More than Lips: An Interview with Michael Ray Bower

Tommy Avallone’s gritty, balls-to-the-wall epic comedy Community College had its premier back in April at Philadelphia’s Trocadero Theatre with much success. An audience looking for laughs filled around three hundred of the five hundred available seats, but actor Michael Ray Bower, who is best known for his role as Donkeylips in "Salute Your Shorts" and had a hypnotic cameo in the film, was unable to make it. Fortunately, July 18 saw the second screening of the flick at Dante’s Bar in Barrington, New Jersey (a location where many of Community College’s dramatic drinking bout scenes were filmed) and Bower had the privilege of attending. With the second screening also a success, Bower spent some extra time enjoying Philly, New Jersey, and New York, and doing some additional film work before he had to head back to his home base, Los Angeles. It was clear that the friendship between Avallone and Bower had come far since the early days of Community College.

How did Bower get brought into the movie? Avallone was always interested in Michael Ray Bower’s work. Bower’s most recent success was playing the guy clamping spark plugs to his nipples in the absurd Super Bowl 2008 Amp commercial (which had over 20 million viewers on Youtube the day after the game), but his diverse acting history includes roles in the movies Dude Where’s My Car? and Evolution, and in the television series "Dark Angel," "CSI," "Singled Out," "The Wonder Years," "Friends," and most famously in the Nickelodeon show "Salute Your Shorts."

After meeting through a podcast, Avallone and Bower hit it off. “I thought it was interesting that he made a joking offer to fly me out from LA to New York and to show me the sites of New Jersey if I would take a part in his movie. I thought he was joking,” Bower explains. Bower agreed to play a hypnotist in Community College, but the role quickly underwent a transformation. “Originally his role was just a hypnotist. Eventually we made it ‘Michael Ray Bower Playing the Hypnotist.' We threw in the 'Salute Your Shorts' references. We sculpted around him,” says Avallone.

The role Bower took on ended up becoming candid autobiography meets whacky caricature. Avallone worked with Bower to create a comfortable character. “He’s one of the first established actors I’ve worked with. He came in, asked me what the character’s motivation was. I come from the school that you should have what you’re doing be funny. Say it and if people laugh you did it right,” Avallone says.

But for Bower, creating the role was not as straight-forward. Having always been faced with the issue of the Donkeylips identity, the goal was also to address the hypnotist’s image while maintaining Avallone’s world of humor. “Avallone and I talked and I told him I didn’t like being called Donkeylips all the time. I thought it would be funny to hypnotize people so you could tell them your real name, so they could forget you were Donkeylips,” Bower says. “It was kind of cool because I started to look like I was a psychopath. Like, ‘I am a God and my name is Michael Ray Bower.'” The result is subtle and quirky, and shows Bower’s impressive control in front of the camera.

Bower is okay with being known by many for his role as Donkeylips, but he’s ready to move on. “I’d like to have tough-guy roles in the future. Not necessarily a role as a serial killer, but I do have a lot of pain I want to get out. Humor’s natural, and it comes to me easy,” proclaims Bower. “It’s hard showing people your vulnerabilities, and it’s really hard to get into the dark areas if you were born into the comedic actor.”

And humor, which comes easiest to him, has already begun to serve as a jumping off point. Both Bower and Avallone have roles in No Footing, a local feature written and directed by Michael Licisyn of Mixed Nut Productions. The movie, which comes out this fall, centers around Madison, an artist (Jensen Bucher) in the Philadelphia area who realizes the life of creativity and glamour is not as easy as it once seemed.

Avallone spent most of his time helping produce the film, and he only fills the minor role (with a total of one line) of a projectionist. Bower plays a prolific, though dark and estranged, video artist who is ironically successful, much to the disdain of Madison. “I make these gothic movies that show the pain and suffering in the world, but I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. It offends Madison that dorks like me get all the luck while she is the intelligent one and has to struggle,” he says. While the world waits for the finalizations of No Footing, which will premiere at the Broadway Theatre in Pitman later this year, Michael Ray Bower is back to LA to take on work as it comes. His parting words: “Love me, love me, love me.” -Greg Bem

http://nofooting.com/

http://www.communitycollegesucks.com/