He's best known for his support roles as Brett in Pulp Fiction and Archie in Field of Dreams.

But he had two leads though in the 90's, one was a comedy called Career Opportunities with Jennifer Connelly. He played night janitor at a store, which got locked by a couple of robbers, and Connelly's character is a young female shopper who also locked inside the store.

His second leading role was in another indie flick called Swimming With Shark, which he plays a young assistant to Kevin Spacey's studio executive boss role. Spacey's character treats him like shit, though. It's great dark-comedy, very underrated and under-appreciated because it was release the same year as Pulp Fiction. The ending is pretty fucking twisted too.

Oh yeah, he also played guitarist Robby in The Doors. I think his best scene from that was the writing and recording of "Light My Fire". I thought it was more about Jim than the band.

Giles in Broken Arrow. Sorry. Its been on HBO recently.

You ain't kiddin, that movie should've just been titled "Jim Morrison". I learned this from having a conversation with an older friend of mine shortly after I finally watched the film a few years ago. My friend told me the way the backstage confrontation on The Ed Sullivan Show with the producers really happened. That the guy asked them to saying "better" instead of "higher", they all agreed with smiles on their faces, but then pulled together, ALL OF THEM, and said there's no fucking way we're changing a word of our lyrics, and they collectively deciding to stick it to the show by still singing "higher" on live TV. Stone was only interested in making a movie that portrayed Morrison as this lone rebel. Don't get me wrong, I dug the film, but also as a big fan of "JFK", it makes me wonder how much of history he took the liberty to change there for the sake of a good story.

Anyways yea I love Frank Whaley. Oddly enough I just watched "Swimming With Sharks" again only a couple months ago. I remember renting it for Kevin Spacey shortly after I'd discovered him from Seven and Usual Suspects.

Whaley was also one of the better patients of the week on a season 3 "House" episode, he had mirror syndrome, he couldn't remember anything about himself so he would always automatically adopt the traits and personality of who he perceived to be the person of authority occupying the room with him.

I remember listening to a Sunday radio show in the 90's and one of the surviving Doors was on the show. I don't remember if it was Ray or Robby but he said The Door movie was mostly fictional by Stone's infatuation with Jim.

So what did you think about about Swimming with Sharks?

I loved the movie and probably one of my favorites from the 90's. Like I said earlier, it got lost in the mid-90's from all the other indie flicks that were popular.

Sharks was a very cool flick. I realize this is a Frank Whaley appreciation thread, and this is a small moment, but I love Spacey's last little bit of dialogue on the big night, after Michelle Burke's already shown up.



I find it quite amusing though the portrayal of what it's like to work for Buddy. I mean, I guess there have been some producers that truly do breathe fire like that on a daily basis, but it's so completely the antithesis of the experience that I had. As I've mentioned in some other thread around here, I worked in a production office directly under director Paul Verhoeven and his producer Alan Marshall for 2 years starting around just before "Hollow Man" came out in 2000, and these guys were sweethearts, best bosses I ever had. Yea sure they could have their moments of anger, especially Alan, but never really at us, it was more of other people around the studio. It's part of what I loved about Alan, ya know it was a very small operation, and Alan was this leader who, to me anyway, helped create this "us against the world" mentality for our little family, I mean I woulda walked thru fire for that man.

The kind of office dynamic showed in the film, I doubt I would've worked there. And not because I'd be crying all the time, taking it personally or I don't have a thick enough skin, I just don't care to be in that type of work environment all day with a boss who literally has no respect for me whatsoever. I mean Paul and Alan genuinely appreciated me.

Anyway back to the movie, I'm not sure its writer has really done much of anything in movies since, is the weird thing.

there was a guy in the movie with jennifer connolly???

I guyes I never got past her tits & unibrow.

Jennifer Connely had a uni-brow in Career Opportunities?

I never got past her gino-cans