Though Matt Keeslar is not yet the big star he’s surely going to be, you’ve probably caught at least one of his film, TV, or live theater appearances. The Juilliard-trained actor’s highest-profile New York stage role to date was in Nicky Silver’s
Fit to Be Tied. His TV work includes the
Dune miniseries, in which he played Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (there’s a mouthful!), and a movie called
Durango, in which he co-starred with Brenda Fricker, Patrick Bergin, and George Hearn. On the big screen, Matt has displayed his versatility in
The Run of the Country (with Albert Finney),
Splendor,
The Last Days of Disco, and
Psycho Beach Party. Even if you missed those movies, chances are that you saw him as Johnny Savage, the studly grease monkey recruited by Corky St. Clair to star in the community theater musical “Red, White, and Blaine” in the hilarious
Waiting for Guffman.
Now, he’s co-starring with T.R. Knight (Scattergood, Noises Off) and Kellie Overbey Shane (Betty’s Summer Vacation, Gone Home, Comic Potential) in Earth to Bucky, a new comedy by Jack Heifner that’s having its world premiere at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor. I spoke with Matt at a Manhattan rehearsal studio a week before the show’s opening on July 12.
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THEATERMANIA: So, the title of the play is Earth to Bucky. Are you Bucky?
MATT KEESLAR: No, I’m Ricky. Bucky is my younger brother, played by T.R. Knight. And Kellie plays this girl that Ricky dated in high school, briefly. She’s a sort of a femme fatale who works over at the Hair Carousel, the one beauty salon on Main Street. We don’t know exactly where the play is set — but they reference Mildred, Texas, so it’s in Texas.
TM: I understand that the play was first done in a reading series at Bay Street. Were you in that reading?
MATT: No. Kellie was involved with that, and so was Tom Caruso, the director. I think Bay Street picked this play for a full production because it was the one that made people laugh the most. It’s pretty funny!
TM: Would you describe it as a romantic comedy?
MATT: You know, in a strange way, it is. The way the story is split up between the three characters makes it a little bit more complicated than that. But yeah, in the end, you can either look at it as a romantic comedy or sort of a madcap party. I’ve never worked at Bay Street before but everyone that I’ve met has been very, very sweet. And it’s nice to do summer theater and get out of the city.
TM: You’ve done some TV work lately but I’m not aware of your having been on stage in New York in the past several years.
MATT: The last show that I did was at the Vineyard Theatre and it was not the greatest experience for me. Really, it’s kind of what inspired me to move to L.A. I’ve been living there for the past four years.
TM: Yes, I saw that show at the Vineyard, but I can’t remember the title.
MATT: It was called Mercy, and that’s sort of what the audience was screaming for while we were doing it. Everyone on that show was vying for a television development deal. By the time it was over, I was like, “Why the fuck am I in New York? I could be in L.A. and surrounded by the same superfluous crap.” They weren’t bad people or anything, but it was a bad situation. Actors have to make money, of course, and they’ll do it any way they can. But the more money that’s involved, the less art is stimulated.
TM: What would be your ideal career? What kind of projects would it involve?
MATT: Well, I would love to be doing theater again. That’s kind of why I came back to do this play and why I’m actively looking for parts on stage — not necessarily in New York, but it would be nice to be back here doing that. I’ve also worked at South Coast Rep quite a bit, and that’s a great venue.
TM: You were terrific in the film version of Charles Busch’s Psycho Beach Party, even though I didn’t think the movie itself was very good. I know what they were trying to do in giving Charles’s part to a biological female and so on, but I don’t think it worked.
MATT: No, it didn’t. The reality is that you have to see Charles perform those parts because he does them with such flair. I think he’s wonderful. In fact, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom was one of the first plays that I received from my Fireside Theatre Collection when I was in high school in Michigan. Maybe it was the title that attracted me to it at first, but I thought it was hysterical. And one of the first plays that I ever saw in New York was Red Scare on Sunset. So Charles’s work had a huge influence on me.
TM: What shows did you do at South Coast Rep?
MATT: I was Septimus in Arcadia, which I think is one of the better plays of the past 20 years or so. And I did a new play called The Interrogation of Nathan Hale. I’ve also been an active member of their reading series, and they have a new works festival in the summer that I participate in. They have a beautiful, brand new theater there. It’s great to be involved.
TM: The theater scene in and around L.A. certainly seems to have improved in recent years, in terms of both quality and quantity.
MATT: Yes. I think it’s partly because the cost of living in New York reached its zenith in the period prior to 9/11 and that forced a lot of trained actors to move out to L.A. Some smaller theater companies started to crop up and these actors keep busy there while pursuing work in TV or movies.
TM: Speaking of which: I would have thought you’d be a big film or TV star by now.
MATT: Maybe I’ve been avoiding it. It’s really hard to say: Do you choose or do they choose? I’ve not been a really successful television of film actor for whatever reason, either because of my own personal integrity or because I just can’t do it. It can be so hard to work under those circumstances — the corporate politics and all that.
TM: I’m amazed that anything ever gets done in film or TV, just from my small awareness of the politics that must be involved. When something actually turns out well, you think, “How did this ever happen?” Probably, it’s because one very strong person has a vision and is able to realize it. It’s hard to produce art by committee.
MATT: Do you find that’s happening in New York: theater by committee?
TM: Well, maybe more so now than it used to be, with the involvement of corporate entities. But the monetary stakes are still so much lower than they are in Hollywood, and the sheer amount of people involved is so much smaller, that I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as it is in film and TV.
MATT: Right. It’s nice to be in a place where you can actually have a say in what you’re doing and feel like you are able to explore an art without having this committee looming over you. Just the idea of having Big Brother or the men in suits watching you all the time makes you much more self-conscious — unless you’re a maverick and you spurn authority, which is awesome!
TM: I can’t let you go without asking about Waiting for Guffman. There are several deleted scenes on the DVD, and you’re in one or two of them. Have you seen the DVD?
MATT: Actually, no, I haven’t. But I think one of the deleted scenes is with Brian Doyle Murray and Frances Fisher and me in my house with Christopher Guest. Corky is trying to convince my parents that I should go into the theater, and he uses every tactic that he can; he talks about ice-skating when he was a young boy and he tries to relate to Brian Doyle Murray about hunting and things like that. It’s a very funny scene.
TM: It must have been so much fun to be in that movie, even though your part is small. Basically, your character is just a device…
MATT: …to get Corky into the show. Yeah, pretty much!
TM: Most of the Guffman actors were also in Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. Do you think you might work with that group again?
MATT: I would love to. I saw A Mighty Wind and I thought it was hysterical. You know, I believe one of Chris’s first projects was a musical that he wrote when he was just out of NYU. I’m not sure if it got produced or not, but I would be curious to know about that. He’s talented in so many ways — as a musician, as a director, as an actor. He’s a genius. Of course, it’s great to see everyone else in those movies, too — Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard. You really couldn’t put together a better company, so why would you need to cast anyone else? For Guffman, I think Chris went through the 60-or-so hours of footage he had shot, picked out the funniest parts, and tried to work them into a narrative.
TM: Were many other scenes cut?
MATT: They did interviews with everyone and there were scenes of the rehearsals, but a lot of those were cut out. We actually got the whole script and score of “Red, White, and Blaine” and we literally rehearsed it throughout the course of the production. We had a full show by the time it was done.
TM: I haven’t looked at the DVD in a while, but I remember that it has complete versions of several numbers that were cut entirely or severely edited. And I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there is a “cast album” of Red, White, and Blaine. It only has about six cuts on it, and I don’t think it was commercially released, but somebody gave me a copy of it.
MATT: That’s probably the stuff that they did in the studio and then lip-synched to during the filming. One song, “A Penny For Your Thoughts,” is actually kind of pretty. While we were doing it, Chris said he thought that was the only number you could take and sing out of the context of the movie. [Sings:] “A penny for your thoughts…”
TM: Do you sing? Would you ever do a musical?
MATT: I sang when I was in high school; I was really into community theater and musical theater. Then, when I went to Juilliard, I just didn’t concentrate on it. Juilliard is a straight-play school, you know. They’re all about classical theater and stuff like that.
TM: Do you have anything on the horizon after Earth to Bucky?
MATT: Well, I’m going to do a play called The Disposal in L.A. It’s by William Inge and it was written in the ’60s. We’re going to do it at a 99-seat theater. Basically, it’s an anti-death penalty piece about these three people on death row. It covers the last 24 hours in the life of one of the characters. He’s visited by his father and a priest; I’m playing the priest. Basically, the guy recounts his life and talks about why he killed his pregnant wife. The director is Bill Alderson, who was a teacher at the Neighborhood Playhouse for a long time. He was Meisner’s assistant for years and years. Now he’s out in L.A and has been trying to put on productions there, mostly using people that went to the Neighborhood Playhouse and then sort of migrated to the West Coast.
TM: Sounds intriguing. Any plans after that?
MATT: No. I’m excited about Earth to Bucky, being out on Long Island and having a little summer vacation. I hear that Sag Harbor has got, like, beaches — nice, clean beaches that you can swim in and everything! I’m really looking forward to that.
