“Bozo is my hero,” David Arquette said on a chilly Sunday morning as he spray-painted a red frisbee-sized circle on a brick wall of a warehouse in Bushwick, Brooklyn. “We want to release this clown.”
Mr. Arquette, 50, who used to run with a graffiti team in Los Angeles, was dressed a bit clown in a Bozo trucker cap, Mickey Mouse vans and white jeans with a pair of pink tiger-stripe wrestling leotards. put the finishing touches on the performance of Bozo the Clown, six feet tall.
These days Bozo is not only Mr. Arquette’s muse, but also his business. Earlier this year, Mr. Arquette, who is the youngest member of the Arquette cast clan, received the rights to the character who was once billed as “the most famous clown in the world” from the Larry Harmon estate, who popularized the character.
“We must first help rehabilitate the clown image,” said Mr. Arquette, stepping back from the painting and pursing his lips in approval. “I want to help bring back the good clowns and change the discourse. You know, help people understand that being stupid is cool. “
In his opinion, the clowns were unfairly slandered. “There is a lot of negative history,” said Mr. Arquette. “There was a Poltergeist. There was Stephen King and It. This was a real problem. And then the Joker and Krusty the Clown. “
“Clowns,” he added, “are reflections of society. And now the scary clown seems to be where we are. “
He would like to bring Bozo back to television. Various children’s TV shows featuring a clown in a red wig have been going on for decades. For a moment, he almost managed to bring Bozo to life at Empire Circus, a new interactive carnival adventure that was due to open at Empire Stores in Brooklyn this month before supply chain disruptions put it on hold.
In a way, Mr. Arquette sees himself as a test case for the # 1 good clown. “All my humor comes from being the target of a joke,” he said. “All my faults and stuff.”
In the 1990s, he found himself in the celebrity circus thanks to his spectacular performances as Dewey Riley, the adorable albeit quirky alternate in the Scream slasher franchise, and his offscreen role as his charming, albeit quirky, husband, Courteney Cox, co-star Scream “.
Sloppy, awkward and understandable for everyone, he was the perfect anti-Hollywood mascot for Generation X.
Or maybe he was a little over the top Gen X. A Seattle rocker rejection party, Mr. Arquette battled alcohol abuse, made headlines with binge drinking and saw his divorce play out in the tabloids ahead of his second career as a pro wrestler. a move that could undermine his reputation in both professions.
But now he’s back – maybe. In January, Mr. Arquette warms up his character Dewey in the 25th Anniversary reboot of Scream, which also features Miss Cox (now divorced) and Neve Campbell, another original cast to face the new ghostly face. a killer for generation Z.
Remarried, sober and living a quiet life in Nashville, he said he hopes to quickly jump into a film career that mostly comes down to bit parts and voice acting. And this time, Mr. Arquette said, he is emotionally prepared to handle it.
As the younger sibling of five siblings in a fourth-generation acting family that included his sisters Roseanne (Desperately Seeking Susan) and Patricia (True Romance), he was ambivalent about joining the family business. felt like … “Uh, my sisters are doing this, my dad is doing this. I don’t know if I have talent. “
One avenue that seemed open was to play the fool, eventually gaining a reputation for eccentricity in the Scream movies, which are very meta-premise of 80s slashers in their own right.
In retrospect, he said he was emotionally unprepared for the Hollywood look. “I’m socially awkward,” said Mr. Arquette, “so I used to get into a situation and dress very brightly and say, ‘Okay, look at me, talk about me, look at me.’ Or I would drink to be outrageous or different. They were survival mechanisms. “
His departure to the fight was his most outrageous move.
It wasn’t insincere. Mr. Arquette was an eternal fan who made his dream come true after starring in the 2000 wrestling comedy “Ready to Rumble”. it was really a joy to me, ”he said.
However, wrestling fans bristled when the world wrestling champion awarded him the heavyweight title in 2000. His Hollywood agents bristled, too.
As acting began to dry out, he struggled with anxiety and addiction, as he recounted in the 2020 documentary of his wrestling career, You Can’t Kill David Arquette.
The worst moment came when a wrestler named Nick Gage accidentally punched Mr. … was dying.
Since then, his life has improved a little. Mr. Arquette lives with his new wife, Christina McLarty Arquette, film producer and former Entertainment Tonight correspondent, and their two children, Charlie, 7, and Gus, 4.
After he finished spray painting Bozo (with permission from the owner of the building), Mr. Arquette walked around the graffiti-covered area and stopped to admire the street art.
“I haven’t seen anyone, I’m not going out anymore,” said Mr. Arquette, stopping at a lamppost to put on a sticker for the upcoming Scream. “I mean, if you don’t drink and don’t want to date girls, there’s nothing there.”
Rebooting meant working with his ex-wife again. “I mean we are co-parents, so we see each other a lot,” said Mr. Arquette, referring to their 17-year-old daughter Coco. “But when you work with someone with whom you have a certain history, there is a built-in, natural – it is not an action at this point. You are really experiencing emotion and life. “
