John Lithgow

You are right. When I sent that, I thought afterwords that I hadn't really understood that he had actually played many bad guys. He's extremely versatile.

Most people only know him from Third Rock. Other than that, he hasn't done a whole lot of comedy. He wasn't been a straight bad guy that often, either, although his turn in Dexter was quite chilling. The first time I remember him was in Garp, although I'd seen some of the stuff he'd done before that, I just don't remember him in them.

Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

Yes, Lithgow is definitely talking about this movie in his book but doesn't use anyone's real name. When he details "Rock Masters'" hair plugs and other details--including success in a late career sci-fi film (Spiderman)--it's obvious it's Robertson.

I didn't get the feeling that Lithgow really disliked Robertson, just that he was surprised by Robertson's tricks throughout the film to get himself as many close-ups as possible. This was one of Lithgow's first films and after a successful career on the boards, the ins and outs of filming a movie were completely new to him.

"You know me Marge, I like my beer cold, my TV loud, and my homosexuals fa-LAM-ing!"

Sorry to be the dissenter here, but when I saw this film in the late 1970s I thought Lithgow's performance was somewhat amateurish, and he certainly had not learned how to make the transition from stage acting to film acting yet. He definitely did learn later, most obviously by the time he did The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment. But Robertson was certainly the better actor here. And I say that without questioning at all the report Lithgow made about Robertson's "movie star tricks". Perhaps those tricks, as annoying as they were, helped Robertson with his performance. Who really knows?