The first time I met Richard Riehle, I was making one of the first things I’d ever made. It was a Funny or Die video, and my friend Tanner Thomason and I were trying to figure out how to get an actual actor to be in it. Someone suggested Richard.
I bet he’ll be down.” So we wrote him a nice letter, offered him the enormous sum of $250, and a week later we were working with a legend. I remember arriving on set that morning and finding Richard already there, sitting by himself, reading the newspaper and drinking a root beer. He’d beaten the crew there.
He didn’t need anything, didn’t seem particularly concerned that he was an actor with hundreds of credits doing a little internet video for two guys who had never really made anything before. He was just happy to be there. That was about 13 years ago.
I spent a lot of the next 13 years trying to find reasons to work with him again. If I wrote something with a part Richard could play, I offered it to him. Sometimes I probably wrote the part because I wanted an excuse to hear his stories.
We ended up acting in several other projects together, too, and over the years we became friends. He was also, without question, one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with. I know that might sound like the sort of thing people say when someone dies, but I mean it.
Richard was astonishingly good. He could make a line funny just by deciding not to make it funny. He could steal a scene without seeming to do much of anything.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
