BLOCKBUSTER INTERVIEW!
with BILL ALLEN, aka CRU JONES

BMXtreme's Grant Hansen recently had the pleasure of chatting with Bill Allen, the actor who played Cru Jones in the cult classic "Rad." As a "Rad" fanatical, Grant was stoked to speak to the man behind the legend, and we hope that you all enjoy this interview. These days Bill works mostly behind the camera as a writer/producer and collaborates on a bunch of projects with his good friend Lou Diamond Phillips. If you're over 18 and don't mind feeling a bit uncomfortable, check out whowantstobeahollywoodmoviestar.com to see one of Bill's latest endeavors.

GRANT: Hey Bill, how's it going? I'm not sure if you can hear it, but I've got the Rad soundtrack playing in the background.

BILL: That's very frightening, Grant.

GRANT: (laughter) That wasn't easy to get you know.

BILL: I believe it. Where did you get it?

GRANT: I bought it off of my web site actually (Classified section). Someone gained the rights to produce CDs of it and I got it for $20.

BILL: All right!

GRANT: So, anyway, how did you land the role of Cru Jones?

BILL: I actually landed that because of an episode of Hillstreet Blues I did. Hal Needham, the director of the film, had seen that when he was ready to cast Rad, actually that day, so he called me in. It was a pretty short audition process. So I guess he saw something he liked on TV.

GRANT: Pretty cool. What was your acting experience before Rad, other than Hillstreet Blues?

BILL: Rad was the third movie I did. The first movie I did was in Kentucky in 1982 about horse racing. That was when I was still living in Texas, and through that movie in Kentucky I wound up getting my Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card, and an agent out in L.A. So, with the money I made from the film and my suitcases, I went out to L.A. So Rad was about the third movie I did, and maybe the fifth or sixth acting job altogether.

GRANT: Was it your first title role?

BILL: Um, the movie I did in Kentucky, I played a jockey in that.

GRANT: That's a different type of riding.

BILL: Yeah, I seem to get stuck with a lot of athletic roles.

GRANT: What was the name of that movie?

BILL: "And They're Off!" It was George Clooney's first movie.

GRANT: Did you have any knowledge of BMX before Rad?

BILL: Uh, not really. I was familiar with the sport, but I wasn't an avid fan or anything. But after working in Canada with all those talented riders I really gained an appreciation for it.

GRANT: How was it working with Talia Shire, the wife of Rocky?

BILL: She was great. Adrienne, yeah! She actually produced the movie with her husband, Jack Schwarzman. She was my boss. I only realized afterwards that Francis Ford Coppola was related to her, otherwise I probably would have been nicer to her.

GRANT: (Laughter)

BILL: And of course Jason Schwarzman was on the set at the time when he was only 10 years old. And he went on to do the movie Rushmore.

GRANT: How old were you when you filmed Rad?

BILL: I was 25 I think.

GRANT: So is Laurie Loughlin a good kisser?

BILL: I had to remove her tongue from my throat a couple of times (laughter). She's great. Very professional. It's hard not to get a crush on someone like that when you're working with her.

GRANT: So ass sliding couldn't have been that bad.

BILL: Yeah, when you go ass sliding you want to make it with a girl like that.

GRANT: I heard that water was absolutely freezing up in Canada.

BILL: Yeah, we had wet suits on underneath, but it didn't really help me because it gets wet. It was so frigid … Canada in the fall, it was frighteningly cold. So cold that parts of a man disappear.

GRANT: Not the right time to put the moves on a woman then! Here's the hard-hitting question. I think Luke (Cru's best friend in Rad) was the unsung hero of the movie.

BILL: I agree.

GRANT: If you'll notice, he was ahead of Cru in the first qualifier before he was taken out.

BILL: That's true.

GRANT: And he doesn't get any recognition.

BILL: True, he kind of got robbed, didn't he? He was actually a local, a Canadian. He was an Olympic cross-country skier.

GRANT: I did not know that.

BILL: So there's some trivia for you.

Click here to read page 2 of the interview.

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