composer, he wanted some songs. You’d think that Les Baxter, being this famous composer, would want to write the music and let me do the lyrics. But he wrote the lyrics and I wrote the music. You see, he didn’t have much feel for country twangy music. Yeah… THE BEAST WITHIN… I’ve done some awful films. Not on purpose, mind you. There’s often reasons to do a film that seem good at the time. I’ve been very selective, but sometimes you just don’t make the best choice.

I’ve seen THE BEAST WITHIN a number of times. It has a strange fascinating quality to it, but it’s so incomprehensible that I always thought it was meant to be something different.

It was that whole cicada analogy… It’s just a really weird thing.

I read that you really liked the screenplay of the CAPTAIN AMERICA film you did in 1990. For me, who only saw the finished movie, it’s hard to see how it could have been a much better film. What was on the page that was not on the screen?

Oh, so much. Stephen Tolkin’s screenplay for CAPTAIN AMERICA was one of the finest I’ve ever read. We shot it in Dubrovnik, among other places. I don’t mean to cast aspersions, but Albert Pyun, while a fine action director, had not the vaguest idea what a comic book hero was about. He got fascinated with the Red Skull. Instead of doing the satire, which was in the screenplay, he focused on the wrong things. It had a great cast: Ned Beatty, Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin. Some really good actors. It just didn’t live up…

Did you watch any of the new Marvel films?

They’re all okay, but it’s just not my genre. But I wish you could have read that screenplay. It was so funny. Having Captain America wake up and seeing all these Volkswagens. He’s appalled that all these German cars are riding around. A lot of delicious satire that just didn’t come across. But I won’t go on about it, because I don’t want to insult Albert Pyun too much. [Chuckles]

Speaking of screenplays, you and your wife wrote a movie in 1984, called RAW COURAGE. What was that experience like?

It was great fun. One of the reasons I wrote it, was that I was trying to play something other than Mr. Boy Scout. Mary and I wrote it. We shot it in New Mexico, my home state. It was fairly low budget. I think we had a million and half, which was decent. We used union crews. It got some good reviews and it turned out okay. But here’s the thing I realized at the end of that film: the importance of a score to a film. We used temp dubs from some great movies in the editing. We looked for music that matched what we thought the scene should be. I hate to go over the top, but with the temp dubs, the film was brilliant. As you know, the score is the last thing that goes in. But we were basically out of money. We hired a wonderful composer, but since we had no money, he played everything on synthesizers. The difference was night and day. The sad thing was, we had shown a rough cut of the film to Jerry Goldsmith, one of my favorite composers in the world. And he liked the film. If we could have come up with fifty thousand dollars, he would have done the score. I look back on that film and I’m proud of it all the way around, but if it would have been a zillion times better with a Jerry Goldsmith score.

Did you do a sequel to THE CAR recently?

It’s a tribute, I guess. What they did is, they bring back that car from THE CAR. We shot it in Bulgaria.

Did you enjoy it?

A lot. My character is only in a couple of scenes, but I liked doing it. It was a chance to go Bulgaria, but since it was all night shoots, I slept during the day, so I hardly got to see any of the sights.

If you do movie now, what are some of the criteria for you to say yes.

First of all, I won’t let any role interfere with any music gig that I’ve already booked. They have to work around that. I love doing movies and TV shows like Nashville, where I get to act and sing. Best of both worlds. I recently did a small role in a movie about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I still get offered stuff.

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A shorter version of this interview first appeared in the Dutch fanzine Schokkend Nieuws, as part of a special on Paul Verhoeven. Above is the whole talk, edited only for clarity.