Red Buttons

'Cause when you second you said chemistry, I was thinking-

Red buttons, baby

... oh, red buttons.

Yeah, red buttons.

This is the best Marvel movie ever made, okay? That's the easiest way to describe this movie.

Um-

Like, there's no way anyone's identifying who this is from that illustration at all.

[laughs]

I had witnessed despair and, um, wanted, wanted to explore that.

I remember when Red Buttons was cast, we decided that in order to, to try to physically understand and psychologically understand what these marathon dancers went through, that we would try to do it.

So we got, uh, Warner Brothers to agree to close off, to close off the s- the set had already been built, and let us stay there for a few days.

Um, and so Red Buttons and I began to dance, and we did it the way you do in the movie.

Um, and I can't remember the exact time lapses, but you dance for, like, f- I don't know, an hour and 50 minutes, and then you have 10 minutes to rest, and then you get back up, the gong goes off, and you do it again.

And what we found was what we'd been told, the, the...

And it's, it's just an awesome thing to see a young, a young talent be, be born.

It's also awesome to see someone like Gig Young, who had never really been taken seriously as an actor, and is at the end of his career, be given an opportunity to bring all of the stuff that had been stuffed into his thimble that he had never had a chance to expose either, and it's kinda like, "Screw it, I'm gonna let it all out here." And, and, uh, that w- that was exciting.

And I had nurses there, and I had doctors, and I had oxygen there because some of the people were older.

Red Buttons wasn't a kid.

I didn't know what was gonna happen.

Uh, but what we would do then is we'd get set up for another take, get two or three cameras on it, and then start them running, and let them go and run and run and run, and I would keep pushing them.

It's so ridiculous.

It's all said in one, like, pretty awesome conversation in the hospital where he ends up in the hospital with Red Buttons.

And Red Buttons is so fucking funny in this movie.

He plays, like, an old school, uh, journalist kind of thing.

And Red Buttons, he has this great dialogue in the film where he's like, "You know, I came to the hospital," and he's like, "I had indigestion.

You know, and they're saying I have a fucking coronary or blah, blah, blah." And he's like, "Well, as long as I have, uh, insurance, you know, there's, they're gonna keep me here." [laughs] And that's literally the commentary of the entire movie.

Of course they're gonna keep you here, 'cause they're gonna keep getting money from it, right? It's kind of funny.

It's just like everything he says is out of control, over the top, ridiculous.

...

Red Buttons.

Hang on, who? Red Buttons?

Red Buttons.

The Red Buttons?

The Red Buttons.

His roommate?

His roommate in the hospital as an old journalist.

Fanta- It was fantastic.

And then, um, I, on some game shows Buddy Hack was on there, Milton Berle's on there, Red Buttons on there.

They had a big influence on me for comedy.

I got to know them pretty well and, and just, and respect them so much.

You know, I didn't learn anything.

I, I liked Red Buttons' performance as Sailor.

Yeah.

And, uh, fuck.

[laughs] It's, it's all very bleak.

I, I associate Red Buttons with comedy, but he didn't really make me laugh at any point.

[laughs]

Maybe 'cause I, I knew where his story was headed.

To, to touch on that really quickly, and they'll come up throughout the, the, the listing, Broderick Crawford, Dan Dailey, and Celeste Holm, all Oscar winners, right, were in his J. Edgar movie, J. Edgar Hoover movie.

Red Buttons was in The Ambulance.

Bernard Herrmann, as there was the composer for the It's Alive movies, and 13 ti- Os- 13 time Oscar-nominated cinematographer George Folsey, uh, was on his, was the cinematographer for his first ever movie, Bone.

Uh, and brought the entire set with him, basically, of all these kind of really kind of old, in their 70s, 80s, uh, highly acclaimed kinda filmmakers, uh, to that movie.

so we're, we're talking, we're getting...

We hadn't been seated yet, and I looked across the room and I saw Red Buttons sitting across the room.

[laughs]

And I said, uh, "Uh, AC, do you know Red Buttons?" He goes, "Do I know...

Like, sure I know AC.

I mean, uh, Red Buttons.

You wanna meet him?" And I said, "Yes, I wanna meet him." And so we go over, and, uh, Red's sitting at a table with his agent, a big agent from William Morris.

Uh, you probably know who, but I can't think of his name now.

true.

Red Buttons once said, if you have to do bestiality, do it with a horse.

At least this way you get a ride home.

Yeah.