Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Robert Ray Shafer is perhaps best known for fawning over Phyllis as Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration in the hit comedy series The Office, but the West Virginia-born actor has played a wide range of roles in a successful career spanning four decades, his resumé dotted with everything from coaches and dads to killers and creeps. He’s also a pro’s pro who trained at the feet of Peggy Feury, his foundation built on theater acting and his reputation made in film and TV, his range stretching from Sam Shepard’s anguished, funny True West to the role of Hollywood movie director Dick Dickster, a drunk hack with a big ego and a bad attitude. Better yet, Shafer has done it all on his own. There were no connections when he decided to make that quantum leap from Pinch Ridge, West Virginia to the City of Angels. Ruggedly handsome, Shafer splashed down in L.A. with grand designs on becoming a model, but all of that changed when an actress friend suggested that he take acting classes.
“I went to the Loft Studios and I fell in love with the craft,” Shafer says, the words tumbling out like dark brown velvet. “I knew right then that there was no turning back.”
Shafer’s 1980 arrival at Loft Studios coincided neatly with the Magic Theatre premiere of True West, just up the coast in San Francisco. Shepard – a prolific, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and a prolific, Oscar-nominated film actor – possessed a stoically handsome face and a rangy frame, physical traits similar to Shafer. Both men also shared something else in common: A fierce work ethic.
“Back home in West Virginia, I had plenty of good role models,” Shafer says. “I was blessed to have family who worked hard to become successful in their communities. They were great examples for me to follow. I brought that with me to Los Angeles.”
Indeed.
Shafer went to work, chiseling out a successful acting career where others could only see a block of stone. He has appeared in commercials, most recently in the hilarious Geico commercial featuring Kenny Rogers. He has acted steadily in film and TV, including appearances on the ‘80s Primetime Emmy Award-nominated Highway to Heaven, starring the late Michael Landon. He’s worked on HBO’s cult favorite Arli$$, starring Robert Wuhl as Arliss Michaels, the president of a sports agency who caters to his clients’ every need as best he can. And he’s appeared on such well-respected shows such as The West Wing, Boston Legal, and Adam Ruins Everything. Along the way, Shafer has developed a huge cult following for his role as Officer Joe Vickers in the ‘89 film Psycho Cop, and the ‘93 sequel, Psycho Cop Returns.
“The fans continue to show their love for those movies,” he says proudly. “I’m asked about the Psycho Cop films all the time, and I’m always getting invitations to appear at conventions and festivals. The staying power for these films has been incredible.”
Always pushing himself, Robert Ray Shafer has also been known to push the envelope. He wrote, produced, and starred in 2018’s Dick Dickster, kicking political correctness to the curb and injecting his character with a biting sense of humor, the rough edges softened with hard drinking. The risk is worth the reward; Dickster is a comedy that unapologetically crosses the line with its dialog, but the lead character, who seemingly has no redeeming value, wins over the audience with his plan to pay back the money he owes the mob.
“Dick is offered $100K to turn his cult movie, Cult of Doom, into a porn movie,” Shafer says with a laugh. “That’s when his problems really start.”
When it comes to The Office, there are no problems. The show has been created lifelong friendships among the cast, conjured legions of fans worldwide, and turned Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration into a cottage industry. Shafer, for his part, remains extremely grateful for the opportunity. He understands how lucky he is to have been cast for the role as Phyllis’ love-struck husband, and he goes to great lengths to reward Office fans for their loyalty.
“Best fans in the world,” Shafer says quickly. “They helped make the show a hit, and then make it one of the best-rated shows in syndication. Today, it’s one of the most-streamed shows in the Netflix universe. The fans have been great from Day One. I enjoy interacting with them wherever I go.”
You’re originally from Pinch Ridge, West Virginia. Do you still feel a connection to the Mountain State?
I absolutely feel a connection to the Mountain State. My family has been living there since 1756 – I still have family there – so my roots run deep. I visit quite often. I’ve always been proud to be a West Virginian. I felt like I was the state’s ambassador when I moved to L.A. in 1980, because there aren’t many West Virginians out here in Los Angeles. I was a rare specimen. I’d get defensive about where I came from, because we were always the butt of jokes. I would say, “Jerry West and Chuck Yeager both came from West Virginia and they’ve made names for themselves, so I decided to do what they did.”
Do you still run into people who take cheap shots at West Virginia?
Those stereotypes still exist today, so you’re always going to have someone out there who can’t resist saying something. There is some truth to it, because there is a lot of poverty in our state. Education has come a long way, and there continue to be strides made, but it still isn’t what it could be. Regardless, the good far outweighs the bad. You have to pick a side, and I chose to be very proud of where I came from. West Virginia made me.
You were 11 years old when you moved away.
It was a very emotional thing for me. I used to lay in bed at night and cry because I wanted to be back home in West Virginia. I remember John Denver’s song Country Roads coming out around that same time. That song, even when I hear it today, is very emotional. It’s one of the greatest songs ever. If you search for it on iTunes you can find it in about 20 different languages. The sentiment of the song…I should have been home yesterday…if you’re a West Virginian and you’re away from home for any reason and hear those lyrics, it always takes you back.
You moved to California in 1980 and started taking acting lessons from the legendary Peggy Feury.
There have always been lots of acting teachers in Los Angeles, but back then Peggy Feury was the number one teacher as far as reputation and demand. She came from the Actors Studio, where she was Lee Strasberg’s right-hand girl, so she came from the world of Marlon Brando, James Dean, and that whole crowd. It was really cool, because our class had this direct connection to the birthplace of American acting.
Was there a waiting list to get in?
My girlfriend at the time was an actress named Susan Dey, from The Partridge Family. Yeah, that Susan Dey [laughs]. She was represented by the William Morris Agency. They were the best agents in the town, and they recommended that I go there. I was very fortunate to be in that class. My classmates included Eric Stoltz, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, Nick Cage, Sean Penn, and on and on and on. Needless to say, it was an incredibly competitive arena.
What were the classes like?
We studied classic theatre, which meant we studied the great playwrights. One semester we would be doing Tennessee Williams, the next semester it might be Harold Pinter. It wasn’t geared toward film or television at all. Theatre is a different discipline, but much of what you learn on the stage that translates to the screen. The foundation for building characters is learned in theatre.
Being part of such a decorated class, did you feel pressure to succeed?
You always wanted to do your best. I was lucky to spend three years there. They called me “Mr. Scene” because I was always working. I didn’t go there to watch other people work. I was there to act. The more that you read and rehearsed, and the more partners that you had, the more opportunities you had to work inside of the class.
Did you feel like the class helped prepare you for your career in Hollywood?
I learned the tricks of the trade early on, but acting is the kind of profession that you can never master. You can never be perfect, or even great. There are times when your performance is better than others, which makes acting a little like golf. A golfer never has a perfect round. He’s always in search of the perfect swing. When it comes to acting, you strive that perfect performance but you understand that it’s one of those pursuits that never ends. You can never say, “I have mastered this. I’ll never be better than I was today.”
Does acting come naturally to you?
The trick is learning how to work in front of people. In other words, even when you are on camera, you’re living without appearing to know that people are watching you live. Like everything else, you have the good and you have the bad. Take Anthony Hopkins and Flavor Flav, for example. They are both considered actors, and they have both been accused of acting, but I would put my money on Anthony Hopkins. That’s because he’s a little more convincing to me. He won the Academy Award for Silence of the Lambs, and yet he is only on camera for 17 minutes in that film. Seventeen minutes. That’s called having an impact. His trick for that role was that he didn’t want to blink. The next time you see it, watch for that. Very rarely does he blink. After I learned about that, I watched the movie again. Afterwards I was like, “That’s a little something, but how hard could it be?” And then I tried it. It is hard as hell.
Interestingly enough, Jodie Foster’s character in that film is from West Virginia. Hannibal Lector recognizes her accent. And her accent isn’t too bad. That’s one thing that drives me nuts – actors doing bad Southern accents out here.
Does your West Virginia drawl ever turn heads?
Everybody thinks that I am from Texas. Maybe it’s because of my name – Bobby Ray seems like a Texas name – or because I’m a big-framed guy. But I have a pretty good ear for dialect, and there’s a big difference between West Virginia and Texas accents, right? There is a huge difference.
Are dialect coaches big in L.A.?
Oh yeah. There is a great story about Robert Duvall, who is one of my favorite actors. He’s getting ready to play General Robert E. Lee in the film of Gods and Generals. This is Robert Duvall we’re talking about, a living legend. He goes to a dialect coach in Los Angeles, the top guy, and he says, “I’m going to play Robert E. Lee, and I need a Virginia accent.” The teacher looks at him and says, “Which one? There are fourteen of them.” That is how specific the dialect is. You have the Tidewater area of Virginia, the mountains, the beltway around Washington, D.C., etc. The guy needed Duvall to be specific about the regional dialect he was trying to master.
Duvall does a great job in that picture.
Here’s a little Hollywood story for you. I actually got to meet Robert Duvall one night. I was at a nightclub that Jack Nicholson owned down in Silver Lake, and when I look around, Robert Duvall was on the dance floor doing the tango. He’d married an Argentine girl, and he had done a movie called Assassination Tango about a tango dancer. Tango is not easy, but he’s killing it and everybody’s watching. When he finishes dancing, he walks over to me and introduces himself. He says, “Hi, I am Robert Duvall.” And I’m like, “Yes, Mr. Duvall, I know who you are. Can I buy you a beer?” So I buy him a Heineken and we stand there and talk. Well, I happened to know about a really obscure Robert Duvall film called Tomorrow. Horton Foote was the screenwriter, who happened to be a famous Texas playwright that we’d studied in Peggy Feury’s class. I explained that some of Horton Foote’s family had come to watch the class do his original stuff. Once Robert Duvall learned that, we became pals.
Does Tomorrow fly under the radar because it came out the same year as The Godfather?
Absolutely, but what a great formula for a movie – a film based on a Faulkner short story, with the screenplay by Horton Foote, and Robert Duvall in the lead! Duvall plays a backwoods Mississippi guy who’s the caretaker of this piece of property, and he’s all alone in the woods. One day this woman comes along, and she’s pregnant. She gives birth to a child and she dies, and he raises the child as his own for four years. He’s happy – he’s got this kid, he’s got life – until the woman’s brothers show up and take the kid from him.
I’m here to tell you, that scene is one of the greatest scenes ever filmed. Those three brothers come and take the kid…they just take him. That scene is powerful. So when I mentioned Tomorrow to Robert Duvall that night, and talked to him about the play, he was really, really pleased. Everybody wants to talk to him about Apocalypse Now, or The Great Santini, or The Godfather. It was just a great moment for me, because I’m such a Robert Duvall fan and we really got to connect on an actorly level.
When I asked Melora Hardin about you, she said that you are the consummate professional.
Melora is great. I love her. My goal when I started acting was very simple: Whatever I acted in, I wanted people to say, “What a pro.” I didn’t want anybody to say anything bad about me when it came to my work. That was the case when I started out, that was also the case when I first walked onto the set of The Office way back in 2005, in the middle of Season 2, and that’s still the case today.
That work ethic had to come in handy when The Office took off.
The Office became such a monster hit, and the pressure only went up with the ratings. I remember going to other sets and people would see me and say, “That’s Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration. He’s Bobby Ray.” They would gather around to see what you were going to bring. That’s because you had more notoriety after the show became a hit. The ratings didn’t change anything for me. I was there to kick ass every time. There’s never been a part that I thought, “Oh, I’ll just walk through this thing.” There have been times when I’ve been less enthused about the people that I am working with, but that didn’t mean that I diminished the effort.
Your first big break in acting was landing the lead role of Officer Joe Vickers in the 1989 cult classic Psycho Cop.
That was another example of where my training paid off. Wallace Potts was a stuffy, Southern gentleman from Alabama who wrote and directed the movie, and I auditioned at his house in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. The audition piece was Sam Shepard’s play, True West. I had already been studying the script, so I knew it cold and didn’t have to look at the page once. I did one audition for it, and they offered me the role.
By the way, Sam Shepard was great at everything – as an actor, director, playwright, author – he won the Pulitzer Prize for his play, Buried Child, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He acted with Jessica Lange, for God’s sake. I’m a huge fan, and I’m lucky to have met him as well. The guy was good in every movie that he acted in. He was so cool. And hell, could he write.
How confident were you that you’d gotten the part?
Well, I knew True West. I’m sitting in the waiting room waiting my turn, and I’m watching all of these actors go in and read, and I can hear them in the other room just butchering it. Shepard’s material isn’t really easy to do, but I did know one thing: At the beginning of the script for True West, Shepard writes, “Do this play exactly as it is written.” That’s what I did. You have to honor the writer’s wishes. It’s not an exercise in improv or ad-lib.
Which begs the question: Are today’s actors taking more creative liberties than ever before?
Absolutely. A lot of actors these days are really casual with the language. It’s almost like they are dyslexic. They just make up their own shit. Their attitude is like, “As long as it’s close, that’s all that matters. Approximating it is good enough.” That’s not my style. In 2000, I actually got to do the 20th anniversary of True West out in Pasadena where Sam Shepard wrote it, and I remember getting into a fight with the other actors before the play even started. I said, “Hey, you’ve got to quit changing this dialogue. You got to do it exactly the way it’s written.” Even the director didn’t have a problem with the other actors improvising the lines.
It’s still happening today. When I was auditioning people for my movie Dick Dickster, which I wrote, produced, and starred in, I auditioned a couple of hundred actors and I was stunned by how many of them weren’t doing the language the way that it was written. I had agonized over those lines. There is a comma in there because that’s where there needs to be a comma. The actor should probably take a break there. When I do a piece, I always assume that the writer is in the room, and that he or she wants to hear it exactly the way that it’s written. I’m not there to rewrite the work. I’m not going to be able to improve upon it, but even if I could, that’s not my job. My job is to say what he or she wrote.
Tell me a little about the producers of Psycho Cop.
Cassian Elwes, who was a hot, young Hollywood producer at the time. He wasn’t sure he was going to make the film, and even then it took a couple of months for the financing to come together. He had just done Jack’s Back with James Spader, and he was also working with guys like Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez, so that’s the company he was keeping. He’s gone on to work with everyone from Natalie Portman to Ryan Gosling to Antonio Banderas, so he’s gone on to have a great career.
Psycho Cop was coproduced by Jessica Rains. You may recognize that last name – her dad was the great Claude Rains, who is one of the guys that I’m trying to emulate in that movie. He had acted in movies like Lawrence of Arabia, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Invisible Man. He was just a terrific actor. To have his daughter involved was a great connection to the past.
You very much looked the part for that film. You cut quite the imposing figure.
I actually went to his Elwes’ office dressed as the cop to close the deal [laughs]. I showed up in Beverly Hills in the middle of the afternoon in a rented the outfit from Western Costume. It cost me 100 bucks. I went into his office and acted tough for about a half hour or so. I think I cracked him up [laughs]. He said, “Alright, let’s make it.”
Like some other ‘80s movies, Psycho Cop is campy but fun!
There is no nudity in Psycho Cop, and there is very little bad language. It was really old-fashioned, even back then, so much so that some people thought that we were making a parody. I call it malevolent glee, when the villain takes such pleasure in his villainy. I mean, you’ve got to have a good time, right? My character wasn’t written that way. He wasn’t the silent killer. He had a quip and a one-liner for everything. That was the way that you had to do it.
In ’93, you reprised your role in Psycho Cop Returns.
The original plan called for a Psycho Cop franchise, and I signed a $1.5 million, five picture deal. I remember thinking at the time, “Holy crap, I’m the next Freddy Krueger. I’m the next great horror villain.”
What happened to the Psycho Cop franchise?
I lived in Melrose / La Brea at the time, in this little Spanish bungalow apartment. I remember coming home after signing that contract and celebrating with an actor friend of mine who lived next door to me. It was a crazy period in my life. I had turned down a role in Back to the Future 2 for these five movies, and the casting director was stunned. She called my agent and said, “Are you kidding me? He’s not going to come and shoot with Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis? Is he crazy?” My agent was like, “Listen, he’s got a five picture deal. He’s going to be Psycho Cop.” It was a tough decision. But on the one hand, Back to the Future 2 was just one movie, and this deal with Psycho Cop was for five. In my mind, I’m going for the gold. I’m betting on myself. I’m going to take the risk. I’m going to be good, the movie is going to be a hit, and I’ll make five of them. As it turns out, the distributor that acquired Psycho Cop also had Maniac Cop, so they killed Psycho Cop and we ended up only making two of them. By the way, Psycho Cop Returns just had its 25th anniversary on Blu-ray last year. The amount of love that we got for that was just crazy good.
Like a lot of actors trying to make it, you cut your teeth on commercials.
Yes. It takes a good commercial agent who knows the business to make that happen, and even then it’s hard. You audition everywhere. You get rejected a lot. I told my commercial agent the last time I met with him that I’m not sure how anybody ever gets one of these things. It’s really a numbers game. It’s also more of a modeling job than anything else. They are putting together a bunch of pieces, and they need everything to fit together. Do you fit the puzzle?
Even big-name directors get involved in the commercial game.
I did a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial with David O. Russell, the Academy Award-nominated director from Silver Linings Playbook and Three Kings. He’s a bit of a legend here because he is really hard to work with. KFC paid him a lot of money to direct this product launch, so there’s no doubt that they are airing it. I knew about his reputation going in, and I knew that you’ve got to get along with this guy. There’s a great YouTube video of him tearing Lily Tomlin apart. He’s screaming at her, calling her the C-word, treating her like shit. Who does that to Lily Tomlin? David O. Russell. When you have a director like that, it changes everyone’s mood. You’re walking on eggshells around this guy. You’re wondering when he’s going to come apart. You know that there’s going to be some screaming before the day is over, guaranteed.
How did you handle working with David O. Russell?
I was determined not to let him rattle me. He directs you inside the moment – in other words, he doesn’t wait until the take is done. He starts talking to you in the middle of the shoot. He’ll say something like, “No, I don’t believe that.” Or he will tell you to stop what you’re doing and do it another way. So you’re making adjustments live, on the spot, and most actors hate that. That’s why he and George Clooney got into a fist fight [laughs].
You’re an imposing figure. David O. Russell has a short fuse. Were there any punches thrown on that shoot?
Surprisingly, no. I arrived on the set early that day, and I was wearing my dad’s 1954 high school class ring. Bob Vance always wore it, and I’ve worn it in every movie I’ve been in, except in scenes where there is blood involved. It’s a beautiful ring, and David O. Russell spots it right away. He asks me where it’s from, and I say that it’s from Elk View High School, in Elk View, West Virginia. David O. Russell immediately lights up, and a huge smile spreads over his face. He says, “The first love of my life was from West Virginia. People from West Virginia are unique, and there are great girls from there.” From that point on we immediately liked each other, and the rest of the day went swimmingly – except for the fact that it was 105° and they kept giving us buckets filled with chicken. We ate a lot of chicken on that shoot [laughs].
Let’s talk about The Office. How did you land the role of Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration?
I got the call for from Allison Jones, who is one of Hollywood’s great comedy casting directors. She does a lot of big films and works with all of the big name comedic actors, people like Will Ferrell. She wanted me to audition at 5:00 PM in her office. I jumped on the freeway thinking I’ve given myself plenty of time, because it’s ordinarily a 20-minute drive, but the freeway was a parking lot. I failed to realize that it was Halloween, which meant that they were holding the annual West Hollywood Halloween Carnival, and by the time I got there I was fifteen minutes late. I’m pouring sweat and out of breath because I’d sprinted from my car to her office, and the I’m immediately asked to audition. I figured I’d blown it. Instead, I wiped the sweat off and nailed it!
What thoughts went through your head at the time?
I remember walking outside afterward, and there were three girls standing in the parking lot, dressed as angels for Halloween. We exchanged pleasantries and then they anointed me with their magic wands, and I’m thinking to myself, “That’s something that doesn’t happen every day…maybe that’s a good omen.” Sure enough, a couple of weeks later my agent called. The producers wanted to meet me. They wanted me to come to the lot where they were shooting, which was on Saticoy Street in Van Nuys. So I went over there. Phyllis was there. She was in the casting room when I walked in, and it boiled down to her choice – who she felt most comfortable with, who she felt was right for the role. They asked her who she wanted…and she picked me. There were some big boy character actors auditioning for that part, so it was a good get. Thank you, Phyllis!
What was the audition like?
They had me do a lot of improv. That’s not something you normally do at an audition. You’re not supposed to be in there writing for them, you know what I mean? They are supposed to provide you the material, and you are supposed to act and read the lines provided to you. But what are you going to do, refuse? I felt like I struggled because they would point to an empty space and say, “That’s Michael. React to Michael.” But there was no Michael there. There were five producers sitting in chairs with Phyllis. Interestingly enough, the part of Bob Vance was originally intended for one of the show’s producers, but he decided that he didn’t want to do it. The very next morning I was on the set. So, I went from auditioning for the part to filming on the set the very next day.
Had you watched The Office prior to auditioning?
I had watched a couple of those first season episodes, and I remember thinking, “What the hell is this?” The mockumentary format was so shocking. We’ve seen it in films, but not in a TV series like that. Michael Scott was sort of a dark character that first season, because they were pretty much going word-for-word with some of the early British scripts.
Ratings-wise, The Office got off to a slow start.
There were six episodes in that first season. It was a summer replacement, and it was one of the lowest rated shows in NBC history. It pulled 2.1 average Nielsen rating, meaning that no one was watching it. Then The 40-Year-Old Virgin came out and became a $100 million box office hit. It crushed. Steve Carell was not a name at the time – I mean, nobody knew him – but the movie was a big hit, so NBC said, “Maybe we’ve got something with this guy,” and they ordered 13 more episodes. I came onboard during Episode 10 of Season 2, and later that week The Office got picked up for the rest of the season.
Bob Vance and Phyllis are unwavering in their love for each other.
That’s all my doing, and it was selfishly fueled by my desire to get myself more appearances on the show [laughs]. I remember sitting there talking to Phyllis – her real name is Phyllis Smith – and I said, “Do you remember your first love in junior high school? I do, and I didn’t have eyes for anybody else but her.” So that’s what I what I decided to make Phyllis – my first love. I wanted to put her on a pedestal and make everything all about her. I know the writers try to take credit for it now, like it was an idea that they came up with. But that was all me [laughs].
Bob and Phyllis weren’t above sneaking in a little sex whenever they had the chance. In one of the “Valentine’s Day” episodes, one minute they’re having lunch with Jim and Pam, then next they slip off to the restroom for a quickie.
I looked around the restaurant and there weren’t any disabled people at the time, so that made the handicap-accessible restroom fair game. Had there been a disabled person, we wouldn’t have gone in there [laughs]. Seriously though, that was one of the funniest moments that Phyllis and I ever had on the show. We were in that restroom, the lights were off, and all we had with us was a mic. There’s no camera shot of us in the restroom; it’s just us making noises in there, and trust me, they really pushed us to come up with something on the naughty side [laughs]. They had us making noises for 30 seconds to a minute at a time, all to get two seconds of moaning. Meanwhile, the cast and crew were outside the door laughing at us. Hell, it was hard for Phyllis and I not to laugh. And then you had Jim and Pam’s reaction, which you see onscreen, and that is what made the scene work so well.
How did The Office evolve while you were on the show?
The bathroom scene is a great example. That type of timing and comedy was the hallmark of the first five seasons. Then the writers started to change – we lost Greg Daniels and Michael Shur, who actually created Bob Vance, to Parks and Recreation; Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg left to write Bad Teacher and work on the Ghostbusters reboot – so there were some subtle changes in how the material was presented. You suddenly had people in there who were fans of the show. They weren’t writing behavioral comedy anymore, they were writing joke comedy…set up, set up, punch line. If you go back and watch, Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute became much more jokey those last couple of years.
The Office is a show about heart. People identify with the mundane, funny moments associated with working at a place like Dunder Mifflin. When do you think the audience started to connect with the characters?
Seasons 2 through 5 were as good as it gets. Then, once the show became a hit, everyone’s makeup was better, the wardrobes were better, the hair was better…because people are stars now. Those first couple of years, no one was in a hurry to be somewhere else. Everybody was happy to be there and to be doing that show. But The Office opened up so many doors. People were like, “Listen, I’ve got to be out of here by four because I got a movie promotional with Fox.” Those are the kinds of things that happen when a show takes off and there are so many more opportunities.
Was it that easy to wrap up filming and head off to do something else?
On most film and television shoots, you’re usually not in every scene every day, so that was one dynamic that the cast had to deal with. When you’re filming The Office, once you were in a scene, you were in it. There weren’t all of these separate camera angles, so if you were in a long scene, once you’d taken up a position, you became a permanent part of the background. You couldn’t leave. That used to drive all of the desk jockeys nuts, because they would need to be working at their desks while the crew filmed a scene with Steve Carell. They would be like, “I’m stuck here…I can’t go anywhere…I’m here all day…there’s no leaving.” Me, on the other hand, there were times when I would only be in a couple of scenes. I’d wrap up by lunch, and I would be like, “Okay, see you later. You guys have a great afternoon. I’m going to go play some golf now [laughs].”
The camera work in The Office was unique at the time.
The cameras were handheld all of the time, never on skids or dollies. The two original shooters, Randall Einhorn and Matt Sohn, both came from shooting the first couple of seasons of Survivor. When you’re handling a 75-pound camera, that’s a long day at work. There were guys standing right there beside them, and every time you’d hear cut they would immediately get the cameras out of their hands.
Was it hard to get used to that style of filming?
It was interesting to watch actors other than the regular cast come on set and shoot in that format. I remember Amy Pietz, from Caroline in the City, coming in to shoot an episode. Caroline in the City was a standard format TV show, and she’d never done anything like The Office. She was having trouble adjusting at first, but she got the hang of it and was fine. Once you get used to where the camera was, it became a very liberating way in which to shoot.
That handheld, close-up style of shooting really draws the audience close.
I remember shooting Desperate Housewives, and they were doing old-fashioned setups; the master, the two shot, and the close-up. Every setup is the same, really. It’s wide, medium, and close every time. It’s just a completely different discipline, right? With a standard close-up, you approach it differently than how you behave in front of a video camera. With a video camera there’s no need to set yourself or minimize your movement. You don’t turn and lean into the camera. It’s just different. You just live in it. In a lot of ways, it’s like doing theatre.
Do the shows take on a rhythm of their own after a while?
I remember the “Crime Aid” episode of The Office, when Dwight and I are bidding for a hug from Phyllis. We’re going back and forth, and he’s raising me a penny every time, and there are other people bidding as well. There was one take where it was absolutely musical. Everybody just nailed it. Everyone was right on top of when they were supposed to be in. It was perfection. I remember thinking, “What we’re doing in that moment is on par with the musical Oklahoma. What’s that line…[sings] Oklahoma, when the wind comes sweeping down the plain. That’s really what great comedy is all about; the timing and the rhythm of the thing. Sam Shepard wrote in a rhythm. If you learned it exactly the way he wrote it, it just flows. That’s what good writing does.
Steve Carrell was perfect as Michael Scott.
I always thought that Michael Scott’s character was a classic case of arrested development, and that he was really a 12-year-old kid. There is a piece in Phyllis’s wedding, where they show flashback footage of Michael Scott when his mother marries his stepfather. When he sees himself at the wedding, I’m like, “You know, that’s who he is. He’s never gotten over Jeffrey getting his mom [laughs].”
Tell me about the “Five Families.”
The name’s funny, just in and of itself. And then there’s the crime connection. You’ve got the cool guy, Paul Faust, whose only appearance was in the “Chair Model” episode. They referred to him as “Cool Guy Paul,” because one of the producers had met him and thought that this guy was really cool. I remember thinking, “Wait a minute, I am the cool guy here. I have an air conditioning company, shouldn’t I be ‘Cool Guy Bob?’” The guy that played W.B. Jones was a friend of mine. I had auditioned with him for years. We used to always be up for these policeman roles, and every time I’d go in to audition he would be there too, so it was great to have him on that set.
I love the “Chair Model” episode.
The “Chair Model” episode was memorable for me because part of it was shot in the Vance Refrigeration conference room. There were all of these little touches, so it felt like my own set. It had my name on the door, there are pictures of Phyllis on the wall. That was a pretty pleasing day for me right there.
Here’s a mouthful: Michael Scott’s Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race For The Cure.
Great episode. It was Michael Scott’s idea, and then the sonofabitch “carbo-loads” on fettucine alfredo and throws up…he blows his cookies right there on the street, but at least he finishes [laughs]. There’s also a deleted scene where Angela spits on Bob Vance at the beginning of the race. I remember thinking, “What the hell is this? Why is she spitting on me? Phyllis will take her out!”
It was a tough shoot, because it was 110° in the valley that day. Every time I drive by the park that we ended up in, I remember that day and how hot it was. As a matter of fact, the week that we shot that episode, I was getting on a plane and flying back to Charleston to throw out the first pitch at the West Virginia Power baseball game. I was pretty excited to go throw out that pitch. Last year I went to Scranton on Labor Day and threw out the first pitch at their game in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
In a show made famous for its cringe-worthy moments, “Scott’s Tots” and the “Dinner Party” episodes stand out.
Well, the “Dinner Party” is one of the greatest episodes ever made. In fact, Rolling Stone magazine put together a book about The Office, and I wrote an article about the “Dinner Party” for it. That episode was based on Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? If you’ve ever watched Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in that movie, they make Jan and Michael look like they are in love [laughs]. Burton and Taylor just go at it, and that’s pretty much what they were going for in that episode. Melora Hardin is just great. When we shot that prison movie together, the “Dinner Party” was the episode that we had a big laugh about.
Please tell me a little known fact about your friend Melora Hardin, who plays Jan in The Office.
Melora and I did a prison movie together a couple of years ago. It was odd because you had two actors from The Office ending up in a prison movie, and a gritty one at that. Trust me, it was not a comedy. She played the bad prison guard – basically, I was the good cop and she was the bad cop – and she was as scary as hell. Yeah, she really roughed this guy up.
The Office really put Scranton on the map.
The tourism in Scranton because of The Office is legendary. Every business that we’ve ever mentioned on that show loves us. Poor Richards is a great example. I’ve been to Scranton three times so far. We did a convention there in 2007, and 15,000 people came from all over the world…Ireland, Australia, you name it. It was crazy. The organizers had a police escort assigned to us, and I’m thinking, “I’m from West Virginia I don’t need a stinking policeman.” Turns out I did. The minute you stepped out of the Radisson Hotel you were surrounded. The next time back was part of a fan tour, and then we went back for an event last year. I think it was Kevin who said, “Holy crap, it’s kind of like being a Beatle!” They all love you, so there’s nothing wrong with that.
Let’s talk about your movie, Dick Dickster and the Cult of Poon…a down-on-his-luck drunk with a hitman on his heels.
There’s a movie that I loved when I first started out in the business, called The Stuntman. Richard Rush was the director, and Peter O’Toole was just brilliant as the lead. He’s very manipulative. So that was where I started, and then it got darker and darker because I wanted to make Dick Dickster someone that everyone hated. I believe I achieved that [laughs].
Dick Dickster has no problem crossing the line when it comes to political correctness.
I set out to offend everyone – which I did – and I am proud of it. I don’t believe in P.C. comedy. I think everybody is a fair mark. Dick is sexist, misogynistic, racist, homophobic…he’s everything. So, the trick was figuring out a way to soften him up somehow. You can’t keep him on the edge all of the time. He has to have some sort of redeeming value. By the end of the movie, people love him and they are rooting for him, even though he is a monster.
How did you pull that off?
The trick was alcohol. He was drunk the whole movie. He constantly has a drink in his hand. A drunk is allowed certain liberties when it comes to forays into sensitive material. For instance, Dick has a run-in with a gay wardrobe guy in the movie. He doesn’t call him “faggot.” He calls him “cocksucker.” It’s that kind of little nuance that lets you get away with a little bit more. In that way it softens the direct blows, if you will.
Jan Brogerg is in the film. She had the Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight.
She plays Coco Hart. Funnily enough, I’m partly responsible for Abducted in Plain Sight. Jan was originally going to make it into a Lifetime movie, and she gave me a copy of the book that her mother had written. I read the book and told Jan that I was really freaked out by it. I was like, “Listen, you’re not going to get this made into a Lifetime movie, you need to make a documentary.” That’s what she ended up doing.
How much did it cost to make Dick Dickster?
I made the Dick Dickster in six days, for $75,000. I don’t know about you, but I think that movie holds up pretty well for that budget.
It looks like it cost a lot more than that.
I had a sweetheart deal with the Screen Actors Guild, so that was an advantage that I had with the talent. I was able to get Tim Russ from Star Trek: Voyager. I got Richard Grieco. For that level of budget, you are talking some big names. Everybody involved was into it, and attacked it with abandon. Another key thing was that I edited that movie myself using Final Cut. I cut it down from 135 minutes to 87 minutes. Then I had a professional editor finish it off with his equipment.
You were the producer, writer, and lead actor. That’s a lot on one plate.
People ask me why I didn’t direct it. The simple answer is that it was too much. I can’t direct myself when I’m acting, because I want somebody else watching it. They need to see things through a different lens, so to speak.
I’ll give you an example. I was doing a play, and it was the night before opening night and we were doing the dress rehearsal. I had this big scene where I am at my father’s grave, and I’m saying, “Old man, you were this, you were that, you were a son of a bitch.” All of a sudden the director calls for cut and says, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m standing here at this grave, and I’m talking to my father.” The director looks at me and says, “Well, your father is not in the grave, you dumb ass. He is up in heaven. Look up to the heavens when you say your lines.” The minute I looked up to the heavens, the whole thing changed. Oh my God, I started weeping. I wasn’t talking to a dead guy in the ground anymore. I was talking to a material being who was looking down from above. That is what a good director does.
Let’s talk craft: Is there a technique when it comes to auditioning?
Absolutely. After I’d done Psycho Cop, I thought I was pretty hot stuff because I had a big movie under my belt. I assumed the roles would fall into my lap. I quickly learned that I wasn’t booking work at the rate that I needed, so I went to an acting class that taught me an audition technique. My professional life changed almost immediately. I booked Las Vegas, Boston Legal, and a little show called The Office, all because I had taken this class – and because I decided to outwork everyone.
In what ways?
I made it a point to get the actor breakdowns. Those are write-ups of the projects that includes a synopsis or description of the project, in addition to detailed descriptions of all the characters/roles in the script they are currently casting for. Basically, I was submitting myself. I got up at 4 o’clock every morning and submitted postcards that I had in the mailbox by 6:00 AM. It would be delivered that day, and I could be assured that the casting director would have a picture of me by 10:00 AM. I quit thinking like I had made it, and that’s how I changed things around.
Do you recommend acting classes?
They are a must. You have to learn how to memorize lines, you need to learn scene study, you need exposure to a lot of different disciplines. And again, I think theatre is where you get your foundation, so that’s another must. I was working with this hot young actor on a movie once. He was very successful, and had done a bunch of TV series. I asked him if he’d ever done any theatre and he was like, “Oh, hell no. It’s too scary. I will never do it.” I asked why, and he said it was because theatre is live. The thought of standing in front of a live audience and acting scared the living hell out of him.
Do you think that it’s a sign of the times? Actors today specializing in either film or theatre?
Call me old school, but performing live makes you a better actor. There are no multiple takes. You’ve got one shot. You go out there, and you live the thing for two hours. That is the purest form of acting that there is. You don’t break the character, you stay in it. And you learn to project; when I did True West, I was right on top these people, and I was ripping them. They felt the power of this thing, especially with my voice in a small room because I’m going to crush it. I am always the sound guy’s favorite guy [laughs]. They love me because they never have to worry about hearing me. When you’re in the theater you can use that weapon to its fullest potential.
I’m not the only actor to go down that path. True West is the piece that launched John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly did True West on Broadway and switched parts…one night one guy would play one brother, and the other night the other guy would play it. The Quaid brothers did it. Ed Harris did it. It’s one of those measuring sticks. All of the big boys have done it. Why? Because a live performance of True West demands that kind of perfection.
Zach Galifianakis just released Between Two Ferns: The Movie on Netflix. What was it like to be involved in a project like that?
I’m sure you’ve seen the cast list, it is just crazy. There are a lot of name people in this. When I was shooting, Gal Gadot – a.k.a., Wonder Woman – was also there. Matthew McConaughey, John Legend, Keanu Reeves, Will Ferrell, Chance the Rapper…I mean, hello?
It was a great experience. First of all, I am a huge fan of Zach Galifianakis. He is a funny, funny, guy. I went and auditioned for the role of his dad, even though I am only 10 years older than him, but that’s okay – I’m there to make him look good, I am not there to steal scenes from him. It’s not going to happen. It is always going to be Zach that closes the scene, right?
Netflix and other services like it are really changing the way we watch content.
I told somebody this today, the one downside to Netflix is that you don’t get to see a great movie like Between Two Ferns in a crowded theater with everyone laughing. That is really what makes this kind of comedy work. I remember seeing There’s Something About Mary in a crowded theater, and the connection with the audience made the experience so much better. When we screened Dick Dickster, we had a full theater and everybody was laughing. There’s a community to comedy that is missing when it’s five people and popcorn and beer at your house.
What was it like acting with Zach?
I tell people, that it’s a bit like being locked in a car with the windows rolled up, and somebody has thrown a bobcat in there [laughs]. Somebody is getting mauled. Zach’s going to be funny. At one point, I stand up at the dinner table, and I take my belt off and threaten to spank him. He jumps up and he takes his belt off. I mean, his talent for improv is just crazy.
Zach has made it big, but I’m sure he’s had to work his way up like everybody else.
We were talking on the set one day and I said, “When you went away to become an actor, did you ever ask your father for money?” He said he remembered being broke in New York and getting a package in the mail from his father. He went on to explain that, when you’re struggling and you need money, you are hoping that somebody is just going to know it intuitively, and that they are going to send it to you with you asking. He said he was excited when the package arrived, because he just knew that his father could sense the desperation coming from his struggling actor/son trying to make it in New York. He was hungry, he needed to pay his rent, winter was coming and he could use a warm jacket…surely his father had the intuition to send a check. Zach said that when he opened up that package, a check was nowhere to be found. Instead, what he found was a 3-pack of Haynes underwear. I listened to him tell that story, and the deadpan way in which he delivered it, and I just burst out laughing. It was like I was watching a live scene straight out of The Hangover.
Money is always good, but there’s something to be said for clean underwear!
I have a quick-but-funny underwear story of my own. My uncle, who lives in Upper Pinch Ridge, West Virginia, has a very successful company there called Power Plant Services. Anyway, years ago he came out to Hollywood with his family to visit me. I had this girlfriend at the time, and, as luck would have it, she had broken up with me right before they got here. She said that things weren’t working out between us, and that it would just be too painful to meet my family, so she thought that she would just go ahead and end it.
Anyway one of my cars was parked in the garage where she lived. She had put some of my belongings on the car, including a couple of books, and a pair of underwear that she had decided to run down the car antenna. Well, we get to the car, and my uncle, who’s a West Virginia boy, takes one look and says, “What the hell is that?” I just look at him and say, “It looks to me like a pair of 32-inch BVDs. Those must be mine!” It was the perfect ‘Welcome to L.A. moment [laughs].”
Last question. If you had one piece of advice to offer other aspiring actors, what would that be?
If you want to make it in this business, you have to outwork everybody. When other people are having a good time at the bars on a Friday night, you are in theatre class. You have to outwork people. You have to learn the craft. You can’t think that you are going to get by on good looks, or charisma. Acting is a serious business.
My best buddy, Nick Vallelonga, just won two Academy Awards for Green Book – Best Original Screenplay, and Best Motion Picture of the Year. We had been working our way up for nearly twenty years, and at one point I finally said to him, “Listen, we’ve got quit acting like we’ve made it, because we haven’t made it. There’s no reason that we should be out at the best bar in L.A. on a Saturday night. We’ve got to outwork these fools.” He’s a regular guy from New Jersey, and I’m a regular guy from Pinch Ridge, West Virginia. Nobody gave me anything out here. I had no connections. I wasn’t born into it. I just worked my ass off and never quit.
Editor’s Note: Robert Ray Shafer’s scenes in Between Two Ferns: The Movie were not included in the original release. There’s no doubt that they were funny as hell.