'Somebody's gonna give you money, you do your best to make 'em a good hand.' (Tommy Lee Jones) (Interview)
Film Comment; 1/1/1994; Smith, Gavin
Andy Davis' 1989 film The Package, in which Gene Hackman's Man Who Knows Too Much races to prevent an assassination, was a cleanly crafted, modestly straightforward thriller, fashionably attuned to the waning of the Cold War. It had few surprises but at least one important asset that stayed in the memory: Tommy Lee Jones' coolheaded career soldier-assassin, a mechanic quietly going about his business with a minimum of fuss. At one point he smiled slightly and nodded hi to an uncomprehending patsy whose identity he had assumed, then put a bullet in him. That brief, amiable smile, so beside the point and--in a good way--superfluous: was it a glimpse of amusement? It seemed goodnatured, understanding even, but don't imagine it was sentimental.
That's the thing about Tommy Lee Jones' performances--the smallest details and touches can infiltrate the imaginative memory, enlarge themselves and then resonate there indefinitely. It's a characteristic of all great screen actors' work, and it can benefit a film incalculably. In JFK his Clay Shaw, a vivid, colorful character study full of unexpected invention, in some way dominates the movie. It's a shock to realize how disproportionate Jones' screentime is to his impact: onscreen for perhaps 20 minutes out of 188, he has one big scene one hour in--being questioned by Kevin Costner's Jim Garrison--and is seen only intermittently thereafter. The term "screen presence" won't quite do.
The best word to describe Jones' acting talent might be "athletic," especially in its imaginative dimensions and off-beat agility. The intelligence behind it is unmistakable. But Jones' tremendous appeal lies only partly in his authenticity. It also has something to do with his lack of narcissism, his seeming indifference. Imagine him alongside, say, Mel Gibson, or watch him opposite Sally Field in Back Roads. He may want you to like the character he's playing, but he doesn't care if you like him. You have to go back to Lee Marvin to find a comparable level of effortless self-possession and unpredictable force.
To watch Jones' U.S. marshal in The Fugitive is to witness the exhilarating spectacle of a movie propelled inevitably forward by sheer personality. It looks like a lot of fun being around this guy, he can do what the hell he likes--and he's cool. Is it only the character or also Tommy Lee Jones up there, funnier, faster, and smarter than everybody else? Is that how he handles Hollywood--never suffering fools gladly, getting the job done without compromising who he is? All of that must be in the actor's individual makeup for it to be in the performance. But it's only a movie, a fiction. Still, The Fugitive, and now Heaven and Earth, together constitute a pivotal moment in Jones' career. Early in his film career he was typed in country-boy parts, most memorably in Coal Miner's Daughter ('80) and Back Roads ('81). Next he was sentenced to a half a decade of heavies and killers--playing Gary Gilmore so convincingly will do that to you (The Executioner's Song, '82). Then TV's Lonesome Dove ('88) reminded everyone that this was an actor of stature; JFK (91) consolidated the perception; The Fugitive and Heaven and Earth are the payoff. His tormented Marine sergeant in the latter is an extraordinary performance, a rich portrait of a lost soul, layered with tenderness and violence, vulnerability and self-loathing. It ranks with the actor's very best work.
What sort of person is your character in Heaven and Earth, from your point of view?
I hope the movie will speak for itself. I think Steve is a. . .good man. Marine Force Recon is very demanding, he was a good soldier, and that was a formative experience for him. When you first see this character, the things that he's done have begun to prey on him. He's a needy man at that point, emotionally and spiritually.
Did you imagine for yourself specific experiences he'd have had in Vietnam to provide a basis for his nightmares?
Yes. If there's an experience your character has, you try to imagine it, to relate it to your own experience. You relate it to your experience of other people's experience also.
Given you've never been in a war, what kind of "as if" did you give yourself to create for the audience the reality of a man fighting a war in a foreign country, risking his life every day?
That's a good question--"as if" I read a lot about the Marine Corps, about Vietnam, and it's "as if" I were reading my own history rather than the history of other people.
On The Deer Hunter Christopher Walken said he used the "as if" of being taken to summer camp and thinking he'd never get home again and being miserable.
I'll do such things. But I may do one for a couple of seconds and then do another for a few seconds. During a take or before?
Both.
Steve seems strong initially and slowly crumbles as the film goes on.
Yeah, he implodes in a way, doesn't he? The character goes through a terrific disappointment--in himself, his country. So to whatever extent I may have been disappointed and know people who have been disappointed, I was able to relate to Steve's experience.
When you talk about your experience of the experiences of other people, are you saying that your work involves the vicarious absorption of the memories and experiences of people around you, revisualizing them for yourself?
For an actor, that's a handy skill or point of view to take. Other peoples experience is important. That's one of the best things about being an actor. I have a real interest in people--for entirely selfish reasons [smiles]. I don't forget anything. You try to be thought I about the experience of other people. And I don't take life all that personally.
Meaning that you detach yourself from the things that happen to you?
You have to, to a certain extent. And at a certain time depersonalize your experience so that you can do something with it. This idea of things happening to one is interesting . . . . Actors are better off if they don't park themselves at the center of the universe so that the world revolves around them, you know? Many people live in a universe that is constructed in this manner. It's no place for a good actor. So where do you locate yourself?
Oh, spinning around the periphery someplace. Passing through, maybe? Actors need agile egos and not necessarily fragile egos or big and demanding ones. They need a different concept of self--I think.
Was there a point where you acquired that?
I went to some awfully good schools, read a lot of good books and had some very good teachers. Working with Zero Mostel was important to me; he was so bright, did so much thinking. Working with Oliver Stone. Having the opportunity to play Woodrow Call [in Lonesome Dove] was important. Not as milestones in a career--we're talking about the development of a point of view as a creative person.
What was significant about Lonesome Dove in those terms?
It was done at home. The elements of that story were very familiar. It's the story of my country and my people in a very real way, so I found that important. It was a good testing ground for any thinking that I might have done on the abstract level about acting and having a creative life--if it's not gonna work there, it's not gonna work.
When you say home, what do you mean specifically
Somewhere between Oklahoma and Mexico [laughs].
How does being Texan shape your creative approach?
There's our work ethic. Somebody's gonna give you some money to perform a job, you do your best to make 'em a good hand--that kind of thing. So I work hard [laughs]. That's a matter of what you might call honor or something akin to it, certainly where we live.
Going back to Steve, his understanding of being in love with Le Ly and your own personal understanding of love may well be different.
Right.
Do you play his being in love with her the way you yourself would behave when you're in love with somebody?
No, it's an act of the imagination in front of the camera. We create the illusion of reality as well as we can. That's Steve falling in love with Le Ly, not me failing in love with my wife or me falling in love with an actress. Do I sit up late at night and convince myself I'm in love with Hiep? No, I'm not that naive, I'm not that young. I'm more sophisticated than that. So, Do I get myself mixed up with my characters? is not a bad question, and the answer is no.
Suppose you couldn't stand the actress you had to play being in love with?
So I imagine the other person to be somebody else? No. I get along with the people I work with. The fact that we're working together makes them immensely likable.
So part of the job when you work with people is--
To get along. Of course. saw 40 minutes of rough-cut scenes from Natural Born Killers, including one of your scenes as the prison warden.
Bizarre, isn't it?
The film is a satire. How does that affect your approach to the part?
Yes, it's a formal satire. Well, you just make reference to Swift and Moliere. When you use the word satire, it already has certain stylistic implications. It's a bit broader, situations are a bit more extreme. The way to sell it, if you're an actor, is to treat it as a very serious thing. Is there therefore less or even no obligation to create the character's inner life?
In satire, characters tend to be obsessed and put on manners. Manners were a big part of Natural Born Killers. The way people treat each other, the way they walk, their posture, their clothes. Internal life: paranoid monster.
How did you develop the character's look?
You pick things that you find ridiculous, worthy of satire. So we tried to think up as many stupid things as we possibly could. I've always thought those little pencil-thin toothbrush mustaches were really stupid. Huge Carl Perkins sideburns. They said, "What do you want your hair to look like?" I said, "I think it ought to look like a '57 Studebaker." Myself and Cydney Cornell, the hair stylist on the movie, we're old pals, we talked about what people are saying about themselves to the world when they do things with their hair.
What kind of statement is the warden making?
The idea was that he's an elegant man, in his own mind. The world revolves around him, so it's important to be quite beautiful, elegant. So these are signs of elegance. We picked the ugliest gold rings we could figure. It was all about how wrong a person can be.
How close is the U S. marshal in The Fugitive to you in real life?
Not very close. I'm not like him, I'm in the cattle business, I raise Brangus cattle, I'm a polo player, I'm an actor, a family man, and I'm a bit of an intellectual. "Intellectual" is a pretentious term --just as easily call me a bookworm. I'm not really obsessive about anything other than cinema. And polo.
I think you are responsible to a significant degree for the film's success. It's said you took a routine character in the script and developed it in very unexpected ways.
We were looking for fresh and new ways to observe good American characters. Andy [director Andrew Davis] wanted this group of marshals to have a team spirit, and told us to imagine things that the audience could identify with. So to that end we decided to be funny, to joke with one another and have great affection for one another.
Did you consciously play Gerard as a manipulative guy?
Yes.
Where did you get the idea that he would have this knack for wrongfooting people to get what he wants from them?
From friends that I know who are in law enforcement. I have several friends who are Texas Rangers. I guess I drew upon their characters and their way of dealing with the life and people. It's something they do. Columbo does it. That guy in Crime and Punishment did it. It's something that the classic investigator does.
Did you think very carefully about your first moments in a film, what first impression you were going to make?
I thought it was pretty important to see Gerard as kind of cool--he's a man at work.
Your delivery of your first line--"My. My. My. What. A. Mess."--is the point when I knew the film was going to be a little different.
My idea was that that line would help the audience identify with the character. The experience of being a little bit abstracted, looking at a total disaster and being cool about it, is something me all have in common. That was the whole point of that line--some sense of community with the audience.
In the drain scene when Harrison Ford has you at gunpoint and tells you he's innocent and you say "I don't care," it's a high-stakes moment--Gerard could die--yet the line is offbeat.
It was very carefully thought out. For him to say "I don't care" is shocking--it's new, it's different. If the audience can believe it, they're gonna conclude that this guy's no fool. Here's a guy who can say quite truthfully to a man with a gun, "I don't care whether you killed your wife or not, you're gonna get caught. Kill me. You're gonna get caught anyway. We're not gonna quit. We will get you" You admire a guy like that. The man is a public servant, after all: he's dedicated to something in a real way, and you know that it means something to him, and it makes you proud. You hope that people like that are U.S. marshals.
And there's another aspect that I learned from talking to the rangers about the relationship that they have with the criminals. It's often affectionate--and certainly familiar. And they do say the weirdest things to one another at the oddest moments.
There's a tiny but I think quite wonderful moment when Gerard is talking to somebody on the phone and hangs up on him.
Thank you! Thank you [chuckles]. It's a bit unsettling to think that these guys could actually shoot somebody and then go on with their lives and forgive themselves. I thought it was interesting that Gerard could shoot that guy and go on. I like Gerard for that.
Was it hard justifying your actions in the scene where you shoot at Kimble through the bulletproof glass?
Yes, very hard. I didn't want to do it. I thought, the audience is gonna lose all sympathy for Gerard here, we're gonna villainize him. Think of it for a moment: nobody in the U.S. Marshals Service would do that, no sane cop would do that. I'll whip this pistol out on St. Patrick's Day? In the middle of the Federal Court Building, which is crawling with civilians? And discharge nine rounds, .40 caliber? They all said, "Nah, it don't make any difference." And it didn't. The letters did not pour in saying, "What about the firearms policy with the U.S. marshals?" No, they all accepted it as adventuresome gunplay within the context of a movie--they love it, let's go on to the next exciting moment, we're not gonna stop and worry about gun policy now, that's not the point. So I was wrong and Andy was right, but I had a lot of trouble with that.
Were you surprised when Oliver Stone offered you the part of Clay Shaw in JFK?
Yes.
Why do you think he picked you
Against type.
Did you discuss why he cast you?
No. I found that very gratifying beyond any telling of it.
Taking off from the script, where did you start to construct your characterization
Bill Fletcher, the world's best wigmaker, came to my house in San Antonio and we started to build a wig. To make a good wig is a fine art; it takes a long time to get it right.
How did you develop a sense of who Shaw was?
The first thing I did was come to a detailed understanding of Jim Garrison's point of view on Shaw. I interviewed Jim on three different occasions. He opened the first meeting by assuring me he could tell me more about Shaw than Shaw's mother ever knew. He may have been right. I did other interviews with people who worked with Shaw and knew him. It was from one of those that the information about his disguising himself as the Winged Mercury during Mardi Gras came to light.
What kind of inner life did you create?
He was a dedicated sadomasochist. These guys, especially Ferrie [Joe Pesci], were also fascists, in love with the idea of fascism, which in those days to those guys was like a fad, part of a netherworld, and it was tied up with sadomasochism and gay life in the Quarter. Flirtations with fascism had more to do with styles and ways of decorating a private, separate life than they did with believing in fascism as a political alternative.
Jim told me that for all of his elegance and rich friends, Shaw was a poor boy from western Louisiana. His father was a county marshal--a petty law enforcement officer. And the family was in and of the backwoods and swamps. His life was one long social climb, and his introduction to the sophisticated world came as a result of being introduced to some very wealthy gay man from a prominent family who took Shaw under his wing as a young boy and made a protege of him, a kept boy. Something that certain people in New Orleans were perfectly capable of doing. Garrison's idea was that his whole life was a sham, and that all of his aloofness, snobbishness, and elegance was utter pretense. I had no idea whether it was true or not. The movie was from Jim's point of view. So I'm playing Jim Garrison's Clay Shaw via Oliver Stones Jim Garrison.
Did you imagine the inner personal needs that drove Shaw and then go to that place within yourself?
Yeah, that's a fair description of a part of the process. I think as a young person who's brought closer every day to a realization of his own sexuality, he probably felt more alienated with each day at home. So when he does finally make the trip to New Orleans and through gay society, the cafes and so forth down in the Quarter, meets wealthy and prominent older men who find him attractive, he's gonna run to that, isn't he? Simply to get away. Once you begin to fill in these details and imagine them, it's easier to play those details that are taken from his life and placed in the movie.
Ultimately everything Shaw does in the film is determined by his sexuality--rather than by, say, his political outlook or desire for power.
Uh huh. Deeply corrupt guy, according to Jim. Yeah, a lot of things are motivated by his sexuality, and so by the time he's an older guy, he's been living this lie. You couldn't really admit to being gay in those days, it was a disgrace. Everybody in New Orleans knows everybody else, but these things are not spoken of or admitted to. So he's led a dishonest life, and I imagine toward the end of it it started to catch up with him.
Given that, how did you come up with that last moment when you tell the reporters, "I shall go home and cook some etouffe"?
Oliver had this big crane-and-dolly shot, it's the end of the movie, were sweeping the whole world here, Kevin's talking and going away . . . it's a big, big shot. Once he had it set up, we had more shot than we had lines, so he said, "Look, you got to think of something to say." Where. . .? "When you come out and all the fucking guys are around you and they're all talking like that, you got to say something there" Oh, okay. . . . So I go off and think about it for 30 or 40 minutes, think about what would be appropriate to the movie and the character, what's gonna be long enough and not too long, what's a little thing for him to say that'll be like a little bit of a punctuation. He's looking for one brushstroke on a BIG canvas. So I gave myself a good talking-to, and that's what I came up with. I tried to put as much poetry in it as I could. I think it scans well, I think it's a nice little line, it has a nice little life within the context of that one camera move, and it has a lot to say about the character, too--how important it is to pretend to be blase or insouciant, sans souci.
Your exit after the Easter Sunday questioning at Garrison's office is also remarkable--you make a simple exit into about five distinct moments: the way you deliver the line, the way you stop and turn, the way you look from one off-camera person to another
That was an important exit to Oliver and he shot the hell out of it--several different lenses and several different distances. We spent a quarter of a day on that exit. I'm doing everything that Ollie says--"All right, we gotta do it again, put your hand here just a little earlier, stop here and look back a little and then go" We did everything to that exit that could be done. He may have made me do all of that just so that by the time we got to the end every moment, every gesture, had meaning. Maybe he wanted that kind of density. He wanted the moment to be portentous, heavy with import. Maybe we weren't quite there, or we got there and he said [shooting arm up to the ceiling], "Go further"--he's done that before! [Laughs.
What about the sadomasochism flashbacks with Joe Pesci pinching your nipples--
Yeah, sonofabitch. He loved that. Was it hard to know where to draw the line in terms of it becoming too bizarre?
It's a fine line because you don't want to make it all about being gay, you don't want to insult anybody's sexuality, you don't want to make a blanket statement about any group of people. People don't exist as groups in my mind, and they shouldn't in an actor's mind. People exist as individuals.
You've worked with both Stone and Andrew Davis three times. Does the relationship change aside from having to say less to each other?
That's important. Never to be underestimated, economy in communication. Do they give you a longer leash each time out?
It'd be a good metaphor, had I ever been leashed metaphorically.
You like to rehearse, but are there occasions where you'll do something unrehearsed off camera for the other actor that will--
--surprise them and trick them into giving a performance? I know actors who will try that. And sometimes it'll work with somebody who's naive, scared, or inexperienced. You go "Boo!" off camera in order to make them look scared. For a real actor, that would be somewhat insulting, wouldn't it? Do you think you can trick me into doing something that I can't think up and do myself? What it says to the other person is, We think you're incapable and unworthy of doing anything that we can't steal from you.
It's an ethical stance.
It's even moral. Certainly bad manners at the best.
I've interviewed actors who like having those things done to them.
I would deeply resent that. I find that stupid and juvenile.
Not even when you're working with a very inexperienced actor like Hiep Thi Le in Heaven and Earth? Don't you have to adjust?
You're right, yeah. It means probably less rehearsal, sometimes more. If I'm off beside the camera and you're on camera and you have to laugh, sometimes I'll change a line reading or do something really stupid and goofy if I think that it'll serve you well and you won't be insulted. You can play tricks if there is an understanding between the two of you. That's different from We want you to look scared, I'm gonna turn a camera on and shoot a gun off right here. I find that unspeakably crude. There are actors who work alone, and there are actors who can't work unless the world is doing something to them, and then they can give and take with the world.
Which kind are you?
The latter. Those who work alone, living at the center of the universe. not doing a very good job,
But given the imaginative dimension of acting, don't you have to create and live in a world of your own when you act?
Sure, to some extent you have to be able to do that. As soon as they turn the camera on, you're living in the character's world. Whatever you need to establish the illusion of that world is what you do. In some cases it means populating the entire world and giving it weather of your own design, and sometimes you just have to show up and have the clothes on. You are living in the character's world.
Has there been a role that was particularly demanding in that way?
I don't know. When I played [serial killer Garyl Gilmore, everywhere you go you're living in a really paranoid world. What was your conception of your character in Under Siege?
When I read the script he was supposed to be like Elton John. I said, "No, no, no, let's make him like the guys from KISS or Alice Cooper." Andy's brother is a good blues guitarist from Chicago, so that led us to the idea of a blues band. You had a nice private moment after the seizing of the ship, when he removes his sunglasses and we see the strain in his eyes.
Thank you. I don't know if it's in the script--
No, it isn't.
It struck me as the kind of moment an actor might ask for to show a different side of a character.
You don't have to ask for that, you just wait 'til the closeup and do it. And they either like it or don't. That was one of 150 ideas I came up with that day. That one made it into the movie. I'm gonna come up with too many ideas. Some of them are gonna be better than others. It's not my job to say I'm only gonna come up with those ideas that are appropriate.
Any favorite ideas that didn't make it into the film?
There was a scene in the movie where the captain of the sub is supposed to come to see us, talk for a few minutes, and then we continue our evil mission, a little scene where the three bad guys talk. It was kind of boring. [Gary] Busey and I worked up a nice little scene that would have been neat and very funny and scary. The sub captain was angry, nothing is going right, and I say, "We've met with some resistance. Do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem?" There was a dead body upright on the couch next to me, and Busey pushed it over, sat down, and said, "Think it over." [Laughs. Something happened and the day got away, so we never got to shoot it. We had it prepared--you should have seen it between the trailers out in the lot, it was GREAT! We showed it to Andy. He didn't have time to shoot it. Did he know you were working on it or did you just suddenly lay it on him
He knew we were working. He knows we work all day.
After the submarine is sunk, your character seems to go out of his mind. How did you justify that?
The way we figured it out, the submarine is sunk, the cause is lost, and the cannon goes off-big bang, knocks him back, slides him along the deck. So the cannon shot has turned him around somehow, broken his eardrums, shook him up.
Which takes you right through to the "This little piggy" speech. [TLJ laughs.] Was that in the script?
Naaaw!
What was the idea?
Basically I was taking little scraps from his mind and putting them all together--rock music, cartoons, cheap little images flashed from the media, all the little shards of our lives that exist in our minds and have no basis in reality. Our heads are full of that kind of thing. What more appropriate things to have flying around inside your head when you're about to invite nuclear holocaust? I thought, How modern and how completely mad--and how real.
There was an editing choice in The executioner's Song in the scene where you tell Rosanna Arquette about your guardian angel that, surprisingly to me, placed the emphasis of the scene on her reaction rather than your opening up to her emotionally.
It doesn't bother me. It's a damn long speech and I'm speaking slowly. I think I'm speaking too slowly. It's actually very weird stuff, what he's saying, and it's quite predatory, in a lot of different ways on a lot of different levels. I think it's neat to look at her listening to this. He's trying to crawl inside her soul. You got a snake and a rabbit and you really do want to have a nice lingering closeup on the innocent rabbit. He's predatory towards everyone.
Were you hoping to achieve a sense of pathos for Gilmore in the film?
Oh yeah. You gotta have that. The story takes a pretty hard line: we have to kill this guy no matter how much we sympathize with him.
Was it your intention to give him a childlike quality?
Yeah. Prison is not a particularly maturing experience.
How did you find an emotional justification for Gilmore's murders?
He did them in the same spirit that a 3-year-old might throw himself to the floor and roll around and scream when there's company in the house. That guy was completely ripped and he was getting even. His girlfriend had gone away, he couldn't get a job, he was running out of drugs, and it was everybody else's fault. What do you do about a situation like that? Simple: kill a gas station attendant. Next. He thought the world deserved it. Again, here's a guy who lived at the center of the universe.
Yet he seems self-aware and articulates a philosophical perspective.
Yes indeed, he pretended to have one, all of that reincarnation crap. Very shrewd, very cagey, very smart.
You thought that was false?
Entirely.
I thought he meant it-i believed him as you portrayed him. A lot of people believed him. That's the sort of thing you do in prison==think up stuff to believe in.
Did you see his murders as premeditated or spontaneous?
He was the kind of guy who, when he didn't feel real good, could make himself feel better by committing an atrocity. It gave him a sense of control. In other words, chaos is visited upon us. If he brought it, at least he's got a measure of control. So it's the act of a very helpless, very weak person, as many acts of violence are. The whole point if you're Gary is to gain control over your environment. It's like changing the oil in your car, to him, at that point. A monstrous character.
In House of Cards where you play a psychologist working with autistic children, your character raises an extremely interesting philosophical question about the nature of creativity. He wonders whether it's a means of withdrawing from or reentering the world. If indeed there is a barrier between the "real world" and creativity. Thank you for seizing upon that line. Very important question for this little girl. Very real.
But also for an actor, I d say.
Yeah. What are your thoughts on it?
It is a really good question. Have you reached a conclusion for yourself?
No. I'll have to think about that one.
Haven't you been thinking about it for years?
Yes.
Well, take the last scene with Duvall in Lonesome Dove just before he dies. Emotionally you're very full, and yet the pan requires that you not release what's inside, it's not in Call's nature. As a result, the actor in you is deprived of the emotional catharsis, which more and more I think attracts people to acting.
I was talking about this very subject with Jeff Bridges the other day. We were sitting around the trailer talking about how old we've gotten and how things that were important to us 20 years ago are no longer important. And that the things that we believe are important today would never have occurred to us 20 years ago. One of these things is that sense of beginning, middle, and end without which no catharsis is possible. Catharsis occurs at the end of a series of events, and that's something you are responsible for eight days a week in the theater, because the performance has a beginning, middle, and end. That sense of scale is not present on a movie set. You do a little piece of the middle here today and you're gonna work on it all day. You have to teach yourself to get along without that sense of completion. So if at the end of the day you think, Jeez, I didn't do a catharsis today, you used to kind of miss that when you were kid but now you're older. But with that scene, what do you mean by catharsis?
Here's someone who's never been able to express how he feels, he's very formal, and his best friend is dying. Don't you, doesn't he, long for a release?
There were people who worked on that movie and people who saw it who would actually tell me that Woodrow Call is the bad guy in the movie. He's a villain. "So you're playing another heavy, huh?" They kind of missed the boat. And other people said, "Here's a guy with no feelings, how do you feel about playing a guy with no feelings?" I cannot begin to relate to that. I've failed that audience member when they conclude that. Woodrow had this tempestuous emotional life. His emotional life is pushed inside, beaten down. Why? Because of where he lived and what he does.
When Gus shows Call the place where he wants to be buried and then berates Call for turning his back on the woman who loved him years ago, we see Call is full of emotion yet completely suppresses it--a real acting problem to solve. You can't show it, but we have to see it.
That tracking shot when we're riding away, if you could see Woodrow's face through all those bushes . . . . They actually had it on film, but they cut away. He starts out very cavalier, "Well, you always got your whores," but by the time that shot's over, he's got the wiggly chins. Because Gus has that ability. If you don't understand yourself and you're in a position of moral pretense, he's gonna stick a pin in you. Gus'll do that every time--that's why people love him. He does it there to Woodrow, but we didn't get a chance to see it because the editor didn't put it in. Why? Probably too emotional. I don't know. I had a few questions about the editing choices on that show.
The moment is there very obliquely in the shot where Call tightens the strap on his hat--
The little button on his stampede string. Yeah, but you're looking at it [in a profile shot]. What I'm saying is, you should have seen it [in a head-on shot] If you had, it would have been a different scene. And it was shot. We got away with it, it didn't hurt, people loved the show, I have no complaints. But there was an element in the production that did not understand Woodrow.
Catharsis is a BIG word. You don't expect it from every shot or every scene. You have it once in the whole event, wherever the gods say that it goes. And that might be my quarrel with the editors: the gods said it went down here, not down here [laughs].
When you talk to professional peers, obviously there isn't high academic discussion of philosophical ideas--
Oh shit no.
But would you talk about something like that?
No, we talk about football scores, horses, and girls. Lincoln Kirstein, a very important guy, was once talking to me about my job as an actor, and told me, "It's none of your damn business if you're happy or not." That's my answer. As Jeff said in the trailer the other day, "It doesn't matter how you feel. It matters how they feel."
