About Steve :: Actor :: Movies
Sgt. Bilko
 

This segment focuses on the new movie "Sergeant Bilko" and other movies who might be possible nominees for an Academy Award at next year's ceremonies.

BODY: BILL TUSH, Anchor: This is Showbiz This Weekend and we know the Academy Awards happened this past Monday, but it is such a huge event, we decided to stick around and bring you more of it. Steven Segal, of course, you just saw him. Rod Steiger is over there, John Lassiter, [sp?] the director of Toy Story and the press from all over the world covering this event and we're here to bring it to you, too and before we meet some of this year's nominees we're going to find out from Steve Martin all about his new film called Sergeant Bilko.

PAUL VERCAMMEN, Correspondent: [voice-over] Reporting for duty in Sergeant Bilko- three highly decorated comedians.

STEVE MARTIN, Master Sergeant Ernest Bilko: I'm the leader of the platoon and I run my men, I run gambling, I run lotteries, I run dances, I sell beer illegally, I'm a con man and yet I'm thoroughly lovable.

DAN AKROYD, Colonel John Hall: I am completely oblivious to all the activities of my master sergeant but yet completely dependent upon him to keep the base rolling at a good smooth level.

PHIL HARTMAN, Major Colin Thorne: And I should have been a general a long time ago instead of shining a secret [word omitted] in Washington, D.C., but thanks to a certain master sergeant, I had a career reversal 20 years ago.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: [voice-over] The subject of Bilko called for a roundtable, okay, poker table discussion.

STEVE MARTIN: If we do well on the CNN national, I know we're going to get on international.

PHIL HARTMAN: I loved doing army when I was a kid and I- man I got my uniform and my belts and everything looked just right and I wanted to learn how to salute.

[excerpt from 'Sergeant Bilko']

STEVE MARTIN: What I loved about it, I was playing Bilko and I grew up with Bilko. So I was more interested in Bilko than I was in the army.

PHIL HARTMAN: That was good

DAN AKROYD: I was a French resistance.

STEVE MARTIN: Yeah.

DAN AKROYD: And I was blowing up railway bridges.

STEVE MARTIN: Yeah.

PHIL HARTMAN: With plastique.

STEVE MARTIN: Yes.

DAN AKROYD: And I was going to bed with Magdalena [sp?] tonight.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: [voice-over] The fantasy is played out in a film made by Universal, newly acquired by the Brockmans [sp?] of the Seagrams liquor empire.

PHIL HARTMAN: Wonderful Canadian family was- [crosstalk]

DAN AKROYD: They're Canadians but they weren't on board when Bilko- they came in just after Bilko was being made.

PHIL HARTMAN: I wasn't told.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: Can you give us the Clinton-Dole quick review of this movie?

PHIL HARTMAN: A master sergeant in the army is in danger of losing his lavish lifestyle when a Pentagon official threatens to close Fort Baxter.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: Perfect. Very well done. And the take from Dole?

DAN AKROYD: I'll tell you right now, you might not really believe me, I'll tell you right now, there should have been a whole bunch of court martials or something in the movie. If you ever saw a sergeant like Sergeant Bilko in that movie you'd send him right up and put him in the bridge. You'd slap in Fort Leavenworth so fast he wouldn't be able to blink.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: [voice-over] Bilko, more master politician than master sergeant and never dragged through the mud. Paul Vercammen, CNN Entertainment News, Hollywood.
 

Steve Martin is playing film version of Sgt. Bilko. Martin says there is improvisation on the set, which brings out the best in actors and exciting times during the day.

JIM MORET, Anchor: Well, you won't find women's roles of major rank in Sgt. Bilko, the Steve Martin movie now in production in Los Angeles. Martin plays the scheming TV character of the 1950s in this military comedy due out next year. Paul Vercammen went to see what kind of mischief Martin and his army buddies are into.

PAUL VERCAMMEN, Correspondent: It's drill time, misfits and misfires. They're making a movie about Sgt. Bilko, with Steve Martin dressing up for the lead role.

STEVE MARTIN: I love the uniform, you know. Nice and cool. They're built for speed, these outfits.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: The cast also includes Dan Akroyd.

DAN AKROYD, From 'Sgt. Bilko': You must think I'm a nincompoop, sergeant.

STEVE MARTIN, in 'Sgt. Bilko': A nincompoop, an NCV, on the contrary, sir.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: Soldiers Max Casella and Darryl 'Chill' Mitchell.

MAX CASELLA: He's running a little bordello out of his room, you know?

DARYL 'CHILL' MITCHELL: Why it got to be me? Why can't it be you?

MAX CASELLA: 'Cause it's you!

DARYL MITCHELL: All right.

MAX CASELLA: If it was me, I would say, man. I would be bragging about it.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: There's Phil Hartman, a major with a major problem.

PHIL HARTMAN: I was burned by Sergeant Bilko. I took a fall in one of his schemes and ended up being stationed in Greenland for several years.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: Martin is a 90s Sgt. Bilko, reshaping Phil Silvers' legendary television character with new scams.

STEVE MARTIN: I'm playing it very differently, I think, than he did, because he defined it so clearly that there's- if you did it that way, you'd be imitating him, which- I'm not a good mimic.

PHIL HARTMAN: He's a hustler and a gambler and he does things like rent Humvees to teenagers.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: This is Sergeant Bilko's thoroughly modern bedroom, complete with a microwave oven, and he has a picture of Donald Trump and Marla Maples, and of course, Bilko has always had those grand notions of wealth dancing in his head, so over his bunk, a picture of Robin Leach. Brian Grazer is Bilko's producer.

BRIAN GRAZER: We have the barracks right here. They're playing roller hockey. You know, for money - who's winning, who's not winning. He's not playing, but he's going to make money from it. See, people are clapping because someone fell through a window. That's an example of what our movie is about.

MAX CASELLA: It's nuts.

DARYL MITCHELL: It's bad; it's real bad.

STEVE MARTIN: Not only was the script funny, but we're also making a lot of things as we go along, and that always brings a certain excitement to the day's work, like I'm making things up now.

PAUL VERCAMMEN: Bilko is back, and worse than ever. Paul Vercamman, CNN Entertainment News, Universal City, California.
 

ERNEST Bilko - the motormouth of the motor pool - was one of the greatest comic creations ever.

It's nearly 40 years since Phil Silvers' scheming sergeant last wormed his way out of a jam.

But repeats of the 144 TV episodes still command huge audiences.

And now Hollywood has decided to tamper with the legend and revive the king of conmen, with Steve Martin taking the throne, in the movie Sgt Bilko.

For Phil Silvers, his four years in uniform between 1955 and 1959 was a comedy triumph he never topped.

Aided and abetted by a platoon of good-natured misfits, Sergeant Bilko dodged his way through life with the plodding Colonel Hall always ten steps behind.

The rapid-fire speech, his over-the-top flattery (to the colonel's wife: "You make a sofa a throne!") and his sheer nerve endeared him to millions.

Awards

The Phil Silvers Show was so popular that President Eisenhower would put all business on hold for 30 minutes each week to tune in.

Bilko - the name comes from the verb to bilk: to con or swindle - earned Silvers a fortune and hatfuls of awards.

Yet when the 73-year-old funnyman died ten years ago he was the forgotten man of Hollywood.

He had battled for years against ill-health and his gambling left him virtually penniless. "Funny, only Bilko won all the time," Silvers admitted ruefully

He would gamble thousands of dollars at a time, but was never really happy - win or lose.

Bilko's refrain: "I hear money. Our money. Crying out into the night, 'Daddy take us home'," was a phrase which seemed to shadow his own life.

Mickey Freeman, who played Private Zimmerman and is one of the few original cast members still alive, says: "Phil was a bad winner. Losing was his thing and God knows, he lost."

Silvers never forgave TV chiefs for axing the series. "One day I blinked and the show closed," he said years after.

"CBS said it was too expensive to pay a platoon of actors. They took away my show but they couldn't take away my dignity - or my talent."

For his daughter Cathy the news that Steve Martin was to take her father's place was devastating at first.

"I wasn't happy at all because to me and millions of others Dad was and always will be Bilko," she says.

Cathy, who has a cameo role in the pounds 20 million film, admitted her doubts evaporated the moment she saw Steve in the role.

"He makes Bilko his own and doesn't try to impersonate Dad," she says.

"It was very emotional going on set and seeing the Fort Baxter sign and the Bilko name again.

"It brought back so many marvellous memories and I'm sure that wherever Dad is he'll be very happy with the movie."

Steve says he was wary of taking on the role.

"As a kid, the show used to make me laugh and I was incredibly nervous because Phil Silvers was so perfect - he was Bilko," he says.

Nut

"But I couldn't resist it. He's a loveable conman and his scams earn him maybe a hundred bucks a day, a true small-timer. It's just that he turns the system to his advantage."

The film is directed by Britain's Jonathan Lynn, creator of BBC TV's Yes, Minister, and a self-confessed Bilko nut. "We wanted someone very different from Silvers," he says.

"Although he was great, if the part is going to be played by someone else, you don't want a Phil Silvers impression.

"Steve is as different as possible. I find that when people watch the film, even if they know the series, they forget about it after a few minutes and are then just watching Steve."

But the movie, which also stars Dan Aykroyd as Colonel Hall, has not gone down well with the US Army - who were distinctly uncooperative.

"My view was that it was the first film for years in which it would look fun to join the army," says Lynn.

"I thought it might do wonders for recruiting, but they didn't buy it."
 

Wild and crazy Steve Martin was stunned when film fans marched out of his big-screen version of Sgt. Bilko (PG, rental).

Then he saw red when he was buttonholed about it by BBC2's Interviewer From Hell, Dennis Pennis.

Martin was so furious he CANCELLED a trip to Britain to promote the army farce.

True, Dennis The Menace's question was: "How come you're not funny anymore?

But face facts, Steve - peeling potatoes for a month would be funnier than Sgt. Bilko.

THE film is based on the vintage US TV series starring the incomparable Phil Silvers.

And you've got to wonder at Martin's sanity -- and vanity -- in trying to top it.

Silvers' classic comic creation, Ernest G. Bilko, was the master-sergeant of the regimental car pool -- a scam-meister with a Gatling-gun delivery dedicated to doing his grunts out of every dime they owned.

Martin's performance is a shadow of the original.

The same cannot be said for Dan Aykroyd, however.

He dons a fat suit to play Bilko's blundering boss, Colonel Hall.

The movie is clearly aimed at a younger audience - Martin's cohorts are laddies compared to the craggy character actors of the sitcom.

The new jokes are crude, in the current style. The old ones, pinched from the original, were funnier in those far-off days of the Cold War.

Most telly series turned into films show their stretch marks and, the bad news is there's more where Sgt Bilko came from.
 

A FILM premiere in Los Angeles. Comedian Steve Martin strides briskly past the howling press pack, pausing only when he hears that most reassuring of all litanies: "BBC! BBC!"

"I know the BBC," says Martin, relaxing in relief. "What's the question?"

"How come you ain't funny any more?" asks the interviewer. Martin turns away, his face crumbling into a sick ruin of contempt and disbelief. He has just learnt the hard way that Dennis Pennis, one-time "showbiz editor" for BBC2's The Sunday Show and the latest in a line-up of cod interviewers, is no respecter of Auntie's ladylike reputation.

This scene from Very Important Pennis, one of two special compilations to be screened on BBC2 tonight and next Friday evening, is bury-your-head-in-the-sofa-cushions kind of television, the sort that makes the viewer sweat with vicarious embarrassment. It would seem that the brash interviewer feels the same way.

"Ooh, urgh, I just can't watch that clip," agrees actor Paul Kaye, Pennis's creator and alter ego, twisting his spidery limbs into a granny knot. "Deep down, I think Steve's great. I just couldn't think of anything else to say. It turned out to be much nastier than we meant, because apparently he was going through a personal crisis, thinking people didn't find him amusing."

Later, Kaye was told that as a result of his insult the comedian had refused to publicise his film Sgt Bilko in Britain, "if even the BBC are so hostile".

"That's the only interview I feel guilty about," says Kaye. "Mostly, I feel quite justified in making jokes at the expense of celebrities."

Why should he, one wonders. Envy? Or simply that peculiarly British sense of humour which enjoys seeing a famous face with egg all over it?

"I get annoyed when celebrities put huge numbers of people to vast inconvenience, making them sit in traffic jams for hours when they close off LA or Leicester Square for an event. I feel I'm striking a blow in defence of a put-upon public," he says, rather lamely. "Anyway," -- in mock-pious tones - "I like to think they go away better people for being a little humiliated."

Among his hit-and-run victims are 007 actor Pierce Brosnan -- "In Goldeneye, I was glued to my seat; otherwise I'd have left" - and Joan Collins - "Do you think things get better with age? Tell that to a banana. No, seriously, you look like a million lire."

The only people he would not target are Arsenal player Ian Wright and Nelson Mandela - "There are some things and some people who shouldn't be trivialised."

****

In any case Dennis Pennis has a limited shelf-life. Kaye can no longer work in London or Los Angeles, because he is now routinely refused accreditation for showbiz events. When Pennis does manage to slip past security, he is often betrayed by other journalists, annoyed that his antics make the stars wary of them too: "GMTV hate me. The last premiere I went to in Leicester Square, they told the police and I was thrown out."

But there is a perverse cachet in being Pennis-ed, and some PRs have started tipping him off with the whereabouts of their charges. "I was offered Liv Ullmann, but there's no point in doing Pennis if the celebrities actually want to talk to him."
 

The Independent (London)
August 17, 1996, Saturday
ARTS; Page 4
A Very Important Pennis (BBC2) The long-term appealof the BBC's celebrity stalker may not be as big as some of his victims' egos.

In A Very Important Pennis, the carrot-topped geek who accosts celebs with scaldingly rude questions was released on Hollywood. And Hollywood, where celebrity is next to godliness, hadn't a clue what to make of him. Time after time, the stars would be seduced, like moths to the flame, into the alluring glare of the camera light, only to get their wings singed to a crisp.

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And there could be something in that -- the next time the BBC requests a formal interview with, say, Warren Beatty ("Warren, you're not seen in public very often: is it fair to say Beatty is privatised?"), he may dimly recall the corporation logo wrapped round Pennis's microphone and politely decline. Certainly, a wounded Steve Martin excluded Britain from a promotional tour after a brutal Pennising.

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