Chatting with Harrison

10/2000
Amica
(translated by YG)

What happens if the phone rings in the morning, very early, and it's Harrison Ford? Brigitte Steinmetz made this experience. And talked a bit with the star about the cinema thriller "What Lies Beneath".

The phone is ringing. It's very early in the morning.

"Hello?"

"Hello." (Silence ... sneezing) "Sorry. This is Harrison Ford."

"Oh, uhm, WHAT??? Mister Ford!"

Harrison ford, THE Harrison ford?? The Han-Solo-Star-Wars-Indiana-Jones-Harrison-Ford who is on vacation on his ranch in Wyoming and still volunteered to do a telephone interview because of his new movie with Michelle Pfeiffer, only the exact time hadn't been settled????

"Mister Ford, Mister Ford, it is really very kind of you to call. It's just, this comes as such a big surprise and, you know, maybe you could call again tomorrow .. because right now I'm not really prepared and ..."

"When," the voice that sounds like a 45 record that runs at 33, asks "shall I call back? Tomorrow at the same time?"

"Yes."

"Well, then until tomorrow."

"Thank you, thank you very much." Click.

ARE YOU TOTALLY NUTS?? You can't just tell Harrison Ford to call back when you feel like it, gone crazy, or what? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

The following facts are known about Harrison Ford:

-wears briefs, not boxer shorts (thanks to Ladies Home Journal)
-was born on July 13th 1942 in Chicago
-signed a seven-year-deal with Columbia Pictures for 150 $ a week in 1964
-"studied" carpentry in the public library during his lean years
-built furniture for Francis Ford Coppola and a deck for Sally Kellerman
-left the plane in 1976, when George Lucas made him Han Solo
-1981 breakthrough as a hero with "Indiana Jones"
-only Academy Award nomination for "Witness" in 1985
-had the leading role in seven of the 40 most successful movies of all time (Han Solo in the "Star Wars" trilogy, the "Indiana Jones" trilogy and Dr Kimble in "The Fugitive"
-is rich: apart from 20 million $ per film, he also gets 15 % of the sales
-built the mahagoni shelves of his Central Park West apartment in New York himself
-advertises Lancia Lybra on German TV, although he doesn't drive one
-possesses, among others, a Ford tractor and a Ford truck
-was chosen People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1998 at the age of 56
-was divorced from high school sweetheart Mary Marquardt after 15 years of marriage in 1979
-has two grown-up sons with Mary: Benjamin, 33, chef, and Willard, 31, teacher
-has been married for 17 years with "E.T." screenwriter Melissa Mathison, with whom he has two children: Malcolm, 13, and Georgia, 10
-distinguishing marks: scar on the chin (from a car accident where a telephone pole was involved)
-the glasses in his self-made spice rack are sorted alphabetically
-had his right [sic] ear lobe pierced three years ago
-has never seen the spider species Calponia harrisonfordi that the American Museum of Natural History had named after him
-hates interviews

Exactly 24 hours later, the phone rings again. And thus the most important thing about Harrison Ford becomes clear: this former carpenter is more reliable than any German craftsman. Unfortunately, the fact that he called was to remain the climax. In a time when hair dressers employ publicists and B class actors can only be reached via phone after you've been put through three times by the assistant of the assistant of the assistant of the publicist, and the talk on the phone has probably to be in front of witnesses with a stop-watch, that's quite something.

"I don't like talking about myself at all," comes the murmur from the bottom of the well, "because there is nothing to be said about me which is worth telling." What about some words about the movie? "What Lies Beneath" shows Harrison Ford for the first time in contrast with his character role of a do-good-man-in-a-do-bad-world: he plays a scientist who lives seemingly happily with his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), until she starts to see ghosts and Ford's affair with a student who was reported missing comes to light. "That's not the beginning of a diabolical Harrison Ford. I wanted to make something unexpected. I can't go on playing the same thing forever."

At the age of 16, Ford worked as a ship's cook on a yacht. To fry a steak on lake Michigan in the galley with a heavy sea was the most heroic thing he'd ever done, he once said. Short time ago, a beaming 20-year-old woman told People Magazine how, some weeks ago, she was rescued from a dangerous situation in the mountains by a helicopter whose pilot had a damned well-known and prominent chin.

"When a rescue helicopter is needed, I put mine at the disposal of the community. That was no heroic deed but just a medical evacuation. The sheriff called me and asked if I was available." "A real hero," the yellow press cheered undeterred. Flattered? "Hero ..." (disgusted silence) Maybe he remembers an anecdote about the photo shooting on his farm in Wyoming. "These are my horses, yeah." (Pause) "I keep horses. What can I tell you?"

Maybe a little lesson about flying. He has a fleet of five planes, among them a jet. Not long ago he even experienced a crash landing. If he knows something comforting for people with fear of flying? "What I do is different from being flown as a passenger. The attraction is doing something for yourself. I like the machines and I like learning something. It's not my job to relieve other people of their fear of flying." The same holds for the secret of a happy marriage: "I am no marriage counsellor."

There is something that Ford hates even more than interviews, and that's speaking in public. Like speaking in front of the American Film institute when he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award.

"The speech was horrible. I was scared for weeks before this appearance. The accident was nothing against it. We were practicing an emergency landing with the helicopter where you turn off the motor and try an autorotation shortly above the ground. And then I had another one, but that wasn't because of a gust of wind, as the papers wrote, but because of a wind shear; that's when winds come from two different directions ..." The taciturn man becomes almost talkative, until he interrupts himself: "It's difficult to explain to someone who's not into aerodynamics."

Maybe a little "and now"-game: Twelve years ago, Ford was urged by a journalist to confess what he wished for in his life. "I wish I was fitter," he said back then. In "What Lies Beneath" there's a remarkable body lying in bed with Michelle.

"Yes, this wish came true. I train myself three to four times a week and I play tennis."

What about: "I wish I was more educated and had taken advantage of my time at college instead of sleeping through it."

"I do still wish that."

It's never too late.

"Oh yeah, I can still go back to school. yeah, that would be funny," he says with a sepulchral voice. "I can hardly get my children to do their homework." Now he's even laughing.

Back then he wished he would be "clearer in my mind". Can he see more clearly today?

"No." What a pity.

"One of the many disappointing sides of age," he sighs as if he was breaking down any moment under the weight of the receiver. Okay, okay. Last question.

"What I'm going to do now? In about four minutes a friend is going to drop by and we're going to jump into my helicopter." Good. Finished.

"Mister Ford, the wake-up call yesterday was the most wonderful one I have ever received."

"I'm sorry, I didn't intend to wake you up, umh ... uh ... uhm, but (Pause) I really appreciate the fact that you sacrificed your time for me."

Sacrificed! Did he really say sacrificed? Fly, Ford.

[In German, "Ford" is pronounced just as the word "fort" which means "away". So you could also read the last phrase as "Fly away".]

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