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cepting acting trophies.
In the speech, Hanks paid tribute to his real life high
school acting teacher, who was already out of the closet.
But that got the satirists thinking: What if a movie star
outed his teacher before the proverbial billion people
watching the Oscars? That could certainly prove problem-
atic for the entire school, particularly the principal.
This was much harder than playing the principal in
those John Hughes films whose toughest job is dealing
with the angst of pimple-faced kids. In In & Out, there was
a teacher who was about to be married who was gay. He
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had been outed on national TV by his prized acting stu-
dent, and the straightlaced school was under siege from
tabloid reporters.
When director Frank Oz called to offer me the role of
the principal, he was selling me all the way. I really want
you for this role. I m not going to tell you it s funny, you
know it s funny, he said.
I wanted to work on the movie because I immensely ad-
mired Frank and his films like Little Shop of Horrors and
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, as well as Kevin Kline, who had
already committed to play the teacher. But I had a
dilemma. My granddaughter had just been born, and she
was coming to visit me in Los Angeles at the same time
the movie would be shooting in New York.
Frank, I have a problem, I told him. My grand-
daughter is coming down from San Francisco, so I have
the choice of either waking up in the morning and seeing
your face, or waking up in the morning and seeing my
granddaughter s face. It s no reflection on you, but I d
rather see my granddaughter s face than yours.
Not only did Frank make the schedule and have me
home in time for my granddaughter s arrival, he did it in
spite of the fact that I had come down with the flu and
missed a week of shooting. Maybe he was just tired of see-
ing my face every morning.
"
I also played the President of the United States in the
movie First Family. I didn t model President Manfred
Link on any particular president. I borrowed traits from
four different presidents: the use of power of Lyndon
I Shouldn t Even Be Doing This! 159
*
Johnson, the pettiness of Richard Nixon, the humanity of
Gerald Ford, and the folksiness of Jimmy Carter.
Actually, President Link was the submarine com-
mander promoted a few grades and then elected almost by
chance. In fact, he became president through the back
door. A week before the election, the favorite candidate was
shot, so he stepped in to fill the slot on the ballot and was
elected. Not surprisingly, he was unprepared for the task.
The movie took a weird turn along the way from script
to screen. It was originally about nuclear energy falling
into the wrong hands, but it ended up being about large
vegetables that are tainted by radioactivity. I don t think
the audience was able to establish the connection between
the large vegetables and a clear and present danger to soci-
ety. Suffice it to say, this was not Dr. Strangelove, with the
threat being the end of the world as we know it; that s
about as big as it gets.
So in the scheme of movie presidents, Michael Douglas
in The American President and Kevin Kline in Dave
would be considered two-termers like Ronald Reagan and
Bill Clinton. My President Link was more like William
Henry Harrison, who got sick on inauguration day and
died a month later.
On the other end of the power scale, I played an elf in
the aptly titled comedy Elf. Actually, I was Papa Elf and
Will Ferrell was my adopted son. You d think this would
be a badge of honor for my grandchildren, what with me
playing a toymaker and all, but kids have no sense of
irony.
For instance, they will be having Oreo cookies. You ll
tell them that they are going to turn into an Oreo if they
160 Bob Newhart
*
eat another one, to which they defiantly respond: No, I
won t. I could never turn into an Oreo cookie.
Or I ll explain to my granddaughter Taylor that she is
nine and I m seventy-five, which makes me eight times as
old as her.
Taylor, you will have to do all the birthdays you ve had
in your life eight times to be as old as Poppy, I ll say.
She ll think for a minute and then say something like,
But I haven t had my birthday this year, and I want a
cookies n cream ice cream cake.
So for my granddaughter Annabella, my playing a char-
acter is a tough concept to grasp. She can t quite put it to-
gether.
You are Bob Newhart, she ll say.
Yes, I tell her.
But you re also Poppy. . . .
Yes, I am.
And you re an elf.
Yep.
"
Now that I have mentioned two of my grandchildren, I
need to mention the other five: Maddie, Caroline, William,
Timothy, and Griffin.
> > > > > > >
CHAPTER TEN
Smoking and Drinking
For most of my life I was a chain-smoker. In nearly every
photograph we have from the fifties, sixties, and seventies,
I m holding a cigarette. I always smoked onstage, as did
many other performers in those days. I was so addicted
that if I woke up at night to go to the bathroom, I d light a
cigarette to smoke on the walk.
Smoking is absurd, if you really think about. That was
the premise of my routine Introducing Tobacco to Civi-
lization. In the routine, Sir Walter Raleigh calls the head
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