Bronson Pinchot Sez: Tom Cruise Hated Gays, Denzel Washington Was Mean

You no doubt recognize Bronson Pinchot as someone involved in Hollywood in some capacity.  And to his credit, he has parlayed having a weird and memorable name into a relatively successful career as a character actor, his biggest role probably being Balki on Perfect Strangers.  We all, of course, know exactly what that is, right?  (Sorry, I was born after the moon landing.)  Pinchot recently sat down with The Onion’s AV Club to talk some smack about his ’80s co-stars, a few of whom went on to become major players.  Most hilarious is his description of Tom Cruise, with whom he worked in Risky Business:

He was tense and made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, “You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?” I mean, his lingo was larded with the most… There was no basis for it. It was like, “It’s a nice day, I’m glad there are no gay people standing here.” Very, very strange.

Three scoops of rocky road, hold the gay please!  Tom Cruise even sucks at bigotry.  ”I thought there would be no gays at this ice cream parlor!  How about I supposed to want this ice cream any more with all the gay people around??  Come on, we’re going to the water park, in case there are no Germans there.”  Plus, you have to wonder how he actually deals with the many gay people he must encounter in moviemaking.  Pinchot had more to say about Cruise, and also Denzel Washington…  

We thought Tom [Cruise] was the biggest bore on the face of the Earth. He had spent some formative time with Sean Penn—we were all very young at the time, Tom was 20, I was 23. Tom had picked up this knack of calling everyone by their character names, because that would probably make your performance better, and I don’t agree with that. I think that acting is acting, and the rest of the time, you should be you, but he called us all by our character names.

Tom Cruise has always been a weirdo, ok.  I’ve heard a lot of strange and far-fetched things in my life, and that’s not at all one of them.  Pinchot also took up arms against Denzel Washington, though, calling him “one of the most unpleasant human beings I’ve ever met in my life.”

That was a low point, because Denzel Washington was behind the incredibly cowardly bullshit of “This is my character, not me.” He was really abusive to me and everybody on that movie, and his official explanation was that his character didn’t like me, but it was a dreadful experience.

Oh, and Tom Hanks is sooooo nice and funny and down-to-earth, just like you knew he was!

The rest is at the AV Club via Celebitchy.