(Columbia Pictures)
He was one of the most hate-inspiring movie characters of the 1980s. As the sneering leader of the Cobra Kai in Karate Kid, Billy Zabka was ideally cast as Daniel LaRusso’s bullying teenage nemesis Johnny Lawrence in the classic 1984 film.
Zabka’s portrayal of the blond rich kid jerk worked so well it pretty much became a template for actors in every California based teen movie over the next three decades. In real life, he couldn’t be a nicer guy.
Now 48, Zabka will be in Manhattan on Saturday for The Karate Kid 30th Anniversary screening and panel discussion as part of New York Super Week.
While he’s still acting – he just finished a role in the upcoming indie film Produce and recently played a version of himself in the final season of How I Met Your Mother – most of his work these days is behind the camera. Zabka was nominated for an Oscar in 2004 as a producer on the short film Most and recently produced and edited two documentaries on Africa. He’s also directed a number of commercials and music videos, including Rascal Flatts’ “Why Wait.”
Zabka (middle) on ‘How I Met Your Mother’ with Josh Radnor (left) and Neil Patrick Harris (right).
(CBS Broadcasting)
Zabka spoke with For The Win about the 30th anniversary of Karate Kid and how he’s learned to embrace his most famous role.
At what point did you realize that Karate Kid was going to have the cultural impact that it ended up having?
Certainly not during filming. I think really only now. It took 25 years. We did the DVD, a special edition, I think it was 25, where we did the special features on the DVD. Ralph and I did a picture in picture commentary during the film and stuff. It snuck up on us. The movie was out in theaters for six months back in the 80s, which films don’t do these days. They’re in and out in a weekend. It just started to graft into pop culture language in a way. I think it takes this long to realize that it’s here to stay.
How often in your daily life does The Karate Kid come up?
The Karate Kid is clearly playing right now somewhere in the world, probably in many countries in different languages. That’s the one that’s played to fans of the 80s. Back to School is probably next in line. There are a lot of big fans of Just One of The Guys.
Every once in awhile someone will remember me from [National Lampoon’s] European Vacation. Now that The Equalizer has been made into a film I get a little bit of Equalizer stuff [he was on the original TV show]. But clearly The Karate Kid and the character I played in that made the most impact so that’s where I get most of my recognition from.
What’s the strangest Karate Kid fan moment you’ve encountered?
The TSA is always fun. Going through the airport a lot of times they’ll recognize me. I’ve had quite a few encounters. At a lot of Comic-Cons guys will come dressed as Cobra-Kais. Last year I was in Boston hosting a Halloween party and it was the first time since I did the movie that I threw on the skeleton outfit. I walked around Boston like that with some other guys and people dressed in character and we had a lot of fun with that.
Because the film and character are so engrained with fans, is it ever challenging for you to constantly have to revisit this one role? At some point is there an impulse to be like “look, I did that when I was a teenager.”
You can lean either way on that. You could resist it – I did that for awhile. Right after Karate Kid, I ran into other projects. In the years after that, I kind of grew my hair long, I went to guitar school and got out of acting for awhile. Friends of mine that I met around that time, like ten or 15 years after the movie, will remind me today of how I was like “Don’t mention Karate Kid to me.” There was a time of resistance against that, because you want to keep doing new things. It’s like hearing a band and just hearing the same old song over and over. I kind of leaned into it – I did a music video called “Sweep The Leg” with a band called No More Kings.
It was a band that approached me with the song a few years back and I directed this really fun video with the original cast of the movie including Ralph. The feedback from that was one and I had a good time with the image of it. You’ve gotta have fun with it. You can be that artist – I know a lot of them – that are in a crystallized moment in time and they’re resentful of it. I’m not. I think it’s fun. It doesn’t affect my life either way. I’m doing what I want to do and I’m happy with where my life and my career’s gone. I kind of embrace it loosely.
I just did a Comic-Con in Alamo City and the fans are from five to six years old to grandparents. As an artist, to have little kids coming up in karate gi’s at seven years old when they weren’t even a thought back then, that’s really a powerful thing. If you’re an actor and you get lucky enough to be in something that people see, that’s the first thing, but something that makes a cultural impact? How do you resent that in any way?
There’s plenty of iconic lines from Karate Kid. Which one do people yell at you most frequently? I imagine it’s “sweep the leg” or “put him in a bodybag.”
Yeah, add “no mercy” and you’ve got the main three.
You’ll see Ralph and Martin [Kove] this weekend and at similar events. How often are you in touch with other cast members beyond that?
The guys that played all the Cobra Kais are some of my best friends. Marty Kove [who played sensei John Kreese] I see all the time. Rob Garrison, [famous for “put him in a bodybag”] he just came and stayed at my house for a week. Bobby and Jimmy (Ron Thomas and Tony O’Dell) live around the corner from me. I reconnected with Ralph about ten years ago.
[Zabka challenged Garrison, Thomas and O’Dell to do the Ice Bucket Challenge last month]
You played a version of yourself on ‘How I Met Your Mother’. How do you decide if those kinds of roles are worth doing?
On a show like that with that kind of team, you know you’re in good hands. They did some really fun things with me and explored parts of me that hasn’t been seen before in a comedy area. Regardless if I was playing me or a version of me, it was a really great acting job. What I won’t do is just sit there and jump around in a karate gi. There has to be something fun. I get offers and so does Ralph almost every day to do something with somebody’s idea of me as me. I take ‘em really, really selectively. The closest I did was How I Met Your Mother and then played kind of a character in Hot Tub Time Machine that was 80s throwback based.
Were you in favor of the remake?
When you find out they’re remaking a movie you were in, that’s shocking on every level. “I’m old enough to remake a movie I was in?” It was kung fun and in China and it was different. I wasn’t against it, but I certainly wasn’t for it. I went to the premiere of that, which I went because Sony called and all the guys were there. It was fun because I was backstage at the afterparty and Will introduced us to Jaden and he said “I just want you to know we weren’t doing anything disrespectful, it’s an homage to the Karate Kid.” I said, “I get it man, I’m actually doing the same thing with the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”
Are there any movie villain roles or other roles around that time you read for that you would have loved to get?
Tons of roles. I met Oliver Stone for Platoon. I would’ve loved to do that. Me and Chris Penn and Cary Elwes were the last three for Tony Scott’s film Days of Thunder [Elwes got the role of Russ Wheeler). Me and Charlie Sheen were against each other for the final role in Lucas.
Zabka (left) with Elisabeth Shue in ‘Karate Kid.’
(Columbia Pictures)
What do you think the character of Johnny ended up growing up to do?
I think he’s a real estate agent. He’s flipping houses somewhere.
One final sports-related movie question about another one of your big films. In Back to School, how did they shoot the final triple lindy scene with Rodney Dangerfield?
Obviously there was a double and the double was a real diver. He came out in prosthetics and he was just so padded. Rodney was so offended by how fat this guy was. “I’m ugly, but I’m not that ugly,” he said and literally walked off the set. He was offended by what he looked like. “I don’t look like that!” Well, actually, you kinda do.
They did that in pieces. The close up shots of Rodney doing the fart under his arm and my thing where I’m doing a handstand wasn’t even at a pool. We did that out in the middle of a desert somewhere with a camera pointing into a blue sky. There wasn’t even water underneath, just a big pad below us. How he did the jumping back and forth was on real springboards, but I think they cut between the boards. I don’t think he actually jumped from one board to another, it was all editing. He was a great diver and gymnast I think, but movie magic was how they did that really.
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