CraveOnline: I’m certainly not a big enough sports fan to know this myself, but I read that Red wasn’t actually at the away games. Were you aware of that?
John C. McGinley: Yeah, of course but you take some poetic license. We took poetic license and I don’t know if it bothered anybody.
We only see Red announcing on the job in the movie. Did you ever delve into his outside life?
No, just because it wasn’t germane to the script. We see him in the booth. That’s it.
Were they recreating real plays from real games?
Absolutely. In fact, I don’t say a syllable in that movie that we didn’t either A) pull from his autobiography, B) from broadcasts or C) from actual game footage that was preserved. There’s nothing that comes out of my mouth in that film that is improvised or flavored by John McGinley eccentricities.
Did they by any chance have a camera on you while they were shooting the game?
Unfortunately, I was brought on when the company was wrapped, so I was by myself in this huge soundstage down in Atlanta for about 96 hours. I was all by myself so I didn’t get to meet any of the actors or anything and that was a drag, but it was wonderfully indulgent to do the Red Barber show for four days and not come up for air, just stay in that rhythm. That was just magnificent.
One of my favorite movies you were a part of is The Rock. Was that script always in flux and did that affect your work?
Oh my God, yes. Sean [Connery] brought on writers, all the big stars had all these writers they brought on. That text was liberally massaged, but in the meantime we were out on Alcatraz for a month and a half, two months and showing up when all the tourists left in the afternoon and shooting all night. So that was one of those great, great gigs.
Since you were playing one of Hummel’s men, did the Nicolas Cage drafts and the Sean Connery drafts really affect your character?
Nah, and plus Ed Harris is such a man. He led our whole team and it was great to be in his glow. He just impacted me as such a man of integrity. I really love Ed. He’s right up there with Bobby Duvall. I don’t know how you get any better than Ed.
I imagine Wagons East is not one you hear about a lot.
No, but I enjoyed the hell out of doing that. Unfortunately the film was a bit cursed as John Candy, rest in peace, who passed during it, the earthquake and fires would happen up here in Los Angeles while we were down there in Durango, Mexico. I thought the film was hilarious on the page but it made it clear just how miraculous Blazing Saddles is. Those things are hard to execute…
I enjoyed it when I saw it in theaters, and that was pre-Brokeback Mountain you got to play a gay cowboy.
I just enjoyed Julian, that’s the character. I enjoyed playing Julian so much. That he’s a closet gunslinger is just genius.
I should ask about Platoon also. Was that a real trial by fire as one of your first gigs?
Yeah, that was arguably the hardest shoot I’ve ever been on, because we were in the Philippines right after Marcos left and Corazon Aquino had taken over. It was anarchy over there and here we are shooting this low budget independent war movie. So it was trying.
In the nine years of “Scrubs,” did you want that hug as much as JD did?
A funny thing happened with the hug in the pilot. When he puts the needle in the patient, he does one procedure in the pilot which involves a needle. The Dr. Cox character almost goes to give him a pat on the back, and then I didn’t do it because I just thought it was baloney that I would be doling out affection so liberally. Billy Lawrence said, “Yeah, you don’t have to do it.”
But there were a lot of Disney suits on the set and there were some NBC suits. I could hear them over in video village confabbing. They said, “Can you pat him once?” I said, “No, no, no” because I’d done about 50 films by then. I’m like, “No, if I pat him once, that’s the take you’re going to use.” And they’re like, “Well, could you just do it once?” I said, “What, am I stuttering? No, I’m not patting him.” It got to be a little bit of a Mexican standoff and Billy Lawrence finally said, “If you don’t want to pat him, you don’t have to.” So that kind of became the impetus for him not getting a pat for a long time.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
