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In thefinal episodeof HBOsBarry, Barry Berkman and Gene Cousineau effectively switch roles.
But to hear Winkler tell it, such deliberately awful moments onBarry and there were many!
are even more startling when its time to perform them.
You go to the set and go,Oh, no kidding.
It was always a revelation.
Want to know how it ends?
I said, Sure.
He said, You shoot me.
And I went catatonic.
I had no idea what to say.
You know me, Im a pretty verbal guy.
I went, Oh, oh, oh okay.
Then it came to the actual shooting, and it was very quiet.
It was very intense.
I was scared holding this gun, even with blanks in it.
Now, when we did it, Bill said, You dont have to do this, Mr. Cousineau.Boom.
Onscreen he just goes, Wow.Boom.
Oh, it was intense.
In my mind, it got very quiet and empty.
I didnt think of the consequences.
I didnt think of anything.
I just accepted my world now is nothingness.
He has such an image of himself, this very important person to the universe.
And killing himself, really, theres no point.
Hes low, hes done bad things, but people will come to understand.
Also, there is a bit of insanity when he walks into that hotel room inthe seventh episode.
Everybody is confronting him and blaming him.
I mean, he flips his wig.
Ive run out of plays, Ive run out of tricks.
No matter what I did, this entire tragedy somehow boomeranged and stuck on me.
Lets talk about the time jump that happens in the last few episodes.
We learn that during these eight intermittent years, Gene has been on a kibbutz.
They actually had a house in the desert where they were shooting Bill and Sarah and their son.
There were scenes, and they built this house and it fell over.
Thats what I was doing for eight years, building homes that didnt stand up.
Were his motivations really that honorable?
I had already talked toVanity Fair,and Jim Moss scared the hell out of me.
Remember, he was hosing down the trunk of his car.
I had to be isolated, he said.
So it was a lot of self-preservation.
If he had just stayed away, he would have been safer.Thats not the way Gene rolls.
He never really looks at the real future, only the future in his head.
Its like his brain is filled with mirrors, and everywhere he looks, he sees himself.
Because he never let anybody know where he was.
I dont think he had any idea.
He was sure Barry was coming for him.
Thats who he thought he was shooting.
I think it would go back to my national television show,Classroom.
I would probably parlay that into a European version.
I would have part of the rights and stumble along as I do.
So you wanted Gene to have some amount of success enough to keep him going?Absolutely.
I mean, not only success fame.
Not just being able to make a living but finally getting the recognition he deserves as an artist.
you’re free to argue he does get recognition.
He probably becomes quite famous but for all the wrong reasons.All the wrong reasons.
Thats not the fame he wanted.
And he gets fame in prison.
If this is my audience, so be it.
Ill take it where I can get it.
I feel like this could be a spinoff.Absolutely.Gene in Folsom.
Bill is not sure.Sally goes on to finally teachlike a human being, but its a high-school class.
I guess he had the sweetest spot for Sally.
Even that was sad.It is sad because she is constantly knocked down a rung.
But she lived, her son lived, and at least they had food on the table.
They had a roof over their heads.
They had some sort of normalcy even though it was not where she imagined herself to be.
Nobody ended up where they imagined themselves to be.
Your character is the villain in the piece.Gene would have hated it.
He has always wanted to be in a movie, but not that way.
Thats not the way he saw himself.
But that was a bridge too far.
