Paul Raci: Mas­ter of Reality

It was a long time com­ing, but Paul Raci final­ly received his dues when Dar­ius Marder’s Sound of Met­al was unveiled at the 2020 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. Hav­ing grown up as the hear­ing child of deaf par­ents, and hav­ing bat­tled drug addic­tion and worked with recov­er­ing addicts him­self, it’s fit­ting that the 73-year-old actor’s belat­ed break­through came in a film about a hard-liv­ing rock­er who finds solace in the D/​deaf com­mu­ni­ty after sud­den­ly los­ing his hear­ing. Even more so when you learn that Raci plays in a Black Sab­bath trib­ute band in his spare time.

As both the lead singer of Hands of Doom ASL Rock and a mem­ber of the Deaf West The­atre in Los Ange­les, Raci is used to per­form­ing in Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage on stage. How­ev­er, oppor­tu­ni­ties to do the same on screen have been hard to come by over the course of his 40-year act­ing career, such has been the his­toric lack of D/​deaf rep­re­sen­ta­tion in terms of authen­tic cast­ing and storytelling.

Not that you’ll hear Raci com­plain­ing. He describes the expe­ri­ence of the past year, dur­ing which time he’s been recog­nised by dozens of Amer­i­can awards bod­ies includ­ing the Acad­e­my of Motion Pic­ture Arts and Sci­ences, as ​‘bit­ter­sweet’ due to how often he’s been over­looked. But as we dis­cov­ered when we caught up with Raci to mark Sound of Metal’s home enter­tain­ment release in the UK, he’s hap­py just being in com­mand of his own life.

LWLies: You’ve been act­ing for more than 40 years, but I under­stand that music is your first love?

Raci: As a boy in high school I was real­ly into the Bea­t­les; that was where my love for music start­ed. But it was actu­al­ly before that, when I was about sev­en years old, that my love of music and film came togeth­er. In 1956 Elvis Pres­ley made a movie called Love Me Ten­der, and my moth­er and I went to see it. My moth­er is deaf, and at that time there were no cap­tion­ing or any­thing for movies. But she want­ed to go and see it. So we’re sit­ting in the the­atre togeth­er, and I quick­ly realised that I had to inter­pret the whole movie for my mom. That was my first expe­ri­ence of act­ing, but I didn’t know I was an actor. Then years lat­er I dis­cov­ered that act­ing is a craft that you can actu­al­ly study. I thought that was amazing.

At what point did you start to pur­sue act­ing as a career?

When I got back from Viet­nam. Before Viet­nam, I was play­ing, you know, pop tunes; after Viet­nam I dis­cov­ered heavy met­al, and that whole atti­tude and lifestyle. But at the time I con­nect­ed rock and roll with drugs – I thought to play rock and roll meant you had to take drugs. I was a very imma­ture young man. The lifestyle was lit­er­al­ly killing me, so that’s when I start­ed focus­ing on act­ing. And then I found out that actors do drugs! It was a very steep learn­ing curve. But here I am.

I did a thing called the GI Bill where they paid for me to go into col­lege. And that’s where I dis­cov­ered the act­ing depart­ment. Up until that point, I real­ly only thought of act­ing as just a bunch of pret­ty peo­ple on the screen. But no, it’s a craft. We were study­ing Stanislavs­ki, which is basi­cal­ly method act­ing, and I’ve still retained a lot of that – I still make notes in my scripts the way I learned at college.

How do you feel about Sound of Met­al being hailed as your break­through, giv­en that it’s come so late in your act­ing career?

Well, it’s very sweet, lean­ing toward bit­ter. I mean, I’ve been doing this for years and years and years. But you know, when you decide to become an actor, you take the good and the bad with it. For most of my career, I’ve just enjoyed being in the moment – what­ev­er job I’ve had at the time has been good enough for me. I love work­ing with oth­er actors and direc­tors and meet­ing dif­fer­ent peo­ple in the busi­ness. But to have this hap­pen at this age, it’s strange. I’ve worked in 99-seat the­atres, I’ve done one line in a movie, one line in TV show, so to have this kind of recog­ni­tion now, it is bittersweet.

But maybe if I had had it 20 or 30 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to han­dle it. You know, I had a daugh­ter to raise, I had drug issues I had to get through, addic­tion prob­lems. So the way I look at it, hon­est­ly, is I think this has added 20 years to my life. I feel like I’ve got a lot of stuff to do now. I’ve got a lot of excit­ing projects com­ing up. My phone is ring­ing off the hook. So am I com­plain­ing? No. Am I bit­ter? Maybe a lit­tle. But I’m too busy to care.

Has this expe­ri­ence renewed your love for the craft of acting?

It’s renewed my faith in life. Has it renewed my love of act­ing? I’d have to say no, because I’ve always loved it so much. I could take any role in any pro­duc­tion and just be so excit­ed about it. Noth­ing could ever dimin­ish that.

This role feels tai­lor-made for you, but in years gone by it might have gone to an actor with a big­ger pro­file. Do you feel like you’ve been over­looked in the past?

I have been over­looked many, many times. In Hol­ly­wood specif­i­cal­ly, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone up for a role and been told, ​‘We’re going to go with a name.’ There are many actors out here like myself that get over­looked every day. It’s just the name of the game. You’ve got to keep your head down and keep mov­ing. But if you’re D/​deaf, you’re blind, or D/​deaf and blind, your chances are even more slim. I think that this movie has afford­ed maybe a lit­tle oppor­tu­ni­ty for those peo­ple to break through that.

What do you think needs to hap­pen now in terms of the indus­try com­mit­ting to more equal opportunities?

I don’t know about in gen­er­al, but I can tell you in this case all it took was one man with the balls to do it. Dar­ius Marder. He researched his movie for about 14 years, and many times in that jour­ney peo­ple told him, ​‘You must have a name to get the mon­ey’. He said, ​‘No, I want to make this film my way’. Some­times it’s as sim­ple as one man hav­ing the hutz­pah to say no. And he didn’t just say no, he insist­ed. He was told not to cast me, for exam­ple, but he knew that he need­ed authen­tic­i­ty to tell this sto­ry right.

At what point did you become involved in the project?

I was brought in very late, almost the last minute. When I first got the call, I read the script, and I thought it was just beau­ti­ful. Then I find out it’s a low bud­get movie. I turned the part down. Not because the pay was low, but because they were film­ing in Boston and I live in Los Ange­les – I work here main­ly as a sign lan­guage inter­preter in the court sys­tem – so it made no sense. I have a mort­gage, you know, I can’t be away from my main source of income for too long. So we went back and forth, they bumped up the mon­ey a lit­tle bit. The thing that final­ly con­vinced me was, Dar­ius got on the phone and talked with me like a human being, like a broth­er. I’m kind of a Bud­dhist, he’s a Bud­dhist, we believe the same kind of spir­i­tu­al phi­los­o­phy. If you real­ly want to know the truth, that’s how I real­ly fell in love with the project.

Joe is sort of a men­tor fig­ure to Reuben. Has there ever been some­one in your life who has ful­filled that role for you?

There have been many. My very first men­tor was my first act­ing teacher. When I got out of Viet­nam, I met this gay man who was a pro­fes­sor, and he helped me fall in love with act­ing. He helped me realise that act­ing was a noble pro­fes­sion. So that’s one. And then of course, hav­ing addic­tion prob­lems, I fell in love with cer­tain guys that would show me the way out of that. I myself worked as an inter­preter for D/​deaf addicts, and I remem­ber one woman in an addic­tion pro­gramme who taught me what it was to be sat­is­fied with who you are and to love your­self. So yeah, there have been sev­er­al men­tor fig­ures in my life, and each has played a dif­fer­ent role.

To me, actors have a gar­den that they bring with them. And my gar­den is so rich. I can pull from it all the things I’ve learned, you know, from cer­tain men­tors, cer­tain expe­ri­ences, peo­ple that I’ve men­tored that still call me for sup­port. I have a gar­den that’s deep and rich, and I’m very grate­ful and blessed to be able to bring that with me on stage or on a film set. The more you expe­ri­ence, the rich­er your gar­den becomes. That’s the way I look at it.

Let’s talk about your music. Are you per­form­ing at the moment?

It’s been hard since everything’s been shut down, but we’re start­ing to book clubs now. So we’ve been rehears­ing, and you know, we’re tight as ever right now. I can’t wait to get up on that stage and play music for peo­ple again soon. You would love it. I have a head­set on; I’m singing Sabbath’s lyrics and I’m doing Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage at the same time. At our shows there’ll be 30 or 40 D/​deaf peo­ple mixed in with the reg­u­lar head­bangers, so you have peo­ple singing ad jump­ing around and oth­er peo­ple singing back at me. It brings a great aware­ness to hear­ing peo­ple to see D/​deaf peo­ple enjoy­ing the music like that. And believe me, D/​deaf peo­ple love Black Sabbath.

Do you play a full reper­toire or just the ear­ly stuff?

We do the first eight albums, all Ozzy stuff, three or four songs from each of them. I’m a Dio fan, too, but we don’t do any Dio. I have to be a bit more sen­si­ble nowa­days though, because after doing two hours of Sab­bath songs I’m exhaust­ed. I’m 73, you know. But I take care of myself.

Sound of Met­al is avail­able to Down­load & Keep and own on Blu-ray now.