DEAN CAMERON
THE RETROCRUSH INTERVIEW
Star of the Cult Classic Rockula and Carl Reiner's Summer School

If you’ve never seen Dean singing his heart out in the 1990 cult classic Rockula with Toni Basil and Thomas Dolby you’re missing out on a rare treat. He’s also well loved for his role as Chainsaw in Summer School which he says has been in a loop on HBO since 1987. We recently talked with Dean about losing his mind on ALF, hanging with Billy Bob Thornton in a Zombie movie, singing in a rock band about Mr. T, and his thoughts on masturbation.

My dad had tried to be an actor in Hollywood for about a year back in the late 60’s. My parents are divorced so every summer and every Christmas I’d visit my dad in Santa Barbara. I started doing plays there in this great program called Youth Theater.

When I got out of high school I drove out here to LA at 17 and starved for 4 years. I did little theater, sent my pictures out, and luckily got an agent. I started getting small roles in TV shows & commercials and sort of built a career.

When they announced in Hollywood that they were going to do a TV show of Fast Times people wondered who was going to be the poor, miserable asshole that would end up playing Spicoli? It was a huge joke. I was really good friends with Crispin Glover at the time and we would joke about this poor, miserable shithead who would be playing Spicoli. It ended up being me.

It actually turned out to be a good thing for me because the show didn’t go on very long. Maybe it was seven episodes, but it put me on the map in Hollywood. I sort of pulled it off and didn’t embarrass myself.

He was a crazy and very inspiring guy. He made up his own way to live and followed it. I’ve always appreciated and admired that in people. Crispin carved a path for himself.

I loved it. When we were friends he told me, "I’m going to do Willard some day." It’s cool that he finally got to do it. There’s that great scene where he freaks out. It’s at the mortuary. He just goes nuts. I think he’s a great actor.

I didn’t see that. He plays a villain right? His dad was a Bond villain. He was a villain in one of the Bond movies.

That was my first movie. That came about because of Fast Times. Amy Heckerline directed Fast Times and was the Executive Producer. She was originally suppose to direct Summer School and actually wanted Patrick Dempsey and Wally Langham who were both in Fast Times to play Chainsaw and Dave in Summer School.

The movie Carl Reiner was supposed to direct at Paramount fell through so they gave him a pick of any movie he wanted. He picked Summer School and Amy got kicked out of the job, but Carl and the writer Jeff Franklin had heard about me. I got in on that movie & read. It went great because I got the job & the rest is history.

Summer School comes off as intelligent & funny.

It was a good movie and did well at the box office. It got good reviews.

You’re the guy who hasn’t seen it! It’s been on HBO on a loop since 1987.

Good for you. They’re doing a remake of it which is proof that Hollywood has officially run out of ideas.

Summer School isn’t much of an original idea to begin with. Carl Reiner is a classic director, writer, and actor. He did The Jerk, Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar, and The Dick Van Dyke show. He spoiled us because he would only shoot from 10 AM to 6PM.

We’d get there at 10 and wrap at 6. It was a relaxed day. There was no pressure, no yelling and screaming. That was my first movie so I thought, "Wow. Movies are really, really easy." I was completely mistaken.

No, no it’s not. It’s always like trying to paint in a hurricane.

It was three horrible episodes of Alf. Keep it in perspective it’s just TV and movies. Having a bad time on a TV show is nothing. There are much worse things to be doing like blowing dogs for Wine change or something. Doing three episodes of Alf is a fine problem to have.

I think it’s an enjoyable show to watch. Just appearing on the show is a weird thing.

By the time they tape Alf has all the funny lines. During the course of rehearsals they’ll go, "Hey, that’s a funny line lets give it to Alf." You’re a straight man for a puppet. After three weeks I was losing my mind. These people had been doing the show for 7 years. It was just bonkers.

Oh completely. The beauty of that is he’s now back in New York doing shows and I think he won a Tony for something a couple of years ago.

I knew he was a friend of the bottle as they say. I think he’s come out of that. If I had been doing Alf for 7 years I’d be getting fucked up & having gay sex.

He was this New York theater actor and I’m sure when he read for it he thought, "I’m going to do this pilot in LA and make a bunch of money. It’s never going to go because it’s a stupid show about an alien doll. I’ll be back in the fall." Seven years later he’s the dad on Alf.

There were three or four different Alfs. The whole sound stage had trenches in it. There were three operators of Alf. One did a right arm & the head. Another one did the left arm. There was another person off with the radio controller doing all the servos for the eyebrows.

It’s a whole Jim Henson production.

The producer was the voice of Alf. That’s why all the good stuff went to Alf because the producer was Alf.

One of the things I was having such a hard time with Alf was at night I was doing reshoots with Emilio Estevez & Charlie Sheen for Men at Work. I was literally getting 2 hours sleep and I was out of my mind. This girl I was living with was moving out and breaking my heart. It was a bad time. The reshoots for the movie were only supposed to last four days. It was January and it was raining heavy so it lasted three weeks.

No, it didn’t. Again it’s one of those things that are on cable all the time and I love it.

Let’s talk about the 80’s classic Rockula!

Let’s do! I love Rockula. I was so excited about Rockula. Out of all these things that almost could have been really huge Rockula was one of them. Summer School came out and it was dwarfed by The Lost Boys.

Rockula was the first movie I got offered based on the fact of Summer School. By the time we made the movie the studio had gone under so it never saw the light of day. It was bad timing. It was really sad for me.

It played in one theater in my hometown of Norman, Oklahoma for some odd reason.

She ruled. She was great. She was with her boyfriend so nothing happened. We had a nice, flirtatious relationship.

I did all of the singing. I played all the guitar. I wrote most of the songs I sang.

I love the rap outfit you wore with multi-colored tights.

And a giant sausage in my pants.

She was in the movie Easy Rider. She’s in the scene where they go to the cemetery, take LSD, and have a three way. She’s one of the two girls. She was beautiful.

We’ve been friends since 11. A long, long time. He’s one of my oldest friends. He was one of the guys I started acting with in Santa Barbara. We did a production of Our Town and John Ritter was the lead. This was before Three’s Company. At the time he was famous because he had won an Emmy on The Waltons. Eric is very successful. He’s directed, produced, and is a good actor.

Exactly.

I did Ski School and Ski School II. People wanted to know what happened to the characters from Ski School. We had to wrap up all those loose ends. They had sold the title Ski School and had three months to make the movie. There’s a ski resort in British Columbia where there’s a glacier and you can ski year round, but there was really no snow.

No that was this other piece of shit called Miracle Beach or Miserable Beach.

Yes, Pat Morita, Martin Mull, Vincent Schiavelli, and Ami Dolenz.

It has about 5 titles. It’s a Civil War Zombie movie. I’ve never seen it. There were 30 pages of exposition at the beginning of the screenplay with none of the main characters. I don’t know if you know anything about movies, but you need to have the main characters in the movie immediately. You’re not going to wait a half hour to introduce them. Having 30 pages without the main characters is ridiculous. All the things we were in got cut out. It was one of Billy Bob Thornton’s early roles.

There was a point where my career was not where I wanted it to go. It was sort of on a downward spiral. Matt Le Blanc was in this movie. This was before Friends. Matt had done two or three shows for Fox. They did a spin off of Married with Children with him and he wasn’t very good in it. It got bad reviews.

They kept trying to make Matt LeBlanc a star and it never worked. I’m sitting in the 120 degree in the fucked desert of California wearing this gray warden Civil War suit with this stupid Zombie makeup on. I’m thinking what went wrong with my life and career? You know what my career may be in the shitter, but at least I’m not Matt LeBlanc because that guy is going nowhere! I was completely and totally wrong.

Matt LeBlanc is like anyone once he finds his role he’s fine. He’s very charming and good. He’s a nice guy. I see him from time to time and I think he’s great on Friends.

That part he plays on Friends is perfect for him. That’s what everyone is working for - that part that is perfect for them.

He didn’t take any shit from anyone. He’s very honest, and crass. I love that in people. When you know exactly where you stand with someone. He’s from Arkansas and I’m from Oklahoma. We got along very well because we both come from the same "no bullshit" type of places.

Eric Stoltz did an HBO movie with him and he has a great story. Billy Bob Thornton is doing a pro shot. He’s in a car. When you do a routine in a car you’re not actually driving. They tow you in a truck.

HBO was fucking with the script and the director. They fired all these people. Everybody on this HBO movie was miserable, but they had these great actors Eric Stoltz and Billy Bob Thornton. They started a take and as they were rolling he said, "Listen. You people at HBO I’m never going to work for you again. You’ve alienated this entire cast and crew. Everyone hates you and your ideas are stupid. You just have to remember you’re just TV. You think your movies and shit & you’re just fucking TV." Then he went and did a great take so they had to print it.

In dailies that night or the next day all the HBO executives had to watch this. Everything you need to know about Billy Bob Thornton is from that story. Eric has an audio tape of what Billy Bob Thornton was saying. It was beautiful.

The movie Bad Dreams sounds familiar.

Andrew Fleming directed it and he went on to do a bunch of other stuff.

It was heavily inspired by Elm Street. The girl comes out of a coma 30 years later after she was in a cult as a little girl. The lead guy had set himself on fire when he was a young guy.

It was just weird. The lead girl Jennifer Rubin was in A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors.

Peter Scolari. He’s very happy; he’s got a great family, and a fine career. We played Soviet Spies posing as a British pop band. The show ran for a few years in syndication.

Exactly.

We did 20 episodes of that, but it only ran in two cities. It was very popular where it ran.
 

Ruth Buzzi ruled. I actually met Ruth Buzzi because my dad was friends with her when he was trying to be an actor in the late 1960’s. He had gotten me her autograph because I was a huge fan of Laugh In.

Yea, that was a great show. She remembered my dad. She was awesome and great. I was so excited to work with her. More than really anyone.

Hollywood Palms is the movie I wrote with Patrick Labyorteaux who’s also in Summer School and Ski School with me. He ended up on JAG which I think just got cancelled.

It’s actually just got released on DVD and you can order it on Amazon.com. I love the movie and it came out exactly the way I wanted it to. I have no complaints about it other than it never hit the theater.

It went under. I worked there for three years. It was good for me. I had this other skill now. I wasn’t dependent on showbiz. I started working more acting than I had in years. There’s this weird thing when you don’t need the job people respond to you. I fortunately now have a good enough voiceover career that I don’t have to do any other job.

Thanks.

I clicked on a few MP3’s on your website for Geico.

Most are radio spots. The ones that are doing great right now are the Geico TV spots.

No, I’m the voice. I’m not the actor in it.

You have to stop smoking so much crack.

It’s amazing. It’s your tenacity. That’s good.

Ah. It’s worth it.

I don’t drink or smoke pot.

Not since 1981.

I thought it might possibly become a problem so I stopped.

It’s also important to know that it doesn’t happen a lot. Some people function just fine doing drugs and alcohol.

I think its like Toupees you only see the bad ones. It’s the guy who trips on the weekends and has a job and a family. You don’t hear about that guy because he’s not driving his car into a house.

Ski School

You pretty much covered everything.

Gayosity was fucking horrible.

There’s this thing called instant films. You write it, they shoot it for a day, and that night they edit it, and the next day they show it. Gayosity was one of those pieces.

Gayosity was a miserable, failed experiment by this asshole, cock director. He went through a good script and thought I’m going to make it a musical because I’m an asshole.

He tried to be cool, but he fucked it up.

If I do TV I do interesting stuff. I’ve had guest star parts in ER, Will & Grace, and Felicity.
 

When I was a kid of about 5 or 6 I was playing in my room I had this little army man and I was singing, "I’m Surfin. I’m Surfin." My mom came in and said, "Stop doing that. That’s terrible!"

She thought I was saying, "I’m Sirhan. I’m Sirhan." The guy who killed Bobby Kennedy.

It must have really freaked her out. It’s like a kid today singing, "I’m Osama bin Landen".

My pretentious answer for that is, "If you’re doing it right you always feel naked."

You’re bearing your soul and skin to the world.

And your balls.

I think it’s going to be an Easter Egg on the Aristocrats DVD.

We shot it with a consumer video camera.

The most beautiful thing about the movie is that it doesn’t matter if it’s in focus or not. It’s the idea about the movie that is so wonderful and pure that people fucking care about.

I always go for it.

There’s this serial show on Sacred Fool that’s going on. I’m excited about producing Billy the MIME show. He’s this fucked up, insane MIME. He’s in The Aristocrats movie. He tells the Aristocrats joke as a MIME. You see him sucking off a dog. He has a one man show. It’s beautiful and I’m excited about that. That’s going on from the beginning of October through the rest of the year.

Space Invaders. When I was in High School I delivered Pizza and the place had Space Invaders. I also enjoyed Dig Dug and Defender.

I’m in the Thorn Birds rock band. We’re almost finished with our latest CD.

That’s how the song came about.

Anything that keeps me out of trouble.

None and that’s why I am who I am.

Sure.

I don’t know anything about that.

The midget in that was in Bad Santa.

I’ve met Bridgette the midget.

Not as much as I’d like.

That’s not true. There’s always a place for masturbation. I think it’s an important field.

No

It goes in cycles don’t you?

Sometimes we just want to be held.
 

Dean's website is chock full-o-hilarity: http://www.deancameron.com/
Music from the rock band Dean's in: http://www.thethornbirds.net/
The two man show Dean Wrote: http://www.spamscamscam.com/
In LA come see Billy the MIME: http://www.seebillythemime.com/

Listen to the entire interview: http://www.clickhere.com/