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Cranky wishes there were wide enough bandwidth to RealAudio this interview with
Jon Voight. Time after time, talking about characters from his long career,
Voight would slip into accent and literally perform for those of us at the table.
When all was said and done, I actually felt a wee guilty for not slipping the
guy a couple of bucks. Talking to Voight was like going to the theater. It was
work and it was most enjoyable. [and here's a sample:
Warning the language is a wee bit foul]
The
General is the actor's second film with director John Boorman
(Deliverance was the first). It is the story of an Irish
thug who was smart enough to do better, had he lived an honest life.
Had he had the opportunity to do so. As leader of a gang of thieves
he single-handedly turned both the Police and the IRA into laughing
stocks, all ending in a hail of bullets that may have been a collaboration
between both sides of the law. John Boorman's flick doesn't tell
you, and Voight himself told a lot of stories which he emphatically
kept off the record so ... I know and you don't. Also on the plate,
past roles including Midnight Cowboy.
Cranky
had this fixed image of Voight in his mind: Role after role, suit
after suit. But no, Voight blows it all to pieces when he shows
up to promote The General in a bushy gray beard, a bandanna
wrapped around his skull. Having moved from leading man type to
solid character actor, we talked about the skills of acting, the
challenge of independent films and The Wink you all loved so in
Anaconda.
Jon
Voight: I want to get away from the suit roles. I'm also grateful
to be working in some of the roles I'm doing 'cuz I get to meet
a lot of the young people... I have to admit I'm getting older,
y'know what I mean [grins]. I think this batch of people [in The
General] is a good one. I haven't seen this much energy in a long
time. My group has been holding court for a little too long; I think
it's time we turned it over. Not that we're stepping down but I
think we have to look to this new batch.
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Voight with John Boorman
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Cranky
Critic: And here you are, sole American in a cast of Irish.
Easy? Hard? Intimidating or Piece of Cake?
Jon Voight: I was intimidated [grins]. As intimidated
as I could be, y'know what I mean? it was a fun thing. John
and I have been friends for years and I have tremendous respect
for him as a filmmaker. Having worked very intimately with him
on Deliverance which was one of his masterpieces, I know
his work very well. |
| I
don't know anybody else who does this kind of work. John doesn't
start from a big wide angle and then start slowly moving in
and throws a lot of footage at the editor. He doesn't do that.
What he shoots will be on the film, so you better get it right
when you're doing the work. If you look at The General,
you'll see several sections of the film with long, long takes.
Any other filmmaker would shoot all day to get seven different
setups and he's shooting it in one camera. That's dangerous,
but it's really exciting when it happens, when you get that
take. Every actor knows they get a piece of it 'cuz if they
let down the take is spoiled. Everybody has to come up to that
one take and it's very exciting.
Cranky
Critic: Your character, Ned Kelly is the cop. He's the
moral center of the story, yet there's a big gray area that
comes up regarding the ultimate fate of Martin Cahill, "The
General". What's your take on the character?
Jon Voight: The moral dilemma is hooked to my character
and that dilemma is this: I see something valuable in this
guy. I'm trying to save him from using the abuse of his childhood
against society. I'm trying to break him. I obviously care
for him and it hurts me that he can't turn around. He's more
clever than I, and I know it, and this kid keeps spitting
on me. It's like my own child, in a way, and in the end I'm
almost brought down to his level. I don't think he is by the
way; I think he feels the despair of it. I thought I saw something
not quite in the screenplay that I could bring to it and we
all together rolled up our sleeves to figure out what that
was. The answer to it was that you had to have somebody telling
you this was a tragedy and that's what I contributed.
|
Voight with Brendan Gleesan |
Cranky
Critic: What makes The General work?
Jon Voight: The key element for me is that all the artists
care. The cinematographer, the people around the crew, the artists
costuming and the actors really cared. When I did my first scene,
several of the guys went to see the rushes that night. They
weren't in the scenes. They just wanted to see how it was going
because it was the beginning week. It was beautiful to see that
they cared enough to see how it's going what's going on they
were in it, not as actors just to do their part, they were in
it for the Piece. And that's what makes the difference. |
Cranky
Critic: Wizard-rous.
Jon Voight: Yeah. It's beautiful, y'know. There's a lot of
truth in it. Where does it come from? it comes from all of us. We
all have a sense of truth. Each person doing that in a collaborative
medium like this, if they all do it well the pieces become very
rich. Sometimes it'll be the makeup person who'll help us. You never
can tell where it'll come from.
Cranky
Critic: Did the fact that John Boorman was making this picture
independently factor in at all?
Jon Voight: Some of the good work I've done was almost like
independent; Coming Home and Midnight Cowboy were
on the edge anyway so, no, it made no difference to me. If John
had wanted to go the studio direction I would have been for it.
I also knew that The General had to be authentic. It really
wasn't a studio film. It would've been a shame if Brendan hadn't
done this role. I can highly recommend the film and enjoyed it myself
because it's not polluted with any other interests.
Cranky
Critic: Is it easy to watch yourself onscreen?
Jon Voight: When I watch myself act it's like watching any
other actor. Except that I have a stake in it.
|
Cranky
Critic: Then I'll bring up a movie that lots of critics
dissed. Have you sat in a packed house and watched Anaconda?
When the snake spits you out?
Jon Voight: The Wink.
Cranky Critic: Exactly.
Jon Voight: No, but I hear it's tremendous. Blows everybody
away.
Cranky Critic: Puts 'em on the floor.
Jon
Voight: I'll tell you when I did that picture, the people
in the immediate surroundings didn't know what I was doing.
They didn't know what I was thinking. I insisted on this accent
and I made the character from Paraguay – he was supposed
to be from Omaha or someplace. I said "The guy's in the
jungle. He's got to be a real jungle rat, somebody you look
at and you get shivers. And it's also got to be fun. We're
talking about a guy who gets eaten and regurgitated by a snake,
we can't take ourselves too seriously fellas [grinning], It's
not an art picture!"
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Voight in Anaconda |
Voight
in Rosewood |
I
had this character that I had been developing while I was making
Rosewood, which was a film I really deeply cared about.
A real serious piece. While I was making that I knew my time
was clicking down when I would have to go to the Amazon and
be this other person. So I was trying to invent this character.
I had to design this physical look. I got this kind of smirk
and the idea that if the snake had bitten him once and ripped
off part of his face than he'd have a scar and some nerve damage,
so his eye didn't quite work. Part of his face would be palsied.
I wanted the hair a certain way, long hair. I didn't want him
to be someone who cared anything about his hair. All he cared
about was catching the snake. |
| And
I thought "I've got to get an accent". I said to myself where
would this guy come from? he was probably the progeny of some
Nazi war criminal who escaped and went to South America. So
I put all this stuff together and I had an injury from Mission
Impossible, I had fallen on my shoulder and was getting
some therapy. I called a masseuse, a strong young girl whose
name was Elena. I thought she was oriental from the way she
talked but she showed up and she was a blonde girl, from Argentina.
She totally had this sing song voice and I thought this was
the most bizarre accent I've ever heard. So I used that accent
for this guy, talking without the "r"s. I said to her "Would
they talk like this in Paraguay?" and she said "Yah. Probably
they would." I said "Good that's it, he's from Paraguay." |
Voight as Phelps in Mission Impossible |
Cranky
Critic: Was it hard making the transition from young star to
older character actor?
Jon Voight: That's a good question. The transition from what
I had as a young actor to what I am now took a lot of journeys,
little different roads. I'm feeling much more playful now because
it. The transition worked because I didn't get dismantled along
the way. From the things that happened to me I picked up some information,
have a lesson or two learned, and I got past some rough spots and
the rough spots were many. Many different things, personal things
that I had to face along the way, to overcome and set right.
Then there was a time that I did television films that had to do
with causes that I felt strongly about (like Chernobyl or Native
Americans or The Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace ship. The situation
with our environment is very seriously to know about it is important
and to do something about it is more important. I try to keep my
hand in those things; the homeless or Vietnam vets stuff like that.
So I took some time off to realign myself.
I went through a crisis when I was
getting older and thinking oh my gosh I'm getting older and looking
different and what am I gonna do. And then I started looking at
myself in the mirror and thinking this is interesting. I could use
this guy. I'm a painter, so I look at everything as a portrait.
I used padding in one role, in a film called Runaway Train. Then
I found I could change my nose, I could change my face I could do
different things. Now, every time I approach a role, I wait for
a bit of inspiration to see how I could do it. I've always been
interested in finding a walk, finding speech patterns, finding people
in my life that I could use a bit of. I was doing that from the
beginning. With Midnight Cowboy I was doing a totally different
person than I was and that's why it was successful. It was fun.
So I was a character and I found that this was not so bad; for a
character actor to come to a point where he's getting older means
you just have other things you can use and you can play other parts.
So I started getting the offers and I started saying yes, let's
go. Let's get this next phase underway. I'm in the middle of it.
I don't know how long it's going to last. I'll probably do some
directing at the end of it.
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