Returning to the big screen for the first time in nearly a decade, Tony Danza has reteamed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt for Don Jon, playing his father in the film and bearing a striking resemblance. It was a pleasure to sit down with him at SXSW earlier this year; not only is he a natural storyteller, but he speaks with a fluidity and honesty that is refreshing. During our roundtable interview, Danza talked about the way that he could sense Gordon-Levitt was at ease during filming, what he tells courters of his daughter, the reality of pornography today and the way it can warp people’s minds, and much more. With the film arriving in theaters this weekend, check out our conversation below.
The Film Stage: So, 2004 was your last movie, Crash.
Tony Danza: Is that right? Yeah, it’s been a while.
How did it feel to get back into it and how did role come to you?
Well, [Joseph] called me and asked me to do it. We’re old friends because we did Angels in the Outfield together when he was twelve. I’ll be honest with you, being in a movie with these kinds of people, with this level of talent, so to speak, was a little… not nerve-wracking, but it did put me on edge. I wanted to not look like the minor leaguer with the big leaguers. But he’s a terrific director and the script was great. It was easy to see what he wanted and he made it clear what he wanted, so it was actually pretty good.
He’s in pretty good shape, he obviously bulked up for the role.
He bulked up, yeah.
Did you work out a little bit?
No, I’m in shape usually — I mean, generally in shape. I didn’t do anything else, that’s me. I’m 62, so if you wanna stay in shape — and I was a prize fighter, and when you’re a fighter you always think the other guy’s training — it’s tremendous discipline.
Yeah, you probably look like Stallone’s younger brother.
You know, he called me. He saw the movie and he called me, him and a friend of mine and he was really complimentary about the movie. It’s interesting you mention him.
How did you get to the bottom of this character when you first read it on the script? How did you decide what you were gonna bring to the screen?
Well, I come from a family where if they weren’t yelling, they didn’t care. So I kind of know people like this and the script is so clear about this relationship between the father and the son. He’s objectifying everything too like the son, but the son comes from him, so you just extrapolate back and forth between the two characters — but I’m telling you, the script was so clear. It just was very clear and I worked on it with [Joseph] a little bit. I worked on it before I got there, I spent a lot of time. That’s the key, really knowing it. You know, I’m a dancer so I wouldn’t go out and dance a number unless I had it in my bones. So it’s much like that with the work.
[Here’s] a little anecdote: when [Joseph] was twelve doing this movie, Angels in the Outfield, I loved him and I have a paternal thing for him — I can’t help it. It’s funny that I’m playing his father, but I’ve always sort of felt that way about him. We were working at Oakland-Alameda stadium and they had closed the stadium. We were working in there and we were both inline skaters. I was a new inline skater, I think I was 42. I had been doing it for about two years, and he was a skater. So we used to skate around the Alameda stadium; that smooth concrete, it was fabulous. But every once in a while I’d say to him, “Hey Joe, come on let’s go skate!” and he’d say to me, “No, I’m following the director today.” So this has always been something that he really wanted to do. I gotta tell you, watching it be so well-received at Sundance and so on, and the way people are reacting to it, I feel good for the kid, I really do. I’m proud of him. Not that it matters, but I am.
What do you like best about the character that you played?
It’s fun. It’s different. I got a chance to do something that I don’t usually get to do. I know a couple of people like this. There’s a friend of mine who saw the movie the other night and loved Joseph. Because when [Joseph] first called me he said, “Do you think I could play Italian?,” and I said, “That’s what’s wrong with you. You could play anything, you rotten kid.” But he got the seal of approval from a bunch of guys with vowels at the end of their name. But my friend, he’s an ex-actor but he’s like this pessimist — the worst outcome, given any situation, the worst outcome. I’ll give you an example, this will characterize him. I say to him, “Let’s go get a piece of pizza.” He says, “No, I’ll get it all over me.” That’s his attitude on life. So I use a little bit of him, I use a little bit of another guy and I don’t know, like I said, if they were all as easy as this one, it’d be great.
Were you surprised by the amount of pornographic imagery in the film? You obviously read the script but I don’t what we’re seeing at SXSW versus the film that will eventually go to theaters….
Well, I knew what the subject matter was so I figured it was gonna be some. He took so much meticulous work and time to get them just right, to crop them a certain way, to put them in a certain way, to have them say something without being explicit to the point where you can’t use them in a movie. So he did all of that. I think what really shocked me was, when the movie started, he’s so brave, that first five minutes of the movie. My friend, I sent him to see the movie the other day and he took his mother. So I warned him and he called me up and said, “Tony, I loved the movie but sitting next to my mother the first ten minutes was awful.
But I think that this movie captures a moment. I think a lot of people are gonna compare this to Saturday Night Fever or to Boogie Nights. I think it has a comparison, but that’s not the one they’re looking at. The comparison I see is that it captures a moment of our culture, a moment of our time — write what’s happening! Remember that song Things That Make You Go Hmmm? I think a lot of people are gonna go “hmmm” — I really do. And I think it’s an issue. I’ve got daughters by the way. I have two daughters, 20 and 25, and these guys that are gonna come courting my daughters — have they been watching porn since they were eleven? What is their headspace, so to speak? And how are they gonna deal with a relationship?
I think this whole thing is interesting too, because my biggest issue is education. I think one of the things that we don’t admit as a society is that we have a culture, a media, that undermines education and it’s the same kind of thing. You get these same kind of messages all the time that you don’t have to work, you don’t have to try, you could be, you could do… so this consumption of media, unlike any time in the history of mankind, we have yet to see what the results are. I find with the kids, the kids I work with in the city, they have such an in-the-moment life and not in a Buddhist, good way. It’s like at the expense of everything else, “what’s my immediate gratification?” And that’s all because this is the message they’re getting over and over and over. I should tell the kids hard work and good behavior will pay off. And then they go off and watch Jersey Shore and come back and say “you know, there may be another way.”
So how do you handle these courters that are gonna be coming to your door as a father?
I have one precise all-encompassing phrase. I say, “Son, don’t make me kill again. Drive safe, have a good time, be careful.”
With the family scene, especially when you all are eating dinner, did Joseph Gordon-Levitt allow you to do any improv? Did you riff off each other?
Yeah, we did a little bit, but a lot of things Joseph wanted was those scenes to crack and that was the whole thing. There’s a map and we tried to stay on it and you can vary it a little bit. And a lot of things I do sort of lend themselves to prior things I’ve done, which bring me back into Tony Danza land, nice guy. Because Joseph kept saying, “No, you’re too nice. I still like you.”
You mention that you got to see Joseph grow up and become a director on this, obviously. I’m curious if it’s an interesting process to see on the other side of the camera and see him. Do you have conversations where maybe you say something to him and realize “wait, I’m talking to the director.”
No, no, no I don’t have any problem with that. First of all, he’s not pretentious or anything like that in any way. But I’ll be honest with you — I don’t know if this answers your question about what his system is, but I directed a short movie, 28 minute, called Mamma Mia and I starred in it, I acted in it and I don’t like it. I like the movie, but I don’t like my performance because it seems to me, and I’ve had other people tell me I’m crazy, but it seems to me that I’m watching the other actors because I’m directing. He is able to, once the camera goes on, to totally turn off that part of him. It was like we were talking about Mel Gibson this morning, imagine being in Braveheart and directing that thing with 3,000 people and being able to not go, “Shit, that guy dropped his shield” while you were doing it. You know what I’m saying? It’s like so easy to get distracted because it’s all on you. And yet he was able to deal with that. So, I’m telling you, I cant say enough about the way it felt. By the way, he got a great performance out of me I think. I’m surprised by what people are saying. But everybody in the movie, Scarlett’s unbelievable, Julianne is beautiful, and Glenn Headly was fabulous and Brie Larson, and somebody’s got the reins, you know what I mean?
You both have experience in TV sitcoms, so I‘m just wondering, how does that inform you as both an actor in a film and a director, whether it’s a feature or a short?
Well, I think I got lucky. My first show was Taxi, so it was like a movie. Remember, we shoot 35mm film back then and what I love about doing sitcoms was, for me, it was like going to school. Every week there was something; trying to get as much comedy and mirth out of this 50 pages every week and then another script the next week and it’s this constant and it’s practice. You just get good at it, you know, you’re doing it. You get a little economical in your work because a lot of times, the schedule isn’t like you’re in a movie. But I just think it’s work is the key, you gotta do it. I sing, I dance, I live act, it takes so long to be comfortable up there. And it’s the same thing, you just gotta do it and what that sitcom does is it gives you that constant. Movie actors, most people, don’t work. You work every once in a while. If you’re a dancer or a singer or a musician, you practice every day. It’s not like that a lot of times with actors. So sitcoms give you that chance, soap operas, they’re not the apex of the industry, but look how many great actors come out of soap operas — some of our biggest stars come out of soap operas. I just think it’s that, any time you could be doing something as opposed to talking about, is better.
Do you think that Joseph’s character grows up to be like yours?
No, I think he wakes up. I think he goes back to college. I think he finds real love. I think that’s what’s great about the movie; in the end it’s a love story — an unlikely love story, but a love story and what it shows is, more importantly, that what even happens to him is that he can be present. And if you’re present then maybe it’s a lot better way to interact with your lover.
What do you think the reaction will be to the portrayal of Italian Americans in Don Jon’s Addiction?
I sent a bunch of my friends to see the movie, because originally Joseph had said to me, “Can I play an Italian?” So I wanted to see what they thought, because I have been very fortunate in my career. I have not had to do that. I have not had to play the gangster. I think there’s one movie where I play an Italian guy who kills somebody, but for the most part, I never had to do that. I was always the guy who was the good Italian. I get letters all the time from the Italians, “we’re so proud of you.” So I sent a bunch of my friends to see it because these things concern me. I mean it, it does concern me I’m an American above all, but according to my friends, that was not an issue. There was not an issue of stereotyping, of mislabeling, of denigrating. There’s lots of families like that. Brie’s got this thing going, the daughter’s got this thing going, the mother’s wants someone to marry her son, the father’s a football maniac, he’s got porn…I mean, Joseph just wrote a real situation so you don’t get that kind of feeling.
Do you think he has a problem? Part of this movie is, he has an addiction. He pays his bills, he’s not hurting anybody.
Well, there’s a lot of people who function in life; people do drugs and function. He has a problem because there’s no way that that kind of environment, — remember he’s doing it eleven times, eighteen, how many times a day? I’ve always been a believer that with great influence comes great responsibility. I don’t know how guys at MTV sleep at night, I gotta be honest with you. Because that’s what my kids are looking at. The kids in high school, that’s their model. That’s it. But there’s no way that that can’t have some affect on you. I mean some people less, some people more, because we’re all unique and we all respond differently but that’s an awful powerful thing. If you’re hitting that muscle all the time, hitting that button all the time, so to speak, and then when you do end up with someone…and can you imagine, you’re in bed with Scarlett Johansson and you gotta go sneak out? I mean that’s a problem! I don’t know about you, but that seems like a problem to me.
So, technology and the porn industry’s right at your fingertips. You can get it —
You know, remember, when I was a kid, if you wanted to masturbate, you had to get a magazine. You either had to raid your uncle’s stash or you had to go to a store. And you had to walk up to the counter with this thing in your hand, your neighbor might walk in and see you and it’s a tremendous governor on behavior. Well now, you get your phone, your computer, you hit a button and boom you’re in wherever you wanna be. And what worries you is, like I say, I got girls. Are these guys gonna be coming? These guys, since they were eleven doing this stuff and has it had an effect? It’s worrisome. I think it’s worrisome. It’s part in parcel with out lack of or lessening of our need to nurture our children as a society.
When we were kids if I watched a Warner Brothers cartoon or a Bugs Bunny cartoon, there were so many historical references and classical music references that I could win Jeopardy after the show was over. Now the only thing they’re doing is trying to sell you something at any cost. And most times they’re selling you stuff that’s not good for you. I’ll give you an example. I was in Philadelphia, I’m doing my third annual teacher’s versus students talent show in Northeast High School. It’s where I taught for a year. I don’t know if you know about that; I taught for a year and wrote a book about it and everything else. So I was there and it’s tough. The kids are tough. They live in this moment, there’s not a lot of rules, they don’t have a model, communication is very different. It’s almost like you’re living in two different cultures. I didn’t feel like I had a great day that day, I felt like I was a little impatient and I had to check myself and say “hey, remember where you are.”
Next day, which is what teachers do, they wake up an they get back up and I was ready, I was gonna go in there and change the world and I turn on the TV. I couldn’t find the channel I was looking for and I ended up on MTV. Now, MTV doesn’t show any music videos except right before school — I used to love that. And here’s the video, I’m not making this up: so you got these two rapping about something that no matter how I tried, I couldn’t understand it. They’re throwing money up in the air, making it rain, making it rain. You got the girls with the big butts dancing around. And then these guys are taking the money, bundles of money, and doing arm curls and kissing the money. This is what these kids are seeing. That’s not right, we gotta admit, at least. And look, I don’t mind making money on TV, but these guys are reaping billions, profiting on the travails and bad habits of young people, so it’s a bigger issue. But I think Joseph’s movie is certainly gonna focus… and you know it’s funny, and it’s the kind of funny where you laugh and go, “oh shit, why am I laughing?” But that’s the kind of thing that fosters conversation and I think that’s the beauty of it.
Don Jon hits theaters on Friday, September 27th.