So opening tomorrow is “Feast of Love,” the new film from Robert Benton (“Kramer Vs. Kramer”) and it stars Morgan Freeman as a local professor named Harry Stevenson who witnesses love among the town’s residents.   

From the die-hard romantic coffee shop owner Bradley (Greg Kinnear) who has a serial habit of looking for love in all the wrong places, including with his current wife Kathyrn (Selma Blair); to the edgy real estate agent Diana (Radha Mitchell) who is caught up in an affair with a married man  (Billy Burke) with whom she shares an ineffable connection; to the beautiful young newcomer Chloe (Alexa Davalos) who defies fate in romancing the troubled Oscar (Toby Hemingway); to Harry himself, whose adoring wife (Jane Alexander) is looking to break through his wall of grief after the wrenching loss of a loved one...

So to help promote the movie, Morgan recently did a roundtable interview and I was able to participate. During our conversation he talks about making the movie and all the other stuff he’s working on. If you’re a fan of Morgan’s, you’ll dig the interview.

As always, you can either read the transcript below or listen to the audio as an MP3 by clicking here.

“Feast of Love” opens tomorrow.

Q: In the movie your character is the voice of reason and everyone comes to him for advice. Why do you think that is?

Morgan Freeman: Well because if you do represent the voice of reason, not wisdom, you didn’t say wisdom, it sort of follows that people will assume wisdom follows reason around. Not necessarily so. My character does not give out advice. If you go back and watch it, you’ll hear it. He doesn’t give advice. All the advice that he gives if I can remember is twice. He tells Greg [‘s character] to kind of count his blessings which is a suggestion rather than advice. And he tells Bat to stay away from this child. That’s advice.

Q: But they do all come to you for advice and they confide in you.

Freeman: They come to confide because he’s a ready and willing ear. He listens carefully. He listens quietly. He’s one of those people who just listens. You will notice that if you have a tendency to listen, people have a tendency to talk to you.

Q: Your character also has a tendency to observe. You were the only one who saw Bradley’s wife falling for someone else.

Freeman: Well she was certainly being intrigued by her. Yeah. But then that in the basic nature of the character that’s on page, he’s going through this script observing what’s around  him. 

Q: In your life, do you feel you serve that role?

Freeman: No. No. No.

Q: Do you think your character was too busy observing other people’s lives as opposed to living his own?

Freeman: That would be the $64 question in his case. I think that they managed to get their child grown up. He wasn’t a child. He was a professional so where does parental responsibility end? It does somewhere. So I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that was the case. But then you say then what was the case and I’d have to confess I really don’t know. But then that is the problem with the character. He can’t answer that question.

Q: Do you believe that houses have the ability to breakup relationships?

Freeman: No. I’m trying to be careful in the answer because that is one thing can be gibing wrong. In other words if you’re superstitious than it’s quite possible that you believe in ghosts and not even know that you do. But, I’m not superstitious.

Q: What brought you to this project?

Freeman: I like to work. It’s great fun to dance around with other actors so I do it on every opportunity that seems like the music is going to be good. Of course the music is sheet music that’s on the page. This was good music. There were good dancers involved so that’s a good drawl. Not to mention getting paid.

Q: I wanted to ask you about a couple other films you’ve done. “Wanted” and “The Dark Knight”.

Freeman: “Wanted” is directed by a Russian director whose name is Timur Bekmambetov. Timur , sweet man and is an interesting director. Is the first foreign director that I’ve ever worked with. It was an interesting experience to play in a movie that is described as a graphic novel. It comes from some place I don’t know. I’m very, very curious to see how it works out.

Q: Can you talk about your character?

Freeman: My character is not easily defined even by me who is a master of character definition. I play a guy who ostensibly heads up a fraternity of brotherhood of assassins. It’s like a guild of assassins. By guild we mean that it’s old. It’s been around for a long time. And they have peculiar abilities. In other words, one guy shoots a rifle from five miles away and hits his target. There’s no straight line in five miles. Is that informative?

Q: What was it like working with James McAvoy?

Freeman: Great. He’s a hard working kid. Maybe too hard. By that I just mean he overact, but this is an action movie and he got a little ill. But we were in Prague so I don’t really know. I remember working in Bulgaria, I also had the same affliction that he came down with. It was like an ear affection that’s really debilitating. Had something to do with the water I’m sure.

Q: An ear affection from the water?

Freeman: Yeah, I was submerged in an icy stream for awhile.

Q: On “Wanted”?

Freeman: No, on another picture called “The Contract”, which never opened here.

Q: What was Angelina Jolie like?

Freeman: What do you want me to say? Something good or something bad?

Q: Whatever you would like to say.

Freeman: First I’m going to say something bad. She’s already taken. She’s an excellent person. Excellent actress. A joy to be with, a joy to work with. She comes by it honestly. Whatever it is, she’s got it.

Q: Did she bring her family to the set?

Freeman: Oh yeah. They were all there. Brad is between so they stayed together as much as possible. He was there. I used to sing to her.

Q: What did you sing?

Freeman: (Singing) Angelina will you get up? She answered back I am not able. Angelina will you get up we need the sheets for the table. She laughed just like that.

Q: What were your experiences like working on the Batman sequel?

Freeman: The sequel. Alec Guiness remarked one time that he made more money on those two [Star Wars] movies that he was just featured in than he’d made in his whole career and had little or nothing to do. That’s what it’s like.

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