Gary Busey on "Point Break" and Meatball Sandwiches

Twenty years later, Celebrity Apprentice star Gary Busey still gets Point Break  quoted back at him – no surprise, considering he has some of the best lines in the movie. The scene he gets the most? His character Angelo Pappas’ request for meatball sandwiches during a stakeout.

“I’ll be in an airport, and I’ll hear it, ‘Get me two,’” Busey told Current. “Of all the lines that stick, it’s that one. I can’t explain it.”

In the scene, Pappas decides (at 10:30 in the morning, mind you) that it’s time for lunch, and sends his rookie partner Johnny Utah (played by Keanu Reeves) to grab some grub. “Right around that corner, there is a sandwich shop,” he tells him. “They sell meatball sandwiches. Best I’ve ever tasted. Would you go get me two? C’mon partner. Two.” Then, as Utah walks away, Pappas sticks his head out the window and yells, in case he hadn’t made his request clear, “Utah! Get me two!”

Of course, in the course of the sandwich run, both Pappas and Utah miss something crucial in their investigation – the ex-Presidents bank robbers run into the bank. Pappas starts to chow down, and he’s so hungry, he expresses his appreciation by telling Utah this line: “I'm so hungry I could eat the ass end out of a dead rhino, I should have had you get me three of these things!”

That line, Busey said, was improvisation. (He was supposed to say something vaguely similar, but it didn’t quite have the same zing). “It just came out of me,” he laughed. “I can’t explain the worth of my genius.”

But just because he got the sandwiches doesn’t mean he ever got to eat them, because the scene required him to then chase after the ex-Presidents. “Those meatballs were as huge as cue balls,” Busey said. “They spilled all over my front. And you can’t drive and eat on a chase. Try going through In-N-Out Burger at 105 miles an hour and getting some food! It’ll just be a splatter of grease on the window. Do you want to lick the window?”

So what does Busey do when folks ask him for a meatball sub (or two)? “I run and I try to find them!” he said. “Sometimes I just smile and wave, and say, ‘Thank you very much,’ but if I can get them a meatball sub, I do.”