The role of Harold Buttleman was written for John, and he performs all his own stunts in the film.

 

Early credits of John’s include supporting roles in “From Dusk til Dawn”, “Rush Hour”, and a guest spot on “The X-Files” (in which he played the first character in the series' history to kiss Agent Scully onscreen – tough break).

 

His first major lead role was Bugsy in “Perfect Storm”, one of the six sailors on the doomed boat and the comic relief of the film. Recently, he played lead roles in “Hardball” with Keanu Reeves and on the Steven Spielberg miniseries “Taken”. He has also been seen in a series of spots promoting the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame show running ad nauseum on VH-1 and Mtv. His spare time is spent performing in local juke joints with his band Gangster Folk. He is a regular on the upcoming HBO series “Deadwood”.

 

John can currently be seen tied to a chair in the film “Identity”.

 

Anita Barone plays Harold’s girlfriend Wendy. Originally from Michigan, Anita has become a familiar face in prime time with regular roles on “The Jeff Foxworthy Show” and “Daddio” and guest starring spots on “Seinfeld”, “Party of Five”, “Friends” (as Ross’s ex-wife) and “The Larry Sanders Show”. Her feature film roles include “I’ll Do Anything”, “Sex Monster” and “Dream with the Fishes”


 

Screen legend Karen Black plays Harold’s busybody mother. Karen hails from the same small town as director Francis Stokes – Park Ridge, IL – an odd coincidence that helped Francis secure her for the role (gotta try that on Harrison Ford).

Karen’s most well-known roles are in “Five Easy Pieces”, for which she won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Oscar, and “Easy Rider”, in which she tripped on acid in a cemetery with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Toni Basil. Other memorable roles include Robert Altman’s films “Nashville”, “The Player” and “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean”, “The Great Gatsby” (her second Golden Globe), Alfred Hitchcock’s last film “Family Plot,” “Day of the Locust” (Golden Globe nomination), “Airport 75” and the cult-classic “Trilogy of Terror”. Recently, Karen received an award at the 2001 Slamdunk Film Festival for her performance in “Red Dirt”.

She currently graces the screen as Mother Firefly in Rob Zombie’s “House of 1,000 Corpses”.

 

Stephen Falk is a successful screenwriter and actor who graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He recently sold a spec script titled “The Prom” to Artisan and he is currently writing “Whispers in Bedlam” for Universal. He was the first place winner of the 2000 Austin Heart of Film Screenplay Contest for “You Down With OCD”. BUTTLEMAN is his first feature film role.


A native of Princeton, KY and Port Glasgow, Scotland, Stephanie Markham moved to New York at age eighteen to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. She has appeared on stage in numerous plays in New York and Los Angeles, most recently in the critically acclaimed and controversial tabloid sensation “Call Us Crazy: The Anne Heche Monologues”. BUTTLEMAN is her first lead role in a feature film.

Dan Castellaneta is most famous as the voice of Homer Simpson on “The Simpsons”, for which he performs several of the lead voices and received Emmy Awards in 1992 and 1993.

 

Castellaneta is one of many actors in BUTTLEMAN who began their careers on stage in Chicago. He performed for four years with the famous Chicago improvisational group The Second City. In 1991, he played the offbeat underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar in “American Splendor” on stage in Los Angeles, and he won a Drama League Award for his performance in “Tom and Jerry” as part of the Met Theater's 1994 One Act Festival. A former cast member of the Emmy Award-winning series “The Tracey Ullman Show”, Dan has appeared in countless television and film roles. The best voice to ask Dan to do is Grandpa Simpson.