Gary Busey promises I won’t have come across anything like his new show, Pet Judge. He’s right; I haven’t. But, to be fair, I’ve never come across anybody like Gary Busey. He really is a one-off – Hollywood legend, coke fiend, brain-damage survivor, sobriety champion, spiritualist and reality-show winner. When he was a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice in the US, Donald Trump concluded: “He’s either a genius or a moron and I can’t figure it out.” Well, I know which side I come down on.
Pet Judge is a new Amazon Prime series, with Busey playing himself – only this Busey is presiding over a court in which litigants resolve quarrels about their pets. One couple are in dispute over the death of their cat; the wife wants it buried in the family mausoleum and the husband wants a Viking funeral, with the cat sent out to sea on a flaming boat. Then there is the woman convinced that her dog is her reincarnated husband – she’s at war with an insurance company that is refusing to include the dog on the family policy. Every so often, Busey bangs his gavel, barks: “PET JUS-TICE!” and brings the court to order. Pet Judge is a fake reality show, cast with actors, largely improvised, sometimes very funny and every bit as bonkers as it sounds. “None of the other judge shows hold a candle fire, bonfire or rocket to this Pet Judge show,” Busey says.
Busey has appeared in more than 150 movies, specialising in unhinged hard men, from Leroy the Masochist (“I like pain. Any kind of pain”) in John Milius’s wonderful 1970s surfer bromance, Big Wednesday, to Mr Joshua in Lethal Weapon, who simply doesn’t feel pain. He is best known for another surfer movie, 1991’s Point Break, in which he plays Angelo Pappas, an FBI agent with a penchant for destruction.
He started out as a musician, however, playing drums with the great singer-songwriter Leon Russell. Perhaps his finest film performance came in 1978’s Buddy Holly Story. Busey was superb as Holly – singing, playing guitar and showing heart and soul, as well as the customary flashes of temper. He lit up an otherwise unremarkable biopic and deservedly won an Oscar nomination.
Today, he’s at home in Malibu, California, when we Zoom. Busey, aged 75, is hard of hearing, so his wife, Stefanie, a hypnotherapist and standup comedian, is here for support. He still has a magnificent nest of ash-blond hair, great blue eyes and huge white teeth that wouldn’t look out of place in Yosemite national park. Cancers have nibbled away at bits of his face (he has no tear ducts or sinuses), but he is still strikingly handsome in his own chewed-up, spat-out, hard-living kind of way. (...)
Busey has become known for his acronyms. Which Buseyism is most relevant to his life? “What? That’s a difficult one. The word to spell is faith. Faith – those letters stand for Fantastic, Adventurous in Trusting Him. And the second Buseyism I consider spiritually profound is hope. Hope stands for Heavenly Offerings Prevail Eternally.”
The Buseyisms, like his tics and other mannerisms, go back to his life-changing motorbike accident and subsequent brain surgery for a subdural haematoma, during which he says he briefly died. “About 25 years ago, I had an accident on a Harley-Davidson. I went off the bike without a helmet, hit my head into a kerb, split my skull, passed away after brain surgery and went to the other side – the spiritual realm where I got information. And I came back, and these messages, these definitions, came to me first-class. I’ll think of a word and write the word down without thinking.” (...)
Before his accident, Busey hardly led a conventional life. He seemed more dedicated to feeding his drug addiction than working. “My drug of choice is cocaine.” After the accident, he briefly returned to the drugs. “I OD’d on 3 May 1990, and thank God, because I realised I’d been dancing with the devil in a very small circle and the devil was leading the dance,” he says in his deep Texas drawl. “I left the dance and said: ‘You kick on from here – I’m gone. I’m dancing on my own.’ When you do a drug like cocaine, you want to get that first hit back, but you never will. That’s gone. It’s a chase to the death when you’re addicted to cocaine.”
Is he surprised he’s still alive? “What? Oh, no. You know what? You never die. Death stands for Don’t Expect a Tragedy Here. It is one transformation from one dimension to another and it is painless, free and lovely. I’ve experienced it, so I can say that.”
Back in the day, he and his close friend (and doppelganger) Nick Nolte were regarded as the hardest-partying men in Hollywood. “We were like two perfectly twin-cloned entities. We’d go to parties in Malibu and were always the last to leave. We’d be sitting under the dinner table with our panama hats on and we got known as ‘the things who will not leave’.”
by Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Philip Cheung/The Guardian
[ed. A true original. And totally nuts.]
Pet Judge is a new Amazon Prime series, with Busey playing himself – only this Busey is presiding over a court in which litigants resolve quarrels about their pets. One couple are in dispute over the death of their cat; the wife wants it buried in the family mausoleum and the husband wants a Viking funeral, with the cat sent out to sea on a flaming boat. Then there is the woman convinced that her dog is her reincarnated husband – she’s at war with an insurance company that is refusing to include the dog on the family policy. Every so often, Busey bangs his gavel, barks: “PET JUS-TICE!” and brings the court to order. Pet Judge is a fake reality show, cast with actors, largely improvised, sometimes very funny and every bit as bonkers as it sounds. “None of the other judge shows hold a candle fire, bonfire or rocket to this Pet Judge show,” Busey says.
Busey has appeared in more than 150 movies, specialising in unhinged hard men, from Leroy the Masochist (“I like pain. Any kind of pain”) in John Milius’s wonderful 1970s surfer bromance, Big Wednesday, to Mr Joshua in Lethal Weapon, who simply doesn’t feel pain. He is best known for another surfer movie, 1991’s Point Break, in which he plays Angelo Pappas, an FBI agent with a penchant for destruction.He started out as a musician, however, playing drums with the great singer-songwriter Leon Russell. Perhaps his finest film performance came in 1978’s Buddy Holly Story. Busey was superb as Holly – singing, playing guitar and showing heart and soul, as well as the customary flashes of temper. He lit up an otherwise unremarkable biopic and deservedly won an Oscar nomination.
Today, he’s at home in Malibu, California, when we Zoom. Busey, aged 75, is hard of hearing, so his wife, Stefanie, a hypnotherapist and standup comedian, is here for support. He still has a magnificent nest of ash-blond hair, great blue eyes and huge white teeth that wouldn’t look out of place in Yosemite national park. Cancers have nibbled away at bits of his face (he has no tear ducts or sinuses), but he is still strikingly handsome in his own chewed-up, spat-out, hard-living kind of way. (...)
Busey has become known for his acronyms. Which Buseyism is most relevant to his life? “What? That’s a difficult one. The word to spell is faith. Faith – those letters stand for Fantastic, Adventurous in Trusting Him. And the second Buseyism I consider spiritually profound is hope. Hope stands for Heavenly Offerings Prevail Eternally.”
The Buseyisms, like his tics and other mannerisms, go back to his life-changing motorbike accident and subsequent brain surgery for a subdural haematoma, during which he says he briefly died. “About 25 years ago, I had an accident on a Harley-Davidson. I went off the bike without a helmet, hit my head into a kerb, split my skull, passed away after brain surgery and went to the other side – the spiritual realm where I got information. And I came back, and these messages, these definitions, came to me first-class. I’ll think of a word and write the word down without thinking.” (...)
Before his accident, Busey hardly led a conventional life. He seemed more dedicated to feeding his drug addiction than working. “My drug of choice is cocaine.” After the accident, he briefly returned to the drugs. “I OD’d on 3 May 1990, and thank God, because I realised I’d been dancing with the devil in a very small circle and the devil was leading the dance,” he says in his deep Texas drawl. “I left the dance and said: ‘You kick on from here – I’m gone. I’m dancing on my own.’ When you do a drug like cocaine, you want to get that first hit back, but you never will. That’s gone. It’s a chase to the death when you’re addicted to cocaine.”
Is he surprised he’s still alive? “What? Oh, no. You know what? You never die. Death stands for Don’t Expect a Tragedy Here. It is one transformation from one dimension to another and it is painless, free and lovely. I’ve experienced it, so I can say that.”
Back in the day, he and his close friend (and doppelganger) Nick Nolte were regarded as the hardest-partying men in Hollywood. “We were like two perfectly twin-cloned entities. We’d go to parties in Malibu and were always the last to leave. We’d be sitting under the dinner table with our panama hats on and we got known as ‘the things who will not leave’.”
by Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Philip Cheung/The Guardian
[ed. A true original. And totally nuts.]
