PLUME: What type of productions would you put on? Were they varied, or was it mostly drama, or mostly comedy?
SPINER: It was really varied. Generally we didn’t do heavy dramas, in high school. We did Shakespeare, but we wouldn’t do Hamlet. We did Twelfth Night and Midsummer, and things like that.
PLUME: Something geared towards the fact that you still had to get people to show up for them?
SPINER: Yeah, and geared towards what kids were actually capable of performing. He was fairly sharp about casting what he had. He chose based on who he had to perform, and what they were capable of understanding.
PLUME: Were there roles at that time that you gravitated towards, or he pushed you towards?
SPINER: Well, yeah, he really kind of pushed me into the college vein. We went to college with him as well, because he went on to college and so did we. We graduated high school the same time he did. It got a little more serious then, and I was doing things like Shylock and more serious drama – but nothing like Hamlet or Othello or anything like that.
PLUME: What was your preference? What were the roles that felt most comfortable to you?
SPINER: Always the comic roles, certainly, and I felt pretty comfortable doing musicals.
PLUME: Is your musical talent something you had pursued even at that point?
SPINER: No, that was where it started. I mean, I had no idea until I was cast and had to do it.
PLUME: Well I guess he definitely did know you all. How much more intense was the college experience, when you talk about the intensity increasing? Was it because it was a college atmosphere?
SPINER: Yeah, and we were doing bigger productions and slightly more serious work. We were sharpening it more towards gearing up for going professional.
PLUME: What were the main points he stressed, as far as going professional?
SPINER: It’s funny, because the thing he stressed the most, I think, was versatility, and he really tried to give everybody a sense of how to play everything. It’s been both the blessing and the curse of my career, and others as well.
PLUME: Because versatility leads to character parts?
SPINER: Not that there’s anything wrong – everybody wants to be a character actor.
PLUME: It means you’re working steady…
SPINER: It’s just that no one knows how to pigeon-hole you – which in Hollywood is “the thing,” you know. You’ve got to fit into a slot. The way I was trained, it’s made it very difficult to kind of figure out what that slot is.
PLUME: I sense a bit of regret in that statement.
SPINER: It’s not regret. It’s always… you never know or the grass is always greener. I so rarely play a character who is close to myself. I just wonder where that would have taken me, had I just done nothing but that. Maybe nowhere.
PLUME: What’s the closest character to yourself that you’ve played?
SPINER: I guess it would have to be – and it wasn’t even that close, but it was the closest I can think of – was in Dorothy Dandridge.
PLUME: Which was an excellent role, by the way.
SPINER: Yes, thank you. It was a nice film to be in. But it’s the only time I can think of, recently, that I’ve played just a regular guy.
PLUME: As opposed to an over-the-top sort of caricature…
SPINER: Or a bizarre character, yeah.
PLUME: Besides the labeling problem – is it circumstance as well that leads to one role leading to another, leading to another?
SPINER: Yeah, exactly. And what I look like, too – and what I don’t want to look like… Which is me, you know. So I choose things where I can change my appearance.
PLUME: Is that some latent insecurity?
SPINER: I don’t know …
PLUME: Or is it just the joy of playing a “role”?
SPINER: Yeah, exactly. My heroes were people like Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness, and people who did that.
PLUME: The sort of chameleon actors.
SPINER: Yeah, exactly.
PLUME: But if you look at their work as a whole, their personality did shine through…
SPINER: Yeah, it did.
PLUME: You can see a certain sensibility…
SPINER: Yeah, absolutely.
PLUME: I think, looking back on your work, one sees a certain sensibility that keeps coming to the fore…
SPINER: I’m sure that’s true. Not that I compare to those guys, but I’m sure that you’re right about that.
Continued below…
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