No Country for Old Men - Interview with Tommy Lee Jones (2007)

Tommy Lee Jones is here he won an Oscar for his work in the fugitive he now stars in two films this season first there is in the Valley of Elah by Paul Haggis the director it also stars Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon then there is Joel and Ethan Coen No Country for Old Men that film is the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival a Oh Scott of the New York Times on in the Valley of Elah quote there is something in arguable something irreducibly honest and right about mr. Jones's performance that sound good I liked how like that coming I am ready to have him back at this table there without flattering you yes they're all saying this a it's a great performance and somehow you have enhanced the character that it was like you have permeated this character you feel that way uh no I just try to do the best job I could you know Paul wrote a pretty good screenplay and I tried to help him see what he wanted to see that's pretty much the way I look upon my job read the screenplay understand it as well as you can and do your best to find out what the director wants to see and then make it possible in every way you can for him to see it even though it might in another case in No Country for Old Men be based on a book written by someone you like and admire very much Cormac McCarthy oh yes sir no different same thing look at the text try to see what the characters about and do the best you can yeah and also try to figure out what the director might want to see and then make it possible insofar as you can for him to see it so what was he looking for in Hank Deerfield I think ultimately we were looking for a cup for maybe two different things he liked the character a lot more than I did really yeah what did he like about him and what didn't you like about it well he thought the guy was salt of the earth the all-american man ultimately the admirable common man of America and his life is upside down because his son is killed yeah exactly and there were elements in the character that I don't like like this character is blindly patriotic without thought when I started not yet and he's ethnocentric which is a very upright way to say big break so and those are things that I really didn't like but he's not after likable qualities a person with those handicaps that's what he wanted to see which is a pretty sophisticated way of looking at it I determined finally I have such disgust for those things that I you know probably played more toward the disgusting villain then then then he wanted but he but we worked it out but he that your character goes to why you want him to go doesn't he he goes from the wrong place to the right exactly right and it all works out and well my point is the worst he is the more interesting the journey is yeah well he he begins to rethink blind unthinking patriotism that might lead you to war let's say without any thought and from a place of I can only say racial prejudice to a more open-minded place and that was that was the journey and I'm hoping and I believe we made it he did is it by definition an anti-war film nothing happens it happens in war well an anti-war film is a big term it's a big convoy and this is about people who live in Tennessee and in New Mexico who are involved in a war so I would hesitate to put such a wide generic well I mean you know some people are our moments yeah but I'd be using different circumstances which is return for more to make statement about war yeah well we have kids coming back from war who they're badly injured and that's where these our consideration now and in some other medium let's say then then television if you will forgive me it's worthy of consideration in literature and in movies in order to put it into a narrative context it might somehow make it a more personal experience that it then then then the television then make you find a deeper truth perhaps maybe because sometimes the television ignores us too personalizing what we see it's because we watch it all day long every day and it's it's difficult to think to take personally what we see on television sometimes I think and it takes away the harshness of it it's almost it becomes if you can be put into a dramatic context sometimes the information comes to us from a different direction it makes a different impact and and approaches the truth maybe it helps to approach sea of truth maybe a little a little bit closer I mean that's supposed to be the function of theater and and movies also the highest and best use for it any similarity between the character you play in No Country for Old Men and this character they both men Marvel I hope not you know I paid more attention to trying to make all these characters different rather than the same and I really don't give any thought at all to you know a running theme but saying and then characters one chooses to play I know you know no no no I know you know don't do that but sometimes you play characters that come or somewhere or look they've been overwhelmed by an environment they find out that there's a world out there they don't know or understand that's clearly what happened in your own country poem in yes yes sir right uh-huh and in this case ain't Deerfield finds itself in a world that he doesn't really know or understand there are things about it yeah but that happens to all of us everything yeah take a look at this this is a scene first from in the Valley of Elah period mark was the one who wanted to join I sure as hell didn't encourage it you know living in this house he never could have felt like a man to be had and gone oh boy thank you couldn't everyone one of the Coen brothers said about it said you added more acid to the character then was there in the novel I read the core max a friend of mine I read all in Berlin and and read all the criticisms it said and read all the criticisms I read that book and that's you know the characters I played was the way I read it as applied to joel and ethan's screenplay and certainly didn't set out to add acid maybe they read the book differently than I did the Coen brothers yeah that's possible it is said that you insisted it be set in West Texas I suggested the obvious that you can't you did be silly to try to create a stand-in or find a stand-in for the trans-pecos that is to say the country in Texas on the west side of the Pecos River there's nothing like it anywhere else in the southwest and to try to fake it would would be a mistake it's very hard for example for me as a child of West Texas to watch The Searchers which was set in western a great movie great movie shot in Arizona yeah and instead the just doesn't work for me and and it's going to work for fewer and fewer people as time goes by and I totally just you know it'd be silly if they tried to fake it I didn't yell at him or insisted on anything I'm neither they I've had a different interpretation that they want to shoot it all in New Mexico because of the rebates that's a governmental thing yeah you get tax rebates and New Mexico makes it much easier to shoot in New Mexico than Texas does Texas only woke up three or four months ago and decided that they would give a five percent tax rebate yeah I'm surprised at that because Texas is always a lot of moves have been made in Texas happening yeah but they're being outstripped by Louisiana and New Mexico now Carolina to a degree yes sir locale much much more encouraging in New Mexico and and in Louisiana to come there and shoot films they're much more inviting then then Texas is and as a result we're losing our talent base and people are moving out they're moving either to Albuquerque or New Iberia New Orleans you have always chosen to live in Texas yeah cuz it's home because you have this other life which is as a rancher mm-hmm you need to do that well you know when I figured out that I could live anywhere I wanted to I in by wisdom decided to live at home yeah yes what's interesting about you I mean literally within 10 days after you left Harvard you got a job I did and haven't stopped working since then no others not really no I haven't stopped working it been anything you've most wanted to do in this life of an actor that you haven't had a chance to do alright when I was younger I wanted to play Hamlet and then but that was cured by becoming too old so y'all still play Lear maybe one day yeah well I think I'm too young there you are that down but maybe one day I think I can play Big Daddy and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof would you want to oh it's been you know I'd like to what let some time go by and so they've been a lot of productions here within the last few years here's what's interesting too about what critics are saying about your forms here uh is it you know I mean there is no sense of vanity about you in these performances I'm you you hope not because there's not about who you are and those know it yeah when you tell me the story of the character your character plays a sheriff who comes on a bad drug scene oh yeah in no country right old man there was a kid there's a kid from sense out of Texas by the way I was reliving in Sanderson right which is much further west here from Santa yes right and he's out hunting antelopes and he comes up to pond a battle site a drug deal gone bad dead people laying everywhere and pickup full of brown Mexican heroin and a track that's leading out across the desert the last man standing clearly to hear me figures out and he tracks that he finds the fellow that survives he crawled up under a bush out on the house out in one of those pastures and died he had a briefcase with two million dollars in it with him and the kid decides that there's no good reason to leave that money there yes and the drama ensues we have a story then we have a story and we have a case I'd say is it people whose money was wanted yeah we have to chester's exactly the the people whose money he's got of chasing him he's trying to get away right and the sheriff of the local county kind of an old-timer is chasing both of them because he doesn't like any disturbance of the peace right and this is all a world he doesn't quite understand drug money and had drug lords on the violence who comes within the buy especially the violence he even who doesn't understand it and it overwhelms and extent except for the insight that he has into the passage of time which is revealed I think in the last few closing scenes lenten may may be its insight insight into what I don't know maybe it's inciting too I easily overwhelmed he's become and maybe it's insight into the future always being there there's a like all of Cormack stories there's a the questions are more important than the answers there's a good question at the end of the movie so the movie looks like a good chase movie and it looks like a good drug and violence movie and a good crime show it's got all the elements but like all of core max work there's many other dimensions to it if you call this a drug of violence chase movie you can call blood meridian the western or you can call child of god a horror flick but these these stories are much more and what question is he asking at the end to what extent has the world overwhelmed be landing soon exactly yeah maybe and maybe not do you write oh yeah what are you write screenplays are you working on one man yeah I own the the motion picture rights to Ernest Hemingway's last book and we've made a screenplay of it and we're hoping to be able to shoot it what was his last book it's called islands in the stream oh yes yes it was published posthumous right right it was there somebody have to finish it at he finished it yeah somebody had to finish it it was really three stories his wife Marianne the publisher sort of tacked together and forward to the first edition says that popper was unable to finish this book by I know the changes that he was going to make and I've done them for him I finished his work you could not argue that that this is his best work because you cannot argue that is that it's his what is his best work god I don't know I've read them all but I wouldn't presume to say which ones which one do you like the most right now islands in the string so how long has he been working on this and what are you doing with it I mean you rewrite your you Tommy Lee Jones is writing the screenplay well it's already written yeah with my writing partner bill witless right who did the screenplays for Lonesome Dove and black beauty and a lot of other movies that you say he's your writing partner just for this project or otherwise for this project we're co-authors of this evening employee Lonesome Dove was an extraordinary adaptations anything it was very fine working that's why I called bill first Wilkins let's go to work do this together yeah how do you do it together you sit down you I wrote a first draft and it got through about 75% of the screenplay and I sent it to him he wrote what I did and that it on the end sent it back I rewrote that I sent it to him he wrote so you get to screen to add and is there interest yes you're gonna make it up you have a schedule I wish I could say yes we were very close you got the money no yes not yet we were very close and will you play in it I'm yes no yeah what's the story no it's a story about a painter who lives in Bimini by himself his three sons come to visit him busy dish oh yeah why we live in Deming yeah he's an oil painter right there's three sons come to visit him and they you know that they're from two different mothers and it's a confusing family situation and they come together to bond together and when after they separate two of the boys are killed in a car wreck and Monte Carlo and one of the boys goes off to join the RAF in England and gets killed and he's totally alone he's completely devastated and he leaves bemmon e goes to Cuba and starts chasing German submarines in his fishing boat living the Caribbean was crawling with u-boats in 99 out of 41 and nearly 1 also was Atlantic coast yeah yeah so he goes to work to the Cuban government and they they find a wrecked crew of German submariners and they chase them down and engage them in a final battle I mean you've got these men older men going through wrenching experience is trying to come to grips of the world they don't know more a world that's been rocked by some unforeseen event yes the death of a son mm-hmm but if I want unimaginable violence the advent of the it's about art family and I have been in the second world war and and you know what it takes to wage war against fascism will you direct this as well oh yes yes you wrote the screenplay yeah you'll produce it yeah you'll direct it you'll star in it I actively well I mean it will act in fair enough you're the consummate filmmaker in this case then that's really my ambition you know in no country it is said that one of the other people they thought about was Clint Eastwood they needed the kind of gravitas to the two of you bring yeah there's not a point here other than when you said consummate filmmaker you think of someone like him two people that can play you know the kind of characters where you really do have to huh yeah well I mean um I appreciate being mentioned in the same sentence with plan I use a friend and the Soviet heroic character you know every filmmakers life it seems to me that you are somebody who lives by his own code who defines the kind of life he wants who has done pretty much what he wants to do who's found satisfaction in the career that he got into early on and there's been an evolution you had a chance to play good and bad heroic and Naniwa I mean it's not a guest this is a long way the question is that this has been a rather interesting journey with a little complaint yes no I don't have any complaints it's I'm 61 years old and and that it you know you feel a little bit more soreness physical soreness at the end of a polo match than I did 30 years ago that's regrettable but inevitable so what the hell otherwise no regrets at all besides you know getting over way up it the more you do see the more opportunity you get to do more things now we're very happy very happy in life and hoping to do better come back well thank you Tommy Lee Jones yes sir thank you job let me give you the date on this and the value Villa is in theaters now you can see it at the opening of the New York Film Festival No Country for Old Men Friday November 9th and nationwide on Wednesday November 21st Tommy Lee Jones thank you for joining us we'll see you next time

Channel: FilMagicians

Views: 385,256

Keywords: Tommy Lee Jones, Interview, No Country for Old Men, Coen Brothers, In the Valley of Elah, Charlie Rose

Id: uENN4pKeBLk

Length: 21min 24sec (1284 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/you_me_fivedollars]

This is incredible - I’d love to see this film!

[u/smotherz]

It’s weird, online it says that they had a $30 mil budget for the film and it was rumored that John Goodman and Morgan Freeman were cast. They had plans to start filming in Puerto Rico, but then nothing else. I wonder why this film never came about?

[u/grlndamoon]

I would love to see this! Someone contact Tommy Lee Jones and tell him we want it!