Let’s get this out of the way. Actor David DeLuise is the son of the great comic actor and Palisadian Dom DeLuise, and he has a striking family resemblance: that robust laugh! Anybody familiar with Dom DeLuise”frequent film foil to Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder; the Pavarotti of broad comedy” knows he has that heartiest of Italian laughter: huge, hoarse and alive. Likewise, Dom’s son has it, and he’s equally generous with it. But David DeLuise is also very much his own man in Hollywood, quietly racking up a nice resum’. The 37-year-old is a regular on the hit show ‘Wizards of Waverly Place,’ on the Disney Channel, otherwise known as the great incubator of teen hysteria such as ‘Hannah Montana’ and ‘High School Musical.’ Today at 5 p.m., DeLuise will star opposite Tom Arnold and Nicole Eggert in ‘Christmas Proposal,’ a new Lifetime movie, while the 2003 romantic comedy ‘BachelorMan,’ flaunting DeLuise’s lead comic-acting chops, is now on DVD. ‘I’m a big fan of hers,’ DeLuise says of his ‘BachelorMan’ co-star, Missi Pyle (‘Harold & Kumar Escape From Guant’namo Bay’). ‘She is so funny and talented and tall. When we took a break, I brought an apple-box stool so that I could be that much taller than she.’ In ‘BachelorMan,’ DeLuise leads a game cast that includes multi-hyphenate Rodney Lee Conover, who co-wrote the script. It’s directed by John Putch, with whom DeLuise has collaborated on three films. ‘The nice thing is we shot it on video,’ DeLuise says of the film, which includes animated segues. ‘That let us just go and be crazy and do whatever. A lot of those real moments made the film.’ DeLuise grew up with brothers Peter and Michael (also actors) in the Palisades Riviera, ‘a block away from the country club,’ and his father served as the town’s honorary mayor from 1984 to 1986. ‘We all were all in the Fourth of July parade,’ DeLuise recalls. ‘We got good parking: that was the best part.’ He used to skateboard around his junior high, Paul Revere Middle School, and he says that he ‘survived’ his ‘Less Than Zero’-esque years at Palisades High (class of ’89), during which time he attended seven funerals. ‘Some rich folks like to get crazy because they get bored,’ he says, alluding to the drugs- and alcohol-related misadventure he had witnessed. But DeLuise adds, ‘I loved growing up in the Palisades because it was a small town. It resembles that now, but it’s just not the same. On the Alphabet streets, you need a million dollars just to tear something down.’ DeLuise was married until August 2003. Ironically, he notes, ‘when I shot ‘BachelorMan,’ I was very much the married man. As soon as the film was done, I became the Bachelor Man.’ He has a girlfriend now, but at the time, he got a crash course in L.A.’s dating world (‘It’s a weird scene out there!’). Today, he resides in West Hollywood with daughters Riley (who attends PaliHi), 15, and Dylan, 11. In ‘Wizards,’ DeLuise plays Jerry, Wizard Class instructor and dad to the Russo kids, who just happen to be wizards-in-training. Sort of a ‘Suite Life of Zack & Cody’ meets ‘Harry Potter.’ DeLuise loves his TV work schedule because he can wrap up by 2 p.m. in time to pick up his kids. ‘They feign interest in what I’m doing,’ DeLuise half-jokes about his daughters’ take on Dad’s profession. David DeLuise knew early on that he would take up his father’s meti’r. But being a DeLuise doesn’t guarantee success, and sometimes David has to transcend typecasting. ‘I did a movie that was a dramatic piece, a serious movie”Throwing Stars”’about four guys and where they are now. The joke is they changed the title to ‘Where’s My Monkey?’ and marketed it as a black comedy [writer’s note: it was re-titled ‘Who’s Your Monkey?’]. It was silly [the way they re-titled it]. I was very proud of that film. ‘It’s a positive and it’s a negative,’ DeLuise continues of being the son of a recognizable actor. ‘Getting a great table at a restaurant because Dad is famous is nice, but then you gotta deal with the fans coming up to your father during dinner.’ On the plus side: ‘I’ve never ever been on a set where someone hasn’t walked up to me and told me a story about their experience working with my dad, which makes me comfortable.’ Of course, the elder DeLuise only played in some of the funniest movies ever made, from Brooks’ ‘The Twelve Chairs’ and ‘Blazing Saddles,’ to Wilder’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother’ and ‘World’s Greatest Lover’ (not to mention the original ‘Muppet Movie’). ‘I was able to watch my dad work with Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner,’ DeLuise says. ‘We got to go on the set of ‘Cannonball Run’ and we got to meet Jackie Chan. It was pretty amazing.’ Dom even stuck his sons in the drama ‘Fatso.’ ‘My brothers and I appeared at the end,’ DeLuise says of the 1980 film, directed by Brooks’ wife, Anne Bancroft. ‘She was the classiest lady in the world,’ he says of the late actress. DeLuise grew up socializing with Brooks and Bancroft’s son, Max Brooks, a writer whose cult-hit book, ‘World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War,’ will be adapted to film by Brad Pitt’s production company. ‘Max wrote a book when he was 13,’ DeLuise says. ‘I was so blown away that he was able to do that at such a young age.’ DeLuise’s father is one of Burt Reynolds’ longtime best friends and frequent co-stars (‘The End,’ ‘Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,’ the ‘Cannonball Run’ movies). Back in the 1980s, before people had home theaters, Reynolds invited the DeLuise family to the one in his Beverly Hills home. ‘I know we saw ‘Gandhi’ there,’ DeLuise recalls Brooks, Bancroft, and Carl Reiner were encouraging of DeLuise’s early career. Brooks cast DeLuise in 1993’s ‘Robin Hood: Men in Tights,’ opposite a green Dave Chappelle. ‘He was so cool and so much fun to work with,’ DeLuise says of Chappelle, with whom he worked with again five years later on a sitcom vehicle for the controversial African-American comedian. ‘I played Leroy Jackson. I was the token white guy. Peter Tolland was the other creator with David [Chappelle]. It was Dave’s 13th pilot. [Chappelle] told me, ‘If this one doesn’t go, I’m out of TV, I don’t want to do it anymore.’ The network was telling [Chappelle], ‘We need more white characters.’ And he’s like, ‘Why?’ I was like, ‘Why challenge a comic genius like Dave Chappelle?” Chappelle went on to bigger things, despite this pilot not being picked up. In light of the comedian’s enormous talent, ‘it was nice to see Dave humble himself and play the guy starting out,’ DeLuise observes. DeLuise’s long-term goal? Top-lining comedies in the Jim Carrey/Adam Sandler vein. ‘It looks like they’re having so much fun,’ he says. ‘If the comedy movies of today are pushing the line, I’m in.’ At least one Palisadian could make DeLuise’s dream happen. Hear that, Mr. Apatow? New episodes of ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’ air Sundays at 8:30 p.m. on Disney Channel.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
