Saw him at an event in Buffalo on Sunday

He appeared at the Buffalo History Museum on Sunday for a program called “Behind the Screen”. Let me get the shallow bit out of the way first: Damn, he’s fine. He’s almost 60 but the thing is he doesn’t necessarily look phenomenally young for his age (although if you did not know, you would probably guess him to be a few years younger than he is) he mostly just wears his years phenomenally well. It was a two hour program where he was interviewed by an entertainment writer from one of the Buffalo newspapers. The good news: Fichtner is a very well-spoken, funny and engaging person so the event was thoroughly enjoyable. The bad news: the interviewer was awful. He kept asking very gossipy questions, trying to get dirt on movie-stars behaving badly and Fichtner flat out would not tell any tales. In fact, he basically said he had hardly any tales to tell and that most big stars he had worked with were hard working, professional and totally non-diva-esque. Of all the things Fichtner has done in a very long and busy career, this guy spent the most time asking about Brett Butler and Fichtner’s experiences with her over 20 years ago on the 10 episodes of “Grace Under Fire” he did. (If you are under 35, you probably don’t know who Brett Butler is or what “Grace Under Fire” was. She is/was a stand-up comic with a famously troubled history and the show was a sitcom that was very popular and highly rated for a few seasons until she basically imploded and put her career permanently on the skids. Fichtner played her love interest for part of the first season and was awesomely odd and appealing in the role. You can catch his episodes on Youtube.) A couple of questions the interviewer asked bordered on rude, so plainly had he not done his research. Case in point: A round about question where he talked about how actors hate being called “character actors” and why the term was offensive only to discover that Fichtner is perfectly comfortable with the term and that he always considers himself a character actor because that is what he is. Another question was “When did you finally reach the point where you can open a film on the strength of your own name?” to which Fichtner replied the only way he could, “It’s never happened.” (See above about him being a “character actor”.) Fortunately, he’s a gracious guy and betrayed no annoyance at some pretty stupid questions. The interviewer also managed to waste time with an anecdote about Peter Ustinov and Laurence Olivier and how they annoyed each other on the set of a movie that was made before anyone in the room was born but Fichtner’s response was priceless so apparently there is no such thing as an interviewer too obtuse to get a good interview out of this guy. There was a period for audience questions which wasn’t a lot more informative because the place was packed with people who knew him from growing up in Buffalo and asked him things like who his favorite teacher was in High School. I’m not from the area and so I didn’t know any of the people in question but Fichtner looked good while he was talking about them so I was happy nonetheless. I would watch and/or listen to this gentleman read the phone book and think it time well spent.