NEW YORK (NYTIMES) – “Bozo is my hero,” David Arquette mentioned on a cold Sunday morning, as he spray-painted a Frisbee-size pink circle on a warehouse brick wall within the Bushwick part of Brooklyn. “We wish to let that clown out.”
Dressed a bit clownish himself in a Bozo trucker cap, Mickey Mouse-pattern Vans and white denims with a pair of pink tiger-stripe wrestling tights, Arquette, 50, who used to run with a graffiti-art crew in Los Angeles, was placing the ending touches on an about 1.8m tall rendition of Bozo the Clown.
Bozo will not be solely Arquette’s muse nowadays, but in addition his enterprise. This yr Arquette, who’s the youngest member of the Arquette performing clan, secured the rights to the character as soon as billed as “the world’s most well-known clown” from the property of Larry Harmon, who popularised the character.
“We first have to assist rehabilitate the picture of a clown,” Arquette mentioned as he took a step again from his portray and pursed his lips with approval. “I wish to assist carry again form clowns and alter the discourse. You already know, assist folks perceive that fooling around is cool.”
As he sees it, clowns have been unfairly maligned.
“There’s lots of adverse historical past,” Arquette mentioned. “There was Poltergeist. There was Stephen King and It. That was an actual drawback. After which the Joker and Krusty the Clown. “Clowns,” he added, “are a mirrored image of society. And proper now the scary clown is type of the place we’re.”
He would like to carry Bozo again to TV. Numerous kids’s tv exhibits that includes the red-wigged clown ran for many years. For a second, he nearly succeeded in bringing Bozo to life on the Empire Circus, a brand new interactive carnival journey that was purported to open on the Empire Shops in Brooklyn this month, earlier than supply-chain disruptions put it on maintain.
In a way, Arquette sees himself as Sort Clown Check Case No. 1.
“All my humour comes from me being the butt of the joke,” he mentioned. “All of my flaws and my stuff.” Within the Nineteen Nineties, he discovered himself within the movie star circus, due to scene-stealing roles as Dewey Riley, the charming if quirky deputy within the Scream slasher film franchise, and his off-camera position as husband of his Scream co-star Courteney Cox.
Scruffy, awkward and every-dude relatable, he was the proper anti-Hollywood mascot for Technology X.
Or possibly he was somewhat too Gen X. Partying with the abandon of a Seattle rocker, Arquette battled with alcohol abuse, made headlines with drunken binges and noticed his divorce play out within the tabloids earlier than a second profession as an expert wrestler, a transfer which will have tanked his repute in each professions.
However now he’s again – possibly. In January, Arquette is reheating his Dewey character within the twenty fifth anniversary reboot of Scream, which additionally options Cox (they’re divorced now) and Neve Campbell, one other authentic solid member, going through off in opposition to a brand new ghost-faced killer for Technology Z.
Remarried, sober and residing a quiet life in Nashville, Tennessee, he mentioned he hopes to jump-start a film profession that had descended largely into bit components and voice-over work. And this time, Arquette mentioned, he’s emotionally outfitted to deal with it.
