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Michael O’Keefe is getting candid about what it was like on the set of the hit 1980 movie “Caddyshack.”
During a recent interview with Page Six, the 71-year-old actor shared that there was a lot of cocaine on the set of the classic comedy and claimed the drug was even accounted for in the movie’s budget, with the actor noting, “there was some miscellaneous item.”
“It was the 70s,” he said. “That’s what was happening back then. People were just treating it like it was toothpaste, and you had to do it twice a day to stay healthy.”
The movie was filmed in 1979 and released in 1980, and also starred Ted Knight, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield and was set at the fictional Bushwood Country Club.
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When reflecting on the drug use on set, O’Keefe recalled doing cocaine before filming certain scenes, telling Page Six that when he watches those scenes now, “it was not my favorite memory,” and that he is “not too happy about them.”
“But I can report to you that right after that movie, during that movie, was the last time I ever did anything like cocaine,” he said. “I realized that it was a terrible thing to get involved [with], and like so many things in the drug world, it looked like fun, but in reality, it wasn’t.”
Part of the reason he decided to take a step back from drugs was the death of Doug Kenney, who co-wrote and produced “Caddyshack.”
He called Kenney’s death “a huge wake-up call.” Kenney died at 33 after falling from a cliff in Hawaii in 1980.
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“[He was] one of the most affable, intelligent, funny people in the world. … Was strung out on cocaine, got depressed, and committed suicide,” he said. “It was truly a result of drug addiction, and that was a huge wake-up call.”
Prior to starring in “Caddyshack,” O’Keefe had his breakthrough starring in “The Great Santini,” which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.
He later starred in “Ironweed,” “Frozen River” and, most recently, the Apple TV series “Your Friends & Neighbors,” in which he plays Ron Cooper, the father of Jon Hamm’s Andrew “Coop” Cooper. His most recognizable role remains Danny Noonan in “Caddyshack.”
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“We always talk about how we got lucky young, and didn’t know what we had,” he told Yahoo in July 2020. “As actors, we don’t want to be pigeonholed, so while I was always glad to be in ‘Caddyshack,’ I sometimes wished that people would acknowledge my other work.”
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He added: “But then I had this one experience with a wardrobe designer who told me that her father died of leukemia and for the last six weeks before his death, they would gather as a family and watch ‘Caddyshack.’
That really changed my feelings about what the movie means to people and what it means to me to be a part of it.”
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