Mark and Brian Get Bits From Kurt Russell [Arizona Daily Star/May 15/1996/US] By Fred Shuster


Radio wackos Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps have another of what they call their "concerned onlooker" roles coming up on the big screen.

The syndicated dynamic due, heard weekdays from 6 - to 10 a.m. on 104.1-FM in Tucson, have filmed a bit part in Escape From L.A., director John Carpenter's sequel to his 1981 flick, Escape From New York.

In the futuristic thriller, starring Kurt Russell and set for August release, Thompson and Phelps play two evil military policemen who hold guns on Russell as he boards a submarine.

"We call them 'concerned onlookers' roles because we're always in the background," Mark and Brian said last week. "Even if they offer us speaking lines, we don't take them."

The radio team has appeared incognito in about 40 movie and TV shows, including an episode of Cheers, Rocky V and a Star Trek film in which they played Lizard People.

"We're in the new thing for basically four seconds," Mark and Brian joked.

Russell, a longtime friend of the radio show, had wanted to book Mark and Brian's appearance in the movie for weeks, but because filming took place during the wee hours, the radio show duo - who must rise each weekday at 4 a.m. for their show - couldn't make it.

"On the very last day of shooting, which was a day shoot, Kurt really wanted it to happen," Mark and Brian said.

The filming took place at a warehouse in the City of Industry.

"We were there for six hours," Mark and Brian said. "Kurt worked it so we could arrive in time to have lunch with him and the crew before we filmed. It took three hours for the shoot, but then Kurt had us wash his car."