Showbusiness is notorious for seeing youthful performers as easily disposable. Yet Patricia Arquette and Matt Dillon began as teenagers and endured. The latest evidence: Their wacky, comically drug-addled “High Desert” series, streaming Wednesday on AppleTV+.
To what do they credit their durability, longevity and sustained interest so many years later?
“I’m gonna say, first of all, good luck,” Arquette, seated next to Dillon for a Zoom interview, began. “Second of all, choosing good other talent to work with.
“Even though Matt was a heartthrob, he didn’t go for that clean, clear leading man, the obvious thing. And I didn’t go for that either. I always wanted messy, complicated parts, interesting stories. When you only commit to that leading lady-leading man thing it’s a dead-end road.”
“For me, I always believed in myself,” Dillon, 59, began. “I wasn’t interested in fame; I was really interested in work. Doing good work. That can be frustrating at times.
“Because I didn’t become an actor because I wanted to be known, I didn’t have that exhibitionistic kind of wanting to perform. It was more about what you could do, what you could transmit. There was something powerful from the very beginning for me to see characters that I recognized, that were real.
“Which is why I like this show — because that’s was this is. This is authentic — that was important to me. And I think that’s maybe my greatest strength: my curiosity.”
“High Desert” has enough drugs – uppers, downers, hallucinogens – it could just as easily be called “Desert High.” Arquette’s Peggy is an addict working in a low-rent tourist “Wild West Show.” She’s tripping when she visits her husband Denny (Dillon) in prison.
“In Peggy and Denny’s history, there is a struggle,” Arquette, 55, offered. “When you’re struggling with addiction, there’s also a struggle with honesty, with living by life’s rules, by society’s rules, the things that make your life and society work well.
“So Peggy’s creating her own little rules for the way things go. Running away from and trying to numb her pain. At the end of the day when you look at addicts, you often look at a real, vulnerable person underneath who doesn’t have the skill set to deal with their vulnerability.”
“The show tells it like it is. It doesn’t glorify these characters’ behavior,” Dillon said. “But we laugh because there’s a lot of human nature in there that is really funny. They basically created the characters, let the characters who are also their own worst enemies run with the story. Anything can happen then.
“As an actor you can’t ask for more than that – a great character to sink your teeth into.”