Stanley Switek: Michael Talbott


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From the book "The Making Of Miami Vice" by MacGregor and MacGregor (I recently purchased)The door to the dressing room with the picture of Elvis Presley in the windowswings open and Michael Talbott, a.k.a. Stanley Switek, steps out. He strides over to aB-52 which rests like a wounded bird near a hangar of a south Florida airport. This isthe set for a scene in the second season episode called "Trust Fund Pirates"."Okay you guys, let's move. Let's go. Move it," he yells. The assistant directors, grips,cameramen, and production assistants look up from what they're doing.Talbott takes a puff from the cheroot in his mouth, then stomps across the set."What's the hold-up here," he says, and appears to bounce his head off the wing of theplane.Tough guy turns klutz and everyone laughs. The impromptu skit is Michael's way ofloosening up the crew for the next scene. "When I'm working we have a good time. I'mthe comic relief," he explains, sitting back on the canvas chair with his name on it.But Michael Talbott is more than the class clown. He's an astute businessman, asupporter of manatees, a cheerleader for America, and an ardent booster of the show. Infact, he once went out on a Friday evening and knocked on doors at random, askingpeople if they were watching MIAMI VICE."I've worked for twelve years to get one of these chairs with my name on it," he says,puffing again on his cigar. You suspect this is another prank and the chair is going tocollapse. Talbott will stand up, brush himself off, and say, "So much for that." But itdoesn't. This time he's serious.As he waits for a noisy generator to be turned off so the scene can be shot, the husky,square-jawed actor, who was born on Ground Hog Day in 1955, describes the Iowafarm boy who graduated from Waverly Shellrock High and struck out for Hollywood in1973."I grew up on a 160-acre farm with two goats, Waylon and Willie, and about 400cats. Yup, Waverly, Iowa. I used to watch TV a lot. One day I read in TV Guide that Mr.Whipple made $300,000 a year for saying, "Don't squeeze the Charmin." That got methinking, because at the time I was eighteen and earning $2.05 an hour shoveling hotasphalt. So one day while washing tar out of my hair with diesel fuel, I decided I'd hadenough. I loaded up my 1969 Pontiac LeMans and drove to Hollywood."Talbott pauses a moment. "Well, it actually all started when I was a sophomore. Oneafternoon while I was working in a gas station the new drama teacher pulled up andasked directions to the high school. I took him over there, and he suggested I take hisclass. I thought that wasn't for me, but two days later school began and I became adrama student. I got the lead in a play called Don't Drink the Water. Then I played KingBuphaneus in Barefoot in Athens because I could grow a beard."The prop master hands Michael a green leather pilot's helmet, which he tries on. "Iwas the class clown, always getting kicked out of school because people didn'tunderstand me. They said, 'You're a troublemaker.' In the Fifties, people thought hyperkids were sick, that there was something wrong with them. I wasn't sick. I was just ahappy kid. Now I'm making money being a class clown."Anyhow, after I graduated without an education, I knew I wanted to go to eitherNew York or Hollywood. I was scared of New York, all those tall buildings, so Idecided on Hollywood. At the time, I'd never seen a palm tree, or the ocean. I'd nevereven been out of Iowa."The director of the episode, Jim Johnston, calls for a rehearsal, and John Diehl, whoplays Switek's partner, sits down in the chair next to Michael. "This won't take long,"Talbott says. "We have to rehearse." He looks over at Diehl. "You ready?"Diehl nods."So why did you bring the girl?"Diehl shrugs. '1 don't know."They both look at Johnston, who nods."End of rehearsal," Talbott says, and removes the leather helmet. "Let's see. Wherewas I. Okay, I arrive in Hollywood and get a job as a houseboy and gardener for afamily in exchange for a room in their guest house. The daughter was an actress andone day she shows me an ad in Variety for an actor who also has knowledge of football.It was for a part in a feature film called Blood Sport with Ben Johnson and LarryHagman for the ABC Movie of the Week."So I call up Twentieth Century Fox on a Friday and ask for directions. I drive overthere and walk in. The secretary says I look okay and sends me down to this plushoffice with shag carpeting. I go in, and the producer starts laughing. I thought I'd donesomething wrong and started to leave. But he says, 'No, no. Read this.' It was the script.I read it and he hands me a plane ticket and on Sunday I went to Sacramento for sixweeks for the feature. No pictures, no agent, no union, no nothing. It was two weeksafter I got to Hollywood."A couple of onlookers have moved into hear what he's saying. "This is a true story.So I called up my mother, and tell her I'm in a movie. She says, 'Quit lying. How areyou? Do you need money?' I say, 'Mom, you wouldn't give me money if I did. But I'mreally in a movie."Everyone is ready to shoot the scene. Michael stands up and walks over to thecockpit of the plane. Halfway there he turns back. "Frisbee. Remind me of Frisbee andwe'll pick it up from there."The scene is shot and re-shot. A few minutes later Talbott returns to his chair andcontinues where he left off. His quick start as a professional actor didn't mark him forimmediate success.After his film debut, he found a job working in a Frisbee factory onthe graveyard shift. He makes it sound like an antic out of I Love Lucy. "I'd open thedoor, the Frisbee would pop out, and I'd close the door, and do it again." It's easy toimagine Frisbees piling up behind Michael's door as he talks to someone and a dozen ofthem bursting out as the foreman watches.But Michael is trying to be serious. "I did that at night so I could keep my days openfor interviews. I found an agent, started meeting people, getting parts." What followedover the next decade was the typical story of the struggling actor looking for a bigbreak. "I would get rejected nine out of ten interviews." He shakes his head. "If you cansurvive the rejections in the acting business, you can survive anything."Over the years he's appeared on some forty-five TV shows, guest appearances onLou Grant, M*A*S*H, and movies for TV. Along the way he met actor Brian Dennehywho, he says, has been instrumental in his career. "I learned from Brian that I just haveto be myself as an actor. He's my buddy; he's helped me a lot." The two have rented ahouse in LA for eight years.Dennehy, the star of Silverado, the sheriff in First Blood, the alien in Cocoon, in fact,introduced Talbott to Michael Mann. "Brian had been making a movie for televisionwith Mann called The Jericho Mile. When the filming was over, I threw a party for Brianin which everyone dressed up like tourists, wearing hats and name tags and took a busaround to LA hot spots.During the evening, this guy comes up to me and says he'd like me toplay a part in a movie he's doing in Chicago called Thief with James Caan. Two weeksgo by and I ask my agent if he ever heard from this guy, Michael Mann, whoever he is,and he says no. But the following day Mann calls, and sends the plane ticket. I went toChicago for two weeks to play the part of Astro Al, a character who wears a fish bowlfor a helmet, and a glove with six fingers."The part eventually was edited out of the movie. But Michael Mann didn't forgethim. "Three years later Brian heard that Mann was doing a series called Gold Coast—that was the original name of VICE—and asks him for a part. He says, 'Brian, I'd love tohave you. But there's nothing for you. Where's .your idiot friend Talbott?"Talbott was rehearsing for a part in a play at the time, but that didn't stop him fromimmediately trying out for the part. "After I get the call I get up to leave and the directorsays, 'Where you going? We're rehearsing.' I say, 'The hell we are. I've got a shot at aseries. I'm out of here."When he met with Mann, they discussed the show and the character. "All they hadwas a name for him, Switek. We talked for a while and he said, 'We'll see you in Miami.'That was it."When work began on the pilot, Talbott and John Diehl got together and made up thebackgrounds and lifestyle of their characters. "We gave Switek and Zito their firstnames, Stanley and Larry, and created their look, the clothes, that they go bowling anddrink beer. Switek wears bowling shirts and golf shoes. We're good cops. We may be alittle slow at times, but we're there if they need us. I mean we're not going to let ourbuddies down."To prepare for the role, Talbott and Diehl became understudies of real Miami Vicecops, joining them on several raids. When Talbott talks about his experiences with thevice cops, there's a certain excitement in his voice, like that of a kid playing war."Everybody has a radio, and what happens is all of a sudden they clear the channelsbefore they hit a house. Then whoever is going in has a cassette and you start hearingthe Springsteen tune, 'She's going down, down, down; She's going down, down, down,'and the next thing you know the SWAT team is charging the house, kicking the doorsdown and you're running in after them."Your adrenaline is really pumping because everybody has a gun but you. TheSWAT team usually secures the place first, then we go in. When you go into a freebasehouse, the ether hits you first. You have to duck down or it'll burn eyes. You can see theair it's so thick."One time, after the show had become a hit, Talbott and Diehl joined a bust, and oneof the suspects recognized him. "This guy was laying on the floor and he washandcuffed, and he kept looking at me like he knew who I was. I said to myself, 'MyGod, this guy's going to kill me. He's going to get out of jail, and come after me."While the success of VICE means that he's often recognized on the street, it's rarelyan annoyance. "It doesn't hinder me. I find it gratifying after kicking around so manyyears. It's when they stop asking for autographs that you're in trouble. I get abouttwenty or thirty fan letters a week, and answer them all personally. I remember myroots."Michael Talbott's hero, like Switek's, is Elvis Presley. He recently read Elvis byAlbert Goldman, but has put off reading Priscilla Presley's biography. "I don't know ifI want to read it or not. She kind of badmouths the King. I like Elvis because he didit on his own, an illiterate kid from Mississippi. He came from the backwoods, andmaybe that's kind of the way I think of myself. I was eighteen, a high school graduatewith no education when I went out to Hollywood. I didn't know any better."He smiles. "I wanted to go places, travel, and why not travel on someone else'smoney. What a great country America is. If you can't make it here, boy, I don't know."Besides Elvis, Talbott also admires Lee Iacocca, whose biography he read in hisspare moments on the set. "Michael is a very good businessman," says John Diehl. "He'sreally got a head for it. He's making the most of the opportunity with the show."Talbott, in fact, readily admits that some weekends he earns double the amount heearns for each episode by making appearances at car shows. "I've gone all over,Louisville, Detroit, New York, Toronto. They fly me there, put me in a hotel, and payme to sign my autographs. God, I love America. What a country. Free enterprise."He says he's amazed by how much interest people have in the show and thecharacters. "Some people come up to me and even repeat my lines from the show, stuff Ican't even remember. A lot of people see John and I as just regular guys, and they canidentify with us."Even though he hasn't appeared on magazine covers like the show's leading men, hedid appear on the front page of the Miami Herald in March 1986. He was pictured, withfellow businessman Lee Iacocca, who was on the set as a guest star, at Talbott'sinvitation, in one of the second season's episodes.Talbott says he's begun investing his earnings in farms in Iowa. "I have my eye onthree farms surrounding my mother's farm. I don't want to see that prime Iowa soilcovered with pavement for a used car lot. It's too bad about all the farmers losing theirland, but they should have seen it coming."His success also means he was able to buy his mother a satellite dish for the farmhouse. "I decided to buy it after I called her one Saturday morning and asked her whatshe thought of the show last night. She said, 'Well, I didn't get to see it. Girls' basketballwas on. I said, 'Girls' basketball. We'll fix them."Talbott laughs and continues his story. "Not long after that I was at the NBCaffiliate's convention in Los Angeles and waited for this guy who's the representativefrom the station in Waterloo, Iowa. So I introduce myself and say, 'I was wonderingwhy you pre-empted MIAMI VICE three times in a row. He said girls' basketball paysmore than VICE. I told him, 'I don't need you any more. I'm buying my mother asatellite dish." When he last checked, VICE was holding its own against girl's basketballin Waterloo.Michael, who has an older brother and a younger sister, returns to his rural rootsthree or four times a year. "Every time I go back, I keep busy with chores like paintingthe barn." The people who used to make fun of the class clown now want to be hisbuddy, he notes. "But I remember how they treated me so I ignore them."On an average week, he works two or three days for VICE. "The other days I drivearound Coconut Grove in a golf cart. I complained to the Chamber of Commerce aboutthe traffic in the Grove so the next thing I know the lady who's head of the Miamitourism bureau sent me this golf cart donated by a country club."Now Talbott is jokingly known as the mayor of Coconut Grove. "The way I becamemayor happened one day when I was walking down the street and a bunch of peoplerecognized me. So I'm shaking hands and chatting and then I go into one of the storesand the manager says, 'What're you doing, running for office?' I said, 'I'm the mayor.'Now when I go out everybody yells, 'Hi, Mr. Mayor.' I was actually running for Pope,but that office is already taken."He doesn't say much about it, but Michael also donates some of his spare time tobenefits. He's raised money for the families of police officers killed on duty, and is also abooster of the endangered manatees. "Last month I raced the bug van in a benefit for themanatees. Now I'm doing a public service ad in which I go underwater in a tank with amanatee. They're going to put labels, "Michael Talbott" under me and "Manatee" underthe manatee, so you can tell the difference."Finally, all the equipment has been cleared away. But Michael is still sitting in hischair at the corner of the airport, talking. He lauds Jonathan Winters, a hero from hischildhood, and curses John Belushi for dying. "That guy cheated us. He checked out.How dare him. I don't do drugs so I don't tolerate them at all. I've never done coke.Never. I have no interest in it."Cigars are his thing. He lights up a fresh one and blows a cloud of smoke toward theB-52. When you're on a successful show people notice things like that.Cancer Society complained about Don Johnson's smoking. He quit. And Talbott?The Cigar Association of America hired him to plug their product. But all did not gowell on that assignment. His plane arrived late in New York and the hotel where he wasto stay gave away his $500 suite. He wandered disconsolately down to the hotel bar at Ia.m. but was turned away because he wasn't wearing a jacket."The same thing happened to Phil Collins at that bar," Michael notes. "So he calledhis next album, No Jacket Required."But before he leaves Talbott walks over to the fence where a couple dozen peopleare gathered. "I like to greet the fans," he says. "How are you all?" he yells."Who're you?" a woman calls."Nobody," Talbott replies."Lady, he's the guy in the bug van," a teenager shouts. "Hey, isn't America great,folks?" Michael says, as he poses for a photo.Ain't it the truth. Try watching 'em make a movie in Moscow. Elvis and Iacocca.God, country, and MIAMI VICE.

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