By now you’ve seen those famous neanderthals. The surly-looking bunch with protruding brows and mangy hairstyles combed into place with rocks. Authentically Pleistocene from the neck up, their clothes and lifestyles project a more modern and hip sensibility.
They’re the Geico Cavemen. Typical urban thirty-somethings. Indistinguishable from their modern peers were it not for those brows, that hair and, of course, the beef they have with the insurance company that made them famous.
Actor Ben Wilson was in the second Caveman commercial. He played a cromagnon who indignantly stands and asks his roommates if they heard the Geico pitchman’s latest insult.
I caught up with Wilson at Miyagi’s on Sunset for a brief chat.
“You don’t actually look much like a caveman.” I say as we get settled in.
Wilson has a short, dirty blonde haircut and a prominent jawline, but to describe him as a neanderthal is definitely a stretch.
He flashes an appreciative grin, revealing smooth, white teeth.
“Thanks, but I smell flattery.” he says. “I’m quite caveman-ish. People say I have a flat face. Which is true. My forehead is so thick that it has corners at the top.”
“Is something like that an advantage at auditions?”
Wilson laughs, a little self-conciously. “Well, fortunately nobody really notices.” he says. “But I’ve got a lot of hair, too. A Forty-Niner beard. Not like Jerry Rice, like the California gold diggers with the mules who turn up on Scooby Doo…
“I get the picture.”
My beard engulfs the bottom two-thirds of my face pretty quickly if I don’t continually cut it off at the base.
“Kind of like kudzu.”
Wilson laughs. “Yeah, and my face is Atlanta.”
Wilson played a pirate in the original “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie, which mentioning his beard reminds him.
“My beard is so impossibly wooly that on the set of Pirates, one amazed makeup lady told me it was the best fake beard she’d ever seen. My hair is brown, but my beard is red so I can see why she thought that. I didn’t tell her it wasn’t a fake, though.”
Wilson and I order the buffet and some tea. Wilson seems to have a thing for buffets. It gives him a chance to stack his plate with various tempuras and gyozas.
“So, how did you land this caveman gig?” I ask.
“I auditioned at Ross Lacey Casting and I was one of the five cavemen they cast. I don’t know how many other people auditioned. They don’t tell you that kind of thing. For all I know I was the fifth caveman selected from five auditionees.”
“Was there a casting couch?”
“Y’know, now that you mention it, there was. All the creative people and the product people were sitting on it. It was a big brown low number. It might’ve wrapped around. I don’t remember. I do remember that on the table in front of the casting couch, there was a Roman-Feast-sized pile of food. It was so high that they had to have TV monitors so they could watch my audition even though I was only seven feet away from them.”
“Did they make you wear the caveman makeup on the casting couch?”
“Though everyone was very pleasant, I was never invited to join them on the couch. Maybe I should have worn cologne…or bathed sometime the week before that call back.”
“Who were some of the other cavemen you worked with?”
“Great guys, all of them. Ben, John, Jeff and Joe. Two Bens including myself and three guys whose names begin with J.”
We both take a second to marvel at this coincidence as a waitress delivers a bottle of sake to our table. Wilson tells her “arigato”. She bows and leaves.
“How did you prepare for the role?” I ask.
“”They made them contemporary cavemen. I didn’t have to transform myself into an actual caveman by say… going into the wilderness to spear a bear. My hat goes off to the inventors of the spot for not making me have to do that. Geniuses.”
“What was it like to wear the makeup?”
“Awesome! I kept asking myself where were these guys when I was getting ready for Prom. It was super fun and like wearing nothing at all. The only thing they had to do was apply a little facial prosthetic.”
“What did they add?”
“Fairly minor stuff. You know, just a completely new face and head structure including forehead, nose, cheekbones, jaw, stuff like that…”
He takes a sip of his sake.
“Fake teeth…” he continues. “A wig, a fake beard. I gotta say, seriously, the makeup and special prosthetics guys are also geniuses. Tony and Vance and all those guys. They’re “amazers”…they will literally amaze you.”
“So it was a relatively painless procedure?”
“They had to spread glue all over my arms and legs and feet and hands and chest with little butter knife things, like I was a big smooth untoasted English muffin, then they stuck lots and lots of hair to the glue. It wasn’t painful, but it was amazingly itchy. I looked awesome, so it was worth it.”
“How long did it take to put on?”
“Not too long. The make up guys are super nice and the time just flies and the next thing you know, “ZOW!” you’re a caveman.”
The Geico Cavemen are noted for their urban-coolness, attending swank parties in condos overlooking West Hollywood, ordering roast duck with mango salsa, scheduling therapy sessions while music by Royksopp soundtracks their day-to-day coming and going. So it’s no surprise that Wilson carries himself in the same way.
The jacket and shirt are thrift store.” Wilson says.
Of course the thrift stores in Los Angeles are filled with a few more buried treasures than those in other parts of the country. The shirt is a nice dress shirt with unfastened French cuffs and the jacket is tailored with blue pin stripes. I notice his shoes, which are a pair of white crocs.
“Is this the kind of ensemble your character would wear?” I ask.
“I actually got to wear these Zodiac brand three-tone top-sider-boat-shoes which I could never have afforded when I was in high school when they were really cool. You remember those?”
I nod.
“Yeah, so that was like another kind of perk. I took a little moment while they were setting up a different shot, to fantasize that I was back in high school strolling down the hall in those Zodiacs with all this manly hair everywhere and totally turning the heads of all the ladies. Students, teachers, student teachers. Everyone. Mothers, secretaries, the kitchen cooks. All these ladies drop everything to catch a glimpse… and nod approvingly.”
“ABC just said they’re going to pick up the Caveman sitcom.” I say.
Wilson nods. “I’ve heard that it’s out there, but I’m not in it. Everybody’s been calling, asking if I’m in it. And they’re all excited and I have to shoot down their hopes. It’s tough, but tough is a main part of tough love.”
“Are the Geico Cavemen ready for Prime Time?”
“I sure hope so…” Wilson says with a smile. “And I hope that they can have a cousin in some of the shows and that cousin can be played by me. It’s a brilliant concept and it’s struck a nerve. Thinking back I can’t believe I got into it at all. I couldn’t be luckier.”
A brief side note. It would appear that none of the original commercial actors were called upon for the sitcom. As so much of the appeal of the Geico Cavemen is in the charisma of the original performers, one has to wonder about the wisdom of the show’s producers to recast. We shall see…
