Jeff Kober on restoring Dr. Robby's bike and surviving Jack Bauer's intensity

AVC: To be fair, I would’ve asked about Ohara anyway. I enjoy a good obscurity, and a Pat Morita crime drama from 1987 certainly qualifies.

JK: Oh, yeah. And Jackie Cooper directed that episode! There was a scene where I had to enter, and I asked him if I could open the door, just to make it real. And he said, “No.” And I said, “Oh, come on, it’s just two seconds more of film.” And he said, “No.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Look, I shoot this, they take it away from me. I have to give them just one way to cut it. So I’m cutting it in the camera.” So he only gave them what he wanted to have on the screen.

AVC: How did you enjoy the experience of playing Duke on The Pitt? Because for the first portion of it, Duke spends a lot of time just sitting in a room by himself. 

JK: It was a lot of that. I don’t know about you, but I hate hospitals. I hate waiting around, because a doctor’s time is always more important than your own, so you’re left waiting and waiting and waiting. And we shot it in sequence, so the character, the last place he wanted to be was there, so any discomfort I had sitting in the room was perfect for the character and perfect for the role. 

AVC: How familiar are you with motorcycles? Because Duke certainly knows his way around them.

JK: I grew up riding dirt bikes. I think I got my first one when I was 11 or 12. I was raised in the country, in Montana, and I got a dirt bike and used it for irrigating and chasing cattle, and then I just spent hours and hours and hours out in the hills, just riding this old Bridgestone 90 and then a Bridgestone 100. These are motorcycles made by a Japanese tire company that happened to be sold by the co-op that my family farm belonged to. And I just did all kinds of daredevil stuff and jumps, my own version of motocross without knowing what I was doing. Just going crazy out in the hills. 

And then a little later on I had a couple of bikes, the last one of which was a BSA 650, a ’68 BSA. And the bike that I helped Robby restore in the show was a 1969 Triumph 650. And BSA and Triumph are like the Ford and Chevy of English bikes back in the day, so they always had equivalent bikes. So I had a bike very similar to the one that we ended up having on the show. 

AVC: Had you already been a fan of the first season of The Pitt before you were cast in season two?

JK: No, I avoided it. Because I… [Hesitates.] You know, I guess it’s, like, when you’re an actor… Well, I’ll just speak for myself, but I like to watch shows that couldn’t possibly be real. [Laughs.] And that have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that don’t have a lot of emotional weight. Because I’ve got enough emotional weight in here for myself already. So the thought of going into an ER and living through these experiences with these men and women, it was something that I was just taking a pass on. And then I got the job, and I just said, “Well, I guess I gotta watch it.” And, God, it’s so good. It really kind of changed my viewing habits.

V (1985)—“Visitor Officer”

JK: That was my first Screen Actors Guild job. [Laughs.] A one-day “co-star” role, they call it. 

AVC: Do you remember anything in particular about the experience?

JK: You know, it was all so quick. It was very much a machine that was running, and I got pulled through it and spit out the other side. But I met Jane Badler—my scene was with her—and then later became friends with her through meditation many years later. But, yeah, it was just a way for me to get my SAG card.

AVC: How did you find your way into acting in the first place?

JK: So I was in the junior class play in my small high school—I played a side role in that—and then when I was in college, I was a trombone player, and the music school was right next to the theater school, and I just saw these strange people going in and out of the theatre school and…I just turned my nose up at them. And then they did a production of Fiddler On The Roof, and I was in the pit orchestra, and I watched these people on stage. It was the first time I’d been exposed to acting like that. I was really close to them, because I was right there in the pit, watching them. And it was really eye-opening. For the first time ever, I realized that those were people. They weren’t this distant thing that I saw in movies and on television. And still I never put myself in that position, or even had an idea of being in that position.

But then I had a very mysterious girlfriend who moved to Los Angeles, and I dropped out of school and followed her. She was going to be an actress. And we went through lots of adventures together. I was in a rock band for a minute, and then the rock band broke up, and she and I broke up. And I was in an office job—a temporary paralegal at Getty Oil Company—and I so didn’t belong there, but it was keeping me fed And I needed to try to make sense of my life, because it had all blown up, and suddenly I’m in Los Angeles without a gig and without a girlfriend. And I just said in one of our communal lunches there, “I remember that things made sense when I was in school. You went to a class, and you had an assignment, and you finished it and you got a grade. That made sense.” And this woman said, “I think you might like this acting class I go to.” 

And so I went and sat in on this acting class…and it was like that experience with Fiddler On The Roof, except times a thousand, because these were people who were being themselves on stage and doing Meisner work, the moment-to-moment repetition work, and falling apart and having these big emotions and being celebrated and recognized for it, for feeling things deeply. And I felt things so deeply, but it was all crushed down inside. And it was like a light in the darkness. I just went toward it. I was hopelessly hooked from the very first class.

The X-Files (1993)—“Bear”

JK: Ah, Bear. With Xander Berkeley and Felicity Huffman!

AVC: Not a bad cast for a one-off episode.

JK: Yeah! And David Nutter, the director, who won an Emmy for directing Game Of Thrones, we were his dream cast. He picked us out from these various jobs that he knew us from. Not that we worked together, but he liked our work and saw us as these characters. And our episode of X-Files was a retelling of The Thing. We were at Ice Station Something, and I had an alien worm in my neck, and…I died horribly. [Laughs.]

24 (2006)—”Conrad Haas”

JK: Oh, that was interesting. I was the third actor in that role. I got called in to go do this role—I’m going to assassinate the president—and there were these scenes that we were only shooting from one angle, and I was, like, “What’s going on?” And they said, “Well, we already shot everything from behind your character and all the long shots of your character, but…those actors didn’t work out.” [Laughs.] “So we’re just gonna do your close-ups and your dialogue with you.” So I said, “Okay!” But people kept coming up to me or calling me to say, “Are you okay? Is everything alright?” “Yeah, why?” And what they were all worried about was that apparently they were afraid that I wouldn’t be able to hang in with Kiefer [Sutherland]. Because that’s what happened with these other actors, apparently: They were intimidated by him. And I’d learned how to just work with whoever you work with.

So we worked together, and then he leaves me. I’m gut-shot and I need to get to a hospital, and he’ll take me if I give him the information he needs…and, of course, I give it to him, and then he just tells me to suck on it and leaves me to die. [Laughs.] And when we finished that scene, I’m laying there just covered with blood and guts, and I’ve got to wait for them to get me out of the mess, and Kiefer is walking across the lot, back to this trailer…and then I see him go like this… [Acts startled.] And he jumps up, as if remembering something, and he turns and runs back and shakes my hand and says, “Thanks so much for coming in! Great job!” It was just that he was in character the whole time, and his character was so intense that apparently the other guys just weren’t able to hang with it.

New Girl (2012)—“Remy”
Self Reliance (2023)—“Cowboy”

JK: Oh, New Girl was a gas. One of the things I love about that was that I was up for that role alongside Mark Boone Jr. from Sons Of Anarchy. I would never see myself up against Mark Boone Jr. for a role, but apparently I was for New Girl. I was once up for an ESPN commercial, and there was me, Dean Cain, Vincent Schiavelli, and a little person…and the little person got the role. [Laughs.] But New Girl was so well-written, and they let you play. The writers and producers would sit behind the camera, and you’d do a scene, and then they’d say, “Okay, do again, and do this…or say this line! Or make something up!” They just let you play, and you got to discover all kinds of funny stuff.

There’s a scene where I’m gonna have a threesome with Jake Johnson and Zoey Deschanel… [Starts to laugh.] And they’re just, like, testing each other to see how far they’re gonna take this thing. And every time they open the door and look in, they have to see me doing something. So I got to come up with something every time they opened the door. Like, I was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, boxer shorts, and cowboy boots, and I’d be doing yoga poses, or reading a book, or eating an apple, or stretching… Just a different weird thing every time they came in. I think I was meditating once, and then doing some ballet moves. It was just so much fun. And I got to do a movie with Jake a couple of years ago that he wrote and directed: Self Reliance. I got to play a cowboy assassin. [Laughs.] It was just absurd and funny. 

Falcon Crest (1986-1987)—“Guy Stafford” 
Big Dogs (2020)—“Capt. DiBiasi”

JK: Oh, Christ… Y’know, two of my dearest friends in the world were Michelle Little, who played my little junkie girlfriend in Out Of Bounds, and her boyfriend at the time, Brett Cullen. And Brett was on Falcon Crest, and Michelle had broken up with him and gone off to the Philippines to do a movie with Jan-Michael Vincent, I think. So every night after work, Brett would make me go to the bar with him. And I didn’t drink, but I’d have to sit there and listen to him whine about Michelle and how much he missed her. [Laughs.] And I’d try to change the subject, but it always kept coming back to Michelle. But they’ve been happily married now for 40 years, so it all worked out.

AVC: How was the nighttime soap opera experience in general?

JK: Kind of horrifying. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and I just saw that they just kept writing the same scenes over and over and over again. And I was working with this director, Philip Leacock, and I was trying to figure out my way into this storyline, and…I just did not do a good job on that show. And I apologize to the viewers and the producers. [Laughs.] But I was standing next to Phil Leacock, this great old British director, and I said, “I’m trying to figure out this scene, Phil, and I just… It’s the same scene we did in the last episode, and the one before that!” And he said… [Sighs.] “Ah, yes, I know.” I said, “What do you do?” He said, “Well, we just muddle on through until we get to one that matters.” But on the plus side, I got to work with Kim Novak. And I remember getting a broken rib from an actor who decided I wasn’t selling our fight well enough for camera! 

AVC: You’ve worked with Brett Cullen several times over the years, most recently on Big Dogs.

JK: That’s right! Yeah, we’ve worked together a few times, Brett and I. But Big Dogs… That was produced by our friends Tony Glazer and Summer Crockett Moore, who have their own studio now up in Newburgh, New York, up north of Manhattan. This author had, like, six novels in this series, and there was the hope that it would go longer, but we did one season of it and…that was it! I never actually saw it, but Brett and I had a couple of really fantastic scenes in it.

Out Of Bounds (1986)—“Roy Gaddis”

AVC: The bid to make Anthony Michael Hall an action star.

JK: And an adult! With the beautiful Jenny Wright in the female lead. It was such an amazing job. And terrifying for me, because it was my first big movie. And I ended up getting sober. We shot two weeks before Christmas, and then we had a Christmas break, and then we shot eight weeks after Christmas, in the new year. And during my off time, I checked into a hotel and got sober. Just sweated and shook for a few days and then went back to work and was just trying not to screw it up. And I kept thinking I was gonna get fired! And then about halfway through, I realized, “Well, they’ve already shot too much of me. They can’t afford to fire me now!” [Laughs.] It didn’t help me relax anymore, but I felt like I’d be able to finish out the job. But it turned out really well, I thought! But that was a job that was supposed to fix me. Third lead in a Columbia motion picture? It was supposed to make me feel like I belonged in the world. And it didn’t. [Laughs.] It didn’t at all. But I gave it a shot!

Tank Girl (1995)—“Booga”

JK: I loved Booga! I still don’t know why they asked me to audition for that. I mean, I just don’t know. But I loved the character so much. There’s some actors that work with animals. Like, if they play a character as a cat or a tiger or an elephant or whatever. I had a Newfoundland when I was a teenager, this big, goofy, loveable dog. And the way Booga was written, it was different than the Booga character in the Tank Girl comic books. He was kind of goofy. There are these sexy women trying to get him to let them out of jail, and he wants to trade baseball cards or something. He’s just kind of goofy. And I played it as my Newfoundland. I don’t usually work as an animal, but that one, for some reason, it just occurred to me, “He’s just like Yoko, my Newfoundland!” So I played him as Yoko.

And Stan Winston, the great Stan Winston, did the prosthetics for that, and…it was extraordinarily uncomfortable. We had like five or six hours of makeup putting the heads on, and then we were in full battle mode, we were in wetsuits that had foam glued to them, and we had servo motors for our ears in our head, and we had big tails that got moved around by puppeteers. It was crazy how much went into it! And all the battle sequences we shot early on in a mine outside of Tucson, Arizona in July. And the first night, I took off that wetsuit, and it weighed about 20 pounds more because of the sweat! So then I had the special effects guys drill holes in the top of my skullcap so that we could get some circulation going. And if you stood in the lights, you’d see steam coming off of everyone’s head,  because they started doing that for everyone to help out a little bit. 

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2004)—“Abraham / Eugene Hoff”

JK: Mariska [Hargitay] won an Emmy for that episode! And they’re doing an SVU Mariska marathon just before the Emmys—she’s hosting—and they’re starting with that episode.

I learned something really interesting in that episode. I play this really creepy cult leader guy who’s a man of God, and instead of playing him like a creepy cult leader, I played him like a man of God. And when I talked to Benson, I really cared. Like, “Why do you put yourself through this? This is terrible! Don’t you know what this is doing to your soul?” And, “Oh, this is what happened to you as a little girl? Oh, I’m so sorry.” I just did it straight up and let the context make it creepy. But my family and friends got together to watch it for whatever reason—it was just one of those that I guess people wanted to see it, or maybe I wanted them to see it, I can’t remember which—but I remember the show coming on and watching the first five minutes of it, and I had to leave the room. Because it was so creepy. It was horrifying!

Timeless (2016)—“Davy Crockett”

JK: Just a larger than life character. There’s one great line where one of the characters asked me if I really killed a bear with a knife, and I say something like, “Sometimes people just need a hero to look up to, someone who’s willing to do the impossible.” Clearly, I’m saying that I didn’t do the impossible, but I let ’em think that I did. I really learned that heroes or superstars, they’re just agreeing to stand in that role for everybody. And that’s what I got from the way they wrote that and the way we were able to play that. And Chris Browning, the actor who played Jim Bowie, he and I hung out a bit after that. I took pictures of him and his pregnant partner before she gave birth. I’m a wet plate photographer.

General Hospital (2020-2025)—“Cyrus Renault”

JK: [Long, cackling laugh.] That was…sort of a Gilligan’s Island job. You know, Gilligan set out for a three-hour tour and ended up being on the air for three seasons. I did a six-month job, and it ended up lasting for four-and-a-half years. It kept me fed during the pandemic and during the actor’s strike, because we were under a different contract, the old AFTRA contract, so we were able to keep going. And we were the second show back with pandemic protocols. So I was really able to keep food on the table. And apparently they liked working with me enough that, instead of killing me off at the end of the six months, they made me Genie Francis’ long-lost half-brother.

AVC: That’s a proper soap opera character right there. 

JK: Yeah! And that job is such a gas, because…our job as actors is to embody characters fully, and if you’re on a movie or a long-running TV show, you kind of know who these people are, you know what their backstory is, you know what’s affecting them. On a soap, you get a script, and go, “Wait, what?” [Laughs.] And you’ve just got to be able to roll with it, man. 

Lucky Stiff (1988)—“Ike”

JK: Oh, God… Anthony Perkins! And Donna Dixon. [Sighs.] The beautiful Donna Dixon. Anthony Perkins was every bit as eccentric as you could imagine he would be. But I remember he had his own espresso machine on set! It was this strange character. Joe Alaskey was the lead in that, and it was originally called Mr. Christmas Dinner, because we were a family of cannibals, and Donna and I each year would go out and get some large man to bring home for Christmas dinner…as the main course. [Laughs.]
And I’m reading the script and trying to make sense of it and trying to find the humor in this ghastly story, and I realize that there are these 15-year-old twins, and these are Donna Dixon’s character’s children…and I’m their father. And she’s my sister! And I realized some aspect of that one day, and I went, “Tony! This and this and this…” And he says, “Not only that!” And then he took it to a place that is just…not printable. [Laughs.] 

But there’s a great bit where Joe Alaskey is walking through the living room, and one of these kids is walking through the room, making noise and holding a tennis shoe, going, “Oooooooh…. Oooooooh!” And he says, “Why is he doing that?” And the reply is, “Don’t act like you see him. He thinks he’s a ghost. He tried to commit suicide, and we didn’t want him to do it again, so we just let him believe that he succeeded.” [Laughs.] So he was haunting the family with his shenanigans!

AVC: I’d say that’s dark, but it seems to match the tone of the rest of the film.

JK: [Laughs.] Well, it was written by Pat Proft, who did Police Academy and The Naked Gun!

Kindred: The Embraced (1996)—“Daedalus”

JK: Kindred: The Embraced… I guess there was a board game of some sort where vampire families were like crime families, and they had split up the five boroughs of New York. Mark Frankel was the head of our vampire family, and I was his sergeant-at-arms, the 3,000-year-old Daedalus. 3,000 years old and looking every day of it. [Laughs.] It was a seven-episode season, and then Mark was killed, tragically, just before we came back for a full season. But his son… Did you see Task, on HBO? Fabien Frankel was in that. He’s got a great career. I think he’s also in the Game Of Thrones spinoff, House Of The Dragon. He’s a great actor, and his father was a great actor. Just impossibly handsome. I really loved him. 

Sons Of Anarchy (2009-2013)—“Jacob Hale Jr.”

JK: You know, Jacob Hale Jr. is similar to Cyrus Renault on General Hospital, in that they needed to have someone who was reprehensible enough to make the bad guys look good. [Laughs.] And Jacob Hale Jr. was just a really crooked politician and land developer who was willing to sell his mother to make a few bucks. 

But I didn’t get to ride a motorcycle, which was kind of a drag. I tried to get them to give me one. Just an English bike, actually. I thought I’d look good on an English bike. I wouldn’t drive a Harley, clearly, because that was all the outlaw bikers. But nobody listened to me.

AVC: You were disconcertingly clean-cut in that.

JK: Imagine how I felt! [Laughs.]

China Beach (1988-1991)—“Sgt. Evan ‘Dodger’ Winslow” 

JK: I auditioned for it with a terrible case of the flu. I could barely speak. John Levy brought me in, and I did the audition scenes for this Marine who had seen too much… [Starts to croak.] And I could barely speak, so afterwards I apologized. And they said, “Oh, no, no, we loved it!” So I ended up having to speak like I had the flu for at least the first season or so! 

AVC: Did you have a favorite Dodger storyline or episode?

JK: You know, it was really a special job, because everyone really was trying to do the best work they could to honor the soldiers and the nurses and the doctors and the donut dollies and USO performers, all the people who had really used themselves up in Vietnam and really given of themselves. So it was all very special. And then they got to tell the story of returning veterans and what they went through. The stories that meant the most to me were the stories about coming back, and the stories about not wanting to leave. Because Dodger had finished his tour and stayed, because he didn’t know how to be back in the world.

There was so much great work that was done. There’s a lot of great camera work that John Wells really helped to develop and that he took to the next step on ER, a lot of long tracking shots and dolly shots, and a lot of choreography of the camera and the actors that was really special and exciting to do. And I got to work with Academy Award winner Haing Ngor, Dana Delaney,Marg Helgenberger, Michael Boatman, Megan Gallagher, Bob Picardo… All of these extraordinary actors. Just great actors. There wasn’t a lot of ego flying around at all. Everyone was just committed to the job and really just enjoying each other and enjoying putting ourselves through what we had to put ourselves through.

We shot that out at Indian Dunes, north of L.A., and there was one day when the high that day was in the 90s, and it got down to, I think, 16 that night. And we were having to do these scenes in our T-shirts, covered with sweat, at night, and it was in the 20s. You’d have to hold ice cubes in your mouth in between takes and then spit ’em out when you were ready to go, so that your breath didn’t fog. It was a challenge to shoot in many different ways, but a lot of great work was done there. Mimi Leder came out of that boot camp. 

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1999 / 2001-2002)—“Zachary Kralik” / “Rack”

JK: I’m one of only two actors who had multiple roles on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Me and Brian Thompson. Marti Noxon wrote that role [of Rack] for me, and I was very grateful for it. It was a fun, creepy role.

But I have to tell this story: Brian Thompson’s character had come and gone, and I was in the makeup trailer one day, getting made up…and Brian was there! And he was on the far end of the trailer, and he was really dressed up nicely, in a suit. He looked really good. And he’s getting his hair and makeup done, and I was, like, “What’s going on, Brian?” And he’s, like, “Ah, yeah, hey, good to see you!” And he just kind of got done and left. And I asked my makeup guy, “What’s Brian doing here?” He said, “Brian? Brian Thompson was here?” He came in and had his hair and makeup done because he was doing an audition down the street. [Laughs.] He just came in and had them make him up without saying anything. He just figured they’d take him in and take him on and fix him up…and they did! No one asked any questions until it was too late!

The Guilt Trip (2012)—“Jimmy”

JK: I got to work with Barbra Streisand. And Seth Rogen! It was a dream job. And it’s true that Barbra would only be shot from one angle…and we adjusted accordingly. And I remember her husband [James Brolin] came in and brought donuts for everyone, and he held her in between takes. Their relationship was so sweet and warm and beautiful. And they weren’t afraid to just have it out in public.

Laguna Heat (1987)—“Vic Harmon”

AVC: Do you remember the first person that you ever worked with where you had to fight to keep from going full fanboy?
JK: Oh, uh… [Long pause.] You know, I did a movie for… I think maybe it was one of the first Showtime movies? But it was with Harry Hamlin, Catherine Hicks, and Jason Robards. And Jason Robards was one of my heroes! But we were both actors. So we were just being actors with each other. But Willie Nelson was apparently having an affair with one of the makeup women. And he pulled up in a limousine, and the window came down, and it was Willie in the backseat, asking me where the makeup trailer was. And I just… [Stumbling.] “It’s, um, just right up there, uh, Mr. Nelson!” [Laughs.] So it was just a weird juxtaposition. I’m working with Jason Robards, for God’s sake. He’s one of my heroes. But I can’t talk to Willie Nelson!

Alien Nation (1988)—“Joshua Strader”

JK: Oh, God, that was a… [Groans.] Oh, that was a hard job. We were “Potatoheads.” We had all this prosthetic makeup on, and…it was challenging! And my last scene… These aliens, seawater acted like acid to us. My character was involved in organized crime—as many space aliens are!—and we were out in Malibu, and it was, like, mid- to late December, and it was freezing, and my character was going to be thrown into the surf. And they literally begged me to do this. I was, like, “It’s fucking freezing! I don’t want to! No!” And they go, “No, no, please do it! And when you go in, please stay under as long as you can!” And I’m wearing a wetsuit, and I’ve got pads on that are all filled with air, and they throw me out in the water…and I just float. I don’t go under at all! But then I climb out of the surf, and I’m soaking wet, it’s probably 30 degrees… Everybody just fucks off somewhere else. The whole crew moves down the beach, and I’m left there, no towels, no blankets, no heater, no nothing! That left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. 

AVC: I did this feature with James Caan, and his instant reaction to Alien Nation was, “Why the fuck would you ask me about that?”

JK: [Nods head knowingly.] Yeah, and I can’t imagine Mandy Patinkin remembers it fondly, either. And there was one actor on it who freaked out after about 35 days straight of that makeup and just tore his makeup off in the middle of the day. He just couldn’t take it anymore. And some, uh, adjustments had to be made in shooting for that. It’s not for the faint of heart, this job!

The First Power (1990)—“Patrick Channing”

JK: Oh, boy. What a terrible creature he was, huh? Yeah, y’know, it was… [Clears throat.] There was too much reality in the darkness of that role. The character was based partly on the Hillside Strangler, and Richard Ramirez was on trial while we were shooting. So I went to his trial. I spent a day watching the trial. And I was sitting way in the back, in the corner, and every time the door would open on the other side of the courtroom, Richard would spin around to see who was walking in, because he was so not aware of the gravity of his situation. And every time he would turn around, I would get to look at him. And one time he turned around and we locked eyes. That’s all I needed. That told me everything I needed to know about who that character was. There was a blankness, a dead, gray quality. His soul was… I don’t know if a soul can be gone, but it was so buried underneath so many layers of darkness.

There’s a four-part documentary on Netflix or HBO about the detectives who found him, and they talk about his story. When he was five years old, his father used to tie him up overnight in the graveyard across the road from his house to punish him. And his uncle came back from Vietnam—I think he was special forces—but he was completely twisted. He was a creeper. He would go around—he was a Peeping Tom—and he took Richard along and showed him the ropes, showed him how to creep on the neighborhood women. So it was, like, “This character was built.”

And Bob Reznikoff, who wrote and directed it, he took all of that and then combined it with dark magic…and more people were hurt on that set than any set I’ve ever been on. There were more injuries. A lot of stunt people were injured on that job. Not because they were doing a bad job, but because there was some ugly juju around it. 

AVC: Lou Diamond Phillips told me that he got kicked in the balls twice by stunt people.

JK: [Takes a deep breath.] Well, and Lou broke my ribs! We had a fight, and I had to keep throwing him up against a pillar. And he had a back pad and everything, but I had to throw him and I think choke him. But there’s a way to hold someone on the breastbone so you don’t actually choke him. But I’d throw him, and I’d say, “Are you okay?” And he’d say, “Yeah, yeah, keep doing it! I know it looks good. Yeah, keep doing it!” But 20 times later… And then we’d do the reverse, and I throw him up, and I’m open, and he’s supposed to punch me in the ribs…and I guess the 20 times up against the post was just a little more than he could handle. [Laughs.] So he punched me. And it broke a rib, man. It hurt!

AVC: The character was wearing a mask during this scene, so it probably wasn’t you, but I still have to ask: Were you the one actually wielding the ceiling fan?

JK: No. That was the great Tom Morga, my stunt double. But I do have one more story from that. We shot in this cathedral on Sunset Boulevard, and there’s a big marble altar, and they had me… You know, I take over the priest in the confessional, and I ask Lou’s character, “How’s the stomach, buddy boy?” or something like that. And then suddenly I’m up on the altar, and I just spontaneously do an arm spread like the crucified Christ, and I’m wearing priest vestments. And we get done shooting that part, and I go outside to go to my trailer. And the actual priest of the cathedral runs into me outside, and he says, “Oh, geez, you look better in that thing than I do!” And I say, “Oh, thank you!” And he says, “I hope you’re not doing anything in there to bring down the wrath of God on us, are you?” “No, no… [Lowers voice.] Did you, uh, read the script?” [Laughs.] So I felt bad about that.