“All right, Mr. Winkler, I’m ready for my close-up.”
I am a movie star.
Or, as a film website based in France refers to me, “acteur étranger” (which means either “foreign actor” or “one who acts strange”).
I have a major role in the just-released “Rocky Balboa.”
(Cue the music: “Don-don, don-don-don, don-don-don, don-don-don …)
I’m busy preparing my Oscar acceptance speech: “I’d like to thank the Academy members who voted for me and all the little people who made this night, as Yogi Berra said, necessary. You love me, you really love me. I’ve come a long way from making Christmas bows in a department store and drinking Boone’s Farm.”
This wasn’t my first role, of course. I was unforgettable as Enoch Snow in “Carousel” in high school. I was sitting in the back of a courtroom in a “Perry Mason.” I had a minor part in the controversial cable TV series “The Playmakers,” and my new DVD, “ESPN’s Year in Review,” is available today (Wal-Mart, $9.95). I also have played “a clown,” according to New York and Miami newspaper reviews, on national television.
But this was my best role. My character’s name is “Woodrow W. Paige,” commentator No. 1. I’m listed 13th in the credits behind Sylvester Stallone (“Rocky”), Talia Shire (“Adrian”) and Mike Tyson (“Mike Tyson”).
My success story began in Las Vegas a little over a year ago, when I was asked if I wanted to try out for a part in “Rocky VI.” The movie was filming at a real fight in Vegas.
My answer was: “Are you kidding me? Rocky VI? Stallone must be 60 years old. I’d rather be the new James Bond.” That was the end of the story, or so I thought.
About six months ago I got a call to be in the renamed “Rocky Balboa” because Stallone, who had written and starred in all movies about a Chuck Wepner-like tomato-can fighter, liked watching one of my TV shows – “Cold Pizza.” This time I jumped, and I got an e-mail with my segment of the script. I initially thought I would be Rocky’s opponent, but light heavyweight Antonio Tarver was cast as “Mason Dixon.”
We shot the scene without Stallone, but with one of the producers, Charles Winkler, for two hours in June. My half-dozen lines were on a teleprompter, but I hesitated when it was my turn to talk.
“What’s the problem?” Winkler said.
“What’s my motivation?” I replied. DeNiro is concerned about his motivation.
“Your motivation is $500,” Winkler said.
Then I said to Winkler: “It won’t matter, anyway. This won’t get on the big screen.”
However, Winkler said the argument between Skip Bayless and me was the setup to Rocky’s long-awaited comeback. “Adrian has died; Rocky owns a sports bar in south Philly, and he and Paulie are watching you two guys on TV debate how good a heavyweight champ he was. This is a key scene in the movie.”
“Roll it,” I said.
Skip, often negative, claimed “Rocky” wasn’t a great fighter, and I disagreed vehemently.
“He beat them all – Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang, the big Russian. He was right up there with the best.”
Then we hollered at each other some more. I was method acting.
“Let’s do it again, and ad-lib, Woody.” I like that.
Take two. Then take three, seven, 11. Over and over. I tried Brando, then Pacino. My throat was so sore, but this was my craft, and I spoke on.
Finally, “Cut.”
We weren’t finished yet, though. Winkler asked us several questions for the DVD feature, “The Making of Rocky Balboa.”
A star is born.
But my invitation to the premiere in Philadelphia last week must have been lost in the mail because I moved.
I haven’t seen “Rocky Balboa” in Denver. It’s been snowing a lot. But I did “Google” the movie and saw “Woody Paige, actor.”
And you thought I was a common, low-life guttersnipe.
My friend Gil, a film critic who previewed “Rocky 60,” as he calls it, told me: “You got a good bit of face time, but none of your lines got in the movie.” He interviewed Stallone, who apologized for slicing my defense of Rocky but added that I “overacted.”
Woody Paige, overactor.
I had wanted my next role to be Bogart’s “Rick” in the remake of “Casablanca.”
Am I washed up? Is my career as a famous thespian done? Am I another Norma Desmond driving into the Sunset Boulevard of motion pictures?
I’ll always have “Rocky Balboa.”
Yo, Adrian.
Staff writer Woody Paige can be reached at 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com.
