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On my local access television show I recently interviewed an actor, Mark Metcalf, who is most famous for his role as Douglas C. Neidermeyer in “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” He also had a reoccurring role on Seinfeld as “The Maestro.” Mark was born in Findlay; Ohio in 1946 and didn’t seriously pursue acting as a career until he was 27 years old. Since then he has appeared in many movies, television shows and theater. He finds theater more emotionally rewarding because of the direct involvement with the audience, but television and movies pays more money.

In 2000 Mark moved from Los Angeles to Milwaukee with his wife, Libby Wick, and their son Julius. He originally wanted to move to Montana where they already owned a house, but his wife wanted to raise their son in her home town. They wanted to find a place that was more like America and less like L.A.

In 2000 Mark and Libby bought a restaurant in Mequon and named it Libby Montana. Recently I took my family to their restaurant with all the little ones; we found it to be very charming and the food was fantastic. We dined in the family section where they had games for the kids to play, a toy box and books to read. The younger grandchildren had a great time and the grown-ups were actually able to enjoy their meal and relax. On Friday nights they serve a special fish fry and Saturdays are their famous pot pies.

Adjourned to the restaurant is a building with great looking sand volleyball courts and their summer league is now signing up players and teams. If interested contact Mark at 262-242-2232 or go and check out Libby Montana for yourself, they are located at 5616 W. Donges Bay in Mequon.

The night my co-host Laurie Muffler and I interviewed Mark on our Viewers Voice TV Show I was impressed with what a fun and nice guy he is and how involved he has become with Milwaukee events. Following is part of the interview we did on our show, if you’re interested in seeing the whole interview call me at 321-3817.

 Sharon: Mark you have accomplished quite a few things as an actor can we go over a little bit of what you have done?

 Metcalf:  Yes, about 27 movies and maybe about 40 or 50 TV shows and around 100 plays in 34 years I’ve been making a living at it. Started my first professional job here in Milwaukee at the Milwaukee Rep in 1971 and I came back. Full circle I guess. I don’t feel like this is the end of it.  

 Sharon: You weren’t born here though?

 Metcalf: No I wasn’t born here; I was born in Ohio and then grew up in St. Louise, Missouri and ended up in Milwaukee. I married a woman from Milwaukee and then she said we’re going to Milwaukee and I said “yes dear” and here we are.

 Sharon: Have you lived in L.A. for any length of time?

 Metcalf: I lived in Manhattan for most of my adult life because I thought of myself as a stage actor and did movies and TV because they asked me too and they pay you well, but mostly what I loved was the stage. Then in about1993 or 94 we moved to California mainly because I found I was spending a lot more time away from home than I was at home when I was living in New York doing plays. I’d go on the road and do a play on tour or go out to Florida or Chicago and do a play, so I thought if I lived in California I could do TV and movies and basically go away for a little while and make a lot of money and then be home for most of the time, so we moved to California. I lived in California until we move here in 2000.

 Sharon: As many times as I’ve been in L.A. I don’t like the life style, it’s different and I don’t like the freeways.

 Metcalf: Yea, although what they’re doing with the Marquette interchange here I don’t know. I go down to First Stage Children’s Theater where I’m doing a play right now and I did a play there in December and I go down in the mornings and I get caught in traffic. I keep thinking that’s one of the reasons I wanted to leave L.A. was because of the traffic.

 Sharon: Let’s talk a little about your career. The movie your most famous for is “Animal House.”

 Metcalf: That’s the one everyone knows and that was the second big movie I ever made.

 Sharon: How was it working with all those guys like John Blush?

 Metcalf: With John and all those guys it was great. John Landis who directed it is a good friend of mine and one of the fellows in it John Vernon, who played Dean Wormer, just died a bout a week ago. John (Landis) and I were just talking about Vernon. Landis had to fight the studio a lot because they got this script and they wanted to put a lot of funny people in it with names and careers. John Landis wanted to put actors in it because he knew or felt he knew that it would be a better movie if there were actors in it and unknowns in it because you don’t have to deal with a lot of egos. So he cast all people, mostly out of New York, a few out of them out of California but none of the people in their head had any big career. John Belushi had done one season of “Saturday Night Live,” I think, and everybody knew he was good and knew something was going to happen for him but they didn’t think it would be as big as “Animal House” became. Tim Matheson had been a child actor, done a couple of TV series “The Virginian” and I think some other TV series I can’t remember what, but those are the only two people that had much of a career except for Donald Sutherland. Landis always says the highest two paid creatures in the whole movie were Donald Sutherland and the horse because the rest of us just worked for scale. If we’d known we would have taken a piece and I told that to John. Somebody was asking me the other day if I’d known it was going to be a big hit would I have taken a piece and I said they wouldn’t have given it to me. I could have asked and they would have said next. They wanted cheap actors.

Sharon: How many movies have you actually made?

 Metcalf: If you count them all up including movies for television it’s 27 or 28. I think its 28 now, because I just finished one last fall a movie that was shot by some local people here a feature film.

 Sharon: I remember reading about that, has it been out yet?

 Metcalf: No, no he’s still cutting it. It probably won’t be out for another six months or so.

 Sharon: What’s the name of that movie?

 Metcalf: It’s called “Sleepwalker” that’s the name we made it under but I think they’re going to have to change the name because there is a Stephen King book of the same name. He’s going to have to change the name and last I heard he might call it “Dream Walker” but then I think there is a Tony Holliman book called “Dream Walker.”

 Laurie: They have to research everything now to get the right name.

 Metcalf: Yea, you have to get the right name. I produced a movie once called “Chilly Scenes of Winter” and they spent a lot of money researching. They spent like $60,000 doing market research to see if that was a good name and they determined it wasn’t a good name so they changed the name to “Head Over Heels” and the movie tanked right away. Then we bought it back from United Artist and got it back to another company and changed the title back to “Chilly Scenes of Winter” which all their market research said it was not a good title and the movie was a moderate success for a low budget art film. A film critic for the L.A. Times had it on his Best Ten of the decade list for the 70’s.

 Mark’s interview was a lot longer and it was very interesting. If you are interested in seeing the whole interview you can put in a request to the West Allis Community Media Center to have it replayed; call 414-541-1121. I’m going to send the show in to Time Warner’s Wisconsin on Demand and see if they will play it. They played our show with the Jerry Taffy interview for three weeks so maybe if enough people put in a request they will televise it. Call Maria Tully at 414-908-4749.      .

 My next column will be on The Milwaukee Brewers Fan Fare with an interview with General Manager Doug Melvin, until then let your voice be heard.