[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Billy, what’s the story of you shifting from being an actor to being a writer?
Billy Van Zandt, Comedy Writer/Playwright/Author: I started out as an actor and I hit a spot where I was not getting a lot of auditions.
I was never a type. I’m half Italian, but I’m not completely Italian. So, I’d go up against Italian kids and I’d look like a WASP. Then I go up for WASP roles and I look ethnic.
So I started writing roles for myself. I started writing the plays for myself.
Then I started directing so no one messed up my plays.
Then I started producing so no one messed up my direction.
I’ve done a lot of that stuff. The plays ended up bringing me out to Hollywood to write for Bob Newhart and entered the sitcom world doing that. And I go back and forth. I do my TV here. Then where most people go to Paris when they have some time off, I would go to New Jersey and put on a play and then go back and forth.
And if in certain plays we took to New York and did off Broadway and then they’re done all over the world.
Film Courage: I want to hear more about the stageplays in a little bit. I’m curious when you were told something in an audition, was it that you were ethnically ambiguous or they didn’t tell you that back then?
Billy: They didn’t tell me anything. They told me nothing. I just wasn’t getting any work. I didn’t go out for commercials. I just went out for movies and stuff.
There was one audition where I went out for a commercial and it was the last one I went on because I had a read with this girl. The two of us are reading and the casting director got a phone call in the middle of our audition and she said,
“Keep going.”
And I stopped and the girl I was with kept reading. I went,
“Wait a minute.”
And I took the phone out of the woman’s hand and hung it up. I said,
“Don’t you ever do that to another actor again.”
And I walked out. I called my agent and said:
“I don’t want to go on any more commercials. I’m done with that.”
Film Courage: Is that the night that you furiously sat down and started writing or you’d already been writing so this was just something you decided to do more of?
Billy: I’ve always been writing, even as a kid. I would write stories about the people in my class in fifth grade and read it to the class and that kind of thing…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Billy Van Zandt and his writing partner, the late Jane Milmore, are two of the most often produced playwrights in the world. Billy and Jane met at a high school acting competition in their home state of New Jersey. Together for 46 years, they wrote and starred in 25 plays together. Billy’s solo play “The Property Known as Garland” starring his ex-wife Adrienne Barbeau broke box office records at Off-Broadway’s Actors Playhouse. The plays have been produced in thousands of theaters worldwide, including two productions directed by Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis (“Billy and Jane are funny, outrageous, off-the chart writers/performers”) and one by film legend Burt Reynolds. For television, these award-winning writers have produced over three hundred hours of television comedy, including “Newhart;” “Martin,” which won them a People’s Choice Award; “The Hughley’s,” which won them a Prism Award;” “Suddenly Susan” for Brooke Shields; “Daddy Dearest” for Don Rickles and Richard Lewis; “Anything But Love” for Jamie Lee Curtis and Richard Lewis; “The Wayans Bros.”; and “I Love Lucy: The Very First Show” which won them an Emmy nomination. As an actor, Billy made his film debut in “Jaws 2”; Billy lives in Los Angeles, when he’s not touring the world in the last Van Zandt/Milmore musical, “The Boomer Boys Musical.”
PRE-ORDER THE BOOK
BECAUSE IT’S FUNNY!: The Plays of Billy Van Zandt & Jane Milmore
BUY THE BOOK – GET IN THE CAR, JANE!: Adventures in the TV Wasteland
CONNECT WITH BILLY VAN ZANDT
Advertisement – contains affiliate links
(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
New book from Film Courage! – See it on Payhip here
New book from Film Courage! – See it on Payhip here
