Cultural icon becomes commander in chief

1997
Mr. Showbiz
by Jenny Peters

YOU don't enter an interview with Harrison Ford without just a little apprehension. The actor's moods are legendary among Hollywood scribes: by reputation, he's curt, he's contemptuous, he's curmudgeonly, he's condescending. Whatever the truth to the allegations, the word "cheerful" is so rarely used in association with Ford that it's somewhat shocking to open the door to his Waikiki hotel suite and find him wearing . . . a smile.

Ford's grin is well earned: life is good for the man who has been America's hero of choice since he blasted his way out of Mos Eisley twenty years ago. Not only does he command respect around the world, and $20 million a picture, he can (but wouldn't) boast that rarest of Hollywood commodities--a stable marriage, to screenwriter Melissa Mathison. Today he's come in out of the Hawaiian sun to give a round of interviews occasioned by the release of Air Force One, the tense new thriller that has the look of his first unqualified hit since 1994's Clear and Present Danger. Air Force One marks yet another milestone in Ford's progression through the action-hero business. Memorable (and highly franchiseable) turns as swashbuckling smuggler Han Solo, Nazi-battling archaeologist Indiana Jones, and Tom Clancy operative Jack Ryan have so ingrained the actor in the American consciousness that his Indiana Jones fedora lies permanently in the Smithsonian Institution. Now Air Force One has gone the logical next step and cast Ford as the President of the United States, a chief executive who has the misfortune to be hijacked with his family aboard his personal jet.

Under the circumstances, he becomes, as David Letterman recently noted, "the ass-kicking President."  When he meets with Mr. Showbiz in Hawaii, Ford doesn't look particularly presidential, sporting gray Dockers and a navy shirt, loafers sans socks, and a tiny silver hoop earring in his left ear. It's one day before his fifty-fifth birthday, and his spiky hair features noticeable salt-and-pepper streaks. The buzz around the Royal Hawaiian Hotel holds that the actor, an amateur pilot, actually flew himself to Waikiki this morning, a short trip from the island of Kauai where he's spent the past few weeks filming the tropical romantic comedy Six Days, Seven Nights. Air Force One is on everybody's mind, but first things first . .

I heard that you flew yourself over here to Honolulu this morning.

Did they say I was going to fly myself over? Well, I did. But I'm only forty-five minutes away, on Kauai, shooting Six Days, Seven Nights with Ivan Reitman and Anne Heche.

I don't really envy you, being an actor . . .

Really? Well then let me tell ya, on certain levels, it's the best job in the world.

I would think it would be, but it's not something I ever really wanted to do. But I have always wanted to learn how to fly a plane, so that's what I envy, now that I hear you're doing that.

Oh, you have? Well, I always wanted to fly a plane, too, and finally realized that time was slipping away and that I'd better get to it, and did it.

But your interest in flying didn't come out of being involved with Air Force One, did it?

No, no! [Laughs.] I always wanted to fly, and about two years ago I began to start flying. Then I continued to make films, and they kept getting in the way of finishing my book-learning and test-taking. And then just last September, last summer, I buckled down and got it done. And now I'm on to working on my instrument-rating, which is the next big test.

Does that allow you to fly bigger planes?

Well, it can. It also takes you to the level where you can fly in weather. I'm not so much interested in bigger planes. I love flying in small planes.

I know you bought one--is it a Cessna?

Uh, I have a Cessna . . .

You bought more than one?

[Blushes.] I have a few airplanes.

Okay, go ahead, what are they?

No, no, no. If this were for Flying magazine, I'd talk about it, but now it just sounds like egregious acquisition.

Which of course it's not?

Well, no, it's not! [Grins.] These are tools.

Ah, you need different planes for different moments?

That's right--for different missions. But I do like airplanes.

How do you like it when David Letterman calls you "the ass-kicking President"?

I can take it for the short period of time that I'm doing [the Late Show With] David Letterman. [Smiles.] I expect David to forge his own path, as he will, and I have only to live there for a little while. He's completely unpredictable.

But "ass-kicking President" is a pretty good description of your role in Air Force One. You can't mind that label too much.

Well, it's fine to be the ass-kicking President, as long as people understand that this film has other values. This film has very strong emotional values and is much more than just kicking ass. It's kicking ass to a moral end, and that to me is much more interesting than just kicking ass. I've never been a huge fan of action films. I think they get boring. They don't engage me as a moviegoer. What engages me is strong storytelling. And strong storytelling, most of the time, has a moral component. There's a moral contest, there's a question of human character and nature and value. That kind of a story can encourage an emotional understanding of what's going on on-screen, it seals you into the story as a moviegoer much more strongly than one kinetic event after another. That's what I look for in a film that I'm gonna do, in this general genre.

I've heard that this was a very enjoyable shoot for you.

Air Force Fun, we called it. And it was, each day. We had no weather problems. We had no sets that weren't ready, we had no problems whatsoever. It was twenty minutes from my Los Angeles house, and we got every day's work done easily and comfortably, and it was great fun. I loved working with Gary [Oldman], loved working with the other actors involved.

And you loved this even though you got the crap beat out of you every day?

Every day. Well, not every day. Some days, they didn't get around to me. They were beating the shit out of each other on those days!

Would you say that this is the most physical role you've ever played?

Oh, no. I mean, I didn't think about it. I guess there are many physical moments, but there are a lot more moments of tension and suspense. I haven't assayed the physical component of this particular film compared to others. A lot of films I do are physical, and a lot aren't.

Has all the fighting you've done on-screen over the years begun to wear on you at all?

No, no, no. It's all choreographed, it's all plotted out. The fun of it, for me, is that it's like an athletic endeavor. You choreograph it, you set your mind on what it is. You don't want to hurt somebody, you want to be very sure of your moves, and so it's a pleasure to perform those things for me. I enjoy it. It's like playing tennis, or ballet dancing or something like that.

Did you get hurt at all during the Air Force One shoot? I remember hearing about a black eye or something.

I don't remember anything substantial. I think I might have gotten a little rotator cuff tear, but that's about it. I mean, if I didn't tear a ligament or something, I don't really remember. Bruises and that sort of stuff, I don't worry about that.

As you get older, how do you stay in shape to keep doing these physical roles?

I don't do much. I play tennis. I play an hour of tennis five, six days a week. I play with a pro--I don't play social tennis--and I really work hard, and that's about all I do. I haven't worked out for years. I used to work out, but I got bored with it. Also, I'm pretty careful about what I eat--but I'm not obsessed. And I'm lucky genetically, I guess.

You've got a birthday looming, don't you? Your fifty-fifth?

Yeah, tomorrow [July 13].

Do you have something special planned to do?

Yeah. I'm going to do television interviews, sixty television interviews tomorrow. That's my special way of celebrating my birthday.

Surely that's not at the top of your list of ways to celebrate.

I think at this point not much celebration is either required or called for. It's not a big event in my life.

Do any of the signs of aging affect you--turning fifty-five, being a grandfather?

Well, my grandson is now four, so I'm used to the idea. But I have never been concerned about age. I guess I've always had a respect for age and not much of a fear of it. I've never gotten more than one year older every year, if you know what I mean. I mean it comes slowly, so it's never really bothered me.

It sounds like you had a great time making Air Force One, but reports were that you had a pretty tough time of it on your last film, The Devil's Own. Is your overall feeling about a film as a product affected by how the working experience went?

No. Even when things are not going well, the job is exactly the same. And I don't want to characterize--I'm using your characterization of Devil's Own. I would never have put it that way. I mean, it was not easy, but the problems we were wrestling with were the same problems, and I felt successful in dealing with those problems a good number of the days that we wrestled with them on Devil's Own. And I am not unpleased with that film. I think in the long view that film will be respected for what it is. So much of the experience of that film was ordained by what people had heard about it, that I was disappointed that so much had made its way into the press about it. But, hey, every day at work where I get to do what I get to do is fun for me. I really do enjoy my job. I don't expect every day to be a party. Some days the bear eats you and some days you eat the bear.

Look ahead for a moment. Millions of people are wondering whether you're ever going to do another Indiana Jones film. What are the chances?

We hope that sometime soon we'll be able to settle on an idea and get somebody working on it. We all have an ambition to do it, Steven [Spielberg] and George [Lucas] and I. It's simply a matter of fitting it into all of our schedules and getting a script that we're all happy with.

Are there any other characters that you'd want to go back to?

I'd like to do another Jack Ryan movie. I really think that's a great character and we certainly have a wealth of material to mine.

Do you have a favorite among all of your films?

No.

Why not?

Well, because they're all so different. And because each of them has different qualities and the experience with each of them is so different, that it is impossible to compare them. It's like saying, "Which of your kids do you like best?"

It looks like your next film, Six Days, Seven Nights, is going to be something completely different again. Ivan Reitman isn't as intense as some directors you've worked with; he's got a lighter touch.

Yeah, but Ivan's done all kinds of films. I mean, certainly, there's the Ghostbusters style--and then there's the Dave style also, which is really controlled and graceful. I think he's got a lot of common sense. It's been very fun, a lot of fun working with him. He's brought a lot to the table.

It's a romantic comedy--what kind of satisfaction do you get from doing that sort of film as opposed to a big, loud action flick?

It's fun to wrestle with comedy because the level of reality that you bring to it is very important. It's very critical. It's gotta be funny and it's gotta be real, at the same time. In this particular story, the story that we're telling, it's romantic comedy.

Was it a conscious effort on your part to do these high-profile action pictures like Air Force One and then change it up and do other kinds of movies?

Yeah, always. I always thought it was a good idea to demonstrate a viability in a number of different things, in a number of different genres. Trying to disabuse people of any given notion they had of you at any given point in time by comparing and contrasting in your next outing.

Did the worry of typecasting ever come into your consideration?

No, typecasting was never an issue for me because I never allowed myself to be typecast. Right now I have the opportunity to do any kind of role, because I have a degree of commercial viability. I've always used that in order to do what I wanted to do. That to me was critical, to avoid being typed as one kind or another. I'm still doing that. I'm going from an action film to a romantic comedy.

Could Harrison Ford ever play the bad guy?

Yeah. Why not? The film would have to wrestle with how it was going to do that, and it might be too much of a burden on the film. To simply step into the bad-guy part might be too much of a strain on the film. It might draw too much attention to that part, it might draw too much attention to me, in that part, and unbalance the film or the story. And most stories that have a good guy and a bad guy do a better job of allaying the engine of the movie with the good guy than they do with the bad guy, and that's where I like to work. I like to work with the whole fabric, not just in the embroidery.

I also heard you spent some time with President Clinton, learning a bit about the Presidency firsthand.

Au contraire. No, no, no. I didn't spend time with the President gleaning the atmosphere. No. The only time I've spent with the President has been purely privately social. I did not use the President for research.

You must have observed a few things about him.

Well, yes, but that's easy enough to observe on television or in any other circumstance. I mean, you don't need to be proximate to the President to glean that. I really did not use President Clinton either for inspiration or detail. There was a story that circulated somewhere that I had invited the President, that I had spent time with the President and discussed this part with him. Not at all. I'm much more interested in his story and what's going on with him. It really never occurred to me to ask him anything about this, nor did I think that would be a responsible use of his time.

Are you satisfied with Harrison Ford as the President?

I think so, yeah. The most important part of the film, for me, in the expression of the particularity of this president, was in that speech that he gives in the beginning of the film, and I was very concerned about how we framed that language--the rhythm and the meter of that language. The very precision of that language was critical, and the fact of the President's taking responsibility for a failure to perform was very important. The rest of it I thought came from the deference that people pay the President. There is no, I think, particular presidential behavior. So I wasn't anxious to know how Bill Clinton might play this part. I was anxious to figure out how I might play this part and use my own experience and my own emotional reserve to give expression to the ideas of this character and the ideas of this story.

Can you explain exactly what attracted you to this role?

Well, when I read the material I saw in my mind's eye a film that was enormously entertaining and that had a real emotional core to it. I could relate to the emotional dilemma of the character, and I could also relate to the moral question that was being raised and answered. I think that's a very important component. I think it dignifies the whole enterprise of filmmaking, when you give it reference to something important in people's lives. There's two ways of doing it. You can co-opt an issue that's real and important and then you can give a movie solution to that problem. I think in this case, we don't offer a solution; we just offer a resolution of the conflict that we're seeing. But we don't attempt to give historic perspective for the future. But those are the reasons that I chose it. I thought that it would be a damn good summer movie! And I thought I could do an adequate job of giving the character emotional expression.

So how was it swinging from one plane to another?

[Laughs.] Swinging from one plane to another? Through the great blue screen? It's always fun to do that kind of stuff, with wires and things.

As much fun as flying your own plane or riding a motorcycle?

No, not as much fun as either of those.

How many motorcycles do you have?

Oh, no. I don't want to say.

Oh, please, come on.

Eight. Or nine.

Harleys?

I've got some Harleys. I have all kinds of bikes. I love motorcycles. But I don't have any classic bikes; I have pretty much all contemporary bikes. A bunch of different kinds.

And how fast do you like to drive them?

Oh! [Laughs.] The speed limit. No more

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