Steve Guttenberg is up for anything.
The likable actor star of the hit movies Cocoon, Police Academy and Three Men and a Baby has so much zest for life that when Hollywood.com caught up with him at the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival, where he was promoting his directorial debut P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, he took the off-the-wall questions we threw at him in stride.
If you could have any other profession, what would it be?
Steve Guttenberg: Rock guitarist god. Absolutely. I want to be Keith Richards. With or without the drugs.
Coke or Pepsi?
Guttenberg: Dr. Pepper.
Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone?
Guttenberg: I’ve never seen him act. I saw John Wilkes Booth act and he was brilliant. But I’ve never seen Oswald.
OK, you’re having a dinner party and can invite one world leader and one famous dead person. Who would you choose?
Guttenberg: [Russian president Vladimir] Putin and General George S. Patton.
Mary Ann or Ginger?
Guttenberg: Mary Ann, for sure.
What ticks you off?
Guttenberg: Unpleasantness.
What makes you laugh?
Guttenberg: Almost anything.
If you could be a dog, what kind of dog would you be?
Guttenberg: My dog, Bucky, a Golden Retriever.
What’s your favorite children’s story?
Guttenberg: It’s a tie between A Wrinkle in Time and Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopy Pants.
Say your house is on fire. What’s the first thing you would save?
Guttenberg: Whatever live being is in the house.
Do you have a “Free Winona!” T-shirt?
Guttenberg: No. And she’s innocent. A total set-up.
If you had to tell someone their pet was dead, how would you do it?
Guttenberg: On the phone. Or possibly e-mail. You know the joke about the guy who is on vacation and gets a call from his friend telling him his cat is dead. The guys says, “Don’t just call me up and tell me my cat is dead. What is wrong with you? Call me up one day to say the cat’s on the roof. Then call the next day to say the cat fell. Then call to tell me the cat is dead. Don’t just blurt it out like that!” So the friend apologizes and a few days later calls the guy and says, “Hey, how ya doing? Your grandmother is on the roof.”
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead opens in limited release in January 2003.
