DANNY BONADUCE growls and purrs more than he speaks, carrying his tightly wound self as if spring-loaded. And this is on a good day, in a cool, dark soundstage in Hollywood, where he is doing his best impersonation of a game-show host.
He lobbed jokey questions at a trio of contestants about the melodramas of, it turns out, some of his friends and neighbors -- Ozzy Osbourne, Courtney Love and Janice Dickinson -- looking far more executive than usual in a dark suit. This was Bonaduce as the star of "Starface," a celebrity-gossip challenge that premieres Tuesday on GSN, a game show cable channel. It's a striking shift from the vodka-guzzling, wrist-slashing, tantrum-throwing train wreck of a man depicted in last fall's VH1 reality series "Breaking Bonaduce." The irony of this latest role is lost on no one, least of all Bonaduce.
"This is the weirdest show I've ever done," he said during a lunch break, "by leaps and bounds."
Actually, weird -- or, more specifically, alarming, cringe-inducing self-exploitation -- is what Bonaduce does best. Still, after all these years, he's strangely compelling. He possesses an odd mix of rage, self-loathing, intellect, even romance that is irresistibly entertaining on the one hand, yet unsettlingly removed from reality on the other.
He has become so attuned to clever one-liners that his language is peppered with tidy, often exaggerated, sound bites. He prides himself on never having uttered the phrase "no comment" to a journalist. Yet he's so admittedly confused about his identity that even his closest friends don't feel they really know him. He may be hosting a game show, but this is, after all, the same guy who punched out Barry "Greg Brady" Williams on a show called "Celebrity Boxing," who seriously considered goading a poisonous snake into biting him on "The Other Half" and who had the name of a radio-station general manager tattooed on his backside.
Bonaduce is perpetually in comeback mode, like so many other entertainers "in recovery," rebounding from drugs and alcohol or his own bad judgment. He said he's been "in jail, all bloody, chained up to people," but he has spent more time in rehab than in police custody. Nothing has stalled his career for long. Show business has an insatiable appetite for self-destruction, and Bonaduce has learned how to make that work in his favor.
"People seem to be willing to give Danny chance after chance," said his wife and manager, Gretchen Bonaduce. "I think for some reason he just brings that out in people. You want him to succeed."
