Did you know?

Did you know Dwight…..

…made up all of his Murdock t-shirt designs by himself.

…does not have a pilot’s license but did have lessons in a fixed wing.

…loves Dutch peanut butter.

…kissed Johnathan Frakes while the man was doing a Q&A. Jonathan had just said he liked Dwight so much. Dwight heard it , ran on stage and kissed Jonathan….who was kind of ‘surprised’ (don’t ask us who told us this hahaha).

…is the proud owner of a set of Klipsch speakers.

…will at Christmas time wish people a Merry Christmas and will use no other words to do so!

…stood in line once for 3 hours at the cinema so he could watch the movie the Godfather.

…in retrospect hated his beard.

…stuffed and cooked a duck with Dirk; and that it was pretty tasty.

…thought Dirk’s decision to get into the Big Brother house wasn’t a very good idea.

…thinks his own personality is close to that of Barclay but wished he could be Murdock everyday.

…thinks he is a bit nerdy.

…wished he would be Sean Connery if he had to be somebody else (that man always looked and sounded good no matter what age he was).

…can be easily persuaded to speak English with a Dutch accent.

…speaks a few words of Dutch and knows how to use them very well.

…ate a salted Haring (herring) in the Netherlands in 1984.

…wants to do a stand up comedian show with Dirk, where he would sing and Dirk would play the piano.

…knows how to crash the hard disc of one single laptop several times.

…used two identical Murdock jackets in the series, the back of the jackets were hand-painted by an artist. He donated one of his pilot jackets to the special forces museum at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. This jacket was later returned to him so he still owns both of them.

…milked a cow in the A-team episode Blood Sweat and Cheers, However the cow had an infection and didn’t give milk but something else.

…made up a text for his next t-shirt about that cow for the next episode, but decided later not to use it.

…teased George Peppard because George always teased people. Dwight sprayed him with water, but George didn’t like it.

…could usually be found in Dirk’s trailer on the A-team set

.…had a conversation with a cockroach on stage during a Q&A (don’t ask us why).

…owns two pairs of wooden shoes – one red pair and one plain pair.

…still hates the fact that Olestra was banned.

…loves to wear sneakers.

…has seen a butt painter at work in New York.

…survived the Jet Blue debacle and has the ticket to prove it.

…has two different types of action figures, Barclay and Murdock.

…can talk to invisible dogs when he feels like it.

…loves to play video games, but he has problems playing them together with other people.

…has his own family therapist that is available to him 24/7 (his wife).

…prefers to read fiction to non fiction.

…has had fixed wing lessons, but never flew solo cause his wife was afraid he would crash.

…gave Barclay a higher pitched voice to make Barclay sound more nerdy and vulnerable.

…stammered when playing Barclay.

…does not mind (unlike Dirk) dressing up as a woman.

…looks good in women’s clothing according to Dirk.

…is an excellent and very loved voice actor.

…thinks a Dachshund is a very strange looking dog, cows are boring, and horses aren’t easy to ride.

…would love to play a guest role in the TV-series ‘House’.

…would love to play a death scene on the silver screen. He would like to get murdered and die a horrible death.

…explained to a journalist: people can earn millions like Hasselhoff, but what good are those millions if you are addicted to alcohol or drugs and your marriage is in crises? All I want to say is fame and good looks aren’t everything. Only happiness will stay forever (Dwight himself is happily married since 1983): I’m botox free and I have no staples behind my ears.

…usually plays the game Medal of Honor on his PlayStation.

…says that the A-team was one of the best things that ever happened to his life.

…loves to play people with mental disturbances because he thinks they are always indicative of the best characters to play.

…says that the funniest thing that ever happened to him while filming a Star Trek episode was when Jonathan Frakes grabbed his inner thigh during a close-up. Dwight: My expression was quite extraordinary. It took me quite a long time to regain my composure.

…says that playing the roles of too many daddies…doctors…and lawyers make him dull.

…when he introduced himself for the first time to George Peppard was very surprised about the fact that Peppard shook his hand and replied with the words: Hi my name is George Peppard and I am not a very nice man.

…said that Mr T’s stunt double was a lasso expert. He was so quick that he could hide a lasso up his sleeve and still get you – which he did to Dwight at least twenty times. He’d wait for Dwight to walk past him and then catch his ankle so he’d fall to the floor!

…said a lot of Murdock was improvised and that the people in charge hated a lot of what he did, but always kept it in.

…made up the impression of the chicken in Black Rock by himself, that got him in trouble again, – but they still kept it in.

…made up the idea of being pulled off camera by the invisible dog Billy in West Coast Turnaround, but that ’the people in charge’ didn’t like it. But again, they kept it in.

…explained that the scene with the explosion at the end of Deadly Maneuvers when Hannibal lights the cigarette and the screen freezes on the big explosion in the background. That this particular scene was shot so close to the house where Dwight lived at the time, that you could hear the explosion inside!

…said that after a while the writers started to write funny behavior for Murdock too, but according to Dwight they didn’t get the humor for the character at all. He said, “Forget it. I’m not going to do that.” He kept improvising and didn’t use their stuff until later in the series when they improved.

…said that during the first two seasons he made up all the crazy Murdock stuff. But by season three/four, the writers wrote a lot of Murdock’s character by just observing him and seeing his impressions off camera (it was seeing Dwight mimic Sean Connery that got them to make Dwight into Logan Ross).

…was a bit scared of mr.T because he was rehearsing his wrestling moves on Dwight and Dirk. Dirk said one of these days someone gets hurt.

…was hit in the head by a 75-pound amplifier at home. Because audio, and music is something that is a passion of Dwight he stated that it was fitting that he was hit on the head by a 75-pound amplifier. The next day he had to get back to work and fainted on the A-team set because of his ‘interesting experience’ with the amplifier the previous day.

…responded to the weird question ‘When you die, are you going to be buried , cremated or have your body parts sold for medical research?’: ‘No, no. My body parts will be auctioned off on Ebay!’ (Ask a silly question; get a silly answer.)

…said that Melinda Culea was in tears when she found out Tim Dunnigan was fired.

…experiences problems with his last name in America because his last name is German and people have problems pronouncing it. They keep pronouncing it as Schullz. Sometimes they even have problems with his first name. Some people keep calling him Dwayne…Alright he said at some point: my name is Dwayne Schwartz! Dwight is tired of telling people it is Schul-tz not Shulllllllz, and now sometimes introduces himself as Schwarz just to save time. (Now don’t tease him with that name at a convention, we don’t want to scar the man’s psyche.)

…made up the invisible dog Billy; Billy appeared during an improv while shooting the pilot episode.

…joked in an interview about the movie Galaxy Quest: ‘A good sci-fi script must rely to some extent, on me. That’s my personal position, anyway. I didn’t recieve a single phone call during the entire film schedule of ‘Galaxy Quest’. If they had only bothered to call me I could have saved the film from disaster status, merely with the opportune raising of an eyebrow, the turn of a head, or from sheer presence.

…said about his first appearance on Star Trek: Because I knew Brent (Spiner), Jonathan (Frakes) and Whoopi (Goldberg), there was a great deal of affection on the set.

…once joked: I’m involved in eternal unemployment.

…thinks the producers of the A-team liked “the turbulence” of working with Peppard. “Conflict is the source of the best things you do in life,” Dwight said.

…explained that Chuck Tamboro was the guy who flew the helicopters in the A-team and can be credited for the helicopter stuntwork.

…after the episode Trouble on Wheels received a phone call from Marlon Brando who told him that he loved Dwight’s impression (crazy Willy) of the Godfather. Dwight was completely surprised by this.

…probably based the name ‘Crazy Willy’ on his own name William and the invisble dog Billy probably also was based on his own name. Besides Dwight his parents sometimes also called him Willy. And at high school people called him Bill.

…had a favorite episode of Star Trek in which he appeared; it was The Nth Degree. Dwight: Reg becomes the smartest being who ever lived. I loved the holodeck scene with all the lasers. Even though the lasers shining on my head were hot.

…only showed up late on the set of the A-team once. It was while shooting the episode Bounty. He was producing the play ‘Mary Rose’ at the same time, and he had to work on that till the early hours of the morning.

…spends each day 8 to 10 hours a day in his car mostly because of the terrible traffic jams in L.A.

…lost his blue baseball hat when he arrived at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in 1984 when he visited the Netherlands. It was so crowded with fans who came to greet him and T and Dirk, that the hat was lost in the crowd.

…loves music – his favorite classical music composers are Prokofiev and Elgar.

…loves listening to Jazz, he likes Miles Davis and John Coltrane. One of his favorite jazz bands is the Dutch Swing College Band.

…enjoys playing vinyl records, like symphonies, because vinly sounds so good.

…has to listen to symphonies by himself because his wife doesn’t share his love for them.

…enjoys watching the television series: House, The Sopranos and ’24’.

…loves playing Mung Daal on Chowder. He says, “It’s been really fun so far. The voice acting is magnificent in the show, and I love watching episodes.”

…based the character Murdock on a garage attendant who he met in Beaumont, Texas. He wore a little blue hat and followed Dwight everywhere, making peculiar motions. He even stood next to Dwight when he used the man’s phone.

…will never forget his audition for the A-team. Dwight: I walked into a room and saw about 25 executives sitting around a desk. I’m very bad at auditions but this was one of the worst. There wasn’t a laugh, so I was sent out with the director Rod Holcomb, who worked with me for a while. When I returned for some reason, my performance was funnier, and everyone was rolling around the floor. I don’t know what I did differently, but it worked!

…gave his invisible dog Billy to the people in the Netherlands during the visit of the A-team to the Netherlands in 1984.

…according to Dirk, was a bit out of character while playing with his wife in the episode Bounty. Murdock wasn’t behaving as he usually did in the series according to Dirk.

…thought: now I can be together with Wendy, as soon as he heard that he got the part in the A-team. At that time they weren’t married yet. Dwight was still living on the East Coast while Wendy was already on the West Coast. Dwight was thrilled, since getting the part in the A-team meant that he could live on the West Coast and would be closer to her.

…signs a lot of autographs himself but would love to own an autograph from Anthony Hopkins. He does own an autograph from Laurence Olivier that he really is happy with.

…actually only recorded about one episode of Star Trek a year.

…said: the effects of the laser beam (Nth Degree) hitting Barclay’s head were done live. The use of lasers and mirrors in the scene allowed for camera movement.

…explained: the original draft of the script (Genesis) was going to ultimately turn the entire crew into identical copies of Barclay, but that idea was deemed too extreme. Also, that episode was in production when the devastating 1994 earthquake hit Northridge, California causing two day delay in filming.

…loves animals but isn’t a good horse back rider. Dwight jokes: I knew I couldn’t be a star in Hollywood because I couldn’t ride a horse. I hated horses, my ass was bloody.

…was called the skinny fellow on the A-team by many bad guys, but he was actually chubby as a child. At the age of 13 he weighed 235 pounds, Dwight realized he loved girls more than food. That’s when he decided to start to lose weight. And we can all see that he succeeded.

…is not (like Dirk) a regular cigar smoker. Dwight usually starts to feel a bit sick after only smoking one.

…played baseball at highschool. He was the team’s catcher.

…met his wife through a blind date in a Chinese restaurant in New York.

…and his future wife watched the movie Koko the Gorilla on their blind date because they both wanted to see it.

…has family with the last name Schutz because his original last name really is Schutz but when his ancestors registered in the United States it was spelled wrong as Schultz.

…knows that the name Schutz actually means “protect” in German.

…knows that the name H.M. in H.M. Murdock really stands for Howling Mad and wasn’t a nickname for Murdock but his real first name, he wasn’t given any other first name. Stephen Cannell came up with the name Howling Mad. He based it on the nickname of a General who served in World War 2. His nickname really was Howling Mad and it became Murdocks real name.

…came up with the idea for the voice for Mung Daal after listening to Frank Morgan in the Wizard of Oz.

…had screenshots of him and his wife Wendy kissing in the A-team episode Bounty stuck on the fridge at home for a long time. Fans had sent the screenshots to Dwight.

…was written out of The A-team (they fired him during the filming of the pilot remember) so they had to write his part back in…this meant he needed to improvise a lot…This is how Dwight came up with the idea HOW to ask for Trash Bags in the episode Pros and Cons (that was filmed after the pilot episode) When he was about 5 years old he spend a lot of time at his grandparents house. He heard roadside hucksters selling crabs in the street where his grandparents lived. Dwight decided that Murdock had to ask for Trash Bags the same way they were trying to sell crabs.

…landed the role of Oppenheimer because he had played the role of Valmont in the theatre play ‘Les Liaisons dangereuses’ at the Williams Town Theatre Festival. Dwight played in the American premiere of the play. Writer and director Roland Joffe sent casting directors a note that he wanted to see all Amerian actors who played the part of Valmont, Dwight was the only one. After Joffe did thought experiences with Dwight and he auditoned for Paramount, Dwight landed the role.

…almost used the name William Knighten as his stage name. Knighten was his grandmothers maiden name and she suggested it. In retrospect Dwight regrets not taking her advice.


Other pages:

Murdock’s T-shirts | Quotes | Murdock’s Psychological Tests | Barclay’s Biography | Dwight’s Collectables