The Devlish DeVito : Hollywood’s comic ‘prince of darkness’ feels at home in the director’s chair

Picture a hungry man in search of succor.

Short and stout, with a two-day stubble, graying hair and a “Taxi” watch on his wrist, Danny DeVito was furiously beckoning a waiter toward his table at the Lorimar commissary. The waiter arrived in time for a comic performance worthy of a grumpy New York actor desperately seeking a sandwich.

“A Cattle Call?” DeVito growled. “What kind of sandwich is called a Cattle Call? You’re lucky I’m so hungry. Can you imagine an actor ordering something with a name like that?”

The waiter tried to defend the sandwich’s honor. “All I want to know is this,” DeVito said, waving him off with a stubby hand. “Is it real turkey or that rolled stuff?”

Assured that the turkey was authentic, DeVito warily ordered the Cattle Call, with an iced-tea chaser. Unfortunately, the waiter returned with the wrong sandwich. “What is this?” DeVito gleefully bellowed, staring at the meat with mock horror. “This is roast beef ! What happened to the turkey? Can’t a guy get something with white meat?”

The waiter apologized, then scurried out of the line of fire. DeVito leaned across the table. “Don’t these waiters know we New Yorkers can tell the difference?” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Where I come from, if you get the wrong meat at a deli, it’s a criminal offense!”

Interviewing Danny DeVito is not for the faint of heart. Whether he’s scaring waiters with his grouchy-New Yorker act or impishly bad-mouthing his pal Michael Douglas (“Did that guy work hard on my movie? Are you kidding? He never missed a (expletive) Lakers game!”), he regales visitors with a warm blast of ebullient gusto.

At 45, DeVito has developed a hot ‘n’ spicy comic persona that owes as much to the malevolent charm of W.C. Fields as to the adorable bluster of Ralph Kramden. Since “Taxi,” where he created the character of Louie the sadistic dispatcher, he’s emerged as a tempestuous little man full of black mischief--playing a vile swindler in “Ruthless People,” a conniving sleazeball in “Twins,” an indefatigable hustler in “Tin Men” and a vengeful maniac in “Throw Mama From the Train,” which he also directed.

At 5 feet 0, even on tiptoe, he’s bigger than life. It’s no wonder that one film critic, alarmed by his characters’ bulging eyes, fire-plug physique and reckless abandon, was moved to describe him as a “human grenade who’s just had his pin pulled.”

So it seems entirely appropriate that DeVito’s new film, “The War of the Roses,” is a wicked comedy starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as an adoring couple whose marriage has gone sour--so sour that their sumptuous home is transformed into a raging battleground where no quarter is asked and no apologies are given.

As DeVito puts it with a fiendish gleam: “I take ‘em from ‘Wuthering Heights’ to ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ ”

You almost hate to admit that, in person, DeVito hardly lives up to his on-screen caricatures. Even on an empty stomach, he’s a warm, sweet-tempered man who dotes on his wife and kids, gushes about his actors and leaves waiters--even ones who can’t tell turkey from roast beef--generous tips.

Best of all, DeVito is blessed with a sly, self-deprecating sense of humor. Buzzing around the Lorimar lot, where he’d been making last-minute fixes on the “Roses” print, he was stopped by several friends, who all offered birthday greetings.

“I was riding my exercise bike this morning, listening to Bob Edwards on NPR, who I just love,” he explained as he headed for the commissary. “And he’s going, ‘It’s Nov. 17. Today is the birthday of. . . .’ ”

DeVito tugs on his sweat pants. “And I’m thinking, ‘This is great. My favorite radio guy is doing the birthday bit and it’s my birthday today.’ ”

Too modest to admit he was actually expecting to hear his name, DeVito simply wags his head. “So what does he say? He goes, ‘And today it’s the birthday of . . . Martin Scorsese!’

“I had to laugh. I just kept riding my bike and said, ‘Well, (expletive), there’s a more famous Italian than me!’ ”

All sorts of superstar actors are directing films these days, from Eddie Murphy (“Harlem Nights”) to Kevin Costner (“Dances With Wolves”). But DeVito isn’t just a million-dollar-club actor-dilettante who’s getting a quick kick behind the camera.

In fact, he began directing cheapo Super 8-millimeter shorts as far back as 1970, when he was scuffling around with a long-haired young actor pal named Michael Douglas. “Danny was the Prince of Darkness even then--he’s always been attracted to wild, really dark stories,” recalled Douglas, who gave DeVito a pivotal career boost with the part of Martini in Douglas’ film version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

During the last season of “Taxi,” DeVito persuaded writer-producers James L. Brooks and Ed. Weinberger to let him direct a pair of episodes. Did Brooks, who directed “Broadcast News” and produced “The War of the Roses” under his Gracie Films banner, encourage DeVito’s directing ambitions?

“Are you kidding--I encouraged him to direct,” exclaimed DeVito, waving his arms. “I hocked (nagged) him and hocked him. When we were doing ‘Taxi,’ I’d lean into him and say, ‘You gotta direct . . . you gotta direct.’ And he’d say, ‘I intend to . . . I intend to. . . .’ ” Despite his Brooks connections, DeVito ended up making his directing debut at Orion Pictures with “Throw Mama From the Train,” which either enraptured or disgusted critics, depending on how much they appreciated its florid camera movements and garish images. Several years before, screenwriter Michael Leeson (whom DeVito knew from his days as a “Taxi” writer) had showed him an early draft of his adaptation of Warren Adler’s novel “The War of the Roses.”

“I loved it--the subject was so funny and dark that I figured people would go nuts,” he said, attacking his turkey sandwich. “So I started doing the big push. I hocked them all. I saw the script in Michael’s car one day and said, ‘I know you’re working on that with Jim. How come you’ve never got it made?’ I really stuck the needle in.”

Finally, the project was green-lighted, with DeVito as director. Eager to work with Douglas and Kathleen Turner, he quickly went about reuniting his “Romancing the Stone” co-stars.

“Michael was going off to do ‘Black Rain.’ So I took him to lunch and gave him the script. I told him to read it as a friend . . . as a producer . . . and as an actor.”

DeVito cackles. “I just threw that in underneath--’cause I knew it was a great part and he could never resist.

“And sure enough, the phone rings and it’s Michael and he says, ‘I love this script. It’s great. If I don’t play this part, I’m gonna ring your neck!’ ”

DeVito, who plays Douglas’ lawyer in the film, was fascinated by the heated emotions stirred up by the script. “It’s a tragic comedy with a terrific theme--love turned to hate,” he said. “Everything happens so suddenly. It’s like being on the freeway and it’s totally clear and you go around the bend and suddenly--wham!--it’s bumper to bumper to Santa Barbara.”

Once the couple goes to war, all of their possessions, no matter how precious, become fair game for their destructive fury--crockery, wardrobes, expensive cars, even beloved household pets. As Brooks put it: “I sat in the aisle at one screening just to see the audience and it was something--they would cover their faces in horror and laugh at the same time.”

The film also boasts a wild, uncompromising finale rarely seen in major-studio films these days. “We just built it into the script so that there was no turning back,” said Brooks, who is renowned for producing films with a healthy dose of realism. “(20th Century Fox film chairman) Joe Roth said a great thing when he saw it. He told me, ‘I woke up last night and I was enormously disturbed by the picture, which I guess makes you guys feel great.’ ”

DeVito has been getting the same reaction. “I had one woman tell me she woke up at 4 a.m. after seeing the movie and she realized this was the story of her life. She said she couldn’t wait for her husband to see it.”

DeVito relished the scenes involving physical comedy, especially a running gag involving his stars and an ornate chandelier. He obviously hadn’t forgotten Douglas’ role as producer of the “Romancing the Stone” films, which were shot under arduous conditions in faraway North Africa and Mexico.

“When Danny had me do the chandelier scenes,” Douglas said, “he was down below, saying ‘Remember the jungle in Mexico? How about the time that camel sat on me when we were shooting on the Nile? Michael, baby--it’s payback time!’ ”

“That’s right,” DeVito said at lunch, his eyes glittering, an evil grin spreading across his face. “I hung them from the (expletive) chandelier! I was dying to do it. It got me through pre-production and rehearsals and everything else, ‘cause I knew I was gonna hoist Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner 30 feet up on a (expletive) chandelier.”

His eyes positively glisten with malice. “And when I got ‘em up there, I let ‘em hang there for a while and then I said, ‘OK. Lunch!’ ”

A native son of Asbury Park, N.J., DeVito recently returned to attend his 30th grammar school reunion. He spent most of his time reminiscing with his Our Lady of Mt. Carmel school chums, Sal Beradesco and Louie Scalpatti, who used to play-act with him by shooting each other and faking convincing death scenes. School memories are still strong--Sal and Louie came to the reunion dressed as a nun and a priest.

“What can I tell you about Catholic school?” DeVito said with a shrug. “I didn’t like it. Who would? It’s not much fun getting the bleep kicked out of you by nuns.”

DeVito grew up in what he calls a “volatile” Italian family. “We were crazy kids,” he recalled. “My mother said we were like wild Indians. We’d be trapped all day in school and when they let us out, we’d go nuts.”

When they weren’t rehearsing death scenes on the street, they were roaming a deserted home that became their playhouse. “There was an old lady who’d died and they’d boarded up her house, so we took it over as our place,” he explained. “I remember us sneaking around one night when suddenly there was this terrible scream-AWWWGGHHH! And we all look around and no one can find Louie. So we’re all going, ‘Louie! Louie! Where are you?’ ”

DeVito laughed. “We finally found him--in the furnace. He’d fallen through this huge grate and slid down this big pipe and landed in the furnace. We went down and got him out and he was completely covered with soot. It was hilarious.”

It’s tempting to see DeVito’s love for dark, explosive comedy as partially rooted in these childhood escapades. “I don’t know where it comes from,” he said. “If you made me lie down on a couch someday, I could figure out why I like these things. I just think movies should be real and true and funny.”

DeVito proceeded to describe the plot of his first short film, which he made with his wife, Rhea Perlman. It depicts a suburban woman who flies to New York one night, picks up a man and knifes him to death. She flies back home, comes into the kitchen and puts the knife back on the breakfast table with the other knives on the place setting. After she plugs in the coffee pot and pops the toaster, she goes upstairs and tries to rouse her husband.

“When he finally wakes up,” DeVito said, “he tells her, ‘I had such a nice sleep.’ And she says, ‘Yes, dear,’ and the movie ends.”

He leaned forward to eyeball his visitor. “What can I tell you--you’re sitting with a very sick man!”

To hear his friends talk, the only thing sick about DeVito is his sense of humor. DeVito and his wife, a co-star of “Cheers,” have been active in numerous social causes, especially child-care campaigns and Planned Parenthood (which will receive the proceeds from a Dec. 11 “War of the Roses” benefit screening).

Still, DeVito loves to play the part of the wicked schoolboy. As he was finishing lunch in the commissary, he spotted a crowd of male studio employees having a raucous birthday party across the room. DeVito studied the scene, eyeing a sexy woman in their midst.

“I bet she’s a stripper,” he said in a conspiratorial hiss. “Watch this--we’re gonna get a real show. You can almost see her nipples already.”

When the woman simply sat down and joined the party, DeVito shrugged, his imaginative vision suddenly deflated. “Well, maybe she’s not a stripper, huh?”

DeVito’s old pals, like Michael Douglas, find his jagged-edged humor refreshing. “I know how sick he is and he knows how sick I am,” said Douglas. “One of my great joys on the set was seeing if I could break him up off-camera. But it really was a great comfort working with Danny, especially because I hadn’t done comedy for a while and he was very supportive. The greatest direction I’d get from him was having him tell me not to overact, to bring it down. And I had to laugh. I’d say, ‘You, Danny DeVito, want me to bring it down?’ ”

After two decades as an actor, DeVito says he can handle both the pans and the raves. “I remember the first part I ever had,” he recalled, taking a stroll around the Lorimar lot. “I was at Oratory Prep school, where my parents had sent me to stay out of trouble, when I got offered the lead in the first school production--I was St. Francis of Assisi.

“My parents drove up to see me and there I was, wearing a robe with a rope around it and no shoes and socks. We’re all out on stage, in a tableaux, before the curtain goes up, and from the audience you could see under the curtain. And right away you could hear my mother say, ‘Look--those are my son’s feet!’ ”

DeVito laughed. “After the play was over, my mother hurried over. And this is my first review ever. You know, I’m expecting her to congratulate me and kiss me and everything.

“So what does she tell me? She says, ‘So, how long do you think it’ll take to get back to Asbury Park?’ ”