FAYETTEVILLE — Easter was much different for former Arkansas basketball manager and Little Rock resident David Horton, who had spent the previous two holidays in Hollywood.
Horton, who worked under former Arkansas coaches Eddie Sutton and Nolan Richardson, appeared in 85 different movies or TV productions during his time in Hollywood.
He worked with actors/actresses such as Al Pacino, Leo DeCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margo Robbie, Jim Carrey, Michael Douglas, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Sandra Bullock, Sarah Paulson, Ice-T, Jay Leno, Fran Drescher and Timothy Olyphant, and directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Jennifer Lynch and Helen Hunt.
He also managed to have bit parts in two Academy Award 2020 Best Picture nominated movies in Once Upon a Time and Ford vs. Ferrari and also was in the movies Birdbox, Deadwood and Greater, the movie about late Arkansas football player Brandon Burlsworth.
“To me in a way, it was kind of similar to what we were doing as basketball managers,” Horton said. “Quentin Tarantino, Jennifer Lynch and Helen Hunt were all great directors that I got to work with and they were kind of like Coach Sutton and Coach Richardson, and Leo and Brad Pitt were like (former Razorback players) Joe (Kleine) and Charles (Balentine). They were the stars, but I was still in the background and had an important role to do.”
He also got work on television shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, This is Us, NCIS, Super Store, In Ice Cold Blood, Fresh Off The Boat, S.W.A.T., Mom, The Kaminsky Method, Timeless, Glow, Booksmart, Black-Ish and many others.
“So many great memories of that,” Horton said. “I think my two happiest times of my life were those three years at the UA and the two years out in Hollywood.”
Horton had always wanted to be involved in the entertainment industry, but it took a series of unfortunate events to actually chase that dream.
“I guess from an early age I always had an interest in acting and really the whole process of telling a story,” Horton said. “I always wanted to be involved in some way either in front or behind the camera, just some part of the whole story telling process.
“It was something I had always had in the back of mind, but kind of figured I had gotten past that point. But some events that happened in rapid-fire succession there in late 2016 led me to doing something totally different.
“I went through a divorce for a second time, went through an arrest and spent a couple of nights in jail and lost my job about eight months after that. It was kind a series of unfortunate events, but I think everything had a reason looking back on it. It all kind of worked out.
“I had a great job, but I was miserable, overworked and overstressed and not very happy. So I just decided to take a chance and do something fun for a while and something I wanted to do.”
It just so happened that Horton’s youngest son Will was headed to Hollywood to go to attend music school.
“He went to and graduated from Musicians Institute Music School,” Horton said. “He is a guitar player and a singer and has a band. So we were kind of pursuing our dreams at the same time while sharing a tiny apartment in an apartment building and trying to make it work on a tight budget in L.A.”
The tiny apartment did have a great locale.
“We were on the eighth floor of this apartment building right on Hollywood Boulevard,” Horton said. “We lived directly behind the Dolby Theater, where they have the Oscars every year, and Grauman’s Chinese Theater, which is obviously a very iconic Hollywood landmark. Every day when I would take a walk, it would through the lobby of the Dolby Theater.
“And when I would wake up in the morning, I could look out the window and see the Hollywood sign. That was always just kind of surreal. It didn’t matter to me that I was living on a budget or that I went from a really good income to not making much money at all, especially those first few months there.”
Horton said the cost of living in Hollywood vs. Arkansas was a wide gap.
“I went from a six-figure income and living in Arkansas, where the cost of living is cheap, to living in L.A. on what was only a six-figure income if you count the two decimal points, and it is a high cost of living,” Horton said.
“But the experience of getting to do that and work around people that you have always admired how they are at their craft was just an awesome experience.”
Horton, who returned home to Arkansas in late 2019 after two years of acting, still gets a lot of shoutouts and screenshots from friends who see him in one of the 85 productions.
“I still see some things occasionally and watch some shows that I worked on,” Horton said. “It is always fun to see how they turned out and see how much I was really involved in the whole process and then how little I was involved in the final cut. Sometimes that can be a little frustrating, but it is fun to see how it turns out.
“I also have people who will send me a screenshot occasionally of something that they are watching that I am on.”
Getting started in Hollywood in your 50s is not easy, but Horton seemed to find a niche while playing a lot of cop or detective roles.
“I signed with every casting agency that I could and got a booking service that would submit me for jobs,” Horton said. “I learned how to audition and took as much background work as I could through Central Casting. You don’t have any lines, you are just reacting to the main actors in the scene. I did a lot of that and then auditioned and move on to the bigger roles as they came along.
“I did a lot of background stuff and that was what I really enjoyed as much as anything. I don’t really care for the whole audition stuff. I did it and I got some parts. I have copies of them and I will probably do my best to keep it hid so nobody else will ever see it.
“I remember one of the first things I did was for a film school, who have some very talented people. I played a guy who robbed a bank and got shot and killed at the end. It was great fun.”
He also got a chance to appear in the movie Creatress as an agency executive, which allowed him to get a different view of actress Fran Drescher.
“One of the bigger things I first worked on was a movie that Fran Drescher was in,” Horton said. “I had a scene with Fran sitting across the desk from each other and there were a couple of other people in the office. She turned out to be super great and just fun and a wonderful lady.
“I had always not liked her and didn’t like The Nanny because of the way she laughed. I just kept looking and her and I couldn’t get that laugh out of my head. But in between takes, she was teasing them because they would have to come in and pat down the back of my head because the camera was on her and I was sitting in front of her.
“They were always doing that and she was teasing me about that and we got to teasing each other and she would start laughing. I was thinking ‘oh, no, I cannot be making her laugh’ but she was great.”
He was dubbed as a “frighten pedestrian” in Birdbox with Sandra Bullock and Sarah Paulson.
“I went from that to working on Birdbox with Sandra Bullock and I spent five days running for my life while things were blowing up and cars were wrecking,” Horton said. “I was just supposed to be running and looking scared and not running into Sandra Bullock.
“After that I was pretty much hooked and I thought I want to do this forever. I had one scene with her that was pretty stressful because Sandra and Sarah Paulson were in a vehicle. They wrecked the car and were in the middle of the street and a garbage truck hit Sarah Paulson and we are trying to run back and forth in front of them with the camera basically only seeing the bottom part of us.
“You had very little room to work with and you didn’t want to go one way because the garbage truck was coming that way and traffic was going the other way and behind you was all the camera and crew and the other side was Sandra and Sarah and you didn’t want to run into them. It was really stressful, but fun, too.”
Horton is clear about his favorite time in Hollywood.
“Once Upon A Time was far and away my favorite week in Hollywood,” Horton said. “I worked Monday through Friday on that, sitting in a restaurant. It was totally a background role. I remember getting booked for that and I went to my fitting for the movie, which was set in 1969.
“I didn’t know what it was at the time because it had a different name and they weren’t letting anything out or who was directing it. After my fitting, I got a message that said, 'Your pictures for your fitting will be sent to our director Quentin Tarantino, who will decide where he wants to use you in the scene.’ I was like, 'Man, that is cool.’"
He would end up being a scene with Pacino and DiCaprio.
“I end up sitting at the table right behind Leo and Al Pacino in a scene in the restaurant,” Horton said. “That was a quite a week there.
“Tarantino is amazing and now I know why he is so good. He sees everything and everything is like he wants it to be. No matter where you are in that scene, he’ll give you a backstory.”
Tarantino would chat with Horton each morning.
“He would come up to me every morning and be like, 'OK, do you remember your backstory?,’” Horton remembered. “‘You are a Hollywood agent, you are big-time, you are going to hang out and have a couple of drinks and maybe close one more deal. Then you are going to go to the bar across the street, eat, have a couple more drinks and have a night on the town.’
“He wanted you to be living that character. It comes across that way.”
Being opposite Pacino was a surreal moment for Horton.
“I was in awe of Al Pacino because he is just so great, just a great, great actor,” Horton said. “So we have done a part of this scene for I don’t know how many times, but we are going to take a break and do one more.
“In between they have to touch everything up, put your plate back where it was, fill you glass back up to where it was because you have to do everything the same way again.
“I have a hair person, a make up person blotting me, the other person making my plate making sure my baked potato making sure it is back to where it was and my drink is back to the same level.
“I kind of glance over and see that Leo has one person working with him and Pacino’s got one person working with him and I am thinking ‘hey, three crew members taking care of me and just one on them. I know there is a little bit of difference in salary here, but hey, you know, maybe I am kind of important.”
But then came the moment went Horton whacked Pacino.
“As soon as we break, I am getting ready to go to the restroom and they have these doors you push open that are like saloon doors…they close behind you quickly,” Horton said. “I push the door open and don’t see anybody else, but one of the production assistants was walking toward me and I open it for her, she kind of shakes her head no and keeps walking. All of a sudden I see her eyes get real big. Turns out Al Pacino was turning the corner and I let the doors slam right on him.
“She is in shock and I’m thinking I have gone from being very important to there is going to be another bald-headed man sitting in my seat right after lunch eating a baked potato. He doesn’t say much and I am saying, ‘I am so sorry,' and he says, 'It's OK,' and just keeps walking.”
Horton thought he was about to get fired while he was in the bathroom when Tarantino walked in.
“It’s one stall and one urinal and I am standing there and the next thing I know Quinten comes in and he is standing behind me and I am thinking, 'He is not even going to let me finish taking a leak before he fires me,’” Horton remembered. “But he just waited his turn and I washed my hands and went back to my table.
“Leo comes out and gets to his place and here comes Al coming down the aisle next to me. I am like, 'Don’t make eye contact,' and I am looking at the wall and he almost gets past me, but stops and backs up and says, 'You are still here?’ I almost sunk under the table, but he gave me a wink and laughed.”
Horton’s memory bank just kept getting filled.
“I worked on the Kaminsky Method so I was sitting in a church scene watching Michael Douglas, just an amazing monologue and Jay Leno was in the scene and coming around joking with us during takes. That was cool.
“Jim Carrey is one of my all-time favorite people and I got to work with him. It was another restaurant scene where I got to work with him. It was his show Kitty on Showtime.
“It was actually a two-part scene, the first part that was really serious so he wasn’t really cutting up at all or doing any joking around.
“But it’s the same restaurant, suppose to be with the same people, but I actually had a different date. She looked like the same girl, but was way too young for me anyway.
“Somehow I got matched up with these great dates. This one was more funny and he was doing some more of his over the top stuff. He had me laughing so hard, but the harder I would laugh he would try to make me laugh harder in between scenes. Just a really fun time and a great guy.
“I also got to work on Ford vs. Ferrari and had one scene where Matt Damon and I end up next to each other and in another I got to watch Christian Bale work and he was just amazing.”
He had previously worked with Bale on the movie Vice in which Bale played former Vice President Dick Chaney.
“He walked into the room and I could swear it was Dick Chaney,” Horton said. “He goes all in. Nobody said a word to him. You left him alone, but on the set of Ford vs. Ferrari, he was laid back and had a good time with us.”
While Horton was enjoying his time in Hollywood, he felt it was time to go all in or do something else.
“It was kind of that moment where I was going to kind of dig in and do more than just background and do more auditioning, and I would have been OK with that, it appealed to me in some ways and didn’t in others,” Horton said. “But also my parents are getting older and they have both dealt with healthy issues so it was time to think about that as well.”
He felt like he got a sign from God on which way to go.
“I was sitting in Hollywood United Methodist Church one morning and just thinking, 'Whatever I need to do here, just give me a sign and I’ll go anywhere, do anything. I am already just more blessed than I should be,’” Horton said.
“That night I got a text from an old friend of mine that owns Kerr Paper and Supply in Little Rock. He was an old customer of mine in my old job and they had a rep that was retiring here that had a good territory and a super good guy that I had worked with before and he said, 'Just think about it and if you are interested in coming back, we would love to have you.’
“So I said, ‘Well, maybe that’s my sign.’ I just kind thought about it for the next week or two and thought this is what I need to do. Since then, I have never looked back as far as that goes. It’s been good to be close to family, especially now with the coronavirus. It would have been tough to be stuck out there with nothing going on and my family all here.”
Horton did work out a agreement with his new employer that he could return to Hollywood for the right role.
Horton, an avid Razorback fan, was able to keep up with his favorite team while in Hollywood.
“I completely kept with the Hogs while I was out there and the good thing about the SEC Network and SEC Network-Plus was that I watched every game I could - baseball, football - on set in between takes,” Horton said.
“I was also on the (Hawgs Illustrated/WholeHogSports.com) message board and enjoyed reading everybody and keeping up that way.”
Like most Razorback football fans, it has been a tough several years for him.
“Football was of course frustrating while basketball, it was sad to see (head coach) Mike (Anderson) go, but I understood what kind of went into that and was glad to see him get another great opportunity," he said. "I know he will do well.
“But I am really excited about Eric Musselman and how he promotes the program and just everything that he brings to the table. I think there are going to be a lot of fun times ahead for basketball.”
Horton was thrilled that Sutton was recently elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
“Just absolutely thrilled about that,” Horton said. “I knew he would eventually, but I was so hopeful that it would happen soon and he would get to enjoy it like he should. I hate that it didn’t happen while (late wife) Patsy was still around, but just so thrilled for him.”