Rip Torn had, like, lessons in everything he said, and one of them was, "I know that an actor can undermine anything a director tells him to do by making fun of it." And he thought that that's what I did.

I remember one afternoon when we were out on a golf course somewhere, and Lauren Bacall, James Garner, and Jack Lemmon were sitting there in deck chairs when I went off to do another scene. And I said something like, "Hey, where have you guys been?" And they said, "Oh, we were down at the clubhouse. We saw your scene!" And Jack Lemmon looked at James Garner, and James Garner looked back at me, and then they both looked back at me and said in unison, "You bet your ass it is!" So I've been up there with the greats. I've had my fleeting moments with theatrical genius.

I was a barfly, so going to work and acting and rehearsing and then going and sitting in a bar and drinking and then going home was sort of my lifestyle. And there was none of that out here in the '70s when I was lucky enough to get movies, and nobody else that I knew was working in movies at that point. I didn't really have a lot of movie friends.

Denzel Washington was so great at The Great Debaters, so focused and talented. That was just an honor to be cast in that, for the most part. I was fat, and I guess the casting director sold him on me. He actually said to me during the scene, "You know, I've always found that less is more," which is an expression that you've heard a million times, but it was a nice way of telling me I was overdoing it.

Paul Schrader, he's a... son of a gun. He's a very feisty, very straightforward guy. He's your auteur director. He sent me to a fat farm down in Palm Springs, I think it was, and got mad because he said, "You're just getting massages and backrubs!" He got the bill, he looked at the itemization, and he said, "You're not doing anything to lose weight! I could've had William Hurt for this part!" And I said, "Well, you're stuck with me, so..." He was funny, though.

When my agent called me up and said, "Do you want to be in a movie called Sharknado?" I said, "What is it about? Is it really about sharks falling out of the sky and eating people?" And she said, "Yes." And I said, "Definitely. That is going to be a huge hit. That is going to put to rest the Home Alone dad image. I'm going to be the Sharknado drunk instead, hopefully." And I was right. I don't know how I knew that, but I just knew that Sharknado was going be a huge hit.

Martin Scorsese was very much the actor's director. We were all very in awe of Martin Scorsese.