Not every actor can say he was in a movie that left an impact.
Eddie Barbanell can.
He played Billy in "The Ringer." The popular 2005 Farrelly Brothers comedy starred Johnny Knoxville as Steve, a man pretending to be an intellectually disabled athlete to help his lowlife uncle fix the Special Olympics and pay off a debt.
Billy and the other athletes quickly figure out he's a fake, and they make Steve come clean.
Eddie, who has Down syndrome, played Steve's roommate.
"They auditioned over 600 people, with and without intellectual disabilities," he said. "And out of 600 people, they picked me."
The movie employed about 150 actors with disabilities. Despite the irreverent humor typical of Farrelly Brothers movies, the Special Olympics endorsed the movie. With Knoxville of "Jackass" fame in the lead role, the goal was to reach a younger audience with the message.
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Eddie feels it did.
"Because 'The Ringer' is about awareness," he said by phone from his Florida home. "It's about letting people know what these people are all about. These are human beings. These are people who have feelings, like me, even though I have Down syndrome."
Eddie is on the international Special Olympics board. He plans to visit Lincoln this summer for the National Games. He looks forward to meeting people here.
He likes to inspire people.
"Since 'The Ringer' came out, people stop me now and they want to talk to me. They want to shake my hand. They ask me, 'Can I take a photo or picture of you? I want your autograph. You inspire me. You inspire my son. You inspire my daughter. You inspire my granddaughter. They look up to you, Eddie.'"
Early in the movie, Steve's uncle and some other lowlifes use the word "retards" and "'tards." But the words are used to lead up to a pivotal scene in which Steve stands up to his uncle.
Don't ever say that word to me again! I mean it. These guys are my friends.
Says Eddie: "That just knocked down that negative stereotype. Now the people's eyes are opened."
By the end, Eddie and the other athletes help Steve become a better man -- one who sees them as real people, real friends, not just people with disabilities.
Eddie's most famous line might be from the scene in which he and Knoxville's character meet and Steve drops one of Billy's CDs.
You scratched my CD! You picked it up in pure daylight and you scratched it!
Eddie left his own impact on the movie. He ad-libbed some of his funniest lines, such as this line from a scene in which he watches an elderly cafeteria worker walking by and exclaims, lustily:
"Oh, Mylanta! You are my woman!"
He inspired the final scene, too, in which Steve directs him and other athletes in a Shakespeare play.
One day during filming, he said, the cast and crew were riding in a van to a bowling alley. For fun, he started reciting the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet."
The original script had called for the play at the end to be "Welcome Back, Kotter."
"So they saw me doing my shtick," he said, "and they changed the whole ending of the movie and they put in my Shakespeare."
He has been acting steadily since "The Ringer." He had a role in "Hall Pass" with Owen Wilson and Christina Applegate. This fall, he will appear with Knoxville in "Jackass 3-D."
He and Knoxville became great friends. Knoxville has said in interviews that the movie totally changed his perspective on the R-word, that he'll never say it again -- not because he's politically correct but because it hurts people like his friend Eddie.
They stay in touch.
"I say, 'Johnny, are you still making wisecracks about me?'
"And Johnny says, ‘You scratched my CD!'
"And I say, 'Don't remind me.'"
Reach Colleen Kenney at 402-473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
