Grand Master D: A Conversation with David Faustino

The TV son - loyal, honest and devoted

Since the dawn of television the role of the TV son has been an essential part of the pop culture journey.  They span a wide range: good looking and talented heartthrobs like Rick Nelson or David Cassidy; mischievous little moppets such as Jerry Mathers or Johnny Whittiker; dependable and upstanding young men like Paul Peterson or Billy Gray.  From Eight is Enough to My Three Sons, the TV sons represent the future of America.  They are loyal, honest, loving and devoted to their family.  They are the types of sons that you wish that you could have.

David Faustino, however, was not one of those TV sons.

David Faustino as Bud Bundy - not like the other TV sons

Joining the cast of the groundbreaking FOX sitcom Married with Children in 1987, David Faustino had the opportunity to be a member of one of the truly unique families in TV history.  The Bundys were not what you would call the classic sitcom family:  vulgar, tacky and mean-spirited, they got their laughs by openly despising each other.  However the formula worked, and Married with Children not only lasted ten seasons, but became one of FOX TV’s most famous television programs, spawning a cult following that continues today.  Playing the role of Bud Bundy from the age of twelve to twenty two, the world watched David Faustino grow from being a snide and sarcastic runt to a seedy young man.  From stealing his first beer to getting into his first fight at the nudie bar, in many ways David Faustino played a more realistic character then most TV sons.   He was like most of the kids in your neighborhood:  he was horny, struck out with girls, insulted his sister, disrespected his parents and gave himself hickies with vacuum cleaners.  Yet, possessing a certain amount of charm and charisma, David Faustino, along with the rest of the Bundy clan, became beloved to the TV audience despite flaws and bad behavior.  Bud Bundy may not have been the guy that you’d want dating your daughter, but you’d probably much rather your son drink stolen beer with him than Greg Brady.

I had the opportunity to meet David Faustino in September 2009.  In Toronto promoting his web series Star-ving that he writes and stars in with pal and former teen star Corin “Parker Lewis” Nemec, David and I became friendly acquaintances, sharing beer and conversation over two afternoons.  David Faustino is as cool as you’d want him to be:  approachable, laid-back and charismatic, David is a regular guy who happened to be on one of the most popular sitcoms in the history of television.  While munching on Harvey hamburgers, David talked to me about his career growing up in a show business family in Hollywood, his current and future projects and, of course, Married with Children and Bud Bundy.   

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS:

GRAND MASTER D:

A CONVERSATION WITH DAVID FAUSTINO

I talked to David Faustino in Toronto in September 2009

Born into a show business family, David Faustino "fell" into acting

Sam Tweedle:  So when I was doing some research on your career, I found out that your first role was playing Lily Tomlin’s daughter not long after you were born.  How did you get that part?

David Faustino:  I was raised in a show biz family.  My father was a costumer at Western Costuming Company for years and years and years.  It was the number one costume house forever in Hollywood.  He’s retired now.  My aunts and uncles were dancers in the movies, so I just sort of fell into it.  My older brother really started it off: he started in commercials.  My sister fell into it for a while so it all was just a natural progression.  We all just made our way through it a little bit, but it was something I really excelled at and did well on auditions and ended up working a lot.  But the Lily Tomlin thing was my first audition.

Sam:  How do you audition as a baby?

David:  Well you don’t:  your Mom comes in with you and Lily was there and she held me in her arms and I didn’t cry.  I was one of the only babies that didn’t cry.  She said right there in the room “This is the one” so it was cool. 

Sam:  Did you ever meet Lily Tomlin after that.

David:  I haven’t, but I saw some footage of her and now that I’ve seen the footage I’m not sure if I want to meet her.  I understand that you can have those days, but did you see the footage of her on the set of I Heart Huckabees?

Sam:  No.

David:  Oh you gotta see it!  Look it up on the net.  It’s great!  Lily Tomlin loses her shit.  She really does.  She doesn’t know the camera’s still rolling.

Sam:  Now, you did both an episode of Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven.

David:  Yeah.

Sam:  What was Michael Landon like?

David Faustino, age five, on "Little House on the Prarie"

David:  He was great.  He was so cool.  He used us a lot.  My older brother did several episodes of something that Michael Landon did, and he used me once on Little House and my sister was on Little House and I think my little brother was on it too.  He was just a kind man.  He was a really gentle kind man.  Funny story.  When I was doing the show I had to do an episode where I had to kiss a girl in front of all these school kids.  In my mind there was like a hundred extras.  It may have been less, I don’t know.  So there were all these extras and all these young kids and I had to run past them all and kiss this girl on the cheek and I refused to do it because I heard these two boys laughing at me. 

Sam:  How old were you?

David:  I was five, and when I heard these kids laughing at me I just decided that I wouldn’t do it and I freaked out and started crying and they had to stop production.  They had to get my Mom, and Michael Landon came over and he had to talk to me.  I don’t know what he said.  I don’t remember but it was so calming.  He said the exact right thing to me and I whipped the tears away and I did it and everybody clapped.

The ghostly Mister Boogedy from Disney's TV movie "Mister Boogedy" and "The Bride of Boogedy" featuring David Faustino, Kirstie Swanson, Eugene Levy and Richard Mager

Sam:  Another thing that you did that I remember fondly as a kid was Mister Boogedy.  That had a bit of a cult following for a while and it just faded really fast.

David:  Well I don’t think they even put it out on DVD.  It was just a TV movie.  Disney’s Sunday Night Movie of the Week.  I had a lot of fun on that.

Sam:  It had a sequel.

David:  Yeah.  The Bride of Boogedy.

Sam:  And I remember it having a following.  I remember the kids in school were obsessed with it:  Boogedy Boogedy Boo!

David:  Yeah.  Boogedy Boogedy Boo!  That’s so funny.  Eugene Levy, Kirstie Swanson, Richard Mager.  What’s up with him lately?

Sam:  I haven’t seen him in years.

David:  I really like him.  He was great.

Anybody remember "I Had Three Wives?" David appeared in this incredibly short lived TV series in 1985

Sam:  You know what else I remember watching as a kid, and I’m probably the only one I know who remembers this show:  I Had Three Wives!  It lasted, what, five episodes?

David:  Six episodes.  Five plus the pilot.

Sam:  I was eight years old watching that.

David:  You watched a lot of TV as a kid, didn’t you?

Sam:  An unhealthy amount.  Funny thing is, I don’t watch that much TV now.

David:  yeah.  Victor Garber was cool.  I liked him a lot.  It was funny because he was out from New York and he didn’t know how to drive yet because he didn’t have to drive in New York.  So we had all these scenes where he had to drive and he’d hit curbs and didn’t know how to park.  It was very funny.

Sam:  So you were telling me yesterday that you were not the first Bud Bundy.

David Faustino and Christina Applegate were not originally cast as dysfunctional siblings Bud and Kellie Bundy on "Married with Children." Thank God the original kids cast got canned!

David:  No.  For the pilot they had hired another kid and luckily for me it didn’t work out for him.  They also had a different girl playing Kelly too.

Sam:  Oh.  Thank God they went with Christina Applegate.

David:  I know!  She’s so good!

Sam:  She really is!

David:  So I went in and auditioned for the pilot and I think I only got through the first round of call backs and was cut out of the mix.  Six months later, after the pilot had been shot and they realized they weren’t going to go with the kids; I was able to sneak back in.  I had switched agents at the time and the rest is history.  I think I had to go to either four or five meetings.  I went to the final network and they paired Christina and I together and I think that everybody in the room felt that there was something there.

When "Married with Children" went on the air in 1987 it met with low ratings. However, it would quickly gain a cult following and last until 1996

Sam:  Well it obviously was because it was on over ten years, but it was a slow start for the show to catch on, wasn’t it?

David:  Very slow.  

Sam:  But wasn’t Married with Children one of the first shows that the FOX network aired?

David:  I think it was.  I think it was us and Tracy Ullman.  They aired them back-to-back three times in a row.  It was a weird idea.  I guess it was because they had nothing else.

Sam:  How old were you when you started that series?

David:  Twelve.

Sam:  One of the things that I think made Married with Children was that it was such an amazing ensemble cast.  Were you guys all close?

Despite the fact that the Bundy Family openly loathed each other, the cast of "Married with Children" is famous for being loyal to one another: "We all had our moments but for the most part it was a joyful set to work on."

David:  I would say yes.  We all got along.  We all had our moments but for the most part it was a joyful set to work on.  It was very easy.  We didn’t work hard but we worked efficiently.  Towards the last five years we were on four-day weeks because the show was a well-oiled machine.  The writers took the brunt of the responsibility; they were the ones in the rooms all night, sweating out jokes until 4 am.  We had it easy.  We just showed up and said our lines.  But it was very easy.  We all got along and it was a lot of fun.

Sam:  You hear people from sitcoms say that once you leave a sitcom everyone goes their separate ways.  Did that happen?

David:  We’re pretty close.  We don’t see each other every day but we talk a lot or we text each other.  Christina and I text each other all time.  Ed and I talk a lot. 

Sam:  Why did David Garrison leave the series?

David:  I don’t think he knows the answer. 

Sam:  I mean when something is working, why do you abandon it?

David:  Well, in all honesty, here’s why:  I think he thought that there was going to be more for him to do on the show, and I think that once Christina and I came more into our own [the writers] decided that there was going to be a lot more for us and that’s how it kind of went down.  But I heard in later years that he really regretted it and he didn’t know the show was going to go another eight seasons.

Sam:  But instead you guys got Ted McGinley.

David Faustino with "clean up man" Ted McGinley

David:  He’s the clean up man.  He comes in at the end of every show and he rides it out.

Sam:  Or kills it.

David:  He didn’t kill us though. 

Sam:  Yeah, but he killed Happy Days.  He killed Love Boat.  He killed Dynasty. 

David:  Funny enough, his first episode of The Love Boat was the one and only episode of The Love Boat that I got to do.  I just happened to be on that episode and I remember meeting him as a nine year old.  Then a few years later we’re on another show together.

Sam:  I remember as a teenager my cousins had posters of Christina Applegate on their bedroom walls.  You never seemed to fall into the teen idol thing.  You weren’t covered in Teen Beat Magazine, or Tiger Beat. 

Although he didn't become a major teen idol, David Faustino managed to get some attention in 90's era teen magazines

David:  I wasn’t cute enough.  Bud Bundy was kind of seedy.  Kind of a dork.

Sam:  Were you comfortable with that or did you wish you were getting more attention?

David:  I was having so much fun I didn’t think about that too much.

Sam:  Do you think Married with Children ever “jumped the shark?” 

David:  Probably around Season Nine.  There were gems still in there, but there were things I didn’t like.  I wasn’t a fan of the “No Ma’am” thing.  I didn’t think it was funny at all.  But in all fairness, after eight years of writing the same jokes for the same characters everything is bound to go downhill.

Sam:  One of the most popular Bud Bundy moments is your persona as “Grand Master B.”  Is it true that you actually did try to forgo a hip hop career. 

David:  I used to run hip hop clubs.  We had the first hip hop club on the Sunset Strip.  We did the Whiskey A Go Go.  You know who Lou Adler is?

Sam:  I do.

Bud Bundy's alter ego "Grand Master B" is still a popular part of "Married with Children" mythology

David:  Yeah.  His son is my partner in different ventures since we were kids.  So we used to do this and we used to rent night clubs.  This was when hip hop was just coming really big and we used to have NWA on our stage.  Nobody else was bringing hip hop that far up into Hollywood.  It was in Compton.  We brought it, much to the chagrin of the West Hollywood sheriff’s department but we did it anyway.  That’s where The Black Eyed Peas met.  We had Eazy-E come through.  So I recorded a couple of songs in that whole mix with various artists.  We did a compilation album called Ballistics.  I still love rap.  In a matter of fact I do stuff with Tom Green sometimes.  He’s a good buddy of mine.

Sam:  Now you have a web series out now called Star-ving.  How did that series come about?

David:  Me and my partners, Corin Nemec and Todd Bringwatt, had been putting together things for a long time that we had been pushing around town.  We got close to some things.  Not so close to others.  So we just decided to write things about some of the struggles that we were going through and write about life in Hollywood when you’re not on top, and then just decided to exaggerate the shit out of it.  Turn the volume up to eleven and just take it balls to the wall.  We did pitch it around.  We had a lot of interest from different television stations that were on the fence but they eventually passed.  So we ended up at Sony and they really liked the concept.  So since it was on-line we were  able to get away with murder.  We pushed the envelope really far.  In some cases too far.  We know that, but it was an experiment in a way.

Sam:  Now Star-ving is really self-parody.  You don’t really live in a crappy apartment with Corin Nemec.

David:  No, but Corin Nemec was living on my couch for a little while.

Sam:  Is there any truth to it?  Do you really own a porn stand?

Ed O'Neil, Katey Sagal and Christina Applegate reunite with David Faustino in an episode of "Star-ving"

David:  It’s really exaggerated.  I mean my Mom’s short, but she’s not a midget.  I’m definitely not destitute.  I’ve got a great house in the hills that I love.  We use the house right across the street.  There’s a woman hermit that lives across the street and never comes out of her house and her house is falling apart.  She lives in there with twenty cats so we used it as the exterior for the house because we thought it was the perfect house.  But Corin and I have had our struggles and we’ve been through our hard times.  We’ve blown off auditions.  That was all fuel that went into that.

Sam:  You did one episode of Star-ving where the rest of the Married with Children cast appeared.  How did you get everyone to appear?

David:  They were all just really supportive of me.  They really supported me.

David Faustino and Corin "Parker Lewis Can't Lose" Nemic, the former teen stars behind "Star-ving"

Sam:  You and Corin Nemec have known each other since you were kids.  You even appeared on Parker Lewis Can’t Lose as Bud Bundy. Is Corin Nemec really the bad kid, and you’re really the good one?

David:  He used to be.  He used to be crazy when we were growing up.  He got into a lot of trouble but I never did because my parents were really strict.  They were on top of me.

Sam:  There is a negative stereotype about former child stars being crazy.  Do you feel that you’ve fallen into that category?

David: I don’t know. 

Sam:  You haven’t gotten into any real trouble.

David:  I’ve been arrested. 

Is this the fate of former child stars?

Sam:  Well nobody else would have found out about that if you weren’t a celebrity.

David:  No.  I haven’t really gotten into any real trouble.  I luckily never got caught anyway.  I think I’ve escaped the stigma somewhat but I don’t know.  I don’t know what other people’s perceptions are.  I don’t know.

Sam:  After Married with Children did typecasting affect your career?

David:  I think more then that was my own sort of thinking.  You can create any situation.  I think what tends to happen is that you start thinking a certain way and your auditions don’t go as well.  I was my own worst enemy for a little while.  I was just pushing too hard and I was going to hard at it instead of just allowing shit to happen. 

Sam:  So you’re starting some sort of production company?

David:  Sort of.  People should look out for FNB Entertainment.  We have some exciting projects coming out with that, and what else can I shamelessly plug.  Yeah. Star-ving is out on DVD.  You can buy it from Amazon.

Although David Faustino has possibly been one of the least visible of the Bundy clan since the end of Married with Children, he remains one of the most ambitious former child stars in Hollywood.  Not content to just moan and bitch about being a former child star, through FNB Entertainment, David, along with Corin Nemec and Todd Bringwatt, are continuing to develop new projects beyond Star-ving.  With an energy that draws people out from under rocks, a charisma that makes him instantly likeable and a sense of humor that doesn’t allow him to take himself too seriously, David Faustino is forging a new path for himself in the pop culture journey.