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Hi Bob (Newhart)!, Part II
February 29, 2008

Here’s the second half of my recent interview with Bob Newhart, who was happy to be hawking the DVD release of Newhart: The Complete First Season from Fox.

 

VB: You’ve been in a bunch of films over the years including, more recently, Elf and Legally Blonde 2.

NEWHART: For some reason, I’m getting a number of movies now. The impression I’m getting is that these filmmakers grew up on my shows and they think to themselves, ‘If I ever direct a movie, I’d like to use him!’

VB: Do you enjoy working on films as much as you do on television?

NEWHART: No, I enjoy television more.

VB: The regularity of it?

NEWHART: No, the normality of it. Television is essentially a nine-to-five job and you get to go home at night and not back to some motel room in some God-forsaken place.

VB: God-forsaken? Where are they putting you up? In the Arctic?

NEWHART: Actually, I haven’t had it too bad. I was Vancouver for Elf, which was fine. I’ve done a couple in Vancouver. I did The Librarian, which was shot in Mexico City and then the second Librarian, which was shot in South Africa, and that was an excellent location. My wife and I were in Capetown for ten days and since we were over there already, we went on a safari.

VB: Sounds like the kind of place you might travel to with Don and Barbara Rickles, whom I know are your good friends.

NEWHART: We’re trying to figure a vacation for us this year if our schedules mesh together.

VB: You’ve famously gone a handful of vacations with them—I remember when you and Don would appear on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, you would bring your home movies.

NEWHART: We’ve done the Caribbean with them, we’ve done Germany, South Vietnam, Singapore. We’ve done a lot of the world and now we just need to find a place we can go next.

 

Posted by Laurence Lerman on February 29, 2008 | Comments (0)