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To hear him tell it, Corbin Bernsen became an actor when his father, producer Harry Bernsen Jr., recruited him to be in the 1974 Blaxploitation flick Three the Hard Way, starring Jim Brown and Fred Williamson.
“The script said, ‘A pair of naked young limbs, thrashing in the backseat of a Rolls Royce,’” Bernsen recalls to Den of Geek. “I went and did it, made out with this girl, and met Jim Brown. I had this Camaro that I’d really worked on, and my dad wanted to buy it from me so we could blow up for the movie, send it 20 feet in the sky.
“They gave me a production van at the end, which was just a van, and my dad handed me nine hundred bucks at the end of the night. And I’m like, ‘Okay, this is my career.’”
In fact, Bernsen’s credits go back even further, to a 1967 movie that stars Elvis Presley as a rich kid masquerading as a water ski instructor in Florida. “I’m credited in Clambake,” he says with a shrug and a laugh. “But I’m also credited with studying judo or karate with Bruce Lee. If you go look it up, it’s there. And I’m just like, ‘Okay…’ I think I might have been there with my mother [actress Jeanne Cooper], who was involved in Roger Corman movies. I might have been there as a baby.”
Those family connections continue up to the present, with his new independently-produced series Woodstockers, written and directed by his son, Oliver Bernsen. In Woodstockers, Bernsen plays Lenny, a former hippie who responds to the end of his marriage and the death of his best friend by going back to Woodstock to relive his most beloved memories.
“I am Lenny,” Bernsen admits. “I’m not everything Lenny is; I have a wonderful wife and I have kids who all get along, not a daughter who’s remote from me. But the thing Lenny’s going through about the resolution of one’s life, I’m definitely going through.
“I’m the bloodforce of Lenny, and in the show, we’re just changing the story about who he is. If we can make Woodstockers the way I want to do it, which covers all four seasons, it can be the four seasons of a man’s life. We can shoot all these beautiful seasons and make them all very distinct. The next season we do will be winter, and in the frozen cold he gives up smoking. Lenny’s just stuck in ice for six episodes of white nothingness.
“I’m very interested in taking the way my life changed via Lenny into the process of doing this project. It all started with me realizing at 71 that you’ve got to reckon with your life.”
Part of that reckoning for Bernsen involves bringing in his son Oliver to write the screenplay and direct Woodstockers. Fortunately, the prospect was equally compelling for the younger Bernsen.
“For me, the fun in anything is how much a story you can tell through someone’s life, and have it inform the character,” says Oliver. “I think that the greatest thing a director can do is pull life into fiction and blend them to create a surprising new character. I know very well what’s true of my father in real life and what’s not true, and I got to massage that a bit when making Lenny. I used my perspective of someone who isn’t 71 to comment on what he may have done wrong or done right.
“That dialogue is what’s exciting to me, to tell a geriatric story through the lens of a young boy. That’s dynamic storytelling.”
Corbin adds, “When Oliver accepted to do this, it just hit me that I would be seeing what Oliver thinks of me, as a father, as a Woodstocker.”
While that personal element did, at times, make for interesting situations on set, as when Oliver had to push his father harder while shooting a scene in which Lenny smokes pot (“I was like, ‘You wrote it, man! You’ve got to rip that bong!’” Oliver laughs), both Bernsens saw Woodstockers as a unique opportunity.
In part, Woodstockers allowed the elder Bernsen to get back to his roots, acting in indie movies produced by Roger Corman. Bernsen’s earliest memory as an actor begins with 1976’s Eat My Dust!, a car chase cheapo starring Ron Howard and produced by Corman. “I played a gas station, and I remember my line: ‘Ethyl lead? ethyl no lead? or Ethel Nordock, my high school teacher.’ That was my line to Ron Howard.
“Roger told Ron Howard, ‘Be in this movie, and I’ll let you direct the next movie,’ which was Grand Theft Auto. So I remember that as the first time really being on a set and really doing it.”
Those types of gambles are reflected in the creation of Bernsen’s current project. Woodstockers doesn’t follow a traditional production model, where a network or a streamer like Netflix orders a series and gives the creators money and space to make it. Instead, the Bernsens simply made the show on their own and put it out on YouTube, hoping to generate interest after the fact.
“This notion of indie TV isn’t something that’s really been done before,” says Oliver. “It’s a great testing ground for people, giving them a place they can explore.”
Corbin adds, “It also goes back to my earliest days. I was a little bit younger than Oliver is now, but I was still around the world because of the relationships I had during the Roger Corman days, the days of the true indie. We’d go out to Zuma Beach to do The Creature from the Black Lagoon or whatever it’s called. There was a spirit of people coming together.”
“You know, I love L.A. Law, I love the big things that I got to work on with eight thousand trucks and craft services and all of that. But there’s something exciting about bringing that independent thing they did in Roger Corman’s day.
“And that’s why I wanted to be part of Oliver’s show,” Bernsen says of Woodstockers. “For me, I want to get down there. I would like us to be pioneers.”
Clearly, the pioneer spirit has served Bernsen well, whether it’s making a TV show with his son or letting his dad blow up his car with Jim Brown.
The post Corbin Bernsen On Embracing a Roger Corman Spirit, Working With His Son in Woodstockers appeared first on Den of Geek.
