An Interview with Actor D.B. Sweeney

Sean Astin as 'Mikey' and D.B. Sweeney as 'Mick' in 'Two Dum Micks' (2020).

We here at Nerds That Geek have interviewed some wonderful actors and creatives over the years. But we’ve yet to truly interview an outright Hollywood legend. But that all changed recently. Because Hollywood icon D.B. Sweeney, who you might remember from Fire in the Sky, Lonesome Dove, Eight Men Out, Memphis Belle and The Cutting Edge, took a few minutes out of his day to speak with John to discuss his illustrious career and what he’s currently working on right now.

​John Betancourt: What really got you into acting in the first place? 

D.B. Sweeney: Well, I was a baseball player and I got injured, and I thought, you know, my leg was not getting better. My knee was not really recovering as fast as I wanted it to. So, I needed to do something in the meantime. And I didn't really want to become a lawyer or something like that. I was cooking a bit. I didn't want to be a chef. The only other thing I've ever really done was I had acted in a play in high school and it was fun, and I thought I wasn't gonna make a career out of it. But I thought, well, here I am, you know, 18, 19 years old, I'll just do this for a couple of years, and it won't be that hard. There’ll be some pretty girls around. You know, it's a fun thing to do for a minute, before I get on with the rest of my life. I started doing theater and plays and I just loved it. I started getting hired. So, it became a long career, so far.

John Betancourt: A long career is right. You’ve had an amazing career for certain. With that in mind, what’s it like on a personal level, to be a part of films that are so beloved? I mean, Memphis Belle. People talk about it all the time. The Cutting Edge has been all over my feed as of late and Fire in the Sky was my first introduction to your work and that’s a movie that has a long-lasting legacy. What’s all that like?

D.B. Sweeney: Well, those are those are great movies. And I'd add to that Lonesome Dove and Eight Men Out, and I was really fortunate to bump into some really good scripts early in my career and had some really good projects. And I think movies were, which sounds like such an old guy thing to say, but movies were better in the 90s than they are now. You know, and movies were better in the 70s than they were in the 90s and so on. I think that movies have been in decline. You know, there are still good movies every year, but there's less and less of them nowadays. So those movies are aging particularly well during this quarantine. I’ve had a ton of people say, you know, they sat down to watch The Cutting Edge for the 30th time. So, it's very it's very gratifying to have these movies that are standing the test of time and, hold up under multiple rewatches.

John Betancourt: Now, I do have to ask. How much skating did you actually do for The Cutting Edge?

D.B. Sweeney: Yeah. You know, there were two things that came together on Cutting Edge where it was like catching lightning in a bottle. First thing was Tony Gilroy, the great writer of the Bourne Identity movies, Michael Collins and Dolores Claiborne, and you know, so many other great movies. It was his first script. And he had apprenticed with William Goldman for many years. And it was a real old school apprenticeship where he was Bill Goldman's writing assistant. You know, obviously, All the President's Men. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, all the great movies that Bill Goldman wrote. And Tony sort of like learned his craft at Bill’s side. And The Cutting Edge represented Tony's first effort as a professional screenwriter, really. His first produced movie, anyway. And it was just a great, great script. And the other thing that came together was Moira Kelly and I are both New Yorkers and neither of us can skate. We're actually both from Long Island, but at the time of Cutting Edge, I was living in Manhattan, and she was still living on Long Island, and we both had to learn to skate. They gave us three months and they paid us. And so, every day we went to this rink called Sky Rink on the west side of Manhattan, which is on the eighth floor of an office building. So unusual to have a rink that you take an elevator to. But we would go there every day. And then we started out, you know, like two people on their first day on skates. We had that day together and then we started to get good. You know, you do anything for a month every single day or six days a week, you start to improve. And we started to get very competitive with each other about who could do this or that, better.

And I was focusing on hockey, she was focusing on figure skating. She got really, really good. She was landing jumps after two months, you know, single axles, things like that, which I know any good figure skater can do after three or four years, not at the Olympic level or anything like that, but it's very impressive for a grown up to take something up and then get that good, that fast. Unfortunately, the first week of filming, she landed a jump, funny, and broke her leg. So, I ended up having to do a lot of skating in the movie, a lot more than they planned on. I would skate with Moira’s double, Sharon Carz. Who was amazing. She could be Moira’s twin sister and was a professional skater. So, when you have a pair in skating, and the guy is in the second position as you're skating, if you hold on to her for support and kind of imitate her stride, it makes you look a lot better. So, I was able to fake it pretty well. Thanks to Sharon.

John Betancourt: Wow. How cool is that? You got to learn how to ice skate!

D.B. Sweeney: Yeah, it's fun when you get to learn a skill. Like when I did Lonesome Dove. I got to learn how to ride a horse. I did not know how to ride a horse. In that case, I lied and said I did. Because I really wanted to be in Lonesome Dove. But then I made the lie, true. And again, these were situations where I had a lot of lead time. Sometimes you don't have a lot of lead time. They come to you. You're not the first choice for a part. Then at the last minute, whoever they have, it doesn’t work out. You have to jump right in. So, you know, you make the best of it in those situations. But at this point in my career, I had the luxury of being able to turn down certain things and then to focus on other things. So, Lonesome Dove and Cutting Edge and Eight Men Out as well, are where I had long training periods to prepare to do those movies.

John Betancourt: Well it’s clear that preparation paid off for sure. Speaking of preparation, I’ve always been curious as to how you got in the right mindset to play Travis in Fire in the Sky? Because I’m not really sure there was a good starting point to build off for that.

D.B. Sweeney: Yeah, it was. You know, it was funny. Memphis Belle was based on a fictionalized version of the actual Memphis Belle crew. Like they changed all the names. And, you know, the story of what happened on that last mission of the Memphis Belle is fiction. So, my character, the navigator, I chose that role because my uncle was a navigator on a B-17 and I had that personal connection to the you know, to the whole eighth air force. I knew a lot about it. So, I just loved the idea of it. But when we got over to England, it turns out that the navigator -- you know, my character for people that don't remember the movie very clearly, he's terrified that he's going to get killed on his last mission. He's doing everything he can to get out of the mission. And he's doing what would objectively be called some cowardly things. And then in the end, he pulls it together and he helps Billy Zane's character to do something heroic to save Eric Stoltz’s life, so that's basically it. And I thought it was the character in the movie with the best arc as well. So, I wanted to play that role. We get to England. It turns out that the actual navigator’s family is not happy. My name was Phil. His name was Chuck Leighton and they had a reunion and, all the actual Memphis Belle guys came, and it was really great. But his family was really upset because they felt like his legacy now was going to be the cowardly guy on the Memphis Belle. Nobody's gonna get the distinction that he's not and that the names are changed and all that. So, you know, the family was trying to get rewrites to happen. And I got drawn into the middle of it. And I was sort of sympathetic to the family. But at the same time, I was like, well, it's just a movie. It got very complicated. And David Putnam, our producer, dealt with Chuck's family. And Chuck was such a great guy, and all the other guys in the crew were having such a good time, loving of the idea of making this movie. He didn't want to be the guy to squish that, but his family -- well their hearts were in the right place. But I think what they were doing was a little bit destructive to the process.

Anyway, it didn't have me playing my part in Memphis Belle. So, we come to do Fire in the Sky a few years later. And I said, I don't want to meet Travis Walton because I like the script. I want to keep it simple. I just want to make the movie. And they agreed to go along with that. So, I didn’t meet Travis until after a big chunk of it was filmed. So, I just was using my imagination. And when I got to the place where Travis was abducted by aliens, you know, Industrial Light and Magic, probably to this day, it's still the state of the art for visual effects in almost every movie. And at that time, they were really the only place that was doing that high-level stuff. So, I was excited to be working with them. And when I got to the set at Skywalker, it wasn’t at Skywalker Ranch. It was just near there -- and the set. It was so ingenious what they did because nobody knew how to do an extended weightless sequence where you can't tell how the actor, or the character is being suspended. Nowadays they do visual effects. But then it was all done with wires. So, to hide the fact that I was on wires, they took that out later, digitally. But you still have to suspend me on wires, so they built the set of the spaceship upside down while they turned the camera upside down and then they hung me upside down. They hung me right side up from the ceiling. So, it disoriented the audience's view of where I was suspended. And then it was a matter of just pretending that I was weightless. So, I just thought, you know, everybody's put so much good thought into this, and so much beautiful work on the sets and everything. I felt like I was up to me just not to let everybody down. Because you’re acting by yourself and pretending all this stuff was going on. And so, it's like the purest kind of acting. And I just felt like if this doesn't work, it's because of me, not because of them, because everything they did was so beautiful.

John Betancourt: Well it turned out great, that’s for sure, and you did a phenomenal job. But. As we look at the here and the now, we need to talk about your latest project, Two Dum Micks. Which is hilarious by the way. It’s just a great five-minute ride. What motivated you to want to make this particular short?

D.B. Sweeney: Well, I really love doing comedy as I've gone on my career. Early on, I was very much kind of pegged as a serious, dramatic actor, which I was very gratified that I had any role. So, you know, I played a lot of movies where, you know, I had a serious situation. But so many people enjoyed the comedy aspect of The Cutting Edge that I just felt like most of us have, you know, lives where we go to our jobs or we have difficulties, or we have health challenges or whatever. And I just started to feel like it was a great honor as an entertainer to be able to, lighten that burden for people. So, sometimes you can do that with a dramatic movie, but everybody really needs a laugh. And a few years ago, I did Two and a Half Men, which was so much fun. And I went back to my theater roots where, we do a sitcom, filmed in front of a live audience.

And, you know, they don't do a lot of takes and you do it almost like a play. And it was really exciting and fun. And I just loved the feeling of, you know, you just lighten somebody's burden in the audience a little bit. So, Sean Astin was one of my favorite people that I've ever worked with. Way back to Memphis Belle. And I was hoping we work together again, and it didn’t ever happen. So, I just started cooking up this idea. You know, my kids are teenagers. They watch a lot of content on their phones. So, what if I did a short comedy thing that was a little bit in the vein of Abbott and Costello, and Laurel and Hardy. And so that was kind of the germination of it. And Sean, I called him up and he jumped right in and it was so much fun filming it with him.

John Betancourt: Well the two of you are just magic on screen in this, that’s for sure. Which brings me to my next question, what is it that attracted you to the character of Mick?

D.B. Sweeney: Well, I was studying a lot of these old comedy teams. And you tend to have you know, you need some kind of a tension between the characters for the comedy to play. So, I just thought if I'm more the conniving character and, Sean is kind of the more big-hearted character. Neither of them are evil or mean, but they're trying to get ahead in life and they just, they don't know how to do it. So, there's going to be subsequent episodes of this. We're going to retell the story as this kind of a series, the way Laurel and Hardy did, or Abbot and Costello and we’re filming more episodes this summer. I think that the key to it is that Sean is such a big-hearted guy that the audience loves watching him try to do the right thing. And my character is pushing a little bit more. You know, he's got less ethical strictures on him to what he decides to do. But Sean, you know, he's a regular guy. He's got a big heart. So, I think that that dynamic, it creates a lot of conflict situations.

John Betancourt: Well that is just some phenomenal depth to inject into a comedy series, and it’s wonderful to hear there are more episodes coming and it sounds like we just got a sneak peek into what expect from this show down the line. But outside of Two Dum Micks, what else is on your agenda?

D.B. Sweeney: Well, I finally did my first zombie movie. Everybody should have one of those, I think. Zombies. Zombies are perennial. And it's a movie I made with my friends, which last several years. I really, you know, if you gonna be away from your family, I really want to be with people that I like. I'm not saying that I’m hard to get along with or anything. But, you know, I've been trying to make things happen with my friends. So, Max Martini is a guy that I worked with 20 years ago on a TV show called Harsh Realm, which was canceled too soon. And it's great. There's only nine episodes of it. I think you can get the DVDs and watch that. Or it might even be on streaming now. But yeah, it was a great show that launched Max's career. We stayed friends. Max was directing this movie written by a couple of wonderful guys, one of whom I worked with on Chi-Raq, the Spike Lee movie. And he was a Chicago guy, which is where I live now. And he’s just a great guy. And they asked me to come do this, this movie called Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre. And it was written by two guys, including my friend, Mike Carey, who were actually wrestlers back in the 90s. You know, they obviously weren't big TV celebrities, but there was a low-level wrestling circuit that existed. And they sort of wrote a movie about being on that circuit. And it morphs into a zombie movie in a very funny way. So, it's not meant to be a scary zombie movie. It's a funny zombie movie. And I play their promoter. And that's really funny and crazy part. This guy's name is Vic Quickbuck. So, he thinks he's Don King. He's not even close to that level. And it's just a funny character. And we have Randy Couture in the movie and Adrian Pasdar. It's just a really, really fun movie.

John Betancourt: And when do audiences get to enjoy that? Because that sounds amazing.

D.B. Sweeney: I think it's coming out in the summer. I think they just closed a deal. They actually are going to -- we're going to make a sequel to it. Which is with vampires! So, it's got you know, it's guys that you want to hang around with. It's just a funny, funny show. So, I think people are gonna enjoy it.

John Betancourt: Well that’s just phenomenal. Means we’re getting the ‘Summer of Sweeney’! More Two Dum Micks and a zombie movie. Now, before we wrap this up. You’ve had such a rich career and you’ve accomplished so much; is there any particular character out there that you are hoping to play, that you haven’t had the chance to yet?

D.B. Sweeney: Well, I mean, I love doing the Western. I mean, with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, who are two of the greatest actors I’ve ever seen, to get to work with them on the same project and be around horses. I really love that genre. And I feel like in a lot of ways, the Western is the purest Hollywood movie because it sort of says something about America or, you know, you can spin it as a bunch of different views of America. But there is something about the world's view of America, which is embodied in the Western. So, I really wanna do another Western. I'd also love to do a movie about NASCAR, as funny as that is. Or maybe not NASCAR like the stars of NASCAR, but the lower levels of racing. The guys trying to break into that NASCAR world. I think that's a cool world, too.

John Betancourt: That would definitely be something new. Well, before we let you go, is there anything else you’d like to share with everyone about Two Dum Micks or anything else that’s coming up for you?

D.B. Sweeney: Well, just that if you've seen it, great. And if you could just tell your friends about it, it's at Facebook.com/TwoDumMicks and there's no ‘B’ in it because… they’re ‘dum’. And the more people that watch it. The sooner we'll be able to create a bunch of new episodes.

John Betancourt: Well that’s all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for your time D.B., it has been an absolute pleasure.

D.B. Sweeney: Oh, thank you. Hopefully we’ll do it again sometime.

To see ‘Two Dum Micks’, follow the link above. To follow D.B. Sweeney, you’ll find him at @RealDBSweeney on Twitter and Instagram. This interview was lightly edited and condensed for clarity.