Posted by Mr. Beaks

For anyone who came of age in the late 70’s and early 80’s, when it comes to movie stars there’s Harrison Ford, and then there’s everyone else.  No actor of the last thirty years can approach the man’s iconic stature; he’s Han Solo and Indiana Jones, which is to say he’s accounted for over $3 billion worth of box office throughout his illustrious career (according to Box Office Mojo, only Tom Hanks has him beat in that department, though he’s also been much more prolific).  He is the face of the modern day blockbuster, and is in large part the primary reason the best of these moneymaking ventures beat with a human heart.  Indeed, his improv’d “I know” to Carrie Fisher’s “I love you” in The Empire Strikes Back is as pure an expression of classical Hollywood romanticism as you’re ever likely to see. 

But it’s been twelve years since Ford’s last franchise role, and that was in Clear and Present Danger.  Though he cut a credible figure as superspy Jack Ryan, the series has continued on without him (traveling through a wormhole to cast the much younger Ben Affleck in the fourth installment, The Sum of All Fears).  In the meantime, he’s tried the adventure thing again to diminishing returns (Six Days and Seven Nights), done straight-up action in the financially successful Air Force One, and played the bad guy in Robert Zemeckis’s shamelessly entertaining What Lies Beneath.  Ford’s last two efforts, K-19: The Widowmaker and Hollywood Homicide, found the actor sincerely attempting to address his advancing age by playing more vulnerable characters in the framework of the kinds of big budget Hollywood entertainments audiences have come to expect from him.  That they happened to be two of his lowest grossing features to date may account for his retreating to the safety of Firewall, a slick, massively conventional thriller in the mold of Jodie Foster’s Flightplan.  It’s his surest bet for box office success since What Lies Beneath.

I had the chance to talk with Ford in a roundtable format at the Firewall junket a week ago, and did my best to ask the notoriously prickly actor about the direction in which he’s headed with his career, and why he’s backed away from riskier fare like A Walk Among the Tombstones, an adaptation of the Lawrence Block novel written by Scott Frank that was to have been directed by Joe Carnahan.  We also made sure to drop in the obligatory Indiana Jones 4 questions, though he was, as expected, less than forthcoming on that subject.  Hopefully, it’s an interesting read.

Why don’t you tell us about calling Virginia [Madsen] personally [to offer her the role]?  That just seems so rare in Hollywood.

Does it?  I don’t think it is.  It’s just one actor calling another actor to join a project.  It wasn’t extraordinary at all.

Well, she seemed shocked.

Maybe.  It didn’t seem to me anything out of the ordinary.  She was up for an Academy Award, she was being offered a lot of things, she was considering our part – I just wanted to tell her that we were very anxious for her to join us, and that I looked forward to her decision.  Typical professional phone call.

Coming from the world of carpentry as you do, what’s your relationship with technology?

I’ve been using computers for years for a variety of tasks just like all of us – a calendar, phone book, and all of those types of things.  Writing letters and printing letters.  Flight training and flight planning software, so I was fairly comfortable with computers.  What was important in this case was to test the theory of our technology on people in the banking community and people in the computer world.  We found something that they agreed upon as a mechanism, and if they were at all iffy on whether or not our concept would work, we would add the one proviso that we hadn’t given them right at the beginning, which was their family were being held with a gun to their head.  Now would it work?  (Laughter)  And to a man they said, “Yes, it would.”  Then you go further, and you say to them out of general interest, “By the way, what do you do for your own personal security?”, because I’m talking to the guy who does the job that I’m doing [in the movie].  And he says, “Not much”.  I think some of them may reconsider how much personal security is necessary when you’re holding that kind of a hand of cards.

So that’s why the password for the house was so simple?  “Lark?”  The name of their boat?  Something that they might be able to figure out fairly easily?

You know, we all have alarms on our house, and most of us don’t set them.  Is that right?

I don’t have an alarm, but I don’t lock my door.  But I live in Topanga.  (Laughter from everyone but Ford.)  Seriously.

You’re probably fine.

Do people lock their doors in Wyoming?

Well, people know where my house is; I sure don’t want to tell them that I don’t lock the door.  (Laughter)

But in general?

People in general don’t lock the door.

I think that computer sequences in movies tend to be boring as hell.

They can be.

But you’ve had the good fortune to be in two movies where they’ve been done exceptionally well:  [Firewall] and Clear and Present Danger.

Exactly.

What’s the secret of making them work?

Make it not about computers.  Make it about people.  The computer is a mechanism; the story involves people, people’s emotions, people’s understanding, people’s gaining knowledge, people’s attention.  That’s why running out of paper for the printer in Clear and Present Danger.  That’s why stumbling backwards out of the weeds to get to the car to get to the house is important [in Firewall].  The detail of humanity is important. 

You’re in really good shape.  Do you keep in shape just generally in case you’re doing another action role, or are you the kind of person—

I don’t do a lot of physical training.  I suffered a lucky genetic accident.  I play a little bit of tennis, and that’s it.  When I’m going to do a fight scene, I stretch a little bit.

You don’t work out rigorously?

It’s not about strength.  It’s about acting and knowing where the camera could be best placed to capture the energy of a particular move in a physical scene like that.

Paul Bettany said you know where the padding should go [when doing stuntwork].

That’s very much the case, yes.

Can you talk a little about working with Paul?  He was excellent as the bad guy.

Yes, he’s a remarkable actor.  He has the whole kit, I think.  He has solid intellectual equipment, and knows how to understand a story at the problem of making a film.  He’s a very skilled actor, and a very instinctive actor.  He has a very professional demeanor, and I think he conducts himself really beautifully.  It was a great pleasure for me to work with him.  We are playing a game of catch in a lot of the scenes between us, and he pays attention; he knows how hard to throw the ball back.  He knows how to work.

Why are you so often drawn to these physical movies?

This is not a physical movie.  This is a movie that only has very brief moments of physical confrontation in it.  It’s a movie about suspense and tension; it is not an action film.  It’s a thriller with a brief bit of action.  I’ve done all kinds of films.  I like to participate in a variety of different genres.  I like to do something different than what I’ve lately done.  I want to work in the best dramatic material that I can, and it often happens that when you tell stories of conflict between characters it comes to a physical confrontation.  That is the nature of film.

Can you tell us about the house you bought when you were making this film?

I didn’t buy a house. 

Can you comment on Indiana Jones 4, and how the role will be played now that you’re getting older?

I don’t know how to relate to that.  I can’t tell you anything about Indiana Jones, but I think you’ve just seen a film in which I performed physically to an extent sufficient for Indiana Jones. 

Has that been a frustrating process though?  Because you liked Frank Darabont’s script.

Did I?

Last time we spoke, I thought you told us you were ready to—

No, I told you I was anxious to make another Indiana Jones film.  I didn’t say anything specifically about Frank’s script – not because I didn’t like it or did like it.  But I didn’t say anything specific about it.

Is there a certain point where you say, “Enough already, we’re not going to get it”?

Why?  Why?  The audience is there anxious for the film, I believe.  Everybody involved is anxious to make the film again, or to make another Indiana Jones. 

You talk about being aware of where you place the camera when you do an action sequence.  You seem to have a really good grasp of filmmaking.  I was wondering if you’ve ever thought about directing.

I’m sure you all have my glib answer memorized.  (I don’t!)  No, I like what I’m doing.  I enjoy what I’m doing.

Why do you still love acting?

Because it’s a complicated problem, and because I have spent my life acquiring an understanding of the process.  Because it’s challenging to me.  Because I get to participate as an actor in filmmaking; it’s a group activity, and I like working with people on a problem.  And because they pay me money to do it.  (Laughter)

What have you found has biggest change in Hollywood over the years?

I don’t know.  I have not been a student of Hollywood.  I don’t pay very much attention to anything business-wise except what presents itself to me.  I’m not a generalist.

How about how much has changed in the way films are made from the time you really began until now?

As far as I know, they haven’t.  If you want to talk about CGI or something specific, yeah, there’s been a change in what is possible to present to an audience on film.  And that may have led to an investment in technology that overwhelms humanity in some cases.  We just talked about a fight scene – or maybe that was in the last group – with no story in it.  It’s just all about “Bam”, “Wow”, fists flying through the frame, and you don’t know what the hell’s going on, or where you are, or where you are in the room, where you are in the midst of the fight, who’s winning, and how it feels to be involved in it.  That potential for going off into the world of bigger and bigger effect may in some cases diminish audience’s human participation in the event.  And if that’s a change… it may be a change.

Have you changed how you view your own personal security?

No.

I’ve always enjoyed you character in Working Girl.  Do you have any plans to go back and do a romantic comedy some day?

(Scoffing) If an audience is interested in seeing a romance with a sixty-three-year-old leading man.  Jack Lemmon and… oh, I’m having a brain—

Walter Matthau?

-Walter Matthau all have made films that involved romance in their seventies.  It’s all about the suitability of the script and the suitability of the casting.  I like to do comedy.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be romantic comedy, but I like, as I said, to do a variety of different genres.

You were talking about the details of the stunts.  There’s that little jump onto the balcony where you stumble back after you land.  I was wondering if that was something you decided if that was something you decided to leave in, or—

Storytelling.  I didn’t decide to keep it in; I put it in purposefully, as I put in the stumble coming out of the trees to get to the car to get to my daughter.  That’s the kind of thing that I think is an observation of how people behave under those circumstances.  It reflects the reality of that kind of circumstance.

How much does the trailer give away?  As you’ll remember, there was a lot of controversy over how much What Lies Beneath’s trailer gave away.

I’m surprised you haven’t seen the trailer.  It’s ubiquitous.  And very well conceived.  It has very little to do with the film in a way; it’s a different way of storytelling.  I think it’s a very effective, and a very good trailer. 

It doesn’t tell everything?

What is there to tell?  Harrison Ford and Paul Bettany.  And an audience knows this is the kind of story where the good guys win, and the bad guys lose.

Did you like the trailer for What Lies Beneath?

I thought it gave away too much.  But, on the other hand, the film was very successful.

Zemeckis told us that kids want the equivalent of a McDonalds hamburger.  No matter what McDonalds they go to, they know exactly what they’re getting.

That may be right.

[Spoiler!]

How far would you go to protect your nearest and dearest?

I have no idea.  And neither do you.  And neither does the character that I play.  The character that I’m playing, the critical moment is when he realizes that his family are not going to survive.  He’s already given the man the money in order to secure his family’s release.  He knows – because the [henchman] has been sent to kill him at the house – that his family is not going to survive either.  So he takes the very bold step of taking the money back, because it’s the only leverage he has.  It’s a scary and difficult thing for him to do, and it’s critically important to the shape of the film.  So, you don’t know and I don’t know what you’re going to do until you come to that moment.

[End Spoiler]

It’s been almost three years since we last saw you.  Was it a long decision process to settle on this film?

No, it was a long process to bring this film to the screen.  It was a long process doing work on the script, but we all felt that was necessary.  It was a long process because we lost a director [Mark Pellington] who dropped out because of a personal tragedy in his life, and then we had to find another director.  And we had to discuss with him the script and what he felt he needed to bring this film to its best possible shape.  So it was a long process, and during that period of time I was engaged in that process and didn’t feel I could go off and do something else.

I was very excited about the idea of you playing Matthew Scudder in A Walk Among the Tombstones.  Is that still a possibility? 

(Curtly) No, I don’t think it is.  Thank you all very much.

And that’s a shame.  If you ever get a chance to read that script, do so.  In the meantime, you can get your Harrison Ford fix this Friday when Firewall opens nationwide.