Anthony Michael Hall in any movie makes me very happy. Call it my ’80s nostalgia despite not being alive then, but every time I see him, I am back watching movies with the Brat Pack. While Air Force One Down is not one of those movies, it does have Hall.
Hall plays Uncle Sam, part of the president’s Secret Service detail who is aboard Air Force One with his niece, Agent Allison Miles (Katherine McNamara). While the movie is mainly about Allison keeping the president alive, it is nice to see Hall in this role and know that he’s going to deliver a great performance, even though he’s on screen for just a little while.
In talking with Hall, I got to not only fangirl out about my love of his career but also about movies like Air Force One Down and how they are a form of escapism. We joked about how he’s playing “Uncle Sam,” and when I called it that fun action movie kind of cheesiness, he said with a laugh, “First of all, you said that; I didn’t.”
But one thing about movies about the president that kind of rules is that none of the details can be too spot-on. The Oval Office as shown in film and television isn’t exactly like it is in real life for security reasons. So, I asked what was Hall’s favorite altered detail in the film.
“First of all, there’s a couple things to note about that, which make it even funnier,” Hall said. “I shot the picture in a city called Sofia, Bulgaria. So the first thing out of the gate, to answer your question, is we went to Bulgaria to do this very patriotic American movie. The director, if I could add some satire to this is actually from Vancouver, so he’s Canadian, but the producer’s a guy named Steven Paul. And Steven gave me my first break many years ago to direct when I was 25. And I just moved to LA. So Steven’s an old friend of mine, and I thought it was a little tongue in cheek because he actually wrote the script. And I thought the Uncle Sam thing was obviously a little double entendre. Right. He’s Uncle Sam and he’s also emblematic of Uncle Sam.”
He went on to talk about how, despite being in Bulgaria and with a director who wasn’t American, they did a great job of making the aspects that needed to feel completely Red, White, and Blue do so. “I thought they did a great job. I’m not sure if it was a mockup that was already built and sort of at Nu Boyana studios, or if it was something that they made. But I gotta tell you, it was incredible. I mean, I really felt like I was on Air Force One not having been on it, but just from photos that I’ve seen. So it was a cool experience. It was really fun. And the director’s a great guy. This guy James Bamford, whose nickname is Bam Bam. So you gotta love that guy.”
Sharing my love of the Brat Pack with Anthony Michael Hall
One of the things I long for most in this world is the release of the Saturday Night Live season that aired from 1985-1986 that Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr. were both on. When I brought this up, Hall said, “Hands down the worst in the history of the show, but go ahead,” with a laugh, but it is something I’ve been fascinated by as a fan of SNL, as well as both Hall and RDJ. That opened up the opportunity for me to ask Hall if he’d be down to return to making comedy movies like Johnny Be Good or 1994’s Hail Caesar.
“To be very honest, I would love that and would welcome that,” he said. “It was never really a conscious effort to kind of avoid comedies to do that. But to be very honest, in the many great seasons of SNL that followed, there were all these great sort of cliques of these great people that are all household names now like Sandler and his group, or even Will Ferrell. And so to be very honest, I long for that kind of camaraderie with other actors. I don’t have that, I don’t have those kind of connections and those kind of friendships where there’s this sort of fraternity of comedians or fraternity and sorority of comic friends that have worked together, you know? But I would love to do that.”
That made me think of the moment when James Spader joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Downey. Spader starred opposite Downey in a 1987 movie called Less Than Zero, and when he was cast as Ultron, I thought that I would see a series of ’80s actors that had worked with Downey get their chance in the MCU. When I asked Hall if he was mad he didn’t make it, he laughed and talked about how Downey introduced him to Spader back in the day.
“Well, this is so funny because this reminds me of that like Kevin Bacon, everything is six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” Hall said. “I think I could start my own game with that. To get back to Mr. Spader, he’s someone I met with Downey back in the day when we were kids, in our twenties, probably in the 90s I think I was living at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. And Downey and I were writing a script at the time, but he was friends with James. So I met him many years ago. Great guy, great actor, great comedic actor, really smart guy. And then I wound up working with him on the Blacklist a couple years ago, and I was playing like a deadbeat brother of one of the supporting actors who shows up. And then it was a great two part episode that I thought was really cool. The writing was awesome so I wound up working with Spader there, but I get your point. I think that’s a fun idea. And I just met Andrew (McCarthy) recently at one of the Comic-Cons, a signing. He’s a great guy. He is a lot of fun.”
So while we might not have a great ’80s reunion yet, you can see Anthony Michael Hall in Air Force One Down. And check out our interview with Katherine McNamara here!
(featured image: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)
