About Interviewing Bill: Bill is in the process of putting the highlights [and interesting lowlights] of his four-plus decades in Hollywood into a book.  [If you count his uncredited walk-ons and bit parts prior to his military service, you can put in another decade.]  However, as the projected  publication date is more than two years away, Bill was kind enough to share some of his experiences with us.   We had planned tidy little categories of interview topics.  However, Bill's mind doesn't operate in tidy little categories.  We thought using video clips from various roles would trigger some old memories.  Well, they did.  They sparked comments like popcorn popping loose in a microwave - no particular direction.  And Bill would spot a person he enjoyed working with in almost every scene.  We promised our video group we would never ask that trite question:  "What was it like working with so and so?"  But Bill is so fond of the people he's worked with, he can't help spontaneously telling us how nice everyone was.

Bill is spoken of well by virtually everyone who works with him.  He's educated, energetic, intelligent and not the slightest bit temperamental.  Those very close to him say you can get him to lose his temper but you have to work  hard at it [but then you'd better get out of the way fast].   Generally he's one of the most affable, easy going actors in the business.  He saves his nastiness for his on-screen personas  where he uses it lavishly and to great effect.

Bill rarely has a bad word to say about anyone.  [There are a few who have warranted a bad word from Bill on occasion --  Bill doesn't live his life in rose colored glasses.  But he doesn't see any point in putting their names on the internet. ]  And he has lavish praise for many.  Although he naturally appreciates fellow actors who are above the norm in acting skills or stuntwork, he has the highest regard for those who are genuinely nice to everyone they work with.  In addition to the people he mentions in the following interview, he especially praised Gene Wilder [Frisco Kid], Connie Stevens [Scorchy],  Max Von Sydow [Ultimate Warrior],  Clint Eastwood [Any Which Way You Can], Director Robert Clouse [Darker Than Amber, Ultimate Warrior], Michael Dudikoff [Platoon Leader, The Shooter],  Mike Pataki [Grave of the Vampire], Roger Mosley [Sweet Jesus, Preacher Man but better known for Magnum], Director/Actor Bill Bixby, Director Robert Aldrich [Twilight's Last Gleaming, Frisco Kid], Nick Nolte & Peter Strauss [Rich Man, Poor Man] and Jack Starrett [Run Angel Run, Hollywood Man, The Losers].   Despite the fact that it only lasted six episodes, Bill has maintained close friendships with his surviving male co-stars on the series Wildside [Terry Funk, John Di Aquino, J.Eddie Peck  as well as with the creator Tom Greene.  [Howard Rollins is deceased.]  And if you get the chance, you should try to catch Bill at a Western collectors show with long-time friends Peter Brown and Bob Fuller.  The pictures below are from a panel the three appeared on at the Western Film Fair in North Carolina, 1998.

Bill clearly loves the physical part of his craft.  Although he's quick to point out that he was never a stuntman, as some people assume, he's always done his own fight sequences and has been called on to do plenty of them.  He also does his own riding - both horses and motorcycles.  He could recall only three times when he was doubled for motorcycle stunts.  [All three are described in the interview  below.]  He has also at times been called upon to either write, rewrite or just plain ad-lib his lines.   He writes poetry which he's been enlisted to recite at a number of western events.     In this interview we weren't trying to elicit any deep discussions about the artistic esoterica of film making or the symbolic meaning of certain scenes.  [We're not sophisticated enough for that.]   Although we appreciate how Bill's acting skills have matured over the years, what we love is  that his joy in the more boyish aspects of his chosen profession hasn't  diminished at all.

Since the majority of the characters he plays use firearms, we assumed Bill would excel in gun handling, but Bill downplayed his ability there.  We mentioned that Jameson Parker and Gerald McRaney had appeared in "We are the NRA ads" and were avid hunters.  We asked if Bill was knowledgeable about firearms.  [Bill appeared in two episodes of Simon & Simon and had high regard for McRaney & Parker.]  Bill responded that he had never been a hunter.  [He suggested he might even have been a vegetarian if he hadn't been raised in cattle country.]   He observed during our interview that both Bob Fuller and Peter Brown could outdraw him any day.

Lots of guns on Simon & Simon

Above Quint is Out - '85 Right I Heard it Was Murder '83

Before we got to our real questions we had a little warm-up query involving Bill's appearance as  The Trebor in the 1980 Buck Rogers episode "Buck's Duel to the Death".  The Trebor  was killed when his electric people zapper was reflected back into his body by way of Buck's 20th Century Yankee ingenuity.   But our question wasn't about his death scene.    We wanted to know about that awful 1960's girlie wig.  Who did Bill piss off to get stuck with that?.

We didn't get much more than a smile and a shrug out of Bill who just passed it off on wardrobe and makeup.  But Joanne, Bill's  longtime significant other, jumped in with.  "Bill is the easiest actor in the world on the wardrobe and make-up people.  Too easy sometimes.  They can do anything to him and he never complains."   [Joanne met Bill on the set of Cybernator where she was doing make-up.  He came up and said, "Hi, I'm William Smith.  She responded with, "I'm Joanne Cervelli and I'm a make-up artist not a magician."  Is it any wonder that romance blossomed?] Bill in Cybernator -- Nice makeup
At that point, Bill recalled a time when he did complain about make-up:  his first biker flick: Run, Angel, Run (1969) [a movie that took 13 days to shoot for under $100,000 and made 13 million]. "My character was clean shaven for the second part of the movie so they used a fake mustache on me in the first part.  The make-up girl didn't know how to stick it on properly.  The damn thing was crooked half the time.  There was one scene where I couldn't move my lips when I talked because it kept dangling."

TO THE INTERVIEW --  OUR FIRST TOPIC:

WILLIAM SMITH:  Dead Again  (and again and again)

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