SR: No. We actually just finished recording season 12, even though we've only had five or six of them on the air. We're always nine months behind. It takes a while to get them up and running. We're hoping for another season, but it really kind of depends on whether the writers' strike goes another month or so. If it does, that might shut us down. If it doesn't, we'd have to start wrapping that up immediately.
AVC: Do you have a preference between the voice work or other acting?SR: No. My whole career, I've tried to bounce back and forth between everything, and not get typed out. I've done a pretty good job of not getting typed. So I'll do a lot of comedy, and then I'll not do comedy for a year, do West Wing and then do something else. You have to remind casting directors out here that you don't just do one thing. There's a lot of people who do just one thing.
AVC: Do you feel like the label "character actor" is pejorative?
SR: Not a bit. To me, it's number one, because all the guys who I look for, who I emulate or respect where the character actors of the '30s and '40s—all those guys. Frank Morgan in Wizard Of Oz, Ward Bond in every movie ever done. I wanted to be like those guys. I wanted to be Lou Grant; I kind of got to be him on NewsRadio. But those are all character guys who populated a very thick universe in the '30s and '40s, you saw them a lot. They did a lot of work, and they got to do a lot of different work. That's more interesting to me than anything else. I've been lucky that I have been able to do that.
AVC: But it seems like being thought of as a character actor keeps you away from all the glory.
SR: I see what you're saying, but I didn't get into it for the glory. My goal as an actor was to work—to be a working actor, whether it was in theater, and, well, I didn't even consider film and television when I was in New York, but what came along, came along. So, in that sense, I have achieved my goal of being a working actor. And luckily enough, I have recognition to be able to do jobs that I want to do instead of doing jobs for money, which is an enviable position to be in. It's what you work for your whole life anyway, to take jobs that interest you and not jobs that are just crap.
Bicentennial Man (1999)—"Dennis Mansky"
SR: The movie where everyone had to loop the whole movie because Robin's suit was so noisy. It was supposed to be metal; it's plastic, obviously, but it squeaked like hell. Every scene we did in that movie we looped, because he was squeaking through it. Too bad. I'm a science-fiction guy, and I think that movie didn't work. But it was fun to work with him and be a bad guy.
AVC: Have you read the book?
SR: Of course. I've read all of Asimov.
AVC: It seems like people who are fans of the book knew it was going to be a tough one to adapt.
SR: Absolutely. I'm glad we made an attempt, but it's almost impossible. You can't do it. It's just too long.
AVC: Do you think the film was too sentimental?
SR: Yep, I do. But you never know how a movie's going to come out. It can look all right in the script, but when you see it put together, "Oh, too corny." And that's what happened.
AVC: When you're shooting, when do you know if a film is going to work?
SR: Well, you don't. Movies are an editor's medium. That's why the Coen brothers are so great, because they are edited in their head as they go. They're doing both—directing, editing, doing production design [laughs]—they do everything, which is the best way, to get more involved in it, to do more than just directing a film. Really, you don't know until you've come back, done some looping, seen a little part of the film, what they've done with it. There are so many things you can do as an editor to a film. You can make it a slow-moving film or a fast-moving film. It's really an editor's medium.
AVC: Have you ever come back and been totally shocked by what you end up seeing?
SR: No, not shocked. I've been saddened by lengthy cuts that I didn't think were necessary, but never shocked. You always expect that if you shoot eight scenes in a film, you might have five of them in there.
AVC: When you say "lengthy cuts," what comes to mind?
SR: I would say Bicentennial Man. Everything that I did is in that film, and it doesn't need to be, including Robin's stuff.
NewsRadio (1995-1999)—"Jimmy James"
SR:Well, it was the most fun I could have had. It was the zenith of what I had been able to do on television, because I came in with a character that I thought was kind of weird and bent, and Jimmy [Burrows] and Paul [Simms] said "Yes, let's write in that direction." So they made him weirder than even I brought in. It was fun. We had four great years, and then Phil left us, and we had another year that wasn't really the show.
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