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I’m scheduled for a phone interview with Christopher McDonald at 9 am. Probably best known to those of my generation as Shooter McGavin, Happy Gilmore’s preening nemesis who likes to repeat his favorite joke about spending more time in the sand than David Hasselhoff, McDonald is the archetypal “that guy,” a character actor with 160-plus IMDB credits who’s more recognizable as his characters than himself, a household face if not a name. He specializes in pompous with an air of menace, plays a lot of newscasters and lawyers. It’s that voice, the kind of boomy baritone you imagine radio guys practicing in their bedrooms, that gives everything he says an air of the theatrical. On this particular week, he’s promoting Lucky Guy, a play Nora Ephron wrote that she was working on up until her death last June. Based on Ephron’s experiences as a New York Post reporter in the “scandal-and-graffiti-ridden New York” of the early 80s, Tom Hanks stars as tabloid columnist Mike McAlary, with McDonald supporting as Eddie Hayes, a litigator and “New York personality,” known for his expensive suits (above, right). The production just extended its run through July.

At 10 till nine I get a phone call. “Hey, it’s Chris. I was wondering if we could push the interview. I’m in the middle of trying to get a library card.”

Interviews almost never happen on time, but as far as excuses go, that’s a new one. That he called me himself, ahead of schedule, is also anomalous. I tell him sure, I’ll call him back at 9:15. At 9:17, I call him back from my Skype account and get his voicemail. As I’m leaving the message I get a call back on my cell. “Hey, man, what gives? You were supposed to call me three minutes ago.”

There’s that air of menace. I can tell he’s not really angry, but I can also sense that if he was, he and that voice could probably make me piss my pants. I tell him I called him back on a different number so I could record. “Are you in any way affiliated with the actor Nick Mancuso?” he asks, probably the weirdest question I’ve ever been asked.

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Charles Durning died this week at the age of 89, and while you probably remember him as a veteran “that guy” actor from such roles as incumbent governor Pappy O’Daniel in O Brother Where Art Thou, or Waring Hudsucker in The Hudsucker Proxy (just to name a couple), it turns out he was also kind of a badass who lived a crazy life.

I’ve put some facts about him into bullet-point form, but only because I couldn’t put them into bayonet form. You’ll see.

• Durning was one of 10 siblings. His father died when he was 12, and he lost five sisters to smallpox and scarlet fever. FIVE. Yes, they were Irish.

• He got his start in show business as a teen, working as a burlesque theater usher in Buffalo, and when one of the comedians was too drunk to go on, Durning took his place.

• Durning fought in the first wave of the Normandy invasion and was the only member of his army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg by an enemy mine.

• After recuperating, Durning returned to active service in 1944, at one point getting bayoneted by a German in hand-to-hand combat, eventually overwhelming him and killing him with a rock. Yes, “once killed a Nazi with a rock” was an actual true thing you could say about Charles Durning.

• Durning was captured by the Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge, and narrowly survived a prisoner massacre. He was eventually awarded the Silver Star, three Purple Hearts, and the Légion d’honneur from the French consul in Los Angeles.

• Despite being a fat guy, he had worked as a dance instructor, and even met his first wife at a dance studio.

• His breakout role came in the Tony-winning play That Championship Season in 1972, when Durning was already 49

Although he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials to comic foils to put-upon everymen, Durning may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982′s The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

The year after Best Little Whorehouse, Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks’ To Be or Not to Be. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975′s Dog Day Afternoon.

Dozens of notable portrayals followed. He was the would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in Tootsie; the infamous seller of frog legs in The Muppet Movie; and Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy. He played Santa Claus in four different movies made for television and was the pope in the TV film I Would be Called John: Pope John XXIII.

In any case, rest in peace, Charles Durning, a man so badass his real epitaph sh*ts on Royal Tenebaum’s fake one.

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