by Paul Fischer
by
Chuck Schwartz
Ed
Harris has class. End of description.
He's also got another Oscar® nomination under his belt for his erformance in the title role of Pollock, the film bio of the most famous American ever to drip paint on a piece of canvas. Pollock also marks Harris' first time in the role of Director. With all the critical raves going to co-star Marcia Gay Harden, after a one week run in December, it was the talk of both coasts when both actors made the Academy cut, one week after we spoke with him. Pollock is a multi-slash gig – he's also one of the film's producers. (It's not a title. The man put up cash, and ten years of his life, to get the film made.) He'll next be seen, and is real good as a multi-millionaire telemarketing scammer in The Prime Gig, coming in September. On the off chance you don't know, Harris burst on the scene with his portrayal of John Glenn in The Right Stuff and bookended it just over a decade later in Apollo 13, as flight conrtoller Gene Kranz. In between was one of the best films of the last century, David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross (directed by James Foley) and topping 'em all of was the underviewed The Truman Show. As written elsewhere, we like the performances in Pollock, though our history as an ignorant git worked against the film. It was also the best place to start this StarTalk . . .
CrankyCritic: Since I'm one of the guys who was lugged to MOMA in tenth
grade, before I knew diddle, what was it that made you want to make this movie?
Ed Harris: I think I had the same kind of feeling at the beginning, a little bit.
I didn't know who Jackson Pollock was when I began to read about him back in the
mid to late 80s. I thought "well, I guess I'm supposed to like his art if
I'm seriously thinking about committing myself to playing him". The more
I looked at his work, in particular when they had the retrospective a couple of
years ago, I really not so much intellectualized it but sensed it. It really started
to grow on me. It really solidified my really strong feelings about him.
CrankyCritic: So what started you on the journey?
Ed Harris: My dad was working at the Chicago Art Institute, in the book
store, and he sent me Jeffrey Potter's book "To a Violent Grave" for
my birthday. He inscribed it, saying maybe there would be a film in there, somewhere.
Then he sent me another book about Pollock the following year, a biography by
Deborah Solomon, and said the same thing in his inscription, "I hate to bug
you about this but..." I'd been reading about him and one thing led to another...
it's a long story [laughs].
CrankyCritic:
How much bad behavior can be tolerated in an artistic genius?
Ed Harris: Well if you look at history, quite a bit. I dunno. Bad behavior.
The need to blow things out. Alcoholism, which is a disease as well as bad behavior,
though some people are more private about it than he was.
CrankyCritic: Are your feelings about fame conveyed in the movie.
Ed Harris: When you're a younger person, and you get attention for what
you're doing, whether it be acting, painting, whatever, all of a sudden you feel
licensed. You feel like you're God's gift to the world. You don't have the life
experience to inform you that you're just another being on the planet. That maybe
you're not that important at all. If you have a proclivity to abuse, whether it
be drugs or alcohol, suddenly it gives you permission to do anything you want
to do. Trash a hotel room. Be rude to somebody. It's an infectious thing that
takes place. And if you get through that time you might realize what an asshole
you were – some people don't get through it or they get caught up in the
abusive part of it and turn it into an addiction. Cigarettes or heroin or booze,
it's tough to shake on its own regardless of whether you've got problems or not.
I'm not sure if I've answered your question.
CrankyCritic: We asked about your personal feeling. How much do you
tolerate?
Ed Harris: Nothing. Not now. I used to tolerate quite a bit. I used to
ask people to tolerate quite a bit from me. I wouldn't be around that kind of
person.
CrankyCritic: You were presented with a 267 page script. As a director,
how did you look at the raw stuff and figure out how to try to obtain a balance?
Ed Harris: Good question. That's what the first eight years was about.
Really. Barbara Turner worked on it for some time. She never rewrote anything,
she just cut it down some. I hired a playwright named Susan Emshwiller
that I'd known and worked with her for a year. Basically I was working with material
that had been written, doing exactly what you're saying. Pawing through it. Distilling
it. Trying to make sense of it. Getting it down to something that you think will
work.
It's realizing that this isn't an art history lesson. Anything that reeks of information
and that doesn't delineate or illuminate Pollock, the way he was or what you're
trying to reveal, is out the window. Good information or not. That's what the
film began to call for.
CrankyCritic: We begin with a famous Jackson Pollock...
Ed Harris: The first image you see is of Life Magazine. It represents
that conflict between art and commerce and hype. Between somebody's true desire
to create and that pull of need and recognition and selling, whether it be a film
or painting. It also happens to be at a point in Pollock's life that is the beginning
of the end, in some senses. He'd painted his masterpieces, in terms of the drip
pouring method. He'd begun to drink again about a week prior to that show. His
relationship with Lee Krasner, who had supported him and got him to where he was,
as at its end. He was a successful painter but he was at the end of his rope.
He didn't want to paint that way anymore. That's what people expected from him
but he had experienced himself that way and revealed himself that way and he wanted
to move and wasn't quite sure where to go. He'd started feeling like a fake and
a phoney and making that film with that guy really bugged him. It just seemed
to me to be a good place to start. He's famous and well dressed and in front of
a painting and there are people all around him but there's something that's disturbing
this guy a great deal. And so, when we come back to that later, hopefully it has
some resonance and you remember it, it has a cinematic framework.
CrankyCritic: Does this whet your appetite for more directing, starring,
producing combos?
Ed Harris: I would take out the "starring" part. It's an awesome
amount of work. I would like to direct again but it would have to be something
personal that I felt I needed to do. Probably not any time real soon because I
would like to spend time with my daughter, Lily, who's growing up. I've been doing
Pollock since before she was born.
CrankyCritic: Are there any personal connections yo made with the character
you brought to the screen?
Ed Harris: It's a tough question to answer because it 's a multi-layered
thing. When I decided to learn about acting I was 21 and it essentially took over
my life. I really said this is what I want to learn about and commit myself to
learning 
about
it. I wasn't concerned about a career. I wanted something to fill my life up with.
I took to it and went to school and learned and decided that this is what I want
to do. I did a lot of small theater in LA and not paying any rent on this little
cubbyhole I was living in and just working in theater. It's that desire and the
importance and need to do that in one's life. Pollock, as a young man found painting
in that way. He was almost pathologically shy on some levels. Not worldly person.
Not a hugely social person. I don't think I was that either. I've been talking
more in the past two years since I directed this movie than I have in the prior
forty-eight because I've had to communicate with people, especially on the set.
Those were some similarities. The obstacles that got in the way. The commercial
aspect of things. Staying away from the hype situations on some level. Pollock
was determined to get to a place where what he was doing and how he was working
was truly his own and truly original. Whether it was revolutionary, or not; groundbreaking,
or not; if it took modern art in some direction, or not; for him it was his own
thing. It freed him up. It filled him up. it was beautiful, as well. Then he got
recognized for it.
CrankyCritic: What should we take away from Pollock?
Ed Harris: I don't know. It's up to you. I don't want to sound flippant
about it. My one fear was that the film wouldn't work cinematically. Not add up
to something and people ask you why you do it. To me, I feel that it works. It's
a whole thing that exists unto itself and if it resonates in some way; for some
people it may be an I intellectual thing where they appreciate it on some level.
Some people might be a visceral thing where something about it affects them in
some way and they have to figure it out themselves. Or not. It's like Pollock
says when he says "it's like looking at a bed of flowers. You can tear your
hair out over what it means. Either it gives you something and I illuminates something
or it doesn't.