December 8, 2021 • 42 mins
Host Andrea Kremer takes us back to 1997 when NFL Films Steve Sabol interviewed retired Defensive Lineman Howie Long. The future Hall of Famer discussed growing up in the streets of Boston and finding his fair share of trouble in his youth. Howie describes his first meeting with Raiders Owner Al Davis as well as adding acting to his professional resume alongside football. Howie shares several stories with Steve from his playing days including the fake names he used on the road and how he once walked to the Super Bowl because his cab was stuck in traffic.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to NFL Films Tails from the Vault. I'm your host,
Andrea Kramer. This podcast for those of you who haven't
tuned in before, and if that's the case, where have
you been well? This podcast showcases some of the greatest
interviews ever done by the late great Hall of Famer
Steve Sable, the president of NFL Films. These are raw,
(00:28):
unedited conversations, none of which have ever been heard before
in their entirety. Now, I actually started my career at
NFL Films as a producer. Facts Steve was my boss
and my mentor. So I love these weekly trips into
the vault of NFL Films, and I sure hope that
you do too. Today we showcase and interview with Raider's
(00:50):
legend Howie Long. When Howie Long retired from the Raiders,
(01:11):
he was at the top of his game at age
thirty four. He probably could have continued to play, but,
as he said in his retirement press conference, it's time
to grow up and get on with life. A year later,
he became a studio analyst on Fox's pregame show and
has been there ever since. For the record, that was
Fox's first season covering the NFL so how he has
(01:34):
been a staple on that set since its inception. When
Steve interviewed Howie at his house in Virginia, of course
they talked about how He's Hall of Fame career on
the field, but really the emphasis was off the field.
Now keep in mind that at this point how He
Long was trying to transfer his matinee idle good Looks
(01:55):
to the big screen, and anything having to do with
movies fascinated Steve Eve. So today's podcast is really as
much about Steve Sable as it is about Howie Long.
So some background on Steve here. His nickname was the
King of Football Movies, but Steve loved all movies. In fact,
(02:15):
he and his sister Blair were brought up in a
world of home movies. His father, Big D. Sable as
we always called him, and his wife Audrey were constantly
filming their children. Steve cinematic tastes while they ran the gamut.
He loves Sam Peck and Paul Western's Bonnie and Clyde,
even the Claude Laluche French movies and yes, Disney Bambi
(02:37):
go figure that look. Steve ultimately was sentimental. He loved
going to a theater and wanted to be enveloped in
the darkness the experience. He didn't like streaming. I would
not fit in well with today's world of Netflix. He
loved movies so much that even as an adult, Steve
would go to see movies weekly. But enough about Steve's
(02:58):
background in his childhood. Let's go into the vault as
Steve dives into Howie Longs childhood. Howie, when you were
when you were growing up? Is it true that you
were you had a fright about public speaking, that you
couldn't get up and got in front of a group
and talk. People might find this hard to believe, but
I was really an introverted kid, lacked a lot of
(03:20):
confidence and and and that's why I'm a big advocate
of youth sports, because youth sports for me was a
vehicle to not only grow from a confidence standpoint, but
also from a It gave me more and more of
an opportunity to speak in front of people. How old
were you when you started to play football. I didn't start.
(03:42):
I played on my first organized team of any kind
when I was about fifteen fourteen, fifteen years old. Big
for your age, yeah, it was always big, But played
in the street. Grew up in Boston and you know,
row Home kind of neighborhood, and we played in the street.
We did everything in the street. I played in the
the b NHL and the b NBL, which is the
(04:02):
Boston Neighborhood Basketball League, in the Boston Neighborhood Hockey League
street hockey. But that's all I did. What was it
about football that that attracted you to that sport? Well,
when I was thrown out of the Boston City school system,
grown out of school system, yeah, it was, it was
a bad rap. And uh, it was during the bussing riots,
(04:22):
ren in some problems, was bust over the boys Latin
and uh was involved in an altercation and the way
they were dealing with at that time was you were gone. Uh.
And my grandmother who's bringing me up at the time,
sent me out to live with an uncle who had
lived the American dream and bought the home in the
suburbs and Milford, Massachusetts was the area. And the first
(04:44):
weekend I was there was the fall of my sophomore
year in high school and I went to the football
game and they had this old fire engine that drove
into the around the football field and they had a
band and a parade and they had cheerleaders, and I said, jeez,
that looks like me. It's got me written all over it.
We were growing up, Howie, what what did you get
(05:05):
in trouble for most often? Oh, I wasn't a bad kid. Uh,
probably truancy in school, a little bit of you know,
we we shoplifted periodically, but it was you know, I
looked at it as it was kind of the Robin
Hood theory. You know. I wasn't shoplifting out of out
(05:25):
of just the greed of it. It was necessity. You know.
We went down to the Whiting's milk and stole milk
and we sit there and drink a gallon of milk.
It was really survival. We stole hockey equipment to play
in the street. We do the things we needed to
do to get by. When how are we academically? Ah,
it's always a bright kid, not particularly book smart, but
(05:48):
street smart. That's why I married my wife. She's book
smart and I'm street smart and she's street dumb. Well, unfortunately,
I've never had a job where I've had to flex
my academic muscle. He said that back in Boston were
raised by her grandmother, live with my grandmother, and then
live with my and Eating and uncle Mike, and then
(06:08):
live with my uncle Billy and mian Ada. You think
there was an advantage to live in with all those
different people or it wasn't. It was confusing and disorientating
when you were growing up to have that many different adults,
You know, I think I have. I've probably worked out
a lot of problems in my own head over the years.
(06:29):
I could have went in a lot of different directions.
I was very fortunate. And now that I'm thirty seven
years old and I have three kids in my own
I know what a sacrifice it was from my uncle Billy,
who was basically making ends meet with two kids and
two adopted children. Uh, we weren't eating much, did you
(06:49):
get I'll tell you what happened. We were reading Matt
we Ate macar you know, mayannated. I didn't like to
hear this, but we're reading that forty nine cents of
box macaroni and cheese. The government that every night, you know,
and it was every other night, and and they were
doing everything they could to make ends meeting. And that
summer I went down to Philadelphia and lived in Philadelphia
(07:12):
and got to eat every stakes, everything in sight. I
went from twenty one to two seventy two and one
summer I went from tight end and nose guards that summer.
You're talking about growing up? How what you have three boys?
What did you learn uh as a as a kid?
Uh that you want to pass on to them? Maybe
(07:32):
the experience that you had growing up? What are things
is from your experiences that you want to pass on
to your children. It's very difficult to because I've I've
done well um and and they don't want for anything.
It's very difficult to establish a set of strong values
for your children. And unfortunately, I didn't know how to
(07:53):
be a dad. I didn't have one around most of
my childhood, so I learned as they went. Unfortunately, my
twelve year old suffered to the first five years of
his life while I was trying to figure out how
to do this. I was better at being a nose
guard or defensive tackle than I was being a dad. Uh.
And I'm proud to say that it's a work in progress,
(08:15):
but I'm I'm getting better at it every day. And
I'd say the most special moments in my life, more
so than anything I've ever done anything. Anything. Was when
my twelve year old after two years of struggling in
little league baseball. Uh, probably more so because of my
not being as good a baseball dad as I should
(08:37):
have been when I was when he was a kid,
because I was so engrossed in playing professional football. But
we've worked at at the last three years, and he
suffered the first two years. You know, he really had
a struggle. And he's hitting six hundred. He hit one
over the fence the other night, one of four kids
that hit one over the fence. And he he won
the game for them the other night, big game. And
just to watch him real is his abilities and and
(09:02):
enjoy himself and get a taste of success and what
price it takes to gain success has been the most
rewarding thing for me. I can be on a shadow
of Dub Morsel than anything. So that's struggling twelve year
old at how he's referring to. That's two times Super
Bowl champion Chris Long, the eldest of Howie and Diane's
(09:23):
three boys. Chris is now thirty six years old, just
a year younger than how he was when this interview
was conducted. Kind of crazy, right, It was quite a
contrast between the childhood that how he had growing up
in a pretty rough Charlestown, Massachusetts neighborhood and where he
raised his boys in Charlottesville, Virginia. But let's have how
(09:43):
we tell you about it. Can you compare the way
he's grown up to the way you grew up? No, no,
there's nothing that. There's no no similarity at all. He's
a late bloomer physically. Uh, and I think I can
draw analogies through that. But beyond that, no, Uh, he's
never had his lunch money taken, you know. Should I
(10:06):
got my I got my butt kicked till I was
about eleven years old. And then I think I can
remember the exact fight. Uh. I just got my rear
in handed to me. It just got bullied and bullied. Man.
I was like twelve years old. Uh, I dropped my
first kid and and realized, Hey, I don't have to
take this straight right. Yeah, I remember it was a
(10:29):
straight right now. When you went to to Villanova, did
that was that the first time that you ever thought
that you might have the ability to make a career
out of play in pro football. I really never gave
and my wife went to Villanova with me, and she'll
tell you the same thing. I never gave pro football
a second thought. I never imagined that I would be
(10:49):
good enough to play in pro ball. What happened was
a player was injured in the Blue Gray All Star Game.
A matter of fact, I missed the final three games
in my senior year and football I was once again
expelled from school. No. I I was in an off
campus altercation in Philadelphia. What's an alteration, it's a fight,
(11:10):
It's a fight. And I got called. I was at
the door of the place and and the cop cars
pulled up. And this was at a house in Philadelphia.
A few friends had been jumped and beat up and
we went back down to get their stuff. They had
been robbed, and the cops pulled up. I spent the
night in jail. It was like, I think we have
fifty dollars to get out, but I have fifty dollars,
(11:31):
so uh. I missed the last three games, so I
never really gave a consideration. And got a phone call
and a player was injured in the Blue Gray Game,
and I was called down to substitute for this player
and played against a guy from Texas A and M
and h won the m v P had a big game.
Jimmy Johnson was the coach. I wasn't supposed to You're
(11:53):
not supposed to rush the punter, and uh, I tell
I rushed the putter, blocked a punt, we scored a touchdown,
and you know, Jimmy wasn't really upset that we won.
Do we like to win? Well? Now? One was the
first inkling that you were going to get a try
out at the end in the NFL, or that the
NFL was interested in you did. Somebody calls the blue
gray game. Suddenly, I think, I think what scouts try
(12:17):
to do, and you know, you can understand what they're
doing to a certain extent because it's their rear end
on the line. If they recommend a kid from Villanova
who's had less than a stellar career at Villanova and
had all the physical talents, you know, run the forty,
the vertical jump and do all those things that really
make no difference. Uh. What was the most unusual workout
(12:37):
that you had? Probably when the guy from the Colts
came by and ran me on the front lawn of
my dorm on a Sunday morning at like nine am,
knocked on my door woke me up. I didn't have
any cleats. He didn't care. He had a girl in
the car. I really what they were doing was they
were just doing their job checking off. Yeah. I worked
him out. You know, I remember the one, the one
(12:58):
guy who ended up with the Raiders as a personnel.
Guy worked for one of the combines. And you always
had to find a way as a scout to cover
your rear end runs great, great vertical jump. Uh, doesn't
use his hands well, lacks toughness. This was the one guy.
And I said, you know, if he could have said,
(13:19):
if he could have said anything, you know, I never
lacked toughness. That wasn't the problem. Maybe I couldn't find
the ball or uh, maybe I wasn't as dedicated as
I should have been when I was younger. But a
Raider scout said in the scouting report. No, not a
Raider scout. He worked for one of the combines like
blessed though, what are the name of those combines? Blest
and I forget And I jumped his ass when he
(13:42):
came to the Raiders. I jumped his ass. I tore
him up and down. I mean it was anything. The
first two years I think with the Raiders, I was
I was. I was sixty eight no in practice, and
he had to fight. You know it was I wasn't
a good for fault player, uh, I was a self
(14:03):
made football player. I was getting blocked on a daily basis,
and the only way I knew to compete was to
fight um and I just survived. Survival really seemed to
be a common theme for the early part of Howie
Long's life and career. I guess that's just the mentality
of a fighter. And when I say fighter, I'm not
(14:26):
just referring to how He's altercations, if you will. In
while he was in college at Villanova, Long was a
boxer and won the Northern Collegiate Heavyweight Championship. Yes, folks,
that really does exist. We didn't make that up. When
we come back, Steve and Howe delve into how He's
time with the Raiders and talk about the only man
(14:47):
that ever intimidated him but not physically. Welcome back to
Tails from the Vault. There's never been a shortage of
colorful and memorable characters on The Raid, no matter where
they played, Oakland, Los Angeles, or even Las Vegas. Of course,
the late Al Davis. He liked it that way. He
(15:08):
liked that reputation of swashbuckling rogues. It was a role
that how he Long ultimately embraced. But for a kid
fresh out of Villa Nova on the main line of Philadelphia,
imagine walking into a locker room with twos and the
mad Stork. Well, it was a little bit jarring, needless
to say. But one of the people that really helped
(15:30):
Long acclamate to the pros was his defensive line coach,
Earl leg It. Leg It actually scouted Long in college
and was the one who recommended him to Al Davis
and ultimately had such an impact on how his career
that Long chose leg It to present him when Long
was inducted into the Profobah Hall of Fame in two thousands.
Do you remember what your first impressions were the Raiders
(15:53):
coming to that organization. I remember walked in the locker
room from Many camp. They just won the Super Bowl,
and uh, at that time, it was a it was
a real collection of players. Uh looked like something out
of a movie. I'm from, you know, Philly and Boston
and you know Oakland could have been the other side
of the world as far as I was concerned, and
(16:14):
then John Matozak walks in and are at Shell and
Jean Upshaw, and I felt like a real kid because
it was it was. It was very When you're twenty
years old, you walk into that environment from Villanova, where
you're playing in front of six thousand people, it can
be very intimidating. Uh did you ever doubt that yourself
(16:35):
that you were I called home. I remember calling home
to my grandmother. And half the family worked for Boston
Housing Authority, which is the projects back there, and half
the family worked through my uncle Mike, who has since
passed away. My uncle Mike was the first one and
he was there for thirty years and he got my
dad a job, and then he got my uncle Billy
(16:57):
a job, and so on and so on. And I
called home to my grandmother and I said, tell uncle
mikey I might need a job. Uh. This was in
mini camp because I was never more sure and never
more beat up. Earl leg It took me to another
level of physical commitment that I had never been to. Uh.
Just it was as far as I was concerned, it
was space. I'd never been there. Uh. He challenged me physically, mentally, Uh.
(17:23):
He made me a football player. What about your first
meeting with Al Davis. Um really didn't know much about him. Uh,
wasn't really a pro football expert. Uh. Uh found him
to be a real character. Uh seemed to be a man.
It was the first time I've ever been around someone
(17:43):
who wasn't physical, who was intimidating, you know what I mean.
It was kind of Marlon Perkins Wild Kingdom where I
came from, you know, where the big, big strong survived
and they were the intimidating people. Where here was this
guy who really wasn't anything physically but was very intimidating.
(18:05):
What made him intimidating He had an aura about him.
I jokingly called him Darth Vader. He could choke you
from three rooms over. You know, he had that air
about him. He Uh, he was a very powerful man. Obviously,
you took a lot of pride in your toughness, But
was there ever a game where you just took a
(18:26):
real old fashioned ass swhipping. I took a real old
fashioned ass swooping in N two from a guy named
Jackie Slater. Uh. Jackie Slater took me to school. I
had no idea what I was doing and he had
the mental toughness, he had the physical toughness, he had
the veteran savvy. He knew what he was doing. He
(18:46):
was a true all pro. And from that game on,
every time I played Jackie Slater, I was after his
rear end. Uh. You know you gotta you gotta answer
the bell. You gotta answer the bell. Jackie took me
to school, and I should thank Jackie for that. Jackie
woke me up. When you say he took you to school,
what do you mean? He knocked me every way? But
(19:06):
you know, out of the stadium. Uh, if it was
if it was a draw, I'd be sprinting up to
feel as if it were a pass, and he'd hit
me with that left club and he club you in
the head. And if you weren't prepared to play, you
got gobbled up. You got eaten alive. You better bring
it or you're gonna get your ass handed to you.
And you're gonna get embarrassed. Not just get your ass
(19:27):
handed to you, embarrassed. Jackie kick you, he'd bite you,
He'd do whatever it took. Uh. And after that, I
kicked Jackie. Bit Jackie clubbed him in the head and
got after his rear in you think that as you
grew in stature that players would say that about you,
that if they were going to play against you, that
that you better bring it. I'd like to think so, I,
you know, I I I'd like to think that if
(19:48):
people would say one thing about me was that I
I brought it every play. Uh. You know when when
a John always says to you, Uh, I was with
John Elway, I think night I decided to retire down
in Atlanta, and uh, we had had a couple of beers.
It was maybe five in the morning and the bar
had closed and they locked us into place, I remember,
(20:11):
and I told him I was going to retire, and
no one was. Probably the two people that were more
tickled pink than anyone else were John Elway and my wife,
because my wife would have me finally at home, and
John Elway wouldn't have me to deal with at work.
Because I had some great battles with John. I always
felt John was probably the guy I enjoyed competing against
(20:35):
the most because I thought John was just a phenomenal player,
phenomenal player, phenomenal leader. He just found a way to
do it. Uh. If there's a guy that deserves a ring.
It's him. When you were at the height of your
career and scouting report had been written on you, what
do you think it would say. Uh. The game, in
(20:58):
my mind, has changed a little bit in recent years,
where it's become so specialized. Uh. I took a great
deal of pride in playing every conceivable situation there was
to the best of my abilities. I tried to take
no plays off, and my mindset was when I played
(21:20):
that I'm going to get blocked, but I'm gonna bring
it every single play. UH. And I did that. One
coach said to me one time that the thing you'll
regret most when you leave the game is if you
don't give it everything you have. UH. And I have
no regrets. I gave everything I had. Was a total
(21:42):
football player, not as talent as a lot of guys,
but I brought it every play and and asked no
quarters and gave no corpse. Matt Milan once told me
about you. He said that your greatest asset was your insecurity. Yeah,
I think so. I I It's funny. I played thirteen years,
you know you think about it like this. I played
(22:04):
thirteen years in the NFL. I went to a Pro Bowls.
I was on one of the two defensive ends on
the All Decade team. And I never enjoyed my career.
It wasn't until I retired. Honestly, I was not until
I retired when I had sat down and said, you
(22:25):
were pretty good. You know, I never I had. I
had had five I had five sacks versus the Redskins
in their hey day in one game up at RFK,
And on the ride back to California on the plane,
all I could think about was the four run plays
that I blew. Um. Yeah, I never really took myself
all that seriously in terms of ability, and it drove
(22:47):
me to I was in that constant quest for perfection
and never realized it. Uh. But in during that quest,
I never enjoyed my career. But you must have enjoyed
the game. So I enjoyed, you know, I really enjoyed it.
But I never there was so much angst over what
(23:08):
I didn't do right rather than what I did right. Uh.
I'm like that with everything though. I really. Uh, let's say,
how if you could go back to your career and
relive one moment, one feeling again, what would that be?
The Super Bowl and eighty four. Uh. I was twenty
(23:30):
three years old. It was my first year starting. I
was defensive player of the Year. I was Defensive Lineman
of the Year. We went to the Super Bowl. Everything
happened so quickly, and I thought, we'll be back again
every year because we're so good. We had eleven twelve
guys at the Pro Bowl. Uh, there was no free agency.
(23:51):
Why wouldn't we be back. Well, you know, there are
a lot of intangibles, and you come to find out
how difficult it is to get there. Uh. I would
have enjoyed that moment and a little bit more because
this will that you might not ever see this again.
And when you walk in the stadium and you spend
the whole week down there, and I remember we got
(24:11):
stuck in traffic. We took a cab to the stadium
and we had to walk the last three quarters of
a mile fore or four of us. Yeah, to the
Super Bowl. To the Super Bowl. Now they've got armed
guards and you know, uh, they have escorts and the
whole thing. But one of the things that that I've
heard about you was that you really enjoyed a practical
joke when you were with the with the Raiders, oh, yeah,
(24:32):
we always did. Uh. I was a victim of quite
a few. One night, I got to the hotel and
uh I watched film for two or three hours. When
we would have home games when we were on the road,
i'd watch more because we had a couple of days usually.
And I didn't get to bed till eleven thirty, and
even turned down the bed because I would squat in
(24:53):
front of the bed because my back was bad. And
I pulled down the bed and there's a big fish
underneath my covers with a note in the mouth. And
I had done something to this person and you could
say it was it was a quarterback and the note
read don't ever blank with me. And I knew who
(25:17):
it was and it's and it's a Hyatt. They don't
have maids at twelve o'clock at nights. So my bed
stinks like fish, and it's wet, and you know, where
do I sleep? So I end up sleeping on the
floor that night. Yeah, I had. I had taken part
in quite a When you used to travel, somebody told
me that you wouldn't use your real name. I stayed
(25:38):
under it was the The NFL makes it very difficult
for you to relax on the road because they published
the hotels you stay in. As you well know. You
get the Black Book through the NFL, and it lists
the hotel where you're staying, and there's a hundred people
in the lobby and everyone wants to talk to player
(26:00):
A player beer players see, so you get the call
from down to the bar. Hey, I would come on
down having beer. You remember me, you know, which is fine.
But I have an agenda when I go on the road.
My agenda was I had my VCR under my arm.
I packed my own VCR, I take my tapes, I
get my room football tapes, and I would watch hours
(26:24):
of additional tape review. I felt if I could get
an edge on two or three plays in an entire
game where I knew what was going to happen, uh,
it was worth the four or five hours I spent
additional on top of what everyone else had watched. And
I didn't like to be bothered on the phone. I
still don't. I stayed under John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Bobby
(26:47):
Or was one of my favorites. I stayed under a
number of names, and if we lost a couple of games,
I changed the name, but didn't you say once that
you were staying that you couldn't beat Bobby Or because
he was actually there. He was at the same hotel.
We already have a Bobby Or here Lo. I couldn't
stay as Bobby, so you went to the hotel checked
in his Bobby. You're in the person the death said that, right,
(27:09):
we already have you as checked in Mr. Or And
I said, no, no, I'm I'm not really switch it
to Charloton Heston as I always wanted to be. El said,
let me jump in here with a little celluloid one
oh one. An old movie history lesson for our younger audience.
El Sid is a nineteen sixty one classic old movie
(27:30):
with Charles and Heston and Sophia Lauren. Now if you
don't know who they are, just google them. Okay, Well, anyway,
Charleton Heston was known for these big epic movies The
Ten Commandments, Ben her and in most of his movies
he played these larger than life figures. El Sid was
a sword swinging night, you know, the hero that got
the girl, that was who how we wanted to be.
(27:52):
El Sid was probably the movie that changed the way
I looked at movies. With Sophia Lauren and Charlton Heston. Oh,
they mon him up in the Horses the Gates over
Love and you know he marches out there all number
one and the Army's retreat the MACHTI some some guys
(28:13):
with odd shaped swords. I don't know, but they say
he's still riding on the beach there in Spain. Yeah,
he was my favorite, Charlton Heston when I met him.
It was a real throw, real throw. As I warned
you at the top of the podcast, this episode is
as enlightening about Steve Sable as it is about How
We Long. And there's plenty more movie talk yet to
(28:35):
come when we come back Steve and how we get
into how his movie career. You mean you just thought
he was a TV star. Well, let's just say that
this interview took place at the peak of how He
longs movie career. The first mainstream movie How He Long
(28:56):
was in was called Broken Arrow, you know, the classic
nineties action movie. Lots of explosions, one liners, a plot
to blow up the world, you know, the standard stuff.
It was directed by John Woo and started John Travolta
and Christian Slater and Howie Long. So Travolta was the
primary bad guy, and how he partnered with him and
(29:16):
against Christian Slater, not to be confused with Hall of
Fame tackle Jackie Slater, who was six ft five thirty
six pounds and gave Howie his biggest ass whooping of
his career. We're talking about five ft nine one d
sixty five pound Christian Slater. This is only relevant because
(29:36):
spoiler alert, if you're gonna go back and find Broken
Arrow and try to scream it, it was Slater who
kills off how He's character by throwing him off a
moving train like that could ever happen in real life? Really,
do you feel strange about being asked to be a
villain in the movies? That mean, when Broken Arrow, a
lot of people had a problem with that. Who had
(29:58):
a problem just the public going through airports or whatever.
You know, I've never been somebody come up to yeah
and say, you know, you were a great Broken Arrow,
but you know this bad guy stuff, I don't know,
you know, it really doesn't fit me real well, Uh,
you don't. You don't want to have an altercation in
other words, in the movies. You don't want your personality
(30:18):
to be uh described by that. No, even in Broken Arrow,
though I was a bad guy who inevitably uh found
a conscience and tried to avert. Yeah, it was a
good death though my old man had a real problem
with that, so did my kid, that Christian Slater had
whipped my button. What scene would we be able to see?
(30:40):
Your your game face? I did a lot of lurking
in the background, John travolts to start, They said I
had eight lines I got away with. I think I
have maybe nine. Weren't you supposed to get killed off
in that movie? Or killed off? Yeah? John wu was
very kind to me. I was supposed to be there
for four weeks, and my wife had her game face
(31:02):
on when I called her and told her I wouldn't
be home for another three months. It was a long movie.
How come you got they didn't. They decided to let
you live because you were doing n John. I had
never been on a movie set, had never taken an
acting lesson. And I said to my wife, I said,
this is the biggest scam I've pulled off yet. I mean,
it's just remarkable that I'm here. I'm sitting in a
(31:23):
careerium with John Travolta in a car and uh, we
do the first scene we're doing together, and he says, hey,
that was pretty good. He said, what have you done before?
I said nothing? And he said, well, where did you study?
I said I haven't. I said, I'm studying right now.
I'm watching you. But like I said, you draw from
you draw from other people. Uh. He seemed pretty good.
So I'll try to do what he does. Why do
(31:45):
you want to be an actor? Now? It's another challenge.
It's something to either succeed at or fail. You need
that fix. I need that fix. I need the fix
of another challenge. You know. The broad casting was a
challenge to me, and I wanted to gwin and I
wanted to be I knew what I wanted to do.
I wanted to be in the studio. I didn't want
(32:07):
to be doing games. I wanted to be in the studio.
I wanted to have the opportunity to be on camera
and succeed in that that aspect of television work. And
then I knew I wanted to be in the movies.
I want to be in the movies since I was
a kid. Though my life has been just a ride
and and I don't necessarily know where it's going. But
I'm I'm enjoying the ride. I never know. I didn't
(32:29):
ask to be in the movies. I didn't ask to
be in the NFL. I didn't ask to go into broadcasting.
That was the only thing I ever really wanted to
do was be in the movies. What's the toughest thing
about being an actor? The toughest? Is it memorizing your lines?
Or is it, you know, being able to like if
we were doing a scene right now and you had
to cross. The thing for me is probably And this
(32:53):
sounds simple, but it's the time commitment. It's being away
from home that's the hardest thing. Trying to Allen's family,
the television and and the film men to have a
window to work between January and a little bit into
September maybe, And that's my window. Looks like next next January,
I'll do one film, and then right away in June,
(33:15):
I'll do another film, and then I'll go right into
flying across the country twenty two times. Have you going
to any school or anything now to learn about acting?
As anybody that you're going to let Strasburg. This is
a funny story. The acting coach I go to I
go to do Broken Arrow and uh, let's acting coach
they sent, and she walked up and introduced herself. High,
(33:36):
I'm so and so, and I'm here to work with
the actors and you know, for some of it, because
there's a lot of some tough scenes in this movie.
And I'm thinking to myself, I'm looking around. Here's John Travolta,
here's Christian Slater. Who is she gonna be working with
with me? She's trying to make me feel like she's
here to work with everybody, But I mean, I'm sure
she's going by John Travolta's room and working with him
(33:58):
at night. So not only that, she calls me up
and we finally we're going to go over this big
scene where I called back to the base with a
fake distress call and UH tell him the nuclear one
of the nuclear weapons has been opened up and uh.
We talked for an hour and before we do it,
I'm thinking myself, I'm hungry. My wife's down in the
room with the kids. I want to go see it.
Are we ever going to do this? This is an
(34:19):
acting coach. So I finally do the scene and she
says to me, where'd you feel that? I said? Uh?
I said I felt it in my I guess in
my head. She said, I felt it in my stomach.
It was it was like no, wait, wait, wait, it
gets a better rays of sunshine. We're pouring out of
every pore in my body. I'm sitting there. Could everything
(34:39):
I could do. I said, if the boys could see
me now, But that was it, and and then I
went and did the scene the next day. It was
the first days shot, and I guess the studio felt
confident that I could maybe pull it off. And I
never saw her again. Have you ever been hurt in
any scenes we've been making a movie. Yeah, the two
(35:00):
scenes in Broken Arrow, I had a problem. Uh. There
was one scene where I was between box cars on
a train shooting. That's where they blow you out of
the side of the train. No, that I did that too,
But that didn't hurt that much. It's just a ratchet.
It's like you're standing here and then you're back there
in a split second. It's like a fun ride. But
we're on We're in between the train and I'm riding
(35:21):
on the ladder and I'm shooting at a helicopter with
machine gun and the train goes into a tunnel. The
tunnel knocks me off the ladder. I fall to the
other ladder, and I kept having to fall hanging on
my left shoulder. My left shoulder shot, so that hurt.
But then did you tell anybody that hurt or take
because they were having lighting problems going from exterior to
(35:42):
interior tunnel. I said, if you don't get it this time,
we're done. You know, that was the only time I
wriped the whole film. But then when you feel sort
of funny about that, this big tough football player, and
then you're to do something, you say, oh, I can't
do it. Well, I'll tell you what that shoulder boy,
it's it's held together with glue and sticks. Or how
about the new movie Firestorm? Ah, yes, Firestorm. Howe's new
(36:04):
movie which was released I'll try to follow me here.
He played a firefighter trying to rescue civilians from a
forest fire, Only there were these escaped convicts also in
the fire, pretending to be fireman, searching for thirty seven
million dollars and stolen cash that was for some reason
buried in the forest. Or they're just who happened to
(36:25):
be a raging fire. I'm assuming that how he saved
the day, foiled the bad guys and got the girl.
But full disclosure, I never saw it. Of course, knowing
Steve Sable, he probably did. This was how his first
and ultimately only leading role. Two years later he started
Three Thousand Miles to Graceland, you know, the one with
Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner playing Elvis impersonators planning to
(36:48):
rob a casino. Iced Tea was in that movie too.
That was probably a really fun set to be on.
But back to Steve and Howie talking about Firestorm broke
two ribs on that. Do you ever break rib is
playing football? Never? And it was never brought. It was
a very unique thing. I've broken everything by my ribs.
And what what was happening is we're up in Vancouver
(37:09):
and it was getting late in the year. We were
over time, and you know, the snow was coming down.
It's like two in the morning and the lake waters
thirty eight degrees and we're I'm supposed to run down
this dock and dive in this lake after the girl
and do all this. And they kept having a blow
towards the dock because they were getting some black ice,
you know, And so I hit a patch of black ice,
and I've got an axe attached to my waist because
(37:32):
I'm a smoke jumper, a firefighter, forest firefighter. I flipped
up in the air and the axe handle hits the
ground first and drives the axe head up into my ribs,
So I break the two ribs. Did you know that
when that happened that I couldn't breathe at first? Obviously
was like taking a good I get the wind knocked
and I forgot to be fine, So I got to
(37:53):
try to do it again. And that scene I'm yelling,
I couldn't even open up my mouth. You have a problem,
you know, with your lines. You have to study the
night action movie. So what do you have? Like a
page or two? You know it's significantly No. If I
(38:13):
have a love scene, pan back to the house, there
would be an action film taking place right in there.
Married an Italian girl from Jersey. They don't play that.
So now what's after Firestorms? I just signed on to
do a picture with Morgen Creek called Field Test, which
is kind of the Dirty Dozen meets Predator on steroids.
(38:39):
Now what do you play? I'm the lead made military
guy who goes into this island on a test mission
and against this mutant that the government has invented for
jungle warfare evidence and our troops and they try to
(39:00):
come up with this ultimate killing machine, and unbeknownst to us,
it's we're part of the test. Have you ever met
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, Now, how much bigger are you than
he is? I don't know. You know, everyone seems to
be the same. I don't look at people as being oh,
he's five eight or he's five he's he's about six
(39:20):
ft tall. I'd say, so, it's Arnold Schwarzeneger about my height. No,
you're taller than Arnold, I would say that, But he
has much bigger arms. He looks good. But do you
ever see yourself in that kind of I don't think
Arnold's ever had a chiefe steak HOGI No, Arnold's good.
(39:42):
You know the thing that's and and everything about Arnold Schwartzeneger.
The most impressive thing about Arnold Schwarzenegger is in here.
Very bright man, very astute businessman. I think he owns
half a Santa Monica. When when you're done some of
the movie scenes, is or anything about doing the movies
now that you can relate to being in professional football.
(40:03):
Some of the discipline, the organization, or certain things that
are the same, or is it just totally things that
people in that industry feel that are demanding and difficult
are like a walk through on a Wednesday in football.
So football for me has been a great measuring stick
(40:24):
for just what hard work is. Ah. Sure, I can
take a lot of the discipline that I had in
football and translate that into both television and also into movies,
but ah, nowhere near uh, the amount of work that
goes into preparing for a professional football game. You can't
even compare the two if there's no comparison. Okay, that's it.
(40:48):
We got. Well, I'm actually getting the last word here
on the Howie Long Interview because listen, I love the
podcast form, but you do miss out on some visuals.
So I want to tell you what that last scene
look like when Howie and Steve were talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As they're talking about Arnold's arms, Steve was actually flexing
(41:09):
for Howie Long. Now, what many of you may not
know about Steve Sable, And I told you we were
going to learn as much about Steve Sable maybe as
we were about how We Long in this episode. Steve
was a champion bodybuilder in n He was crowned Mr
Philadelphia and the photo of it is still hanging in
his office at NFL Films. Steve's bodybuilding career didn't exactly
(41:31):
take off, just like Howe's movie career didn't turn out
as he probably hoped. Firestorm, as the Rotten Tomatoes critics
consensus put it, quote, failed to ignite Long's career or
anything else for that matter. Ouch, there's no oscar for
him and probably will ever be one, but that's okay
(41:52):
because he's in his twenty season on Fox. He's been
nominated for an Emmy thirteen times, and not long after
this interview is conducted, he won the award for Best
Studio Analyst. Next week, our trip into the Vault find
Steve sitting with the Hall of famer who manned the
middle of the great Chicago Bears defense, Mike Singletary. Thanks
(42:14):
for listening. I hope you'll joined us next time. I'm
Andrea Kramer. Yeah,
Welcome to NFL Films Tails from the Vault. I'm your host,
Andrea Kramer. This podcast for those of you who haven't
tuned in before, and if that's the case, where have
you been well? This podcast showcases some of the greatest
interviews ever done by the late great Hall of Famer
Steve Sable, the president of NFL Films. These are raw,
(00:28):
unedited conversations, none of which have ever been heard before
in their entirety. Now, I actually started my career at
NFL Films as a producer. Facts Steve was my boss
and my mentor. So I love these weekly trips into
the vault of NFL Films, and I sure hope that
you do too. Today we showcase and interview with Raider's
(00:50):
legend Howie Long. When Howie Long retired from the Raiders,
(01:11):
he was at the top of his game at age
thirty four. He probably could have continued to play, but,
as he said in his retirement press conference, it's time
to grow up and get on with life. A year later,
he became a studio analyst on Fox's pregame show and
has been there ever since. For the record, that was
Fox's first season covering the NFL so how he has
(01:34):
been a staple on that set since its inception. When
Steve interviewed Howie at his house in Virginia, of course
they talked about how He's Hall of Fame career on
the field, but really the emphasis was off the field.
Now keep in mind that at this point how He
Long was trying to transfer his matinee idle good Looks
(01:55):
to the big screen, and anything having to do with
movies fascinated Steve Eve. So today's podcast is really as
much about Steve Sable as it is about Howie Long.
So some background on Steve here. His nickname was the
King of Football Movies, but Steve loved all movies. In fact,
(02:15):
he and his sister Blair were brought up in a
world of home movies. His father, Big D. Sable as
we always called him, and his wife Audrey were constantly
filming their children. Steve cinematic tastes while they ran the gamut.
He loves Sam Peck and Paul Western's Bonnie and Clyde,
even the Claude Laluche French movies and yes, Disney Bambi
(02:37):
go figure that look. Steve ultimately was sentimental. He loved
going to a theater and wanted to be enveloped in
the darkness the experience. He didn't like streaming. I would
not fit in well with today's world of Netflix. He
loved movies so much that even as an adult, Steve
would go to see movies weekly. But enough about Steve's
(02:58):
background in his childhood. Let's go into the vault as
Steve dives into Howie Longs childhood. Howie, when you were
when you were growing up? Is it true that you
were you had a fright about public speaking, that you
couldn't get up and got in front of a group
and talk. People might find this hard to believe, but
I was really an introverted kid, lacked a lot of
(03:20):
confidence and and and that's why I'm a big advocate
of youth sports, because youth sports for me was a
vehicle to not only grow from a confidence standpoint, but
also from a It gave me more and more of
an opportunity to speak in front of people. How old
were you when you started to play football. I didn't start.
(03:42):
I played on my first organized team of any kind
when I was about fifteen fourteen, fifteen years old. Big
for your age, yeah, it was always big, But played
in the street. Grew up in Boston and you know,
row Home kind of neighborhood, and we played in the street.
We did everything in the street. I played in the
the b NHL and the b NBL, which is the
(04:02):
Boston Neighborhood Basketball League, in the Boston Neighborhood Hockey League
street hockey. But that's all I did. What was it
about football that that attracted you to that sport? Well,
when I was thrown out of the Boston City school system,
grown out of school system, yeah, it was, it was
a bad rap. And uh, it was during the bussing riots,
(04:22):
ren in some problems, was bust over the boys Latin
and uh was involved in an altercation and the way
they were dealing with at that time was you were gone. Uh.
And my grandmother who's bringing me up at the time,
sent me out to live with an uncle who had
lived the American dream and bought the home in the
suburbs and Milford, Massachusetts was the area. And the first
(04:44):
weekend I was there was the fall of my sophomore
year in high school and I went to the football
game and they had this old fire engine that drove
into the around the football field and they had a
band and a parade and they had cheerleaders, and I said, jeez,
that looks like me. It's got me written all over it.
We were growing up, Howie, what what did you get
(05:05):
in trouble for most often? Oh, I wasn't a bad kid. Uh,
probably truancy in school, a little bit of you know,
we we shoplifted periodically, but it was you know, I
looked at it as it was kind of the Robin
Hood theory. You know. I wasn't shoplifting out of out
(05:25):
of just the greed of it. It was necessity. You know.
We went down to the Whiting's milk and stole milk
and we sit there and drink a gallon of milk.
It was really survival. We stole hockey equipment to play
in the street. We do the things we needed to
do to get by. When how are we academically? Ah,
it's always a bright kid, not particularly book smart, but
(05:48):
street smart. That's why I married my wife. She's book
smart and I'm street smart and she's street dumb. Well, unfortunately,
I've never had a job where I've had to flex
my academic muscle. He said that back in Boston were
raised by her grandmother, live with my grandmother, and then
live with my and Eating and uncle Mike, and then
(06:08):
live with my uncle Billy and mian Ada. You think
there was an advantage to live in with all those
different people or it wasn't. It was confusing and disorientating
when you were growing up to have that many different adults,
You know, I think I have. I've probably worked out
a lot of problems in my own head over the years.
(06:29):
I could have went in a lot of different directions.
I was very fortunate. And now that I'm thirty seven
years old and I have three kids in my own
I know what a sacrifice it was from my uncle Billy,
who was basically making ends meet with two kids and
two adopted children. Uh, we weren't eating much, did you
(06:49):
get I'll tell you what happened. We were reading Matt
we Ate macar you know, mayannated. I didn't like to
hear this, but we're reading that forty nine cents of
box macaroni and cheese. The government that every night, you know,
and it was every other night, and and they were
doing everything they could to make ends meeting. And that
summer I went down to Philadelphia and lived in Philadelphia
(07:12):
and got to eat every stakes, everything in sight. I
went from twenty one to two seventy two and one
summer I went from tight end and nose guards that summer.
You're talking about growing up? How what you have three boys?
What did you learn uh as a as a kid?
Uh that you want to pass on to them? Maybe
(07:32):
the experience that you had growing up? What are things
is from your experiences that you want to pass on
to your children. It's very difficult to because I've I've
done well um and and they don't want for anything.
It's very difficult to establish a set of strong values
for your children. And unfortunately, I didn't know how to
(07:53):
be a dad. I didn't have one around most of
my childhood, so I learned as they went. Unfortunately, my
twelve year old suffered to the first five years of
his life while I was trying to figure out how
to do this. I was better at being a nose
guard or defensive tackle than I was being a dad. Uh.
And I'm proud to say that it's a work in progress,
(08:15):
but I'm I'm getting better at it every day. And
I'd say the most special moments in my life, more
so than anything I've ever done anything. Anything. Was when
my twelve year old after two years of struggling in
little league baseball. Uh, probably more so because of my
not being as good a baseball dad as I should
(08:37):
have been when I was when he was a kid,
because I was so engrossed in playing professional football. But
we've worked at at the last three years, and he
suffered the first two years. You know, he really had
a struggle. And he's hitting six hundred. He hit one
over the fence the other night, one of four kids
that hit one over the fence. And he he won
the game for them the other night, big game. And
just to watch him real is his abilities and and
(09:02):
enjoy himself and get a taste of success and what
price it takes to gain success has been the most
rewarding thing for me. I can be on a shadow
of Dub Morsel than anything. So that's struggling twelve year
old at how he's referring to. That's two times Super
Bowl champion Chris Long, the eldest of Howie and Diane's
(09:23):
three boys. Chris is now thirty six years old, just
a year younger than how he was when this interview
was conducted. Kind of crazy, right, It was quite a
contrast between the childhood that how he had growing up
in a pretty rough Charlestown, Massachusetts neighborhood and where he
raised his boys in Charlottesville, Virginia. But let's have how
(09:43):
we tell you about it. Can you compare the way
he's grown up to the way you grew up? No, no,
there's nothing that. There's no no similarity at all. He's
a late bloomer physically. Uh, and I think I can
draw analogies through that. But beyond that, no, Uh, he's
never had his lunch money taken, you know. Should I
(10:06):
got my I got my butt kicked till I was
about eleven years old. And then I think I can
remember the exact fight. Uh. I just got my rear
in handed to me. It just got bullied and bullied. Man.
I was like twelve years old. Uh, I dropped my
first kid and and realized, Hey, I don't have to
take this straight right. Yeah, I remember it was a
(10:29):
straight right now. When you went to to Villanova, did
that was that the first time that you ever thought
that you might have the ability to make a career
out of play in pro football. I really never gave
and my wife went to Villanova with me, and she'll
tell you the same thing. I never gave pro football
a second thought. I never imagined that I would be
(10:49):
good enough to play in pro ball. What happened was
a player was injured in the Blue Gray All Star Game.
A matter of fact, I missed the final three games
in my senior year and football I was once again
expelled from school. No. I I was in an off
campus altercation in Philadelphia. What's an alteration, it's a fight,
(11:10):
It's a fight. And I got called. I was at
the door of the place and and the cop cars
pulled up. And this was at a house in Philadelphia.
A few friends had been jumped and beat up and
we went back down to get their stuff. They had
been robbed, and the cops pulled up. I spent the
night in jail. It was like, I think we have
fifty dollars to get out, but I have fifty dollars,
(11:31):
so uh. I missed the last three games, so I
never really gave a consideration. And got a phone call
and a player was injured in the Blue Gray Game,
and I was called down to substitute for this player
and played against a guy from Texas A and M
and h won the m v P had a big game.
Jimmy Johnson was the coach. I wasn't supposed to You're
(11:53):
not supposed to rush the punter, and uh, I tell
I rushed the putter, blocked a punt, we scored a touchdown,
and you know, Jimmy wasn't really upset that we won.
Do we like to win? Well? Now? One was the
first inkling that you were going to get a try
out at the end in the NFL, or that the
NFL was interested in you did. Somebody calls the blue
gray game. Suddenly, I think, I think what scouts try
(12:17):
to do, and you know, you can understand what they're
doing to a certain extent because it's their rear end
on the line. If they recommend a kid from Villanova
who's had less than a stellar career at Villanova and
had all the physical talents, you know, run the forty,
the vertical jump and do all those things that really
make no difference. Uh. What was the most unusual workout
(12:37):
that you had? Probably when the guy from the Colts
came by and ran me on the front lawn of
my dorm on a Sunday morning at like nine am,
knocked on my door woke me up. I didn't have
any cleats. He didn't care. He had a girl in
the car. I really what they were doing was they
were just doing their job checking off. Yeah. I worked
him out. You know, I remember the one, the one
(12:58):
guy who ended up with the Raiders as a personnel.
Guy worked for one of the combines. And you always
had to find a way as a scout to cover
your rear end runs great, great vertical jump. Uh, doesn't
use his hands well, lacks toughness. This was the one guy.
And I said, you know, if he could have said,
(13:19):
if he could have said anything, you know, I never
lacked toughness. That wasn't the problem. Maybe I couldn't find
the ball or uh, maybe I wasn't as dedicated as
I should have been when I was younger. But a
Raider scout said in the scouting report. No, not a
Raider scout. He worked for one of the combines like
blessed though, what are the name of those combines? Blest
and I forget And I jumped his ass when he
(13:42):
came to the Raiders. I jumped his ass. I tore
him up and down. I mean it was anything. The
first two years I think with the Raiders, I was
I was. I was sixty eight no in practice, and
he had to fight. You know it was I wasn't
a good for fault player, uh, I was a self
(14:03):
made football player. I was getting blocked on a daily basis,
and the only way I knew to compete was to
fight um and I just survived. Survival really seemed to
be a common theme for the early part of Howie
Long's life and career. I guess that's just the mentality
of a fighter. And when I say fighter, I'm not
(14:26):
just referring to how He's altercations, if you will. In
while he was in college at Villanova, Long was a
boxer and won the Northern Collegiate Heavyweight Championship. Yes, folks,
that really does exist. We didn't make that up. When
we come back, Steve and Howe delve into how He's
time with the Raiders and talk about the only man
(14:47):
that ever intimidated him but not physically. Welcome back to
Tails from the Vault. There's never been a shortage of
colorful and memorable characters on The Raid, no matter where
they played, Oakland, Los Angeles, or even Las Vegas. Of course,
the late Al Davis. He liked it that way. He
(15:08):
liked that reputation of swashbuckling rogues. It was a role
that how he Long ultimately embraced. But for a kid
fresh out of Villa Nova on the main line of Philadelphia,
imagine walking into a locker room with twos and the
mad Stork. Well, it was a little bit jarring, needless
to say. But one of the people that really helped
(15:30):
Long acclamate to the pros was his defensive line coach,
Earl leg It. Leg It actually scouted Long in college
and was the one who recommended him to Al Davis
and ultimately had such an impact on how his career
that Long chose leg It to present him when Long
was inducted into the Profobah Hall of Fame in two thousands.
Do you remember what your first impressions were the Raiders
(15:53):
coming to that organization. I remember walked in the locker
room from Many camp. They just won the Super Bowl,
and uh, at that time, it was a it was
a real collection of players. Uh looked like something out
of a movie. I'm from, you know, Philly and Boston
and you know Oakland could have been the other side
of the world as far as I was concerned, and
(16:14):
then John Matozak walks in and are at Shell and
Jean Upshaw, and I felt like a real kid because
it was it was. It was very When you're twenty
years old, you walk into that environment from Villanova, where
you're playing in front of six thousand people, it can
be very intimidating. Uh did you ever doubt that yourself
(16:35):
that you were I called home. I remember calling home
to my grandmother. And half the family worked for Boston
Housing Authority, which is the projects back there, and half
the family worked through my uncle Mike, who has since
passed away. My uncle Mike was the first one and
he was there for thirty years and he got my
dad a job, and then he got my uncle Billy
(16:57):
a job, and so on and so on. And I
called home to my grandmother and I said, tell uncle
mikey I might need a job. Uh. This was in
mini camp because I was never more sure and never
more beat up. Earl leg It took me to another
level of physical commitment that I had never been to. Uh.
Just it was as far as I was concerned, it
was space. I'd never been there. Uh. He challenged me physically, mentally, Uh.
(17:23):
He made me a football player. What about your first
meeting with Al Davis. Um really didn't know much about him. Uh,
wasn't really a pro football expert. Uh. Uh found him
to be a real character. Uh seemed to be a man.
It was the first time I've ever been around someone
(17:43):
who wasn't physical, who was intimidating, you know what I mean.
It was kind of Marlon Perkins Wild Kingdom where I
came from, you know, where the big, big strong survived
and they were the intimidating people. Where here was this
guy who really wasn't anything physically but was very intimidating.
(18:05):
What made him intimidating He had an aura about him.
I jokingly called him Darth Vader. He could choke you
from three rooms over. You know, he had that air
about him. He Uh, he was a very powerful man. Obviously,
you took a lot of pride in your toughness, But
was there ever a game where you just took a
(18:26):
real old fashioned ass swhipping. I took a real old
fashioned ass swooping in N two from a guy named
Jackie Slater. Uh. Jackie Slater took me to school. I
had no idea what I was doing and he had
the mental toughness, he had the physical toughness, he had
the veteran savvy. He knew what he was doing. He
(18:46):
was a true all pro. And from that game on,
every time I played Jackie Slater, I was after his
rear end. Uh. You know you gotta you gotta answer
the bell. You gotta answer the bell. Jackie took me
to school, and I should thank Jackie for that. Jackie
woke me up. When you say he took you to school,
what do you mean? He knocked me every way? But
(19:06):
you know, out of the stadium. Uh, if it was
if it was a draw, I'd be sprinting up to
feel as if it were a pass, and he'd hit
me with that left club and he club you in
the head. And if you weren't prepared to play, you
got gobbled up. You got eaten alive. You better bring
it or you're gonna get your ass handed to you.
And you're gonna get embarrassed. Not just get your ass
(19:27):
handed to you, embarrassed. Jackie kick you, he'd bite you,
He'd do whatever it took. Uh. And after that, I
kicked Jackie. Bit Jackie clubbed him in the head and
got after his rear in you think that as you
grew in stature that players would say that about you,
that if they were going to play against you, that
that you better bring it. I'd like to think so, I,
you know, I I I'd like to think that if
(19:48):
people would say one thing about me was that I
I brought it every play. Uh. You know when when
a John always says to you, Uh, I was with
John Elway, I think night I decided to retire down
in Atlanta, and uh, we had had a couple of beers.
It was maybe five in the morning and the bar
had closed and they locked us into place, I remember,
(20:11):
and I told him I was going to retire, and
no one was. Probably the two people that were more
tickled pink than anyone else were John Elway and my wife,
because my wife would have me finally at home, and
John Elway wouldn't have me to deal with at work.
Because I had some great battles with John. I always
felt John was probably the guy I enjoyed competing against
(20:35):
the most because I thought John was just a phenomenal player,
phenomenal player, phenomenal leader. He just found a way to
do it. Uh. If there's a guy that deserves a ring.
It's him. When you were at the height of your
career and scouting report had been written on you, what
do you think it would say. Uh. The game, in
(20:58):
my mind, has changed a little bit in recent years,
where it's become so specialized. Uh. I took a great
deal of pride in playing every conceivable situation there was
to the best of my abilities. I tried to take
no plays off, and my mindset was when I played
(21:20):
that I'm going to get blocked, but I'm gonna bring
it every single play. UH. And I did that. One
coach said to me one time that the thing you'll
regret most when you leave the game is if you
don't give it everything you have. UH. And I have
no regrets. I gave everything I had. Was a total
(21:42):
football player, not as talent as a lot of guys,
but I brought it every play and and asked no
quarters and gave no corpse. Matt Milan once told me
about you. He said that your greatest asset was your insecurity. Yeah,
I think so. I I It's funny. I played thirteen years,
you know you think about it like this. I played
(22:04):
thirteen years in the NFL. I went to a Pro Bowls.
I was on one of the two defensive ends on
the All Decade team. And I never enjoyed my career.
It wasn't until I retired. Honestly, I was not until
I retired when I had sat down and said, you
(22:25):
were pretty good. You know, I never I had. I
had had five I had five sacks versus the Redskins
in their hey day in one game up at RFK,
And on the ride back to California on the plane,
all I could think about was the four run plays
that I blew. Um. Yeah, I never really took myself
all that seriously in terms of ability, and it drove
(22:47):
me to I was in that constant quest for perfection
and never realized it. Uh. But in during that quest,
I never enjoyed my career. But you must have enjoyed
the game. So I enjoyed, you know, I really enjoyed it.
But I never there was so much angst over what
(23:08):
I didn't do right rather than what I did right. Uh.
I'm like that with everything though. I really. Uh, let's say,
how if you could go back to your career and
relive one moment, one feeling again, what would that be?
The Super Bowl and eighty four. Uh. I was twenty
(23:30):
three years old. It was my first year starting. I
was defensive player of the Year. I was Defensive Lineman
of the Year. We went to the Super Bowl. Everything
happened so quickly, and I thought, we'll be back again
every year because we're so good. We had eleven twelve
guys at the Pro Bowl. Uh, there was no free agency.
(23:51):
Why wouldn't we be back. Well, you know, there are
a lot of intangibles, and you come to find out
how difficult it is to get there. Uh. I would
have enjoyed that moment and a little bit more because
this will that you might not ever see this again.
And when you walk in the stadium and you spend
the whole week down there, and I remember we got
(24:11):
stuck in traffic. We took a cab to the stadium
and we had to walk the last three quarters of
a mile fore or four of us. Yeah, to the
Super Bowl. To the Super Bowl. Now they've got armed
guards and you know, uh, they have escorts and the
whole thing. But one of the things that that I've
heard about you was that you really enjoyed a practical
joke when you were with the with the Raiders, oh, yeah,
(24:32):
we always did. Uh. I was a victim of quite
a few. One night, I got to the hotel and
uh I watched film for two or three hours. When
we would have home games when we were on the road,
i'd watch more because we had a couple of days usually.
And I didn't get to bed till eleven thirty, and
even turned down the bed because I would squat in
(24:53):
front of the bed because my back was bad. And
I pulled down the bed and there's a big fish
underneath my covers with a note in the mouth. And
I had done something to this person and you could
say it was it was a quarterback and the note
read don't ever blank with me. And I knew who
(25:17):
it was and it's and it's a Hyatt. They don't
have maids at twelve o'clock at nights. So my bed
stinks like fish, and it's wet, and you know, where
do I sleep? So I end up sleeping on the
floor that night. Yeah, I had. I had taken part
in quite a When you used to travel, somebody told
me that you wouldn't use your real name. I stayed
(25:38):
under it was the The NFL makes it very difficult
for you to relax on the road because they published
the hotels you stay in. As you well know. You
get the Black Book through the NFL, and it lists
the hotel where you're staying, and there's a hundred people
in the lobby and everyone wants to talk to player
(26:00):
A player beer players see, so you get the call
from down to the bar. Hey, I would come on
down having beer. You remember me, you know, which is fine.
But I have an agenda when I go on the road.
My agenda was I had my VCR under my arm.
I packed my own VCR, I take my tapes, I
get my room football tapes, and I would watch hours
(26:24):
of additional tape review. I felt if I could get
an edge on two or three plays in an entire
game where I knew what was going to happen, uh,
it was worth the four or five hours I spent
additional on top of what everyone else had watched. And
I didn't like to be bothered on the phone. I
still don't. I stayed under John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Bobby
(26:47):
Or was one of my favorites. I stayed under a
number of names, and if we lost a couple of games,
I changed the name, but didn't you say once that
you were staying that you couldn't beat Bobby Or because
he was actually there. He was at the same hotel.
We already have a Bobby Or here Lo. I couldn't
stay as Bobby, so you went to the hotel checked
in his Bobby. You're in the person the death said that, right,
(27:09):
we already have you as checked in Mr. Or And
I said, no, no, I'm I'm not really switch it
to Charloton Heston as I always wanted to be. El said,
let me jump in here with a little celluloid one
oh one. An old movie history lesson for our younger audience.
El Sid is a nineteen sixty one classic old movie
(27:30):
with Charles and Heston and Sophia Lauren. Now if you
don't know who they are, just google them. Okay, Well, anyway,
Charleton Heston was known for these big epic movies The
Ten Commandments, Ben her and in most of his movies
he played these larger than life figures. El Sid was
a sword swinging night, you know, the hero that got
the girl, that was who how we wanted to be.
(27:52):
El Sid was probably the movie that changed the way
I looked at movies. With Sophia Lauren and Charlton Heston. Oh,
they mon him up in the Horses the Gates over
Love and you know he marches out there all number
one and the Army's retreat the MACHTI some some guys
(28:13):
with odd shaped swords. I don't know, but they say
he's still riding on the beach there in Spain. Yeah,
he was my favorite, Charlton Heston when I met him.
It was a real throw, real throw. As I warned
you at the top of the podcast, this episode is
as enlightening about Steve Sable as it is about How
We Long. And there's plenty more movie talk yet to
(28:35):
come when we come back Steve and how we get
into how his movie career. You mean you just thought
he was a TV star. Well, let's just say that
this interview took place at the peak of how He
longs movie career. The first mainstream movie How He Long
(28:56):
was in was called Broken Arrow, you know, the classic
nineties action movie. Lots of explosions, one liners, a plot
to blow up the world, you know, the standard stuff.
It was directed by John Woo and started John Travolta
and Christian Slater and Howie Long. So Travolta was the
primary bad guy, and how he partnered with him and
(29:16):
against Christian Slater, not to be confused with Hall of
Fame tackle Jackie Slater, who was six ft five thirty
six pounds and gave Howie his biggest ass whooping of
his career. We're talking about five ft nine one d
sixty five pound Christian Slater. This is only relevant because
(29:36):
spoiler alert, if you're gonna go back and find Broken
Arrow and try to scream it, it was Slater who
kills off how He's character by throwing him off a
moving train like that could ever happen in real life? Really,
do you feel strange about being asked to be a
villain in the movies? That mean, when Broken Arrow, a
lot of people had a problem with that. Who had
(29:58):
a problem just the public going through airports or whatever.
You know, I've never been somebody come up to yeah
and say, you know, you were a great Broken Arrow,
but you know this bad guy stuff, I don't know,
you know, it really doesn't fit me real well, Uh,
you don't. You don't want to have an altercation in
other words, in the movies. You don't want your personality
(30:18):
to be uh described by that. No, even in Broken Arrow,
though I was a bad guy who inevitably uh found
a conscience and tried to avert. Yeah, it was a
good death though my old man had a real problem
with that, so did my kid, that Christian Slater had
whipped my button. What scene would we be able to see?
(30:40):
Your your game face? I did a lot of lurking
in the background, John travolts to start, They said I
had eight lines I got away with. I think I
have maybe nine. Weren't you supposed to get killed off
in that movie? Or killed off? Yeah? John wu was
very kind to me. I was supposed to be there
for four weeks, and my wife had her game face
(31:02):
on when I called her and told her I wouldn't
be home for another three months. It was a long movie.
How come you got they didn't. They decided to let
you live because you were doing n John. I had
never been on a movie set, had never taken an
acting lesson. And I said to my wife, I said,
this is the biggest scam I've pulled off yet. I mean,
it's just remarkable that I'm here. I'm sitting in a
(31:23):
careerium with John Travolta in a car and uh, we
do the first scene we're doing together, and he says, hey,
that was pretty good. He said, what have you done before?
I said nothing? And he said, well, where did you study?
I said I haven't. I said, I'm studying right now.
I'm watching you. But like I said, you draw from
you draw from other people. Uh. He seemed pretty good.
So I'll try to do what he does. Why do
(31:45):
you want to be an actor? Now? It's another challenge.
It's something to either succeed at or fail. You need
that fix. I need that fix. I need the fix
of another challenge. You know. The broad casting was a
challenge to me, and I wanted to gwin and I
wanted to be I knew what I wanted to do.
I wanted to be in the studio. I didn't want
(32:07):
to be doing games. I wanted to be in the studio.
I wanted to have the opportunity to be on camera
and succeed in that that aspect of television work. And
then I knew I wanted to be in the movies.
I want to be in the movies since I was
a kid. Though my life has been just a ride
and and I don't necessarily know where it's going. But
I'm I'm enjoying the ride. I never know. I didn't
(32:29):
ask to be in the movies. I didn't ask to
be in the NFL. I didn't ask to go into broadcasting.
That was the only thing I ever really wanted to
do was be in the movies. What's the toughest thing
about being an actor? The toughest? Is it memorizing your lines?
Or is it, you know, being able to like if
we were doing a scene right now and you had
to cross. The thing for me is probably And this
(32:53):
sounds simple, but it's the time commitment. It's being away
from home that's the hardest thing. Trying to Allen's family,
the television and and the film men to have a
window to work between January and a little bit into
September maybe, And that's my window. Looks like next next January,
I'll do one film, and then right away in June,
(33:15):
I'll do another film, and then I'll go right into
flying across the country twenty two times. Have you going
to any school or anything now to learn about acting?
As anybody that you're going to let Strasburg. This is
a funny story. The acting coach I go to I
go to do Broken Arrow and uh, let's acting coach
they sent, and she walked up and introduced herself. High,
(33:36):
I'm so and so, and I'm here to work with
the actors and you know, for some of it, because
there's a lot of some tough scenes in this movie.
And I'm thinking to myself, I'm looking around. Here's John Travolta,
here's Christian Slater. Who is she gonna be working with
with me? She's trying to make me feel like she's
here to work with everybody, But I mean, I'm sure
she's going by John Travolta's room and working with him
(33:58):
at night. So not only that, she calls me up
and we finally we're going to go over this big
scene where I called back to the base with a
fake distress call and UH tell him the nuclear one
of the nuclear weapons has been opened up and uh.
We talked for an hour and before we do it,
I'm thinking myself, I'm hungry. My wife's down in the
room with the kids. I want to go see it.
Are we ever going to do this? This is an
(34:19):
acting coach. So I finally do the scene and she
says to me, where'd you feel that? I said? Uh?
I said I felt it in my I guess in
my head. She said, I felt it in my stomach.
It was it was like no, wait, wait, wait, it
gets a better rays of sunshine. We're pouring out of
every pore in my body. I'm sitting there. Could everything
(34:39):
I could do. I said, if the boys could see
me now, But that was it, and and then I
went and did the scene the next day. It was
the first days shot, and I guess the studio felt
confident that I could maybe pull it off. And I
never saw her again. Have you ever been hurt in
any scenes we've been making a movie. Yeah, the two
(35:00):
scenes in Broken Arrow, I had a problem. Uh. There
was one scene where I was between box cars on
a train shooting. That's where they blow you out of
the side of the train. No, that I did that too,
But that didn't hurt that much. It's just a ratchet.
It's like you're standing here and then you're back there
in a split second. It's like a fun ride. But
we're on We're in between the train and I'm riding
(35:21):
on the ladder and I'm shooting at a helicopter with
machine gun and the train goes into a tunnel. The
tunnel knocks me off the ladder. I fall to the
other ladder, and I kept having to fall hanging on
my left shoulder. My left shoulder shot, so that hurt.
But then did you tell anybody that hurt or take
because they were having lighting problems going from exterior to
(35:42):
interior tunnel. I said, if you don't get it this time,
we're done. You know, that was the only time I
wriped the whole film. But then when you feel sort
of funny about that, this big tough football player, and
then you're to do something, you say, oh, I can't
do it. Well, I'll tell you what that shoulder boy,
it's it's held together with glue and sticks. Or how
about the new movie Firestorm? Ah, yes, Firestorm. Howe's new
(36:04):
movie which was released I'll try to follow me here.
He played a firefighter trying to rescue civilians from a
forest fire, Only there were these escaped convicts also in
the fire, pretending to be fireman, searching for thirty seven
million dollars and stolen cash that was for some reason
buried in the forest. Or they're just who happened to
(36:25):
be a raging fire. I'm assuming that how he saved
the day, foiled the bad guys and got the girl.
But full disclosure, I never saw it. Of course, knowing
Steve Sable, he probably did. This was how his first
and ultimately only leading role. Two years later he started
Three Thousand Miles to Graceland, you know, the one with
Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner playing Elvis impersonators planning to
(36:48):
rob a casino. Iced Tea was in that movie too.
That was probably a really fun set to be on.
But back to Steve and Howie talking about Firestorm broke
two ribs on that. Do you ever break rib is
playing football? Never? And it was never brought. It was
a very unique thing. I've broken everything by my ribs.
And what what was happening is we're up in Vancouver
(37:09):
and it was getting late in the year. We were
over time, and you know, the snow was coming down.
It's like two in the morning and the lake waters
thirty eight degrees and we're I'm supposed to run down
this dock and dive in this lake after the girl
and do all this. And they kept having a blow
towards the dock because they were getting some black ice,
you know, And so I hit a patch of black ice,
and I've got an axe attached to my waist because
(37:32):
I'm a smoke jumper, a firefighter, forest firefighter. I flipped
up in the air and the axe handle hits the
ground first and drives the axe head up into my ribs,
So I break the two ribs. Did you know that
when that happened that I couldn't breathe at first? Obviously
was like taking a good I get the wind knocked
and I forgot to be fine, So I got to
(37:53):
try to do it again. And that scene I'm yelling,
I couldn't even open up my mouth. You have a problem,
you know, with your lines. You have to study the
night action movie. So what do you have? Like a
page or two? You know it's significantly No. If I
(38:13):
have a love scene, pan back to the house, there
would be an action film taking place right in there.
Married an Italian girl from Jersey. They don't play that.
So now what's after Firestorms? I just signed on to
do a picture with Morgen Creek called Field Test, which
is kind of the Dirty Dozen meets Predator on steroids.
(38:39):
Now what do you play? I'm the lead made military
guy who goes into this island on a test mission
and against this mutant that the government has invented for
jungle warfare evidence and our troops and they try to
(39:00):
come up with this ultimate killing machine, and unbeknownst to us,
it's we're part of the test. Have you ever met
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, Now, how much bigger are you than
he is? I don't know. You know, everyone seems to
be the same. I don't look at people as being oh,
he's five eight or he's five he's he's about six
(39:20):
ft tall. I'd say, so, it's Arnold Schwarzeneger about my height. No,
you're taller than Arnold, I would say that, But he
has much bigger arms. He looks good. But do you
ever see yourself in that kind of I don't think
Arnold's ever had a chiefe steak HOGI No, Arnold's good.
(39:42):
You know the thing that's and and everything about Arnold Schwartzeneger.
The most impressive thing about Arnold Schwarzenegger is in here.
Very bright man, very astute businessman. I think he owns
half a Santa Monica. When when you're done some of
the movie scenes, is or anything about doing the movies
now that you can relate to being in professional football.
(40:03):
Some of the discipline, the organization, or certain things that
are the same, or is it just totally things that
people in that industry feel that are demanding and difficult
are like a walk through on a Wednesday in football.
So football for me has been a great measuring stick
(40:24):
for just what hard work is. Ah. Sure, I can
take a lot of the discipline that I had in
football and translate that into both television and also into movies,
but ah, nowhere near uh, the amount of work that
goes into preparing for a professional football game. You can't
even compare the two if there's no comparison. Okay, that's it.
(40:48):
We got. Well, I'm actually getting the last word here
on the Howie Long Interview because listen, I love the
podcast form, but you do miss out on some visuals.
So I want to tell you what that last scene
look like when Howie and Steve were talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As they're talking about Arnold's arms, Steve was actually flexing
(41:09):
for Howie Long. Now, what many of you may not
know about Steve Sable, And I told you we were
going to learn as much about Steve Sable maybe as
we were about how We Long in this episode. Steve
was a champion bodybuilder in n He was crowned Mr
Philadelphia and the photo of it is still hanging in
his office at NFL Films. Steve's bodybuilding career didn't exactly
(41:31):
take off, just like Howe's movie career didn't turn out
as he probably hoped. Firestorm, as the Rotten Tomatoes critics
consensus put it, quote, failed to ignite Long's career or
anything else for that matter. Ouch, there's no oscar for
him and probably will ever be one, but that's okay
(41:52):
because he's in his twenty season on Fox. He's been
nominated for an Emmy thirteen times, and not long after
this interview is conducted, he won the award for Best
Studio Analyst. Next week, our trip into the Vault find
Steve sitting with the Hall of famer who manned the
middle of the great Chicago Bears defense, Mike Singletary. Thanks
(42:14):
for listening. I hope you'll joined us next time. I'm
Andrea Kramer. Yeah,
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