This is the Truth of

  Gary Busey Speaking

LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW IT"S WORTH IT It happened all so quickly. One second, we were on deadline, pushing out another issue of The 11th Hour, and the next, Gary Busey’s publicist was saying our interview was a go. In the half hour that followed, I spoke with a film and TV star, a man who has and is leaving his mark on the world. He’s performed hundreds of roles and been nominated for an Oscar. He’s been the star of movies and reality TV. He is as intense an individual as I’ve ever encountered, and the interview was every bit as fulfilling as it was unexpected and unpredictable. At the close of our conversation, Mr. Busey specifically asked that we protect the integrity of this interview, not trimming it too much. In the transcription process, we agreed. We had to keep this as intact as possible, even though space restrictions require releasing the interview in two parts. We don’t think you’ll mind too much. As you’ll find, he is blunt, honest and occasionally, really deep. As he himself said, “This is the Truth of Gary Busey speaking.” And you all deserve a chance to experience it. We will, as our abilities with technology improve, be posting excerpts from the interview as podcasts on our website so that you can hear the Truth of Gary Busey speaking too. As they say, stay tuned… 1.) At the start of your career, you were a musician, a drummer. How’d you get into that and do you still play? My career started at birth. Entertaining others was easy for me because that is who I am and who I’ve been and what I continue to be. The first set of drums I had was three round containers of Quaker Oats, three different-sized coffee cans, three sizes of glasses, and one bell. This was when I was in the fifth and sixth grade. I would get up early in the morning and set up my drum set, get six carpenter pencils—the thick ones—and play my drum set so hard and loud that my Mother would run out of the bedroom and kick my drum set apart and tell me to “stop playing those damn drums!” And the beautiful thing about my mother’s reaction (is it) motivated and inspired me to get the biggest drum set you could find, set it up in the living room, and show her the difference in volume between Quaker Oats boxes and Ludwig drums. In terms of music, I went to church every Sunday and went to youth fellowship and Christian camp. There was a lot of singing in church and the gospel hymns and the Christian faith is the foundation of my musical inspiration. 2.) You have appeared on several Leon Russell recordings. How did you meet up with him? Which songs were you on? At that time, in 1971, in Tulsa, OK, there was a local show where I played a character named Teddy Jack Eddy, and it was a skit show—and nobody knew Gary Busey at that time because it was before the acting career started off in Hollywood. So people in Tulsa thought I was Teddy Jack Eddy—there was no Gary Busey. When I met Leon, he thought I was Teddy Jack Eddy; he didn’t know anything about Gary Busey. And, I went into his studio—his church studio—sat down at the drums, and just started playing by myself. He came in—and the room was lit with blue lights, a real big room and it was like medieval—he went in and sat down with his long hair at the piano, and started playing along with the beat of my drums. And we did that for about thirty minutes. We got up and talked about Teddy Jack Eddy, and I just went along with it, you know. I went into the studio again with him, and the performance with him was just improvisation. And then he found out who I really was. And then he asked me to play drums with him, so I stopped acting in the middle seventies, just before the movie A Star is Born with Barbara and Kris. I played drums with him for a while, and we used the name Teddy Jack Eddy because now Gary Busy was an acting name. He named his son Teddy Jack Russell. Leon and I are like brothers and soul mates from another life. It’s just so beautiful what we share together. The songs I was on was “Little Hideaway”, something about rock and roll, and “Bluebird” on an album called Will O’ the Wisp. “Lady Blue” was the number one song off that record. It’s beautiful. 3.) What are the origins of that name, Teddy Jack Eddy? I was doing a show, and a friend of mine—it was his show—I said, “I need a name, I need a name!” And just before the camera went on he yelled “Teddy Jack Eddy!” I thought to myself, Teddy Jack Eddy? And I came up with the idea that you are never to trust a man with three front names. You want to hear who they are? John Wilkes Booth, James Earl Ray, Lee Harvey Oswald. Okay, you don’t have to put that in there. It was thrown to me and I utilized it. 4.) You’ve had a long career in film and TV, garnering an Oscar nomination for your role as Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story. Did you relate better to Buddy Holly having been a musician for so long? In the seventh grade, I came home from school and I heard on the radio that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson, The Big Bopper, went down in a plane and were killed. I remember that like it was yesterday. I remember what the radio looked like, the coffee table, the big picture window in the front of the house, and what the weather was like outside. I had no idea at that time, that I would be asked by the spirit of Charles Hardin Holley A.K.A. Buddy Holly to play him in a movie. It was the first musical done live. I sang all of the songs in the same key he did, and I didn’t know it then, but the spirit of Charles Hardin Holley was in me. When you watch the movie again, you’ll see it. You’ll see it in all the music. I can see myself in a trance. I’m in a self-hypnotic trance; I’m not in the human zone. When I finish the last song, “True Love Ways”, I turn around and I say, “that made my heartbeat skip, ya’ll.” That wasn’t in the script but that was what Buddy Holly would say. Everything was done in one take. It was pure, relaxed, comfortable. No pressure, nothing. When they fixed me up as Buddy Holly, with the permanent black hair, 1950’s clothes, and the funny glasses, I could not find Gary Busey in the mirror. I was not there to get in my way. It was the toughest role, but the simplest and most fun and the best one. And the funny thing about it was a few years earlier there was a movie made called Not Fade Away about The Crickets and I spent a lot of time with Jay Allison who was Buddy’s drummer and best friend. So Jay was actually preparing me for that movie, without he or I knowing it. Chris: It certainly sounds like it. Gary: What? Chris: It certainly sounds like it. Gary: Sounds like what? What’s it? Chris: Oh, I’m sorry. I just meant that it seems like the spirit was in you, like you were in the flow. Gary: Yeah that’s what happened. Out of 148 movies and 38 years that is the only picture that has had that affect on me. 5.) In an interview about Hunter S. Thompson, you were asked about the parallels between your work in front of the camera and his behind a typewriter to which you answered, “It’s a mind that’s open to everything yet attached to nothing. It’s called ‘freedom’.” How important is that freedom when you’re acting? Enlightenment is the mind that is open to anything, but attached to nothing. That is freedom. No values, no resentment, no grudges. Not carrying the past along with you. Not carrying memories from the past that are hurtful and shameful and embarrassing. Just let all that go and you are living in enlightenment, and you are free for everything. Hunter S. Thompson was that way. That freedom is the key to performing. Acting is the absence of acting. It’s believing in the truth of the moment you are creating. Acting is a trick word invented in the festival of Dionysus, before Christ, in Greece at a fertility festival. That’s where theatre came from: a fertility festival. No women were allowed. All the men played all the parts. I majored in theatrical arts in college. I lost my athletic scholarship by injuring my right knee. That right knee kept me out of Vietnam, and I went into Drama. I put them all together with a football foundation and the house was built on Drama—and love and kindness and understanding and grace. Sixty-three years old. Everyone goes through their stuff when they are growing up. It’s all relative. Everyone has the same situations on their menu. We just make the choices in terms of what situations we’re going to eat. And I have been blessed in many ways in the protection of God. In my brain surgery and my death after brain surgery. That was the motorcycle wreck that happened December 4, 1988. During that brain surgery, I passed on and went to the other side. Then there was the cancer of the middle of the face I had in 1997, and that was taken out and removed. The drug overdose of cocaine made the third in 1995. I was on the table and going out to death. The angels of God’s protection and the Holy Ghost and Jesus pulled me right out of that. As you can tell by the way I talk, I live in a spiritual realm because I’ve been there before. Freedom is the freedom you choose, when you’re not getting in your own way. The best way to start every day is to wake up and wash your face and look yourself in the mirror, right in the eyes of your reflection, and say, “don’t get in my way.” Because it’s only when we get in our own way that we have to step back or step aside or step over here and not walk at all. Chris: That’s pretty deep Gary: And freedom comes with grace, kindness, understanding, and love. Don’t take anything personal, folks. Whatever is said about you or rumored or you heard something—you haven’t done anything wrong and it’s not your fault. That is your own self invisible anchor that will stop your boat of life from going forward. 6.) It seems that, for you, art is a spiritual act, and not just a career endeavor. Could you elaborate on how art and spirituality are intertwined, and how you came to that place? Art is only the search. It is not the final form. Everything I do in life is spiritual and everything everyone has the ability to do in life is spiritual. And career endeavors, I don’t think I’m in a career; I just think I’m in life. I know I’m in life. I’m allowing life to walk me along in it. I take the steps but I allow life to guide me. Yes it is a spiritual act. Art is a beautiful creation that comes from innocence and freedom. And no blockage. Spirituality has no blockage and it’s all innocent and free and all very powerful. The greatest power you have is your faith. F-A-I-T-H. And the word faith stands for Fantastic Adventures In Trusting Him. God will be there to fight all your battles, all you have to do is let him. Faith is very strong. Part of my life ministry is talking about God in terms of bringing back who I really am to the forefront of my identity. There are a lot of things that people don’t know about me. I’m happy to say that I’m on the way to bringing all that back, especially with people like you, Chris, and your enterprise down in Macon, Georgia. I thank you for allowing me to talk to you and tell you about this, and I really appreciate it. I will never forget it. •    7.) How did you get from a young man in Texas to a Hollywood actor? What in your youth prepared you for these larger stages? That’s easy, you get in the car and you drive west. You get to the beach and you say, “Hey what is there to do here?” and they say, “Well they got some interviews down there for someone who wants to play a cowboy.” “Hey I’ll try that, I’ve been a cowboy all my life!” And I went down there and got a job. But it wasn’t that easy. But my first was a Cowboy film. It was 1970 I began. I was born in Texas, grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. It was just in my system. It was my dream I could not put into words, but I was going to chase down and catch it. And I’ll tell you what, it’s very important to chase down your dreams, because if you don’t your imagination will live in empty spaces. That is a quote from the spiritual world to me. I just had a feeling. I couldn’t put it in to words. I was in a band at Oklahoma State University called The Rubber Band and I had a list of names that I had from Kansas State College that I got when I was studying drama, and I asked them to take the band to California and they said okay. We were together for seven years and we recorded an album for Epic Records, and then the band name was Carp—C-A-R-P—which was a horrible name I gave the band when we were playing for the Hell’s Angels and they told us that if we didn’t play “Louie, Louie” for three hours straight they would cut our nuts off. So we played “Louie Louie” until our guitar strings were broken. I told our guitar player to break the strings so we could get the “F” out of here. Yeah, so I just got in the car and headed west with my rock n roll band, and then I studied camera technique and film awareness with a man named James Best, who’s a contract player at Universal. He showed me how to work on a film set. I had the foundation in classical theatre. So he put those two things together to be an even thing and just relaxed and let it happen naturally—there you are, you got it made. You don’t have it made; you have it started. When you start something, it’s up you to keep it going in the right direction. And always be able to balance your internal energy with any environment you’re in. Everything we do in life is a test of faith, so keep passing the test by having faith. It’s Easy. 8.) In your film career, you’ve played some very intense roles—I’m thinking right now of the childhood story your character tells in Surviving the Game—and you’ve been able to do comedy with similarly intense but more farcical characters—like your Drake Sabitch in 1996’s Black Sheep. What’s the trick in reversing the approach between the comic and dramatic? There’s no trick because they are both the same. It’s just different faces, different behaviors. It’s just a different way of looking at the world. They’re both comic; they’re both tragic. The most tragic character I played, in terms of dealing tragedy to others—his name was Mr. Joshua in Lethal Weapon I. He was a pretty tough dude there. He would walk through his grandmother’s blood to get a postage stamp and not even look at her. That’s the kind of heart he had. If you look in Mr. Joshua’s eyes, there is no life. It’s like looking into the eyes of a shark. So there’s different paintings you do on the venue of the character. Different clothes, different postures, different angles, different looks, different eye movement—and the lines they give you in the script, they go along with building the foundation of the character. Drake Sabitch, Black Sheep, that was a wonderful, hilarious part to play. He wasn’t insane, he was just happy in the world he was living in, still in Vietnam. They cut out a part of the film I loved which is where I took off my artificial leg, and I pulled out my camouflage makeup and a woman’s makeup container and I’m putting on camouflage like a woman would put on make-up. That was hilarious. Chris: That was. Gary: That is not in the film. What’s the other character you said? Surviving the Game! That was fantastic and when it came time to do the story about how I got into this game of surviving the game, the line was about three inches long. I told the director, Ernest Dickerson, I said, “Ernest, this is not enough tell the people why I’m here. Can I enlarge this?” And he said, “Yes you can.” And I said, “You have just watered my garden! Thank you.” So out came the story about me fighting Prince Henry Stout, the bulldog—life and death. And all that was improv. It’s used in film studies now at colleges and universities to talk about the power of improvisation and spontaneity. And here is the key to spontaneity. This is a quote. Spontaneity comes from an invisible idea that is there before the creation begins—end quote. We all have it. We all have it in us, this a natural gift.     9.) On TV lately, you’ve also seemed willing to make poke fun of yourself, appearing on The Simpsons, VH-1’s Celebrity Fitness Club, and on Scrubs as a sort of running joke, and starring in the Comedy Central reality show I’m With Busey. What’s your reaction when you’re approached with these sorts of projects, and why do you agree to them? The Simpsons. I loved doing The Simpsons. I played myself, telling Bart how to get out of a restraining order. It was lovely. Just a wonderful people—the group, The Simpsons group is just top-of-the-line for a production team and an acting team, putting the show together. They are magnificent and don’t miss a one because they are all going to come at you different. Go see the movie. Celebrity Fit Club. I weighed about 220 lbs and my waist was 40 inches. I’d been an athlete-in-training all my life. And I was just lethargic, just had some emotional things that I just couldn’t sort out. They weren’t defeating me or killing me but they were keeping me immobile. So I went in to prayer about it – “God, give me an opportunity to get up off my ass and start training.” I got a call from Celebrity Fit Club and they said, “Would you like to do it?” I said, “YES!” In 100 days I weighed 170 and had a 32-inch waist. The waist is still 32-33, but I’ve gone up to about 180. Chris: Well, that’s not bad at all though. Gary: No, it’s not. It’s an inspiration, that show was. So I did it and became an inspiration to people who were watching the show. I got three inches of faxes and emails saying “Gary, thanks so much for inspiring me.” You touch one person, you’ve touched a million because that one person will go out and tell others and others will tell others and others will tell others and pretty soon, it’s a million people who have been inspired by you—by me being inspired by Celebrity Fit Club. 10.) You have certainly become a pop culture icon in addition to being a well-respected actor. When it’s all said and done, how do you want people to view you and your legacy? I would say: “No matter where Gary Busey is, he’s always here.” And I wouldn’t say I’m a pop culture icon. A pop culture icon is a press word that doesn’t get at the reality, the heart and the spirit of where I’m from and what I do. I’m just me. I was born in Texas and I was raised in Texas and Oklahoma. I’ve been told the reason I’m funny is because I don’t think I’m funny. And I’m not; I’m not funny. What’s funny about me? I will tell you one thing though, in a minute. People will view my legacy in terms of the truth of myself and what I’ve done and what I am. And it doesn’t matter how people view my legacy. It matters how God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and the angels who protect my heart and brought me into a place of oneness with the supernatural, the spiritual realm, view me. I’ll be viewed well. Even if I’m not, I’ve still made a mark. We’re all responsible for mistakes, rejoicing, sadness, bad choices, good choices, emotional behavior, addictions, failures, brain lapses, short-term memory lapses, terrible accidents that take us away from our naturalism—we’re all capable of going through those things, and that’s what Earth is about. There’s one reason we’re on Earth and that’s to find the truth of ourselves. And to learn how to forgive. And to learn how to love thy neighbor. And that doesn’t mean just mean the guy next door, the woman next door, the woman across the street, or the guy down the hill. That means different countries, creeds, religions, and cultures. Not fight about it, but understand it. If we work on understanding each other and not fight about what we don’t understand with each other—with guns, bows, nuclear weapons, and bombs – then we have a chance of survival and the Earth has a chance of survival. But the money, the greed, the politics—that in one way is the shadow of Lucifer. I think the devil’s claw is in America and the devil’s claw has five points to it. One point of the claw is in Washington, D.C. One point of the claw is in the Republicans. One point of the claw is in the Democrats. One point of the claw is in the war on middle class, and the fifth point of the claw is in illegal immigration. If we can get together in a wholesome way and understand it, we don’t have to fight to be friends. We can ditch this war and have a happiness on this Earth where everyone is accepted and respected. And love. And understanding. That’s my legacy. And promoting that and fulfilling that dream to become a reality so people can stand up and talk from the heart about what they believe in and who they are. The American people have to start standing up and talking to their congressmen and senators and saying, “If you don’t help us out here, you’re not going to get elected again.” The Congress and the Senate and the administration have to dismiss all the earmarks. Take away the earmarks. They’re helping the constituents of the congressmen and senators for no reason at all to the American way of life. They’re taking away from that. It’s not working for the country. They’re working for themselves. And that’s a sadness. And that brings us to the end of this lovely conversation, Chris. Unless you have more questions. 11.)    I did want to ask you if you’d ever been to Macon before. What?! Have I ever been naked before? I was born naked. Chris (laughing): No, no. I’m sorry. Have you ever been to Macon before? Gary: Oh, Macon, Georgia! Oh no, I haven’t. Chris: I didn’t know if—I knew that Leon Russell played here quite a bit and— Gary: Yeah, I know that. And Little Richard’s from there. Chris: Okay. Gary: They made a movie there with my buddy Nick Nolte, Macon County Line, years ago. What’s Macon County famous for, moonshine? Chris: Yeah. (Hesitating.) It is. Gary: When I made a movie, years ago, called Last American Hero about NASCAR racer Elroy Jackson, Jr., who was a moonshiner and ridge runner, I was going on some of those runs. Those are pretty exciting. Dirt and gravel and asphalt without shoulders is a quick way to go. Chris: No kidding. Gary: I’m not kidding. (Pause.) Do you like the answers? Chris: Yes sir. Gary: When my spirit starting talking on that last one, that’s very important. This is the personality and truth of Gary Busey speaking. This is the truth of Gary’s personality. This is the truth of Gary Busey speaking. That’s your byline. The truth of Gary Busey speaking—however you want to say it, that’s what it is. …Write this down if the tape’s not on: I’m speaking from my heart, my truth and my spirit. Listen to what is said and act upon it properly to save this country, to bring this country back where the founders want it. There you go.