Steve Buscemi Used to Just Thumb Through Scripts to See When, Not If, His Character Is Killed Off

Christian Blauvelt
·3 min read
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“Goodnight, sweet prince.”

Every fan of “The Big Lebowski” knows that line: The final eulogy for Steve Buscemi’s character, Donny, who loved bowling and exploring the beaches of Southern California as a surfer from La Jolla to Leo Carillo, and on up to Pismo.

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But Donny is just one of the many dead characters in Buscemi’s filmography. In a wide-ranging Q&A with Rolling Stone film critic David Fear at the Sarasota Film Festival, Buscemi talked about the particularly high body count in his filmography.

“I learned to try to get parts where your character doesn’t get killed off too early in the film, and to get parts where your character is actually important to the story. Because it’s so easy to get cut out of films. I was cut out of three films in the space of a year. One by Stephen Frears, one by Gus Van Sant, and one by Woody Allen. These are three big directors that I was so excited to work with. And yeah, I was just cut out of all of them.

“I used to just thumb through and get to what page I would get killed. ‘How long does he last?’ Yeah.”

In fact Buscemi has one of the most extensive pages on the fan-created wiki List of Deaths, which tracks the number of deaths in certain film and TV properties as well as actors’ filmographies.

Certainly Buscemi has inflicted many deaths on others in his movies and TV shows as well, and that’s something he started to feel differently about during his run as the lead character Nucky Thompson on HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire.”

“As a young actor, I loved doing the action stuff and it was just fun. It’s fun. And then the older I got, playing [Thompson] who I really got to know and have affection for, to see him take this really dark path was really— it does affect you. And after that, I sort of tried to look for a different way to go. I mean, I get offered a lot of criminal parts, but I’m really selective of playing— of going that dark again.”

His new film behind the camera, “The Listener,” which premiered at Sarasota is available now on VOD, reflects that quieter, more sensitive direction. Buscemi directs Tessa Thompson as a crisis helpline volunteer, fielding calls from desperate people and hearing them out. A far cry from, say, Buscemi’s Mr. Pink in “Reservoir Dogs.”

Speaking of that character, Fear brought up how another “Reservoir Dogs” actor told him he was so relieved because he didn’t have to play Mr. Pink, who delivers a monologue about how much he hates tipping waiters. The unnamed actor suggested Buscemi would be a perpetual target of waiters’ wrath in real life ever since.

“Oh, I never thought about what they were doing to my meal,” Buscemi said. “I guess I’m lucky I’m still alive!”

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