McBain blog
A film starring Christopher Walken was auditioning and I had been requested for one of two roles:
In 1990 I was living in Hollywood when my agent Lynne called to tell me that
the good guy who gets killed or Simon Escobar the bad guy. I chose to audition for Simon Escobar,
the drug kingpin.. I had to fly back to New York for the audition. The morning of the audition, I got a
brainstorm: Since my monologue talked about sending flowers to the ex-president of the country at a
cemetery, I bought a beautiful flower and decided I would audition using the flower as a prop.
Touching it, smelling it, No shouting, but very intimate, yet menacing. I was in charge! After the
audition I offered the flower to the casting director and left quietly. That same afternoon I flew back to
Hollywood. A few days later my agent called and she said: ”I don’t know what you did but, they don’t
want to see anybody else for that part “. Mission accomplished! I left Hollywood and headed back to
NYC. Two weeks later I was flying to the Philippines to begin shooting McBain. When I got to
Manila, the producers wanted me to come to the location set which was three hours away by car. The
driver was waiting at the hotel to take me to the jungle and and upon seeing me said: are you one of
Escobar’s men? I got into character, looked at him and said:I am Escobar, let’s go! Three hours later I
was in the Jungle. I had fun doing McBain. The day I finished shooting my scenes, they provided a
driver for me and my henchman Hans a Brit, a driver to get us back to Manila. The car broke down
and we had to hitch hike back to our hotel two hours away. Luckily we hitched a ride back from
strangers in the back of a pickup truck. We hanged on for dear life. Not a pleasant ending to a
successful shoot. In the lobby of The Mandarin Oriental hotel Christopher Walken and I had a few
drinks. I mentioned to him how odd it was that he plays the hero and I the villain and yet we never
meet in the film . He said “ Yes, that doesn’t make sense does it? “.
