My Short-Lived Acting Career

1976

Once upon a time, in my youth, I was a magician.  Hold onto that factoid for a moment.

Publicity shot for a performance at the local library.

1981

In college I shaved off my beard for a role I was playing in a student film.  Here's a before and after picture using an in-camera double-exposure technique.  And I had to get it right on the first try.

My first experiment with double-exposure used a Cokin filter with a cardboard insert which blocked half of the frame (below image). This technique requires a camera that can do double exposures. The f/stop you choose determines how sharp the line is between the two halves. The overlapping elbows was beginner's luck.

BTS photo of one of the student films I was in.  That camera was a rare 16mm film camera that shot half-frame.

Here I played a sidekick from India.

In this movie I played a Nazi soldier looking for a time portal.

This is literally how I learned to drive stick shift.

A large sand dune in Randsburg, California. I'm on the right. The star of the movie is on the left, playing a soldier in the French Foreign Legion.

1981

In the movie "Clowns of War", Hitler had a clown that made him laugh and allowed him to come up with brilliant battle plans. So if Hitler's clown is assassinated, Germany will lose the war. Commando clowns were recruited, and along with the help of some vagabonds, hobos and tramps (they're different from clowns, you know!) the mission was completed. I played a variety of minor roles. Below are publilcity shots I took for the movie.  You can see the trailer here. And you can watch the full film here.

 

"Hitler will never laugh again."

Me holding the shoe phone, which got me into the Guinness Book of World Records.  (Don't you hate it when other people put you in the center of the frame?)

Me attacking a Nazi soldier.

1982

I was an extra on M*A*S*H in the early ‘80’s. “That Darn Kid” episode, directed by David Odgen Stiers. It was the episode where a goat ate a big pile of money and so nobody could get paid. The show was winding down at that point and production was down to a core group of people (unlike the first year, when they had at least 50 extras everywhere. This season even the operating room scenes were sparsely populated.) And it seemed that the entire cast would take turns directing episodes in the final years.  (Click on any image to view larger.)

As usual, the extras were pretty much ignored by the cast except for Hank Morgan, who showed up drunk. They had to shorten his lines just so he could get a full sentence on camera. Later he threw up over my shoulder, which may explain why he didn’t laugh at any of my Dragnet references.  So in this way I don't feel like I was ignored.  Instead I had a brush with greatness.

David Odgen Stiers was a hoot because his real speaking voice was nothing at all like the Rich New England accent of Charles Emerson “We’ve had problems with immigrants ever since we came to America” Winchester III. And it turns out that he and that guy who played Rizzo didn’t get along, either on screen or off.

By far the most easy-going person there was Mike Farrell, who didn’t mind shooting the breeze about foreign political issues and his financial investment in his “Our Contribution” health food restaurant in the valley. He also didn’t try to hide his disdain for the CBS show “Trapper John, MD”, which had nothing at all to do with M*A*S*H and the network brass were just trying to capitalize on the brand. In our conversation I made a casual suggestion: “You should do an episode about Nurse Kelly. She’s always there year after year in the background doing her job without drama and nobody pays attention to her. She deserves to have her character expanded!”

 
Somebody listened. At the beginning of the final season they did such an episode about her, entitled “Hey Look me Over”. I get no credit, of course, but at least I get the satisfaction of knowing I made a difference in a historic show.

1984

My acting career was ruined when I was a guest star on the TV show The Love Boat. I was a friend of Aaron Spelling, who cast me opposite Bill Bixby because we were both Magicians of one sort or another. But we didn’t get along – I kept on pointing out the technical errors his character would make on his TV show “The Magician”, and he kept making fun of my shoe phone, mentioning what a waste of time it was and that it meant I must not have a life. To annoy him I continued to call him “Uncle Martin” for most of the week. That really pissed him off.

Gavin MacLeod was cool, though. We hung out between scenes and he talked about the positive role Jesus had played in his life, and he complained bitterly that his talents were wasted in this role (unlike his “Big Chicken” role in the original Hawaii 5-0), and that he didn’t have the brilliant writers he had on the Mary Tyler Moore show. At some point the conversation drifted to hair loss (as I was acutely aware that I was losing mine), and he encouraged me to embrace it – loss of hair is like a merit badge. It means you’ve made it this far. I took that advice to heart and when I went to teach English in China years later, I shaved my head completely. Thanks, Gavin!

(Oh, and that guy who played Gopher? Dweeb.)

My Gavin McLeod-inspired haircut when I taught English in China

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Yes, this posting is dated April 1st.  But most of it's actually true!

Until next time,

Yours Truly, Gary Friedman

I was an extra in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  Between takes I was showing off the Data Egg, a Keyboard for Astronauts I developed while at JPL, to the cast and crew.  (Seen in my right hand.)  They weren't impressed.  

This content was created by a human, without the aid of A.I. or machine learning tools.  Had I used such tools I probably could have shown you a convincing picture of Harry Morgan throwing up over my shoulder.