Any journalist covering Hollywood over the past 20 years is aware of, or has experienced first-hand, how difficult it can be to interview actor Tommy Lee Jones. It's not that he's reserved and introverted the way say, Harrison Ford, is during interviews. He's just downright ornery. The tales of his grumpy interactions with members of the press are so notorious that if there were a definition of "bad interview" in the dictionary, then Jones' picture would likely accompany it.
So, when Jones arrived at this year's Cannes with his second directorial effort to appear in competition at the festival, nobody knew what to expect, though you can be sure expectations were tempered. Not for the movie itself, as his previous film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada premiered in 2005 at Cannes and was well-received. Rather, the 400 journalists gathered at the official press conference for The Homesman were fully expecting a contentious affair.
But when Jones arrived at the microphones surrounded by a cast that includes Hilary Swank and Miranda Otto and producers Luc Besson and Michael Fitzgerald, he was uncharacteristically pleasant. In fact, upon realizing some of the international press corps was struggling to ask questions in a foreign tongue, Jones interjected, "I would like to say something before we go any further. I would like to thank you all for asking these questions in English and for being patient enough to listen to us answer in English. We know we are in France and we appreciate your use of English in this conference."
Based on Glendon Swarthout’s 1988 book of the same name, The Homesman focuses its attention on an aspect often overlooked in cinematic westerns: pioneer women. Anchored by noteworthy performances from Swank and Jones, it manages to convey the hardships of pioneer life, especially for women. The story keeps viewers engaged by never taking the obvious or expected narrative turn and is delivered through the fine camerawork of cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.
Premiering to positive reviews from the critics here in Cannes, Jones realizes The Homesman is anything but a typical western. "The journey in this movie is the inverse of what you usually see in a movie that has wagons and horses in it and the subject matter is insane women instead of heroic men," he said when asked about the movies unusual approach and themes. "I won't try to hide the fact that a consideration of American imperialism on the west side of the Mississippi River is an underlying theme. But I'll let the movie speak for itself."
"It's a vision of America that we don't know, so for me it looks like a [Akira] Kurosawa film," added Besson. "It's very exotic. I didn't know the West was so hard and so difficult. We know about the American dream and we love it, but it's good to have the truth also, before the dream."
Besson, a renowned French director in his own right, also produced Jones’ first feature film Three Burials, and pointed out that his company's financing of both movies is a bit ironic. "The funny thing is the first movie was the relationship between U.S. and Mexico and this one is about how the United States starts and both times they call the French," he laughed.
Inasmuch as The Homesman is a non-traditional western, so too is Swank's Cuddy, at least for a woman, alone on a farm in the mid-1800s. Having entered her 30s without a husband, she reverses gender roles on more than one occasion by asking men to marry her. In propositioning these men, Cuddy pitches her finances, land and other attributes, explaining how despite her plain looks such an arrangement would be wise.
Swank has won two Academy Awards for inhabiting strong women onscreen before, ones whose character and morale were meant to outweigh any physical beauty. Swank, however, waves off any concern that she will be typecast for playing unattractive women. "I like real people. I like real women," she said. "It's obviously subjective what people find pretty or not. I've had a lot of people say Maggie Fitzgerald from Million Dollar Baby or Marie Bee Cuddy from this film are beautiful because they are natural and they are real. So it really is a subjective thing to say what is pretty and what is gorgeous."
As the conference wore on, Mr. Jones desire to promote his film began to give way to his impatience for the obligations required to do so. When asked if he was concerned whether there might be some controversy over a brief scene in which Native Americans appear to threaten The Homesman's main characters, Jones responded, "I don't have any concern about it whatsoever. Those people were all Native Americans. They were of Pueblan descent. They all claimed to be expert [horse] riders. Not one of them could ride one side of a horse, but they did look like Pawnees."
And when the subject of post-production was raised via a journalist's request for Jones to elaborate on his work with editor Roberto Silvi, you could see from his response that Jones may have surpassed his ability to play nice with the press. "It's not really hard work, I don't think," he replied. "It's time-consuming, but if you look at the footage of any day that we shot, the editing choices are obvious. If you think freely and openly about it, you can really see how to do it. It's not a big puzzle. I have a friend named Ron Shelton [Bull Durham, Tin Cup] who's a pretty good movie director and when I first started 20 years ago directing movies I asked what is the best point of view to take with an editor and he said 'over the shoulder.’”
Ah…now there's the Tommy Lee Jones we've all come to know, love and admire.
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