The Let’s Play Podcast

Season 2, Episode 6

David Patrick Kelly

Actor in Twin Peaks, The Warriors, John Wick

Episode Transcript

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David Patrick Kelly [00:00:00] I always tell young actors that you just make a list of what is great and why, and you keep trying to go for that, you know, so you just I think you just keep aiming for what you really want and then stuff sort of collects around you.

Verta Maloney, the*gameHERs [00:00:23] Welcome to Let's Play by the Gamers, a podcast hosted by actress Kaili Vernoff Dansville Kaili best as the fiery Susan Grimshaw in Red Dead Redemption 2 and Miranda Cowan in GTA 5. Our series features some of the most informed and exciting people in the gaming industry today. Kaili and her guests discuss careers, gaming and so much more. If you like what you hear, be sure to check out thegamehers.com website to hear exclusive bonus material from each of our guests.

Kaili Vernoff [00:00:56] Hey, everybody! Ok, I truly love all my guests, but this one has a very special place in my heart. I am so excited to bring you my conversation with my dear friend and mentor, the legendary actor David Patrick Kelly. Fans will know David or DP, from his truly iconic roles in projects like the Warriors, Commando, The Crow, Twin Peaks, John Wick, and many, many more. Broadway fans will also fondly remember his performance as Da in the Tony Award-winning musical Once. DP shared some incredible stories about growing up in Detroit in the music scene, studying with Marcel Marceau in Paris, and his experiences working with some of the greatest actors and directors in the industry. It was so special to get to dive into all these stories and hear his advice and perspective, and I am completely delighted to share it with you. And be sure to stay tuned till the end of the episode for a special treat. All right, here we go.

Kaili Vernoff [00:01:57] Mr. Kelly?

David Patrick Kelly [00:01:59] [singing] Are you there?

Kaili Vernoff [00:02:00] Yes, I'm here! Hello!

David Patrick Kelly [00:02:03] Nice to hear you.

Kaili Vernoff [00:02:06] It is so nice to hear you!

David Patrick Kelly [00:02:10] How does it sound? [strums]

Kaili Vernoff [00:02:16] It sounds beautiful. It sounds fantastic. Yes. I'm so excited to do this. You know, I've interviewed a lot of people for this show now, and I always get a little nervous, just, you know, making sure that I've done proper research, and I wasn't nervous with you. And then all of a sudden I got super nervous. I was like, oh, my gosh, oh, I almost know him too well.

David Patrick Kelly [00:02:44] I knew you when you were in college!

Kaili Vernoff [00:02:46] You did. That is true. And, you know, you've really had such a profound impact on my life. You know, you've been a mentor to me in the truest sense of the word,and a friend and I have so many just sweet memories of our time together, including, you know, being pregnant at your wedding. You know, it was just...

David Patrick Kelly [00:03:09] And you stayed the whole time and dance the night away.

Kaili Vernoff [00:03:12] I did. We boogied. OK, so I'm just going to dig right in. And I'm realizing that as much as I know about you, there's also a lot of stuff that I don't know. So I'm excited to just ask you everything I want to ask you.

David Patrick Kelly [00:03:29] Oh, great.

Kaili Vernoff [00:03:30] OK, so you were born and raised in Detroit, is that right?

David Patrick Kelly [00:03:36] The Motor City, yes, indeed, on the east side of Detroit. Now I know Eminem talks about eight mile, but we were a little closer in. We were seven mile. And my family is Irish. And on my mom's side, French Canadian and Daniel Murphy from Cork met Emma Martino on the Belle Isle Bridge. If you've ever been to Detroit, it's a beautiful bridge. It leads to a little island that was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the same guy who did Central Park in New York. A couple of other parks...

Kaili Vernoff [00:04:08] I did not know that. I didn't know that. I have not... I've been to Detroit exactly once for a film and I saw nothing.

David Patrick Kelly [00:04:17] Too bad.

Kaili Vernoff [00:04:18] Yeah

David Patrick Kelly [00:04:19] It's a great place. You got to go back. It's booming and, you know, yeah. I think it's going to keep keep rising up, rising up and so many different ways. My very gifted niece, she's actually my cousin's daughter, is an arts curator and left from the Williamsburg area in New York and went back to Detroit and started this great gallery there. There's a booming art gallery scene and it's become quite a food culture. We love to go.

Kaili Vernoff [00:04:53] Yeah, I know a lot of people that made that move that just sort of said New York is too expensive. You can't do anything creative without a huge budget. And Detroit was really the place to go.

David Patrick Kelly [00:05:06] Yeah, that was important for the art world, and it's it's always been that great thing, you know, I mean, Joni Mitchell lived there before she made it big. She lived purposely right next to the Detroit Institute of the Arts because Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had lived there in the 30s doing this amazing mural, which is a world-class attraction that people come to see all the time. So Joni Mitchell wanted to be next to that for inspiration for painting. And she lived in downtown Detroit for a number a good long while. 

Kaili Vernoff [00:05:46] I don't think that I knew that Detroit had sort of always been, you know, like an artistic haven.

David Patrick Kelly [00:05:54] Yeah, a cultural hub. You know, I mean, he must have I don't know much about them, but Edsel Ford, the scion of the Ford family, must have been an eccentric character because he got a commission together and he got Diego Rivera, you know, who is a lifelong communist, to come to Detroit, the Mecca of high capitalism, to do this mural. And there's lots of theories about why they invited him, you know, but it's just amazing thing that people still flock from around the world to see the beautiful Detroit Institute of the Arts, you know, so it's always been this intense mix. It remains to this day of people from across the spectrum of beliefs, but it's very always been a productive place.

Kaili Vernoff [00:06:42] Now you were... You came from a big Irish Catholic family. Right? How many how many siblings did you have?

David Patrick Kelly [00:06:50] My mother called us the seven jewels.

Kaili Vernoff [00:06:53] Oh, that's beautiful.

David Patrick Kelly [00:06:55] Yes. My dear brother passed away two years ago. He was just a little older than me. So there's there's six of us remaining on this earthly sphere. But, yeah, there were seven of us. And if you saw the house, you'd be really shocked. You know, this is a tiny little post-war, World War II house on the east side of Detroit and we lived there for a long time. I lived there for like twenty years before I came, made my way to New York, you know, but it was a great place and, you know, we had the benefit of all that Detroit stuff, you know, and.

Kaili Vernoff [00:07:34] And were you a part of it? Were you a part of that artistic culture like where you were you already in theater before you made the move to New York?

David Patrick Kelly [00:07:45] Well, it's always been for me, Kaili music and theater, literature and music. And and so in the 60s in Detroit, I was a big part of, you know, without even knowing it, you just everybody was picking stuff up. And my mother on St. Patrick's Day, 1964 when I was 13, she gave me my mandolin and and I was inspired by the Beatles, who I had seen in Detroit at the hockey stadium, which is gone now. But it was Olympia Hockey Stadium the Beatles performed, and Larry Francis and I and ten thousand screaming young ladies were at the Beatles concert. And I think Glenn Frey from the Eagles was there, too. But then I learned afterwards I didn't know him.

Kaili Vernoff [00:08:36] But he was just there as a spectator like you guys?

David Patrick Kelly [00:08:39] Yeah, like the same same group of people that were saying, what is this? You know, and it was really intense. So, you know, the Beatles, anything different was cool. So when my band, my high school band and, you know, that was really such an education, we had a group called The Zoopan Band. I made this word up, which meant all and everything Zoopan, and that was our band and had four other gifted guys in there. And we did everything. We did Motown, a lot of Motown, of course, and we did Beatles and British Invasion stuff. But I played the electric mandolin I sort of invented. I liked it.

Kaili Vernoff [00:09:21] In your high school band, you played an electric mandolin?

David Patrick Kelly [00:09:23] Electric mandolin. I like to say I invented psychobilly, you know, now with the great Chris Teeley and all these wonderful, all alternative country folks who are playing Jimi Hendrix songs, you know, but we played it back then, you know, with everybody saying, what's that? What's that little guitar there? You know? And I just took a pick up on it. And and that's what we did. And our biggest claim to fame is we played everywhere, frat parties, and we were just kids, we were 14, 15, 16. And and we opened for Bob Seger, who was a local hero.

Kaili Vernoff [00:09:57] Oh, yeah. That's a big deal.

David Patrick Kelly [00:09:58] He was great. And he had a couple of local singles, heavy music. [sings] "Don't you ever listen to the radio?"

Kaili Vernoff [00:10:06] Yeah.

David Patrick Kelly [00:10:07] And and we opened for him. And he was he was really supportive to me, you know, and the band, you know, and you said every time I see you're playing a different instrument, you know, because I played flute and I played trumpet and I played mandolin in the band, you know, and so we could cover all that stuff, you know. And I started writing songs in that band, you know, and as a matter of fact, strangely enough, it's cutting ahead in the story. But, you know, a guy just got in touch with me on Facebook and he has a demo that I recorded with a guy that played the guitar. He became a producer and it was Don Davis. He's gone now a couple of years ago, but he played [sings]  "down, down, down down" on money for Berry Gordy way back when he was a teenager himself in Detroit. He played that guitar on the great song Money that the Beatles also covered.

Kaili Vernoff [00:11:07] Yeah, that's a fabulous song.

David Patrick Kelly [00:11:09] But he became very wealthy, became the first Black-owned bank in Detroit, and he owned this record company called Drewes Ville. And he signed me up to do demos, you know, so of course, one of the songs from my ZooPan band days, I put on the demo and this guy sent and back then it was all vinyl and and they used to do him a big steel master plates. And then you print the vinyl from these big steel master blades. So it's some obscure great... they have all these obscure great record stores in Detroit area. Yeah. And he found this and he called me up and said, is this you? I said yep! So he sent it to me and I signed it and I sent it back. You know, he's got kind of muscular dystrophy or something, and he collects records and sends him out around the world. And so, yeah. So it's been quite a story. Detroit has been fantastic, you know. Yeah. And then we got to, you know, on a high school at the end of my first year of college, I got into Hair with Meat Loaf.

Kaili Vernoff [00:12:10] And wait a minute. I did not know... How did I not know this?

David Patrick Kelly [00:12:14] I don't know.

Kaili Vernoff [00:12:15] You did a Hair with Meat Loaf?

David Patrick Kelly [00:12:17] That was my first big... It's interesting because I never really... I was always playing in the band and in high school, I didn't really get any good parts. But when I got to my freshman year, I went, boom, I get all these parts, you know, for some reason, you know, completely unexpecting. And it pulled me away from my studies a little bit. I tried to keep up, but at the end of the first year, I mean, a thousand other kids went down to one of the national tours of the Broadway hit Hair. It had come to town and Meat Loaf was living there. He had this band called the Popcorn Blizzard, Meat Loaf, you know.

Kaili Vernoff [00:12:54] That's a spectacular name.

David Patrick Kelly [00:12:56] In't that great for the 60s? And and so he was in that, and I didn't know it for a week, but I got the lead. I got the lead in Hair, you know, and we got, you know, got our union cards. I was only 19 and Meat Loaf is about the same, you know, and we we did the national tour. We didn't do the tour, but we were in this national touring company. Long story. Because it was freshman year, it was 1970. Vietnam was still raging. I had a college deferment. I wasn't a draft dodger. I had a deferment. You could stay in college. You weren't going to be drafted. My brother had gone. My cousins had gone, you know, so I was in college from '69 to '73. OK, so on my summer break of my freshman year, I could do Hair for four months and that's what I did here in Detroit. It Was a fantastic thing. Actually. Ben Brantley in the Times just did it kind of feature about it. The critic for The New York Times talking about the influence of Hair and they pulled together for a photo session people who were in the original companies around the world that the international hit included Meat Loaf and me and Meat came in -- it was the first time I'd seen him in like 30 years, you know. He wasg great. He said "we were best friends in Detroit!" And we were, we went everywhere. And we... You know, we had bomb threats to Detroit, cause it was quite a radical musical in the time we had to all evacuate the theater and Meat Loaf and I would lead everybody back into the theater, you know, and it was quite something. And then I saved up that money and went to Paris because I got college credit to go study with Marcel Marceau.

Kaili Vernoff [00:14:39] That's what I was about to ask. What was it like studying with Marceau? I mean, I think of you as, in my experience of watching you and of working with you in the capacity that I have, is that you are a very physical actor. And I think that training must have been so informative to your work.

David Patrick Kelly [00:14:58] Well, it was great. I really plunged into so much theory about acting in my first year in college and my generation back then was very influenced by Peter Brook and Grotowski, you know, and the physical. Many people went off to go to circus school, Barnum and Bailey. And you got people like Bill Irwin and later Penn and Teller and all these kind of new vaudevillians, you know, that were really influenced by circus technique and rock and roll, went into glitter glam and stuff like that. That was much more theatrical and things like that.

Kaili Vernoff [00:15:34] Yeah.

David Patrick Kelly [00:15:35] And, you know, I just thought it would be a good thing because I didn't want to be limited. So here I played this waif-like character who gets drafted and goes to Vietnam and dies in Hair. But I just wanted a broader spectrum. I wanted to you know, my life goal had been to do everything you can do as an actor. I wanted to do everything that you can do as an actor, you know, and and and that meant this kind of I had to give myself I couldn't afford and couldn't get into these different academies. And I thought they were kind of limited too they had a style. Like Juilliard, they all sound like Kelsey Grammer and Robin Williams and Kevin Kline. You know, they have this you have this kind of sound, you know, and and, you know, I came from rock and roll and there's different kind of I wanted folk music and different kind of aspects that I wanted to get into the thing, you know, and my heroes were Shakespeare and.\ Brecht plays with songs in them, you know, that's what I do. I even wrote one during the quarantine. But, you know, so I wanted to expand my skills. And Meat Loaf was horrified. He said, "what? You're going to leave the tour? You can't leave the tour. No, man, come on!" You know, but it was it was really a great thing to do. It was an amazing time to be in Paris. 1970 and '71.

Kaili Vernoff [00:16:57] Wow.

David Patrick Kelly [00:16:57] And they had gone through two or three years before their own revolution there with the students. And it was just a magnificent place to be. And, and we had a very intense, really difficult school, you know. And you know, I left Detroit, the skinny hippie, and came back. There's kind of, you know, amazingly, I wouldn't say buff, but it really transformed the kind of dancer person, you know. And because we studied mime: three different kinds of great pantomime, we studied dance, we studied acrobatics, we studied fencing, we studied, you know, so many different things, mask making, you know, and and so it really just broadened everything. And influenced... Still to this day influences everything I do. I secretly think I was one of his favorite students, you know, and he he you know, he was he was so magnificent. You know, it's just come out his whole aspect of him fighting for the resistance in France. I don't know if you know much about Marceau.

Kaili Vernoff [00:18:02] Now. I know almost nothing about Marceau.

David Patrick Kelly [00:18:05] He was Jewish kid from northern France and he created the stage name of Marcel Marceau. And during the occupation, he rescued like a thousand children, you know, from being deported, you know, and sent to camps and stuff, you know, and  I think there's a movie coming out.

Kaili Vernoff [00:18:30] There would have to be a movie coming out about this. That's an incredible story.

David Patrick Kelly [00:18:34] Yeah, but he was a magnificent teacher, world-renowned, of course, in the 1970s by that time. And it was a great school with all these kids. You know, Laraine Newman from the first Saturday Night Live cast was there. Shields and Yarnell were in my class. You know, I don't know if you know who they are...

Kaili Vernoff [00:18:51] I do. I do. I can't believe this.

David Patrick Kelly [00:18:54] They had a TV show for while they were big Vegas attraction for many, many years. And he sort of invented the robot. I was just talking with a young hip hop guy. I did this show with him. And you said you knew Robert Shields man? He was English, an Afro English guy. He said, Robert Shields, Robert Shields! Because he invented the robot, you know, the breaking.

Kaili Vernoff [00:19:17] I didn't know that.

David Patrick Kelly [00:19:18] Yeah.

Kaili Vernoff [00:19:19] And so and he was studying with you.

David Patrick Kelly [00:19:22] He was studying with me. And, you know, we were a little bit broke over there. We lived in a big house in the suburb of Paris, the Chateaux [unintelligible]. And we take it in every day, just about a fifteen-minute ride on the metro into our school, which is in this magnificent old theater and and upstairs to the studio rooms. And and I would busk on the subway a little bit. And I would sing [sings] all gone to look to the poor America! You know, different songs and...you.

Kaili Vernoff [00:19:57] Did you, did you make enough for dinner?

David Patrick Kelly [00:20:00] Oh, yeah, we did great, you know, and you just go to prix unique to the cheap grocery store and you get a bottle of wine and some bread and make some spaghetti at home, you know?

Kaili Vernoff [00:20:12] Yeah, that kind of sounds like heaven. That sounds like a young artist heaven.

David Patrick Kelly [00:20:16] Ah it was really great. We learned so much and saw so much. So it was a magnificent time to be there and it transformed my life and added so much. And then it came back to Detroit because you asked me who my favorite teacher was. And I'll tell you more about him at the end. The biggest influence on this guy, Dave Riegle, who is in Detroit, great teacher, just retired after about 60 years of teaching.

Kaili Vernoff [00:20:39] Wow.

David Patrick Kelly [00:20:39] And and he engineered a scholarship for me at the University of Detroit, where I eventually graduated from. And so I moved over to the University of Detroit and taught there and taught mime and did all the plays there and wrote a musical version of Lysistrata. And and Dave engineered all that. He really was the guy that gave me a major, big break, you know.

Kaili Vernoff [00:21:03] Yeah, I love that. And I will ask you more about that later. OK, so let's move ahead, because now you've graduated and you come to New York and I imagine it must have just been like a sensory overload. Weren't you... Like didn't you have a job at Max's Kansas City?

David Patrick Kelly [00:21:19] I did! I followed I had a cool group of friends, my posse in Detroit, and they came they were a year or two older than I and they all came to New York from Detroit. We've done countless plays and experimental theater in Detroit. And so they came. So they were always my mentors after that because they knew the ropes.

Kaili Vernoff [00:21:46] Right.

David Patrick Kelly [00:21:46] Because I came like a year and a half later. And this one great friend I'm getting a little emotional thinking about. His name is Bruce Naylor. He loved English stuff and English rock stars. And he changed his name to Ian, Ian Naylor. And he's gone now, but he was a wonderful dancer. And so he moved on to a show and he got me into his job at Max's Kansas City, which was my grad school. I wanted to go to Juilliard or Yale or something like that. I had no money, no way to get into those places. So this was my survival. But it became my great grad school education because I saw so many brilliant people at Max's Kansas City, you know, Bruce Springsteen with just one album out and Bob Marley and the Wailers with one album out, they opened for Springsteen, as a matter of fact. And it was a tiny, tiny little room. And after only about a year and a half or two years, I played there too, and directed a play. I think I was only one of two people that directed a play at Max's Kansas City, which, if people don't know Max's was this hotbed of creativity. You know, it was a weird restaurant downstairs. It was on Park Avenue and 17th Street by Union Square in New York City.

Kaili Vernoff [00:23:15] You know, my mom had a little job there. That was when she she moved in the 60s to New York and was modeling. And she had a job as a waitress there.

David Patrick Kelly [00:23:23] Wow. Like like Debbie Harry. You know, she probably may have been before Debbie, but Debbie was downstairs and me and my crew were upstairs, you know, and we were the people that set up the room, all these little tables in a line, but only one hundred and fifty seats and set up the mikes, you know, and then when the band came, did their sound check and had dinner for free downstairs at the restaurant, you know.

Kaili Vernoff [00:23:48] Yeah.

David Patrick Kelly [00:23:49] And then we'd be upstairs saying "ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen." And you know, that's my twenty-two-year-old voice.

Kaili Vernoff [00:23:58] I was going to say I like the vocal choice. Well, according to my mom, it was also a pretty wild place to work, at least when she was there.

David Patrick Kelly [00:24:08] Well, you know, there was a big separation because it was you know, 70s was an absolute druggie, sybaritic time beautiful word, sybarite, you know, where everybody was indulging in everything, you know.

Kaili Vernoff [00:24:21] I love that word. I don't think I knew that word, sybaritic?

David Patrick Kelly [00:24:24] Oh yeah. Sybaritic. Yeah. And, you know, so downstairs, Mickey Ruskin was this great guy from Cornell Law School and he owned two or three restaurants before that. And his friends, he said artists are the only intelligent people. They're the only ones that can talk to them, you know. And so he ran tabs for all these artists and I won't remember all their names, but great sculptors like David Chamberlain and Dan Flavin, you know, and Rusty Watson.

[00:25:02] Oh, gosh. You know, I don't know if you ever made the trip up to DIA at Beacon and Beacon, New York. It's a magnificent, giant sculpture museum. It's an hour north of Manhattan and Beacon, New York. And in that room are all these hugely successful sculptors. And so many of them are the guys who are completely broke in the 70s here at Max's Kansas City. Right. Bringing sculptures and artwork into the restaurant to pay their bill. You know, and and this was Mickey Rourke. And this is who, you know, and they drag a big sculpture into the front, you know, and it would stay there would be there for the two years that I worked there, you know.

Kaili Vernoff [00:25:47] So he was a visionary?

David Patrick Kelly [00:25:47] He was a visionary. And he passed away from I don't know from what, but he passed away at a too young age, maybe not even fifty, you know. But the second part of the story is Sam Hood. Sam ran the upstairs music room at Max's, and by then it was the beginnings of Glitter Glam. And the New York Dolls were like a house band that played there. Patti Smith, I saw countless times it was just her and Lenny Kaye, you know, she would recite and. He would hammer on his guitar and it was magnificent. But you have to stand up Andy Kaufman played there and say, what? What are you doing?

David Patrick Kelly [00:26:27] [Coughs] Excuse me, I'll take a drink.

Kaili Vernoff [00:26:32] Yeah, take a drink. Speaking of Glitter Glam, and I was researching you for this talk today, and I found the most incredible photographs of you and Michael Cerveris from Tooth of Crime.

David Patrick Kelly [00:26:47] Tooth of Crime, later in the 80s, yes, it was kind of...they referenced a lot of this stuff I'm talking about.

Kaili Vernoff [00:26:53] Yeah.

David Patrick Kelly [00:26:53] Because I, I when I saw David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars in Detroit when I was still there in 1971 or. Yeah, I think it was 71, it was like the Martians had landed. It was really something to see. They really took it to it. They looked about 10 feet tall. They had these platform boots on. But Bowie was always so theatrical, really great. He'd come out with his 12 string and sing Jacques Brel songs "My Death waits like an open door..." He's he was really you just sit on a stool, you know?

Kaili Vernoff [00:27:31] Yeah.

David Patrick Kelly [00:27:31] He was he was really commanding, you know, the audience. They were kind of awestruck in Detroit, you know, and he come out at the end of the curtain call and say, "well, you you're good, but not quite good enough. So could you stand on chairs or something for our encore here? We do a song," you know, and then we'd obediently obey.

Kaili Vernoff [00:27:51] I love that this is how you were, like, incubated. It's incredible. Just surrounded by talent.

David Patrick Kelly [00:27:58] Oh, yeah. And then, you know, Lou Reed had played at Max's. But before I got there, you know, Max is round '68-'74 with Mickey Ruskin. So it was quite a hotbed and then it moved into punk. And so I had a really cool band for about two years. I had these wonderful musicians, but I was always doing acting at the same time. You got to concentrate, you got to do one.

Kaili Vernoff [00:28:29] I know you never stopped doing theater, but but your first film, your first film is The Warriors, right?

David Patrick Kelly [00:28:37] That's correct. Yeah.

Kaili Vernoff [00:28:38]  I mean, it's just hard to sort of overstate the impact that film has made. I mean, you know, I was literally just listening to music the other day while I was doing the dishes. And, you know, I love like 90s hip hop and rap. And I had like a Flava in your Ear remix. And all of us like to start the song all of a sudden, like, Biggie and Puff are going "bad boys... Come out to play" and they've got the bottles and everything. It it it is so in our culture. And the fact that you improvised that line in your first film is kind of hard to wrap my brain around.

David Patrick Kelly [00:29:25] Yeah, it was, you know, kind of it kind of all added up, you know. Thanks for the kind words about it, but it was really, you know, it kind of all that added up, all the theatrical stuff. Even I credit mime school to being able to find those bottles and make something of them, you know, and and.

Kaili Vernoff [00:29:45] And were you improvising on the whole film?

David Patrick Kelly [00:29:48] No. You see, because it was quite interesting. There was all these young actors, you know, we were in our 20s, but we were still many of us who were doing our first film. But a couple were more experienced. Remar and Michael Beck and Tom Waites head to head, but Deborah Van Valkenburgh and I and so many of the other kids, it was our first film. So Walter was quite concerned. He was relatively young as well as early 30s or something like that, and that the the producer, you know, so we sat down at the table for the first read through and Tom Thomas G Waites asked Larry Gordon, legendary, fierce Larry Gordon, what what the purpose of the read-through was.

Kaili Vernoff [00:30:42]  I could totally see him asking that.

David Patrick Kelly [00:30:46] Oh, gosh. And then Larry Gordon said "to find out who we got to replace." And and I started laughing. And Gordon said to me, "he's got a good laugh, doesn't he?" And so that was it. It was kind of thrown down, you know, do what you're told. But Thomas G. being a creative actor, you know, he eventually got into some differences with Walter and his role was kind of terminated earlier than than was expected, you know, and he's very upfront about it. He goes to so many of the conventions and things like that. And and he really talks about it. And and Walter does as well. You know, he kind of regretted.

Kaili Vernoff [00:31:31] But I always felt like you were in a brotherhood. I've talked to him. You know, he's my neighbor. And I see him every now and then. And he knows you and I are friends. And, you know, he just adores you. And he really talks about it in a way that's like a true brotherhood.

David Patrick Kelly [00:31:44] Oh, yeah, he's great. And and a wonderful actor, really. You know, you talk about the bottle scene, but there's a scene that's one of my favorites in the movie is when the Orphan Gang at Mercy kind of walks away from the late, great Paul Greco comes out with his gang and he's shown that pathetic newspaper clipping to the gang. And he said, "see, we're famous. We were we were in and we were in the newspaper" and Waites and Michael Beck exchange this look and it's just so great. It's just a great scene where you say, you know, get real guys, you know, in the real world is much different than that. Doesn't matter if you're in the newspaper. We got to get home, you know. And so, you know, little subtle things like that, you know? So he really contributed to the movie. And but I always felt that because Walter was it was a difficult film to shoot in New York City, they were under time pressure. It went a lot longer than they expected it to go. You know, I expected to be there like a month and we were there for three months, you know. You know, my apartment was robbed and I I was essentially homeless during the entire shoot, riding around, staying in cheap hotels on my bicycle and storing my stuff at my Columbia professor friend's house, you know. And so it was a difficult shoot, you know. And so he wanted everybody to just do what planned the shot. We're going to do it. You got to do what I say and that's it. So I think that finally, by the end, he was feeling looser. We're coming to the end. And he just didn't like the final scene where we meet up and have that that showdown on the beach. And so Walter said, "you got to make something up. I don't like what this is, you know, so we need something more taunting, something, you know." And, you know, because I'd had this neighbor who had said this creepy thing, you know, he... I would say hello to Rich and he'd say, "Dave, Dave, Dave." You know, and he would never talk to me like and I thought that was really creepy. So I'm gonna put that in the movie, you know, and.

Kaili Vernoff [00:34:12] That is really creepy.

David Patrick Kelly [00:34:15] And I went off to get to look around, you know, and look for something. And I found those little bottles and and because it really was a kind of La MaMa, Elizabeth Swados kind of influence, you know, where you make something up and you beat on pots and pans and stuff like that, and and that's where it came from, you know? And at first I was kind of shocked that they kept it in because it was so strange.

Kaili Vernoff [00:34:44] Right. Right. That's when, you know, you've hooked on something brilliant where you think, is that too much?

David Patrick Kelly [00:34:50] Oh, my gosh. And, you know, it really was a fun day. We only did it twice. I think, as I recall, we rehearsed it and and Walter said, "take more time," you know, and and then we did it, and that was it. And I had never done it again. Kaili. That's it. People ask me. They ask me all the time.

Kaili Vernoff [00:35:16] I've seen people ask you and you are so gracious. But the closest we'll get is you going, "Dave, Dave, Dave."on my podcast look.

David Patrick Kelly [00:35:27] I like saying that story. That's a good story.

Kaili Vernoff [00:35:30] Good story. So obviously that has been just this cultural phenomenon. And I'm going to ask you, this is a question that I actually stole. I was listening to David Tennant's podcast and he asked this of another actor, but you've done multiple collaborations with huge visionaries and you've worked with, you know, major film filmmakers at the beginning of their career. So like David Lynch and like Spike Lee, or one of my favorite films is Flirting with Disaster, which was an early David O. Russell film. And and so the question is these, like collaborations with these true visionaries. How much of that do you think is luck and how much of it is judgment?

David Patrick Kelly [00:36:10] Well, you know, I don't care what it sounds like, you know, but I really have always felt that God is my super agent, you know? And and I think I always tell young actors that you just make a list of what is great and why, and you keep trying to go for that, you know. And so coming from where I came from, you know, you knew you weren't going to be able to do classics and you weren't going to be able to do... And I loved Shakespeare and I loved classic literature, you know, and I loved, you know, the big things that actors can do. You know, when when you think of an actor, you know, you want that, you know. And I didn't know it would it would broaden out into the great avant garde plays of Richard Foreman. And and, you know, I've worked with two or three of the the MacArthur geniuses, you know, Peter Sellers and and and Des McAnuff and and, you know, just great folks, you know. So you just I think you just keep aiming for what you really want and then stuff sort of collects around you and you sort of do your own stuff, too, like you did with me. You did my play at HERE way back when in the 90s. And that kind of stuff brings stuff to you. People see, you never know who sees it, but people see it. And, you know, even if it's only, you know, 20 people, if that many and and that kind of generates stuff.

Kaili Vernoff [00:37:38] I agree with you. First of all, working with you was such an incredible dream. I learned so much.

David Patrick Kelly [00:37:43] Ah you were so great.

Kaili Vernoff [00:37:44] Well, you know, I'm backing up. I'm actually going a little out of order here. But it's funny because. Well, actually, here's what I want to say. So when I first met you, Twin Peaks was just becoming this huge cultural sensation. And it was, you know, it was the first TV show that I had watched. I had watched a little TV as a kid, Charlie's Angels, that kind of thing. But I was not a TV person. But in in you know, in college, when I was like a senior in college, Twin Peaks was what everybody was watching. And I... My boyfriend was really into it. And I started watching it. And I was just it changed my idea of what TV was. It made me feel like TV was something that I that I would aspire to do. And but... But here you were in Boston doing Iphigenia, right?

David Patrick Kelly [00:38:38] That's correct. We did with Tazewell Thompson was the director and Paul Tazewell, who won a Tony just a couple of years ago for something. I can't remember what it was, but he did the costumes. And I'm going to blank on the guy, the poet... He worked with, Isadora Duncan, and he did the translation. Now, this goes back to asking, you know, keeping your eye on what you want to do. So my agent was horrified. I said, I want to do this Greek play. You said, "are you out of your mind? You're in the hottest thing on television," you know? And we stayed in these funky. Apartments near the Huntington Theater and in very nice, very nice apartments, but, you know, I didn't have a television and I'd have to go to a sports bar in Boston to watch Twin Peaks.

Kaili Vernoff [00:39:39] Oh, my God.

David Patrick Kelly [00:39:42] And I'd say, could you turn the channel...

Kaili Vernoff [00:39:46] To take off the Red Sox and put on Twin Peaks?

David Patrick Kelly [00:39:51] But they did. They did. And that's where I'd watch some of the episodes on Thursday night. And...but my going back to this point, I can't remember who the poet was. He did. My schedule was try to do more... I was already...what year was that? I was already 40, you know, and I was trying to say, how am I going to get more of these major Shakespeare roles and things? You know, so I had a kind of stepping stone way. And so Paul Tazewell, like many people, he'd seen Twin Peaks and he offered me this part, you know, and said, why do you want to do it, you know? And the reason was because of this translation, which was iambic pentameter, but it wasn't anglophilic iambic pentameter. You know, it was this great iambic pentameter of Iphigenia by Euripides. And and and so I said, well, that'll be a way to work on my first speaking so I can work up to Iago, which I eventually did only about seven or eight years ago, and things like that. But it was a great experience and I really enjoyed that.

Kaili Vernoff [00:41:00] And well, I cannot overstate what an impression that made on us as acting students to have this guy that is on the coolest show on TV that is putting in the work in a Greek tragedy where we were, you know, as as students at the Boston University acting program there, we were running, you know, we were we were all like stagehands and and to see how hard you were working. And, you know, it just it was such a great message, even though I don't know if I was conscious of it at the time, but just to see that it's it's not that you are working your way towards this thing and then you stop doing the work, it's like what you're saying, a stepping stone. It all is leading to the things that that you're interested in. And it was, you know, just your being there influenced so many of us in my class and in my school.

David Patrick Kelly [00:41:53] Oh...that really means the world to me. And I remember you very clearly and asking questions in the front row and and and then meeting you just a little while later back in New York.

Kaili Vernoff [00:42:04] In New York. OK, I remember I will never forget this because I was it was like early afternoon or late morning and I was coming from an audition on the Upper East Side where you and I both live. And when you're a little further up now. But we lived very close to each other, unbeknownst to me. And I was wearing a cocktail dress. And I because I had to wear it was like a Coca-Cola, you know, commercial or something at a cocktail party. And I was like wearing a cocktail dress. And I ran into you and I thought, oh, gosh, he's going to think that I was out all night. I admired you so fully. And I was like, I just do you know Karen Kaiser? She's around the corner. That's where this audition was. And and, you know, and we stayed in touch. And then I got to do that play with you that you wrote and that for me.

David Patrick Kelly [00:42:49] Aw yeah.

Kaili Vernoff [00:42:50] That for me was such a lesson in hard work. I don't know if you remember, but I used to get these headaches like we'd be working in your and we'd rehearse in your apartment because we didn't have the theater.

David Patrick Kelly [00:43:02] In my tiny weird apartment.

Kaili Vernoff [00:43:03] Well, and we were using stacks of newspaper for furniture. All the all the furniture were these stacks of newspapers that we'd move around.

David Patrick Kelly [00:43:11] And we put it in the play.

Kaili Vernoff [00:43:12] And we put it in the play, which was just fantastic. And I and, you know, I think that, like, even though I'd gone to acting school and studied very hard and done everything I was supposed to do, I kind of functioned more as like an instinctive actor. And you would... We would... You had written it and you were directing it. And we were in the scenes together. So it was really an immersive experience for your way of working, which is to dig into the words and find everything from the words.

David Patrick Kelly [00:43:43] And you were brilliant. You were brilliant in that. And, you know, I'm sorry we didn't you couldn't manage to get any critics to come and see it or anything like that. It it was quite a short run and stuff like that. But I remember, you know, you know, coming out for the curtain call. And I came out first and then you came out and they all cheered for you. They said, waaaah, it was really great.

Kaili Vernoff [00:44:09] It was such it was just such a formative experience for me. And and I just feel so blessed to have gotten to do it. And as you know, then I got to work with your brilliant wife in one of her plays. And, you know, it's... Our connection has just been. Invaluable to me.

David Patrick Kelly [00:44:26] You were fantastic in her play as well. I wanted to tell you one thing about, you know, back to the Greek drama there...

Kaili Vernoff [00:44:33] Go back.

David Patrick Kelly [00:44:33] Was being a playwright, you know, not as productive as Juliana.

Kaili Vernoff [00:44:41] That's your wife, your wife, Juliana.

David Patrick Kelly [00:44:43] But I've managed to eke some out. And I've also been studying playwriting all the time. And poetics is the thing. I know it sounds pretentious, but that is really the thing. You know, you got to do things for a reason. They have to have meaning they have to have philosophical underpinning. And so I studied playwriting and Aristotle talks about in his Poetics, there's great reunion scene in Iphigenia of Taurus. He said it's the greatest reunion seen. And so with Karen Evans Kandell and me playing Orestes and Iphigenia, you know, to do that scene, you felt you went to school on that play. You said, well, here I am. I'm just, you know, basking in the glory of this, you know, a thousand-year-old play and, you know, feeling what Aristotle was talking about, you know, and and then that goes into all your other work, you know? You know, I thought there was something tremendously Greek about Twin Peaks, you know, and.

Kaili Vernoff [00:45:48] Yes. yes...

David Patrick Kelly [00:45:50] There's so many other things, you know. So following the poetics is really important, you know, and and, you know, Juliana has been doing that as well.

David Patrick Kelly [00:46:01] And you were fantastic in The Reenactors, her play. And she with Tony Torn as your great director managed to get The New York Times to come and give a great review.

Kaili Vernoff [00:46:09] And they loved it.

David Patrick Kelly [00:46:11] They absolutely loved it.

Kaili Vernoff [00:46:12] That was that was such a great experience. You know, I'd never I had pneumonia through almost the entire rehearsal process, and I kept trying to quit because I had so much guilt for not showing up. And Juliana came here and took care of me and made me tea and said, you can't quit. She said, I will stand in your place until you are ready to come. And I was so grateful. I was so grateful at the time I was doing a TV show when I was about to go out to L.A. to make this film. And I was doing this play and I was in bed for three weeks and she was...

David Patrick Kelly [00:46:45] You were so great and so generous of you.

Kaili Vernoff [00:46:47] Ugh my pleasure, it was a privelege.

David Patrick Kelly [00:46:48] And it meant the world. I remember calling her up. I read this guy's review. Neil Genzlinger, who is is not easy, not an easy dude. And I, I read the review somewhere. And on a Saturday afternoon I called her up and I said, "you got a good review in The New York Times." She said, "no, we didn't, no. That's like a that's like a blog somewhere." I said,  "No, no, it's in the Times. It's the it's the giant golden top of the tree!"

Kaili Vernoff [00:47:17] You know, I was yeah. Everyone that I know that came to see that play and most of my friends did come to see that play, loved it. And I wasn't sure that that would be the case because I thought some people will love it and some people won't get it. Across the board, people loved it and we'd go out after and and they would just want to talk about the play. And that's when you know that you've affected people. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of your wife and I hope we get to work together again.

David Patrick Kelly [00:47:43] Yeah, well, she likewise from her to you and you know, she really knows how to pick 'em and pick and you for that and you know, the rest of your gifted cast in that was really great.

Kaili Vernoff [00:47:57] OK, back to you now, because this is about you, I want to talk a little bit about your experience on The Crow.

Kaili Vernoff [00:48:05] Yeah, so I knew you then and you were so you were so inspired by Brandon Lee. I remember you just talking about him because you're also a martial artist. And and he was so beautiful. And I know that you were on set when he died.

David Patrick Kelly [00:48:23] That's right, yeah.

Kaili Vernoff [00:48:24] That there were several of you pointing the...the guns at him at the time. Right? That's the story right?

Kaili Vernoff [00:48:33] No, not at the at the tragic shot, no.

David Patrick Kelly [00:48:37] Oh, OK. We actually reshot with Alex Proyas and and I think it was really we wanted to to take the onus off the late Michael Massey, you know, who was completely blameless in the entire thing.

Kaili Vernoff [00:48:57] So for people who don't know, there was a there was a piece of a blank that had caught in the in the chamber. Is that right? That's what happened?

David Patrick Kelly [00:49:06] That's right, yeah. They'd done just camera close ups on this gun the night before and they'd fired a lot of a lot of blanks. And there's a little piece of metal. I'm not quite sure how it all works, but somehow a piece of metal remained in the barrel that they did not clean out. And and the major props people had left because it was the end of the shoot. We only had a couple more days to go, tragically. And and so they gave it to a wonderful prop guy and. He had tested it and he put it blank in it, but that didn't dislodge it and and that's what happened. You know, when they put the full load in there of the of the blank, this piece of metal came out and hit Brandon. But that was just the one actor firing that was... and later after we came back and and we re-filmed some of the scenes, you know, I think Alex wanted to take the onus off Michael. And so we all were in the shot and we agreed to do it for Michael, you know, to to make sure that he wasn't sort of singled out. Say, that's the moment. That's the moment.

Kaili Vernoff [00:50:28] You know, I do remember there was some secrecy around it that, you know, that they didn't name who because I can't imagine being an actor and holding a prop gun and and the person I'm doing a scene with dies. I can't imagine what it felt like for all of you. And you finished the film so beautifully, but I can imagine how impossible that must have been.

David Patrick Kelly [00:50:50] Yeah, we finished it and it was just a horrible tragedy. He was a delightful guy. I have to say, on the day during that scene that we were just talking about, you know, being a dedicated new age Catholic, I always carry holy water with me, you know, and and I had some with me. And and when Brandon couldn't get up, I just... We didn't know what it was for hours. We didn't know what it was, you know,.

Kaili Vernoff [00:51:16] Cause it wasn't bleeding? It was just...

David Patrick Kelly [00:51:19] No, it was internal. It was internal, you know, and and so I went up and blessed him, you know, and and, you know, I'm the last one he looked at in the scene, you know, and we had a great relationship, you know, and he just kind of waved me off, you know, he said and we said, you know, we thought it had finished it in an amazing way, but he just didn't get up. And, you know, and then the medic rushed up and then they took Brandon to the hospital. And it took many hours until he passed away, sadly. And and I just remember walking home in downtown North Carolina there.

Kaili Vernoff [00:52:03] I thought you were here. You were in North Carolina shooting.

David Patrick Kelly [00:52:07] Yeah, North Carolina. And and there was a church that was always closed. I tried to go, you know, try to stop in for mass every once in a while wherever I am. And and on this day, at like 6:00 in the morning, for some reason, it was open and there was nobody in there. And and I just looked up at these windows and, you know, it was just a terrible, terrible moment. But I felt this kind of amazing, unconsoling consolation of God, you know, in that moment, you know, this kind of thing is that you don't understand this, but there's a transcendence that will will make you be able to endure, you know. And so, yeah. So it was tragic. And we we took a little time and I went to England to visit my family over there. And then Alex asked us if we wanted to come back and finish it. And of course, we did. You know, and I've been over to England and I've been to see Kenneth Branagh way back in ninety three. He was on stage at at Stratford doing his Hamlet. And I went to a little bookstore around the corner from Shakespeare's house. And there was a copy of Paradise Lost by John Milton. And you know, James O'Barr, who wrote The Crow is very literary. And, you know, he loved the early 80s punk rock scene that was around then, you know, and and so I asked if I could put this in as if it's in because we reshot some of that scene, the tragic scene, and took the book, the the Milton's Paradise Lost. And there's a line in that. It's where the Devil sees the Angel Gabriel, and the Devil is feeling very powerful for having rebelled from God. And the Angel Gabriel was standing just glowing in the line of Milton is that the Devil thought "Abash, the Devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is," you know, and and we put that in the movie. That's the movie that T-bird says in an awful satiric, ironic way because he's pulling the books off their shelf in there. But it was a line from Milton that I thought... Because O'Barr has references to Herman Melville and Milton in the thing and Rambo and and so we wanted to actually... This is one of the great conversations I had with Brandon because we wanted to get some of the language that was in the original comic book. The reason I did the movie was because of the original comic book.

Kaili Vernoff [00:55:09] Right. I think I was you talking about that. Yeah.

David Patrick Kelly [00:55:13] Yeah. I was very moved by that story. It was a true story based on O'Barr's tragic loss of his girlfriend. And, you know, this this thing was written as a kind of catharsis for him to get over that tragic loss. And so that's why I wanted to do it. And it was set in Detroit. You know, I wanted to do something set in Detroit. I'd never been able to do anything set in Detroit. So even though it's this fictional cartoon Detroit, those are the reasons I wanted to do it. And so when Brandon and I spoke about it, you know, I told him I was training for my black belt, my first black belt at the age of then 43 or something like that. And, you know, he said, I'll help you train, you know, but after we're done, you know, because we want to keep kind of actor distance, you know, professional distance going while we're in the movie and stuff. And but we said I'd like to get more of the language from the original story back in it. Because because O'Barr had more poetic language, more quotes from different poets and everything and a couple of instances, we were able to stick that in, and that's one of the one of the instances, you know, we stuck that Milton quote in there.

Kaili Vernoff [00:56:28] And that when you were reshooting, reshooting at the end?

David Patrick Kelly [00:56:31] Yeah, but there's another moment to where I'm talking to Michael Wincott. This is interesting. It must be because of this interview, but I just had a dream about Michael Wincott last night. People have been walking in our front door here in my dreams lately, you know, but he came in and and wanted me to introduce him to some actors on this indie film. I was shooting...that's the whole thing. But there's a scene with with Michael Wincott. Now I'm going to block on what the word is... I say, but it's an archaic word. I say he got himself wasted or something like that and he got himself... I forget. There's some archaic term that I use when I'm speaking, talking about, you know, one of my gang to Michael Wincott. And I use this archaic term, you know, and we tried to stick these kinds of more poetic, you know, archaic poetic language into the script again.

Kaili Vernoff [00:57:31] I love that that's so beautiful and I love that you all came together, you know, to to support the actor who'd had that that experience. That it was really a group effort to all sort of take the onus off of him. And I was thinking actually, just now, as you were sharing that story, I watched an interview with you from Lincoln Center and you talked about how you always loved to be in a troupe. In a group, I think you called it, but like a troupe of actors, a group of actors, like a.

David Patrick Kelly [00:58:05] Ensemble.

Kaili Vernoff [00:58:05] An ensemble, yeah, yeah,.

David Patrick Kelly [00:58:08] That's right. Oh, yeah, and that's you know, I really treasure those kinds of awards more than any, you know, because you gotta have a great group, you know, and it's always been my philosophy. You know, I've always compared acting and theater and films to paintings, you know, and it's a composition. And then in the composition of the painting, you see that one guy way off in the corner. And the painting would not be the same without that one thing. And you say, well, that's that's what it's going to be about. You know, going back to poetics, you know, I take it from Stanislavski, you know, and you read those three classic books that all actors read: Actor Prepares, Building a Character, Creating a Role, and in Building a Character. Stanislavski stops talking about beats and motivations and all that, and he starts talking about literature. And he says, you got to know what the whole story is. You've got to... You got to study the whole thing. So you'll you know, what you can bring to the central story. And that that gets into all this theater language that I like to, you know, Sine Qua Non, which is a legal term, means without which, no, you: sine qua non. And that's what Stanislavski talks about. And he talks about there's something in every story, classic story, great story that makes it without which this one thing, it would not exist, it would not be the same. And it generally has to do with the main character, the protagonist, doing something. It's not about theme. It's not about man's inhumanity to man. It's about something that the central character does and that holds up the entire story. And I've been working from that for a long, long time. And and when you know that no matter what your part is, you can figure out how you help to support that central point, you know.

Kaili Vernoff [01:00:07] I'm so glad you're bringing this up, because I. I was I was really meditating on you and and how I've learned from you. And I was thinking that there's something that I want to ask you for my own personal... For my own personal growth, which is that I see that with you that, you know, you have you are so committed to what you do. And I've seen you in films where you've just had a few lines and without drawing focus, what you do is so committed and memorable that you leave an indelible mark. I...when I work and I work a lot as a guest star, especially on TV, I always say a little prayer to myself where I say, just move the story forward, just move the story forward. It's not about how you, just move the story forward. I always try to have that be my mantra, even backstage at a play. That's what I'm saying to myself. However, because of that, as a guest star, I am often afraid or or unwilling to try something that might not work because I don't want to waste anyone's time. And, you know, when you come into a guest star situation or if you're a smaller role on a film or that that there's already, you know, there were already behind schedule, they're already behind budget. There are concerns. And I...and I think that I hold myself back frequently from trying something if I think there's a chance it won't work. And and what I have been noticing as I've been immersing myself in your stuff, especially in preparation for this talk, is that you have found a way to do that, to try stuff that I know for a fact isn't written in the script exactly as you're doing. And I wonder about that. I wonder about is it just that it's so important to you? Is it that you feel that you've earned those conversations with the director? What gives you the confidence to try something that they may say, oh, what's he doing?

David Patrick Kelly [01:02:06] Well, that's very sweet of you to say, I I think it's you know, I'm cocky. No...

Kaili Vernoff [01:02:11] [laughs] The end.

David Patrick Kelly [01:02:11]  I think the... You know, I say give yourself freedom. You say, I've always said whether it's from that first film or on and on, that if they don't say no, you've got a green light. You know, if they say no, you've got to go. And everybody said no, you know, they've all said no to different things, you know, all the same people you're talking about. You know, I tried so many different things, but I think there's a way to do it where you don't impose yourself, you know, on the people, what they're doing. I've always been committed to getting the job done. I like Clint Eastwood. You know, his aesthetic. You know, the one-take wonder. I was very grateful to be able to do one scene as President Truman in Flags of our Fathers for him.

Kaili Vernoff [01:03:07] Oh god you were amazing in that.

David Patrick Kelly [01:03:07] Oh you're very sweet. He loves actors. You know, he loves the process. He loves the whole thing, you know, and and I did it my way. I did, you know, the things that I wanted to do about Harry Truman. I visited the White House and, you know, had a great time researching that part. It was really great. So I just think you just give yourself a freedom. You know, life's too short, you know, and you can you know, you don't have to... If you stick and dig in your heels and say, "I got to do it," you know, then that's no good. You got to, you know, coming from a kind of... This goes back to mime school again, you know, I never minded being choreographed, even emotionally, you know, I never minded. I'll do it and make it my own, you know?

Kaili Vernoff [01:03:53] Yeah. I don't mind that either. I don't mind if you tell me where you want me to hit certain points. That doesn't bother me. But then I have to figure out how to get there.

David Patrick Kelly [01:04:02] Yeah, and and I think, you know, you can, but if they don't tell you, you know, you just go until they say no, you know, and it's hell and you got to not be afraid of, you know, them being grumpy or being impatient or being stuff like that, you know, you gotta be able to take the heat a little bit about that, you know, and be not afraid, you know, don't get yourself fired. But, you know, try stuff until they say no, but with good spirit and knowing that you're trying for the the greater good of the whole thing, you know.

Kaili Vernoff [01:04:39] Yeah. Yes.

David Patrick Kelly [01:04:39] And that's that's that's always what I felt. You know, if you got an impulse, you know, sometimes they're so grateful for it, you know, but, you know, there have been things that that people have not used, you know -- Spike -- like I was in Girl Six for a while, but we ended up not using that. And that's a different thing. Sometimes it's just time, you know, and stuff like that. But.

Kaili Vernoff [01:05:06] Oh! Every actor worth their salt has been cut out of something or maybe even replaced. I was replaced in a job that I did a few years ago where the director was falling over himself, telling me how I was so great. I felt like I was doing the best work of my life. I was in Chicago, it was going so well. And then, you know, six weeks later or something, I get a call like, "just so you know, there is a breakdown going out today. You are being replaced," Ah! You know, and it's hard, you know, but I mean, it keeps us humble.

David Patrick Kelly [01:05:39] Yeah.

Kaili Vernoff [01:05:40] But what about things like... I was watching you and Crooklyn the other day and, you know, oh, God, that character has the..the glasses and the platform shoes and the wig. And then and then like I was watching Charlie in John in John Wick and he has that big hat. How much of those things are your ideas? Do you do you also bring that collaboration to that costume department to props?

David Patrick Kelly [01:06:01] Well, you do. You try, to you know you know, John Wick was very designed. So my main contribution to that was doing the research about those guys. You know, there's a great company,.

Kaili Vernoff [01:06:14] The Cleaners?

David Patrick Kelly [01:06:15] The Cleaners, which is a real deal. You know, those are the people who come after the the police and the investigators and everything else. And they come in. They have to deal with grieving families. And, you know, and it's very intense. And the people who do it were so gracious to me. And they sent me a big box of stuff, you know, and and, you know, I got to read their, they have books about it, about how you do it in the attrition rate, because the people who were on site, you know, the guys who run the company don't go that often. You know, they just set up the gigs. But the people, the young people that are like college people doing a gig, you know, they don't last that long because it's such grisly work, you know? But that was my main contribution to that. Just knowing what the deal is with that, you know, and.

Kaili Vernoff [01:07:06] That was one of those movies I never would have gone to see if you weren't in it. Like, I wouldn't have thought that John Wick would be something that I would love. And I was like screaming in the theater. I was like so into it. I loved that whole film.

David Patrick Kelly [01:07:20] Oh, we went on the first day, Juliana and I, because it was my first IMAX movie, you know, so.

Kaili Vernoff [01:07:25] Oh, yes, I remember.

David Patrick Kelly [01:07:27] So we went to see the IMAX movie, you know, and and that directors was Chad Stahelske. It was directed by Chad Stahelske and David Leach. Now, Chad, you know, I'll preface this by saying the reason I was in it, because I, I really, really respect some people and martial arts people and they really understand what it's like to be in a life and death struggle and the emotional cost and physical cost of that. And so when you see this choreography and you see people doing stuff, you know, and you feel something for the character that either they're representing or are themselves, that takes a lot of training. That's a lifetime dedication to know that, you know. So Chad and David Leach had this company called 87Eleven in Long Beach, California, where they trained stuntmen. But they also have been a part of many, many, many major movies. The 300 and I don't know, and they film little, you know, they they'll sell themselves, pitch themselves by filming little choreography and sending it to the people, you know. And so... But Chad was Brandon's double on The Crow. And when we did the reshoots, that's Chad who you see.

Kaili Vernoff [01:08:46] Oh my God.

David Patrick Kelly [01:08:47] Doing the... the handsprings and the back flips. And I don't know if it was the total reason that I ended up in John Wick, but it was a big thing. It was great to see him again. And, you know, that was just good old Keanu, giving people a break, you know, he gave these guys who had been his stunt doubles on The Matrix films and he said, I got this script, I want you to direct it. And he knew apparently that they wanted to be directors and now they're just Boomtown. You know, they split up. They don't direct together anymore, I don't think. But yeah. So that was Chad Stahalsky and he co-directed John Wick.

Kaili Vernoff [01:09:29] I didn't know that about Keanu. I hear such nice things, but I did not know that. That's.

David Patrick Kelly [01:09:36] Yeah.

Kaili Vernoff [01:09:37] That's the way to be, right? That's the way to be in this business.

David Patrick Kelly [01:09:40] Yeah. And I just you know, it reminded me of so many things. You know, these guys are very knowledgeable about film. And, you know, all my life I've liked action movies, you know, and back in the 70s, you know, there used to be this big divide between art films and action movies. Now with Tarantino and all different folks, it's all kind of blended together, you know. But back in the day, you'd have to go to see Charles Bronson movie or, you know, Clint Eastwood movie. And then you'd go see Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in something, you know, but or a Bergman film or something like that. There was a big divide, but people started to recognize, well, there's more to this than meets the eye, you know. But going way back, I've always, always loved action movies, you know? And so that's why I wanted to be a part of that.

Kaili Vernoff [01:10:32] That's awesome. OK, I want to talk a little bit about your fans, because I imagine that many of them will be listening to this. You know, I've been with you on the street when, like, big groups of kids will be coming sideways at you. And, you know, it's like they just sort of will approach en masse and they get in for your in your face. And all of a sudden they're going, you know, they'll they'll either go "warriors come out to play" or they'll say, you're famous line from 48 hours: "I've been busy." And they just will come up, you know, quoting you. But it takes a second as your friend to realize what's happening. I just see a big group of people and you have a lot of young fans, too, I think. I mean, and you are always so gracious, but is it ever intimidating? Like, what does that feel like?

David Patrick Kelly [01:11:24] Used to be you know, it was... It was difficult in the beginning because the Warriors went boom, nobody expected there was a genre film, so nobody expected it to do much. You know, there were all these big art films that were supposed to be coming out at the same time, but it was number one, it was number one around the world. And so that was odd because whatever that character Luther inspired in people, you know, I'd go out to a bar or something and people would get in my face, you know, these guys would get my face, you know, and try to challenge me and stuff like that. So I... I literally stopped going out for a while, you know, for a few years, you know, it really kind of, you know, stopped. And that was difficult in the beginning. But then it grew into this way different thing. You know, it really became such a different thing over the years...now 40 years, whatever it is, you know, and the world is so different now with these conventions and everything. I have not been to a convention yet. I have done signings. Like individual signings...

Kaili Vernoff [01:12:30] Oh I know! There have been like these kind of Comic-Con agents who are like, "you know him? Can you convince him to come out on the road?" Like they all want you.

David Patrick Kelly [01:12:41] But I haven't... Well, I'm old school, you know, and going back to Twin Peaks, I had a hard time deciding to do that because I didn't really want to be on TV. It had a different feeling back when I was growing up. You know, you wanted to do movies and stage and stay away from TV because you had to commit for so long and didn't know what was going to happen with your character and you didn't know all these different kind of reasons. You know, and it was Nick Cage and Laura Dern who convinced me to do that, doing Wild at Heart. And they said, "do Twin Peaks. It's going to be something very special," And there's all kinds of television that can really be great, you know? And so I owe it to them in large degree.

Kaili Vernoff [01:13:23] And by the way, Wild at Heart was another one of my favorite films. And even after I met you, I didn't quite put together that that was you until I went back and watched it again.

David Patrick Kelly [01:13:35] Oh, yeah, it was it was something to do with Grace Zabriskie and Harry Dean Stanton and and Calvin Lockhart, the late, great Calvin Lockhart, you know, and and...Yeah, I remember every detail about it. You know, that was another I got my glasses that I wore and that, you know, and these were... He was kind of... It didn't come out very strongly in the film, but he was sort of hooked up with Willem Dafoe. We had this similar matching tattoo on our hands, you know, and and we are both Vietnam veterans, you know. And so I wanted glasses that I'd seen on people in Vietnam. And I went down to L.A.'s Koreatown, of all places, and I went to a store there and got these particular kind of glasses that I see Asian-Americans and Asians wear a lot. Kind of a little tortoiseshell top them, you know, as if this guy had picked them up in Vietnam, you know, and to continued to wear them. But, yeah, Wild at Heart was crazy, but it was so strange to read that script. You know, Lynch goes so far and I read the script and said, oh, I don't know, man.

David Patrick Kelly [01:14:52] And but, you know, I can miss it because this was Johanna Ray. Johanna Ray had cast me in Dreamscape.

Kaili Vernoff [01:15:02] Right. We didn't even get to Dreamscape, but that's another one that the fans are just insane about.

David Patrick Kelly [01:15:08] Oh, yeah, I loved working on that. And and and so she brought me in for Wild at Heart and and then she cast me in Twin Peaks as well, you know, but Lynch and I hit it off immediately, you know. So, you know, that's how that went down, all those things. But I kind of got off your topic there.

Kaili Vernoff [01:15:32] No, I... Listen, I love these stories. These are all some of my favorite things. But I do want to touch on something before we, before we wind down, which is that, you know, we were talking about how you love to be part of an ensemble and, you know, you've never stopped doing theater. And you did get to play Feste and Iago and all these a lot at Lincoln Center. But I think that avid theater-goers might know you best for your run as Da in the musical Once.

David Patrick Kelly [01:15:59] That it was so great, you know, David Patrick Kelly and I'd never done an Irish play before in my  50-year career. And so to start with these guys is quite intense, you know.

Kaili Vernoff [01:16:11] Well, I come to see you in that. And I just want to say this. First of all, I loved the play. I loved everyone in it. I loved you. But as someone who's known you so long, you seemed so happy.

David Patrick Kelly [01:16:24] I was so happy and playing the mandolin. And you and Krista came and it was really... You did come with Krista to that?

Kaili Vernoff [01:16:33] Yeah! I came with Krista.

David Patrick Kelly [01:16:34] And, you know, so, you know, and every night before mikes my dressing roommate and I would read Irish literature, you know, and just communing with my ancestors was such a treat, you know, was just like, you know, just like being home sweet home, you know, going all the way back to Ireland, you know.

Kaili Vernoff [01:16:58] And there you were with a young daughter and, you know, your beautiful wife. And I just remember it sort of I know that Margareta sort of grew up as her very young years, like in the wings.

David Patrick Kelly [01:17:11] That's right, yeah, she stayed there was two little girls that were in the play and she would come and stay with me one or two days a week, and she would sit in the dressing room with them. And and and it was really great, really wonderful experience the whole time. We had a great staff there, Bess Glorioso and Katherine Shay were our stage managers. And but I have to say, one of the reasons that I got that part may be John Tiffany, the director, saw Twin Peaks. And he was... That made him a director. He was in school and I think in Yorkshire and England. And you said "It changed me life, it changed my life, seein that show."

Kaili Vernoff [01:17:55] Look at that. And the Twin Peaks, this TV show that you do in the early 90s, ends up leading you to be in this this.. you know, Tony-winning Broadway smash that also is so fulfilling to you and your soul. And I just love I love that. That's beautiful. I didn't know that.

David Patrick Kelly [01:18:18] It was one of those things that was bigger than everybody that was in it, because the set designer and the costume designer is from Dublin himself, you know, but he's he's an amazing designer. Hass been around the world and won Tonys before, you know, but this was coming home for him, you know, and everybody in it. It kind of just was bigger than all them. All the work they'd done before, you know, all the... You know, it just had a life of its own, you know, and even Glen Hansard the composer. You know, he was just writing the music for the original movie. And Cillian Murphy had to drop out for something else. And Glen stepped into the role and it became this world success, you know, and they won the Oscar for the song. And that's where it all started.

Kaili Vernoff [01:19:16] I loved the film, too.

David Patrick Kelly [01:19:19] Yeah it was great.

Kaili Vernoff [01:19:19] I might have a timeline wrong, but I vaguely remember thinking that the film came out when Lucy was a baby and it was one of our first sort of like dates that we, you know, got to go see a movie after having a baby. I'm not sure if that's right, but that's my memory.

David Patrick Kelly [01:19:36] Yeah, it sounds right. It clicked along pretty quickly. The whole operation gone from movie to Oscar to to stage thing, you know, and then being up in Boston again to create the original, and little Margareta and Juliana came up to see it up there. And there's a great story of Margareta coming into rehearsal.

Kaili Vernoff [01:19:54] You did it at A.R.T.?

David Patrick Kelly [01:19:54] We did it at A.R.T. and that was the workshop. John Tiffany was on some kind of fellowship there. And this was just his little project that he did. And so we went up and tried that out. And Margareta was just one or two maybe. And she came up on the train and all the way up, Juliana told her, "you got to be quiet now. We're going to go into rehearsal. You got to be quiet, you know" and so they came into the rehearsal at A.R.T. and were sitting in the audience and I came out for the final scene. And Margareta heard me talking and she said, "Daddy, be quiet."

Kaili Vernoff [01:20:34] Oh that's the best.

David Patrick Kelly [01:20:39] It was really great and, you know, so it was a magnificent thing. It was my longest run in anything. It was a total of about five years that I was in that from A.R.T. To New York Theatre Workshop to Broadway for three years, you know. So it was a great thing to be in an Irish play and research. Being a CBGBs rocker, I had never really understood or frankly was a fan of kind of Irish folk music, you know, but plunging into it. I said, woah, what I've missed, you know what I've missed, you know, how it's influenced American folk music, you know, and so it was really a fantastic experience.

Kaili Vernoff [01:21:23] Well, it also is sort of a perfect segue for us tto get into what is our signature question on the show, because it is such a collaboration. You know, we all need each other, right?... One thing leads to another. We don't do this by ourselves. It is... It is all a collaboration what we do. I would love to give you an opportunity to tell me about a time in your life or in your career when someone recognized something special in you, David, and just, you know, and gave you an opportunity to shine.

David Patrick Kelly [01:21:51] Well, I've never really been able to thank enough. David Regal, who was a grad student in Detroit during my freshman year in college, and he was a legendary teacher and the actor in Detroit. And he was in grad school with Jeffrey Tambor, and we were... We became... I took his acting class that was my first acting class with David Regal when I was an undergraduate at Wayne State University in my freshman year. And we became fast friends and became rock and roll actors in Detroit and did play after play. We did a little poetry plays of Bukowski poems. And and and then we did... We had an acting company called the Actors Ensemble. And Tambor was a part of that. And we did Woyzceck and and all the different plays. Eventually we moved over to the University of Detroit and I wrote a musical of Lysistrata and we did of Mice and Men and  The Tempest together at the University of Detroit. But he was really encouraging and really a great teacher who went on years later to teach Keegan Michael Key and Tim Allen and many, many other people, you know, down through the ages. And so, David Regal, prince of a guy, he never wanted to move from Detroit, a wonderful actor, but he had a wonderful life there in Detroit. And still he's still with us. But he retired just two years ago and he did commercials, and  voiceovers and audio books, and and and did two or three plays of the year, major roles and plays in Detroit. [bark] There's Monet.

Kaili Vernoff [01:23:45] I can hear Monet. It sounds like Monet in the cat might be fighting.

David Patrick Kelly [01:23:49] And Margareta and Juliana just got home. You're all good? We've been talking about you here.

Kaili Vernoff [01:23:55] Hi, guys.

David Patrick Kelly [01:23:56] Kaili says hi.

Kaili Vernoff [01:23:58] OK, well, this has been amazing. And I think you and I are going to do a little number from the play we did together.

David Patrick Kelly [01:24:06] That's right, are you ready?

Kaili Vernoff [01:24:07] I am ready. You may have to cue me and just tell me where to go if I don't remember. Tell me where to start. Start my part.

David Patrick Kelly [01:24:14] OK, I'm going to sing. Do you have the lyrics?

Kaili Vernoff [01:24:17] I do. I do. Yeah, I have it right in front of me.

David Patrick Kelly [01:24:19] So just... We'll just try it if we can, you know, we will. But we will. Here he goes. 3-2-1.

David Patrick Kelly [01:24:31] Oh, boy, it's been a big day. You're falling to sleep.

David Patrick Kelly [01:24:40] What you can't hold in your mind pray your soul to keep.

David Patrick Kelly [01:24:57] Rip van boy man

David Patrick Kelly [01:25:00] Climb out of a cave

David Patrick Kelly [01:25:03] This is the good war you've been waiting for. Rip van boy man. And the surrounding shelter. Let it all fall out.

Kaili Vernoff [01:25:15] You say you need someone with a healthy disrespect for everything that you hold sacred. Oh, yeah. Shake up your beliefs. But when you're crawling through the streets of a broken glass bare naked, you've gone too far. Maybe not quite deep enough. You've gone too far.

David Patrick Kelly [01:25:51] Rip van boy man. Stick to your guns. See where they get you. Rip Van Boy Man, watch yourself. You're feeding the hands that.

Kaili Vernoff [01:26:07] The old world made you sick. The whole place was bubonic. Now you found the kind of love you need. It's plutonic.

Kaili Vernoff [01:26:25] I don't mean bad, my angel of the underworld.

Kaili Vernoff [01:26:35] I don't mean bad.

both [01:26:41] Rip van boy man.

both [01:26:49] Come out of that cave. This is the good war you've been waiting for.

David Patrick Kelly [01:26:52] Rip van boy man, surrender that shelter. Let it all fall down. Hey man, there's been a long night. Open your eyes. While you were taking your time, time took you by surprise.

Kaili Vernoff [01:27:24] We did it. That was so good. That is from your incredible play, Looping in the Land of the Living, and it's on Spotify that that song. You have a whole album on.

David Patrick Kelly [01:27:35] You can find it on Spotify in a bit of a different version.

Kaili Vernoff [01:27:38] I love it. All right, my friend, thank you so much for taking time for this today. I think you know how much I treasure you. And this has been wonderful for me.

David Patrick Kelly [01:27:48] Kaili Vernoff gameHER, forever.

Kaili Vernoff [01:27:51] Yes! Team gameHER forever.

David Patrick Kelly [01:27:54] Hope to see you soon. Stay safe.

Kaili Vernoff [01:27:55] You too! I miss you.

David Patrick Kelly [01:27:55] God bless.

Kaili Vernoff [01:27:56] God bless. Kay bye!

Kaili Vernoff [01:28:01] He is so amazing and inspiring. Be sure to check out thegameHERS.com for exclusive bonus material with David and our other amazing Let's Play guests. Mr. Kelly also appears in a new film called Fugitive Dreams and can be seen in the newest season of HBO's Succession. So keep an eye out. To hear more of David's music on Spotify and to follow him on social media, be sure to check out the links in the show notes.

Verta Maloney, the*gameHERs [01:28:28] Thanks for listening. Let's Play was brought to you by the*gameHERs, a community that connects all types of women gamers and welcomes every human who supports this. Let's Play was produced by Kaili Vernoff and co-produced by the*gamHERs team, Laura Deutsch, Rebecca Dixon, Verta Maloney, Heather Ouida and Alexis Willcock with Sound Design done by Frank Verderosa. Please visit thegamehers.com for show notes, to access exclusive bonus material, and to learn more about the*gameHERs community. And we so appreciate if you subscribed and gave us a five-star review. Thanks again for listening.