I dreamt of being a pilot as a child and grew up watching The A-Team and my favourite character was 'Howling Mad Murdock' played by Dwight Schultz. I was obsessed with aircraft so he was the one I wanted to be as his character could fly any plane or helicopter that he had to. Years later I saw him with Jamie Glazov and Anni Cyrus on 'The Glazov Gang' and was intrigued at his strong Conservative Christian stance while delivering common sense commentary. This is the first interview he has done for many years so...
I dreamt of being a pilot as a child and grew up watching The A-Team and my favourite character was 'Howling Mad Murdock' played by Dwight Schultz.
I was obsessed with aircraft so he was the one I wanted to be as his character could fly any plane or helicopter that he had to.
Years later I saw him with Jamie Glazov and Anni Cyrus on 'The Glazov Gang' and was intrigued at his strong Conservative Christian stance while delivering common sense commentary.
This is the first interview he has done for many years so it truly is an honour to have Dwight join Hearts of Oak on this audio only discussion. (he is the voice king)
We talk about those early days treading the boards in the theatre and as a star in Hollywood, working on the biggest TV programme in the world and Dwight shares some stories of how his strong conservative stance got him into much hot water.
He truly is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly demonic industry that opposes truth at every turn and mocks all who have a Christian Faith or Conservative Values.
(*Peter takes to the skies regularly and has held a pilots licence for many years)
A respected performer on Broadway, Dwight Schultz found everlasting fame by playing the certifiable "Howling Mad" Murdock on the action series "The A-Team" (1983-86).
A living, breathing cartoon with a seemingly endless selection of voices and accents at his command, Murdock provided the air power for the A-Team's clandestine adventures, provided that his compatriots could break him out of the mental hospital where he resided.
One of the show's most popular and memorable figures, Murdock ensured Schultz steady work on television and on the big screen playing Reginald Barclay in "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
An accomplished voice actor, Dwight can be heard in numerous hit computer games and in countless animated shows.
Interview recorded 21.3.23
*Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast.
Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20
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TRANSCRIPT
[0:22] Hello Hearts of Oak, and welcome to another interview coming up with Dwight Schultz, Howling Mad Murdock from the A-Team.
He came in on a audio. Dwight hasn't done interviews for years.
I was absolutely delighted to have him on when you talk to one of your childhood heroes who you grew up watching him in A-Team.
And he was my favourite simply because he was a pilot. And I always wanted to grow up and that's what I wanted to grow up to be.
But I'm talking to him about being a conservative, being a Christian in the industry, in Hollywood, in the movie industry. And actually we delve more deeply into his Christian faith, Roman Catholic background, and what it means for him to be a Christian in that industry where you're pulled every way and where your faith is ridiculed, mocked, and everything stands against that. So great conversation about some of his experiences and what it is to be a Christian and to be a conservative in the industry. We talk about his voiceovers, I mean his voice is legendary. Talk about that and why he stepped away from doing kind of in front of a camera in 2001, why that was, and all the voiceover and then I think 100 video games, his voice is in a whole other world, a whole other industry. So, I know you will enjoy listening to Dwight as much as I enjoyed speaking with him.
[1:48] It is wonderful to have Dwight Schultz with us today. Dwight, thank you so much for joining us.
[1:54] Oh, it's my pleasure, Peter, for my reintroduction to the world of podcasting, radio, television.
Well, this is something I've only been doing three years, So I know you have much more experience back in the day, but we'll get into some of that.
And obviously I...
Remember you fondly growing up. I think I was six when The A Team first came out, which is now 40 years ago.
I'm sure I didn't want it when I was six. But your role obviously is as Howling Mad Murdock.
So we can take just a little bit memory lane before we go into and talk about actually being a conservative in the industry and what that is like.
But I mean, it ran for five seasons, 83 to think 87.
Do you just want to let us know how you actually ended up in that role?
Well, actually, it actually only went four seasons, real seasons, so it's not technically considered a success. That's true. I ended up in that role because I made a comedy tape at the Williamstown Theatre Festival around 1979, 1980.
[3:18] Somewhere in there. And the comedy tape, and for two years, I didn't hear anything.
And then suddenly I started getting calls from my agent to audition and to go to Los Angeles to audition.
and it was because of this comedy tape.
And I found out it had been making the rounds for two years and eventually Steve Cannell and Frank Lupo, his co-writer saw it and requested me to come.
Joel Thurm, who was the vice president of NBC at the time, however, he had different ideas about this character.
And anyway, I went in and they flew me out to Los Angeles.
[4:03] And my wife was out here. She wasn't my wife at the time, but I had been dating her since 79.
And she was out here living in Los Angeles, which was difficult.
I mean, I was glad to come out here for any reason. And I had never.
It was a joy, but I came in and I auditioned and it was a total flop. It was a bomb.
I mean, you walk into a small room with 25 people, 30 people, and there was not a single laugh.
There was nothing. There was no... And then they sent me out and they sent the director, Rod Holcomb, out with me to talk to me. I came back in, I did the same audition, And everybody was laughing and I had no idea why they were laughing now.
And they weren't laughing before, unless someone said laugh when he comes back.
You know, that's the way it was. It was just an astonishing thing.
And they said, you got the part.
[5:02] And then, uh, and this is the, really, this is the nub, right?
So, uh, I, they shoot in Mexico and I went down to Mexico.
And when we were down there, I was fired.
I was fired. I was fired. Rod Holcomb came into my little room and he said, I'm afraid it's not going to work out.
And I said, oh, what? He said, it's not Steven. It's not Frank.
It's the would-be's at NBC. They just don't think you're quite right for it.
And so they took me out of my little room and they put me in with a stuntman who I loved.
I just loved him. I mean, it was incredible to work with these guys.
And so there I was with the stuntmen for the rest of the shoot down in Mexico.
And when we came back to the States, they were editing it and putting it together as we were shooting it, right?
[5:58] I got a call from my agent said your dials were great. I said, what are you talking about?
I had no idea what they were talking about.
This is 82, right?
This is 1980. I don't know what you're talking about. He said the dials, the dials, the testing.
The audience loved you. You're the best dials that anybody had.
So I was written back in.
I was rehired before I was fired. And so you can't make this stuff up in life. You can't.
So it just turns out that they had a different view of what this character should be like.
And I had another view.
And Stephen Cannell and Frank Lupo were in my camp.
And so they had to write me back into the first five episodes, which they had kind of written me out of. And that's the way it started. And I was,
[7:04] as anybody would be, you know, I got to work with some of the finest old actors
[7:12] that I had grown up with in the 50s and 60s. And it was a thrill. The four years were a thrill.
I mean, it was an absolute thrill. And I got along beautifully with everybody. And Stephen J. Cannell
[7:24] was a conservative. I mean, I'm lucky. I'm fortunate there. I was fortunate because some of my other experiences were not so fortunate, working with people who knew I was a conservative and weren't going to have a conservative on their show. That was the way it started back then.
But anyway, so it was four years of, we didn't really have a studio.
We were working on locations and I got along famously with everybody.
And it was a joy. It was four, believe me, it changed my life completely and totally.
I never thought I would end up in Los Angeles and never leave.
Well, what was I mean, it's intense, I guess, that you're living and breathing it.
And most people, I have no idea what that's like. Most people go to a job and they go home, but you're there nonstop.
What's that kind of intensity, especially for years with it's the same people?
It's the same people. But listen, as an actor, I mean, I've been working I've been working professionally since nineteen sixty nine.
This gig, it's over 50 years. Right. So I had, I have before the 18, I never knew
what my next job was ever. I never knew what I was doing next. And after the 18, I never have known
[8:50] what I'm going to do next. I've never had a consistent job other than those four years.
And I thank God for them every night. I hoped it would go longer, but this was not the intention, nor the background of Stephen J Cannell. His shows were two years, three years. And then they name of every single writer that we had in the first year moved on to their own series.
They all became producers. And this is not the way you have a successful series for an, actor, which is selfish, right? You want to go at least five years, seven years. But they all, you have to have somebody there who is consistently behind it, pushing it, making sure everything is the way it's supposed to be. But that was not the way it was. But I did everything that you can possibly imagine, I think, on that show.
And as the 14-hour days, 15-hour day, I loved it because I knew that there was going to be an ending.
I knew the day I started that there was going to be a last day.
And so and I think that's the way life is, actually.
[10:02] And so take advantage of what you have and enjoy it and hope for the best.
But I savour it every minute and I look back very fondly.
When you say it wasn't a success, I remember thinking this is the biggest thing ever.
This is phenomenal. I watched it as a kid growing up. So it did seem to be the kind of TV show that you would watch. I mean, the only other one I remember at the same time was I think Knight Rider at the same time, but they were the shows to watch.
Yes, they were. But you see, we were on NBC, Grant Tinker and Brandon Tartikoff, and their moniker was quality programming. And Grant Tinker, and well, Tartikoff gave an interview for the New York Times, right? This is not an example of our quality program, right? Really, this is it. That's what he said. You know, their ideas was Hill Street Blues, which they had on.
This was their idea of quality programming, not this schlock that's number one.
[11:12] This is not it. And I sent Grant Tinker a telegram and George Peppard said, don't do it, pal.
Don't do it. Don't do it, Peppard said to me.
I sent it to him and I said, this is third rate executive ship.
I said, we do the best work we can and we're number one, why are you doing this to us?
And then he sent me a telegram back, which I have kept, saying, well, you're assuming that that was true, what you read.
And I said, well, I checked with the writer, the journalist, quote unquote, who he said, he talked to you and this is what you said. And indeed he did.
And this is a tag to all of this.
He, after the show was over, it was cancelled, several years afterwards, I have received a phone call from his assistant saying
[12:13] Brandon wants to talk to you. And I said, sure, I'll talk to him.
And I met with him in this basement office, 20th Century Fox.
And I walked in and there was nobody there but Brandon Tartikoff sitting at a table and he apologized to me.
[12:31] His daughter had been in a very serious accident and it changed his life.
It was one of these things. And he apologized to me.
I'll never forget it. And this does not happen in show business. It does not happen.
And I said, thank you. Thank you so much for that.
I said, and then I went into my spiel about being an actor. And that I, you know, you do the best job you can, whether you're doing Shakespeare, whether you're doing a show, or whether you're doing The A-Team.
You do the best job you can. It is the same job if you're good and you love your work.
It doesn't matter. You do the best thing, the best you put. You're not walking through it.
I said, that's what we were doing. And we happened to be number one.
And why did you rain on the parade? You know, I asked him and he gave me some explanations as to the the exigencies at the top of a TV network.
And I, so at any rate, that that that's the experience. That's the beginning and end of that experience, really.[13:43] And I carry with me.
How did you cope with that fame? And you were what, 30, 32, so you weren't young, young.
But still, when you're thrust into that level of publicity, how did that affect you personally and how did you cope with that?
Well, you know, I was fortunate that I was working since I had been working since 69.
I spent 13 years in regional theatre.
I spent years in New York, three Broadway plays.
I had a lot of experience.
[14:17] Really, they walk in the boards, doing all the grunt work, getting there.
And I, fame was not a, I was known and all my interests in theatre were to be, this is a joke actually, but never the same actor twice.
I mean, that's it. You didn't want to do the same thing.
And here I was, and I forced the idea that this actor, this character would be different in each episode, which the vice president of NBC said, that's the way you comb your hair differently.
You should be the same. We want you to be polite on this.
And I said, no, no, no, no, no, I don't wanna do that.
I wanna be different in every show. And so I maintained, I think, because of the work that I had had.
When you do the classics, when you're in, and I don't mean this, when you have the great opportunity to play a Shakespearean role.
[15:22] You understand something about talent, about what goes into writing, brilliant writing, and then schlock writing.
I mean, you see it all. And when you've been given that opportunity, There's a humility that hits you.
So fame was never something that I wanted.
I wanted to be able to – and I've had this ability. I've been able to go to a department store or take my daughter to a mall and not be recognized, which is – I'm telling you, I have worked with – I mean, I worked with Paul Newman and Paul Newman was, it was not a, he, he told me he couldn't go anywhere.
He was a prisoner of his fame.
[16:12] George Peppard was a prisoner of his fame. I mean, the closest I think I've ever gotten was somebody said, your voice sounds familiar, do you know my brother?
I'll say, no, I don't know your brother.
Then every once in a while, somebody recognizes you, but it's a curse.
[16:33] It is a curse, really. If you have a family, if you want a family life, if you want privacy, which I think is necessary for survival in this business.
I mean, I've seen a lot of actors drop to their knees and open cardboard tubes and pull drugs out.
You know, and that's fame. And you ask them, that's it, it's driven.
You know, you gotta have that fame, you gotta have that fame, you gotta.
And it's not what I wanted. I really am a repertory actor, that's it.
I'm a repertory actor. I spent one year in Houston, at the Alley Theatre in Houston, and it was one of the greatest years I've ever had.
And I never wanted to leave. And someone told me, that's why you have to leave.
I would have stayed there.
I could have stayed there. But my agents all told me, you have to leave.
You can't stay here, or your career will be over.
And I said, but I love this. And they said, you won't love it when it dries up there.
You know, you have to go to a bigger, a bigger yard in essence.
But I'm really a repertory actor. That's it.
[17:47] Your last I think your last TV role was 2001.
I will get into the voice side later, but your last 2001. Why did, why did it end there?
Was a personal experience? Was it just choice?
Oh, yeah. No, it was a really a personal experience.
It was CIA. 2001 was...
[18:17] I went in for wardrobe fitting, and we were at the Memorial Cemetery, Veterans Cemetery down in Wilshire Boulevard, and that's where it was being shot. And I walked in, and this is nothing, I won't mention the name, I shouldn't have even said what the show was. Just someone in the wardrobe room.
We were talking about 9-11. We were talking about what had happened in New York. I had a lot of friends in New York, of course, obviously. And she said, I don't have any connection to that. I don't know why everybody – I just don't have any connection to it, you know? She still connects? And she rubbed it off, you know? And I said, I mean, life was – rules were at that point not easy to come by, actually. And I said I can't do this, you know, I can't work.
This to me was a sign, a sign from God.
I'm not joking. You look for these things. This was a sign that this was the wave of the future.
There was going to be a lot of denial and there was going to be, and it's complicated. I mean, I'm not judging anybody.
[19:43] But for me, I had an opportunity to move into another direction, and I decided to do the other direction because I could be anybody, anything in voiceover work. Video games were just becoming big at the time, and the whole business was very big. And voice work was something that, as an actor in the theatre, I always did.
If I couldn't find the voice of the character, I couldn't find the character. And so that was it.
I mean, the fates came together at that time.
And I was doing radio at the time on a fairly regular basis with a friend named Don Ecker.
And I just moved in that direction.
[20:36] I mean, there were opportunities there, but I knew things had changed at that point.
Yeah, well, we'll get into that. I want to pick on being a conservative in the, the movie and TV industry, and that seems to be opposites.
We've seen more and more, and I think it probably gets worse.
And you're Roman Catholic, you're conservative. And what has been your experiences having a faith and also having a conservative belief?
How does that fit into the showbiz industry? What has it been like for you?
Well, going back, if you look at,
[21:23] if you look at the world that we're in today, the Judeo-Christian world, which is, and I have to say if I have one criticism of modern Christianity prior to today, and I mean going back, because there's a lot of things I could say about today, which we will, I'm sure.
But one of the things which always struck me me was about Christians, was their antipathy for the Old Testament, the Torah. It is Judeo-Christianity, and if a Christian doesn't understand that the Old Testament is their testament, there's, a problem. And they don't, indeed. In Bible study, the number of times that I heard Christians say oh, that's not my God. I want to get out of this. I want to get to my God. Well, that's two gods.
[22:24] I mean, there is the Trinity, which is three gods in one, right? I mean, we do have that mystery, but we are monotheistic. And Christ's Old Testament was his Old Testament. He was here to fulfil the Old Testament. This is what he said, that it is the Father. You're speaking of your father. This is Christ's father and the Torah, the law as it was laid down is your law.
It went on to the New Testament.
[22:58] You know, and Catholics, I mean, I was raised a Catholic, and when I found out that it wasn't, thou shalt not kill, but thou shalt not murder, you know, the wheels begin to turn, and you try to think as best you can about these things. But there was a disconnect between the Old Testament in the New Testament. But that has to do with my criticism of my own faith. In motion pictures in the film industry, it was under attack, as it is today.
Christianity is—and Judeo-Christian ethic, the West, everything that has been built through the Judeo-Christian ethic is under attack and they want to destroy it.
[23:55] And basically at the very front of that is the communist wagon, and it always has been. And you can go back to 1918 or whatever and read about it, and they tried every which way from Sunday to do it, and they always failed, and now they've found another way of doing it. And they have succeeded by going after our children when we didn't know they were going after our children.
But as Christians, we're pretending that it wasn't important to be mothers and fathers and the nuclear family really wasn't that important.
Well, then why were they trying to destroy it? And why has it been number one?
[24:35] Because and I'm going to say something else here in a second, which I'm pointing to, there's a quote.
This is the technique that they have used, and you didn't know it, but you felt it all along.
You felt this, but you didn't know it.
[24:57] A quote by, it's attributed to Oscar Wilde. And I think it is his, I don't think, I don't think, I think it is his quote.
And it is pithy and accurate and brilliant and beyond belief descriptive of everything.
Everything in the world is about sex, except sex.
Sex is about power. And boy, when I read that, I said, is this, did he really say this?
Is it? And it hit me from every direction.
The entertainment business in every which way is about sex. Novels, books, television, commercials, life itself, clothes, it's all about sex.
And it goes back to God's edict to humanity.
[25:56] Go forth and multiply. This is the power of procreation, is sharing in the power of creation.
That power was given to all of us.
We don't know, I mean, people have talked about it, but you don't, we don't know where that came from, except from God.
And it is something to, what do we do with these gifts? Do we throw them away?
Or do we say these are precious?
[26:30] And you see by the people that you meet, those who recognize the gift and those who don't recognize the gift. And you are asked not to recognize it on a daily basis.
And as a child, if you think back to your childhood when sexual urges, whether you're—and of course, I can't tell you what a woman goes through, but I can only tell you what a kid goes through—boy, when you're going through puberty, the whistles and gongs are going off, and you're you're having dreams at night and you can't stop it.
[27:03] Everything is at the wrong moment and you're not purposefully thinking about it, but it's a force to be reckoned with.
And you understand it as you grow older that this force is to bring you to someone else, to love, to have a family and to create the next generation and then everything changes after that.
If you can contemplate that greatness, that extraordinary thing, and realize that the world seems to want to distort it, well, you realize the powers that are set up against Judeo-Christianity.
And who say, we don't want the Ten Commandments, we don't want that Old Testament rag, we want freedom, free, and of course I went through that in the 60s and 70s in school, and I saw it.
I mean, I was part of it in that it bounced off of me at every moment.
And being a Christian, you stay in it.
[28:10] I stayed in my Christianity. This is another tale.
When I got to school, to college, I mean, I had 12 years of Christian education, right?
I wanted to be an actor and I went to Towson University, which had a great theatre program.
And it was the first time that I was in a purely secular environment.
The thing that killed me was that everybody hated their parents.
Everybody hated their parents. I mean, nobody wanted to, nobody had a good thing, I loved my parents.
And I used to say, I used to have a long bus ride home and I used to sit in the bus looking out the window saying, why do I love my parents and I can't find somebody who loves their parents? What is that?
Well, I can't say that I answered the question, but the answer was in the destruction of the family.
[29:10] It was in the destruction, and it had started then. Not my mother and father.
And then here's the next aspect, and I think that this plays a very big part in all the trouble we're having today.
I never wanted to do something that shamed my parents, that they would be ashamed of. I felt shame. I still do. I feel shame. It was given to me by my mother and my father. Now, none of us are perfect. I know my mother wasn't perfect, my father wasn't perfect. I'm not perfect, but I feel shame and shame is rare.
Now, look, I was listening to your podcast
[29:58] with Father Calvin Robinson. Right.
Goodness, you make me blush.
No, no. And no, but he said something.
He said he said something about
drag queens in the sanctuary.
[30:19] I mean, we're talking about there's no shame if you do that.
Before, shortly after, I guess we communicated, I went to here in Los Angeles, I went to the Church of the Nazarene in Pasadena, and I saw two, I don't know if you know these individuals, Dennis Prager, do you know Dennis Prager? Dennis is a Jewish scholar. I've been following him since since 1982, when I came to Los Angeles.
He had a program called Religion on the Line, one of the great minds and thinkers of all time.
In fact, many times after listening to him, I would say to myself, I'm a Jew.
That's what I am, I'm a Jew.
[31:05] And then there's Eric Metaxas, who is a Christian writer, thinker, and these two were in a program, an evening called ask a Gentile, Ask a Jew. And it was a great evening, two hours of just two brilliant people talking about the state of religion. What was the final outcome, sad outcome of the evening? Metaxas and Prager both came to the conclusion that we, organized religion, has failed us. It has failed us. The churches and the synagogues have failed us. They have not stepped up to defend their own dogma, their own beliefs. And we are left flailing, individuals almost.
And we are struggling to connect, which is what you and I are doing right now.
[32:08] I was dumbfounded by that, but at the same time, that's what I'm thinking.
That's what I've been thinking for quite some time.
And all of these things, you know, we are under attack from every direction.
And in your own mind, what do you do? Do you throw it away? Do you say, well maybe I'm thinking the wrong thing.
No, no, no, that is not the case.
Because when you think about why our children,
[32:47] and if you've seen this now, why our children are being told that they don't know what their sex is, Metaxas brought this up in the evening that this is one of those key cardinal points. You can see.
This is a perversion of reality, because you know what the truth is.
If you have a Supreme Court justice, as we do in the United States, who says, I can't define a woman, and that children, 10 year old children, 11 and 12 year old children, secretly, don't tell your parents the hallmark of a lie.
Keep it secret.
Don't tell anybody. Don't even tell yourself.
[33:26] You know the hallmark of concealment, consciousness of guilt, everything that you know is, they are trying to tell you you know nothing and everything you know is not to be believed, but they are to be believed.
That children, there are not boys and girls, that men can give birth, that there are, you know, these things that we, it's incomprehensible what's going on and it's all to destroy right from wrong.
Well, that's because it's kind of, I look at it a different way.
One is the difficulty of living in a society where evil is slightly different, where it's a slippery slope and it may be difficult to distinguish what you believe with something that's slightly different.
But we see such a chasm now between what is true, what is right, and the collapse and degradation of society.
So in theory, that means it is easier to be a Christian because it's easy to be distinct, because what you face is the opposite of what you believe.
And and that's why it's curious and interesting to see churches going down this line whenever there's,
[34:38] there's no question of what we see is the opposite of what is written in scripture.
Oh, there's no question.
You know what you're saying?
You can be crushed. You know, you can be crushed at the same time.
You have to deny so many things to accept what's going on.
And yet you say to yourself, how do I stop it?
The war that's going on in Europe at this moment. And this is why I love Bannon.
I mean, I just, I adore him. I never got to, I would not, and I'll say this, Andrew Breitbart brought me out of the closet politically, really politically.
I was doing a lot of things, but saying a lot of things that were in the basket, but he truly brought me out.
When was this?
When was this? .
This is a through also through Gary Sinise and friends of Abe.
[35:48] Boy, this is this is in the, I have to say nine. I'd say 2000 to 2005,
2006.
By 2008, yeah, I have to say around 2005, 2006.
[36:09] I was like a Jew wandering in the desert alone and wondering where God was.
And a friend of mine who I worked with on Fat Man and Little Boy, a film about making the atomic bomb, called me up, his wife was a casting director, and he said, you know there are conservatives just like yourself who get together on a regular basis.
I said, no, I did not know that. He said, would you like to go to a meeting?
I said, I would love to go to a meeting of other people.
I went and it was Gary Sinise and Andrew Breitbart, and a lot of other extraordinary people who were all, and this is it, seeking, trying to make connections.
And so Andrew said, you have to become public.
He had big Hollywood and big, you know, all of, he had all of these big websites.
And he asked me to write an article.
[37:09] He heard me in private describe a situation that I was in, in which I was at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
I had just come back from working with Charlton Heston and I had a long discussion, which was just a wonderful discussion in the hallway at the Amundsen Theatre about Ronald Reagan becoming president, right? And this individual who was a big producer in Hollywood overheard me talking about Ronald Reagan, and he said, Oh, so you're a Reagan a-hole, you know?
[37:58] And yeah, that's right. That's right. And I was, I got to tell you, I mean, this was a big guy at the theatre too, that I was working,
and I went cold.
I went cold. I said, yes. I said, you know, not as a, you know, and I pulled back.
I was, you know, he was attacking me, obviously, with his language.
And I was shocked. I was totally numbed.
And I didn't want to continue with this discussion, because otherwise there would have been a blowout.
But that was how in 78, 80, I understood that there was this chasm there.
And
[38:51] it only got worse as time went on. As I said, fortunate, it is not a zero-sum game.
Fortunate there was for me, and I did have an audition for this producer.
There was a writer there and a brilliant writer. We had a fallout, but he's just an extraordinary writer.
His name is Tom Fontana. He wrote some very, it was St. Elsewhere, producer, writer for St. Elsewhere, The Wire, many wonderful programs.
And he did not know about this problem that I had and invited me to read for a part called Fiscus in St. Elsewhere. And I walked in and there was this producer
[39:37] who has passed away since now. And Breitbart wanted me to write about him.
And I did, and I regretted it, but I don't regret it.
But anyway, so I walked in and he was there and he said, oh, what are you doing here?
And to this audition, and I said, I'm here to read for the part of Fiskars.
He said, it's not gonna be a Reagan blank hole on my show.
So you know what that audition was like, right? You know, I mean, and I walked out and I just, I said, God, is this going to be it?
You know, is this the way it's gonna be?
And at any rate, so, but I finally did write this article about him and I lost a lot of friends for writing it.
And then at the same time, and I was one of the first actors for Breitbart to use my name.
This was what he wanted because a lot of pseudonyms, writing for Big Hollywood, And which I understand, please, I did not do this, I did this
[40:40] for personal reasons, but not because I'm brave or anything of that nature.
I just was at the point where I was going to tell the truth.
This is the way it's done. And you are excluded on a cocktail napkin.
And that cocktail napkin is sent around to other producers and you're excluded.
It is not a zero sum game because there was Stephen J Cannell and he hired me.
[41:03] But the majority of people will not, unless, of course, you bring in 30 or 40 million dollars over a weekend.
And then they'll hire you. But the attack on Judeo-Christianity, the attack on conservatism, which is a hallmark of Judeo-Christianity, is now at its height. It's never been greater than it is today.
Well can I, you're obviously being a Christian, being a conservative within an industry within the workplace, but then you had your podcast, then you're doing, you mentioned Breitbart on the Glazov Gang, that's something different. You're stepping outside and actually you're much more public. I mean was that a conscious decision to actually begin to use radio, use the internet, use TV and speak of these issues as a Christian and conservative.
Yes, absolutely. And the reason for that was I, you know, if you're,
[42:13] make a point, like I would not, as Murdock from The A-Team, go out and evangelize.
I wouldn't go out as Murdock from The A-Team, vote for.
Right?
[42:34] You're taking something that is not related and you're trying to use it to get somewhere.
Where it's not as, to me, as honest as separating yourself out, creating a podcast, creating another world.
This is where I talk politics. This is where I talk my personal life, my personal beliefs. This is where I do it.
And so you come to me and then we go out from there. And I associate with people who talk about religion, and I associate with people who talk about politics, and I talk it there in that realm.
[43:19] There's obviously a mixture. You can't divorce yourself from who you are and what you've done, and I don't.
But I've never hidden my religion. I've never hidden my Christianity, as some people do.
That's not the way to do it either.
Yes, I am a Christian. I'm a Judeo-Christian.
I believe in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And it's, for me, not a contradiction in terms.
And so I express it that way. I express it here on my own podcast when I had it.
And if ever anybody wanted to talk about it, I was willing to do it.
And I attended every event, and with Jamie and
[44:10] the lovely Anni Cyrus, that was just wonderful. That was absolutely wonderful.
I went to a David Horowitz retreat, where I met Jamie.
I had the great fortune, an opportunity to speak at a Freedom Concert event.
Many of my public heroes were there from various political websites.
And I got to meet them. And that's where I met Jamie. And he invited me on to engage with him on his program, the Glazov Gang. It's so funny. But, you know, and I met just so many fabulous people. And there are so many things right now, which I see things now and can talk about things that I couldn't prior to coming out with Andrew. And that, of course, is Bannon's big thing, Andrew.
Andrew, I mean, he's – and Andrew changed – just brought the world together. I mean, his vision, his understanding of what was really going on was unique.
And he was right into – he was dead on about everything. And I still don't agree with most of his friends.
[45:38] I have very dark feelings about what happened to Andrew, even though I know he had a heart problem.
But when the, I mean, you know what I'm talking about. I don't want to get into that aside, but I know the darkness that's out there and a voice like his had to be stopped.
And they don't stop at anything. They don't. And we have now been witness to it in the United States for five or six years. Nothing stops them. Nothing. And they will lie to your face.
They do not care because they are the voice of something that is dark.
[46:20] That's not a knife you feel in your back. That's me scratching it. Oh, but I feel blood. No, that's not blood. You know, that's it. That's it.
Can I finish off with your voice? Now, it is always wonderful to have a guest coming on and the sound is absolutely beautiful, crystal clear.
You're coming through. Obviously, your voice is your how you make your your living now.
And you've you've moved away from being kind of front of the camera to doing voice. Tell us what that is like, because it means you talked about fame and that means you're not recognized. It is your voice. And I remember watching, you were the one who, again, using your voice in all different ways, even back as in The A Team. But tell us about, how that works in the industry.
Well, in the industry, it doesn't. You have to be very fortunate. One of the first casting directors I ever met was Sylvia Gold, was her name.
And she met with me, my first agent introduced me to her, and she said.
[47:36] Oh, darling, she said, you don't understand. No one wants to hear that stuff.
That's in the theatre. They want to hear you. They want to hear your voice.
It's your voice that's important. And I said, no, it's not. I said, that's not what it's not.
You know, I'm a vampire. I'm a thief. I listen to other people. I'm a mathematical idiot.
And God gave me this ability to hear people's voices. And I said, I remember being seven years old.
I was about seven years old, and I remember the first impression I ever did, which was, James Mason in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, he had a line, it was, I am dying now, and the Nautilus is dying with me, present as him. And I said this out loud to myself, I am dying now, and the Nautilus is dying with me. And the more I did it, the closer I got.
And I would spend time, and I became an Anglophile, and I started listening to Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, and I found that if I put headphones on, their voice came from the middle of my head, and I could steal from them.
I could do impressions of their voice, and even if it wasn't perfect.
[48:52] It became another voice, another character.
And I began to identify with my relatives that way. I started doing impressions of my relatives and they did not like it.
And I started doing impressions of my teachers at school and the kids liked it, but the teachers didn't like it if they heard it.
And that's how it started. And I just had an ear for people's voices and dialects in the United States.
And that's it. And in terms of, well, if I'm coming across crystal clear, That's because somebody recommended this microphone, the Heil PR-40, which is a dynamic microphone.
Most people are wedded to very expensive condenser mics. But this is a rejection, it's a cardioid.
People can open the door and come into the room and you won't hear it, you'll just hear me.
Art Bell used this mic and he was always extolling the virtues of this mic, and I listened to him.
And so, you know, and it's inexpensive, comparatively speaking, so it's available.
[50:04] And so I, but I have spent years studying and recording people's voices and listening to them and trying to reproduce them.
And one of the great thrills in my life was, I was, I knew somebody who was intimately involved with Laurence Olivier.
[50:29] Peter Shaffer, and he wrote Amadeus, right? And he was just an absolutely spectacular man.
And he gave me the play Amadeus to read before it was on Broadway and in Great Britain.
And he was just a sweetheart of all sweethearts anyway. So I went into a bathroom and I did my impression of Olivier doing the Othello chamber scene.
And I gave it to someone who was with Peter and asked them to listen to it to see if I caught any of it.
And he said, this friend said, Shaffer listened to it and said, well, he said if Larry was very, very sick.
But it was, you know, it was one of those, I, God, to have, you know, I, I, I think I listened, I don't know, I can't, I can't repeat anything that I've ever done myself, but I, I think I listened to the chamber scene from Othello, Olivier's Othello
a thousand times. And that's how you learn when you're a young kid. That's how you learn.
And you say, oh, my God, every comma. I followed it along, and he followed the text.
[51:49] Amazingly, he followed the text and was dead on. And those are the kinds of things that I became very attuned to people's voices, and recorded them.
And I have a lot of recordings and sometimes I still listen to Burton's Hamlet.
And Gielgud, of course, directed it.
[52:21] And it was considered a disaster on Broadway, but there's some great, there's just to capture, it is a miracle that I can sit here and listen to people who have passed away as if they're in my room.
It is, it is a miracle, a technical miracle, but a miracle, or listening to the great choruses, motion picture choruses from 1958 and 60, and I listen to these grand voices, and I say, most of these people are not here now, But I'm listening to them and I get emotional about it.
So anyway...
You've also embraced just finally about. I think I looked through and you've done the voice for like 100 video games.
Well, yeah, I guess that's just if you're you're good at something, then that can be used across different, different industries.
Oh, exactly. and video games are bigger than motion pictures now.
And the hardest thing I was ever asked to do, and we were asked to do this periodically, you know, these great actors, right?
[53:31] Sir Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, right? Those two individuals.
Do impressions of both of them, to do them in the same thing.
They were in X-Men, right?
So I can't do them because they're so close. And you just do.
You're asked to do it. They can't make it to do a pickup, right?
So they ask an actor to come in and do a line, half a line.
That's it.
I can't do Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart at the same time.
But I can't. I can't do it because they're too close. And yet they're different. But I have not been able to.
I mean, you know, you in Ian McKellen with Bilbo Baggins, you know, he's called the essence.
[54:19] Patrick is done it. Patrick is down there, too. But I can't do them together. I cannot do them together.
I have to do them separately.
And Patrick is he was a delight, by the way.
Very liberal, very liberal. But one of the great things about Star Trek is my greatest experience that I've had in Hollywood, because there was little to no politics on that set, and everybody was a delight to work with.
Everyone, absolutely everyone. And walking around on the great Paramount lot was a thrill.
Anyway, sorry, I'm getting side-lined.
I loved all those people. I did. I really did.
Dwight, I so appreciate you coming on. It's absolutely wonderful to speak with you and hear about your experiences in the industry.
So we really do appreciate your time today.
Well, it's my pleasure and I am very grateful.
It's been a long time since I've done anything like this.
Oh, maybe it'll become more regular.
Well, thank you, Peter.
Thank you so much, Dwight. Thank you.
Bye-bye.
