Good as Gould
Humble star is endearing himself once again to Edmontonians
By JEFF CRAIG

Sunday, July 27, 1997

It’s been said that movie stars have something the rest of us lack – beyond the obvious good looks and good fortune.

Oscar-nominated with a long-established, international fan base, Elliott Gould clearly has that something. But it’s more than the glint in the eye suggesting that he harbors a juicy secret. It’s more than the legacy of creating the role of Trapper John in M*A*S*H or Marlow in The Long Goodbye; having been the executive producer of Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) – or even having been the first American actor to star in an Ingmar Bergman film.

It’s more likely his spirit, which had him in the hallways of Edmonton’s Allarcom studios, making young female production assistants blush at compliments and his even younger co-star self-conscious about attempting some time-honored ballet moves. Or playing, with the same co-star, vigorous between-takes rounds of Frisbee in the cavernous studio that was once home to SCTV.

Friday, Gould wrapped a week-long filming of the pilot for a children’s TV series called Mentors. The episode, created by city writer Josh Miller and directed by Alberta film veteran Arvi Liimatainen, is entitled The Genius.

Gould is Albert Einstein, conjured magically by a basement-lurking computer tyke played by Edmonton actor Chad Krowchuk (Jake and the Kid), a boy who ends up learning far more about family than physics from the great scientist.

“I believe in children and I believe in education, in reading and imagination,” Gould was saying during a lengthy makeup transformation from Brooklyn-born Jew to theory-of-relativity-discovering German.

“That’s provocative on its own, isn’t it?” he jokes at this little irony.

“I’m interested in wholesome products like this. And Chad is the cream of the crop. Magnificent in his humble, Edmontonian way. So pure.”

Future episodes, should the concept go to series, will feature great philosophers, politicians, artists and sports heroes, as conjured by computer whiz kids played by Krowchuk and others.

And there could be no better star for the pilot than Gould, you’ll find everyone from director Liimateinen, writer Miller and just about everyone on staff proclaiming.

But the actor himself would balk at the suggestion he’s special.

More proud of his three children than his own proven talent, Gould is decidedly anti-Hollywood biz.

“My take on celebrity,” the actor quips, “is that some of us have to make bigger fools of ourselves than others.”

Gould made a comeback of sorts in the past couple of years with a recurring role on the hit sitcom Friends, as father to Courtney Cox and David Schwimmer.

“It’s nice to be a part of Friends,” he says. “I’ll certainly do more when they write for me. It’s good for the cause to be a part of such a successful show.”

The cause, to Elliott Gould, is our common challenge of maintaining the rent – and a centred life.

That led him to accept the lead in an eight-month touring production of Deathtrap, an experience he calls, “Very beneficial, very fruitful. The discipline was good for me, though it sure made me vulnerable to the critics. I think the audience got their money’s worth, though.”

It also meant he had to decline Woody Allen’s offer of the lead in his latest film – a role some have said Allen wrote specifically for Gould, which the actor denies.

Either way, it could have made him an A-list property again, something he desires from the point of view of the material he’s able to do, rather than the celebrity it breeds.

“What’s a star?” he asks. “I think a star on this planet would be a tree, not a person.”

This is the kind of modesty that has endeared Gould to those who’ve met him, especially in Edmonton on his first visit, when he performed at Stage West for 10 weeks in 1992 and became a fixture at that year’s Fringe.

Modesty, and humility, are things Gould says he tries to bring to every role, even that of one of history’s greatest thinkers.

“Einstein was a genius, and genius is defined as `one of a kind.’ I believe everyone of us is meant to be one of a kind – but taking into consideration the ego and vanity of our species, modesty and humility is an asset. And I enjoy reminding myself that an eggplant is also one of a kind, and there’s nothing more intelligent than vegetation because it simply is, and that’s all life is truly about.”

From Edmonton, Gould goes to Toronto for a part in a Terence Chang film (Chang is John Woo’s partner) and then to a film festival in Brazil next month to promote a film he shot in China about 18 months ago.

He then may star in a television project with Bill Cosby, whom he’d worked with years ago in film.

But no matter what, he says, there will always be dancing in the halls, Frisbees between takes, and – if he’s lucky – onion cakes at the Fringe.