Behind the scenes: Gross history

Apr. 5—John Wilkes Booth's remains rest in an unmarked area of the family's plot in Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery. If a visitor wants to express anger or disrespect toward the assassin of one of the nation's greatest presidents, it's hard to know exactly where to aim one's derision.

Actor Michael Gross — while discussing a Santa Fe production he's starring in, a Tremors-themed festival that will bring him back to the city, and the film industry giant who founded New Mexico Actors Lab — found time in our hourlong phone conversation to delve into his own "target practice" from when he visited the Booth grave recently. "You know, it was a quiet day when no one else was there," says Gross, who lives part time in Santa Fe. "So [now] I'm going to get arrested for indecent exposure. But this is what I do in my spare time."

So Gross, famed for roles including Steven Keaton in the 1980s sitcom Family Ties and Burt Gummer in the Tremors film series, has an amusing way of revealing where his Civil War sympathies lie. He's an interesting person overall, as is Family Ties and Talley's Folly (the local production) co-star Meredith Baxter; I interviewed both for a feature story about Talley's Folly (Page 28).

When you write about the arts, interviewing well-known people is part of the job. I've had some hilarious exchanges with filmmakers and musicians that didn't fit the context of the story and went unused. I'm writing about Gross in an effort to combat this, and to delve into the unexpected ways someone can inspire.

Once it was clear we were comfortable communicating, I told Gross that his character in Family Ties was the first father I saw behaving decently toward his family. It made me understand such a thing was possible at my young age.

It turns out, a lot of people reacted that way to Steven Keaton, whom Gross portrayed from 1982 to 1989. He encounters them periodically when attending horror film conventions — a result of his Tremors fame.

"I can go to a convention and have some huge man, completely tatted, with a mohawk, dressed in survival gear," Gross says. "He'll come up to me and say, 'Man, you meant a lot to me in Family Ties. You were like a dad. You raised me, man.' And I'm going, 'Wow, I wasn't expecting that from you.'"

Gross' Family Ties and Talley's Folly costar Meredith Baxter says she usually isn't recognized in public. "But if I am, it's usually, 'Oh my God. I love Family Ties. I wish you were my mother,'" she says.

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My birthday is Saturday, April 6. I plan to spend that night in an apartment on the campus of Roswell's Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, learning about the residencies there featuring artists from around the world and hopefully meeting some of them. Anderson has a sterling reputation — which you know if, unlike me, you've been there. I'll confess that this is my first visit to Roswell after living in New Mexico for 2 1/2 years.

I'm also going to be doing some preliminary research for a feature about Roswell as an arts town. If you've got suggestions about things to visit there, I'm all ears. For that matter, if you can recommend a place with good huevos rancheros, let me know. The last time I traveled for an assignment like this, in Farmington, I tried to order huevos without ground beef included and was told this was not possible, as the ground beef was in "the mix." Now, every time I order the dish, I try to picture what huevos rancheros mix looks like.