Anybody who saw last year’s family hit “Free Willy” and figured the killer whale story was about to take a truly “killer” turn when Michael Madsen appeared on screen as Jason James Richter’s foster father wasn’t alone.
Michael Madsen thought the same thing: “I remember when I first read the script, I said, `There must be a scene in here they deleted. The father’s gonna go berserk somewhere and they haven’t told me yet,’ ” Madsen says, laughing. “He’s gonna chop Willy’s fins off.”
That certainly wasn’t the case, but in “Reservoir Dogs,” Madsen wreaked enough havoc to lodge him permanently in cinema’s all-time psycho rogues’ gallery. Quentin Tarantino’s critically praised independent thriller about a botched bank robbery featured a stellar cast of heavies, including Harvey Keitel and Chris Penn, and plenty of violence. But it was Madsen’s Mr. Blonde, the ultra-cool character who cut off the ear of a tied-up police officer while boogieing to the ’70s hit “Stuck in the Middle With You,” that everyone walked away talking about. And that clinched the actor’s place in Hollywood as a primo bad guy.
“It hangs there forever,” says Madsen of this casting albatross, further solidified by his drippingly menacing turn as Rudy in last spring’s “The Getaway.” “It definitely follows you around for a long time.”
Madsen is talking from the set of the “Free Willy” sequel, shooting in Washington’s San Juan Islands. But even with a box-office success under his belt playing a good guy, its sequel on the way, and this summer’s “Wyatt Earp” (opening Friday), in which he plays brother Virgil to Kevin Costner’s law-abiding title character, Madsen stills gets the looks.
“I get a lot of people on this set who sit there and stare at me and shake their head and can’t believe that Mr. Blonde is playing Glen Greenwood,” he says. Even his breakthrough role as one of the only decent men in “Thelma and Louise,” Louise’s boyfriend Jimmy, was overshadowed by the evil bravado of “Reservoir Dogs.”
“As far as noticeability is concerned,” he continues, “I really thought (Jimmy) would have been a role I could have played more often after that, and been offered those kinds of parts. But it didn’t work out that way.”
“Wyatt Earp” could very well be the movie that frees Madsen from such typecasting once and for all. Lawrence Kasdan’s three-hour film spans four decades in the life of one of America’s most legendary lawmen, a man whose bond to his brothers was the very lifeblood of his crusade for law and order.
“It’s not only the brothers,” Madsen explains. “It’s the friend as well. The friend being Doc Holliday.” Holliday is played in the film by Dennis Quaid, but when Madsen first got wind that Kasdan was going to make “Wyatt Earp,” he lobbied for the part. During the shooting of “The Getaway” in Phoenix, the actor got a couple of days off, so he flew to L.A., still sporting Rudy’s long hair, and met with Kasdan in the director’s office.
“I’m sittin’ there flippin’ my hair and saying, `Hey, Larry, you know, I’d really like to play Doc Holliday,’ ” Madsen recalls. “And Larry was looking at me across the desk, and he’s saying, `Well, Mike, I don’t know.’ And I’m thinkin’ `OK, that’s it. This is over. Better get back to playing Rudy.’ But before I left, I told him, `You know, Larry, if you’re thinking of using me at all in the film, don’t cast me as one of the bad guys. I don’t want to be a Clanton. That would be the thing I’d be expected to do. I want to be involved . . . and if you’re gonna use me, I’d like to be an Earp.’
“Larry didn’t say much, he was very noncommittal, and I went back to Phoenix not really knowing what was happening. But I remember I felt I had a great rapport with Larry. We talked about old Westerns we loved, and in looking back I knew I understood where he was coming from. And 24 hours later, they sent me the `Wyatt Earp’ script and there was a note from Larry asking me to take a look at the role of Virgil.”
Madsen is very proud of his work in “Wyatt Earp,” which he calls a ” `Godfather’ set in the West.” And although it was a long shoot-4 1/2 months-he found the entire experience rife with reward, especially working with Costner, Kasdan and Gene Hackman, who plays the Earp patriarch.
“Kevin is the type of guy who is so comfortable in his own space that he was amazingly open to letting other characters have their time,” Madsen says. “I’ve worked with a lot of people who want to be the center of attention, but Kevin wants the scene to work as it should. It provided a lot of family attitude between the brothers that really came across. It’s funny how total strangers can come together and play such closely related people and be believable.”
Madsen credits the on-set camaraderie to the rehearsal process, the value of which he says he never realizes until shooting starts. In that respect he found a kindred spirit in Hackman, who, Madsen says, “just wants to get on with it. I don’t like to go over and over things, and I found Gene to be the same way, so we had a good working relationship. He has a tremendous presence. And to be honest, it’s a lot easier to work with people like that, who know what they’re doing.”
That’s probably because Madsen knows what he’s doing. He’s been an actor for 15 years, earning consistent kudos since he started snaring film leads a few years ago. He started in the theater; his stage training was at Chicago’s acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre.
While he says he is pleased to be where he is, he still can’t help being impatient about his career. Perhaps this trait explains why he left the theater. “I got pleasure out of it, but I needed to get on with it,” he says. “I felt like I was wasting my time. I always hear the clock ticking, and it’s always ticking very loud, like Big Ben in my head. There’s a lot of things I want to do, and I always feel like I’m running out of time.”
Madsen says he has a short attention span when it comes to his side interests as well. “I want to be Hank Williams, but I don’t have the patience to learn how to play the guitar,” he cracks. But he’s as disciplined as they come when the role and the movie call for it.
“Wyatt Earp” was pure pleasure, Madsen says. For a boy who grew up with such favorite films as the Burt Lancaster/Kirk Douglas Wyatt Earp film “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” strapping on six-shooters and playing cowboy was a “big kick.” Looking back on it, he’s surprised he knew to take it easy and appreciate it all while he did it, instead of “letting it fly by in some haze of self-gratification,” he says. “You’re so worried about what it’s gonna be that you can’t enjoy it.
“I mean, how many chances in your life are you going to get to walk down to the O.K. Corral?” Madsen asks with as much excitement as he can muster after a long day’s shooting.
And then his voice returns to its smoky soft-spokenness. “But I didn’t know it was so far down to the O.K. Corral. Because if I knew it was so far, I would have taken a cab.”
