James Woods on The Specialist

In the early days of FSM, one of the first people who reached out about making a “soundtrack fan club” (or something like that) was Andy Dursin, who has been writing The Aisle Seat for several decades, and is now a lifelong friend.

We were delighted to discover we were around the same age and lived not far from each other in Southern New England—so we’d hop the Schamonchi ferry (New Bedford–Vineyard Haven) for reciprocal visits.

I loved my time at Andy’s house. His folks were super nice, and we’d spend a weekend watching rarities from his videotape collection of vintage movies and TV like Siskel and Ebert reviews (this is all pre-YouTube), share our love of the Red Sox and Patriots, play Super-NES, hit the beach if it was summertime—and, of course, catch a movie in a theater.

One of the movies I distinctly remember seeing together was The Specialist, in the fall of 1994. The Stallone–Sharon Stone sexy action–thriller—with its high-class score by John Barry—was exactly the kind of studio “programmer” that you could enjoy and make fun of as a wiseass teenager (although I must have just turned 20?).

It literally has a scene that has no purpose except to beef up Stallone’s ego halfway through, where he beats up a bunch of Latino gangbangers on a bus who stole a seat from a nice civilian lady—and Barry scores it like the 1990s Bond film he never did.

I also distinctly remember seeing it in a Rhode Island mall that was overflowing with hormonal high school kids. So there was Sharon Stone’s body double doing a gratuitous nudie scene and it was like a school cafeteria with all these kids carrying on about whatever they wanted (the fact a movie was playing was incidental).

Andy and I loved James Woods in this film, with his over-the-top villain who was, in classic Woods style, threatening and scary and hilarious—he stole the movie. Even though Stallone was Rambo and Woods was seemingly no match physically, you really were convinced that Woods could catch and kill him.

I came across this interview on YouTube where Woods talks about the film, and seems like an unusually articulate and enthusiastic guest:

It reminds me of the adage that the people who play screen villains are the sweetest guys in the world—while the stars who play the heroes are the villains in real life.

The Specialist has an unforgettable (believe it or not) scene where Woods’ character flexes his power visiting a police bomb squad—he improvises an explosive, MacGyver style, and scares the shit out of the cops. This is it:

And wouldn’t you know? It was basically improvised on set at the last minute. The scripted scene was lame, there was some time left at the end of the day, and Woods and the propmaster and supporting dayplayers more or less made it up—it stayed in the movie and is the scene you never forget.

Good interview! Enjoy.

This is your 1990s nostalgia for the day.