The actor: Marc Singer began his career as a stage actor, and he’s made a point of returning to the stage whenever the opportunity presents itself, but his greatest impact through his roles in front of the camera, including two of the most memorable franchises to emerge during the 1980s—The Beastmaster and V—as well as a film that proved to be a cable TV staple throughout the same decade: If You Could See What I Hear. As a result of cementing his career during this period, Singer has been able to maintain a steady workload over the course of the intervening years, including a notable stint on The CW’s Arrow.
In addition to the aforementioned theater work, Singer has also continued to deliver memorable performances in a plethora of indie films over the years. His latest such endeavor, Agent Recon, found him teamed for the first time in his career with Chuck Norris, and it also provided The A.V. Club with the opportunity to dig into all of the aforementioned projects as well as a number of others, ranging from the Planet Of The Apes TV series to voicing a fan-favorite character on Batman: The Animated Series and much more.
A.V. Club: The obligatory first question is to ask how you found your way into this project in the first place.
Marc Singer: You know, I became a part of Agent Recon by just the good fortune of Derek Ting—who’s the writer, director, producer, and leading man in Agent Recon!—communicating with my agent and my manager and expressing some interest and wanted to see if I was interested in return. So I got the script, I took a look at the script, and the first thing I generally try to evaluate is, “Does this look like a movie that I can see in my mind on the screen?” And, boy, the script did. It was everything. It had wide open spaces and dark, deep alleyways and rooftops going across, scenic settings and lots of action… So it certainly checked those boxes!
But then the main thing is, what’s the character like? Does the character have enough complexity and enough weight and is it challenging enough to me that I’m going to be able to connect with it really strongly and bring out something that’s really valuable and that an audience is gonna connect with and make them excited and want to know about what’s gonna happen to this guy and what’s gonna happen in the film itself?
I think the way to put that is, in conversations that we have in regular life, like the one we’re having right now, you and I… The inner workings of our personalities, you and I, they’re not necessarily appropriate to the communication we’re having. We’re just two guys talking. But in the film, all that inner complexity has to have an avenue to come out and be expressed in. And that’s exactly what makes a character interesting on film: all that inner complexity. So I look to see whether a role is going to reach inside me and search those places that find something in me that compels me. And hopefully in that sense, it also is compelling to the people who watch this guy go through this.
AVC: Would you have ever believed that you’d make it to the stage in your career where you could play the grizzled military veteran?
MS: Well, the calendar will do that for you, y’know? [Laughs.] If you exist in this industry and persist in this industry for long enough, time will tell. The way you carry yourself is how much of that history you bring with you every day.
AVC: I was thoroughly impressed with the exposition dump in this film. In the first 45 seconds, it laid out an entire universe. Literally.
MS: Yeah! This is Derek Ting. Derek Ting as a writer, he knows how to get right at it, and there’s an economy of storytelling. We get right to the point, and we move from that point to the next point. And we progress through the film in that way, in a very direct line. The people that we’re introduced to and the situations that challenge us come right away, and the exploration of who it is we’re going to be witnessing as we go along this journey with them comes in a very direct way, too. We find out who these people are almost immediately when we see them, and as a result, we relate to them. It’s a good script that way, and a good story.
AVC: I will say that Chuck Norris had the more relaxing role between the two of you.
MS: [Laughs.] Yeah! Yeah, Chuck, he and I had a barely nodding acquaintanceship with one another, back in various black-tie events that the industry used to host back in the day. He hung with a different crowd than I did, so it really was just a nodding acquaintance, and we’d never had a chance to work together professionally. This was the first time we got to spend a moment together, and I have to say, his enthusiasm for filmmaking… It was just apparent from the moment he got in. He was saying, “Let’s do it! Let’s get at it! Let’s do it!” And he was so unassuming, so available to everybody, the young cast and the young crew—both great, and a great cinematographer, too. I look to see this when I’m on a set, whether it’s the stage or a film set: he fell in love with everybody right away, and they fell in love with him. And that was it: you could just see it. He was a real pleasure.
AVC: Before we move on, I’ll just mention that I did catch the nod to V in one of your lines of dialogue.
MS: Yeah, there’s always room for irony. [Laughs.] And Derek knows how to exploit that!
AVC: We try to go as far back in an actor’s on-camera career as possible, and if IMDb is to be trusted, then it looks as though yours was playing a Young TV Doctor in an episode of Columbo.
MS: Yeah!
AVC: And even though you’re uncredited, I can confirm that you are in this episode, because I watched it this morning on Peacock.
MS: [Laughs.] Yeah, I came to filmmaking completely unwashed. I didn’t know anything about the film industry. I was a stage actor. I was doing Chekhov and Shakespeare and whatever else there was that we were doing on the stage for years. And seeing myself on that episode of Columbo, which I did for the first time maybe two years ago, I think… [Laughs.] Somebody slipped it to me on a DVD. It was a little like watching Tony Curtis as an extra in The Red Badge Of Courage. Everybody has to start on camera somewhere, standing and having people say, “Hit the mark, look this way, this is camera right, that’s camera left, this is how it works.” You have to have that experience. And that was mine. I look back on that with a great deal of interest and also a certain degree of nostalgia. I think that was my first time in one of the big studios. In that day, we used to work from studio to studio to studio, from Warner Brothers to MGM to Universal to you name it.
AVC: What led you to pursue acting as a career path? Because given your father [Jacques Singer, a virtuoso violinist and noted symphony orchestra conductor], you could have easily headed in a musical direction, like your siblings did at various points in their careers.
MS: Well, actors become actors… [Hesitates.] It’s not something you choose on a menu of other activities. When you discover acting, you discover that that’s the only thing you want to do. It happened to me by chance. I was in high school and I got tapped in my junior year to play the lead in the senior play, just by happenstance. It was Shakespeare, and I’d always loved Shakespeare because my father got me interested in Shakespeare. In fact, behind me, somewhere in the dark over here, is my father’s old Shakespearean anthology. But when I walked out on stage, I knew that was exactly what I was going to do for the rest of my life. And I will say, by the way… I just want to put in a plug here for the arts in education. They should be funded. Not just athletics and not just academics, but also the arts. If there hadn’t been funding in those days in the public schools for theater and performing arts, I wouldn’t be here today talking with you. That avenue would have been closed to me, and to millions of other young people throughout the nation.
MS: Oh, yeah, Stan Novak! I loved playing that role. That was a departure role for me. He was a male stripper… and I had to learn this strange routine of stripping! [Laughs.] They had to teach me. “No, no, no… First you take off your shoes. Don’t try to take your pants off over your shoes. Take your shoes off first!” But, yeah, I loved playing that role, because he was a very interesting guy. He was a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, and this was where life had led him: to being a male stripper. And I enjoyed playing lost souls. There’s something that I… I find an affinity between myself and them.
There was a role I played on The Twilight Zone years ago in which I portrayed a baseball player who found himself considered a loser in the 1980s and was transported back into the early days of the 20th century and found his place in the baseball venues of those days. It was a very sweet story. Stan Novak, however, he ended tragically. But he had a tenderness about him and a naivete that really spoke to me. I really enjoyed that. And we filmed that in New York. We filmed it on the streets of New York, and that was a wild experience, because… [Starts to laugh.] New York is a movie in and of itself, particularly during that era!
MS: Boy, did I have fun doing that. And as it turns out, because the series itself was iconic, everyone associated with the series has a certain iconic attachment ancillary to their involvement with it. My wife [Haunani Minn] even voiced some characters in Batman! But sitting in the room and doing Batman was a unique experience. It really was like doing old radio. We all sat around in a common room, in a soundstage, with a music stand in front of us, on which there was a script, and we played essentially a radio drama. “What do you think, Robin? Can we go over here and get this?” “I think we can!” “Wait a minute, somebody’s coming in!” [Makes the sound of footsteps.] “Hello?” “Oh, hello!” You know, we played a radio drama. It was just wonderful, and a great experience. Just a lot of fun.
MS: I love playing a character like that. He was STRAC. He was straight down the line Army. He was military. And he represented the kind of villain that you admired in spite of yourself… and in spite of himself. What a well-formulated script that was. It really brought out… Well, let’s just say that it seemed like second nature. A little too close.
AVC: Since we’ve done two DC roles in a row, it begs the question: are you a comic-book guy yourself?
MS: You know, my family was classical musicians. We were about Shakespeare and the high-minded stuff. I had to go over to the neighbors to read the comic books. [Laughs.] So I didn’t actually own any. But I devoured them! You know, I held in my hands—and if I knew then what I knew now, I would’ve held onto it—and read the very first issue of Green Lantern over at my neighbor’s house. I remember it specifically and what a powerful impact it made on us when we were kids. It was extraordinary.
MS: I played a Nazi! It was a World War II comedy, and that was an interesting experience. We filmed it in Israel, and… Oh, wow, that just spun my mind. Suddenly now I’m thinking of all the things that happened then, and… Well, I have two stories about that which I think might be interesting. At a certain point in the film, Von Kraut, we discover him when he’s, uh, not in uniform. He prefers to dress in drag. So I had a bustier on and fishnet stockings, and… the wardrobe people made high-heeled shoes for me. I wear either a 10 or an 11 shoe. I had these gigantic high heels, and I remember wearing these…and believe me, the crew gave me hell while I was walking to and from the set! But I remember putting on these high heels and wondering, “How do women do it? How do they do this? This is impossible!” If you don’t break your ankle, you’re gonna get cramps in both calves. It gave me a new respect for things that women can do and men can’t!
The other thing is, there was an incident that was very telling. Since it was a war movie, even though A Man Called Sarge was a comedy, we had a battle sequence, and it took place in a large—for want of a better term—horseshoe canyon. Very broad. About a mile across, and maybe two or three miles deep, in a desert setting. And the way they simulated it as an ongoing or just-past battle site was to burn rubber tires to send up all this black smoke. And it being Israel, after the many wars and conflicts they’ve had with their neighbors, they had plenty of burned-out or blown-up tanks, so a few of those were scattered around. Army vehicles of some sort or another. And I was not participating in this big scene, but I was standing up on one ridge of this horseshoe canyon, this broad expanse. They set fire to the tires, and they began moving the Army vehicles—those that could move—they began to maneuver those through the area. I was standing up near one of the cameras that was filming this from up above.
Suddenly from the distance these… I guess it was F-15 Phantom jets from the Israeli Air Force, they came screaming at us from out of the blue, because no one had told them that we were making a film there. And they came diving at us, in case there was an invasion going on. And one of these pilots came eye-level with us up there in the camera crew, and this pilot was so close to us, you could see him distinctly in the cockpit. And he took that jet and flew it like this… [Demonstrates with his hands.] He took a look at us, stood it on its tail, and went BING! Up into the sky and disappeared. It was extraordinary to see that kind of aerobatics… and also to realize how close we’d come to being on the business end of the weaponry they were carrying! So, yeah, filmmaking is fraught with those kind of adventures. They’re unique, I think, in their own way to this profession.
AVC: Gary Kroeger told me to tell you “hello,” and that you looked great in fishnets.
MS: [Laughs.] Well, he was a wonderful guy to work with. That was another set on which everybody was laughing and happy. We had a great time on that. By the way, I want to put this out there: there’s a film called The Band’s Visit, which takes place in Israel. I just saw it last night for the first time, and I recommend it to everybody. It not only captures the spirit of the Middle East, especially located in Israel, but the message of the film is strikingly valuable. It’s a great film.
MS: There were two aspects to Mike Donovan. One of them that really impressed me was that he was a reluctant hero. He didn’t want to be doing what he had to do, and I think the lesson learned there was deeply embedded in me. It was an exciting time for a young actor, but it was an instructive time as the years went by and I reflected more deeply on the kind of stuff we did. But as far as a working experience, it was like going to a rodeo every day. Whatever you thought of that you wanted to do, they’d let you do it. If you figured out a stunt whereby you threw yourself off a roof and landed on your head, they’d say, “Let’s do that! Let’s figure that out!” So it was a great deal of fun.
And then, of course, I had a chance of working with one of my favorite people, and it brings a smile to my face to even think of her, and that’s Jane Badler. Jane Badler… I have such fond memories of her. And we see each other occasionally. Very rarely do we run into each other, but when we do, I always get the biggest bang out of her. I think she’s wonderful.
AVC: How was the experience of working on the 2011 incarnation of V?
MS: A completely different experience. Completely different. Because in the intervening era between the original V and the reboot, a whole new generation—well, two or three generations!—of filmmakers had passed through the gates, and there was so much technology to it. I remember that one of the scenes I filmed took place in a gigantic hangar-sized soundstage, and the entire place was a green screen. The entire interior was a green screen! So you walked in there, and after an hour or two, everybody was staggering around because of this vibrant, luminous day-glo green that we were all surrounded by that was just vibing us. But it was a different concept. I wish it had lasted longer. I only got to participate in a single episode, and then I think they closed the franchise down. I hope it wasn’t because of me! [Laughs.] But anyway, they did. And I felt I had a lot more story to tell, so I regretted that.
MS: Well, first of all, let me tell you that that’s the moment that I learned what it was to be cold… and that I never wanted to be cold again. [Laughs.] That came about, as a matter of fact, as a result of my work in Shakespeare, doing The Taming Of The Shrew, which is out there on the ‘net somewhere. But the writer/director Don Coscarelli had seen my performance in that, and he said, “That’s the guy I want to play Dar!” So there was really no casting. There was just a meeting. We met, and we had a conversation and, man, we got right at it! And the next thing I knew, I was being fitted for my little leather hula skirt, and off we went into the desert again. I seem to be filming a lot in the desert!
But we went out and started filming in the desert, and that’s where I made some lifelong friends and developed, actually, my appreciation for filmic history. And I also had my real lessons in camera technique sharpened by a man named Chuck Bail, one of the original Stuntmen’s Association founding fathers. He took me under his wing, and he and I became very, very close friends for many, many years. He’s passed away now. But I owe Chuck Bail, a legendary filmmaker and a legendary figure in his own era, for his contribution to the film industry.
Beastmaster was a big-time event. In order to play the Beastmaster, we had to audition tigers. We went out to a place called the Gentle Jungle, and they brought various tigers out, and I walked around with the tigers for a while to see which ones would be most appropriate… and that would not eat me. [Laughs.] I’m not kidding you!
I remember one incident when we were walking along, and one of the tigers that we had selected at this moment was walking beside us, and as we were walking along, the tiger suddenly turned and put my entire leg in his mouth. And so my knee—and all around my knee—was in a tiger’s mouth. Now, we had two or three animal handlers who had taken the tiger out, and each of them had a huge club for obvious reasons. So when the tiger puts my entire leg in his mouth, we all got very quiet… We all thought about the clouds… We all wondered when the last time was that we’d communicated with our mothers… And we thought about quiet things… And then the tiger let my leg go. And they said, “I think we’ll look for a different tiger.”
And that’s how we ended up with Kipling, who was dyed black and seemed to like it. He kind of said, “I think this looks good on me!” And he was one of the most extraordinary beings I’ve ever been around in my entire life. He was like a buddha. He knew everything. He was the first one I said “hello” to every morning and the last one I said “good night” to every night. And whenever we were on camera together, I always said to him, “This film is about you, not about me.” Good ol’ Kipling…
AVC: How did you enjoy the continuation of the franchise into the sequels and then—several years later—on the syndicated series?
MS: Well, it’s like what I said about V: there’s always more story to tell. You might to some varying degrees be fonder of one iteration than another, but there’s always more to tell. And if you’ve created a character, you own that character, in a very personal way, regardless of the script, which I was never consulted on, appropriately so. You don’t want to give that character up. You don’t want to let that character go to somebody else, because… that’s my character! I thought that up.
When I went to Australia to participate in the television series that was eventually made following the…I think three films that we did of Beastmaster, by then I was playing an elder statesman. So my sword work was no longer associated with Dar. Dar was being played by somebody else…and I also directed an episode down there, as I recall now! So you never know how much life there is in a project and how much more life there might be yet. So I look forward to more of that, if there’s more to say!
MS: You know, every role you play is a reach down into yourself, and it’s also a reach into the outside world at the same time. The title of the film just about says it all. Exploring that lifetime for the brief moment that I was involved with it was pretty amazing, and one of the exercises that people might try in their own home is just having a normal conversation with anybody on any subject and simply closing their eyes while they do it. Because the rest of the world comes to you, and life’s experience resonates with you, in a way that maybe you’re unused to. And in that, there’s kind of a deepening of the experience… and there certainly was in playing that role.
As far as the filming experience is concerned, we had a blast, because Tommy Sullivan is basically a happy-go-lucky guy, or he certainly was in his youth, and we filmed this on the shores of Nova Scotia. The setting was just idyllic. The Atlantic Ocean, with its white-capped waves, and the big puffball clouds overhead in the spotless sky, it was just amazing. And the cast, of course, was unbeatable, as was the author, Stuart Gillard, who I’ve known since college days. He’s one of my best buddies still today and a wonderful director now. Still works in Canada a lot, as well as the US.
MS: [Long pause.] You know, a lot of these films change their titles after I’m involved with them…
AVC: This was one where you co-starred with Mark Hamill.
MS: Oh! Yeah, okay! Well, I’ll tell you, with that one, I think the thing that was the most striking about it… Again, it’s almost like the location dominates the films in many of these instances, because we filmed this up in a ski resort in the local mountains called Big Bear. And Big Bear features prominently in a lot of Raymond Chandler’s mysteries. Sometimes when you go on location around the Los Angeles area, you’re going to find yourself in iconic settings that really speak to the history and the romance of this area, and that was certainly one of ‘em! I remember that mainly from the setting. As far as the filming is concerned, I know that Mark was great company to be with and easygoing and very giving. It was a good experience. I look forward to working with him again someday.
AVC: I know Gilbert Gottfried was in the film, but I don’t think you actually had any scenes with him, did you?
MS: I don’t recall that I had any directly with him. But, boy, was he a blast. [Laughs.] He was really funny, and he picked up on every nuance of every joke that you ever threw his way as well. He was an outrageous character, but at heart, he was what he really seemed to be: a sweet guy.
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PL0c1cIhgHZMawjH8kxTlcge_b542mbe33′ type=’playlist’]AVC: You actually did two episodes of Barnaby Jones, but on the first one you worked with Nick Nolte.
MS: Yeah! Nick has remained a favorite of mine. Completely uncomplicated, extremely straightforward guy, solid as a rock. I’ve got nothing but praise for him. Always been a good friend to me whenever we’re together… which is infrequent! But, yeah, he’s the real deal. He’s a real guy. And Barnaby Jones itself was quite an experience. That was early in my career, and I was really learning about filmmaking. Every experience in Hollywood has its own memory, and time will erase a lot of things, but a lot of things still stay with you, and Buddy Ebsen… What a man. What a legend.
MS: I remember that in particular because it was the first time I had an onscreen fight. I was opposing Bill Smith, and he’s about the size of two refrigerators and just as strong as an ox. [Laughs.] A very erudite man and speaks Russian fluently… and I believe he taught Russian for a while at UCLA, if I’m not mistaken, although I may get some of that tangled up. But I didn’t know anything about fighting, and inadvertently I popped him one around the liver, which he had to walk off. Somebody had to show me how to throw a punch in a fake fight, because I’d never done a fake fight before on film. I’d done a lot of action on stage, but not on film. And somebody else came up to me and said, “Do you know who you just hit?” And I said, “Well, I didn’t mean to. That was just an accident!” And they described to me how tough Bill Smith really was… and I felt a great deal of relief that he was also as kind as he was, because he said, “It’s okay, kid, take it easy. We’ll be fine.”
AVC: Do you have a favorite project that you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?
MS: Probably a few. I always like to cite that guest-starring role on The Twilight Zone that I mentioned earlier. I liked playing that baseball player. He was a very naïve, romantic figure. I liked him very much.
AVC: The only one I thought you might say was Dead Space, which is kind of an underrated little sci-fi film.
MS: Oh, you know, I remember that we had a lot of fun on Dead Space! My very first shot was shooting out of an irrigation tunnel into a huge vat of stagnant water. [Laughs.] That was the very first shot that I made on that one. Welcome to filmmaking!
AVC: That was a Roger Corman production, wasn’t it?
MS: It was! I did… three of them, I think? Maybe four Roger Corman productions. I know I did two, but I think maybe I did three or four. But it was a great studio to work for, and it was always with young talent coming up. You really enjoyed a great deal of artistic and creative freedom when working there, and a lot of fine actors and actresses I worked with under the Roger Corman auspices.
MS: That was one of my first experiences in the Hollywood cliché where one of the people who was representing me at the time said, “Why would you want to do this film? They’re really not offering you a salary commensurate with what you’re able to command these days!” I said, “It’s a great script.” And he literally picked up the script and thumbed it like this… [Does a rapid-fire flipping motion.] …to see why it was a great script. And I said, “And besides, I’m going to be hand in glove working with Burt Lancaster! You can’t turn that down!” So I accepted the film.
We went out to a location in the desert outside of Los Angeles, and a whole Army fort was set up there. I was very new to filmmaking in those days. Burt Lancaster sat down behind his desk on the set, cameras were all pointed to him, this was his first scene, and I’m standing at his side. I’m his adjutant. And Ted Post, the wonderful director, is getting ready to call “action,” the rest of the crew, all the cast, they’re all standing by for Burt Lancaster’s first scene in the movie. Oh, my God, it’s Burt Lancaster! And I, on the other side of the lens by Burt, I’m thinking, “Yeah, baby… Me and Burt… here we go!”
So Ted Post says, “Action!” And Lancaster doesn’t say his line. He looks up at me and says [Doing a pitch-perfect Lancaster impression.] “You know, when I was a younger man, I used to just have to come on the set and say, ‘Hey, baby! Ha ha ha!’” And when he said, “Ha ha ha!” he looked young again. And he said, “Well, who could resist me? But as I’ve gotten older, it’s forced me to learn how to act!” And Ted Post, who’s watching this, goes, “Cut!” Somewhere that piece of film probably exists. But I certainly feel the same way in my own career: as I’ve gotten older, it’s forced me to learn how to act!
On the last day of filming… Well, it was my last day of filming, but it was a night shot, and I said, “Burt, I just wanted to say what a great experience it was working with you and how much I’ve learned from you, and how much you represent that you may not even know you represent.” And he said, “Well, kid, I got here just like everybody else.” And he turned and walked off into the dark.
