Cliff's notes: Actor John Ratzenberger offers advice to students in U-46 media academy
“Cheers” fans remember him as Cliff Clavin, the trivia-filled blowhard from the popular 80s and 90s-era sitcom.
Younger folks may hear his voice and realize he has voiced characters in every one of the Pixar animated films, from Hamm the talking piggy bank in all four “Toy Story” films to Mack the truck in the “Cars” series to the abominable snowman in the “Monsters” films.
But if you talk to John Ratzenberger, you get the impression he might prefer to be remembered as the Renaissance man who inspired Americans to again exalt working with our hands.
The actor himself has done “day jobs” and hobbies ranging from furniture making to carpentry, archery instruction, tree surgery and even manning a fishing boat.
Ratzenberger was the keynote speaker Tuesday as the Beacon Academy of Media and Digital Arts based at South Elgin High School held its eighth annual “Beacon Academy Awards” night.
The magnet academy has 267 students, drawn from all over Elgin School District U-46. The event drew a near-capacity crowd of 1,100 to the Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin.
Speaking to the future media pros, Ratzenberger urged them to pursue their dream, “but don't take it too seriously. And stay close to your family. At the end of the day, when you breathe your last, it won't be your agent who's holding your hand.”
Ratzenberger also urged the teens to read and to live a life outside of their cellphone screens.
“There are so many reboots on TV because so many writers out there have never read a book. The writing in the old movies was so much better because the writers had lived World War II, the Great Depression. Take up fishing. Go to Greece. Go to Poland. I would choose which movie to do based on geography. I made a movie called ‘Warlords of Atlantis' because it was being made on Malta and I had never been to Malta.”
Of course, he acted in a few more successful movies and TV shows, too. Look very, very carefully at “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Gandhi,” “A Bridge Too Far” and the first “Superman,” and you'll find the future Cliff Clavin playing small roles as soldiers or cops. He claims that if you add together the box office receipts of all 38 films in which he has any kind of role, “I am the No. 6 highest grossing actor of all time.”
One film Ratzenberger did co-star in has an Elgin connection. In 2010 he played a gruff angel who offers a callous rich man a look at an alternative life in the faith-based film “What If ...” Its director was Dallas Jenkins, who soon after would join the staff of Elgin-based Harvest Bible Chapel as its media director and would work with a division of Harvest to direct the faith-based 2017 comedy-drama “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone.” Jenkins still lives in Elgin, though he resigned from Harvest last year.
Interviewed before Tuesday's show, Ratzenberger said he grew up in blue-collar Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of a male truck driver and female factory worker who were sometimes so poor he had to put cardboard in his shoes to cover up the holes.
He went to the 1969 Woodstock rock festival — as a worker helping to build the stages. Yearning for adventure and travel, in 1972 he accepted a buddy's proposal to move to England. They formed an improv comedy duo named Sal's Meat Market that he says became a big hit while he played small roles in some of those giant movies.
He stayed in England for 10 years. He might have remained there if he hadn't come temporarily to Los Angeles to do a writing project at the age of 35. While there, he auditioned for a supporting role in a new TV series named “Cheers.”
“The audition didn't go well,” he said. “But as I began to leave, I asked them, ‘Do you have a bar know-it-all in the cast?' They asked what that was. So I gave them five minutes of what would become Cliff Clavin” — a blowhard letter carrier full of boring trivia, most of it mined from what Ratzenberger calls his own “mind that collects facts like a sponge.” The producers liked the character and hired him to play it. He became nationally famous.
“My job for 11 years was to sit in a bar and crack jokes. My father was so proud of me.”
But Ratzenberger thinks his dad might be even prouder of how he has been campaigning to get more young people to go into the trades and manufacturing jobs.
For example, he started a nonprofit called the Nuts, Bolts and Thingamajigs Foundation to set up summer camps teaching kids how to use tools.
A passionate Republican, he serves on President Donald Trump's task force to increase the use of apprenticeships. And for several years he hosted a TV series called “John Ratzenberger's Made in America,” which showed how things are manufactured in places like the Elgin Sweeper Co. plant and the Weber Grills factory in Palatine.
“I don't call it blue collar work,” he said. “I call it essential work. We're running out of people to make this country run, people who can fix things.”
Members of each of the academy's nine classes received awards for best director, best videographer, best content maker and best on-screen talent in their class, as voted by their fellow class members. One “rock star” was also honored from each class, named by their teacher based on how well that student helped solve problems and worked with fellow class members.