While FilmDrunk is technically a general-information humor site about movies, we do have our favorites. Those generally go, in order of importance, Gary Busey Stories, Steven Seagal Stories, and Pictures of Rape Vans. We know what we like and we have a good nose for it. Our own Chareth Cutestory recently chanced upon a new Busey story, as recounted by Paul Scheer on the latest Doug Loves Movies podcast (which I assume he found only after he’d finished listening to every FilmDrunk Frotcast). We pick up with Scheer describing the Busey incident.
SCHEER: “I was in a movie that Gary Busey was in, and I talked to the lead actor, and I was like, what was it like working with Gary Busey? And he goes, ‘He kicked me in the stomach!'”
Paul Scheer and Gary Busey were both in Piranha 3D Piranha 3DD so it’s pretty safe to assume that Piranha 3DD is film in question. As for the lead actor, I would imagine he means Steven R. McQueen, who played the main kid in Piranha 3D, who was the closest thing to a protagonist. Though I think it sounds a lot better if you leave all that out and just say, “Didjou hear Gary Busey kicked Steve McQueen in the stomach??” It doesn’t matter that Steve McQueen died in 1980, people will believe it. It’s Gary Busey. Anything’s possible. (Wrong movie, my bad).
“And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he says, ‘Well I came on set,’ — and he’s the lead of the movie — ‘I came on set and I introduced myself to him, and he goes ‘Get outta here with that bullsh*t!’ And he kicked me in the stomach. And then he said ‘Get that guy off the set!” And they did! They got him off the set! The lead actor, they dragged him off the set.”
Knowing what we know about Gary Busey, that he becomes agitated whenever commercials come on TV and demands that they be muted, even if he’s at a crowded sports bar at the time, because, as he says of commercials, ‘It’s bullsh*t!” (as recounted to us by a guy who was Busey’s assistant on a film a few years back), I’ve pieced together a likely scenario. Gary Busey probably heard the sound of a commercial, and at the same time was confronted with a stranger trying to introduce himself. He had no choice but to assume that the commercial was coming from this stranger’s stomach. So Busey kicked him in the belly, attempting to mute the tiny television inside (the same way he handles the television at home). When this failed, he demanded that his assistants “get rid of the bullsh*t”, his frequent last resort with televisions playing commercials when he can’t reach them with his foot, which is the only way to keep his brain from being unnecessarily bombarded with crass commercialism. And that’s important, because Busey knows that that’s how the coyotes trick you. And once you’ve been fooled by a coyote, you have to pay him off with highlighters and spare change, and that’s no good, because you’ve probably got important stuff to highlight.