“We didn’t know what the hell was going on!”
Jeanne Basone was appearing in a popular weekly lunchtime lingerie show and raffling off prizes at Chuy’s restaurant in Glendale, California in 1993 when she was approached by a regular customer asking her to star in Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. “And that’s how,” she chuckles good-naturedly, “I ended up in the Ed Wood of video games!”
Her description is apt. The game has acquired cult status as a charming disasterpiece worthy of historically terrible director Wood’s infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space, his endearingly incomprehensible 1957 sci-fi horror once called the “worst movie ever made” by none other than Jerry Seinfeld.
The customer, entrepreneur Michael Anderson, had only intended to make a novel experiment in interactive entertainment. Composed entirely of still photos overlaid with voice acting, it’s a romantic comedy where the player contrives to get a plumber named John (played by Edward J Foster) and “daddy’s girl” college student Jane (Basone) together in the manner of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book.
Looking at the original box art in front of her featuring the effusive praise: “The reviews are in: it plays like a game, feels like a movie!” causes Basone to boggle: “Uhhhh….not really! It’s a glorified slideshow!”
Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties (United Pixtures)PREVNEXT
For about a month in 1993, Basone shot scenes from the game’s nonsensical script — reportedly written by Anderson in a blitz of booze and marijuana — on the fly. She even suggested filming locations such as in front of the Hollywood Sign and the Griffith Observatory. Again channeling Ed Wood, they had zero filming permits. As an actor, Basone was used to scenes being shot out of sequence (one minute, she’s whipping a priapic boss, the next she’s running through Chinatown in a bra and a skirt). “But I thought that once they put it together, it would at least make sense!” she chortles.
“I’ve pushed boundaries throughout my life. When you’re young, you’re fearless.”
While recent years have witnessed a growing number of A-listers taking virtual roles, such as Oscar-winner Robert Downey Jr. in Call Of Duty: Black Ops II, Keanu Reeves and Idris Elba in Cyberpunk 2077, and Jodie Comer in the Alone in the Dark reboot, what happened to those involved in the gonzo first frontier of digitized acting and grainy full motion video (FMV) games? These accidentally trailblazing unknowns often found their performances derided as cheesy or used as a hand grenade in a moral panic. But three decades later, they look back at the experience fondly, if with a hint of embarrassment.
“Actors didn’t tend to appear in video games back then,” Basone says, “but I’ve pushed boundaries throughout my life. When you’re young, you’re fearless.”
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Gary Ryan 