From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman. To hear an audio clip of my interview with Rodney Carrington, click here.
“Beer” buddies
Toby Keith, Rodney Carrington team for comedy
In the action-comedy “Beer for My Horses,” country music star Toby Keith and stand-up comedian Rodney Carrington play steadfast friends who stick together through the mundane and messy parts of life.
In real life, co-writing and co-starring in the movie helped the Oklahoma entertainers renew their long friendship.
“It was a great process,” Keith said in a phone interview. “I laughed at him the whole time we were writing it. He gets up and gets possessed and walks around the room and acts this stuff out, and it’s like he’s onstage doing his act, and it’s funny.
“It’s legitimate when you see me laugh at him in the movie; I’m really laughing at him. He could run those lines 100 times … and his delivery would make me laugh.”
Keith and Carrington play Rack and Lonnie, small-town Oklahoma sheriff’s deputies assigned to stake out a farmers cooperative where methamphetamine makers are tapping anhydrous ammonia tanks.
They nab one of the drug ring’s leaders, Tito (Greg Serano), but soon after the arrest, Tito’s vengeful brother kidnaps Rack’s girlfriend, Annie (Claire Forlani), and demands a trade. Defying their boss (Tom Skerritt), Rack, Lonnie and their fellow deputy Skunk (Ted Nugent) hit the road for Mexico, determined to rescue Annie.
Along the way, they encounter many colorful characters, including a friendly band of circus performers played by Willie Nelson and David Allan Coe.
“It was very surreal,” Carrington said in a separate phone interview from his Tulsa home. “I’m standing there with Tom Skerritt and Willie Nelson and Ted Nugent and Toby Keith. To me … it’d be equivalent to The Beatles and some guy who works at Quik Trip. I felt like ‘how did I get here’ most of the time.”
Keith and Carrington met about 10 years ago, when they were both new artists on the Mercury label. With Keith growing his music career and branching out into movies and Carrington starting his TV show “Rodney” and building his stand-up fan base, they only crossed paths two or three times in that decade.
When Keith developed an idea for a movie based on “Beer for My Horses,” his hit 2003 duet with Nelson, he thought Carrington could help him shape the story and “put the funny in it.”
“I already had the story. I had already written the story and submitted that, and they (MTV Films) loved it, so now all I had to do was write this screenplay, to go in and do all the dialogue and stuff,” Keith said. “Rodney created several really good scenes for the movie and then across the board just made the dialogue blow up and be funny.
“And Rodney has a real sensitive side to him; he was able to really help the scenes of like Claire and my part, when Rack and Annie get together. He was real instrumental.”
Carrington’s telling of the story is a bit more, let’s say, colorful.
“Toby was desperate; Toby needed somebody because his career was floundering,” the comic joked.
The pair ran into each other at the 2007 CMT Music Awards in Nashville, Tenn., he said, and Keith invited him to help write the script.
“I came to his house, his Disneyland, Tobyworld, that he lives at there in Norman. You drive through the front gates, and Josh Groban music starts playing. It’s beautiful out there … and that little actor “Webster” - ‘member him? - he’s out there sitting on a giraffe wearing a Toby Keith hat waving to you when you drive through the gate. He’s got it all going on,” Carrington joked.
“But I drove over there, spent three or four days at his house; we wrote a 20-page outline.”
Through phone calls, e-mail and sit-down writing sessions, the pair hammered out the 90-page script over the next 10 months. For Carrington, his two years of writing experience on his sitcom taught him the importance of developing a strong story.
“I thought that I could help Toby with that aspect of it. Toby had a clear idea in his mind about what he wanted in this movie, and I just helped him facilitate what he wanted,” he said. “Then, I brought my own creativity, as far as my many years of being on the road and telling jokes and being funny. … So it was a collaborative effort. It was fun.”
When it came to making “Beer for My Horses,” Keith, who also produced the film, said New Mexico stood in for Oklahoma because the neighboring state offered better tax breaks and resources.
His experience on his first film, 2006’s “Broken Bridges,” helped him become a better, more responsive actor.
Still, Keith and Carrington said making a movie is longer, harder work than one might think.
“The days were long; they were 12- and 14- hour days. … But we had a blast. I mean, the laughing you see on the set is genuine,” Keith said.
Now, they hope their project makes others chuckle, too.
“We laughed a lot, and I said to Toby, ‘Well, I hope that me and you ain’t the only two laughing when this thing’s over with or we’re in trouble,’” Carrington said with a chortle.
-BAM
