I sometimes wonder what it must to do one’s self-esteem to continually be cast as the evil villain. That’s a question I should have asked Billy Drago when I met him at the Chiller Theatre show on October 27, 2012. There must be a limited number of actors in the business who have a higher ratio of ‘bad guy roles’ to ‘good guy roles’ than he does. And clearly he does it well. I’m not familiar with a lot of the evil roles he played, but you might catch him as a gangster in an episode of Moonlighting, a corrupt deputy in Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, or most notably as Al Capone’s henchman Frank Nitti in The Untouchables.
It is the latter film that I knew him best from, and his character was so despicable that I – along with every other filmgoer who saw The Untouchables – had to hold in a rousing cheer when Kevin Costner (as Eliot Ness) tosses him from the roof and he lands atop a car after screaming the whole way down, prompting the dialogue exchange in the title of this posting. This event was pure fiction (the real Nitti committed suicide years later), but it was nonetheless utterly satisfying.
Billy Drago has been scheduled to appear at the Spring Chiller Theatre show and, having been disappointed when he cancelled that appearance, I was most pleased to see him re-scheduled for the Fall show. We didn’t have any lengthy chats but it was clear that he wasn’t evil. In fact, he seemed quite nice, and not as crazy as the long hair would indicate. I paid the $30 for the autograph and a free photo op and moved on to the next celeb, rather pleased that I finally got to meet that poor sap who landed on a car.
Celebrities of the Fall 2012 Chiller Theatre Show will continue…
He was also the demon “Barbas” on several seasons of “Charmed.”
Denise
March 15th, 2013