Exclusive Interview: M.C Gainey

Interview by Clint Morris

Interview with M.C Gainey
Appears in movies The Dukes of Hazzard and Anchorman.

M.C Gainey has played many bad guys: "I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts."

He'll never be a romantic leading man or all-round good guy - and actor M.C Gainey is the first to admit it.

"With a face like this…" begins Gainey, whose many credits include Breakdown (1997), The Cooler (2003) and Wonderland (2003), "…there aren't a lot of lawyers or priest roles coming my way.

"I've gotta face that was meant for a mug shot and that's what I've been doing for the past thirty years. If I play a cop, it's always a racist cop, or a trigger-happy cop or a crooked cop - but by and large I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts."

Gainey's latest film is a big-screen retool of The Dukes of Hazzard. It's actually Gainey's second excursion into Hazzard county. "I actually did an episode of 'The Dukes of Hazzard' in like it's third or fourth season. I played a gun-toting thug and now I'm playing another gun-toting thug… Well, the sheriff," he laughs.

The new version stars Sean William Scott and Johnny Knoxville as good ol' boys Bo and Luke Duke. With a little help from their dashing cousin Daisy (Jessica Simpson), they manage to egg on the authorities of Hazzard County, notably, Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds) and Sheriff Coltrane (Gainey).

James Best played the character of bumbling sheriff Rosco Coltrane in the original TV series, but Gainey was instructed not to try and Xerox his performance. "Did you see the film version of The Beverly Hillbillies?", he asks. "I believe that the film didn't work because they tried to do an impression of the TV show, and that's not what The Dukes of Hazzard is about at all - we're not doing an impression of the TV show. We're taking these characters, updating them and putting them in the 21st century.

"I play very little resemblance to the great James Best, I don't have the funny laugh or little giggle, and I don't do a lot of comedy with the dog - because that's not what we're about. Boss Hogg and I are about some real, real dark stuff - they're not after the boys just to rough them up, write them a ticket or put them in jail for the night -- we're into some real nasty stuff. I remember what James Best did and I don't think I'd want to do him the disservice by trying to do an impression of that anyway."

Gainey says the villains of the original TV series never had the option to go uber-nasty like they do in the movie. "When you're doing a TV show every week - you can't be too bad. You have to be ineffective, at best, and bumbling, because, well, it is a comedy. They were there every week. We're a different kind of bad guy."

The change in tone wasn't what appealed to Gainey about the film though - it was the chance to work with some of his idols. "The opportunity to work with some of my heroes - Willie Nelson, Burt Reynolds, Joe Don Baker - I love those guys, so that was a big draw."

Gainey says working with Seann William Scott, Johnn Knoxville and Jessica Simpson was a surprising treat too. "They're brilliant, they make the movie. The two guys are hysterical together. I don't want to say Hope and Crosby - but there's an awful lot of Hope and Crosby in their relationship.

"I think that they're getting overlooked, because so much of the attention is on the car - in all honesty, the car is the main icon, but these two guys are absolutely hysterical and Jessica Simpson is wonderful as Daisy Duke."

Some were up in arms that Simpson was hired to step into the shorts of Catherine Bach for the film - saying she's too ditzy for the part, but Gainey doesn't agree saying Jessica Simpson's smarter than she acts. "People said Jessica Simpson can't play Daisy Duke because Daisy Duke was not dumb. They're assuming that Jessica Simpson is playing her as dumb - she's not.

M.C Gainey rejects Jessica Simpson's 'dumb' tag: "When Jessica was on her series and said, 'Is this Chicken that I'm eating?' as she dug into her tuna, that was not for real. She's not dumb."

"Trust me brother, when Jessica was on her series and said, 'Is this Chicken that I'm eating?' as she dug into her tuna, that was not for real. She's not dumb. She's very affective. She's also dynamite looking. She's very strong and very powerful as Daisy Duke."

M.C Gainey made his film debut in 1981's Pennies from Heaven and went on to appear in near another sixty films. In the mid '90s he became somewhat of a 'go to' guy for the bad guy part, but he's not complaining.

His favourite bad guy? "Swamp Thing in Con Air. In a movie that has so many villains, take a look at my character closely - not that it supports the weight of a careful examination - and you'll see that I don't really get in anyone's face, I don't really kill anyone, I'm not really a bad guy - I'm just a guy who likes to fly.

"He made the mistake of landing his plane full of controlled substances in the wrong place and finds himself in the system. In terms of bad guys though, the character I played in Breakdown was a very bad human being. There's nothing redeeming about that character."

Film wise, there's only a couple of film experiences he didn't enjoy - one was Jerry Springer: Ringmaster. "No money, bad location, and poor Jamie Pressley had to have simulated sex with me," he laughs.

"People always think that the people on the Jerry Springer show are actors - no. This is what actors look like when they're doing this shit. The real folks are the nuts, they're the real goods."

His latest film was a much more pleasurable experience, and looks set to be a bit of a money-spinner too. "We're doing reshoots for Dukes right now, but when it's done, it's going to be a lot of film watching it rollout."

It would've been an even bigger Summer for Gainey. Audiences would also have seen the actor in the sequel to House of 1000 Corpses - but he's just found out his character got the chop from proceedings. "I was sharing scenes with a character named Doctor Death, but I don't think they're going to show him in this movie [now]."

A bit of a loss, but on the other hand - he's doing some work on a major television series. "I'm entering the cast of 'Lost', appearing in the final episode of the season, and then I'll be back next season to finish an arc on that," he says. "I'm also in a new pilot that stars Rebecca Romijn called 'Pepper Dennis', which is a mid-season replacement on the WB."

Film wise, he's just completed another movie with his Dukes co-star Sean William Scott and the always-dependable Billy Bob Thornton. "It's called Mr Woodcock," says Gainey. "I play the town barber. He's kind of like Floyd from the Andy Griffith show - only he's mean."

Though things are gradually shifting, Gainey seems to star in films that are the perfect target for a fastidious film critic, but amazingly, loved by audiences alike. A recent example, the panned but profitable Are We There Yet?, an amiable family comedy starring Ice Cube. "It did over 80 million dollars at the domestic box office here, so I guess whatever the critics savage has a real good chance of doing well at the box office," says Gainey, who played a menacing truck-driver in the comedy. "If critics had anything to say about it none of us would know who Adam Sandler is."

There's one film that Gainey appeared in that critics have enjoyed though - Sideways. Gainey plays the memorable role of Cammi's hornbag husband. "It's really funny, I've been doing this for thirty years and I got more attention doing that - than anything else. It's almost transformed my career. If I'd only known thirty years ago, I would've dropped my pants then!"

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