Meet Bill LeVasseur, aka Staff Sergeant Mothershead

You know Bill LeVasseur, you just don't know you know him. If you've seen "Standards of Ethical Conduct", you know Bill as Staff Sergeant Mothershead.



However, even if you haven't seen Standards of Ethical Conduct, you know Bill. I guarantee it. Remember these Coors ads?



If you somehow missed those, perhaps you've seen him sell Dish Network, or as a Dish customer, you've seen him help you with your remote.



Or, if you're a fan of Crash (the TV series), perhaps you saw Bill get his ass chewed by Dennis Hopper.



See, you recognize Bill now right?

I met Bill when I was a producer of "Spotless", where he played a cold-blooded hitman named Jackson Hash. When it came time to shoot Standards, he was one of the actors I had in mind, and he knocked out the role of Staff Sergeant Mothershead. And no, that's not some made-up character name, although it sounds like one. That's the real name of the guy that let us borrow his uniform for the movie. Since you can see the name written on the uniform, we changed the character name to match. So there is a real Staff Sergeant Mothershead, and if he is out there, thank you for the uniform!

It makes me wonder though, since our last names are mostly related to what our ancestors did. You know, a blacksmith become Smith or the guy who ran the grain mill became Miller. Let's hope that "Mothershead" wasn't earned in the same way. Anyway, I digress.

Since we had much of the same crew on Standards as we did on Spotless, Bill was familiar to all, which gave us some entertaining moments on set. Boom operators are often the target of on-set hijinks, as they wear headphones attached to their boom mic with the volume turned way up so that they can pick up any sound that might ruin a take. So you might abruptly talk real loud or make a fake hissing sound to mess with them. Or, some folks just like to tap on their mic to piss them off. In this clip, the foul mouthed boom operator is played by Patrick Hackett.




You can read more about Bill at his website, billlevasseur.com, check out his profile at IMDB, and see him as host of the Vail Film Festival.