Going For The Jugger
How a forgotten Rutger Hauer movie got me out of tight spot with a truculent star.
By and large, I’ve been lucky. Most everybody I’ve interviewed has been perfectly pleasant. And those that have proved difficult have usually turned out to be well worth the effort.
There are exceptions, however; none more so than Delroy Lindo, star of Get Shorty, David Mamet’s Heist, any number of Spike Lee movies and the unsung cricket movie Wondrous Oblivion, which was the reason for our conversation. I’d heard from others that he could be prickly, but from the way the first five minutes of our chat went, you’d have thought I’d commenced proceedings with a racial slur.
Things warmed up slightly when I recalled that he was a football fan, and he spoke with great enthusiasm about Thierry Henry, then at the very peak of his powers. It wasn’t long, though, before we were back to the one-word answers and the surly air.
And then it came to me - Salute Of The Jugger!
Written and directed by David Webb Peoples (the man who penned Unforgiven, Blade Runner and Twelve Monkeys), Salute Of The Jugger - aka The Blood Of Heroes - was one of those violent, post-apocalyptic pictures that were all the rage in the 1980s. Part Mad Max, part The Running Man, the movie stars Rutger Hauer as Sallow, the leader of a band of futuristic gladiators known as Juggers. Hauer’s teammates include Vincent D’Onofrio, Joan Chen, Anna Katarina and, as the impressively scarred Mbulu, Delroy Lindo.
Our man’s presence in the cast wasn’t the key thing, however. No, what screamed out at me was that his co-stars also included Gandhi MacIntyre, a Sri Lankan-Australian actor whose CV includes bit parts in Aussie pics such as Frauds, Fat Pizza and the Babe sequel Pig In The City.
Since Salute Of The Jugger was shot in South Australia, it was no surprise to see Gandhi on screen. No, what set off s light bulb in my mind were the facts that i) I was conducting the interview by phone from my office in Sydney, and ii) Gandhi MacIntyre was said office buildings security manager!
Yes, when he wasn’t gracing the silver screen, Mr MacIntyre moonlighted (moonlit?) as a security guard. Having only seen him the other day, I thought I ought to mention the fact that I knew - and liked - Gandhi, and that he was a presence in my daily life.
At which point, the man who had little to say and less will to say it became the most warm, helpful interviewee you could possibly imagine. From great stories about his fallout with David Mamet to frank chat about Danny Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary, Delroy Lindo couldn’t have been kinder nor more candid.
And how did he end the interview? “Hey, the next time you see Gandhi, you give him a big hug from me!”
Not one of nature’s great huggers, I nevertheless passed on Mr Lindo’s warm regards to Mr MacIntyre. “Delroy!” he laughed. “Such a lovely man!”
And indeed he was. Eventually.