Sledge Hammer! star David Rasche on the fun of puncturing American gun culture

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http://www.avclub.com/article/sledge...ing-ame-230851

David Rasche has spent much of his career playing comically flawed authority figures in films like Burn After Reading and In The Loop, along with TV shows like Veep, on which he has a recurring guest part as Speaker Of The House Jim Marwood. But his work as the title character of the mid-’80s ABC cop spoof Sledge Hammer! remains his most enduring role. One of the best decisions made by Alan Spencer, the show’s creator, was to offer Rasche the part without even asking for an audition. (In fact, Spencer said in an A.V. Club interview published yesterday that merely reading reviews of the actor’s work was enough to make him insist on casting Rasche.) Rasche’s combination of dramatic training and Second City comedy experience made him the ideal choice to send up the grim, violent cop archetype that infested pop culture in the “tough on crime” ’80s.

Over the course of two seasons, Rasche played Sledge with a naivete that somehow made the nihilistic, Magnum-toting misogynist a sympathetic figure. Sledge often surveys his world with a strained squint, as if the character is perpetually trying to squeeze a complex world into his narrow worldview. And while Sledge is a bumbler—his swagger can be deflated by an obstacle as minor as a beaded curtain—Rasche also possessed enough versatility to give the NRA poster boy a convincing touch of emotional depth, as in the series finale, when Sledge’s ex-wife remarries and he has to confront his deep loneliness.

Perhaps most importantly, Rasche never sells out Sledge or winks to the audience. Even though Sledge Hammer!’s writing self-reflexively lampoons the conventions of contemporary film and TV, Rasche’s performance doesn’t retreat to that “meta” level—he plays Sledge straight. The resulting combination of earnestness, broad physical humor, and barely detectable vulnerability endeared Sledge to “Hammerheads,” the show’s cultish followers. Rasche is reuniting with Spencer and his castmates, Anne-Marie Martin (who played Sledge’s partner Dori Doreau) and Harrison Page (who played supervisor Capt. Trunk), at SF Sketchfest this weekend. In advance of the event, Rasche spoke to The A.V. Club about his start on the show, its influence, and the blithe fun of working on a program that was ranked 60th (out of 61) in the ratings.