Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little politically charged interview with one Mr. James Cromwell. I’m a big, big fan of Cromwell’s work, so when he came through Austin in the days before the release of W. I jumped at the chance to sit down with him.

As you’re probably aware, Cromwell plays George HW Bush in Oliver Stone’s examination of our current sitting president. I found Cromwell to be incredibly kind upon our meeting, but when politics came up, as should be expected given the subject matter, he got really impassioned.

I found the conversation to be fascinating, especially when he compares his own relationship to his father with the one between HW and W.

Enjoy it!

Quint: I’ve been quite a fan of yours for quite a while.

James Cromwell: Well, bless your heart.

Quint: One of my favorite movies growing up was one of your earlier works, MURDER BY DEATH.

James Cromwell: Oh yeah.

Quint: I love that movie.

James Cromwell: Did you ever see the sequel to it? THE CHEAP DETECTIVE.

Quint: With Peter Falk? Yeah, I like it, but I don’t like it as much. You miss Peter Sellers. I love that whole Sidney Wang aspect, the whole relationship he has with his adoptive son. Murder By Death had so many great people in it, like Capote and…

James Cromwell: Maggie Smith, David Niven, and Nancy Walker and Estelle Winwood.

Quint: Elsa…

James Cromwell: Yeah, Elsa Lanchester.

Quint: The Bride of Frankenstein. That’s crazy man…

James Cromwell: We had wonderful people. Alec Guinness…

Quint: As the blind butler. That movie is so fantastic…

James Cromwell: They didn’t know what to make of it when it came out. Somebody was describing the reviews and they were saying Oliver Stone couldn’t make up his mind whether this was a comedy or a drama…

Quint: Oh, for W.?

James Cromwell: Yeah and that’s sort of what happened to our film. “Is it a satire?” “Is it a real murder mystery?” “Did somebody really die?” and missed the whole point.

Quint: I love it and I love that it all kind of goes to a mindfuck at the end where it’s just like “What? You’re literally saying she was a mannequin, but now she’s real?” I love that, because the whole point of the movie was to turn…

James Cromwell: They never make sense, those things.

Quint: I loved it as a kid, but watching it as I grew older, I see so much more depth and a lot more satire on the Agatha Cristie…

James Cromwell: On the genre.

Quint: Yeah, and picked a lot of that stuff.

James Cromwell: It’s what he wanted.

Quint: But you are talking about W. and I think it’s so funny that that’s the same comparison coming, because it’s like “Is it a satire?” “Is it a comedy?” “Is it completely serious?” To me, that’s the Bush Whitehouse, so I don’t understand why people would find the movie confusing.

James Cromwell: True. I don’t think they necessarily are finding it confusing. I think as somebody said, “They write the review about the movie they would have made given the same subject,” instead of looking at what it was and making a comparison between the movie they have in their head as the actual movie and of course the real movie doesn’t live up.

Quint: Still even now there is… I think a lot with print press, you want be like “Okay, really wow me. Wow me with this story.” You have the people who want to see the scathing indictment and then you have the people who want to see a fair, level headed look. To me, I just love movies and I love compelling stories. I love that they made me sympathize with Bush, because that’s not something I’m very used to.

James Cromwell: (laughs) It surprises a lot of people on the left.

Quint: I think the biggest surprise for me was how much they made me like Laura Bush, because she has always been kind of a non-entity, at least in my political views, in terms of I don’t really feel strongly one way or another about her.

James Cromwell: Is she from Austin?

Quint: I think she was. I think that’s…

Kraken: At the very least she lived there when she met Bush.

James Cromwell: Is this where the car accident happened?

Quint: I don’t think so.

James Cromwell: She was in college then? No, she was in High School.

Quint: I don’t know if she was born in Austin. We had Bush here for a few years. He kicked Ann Richards out of office unfortunately when I moved here.

Kraken: Unfortunately.

James Cromwell: Fortunately?

Kraken: No, no. Unfortunately.

[Everyone Laughs]

Quint: Yeah, you’re going to pull a Sean Penn. (laughs) But I moved here from the Bay Area and that was the biggest shock to me, seeing somebody… and I loved her here, because she was so involved in film and the arts. I would see her at movies all the time, but yeah it’s kind of bizarre, because we had a lot of George Bush before he was on the national map and I don’t know where I’m going with that…

James Cromwell: So you had a good snootful.

Quint: Yeah.

James Cromwell: You should have told the rest of the country.

Quint: We tried!

James Cromwell: (laughs) I’m sure you did. They are doing it again…

Quint: They’re trying. Let’s talk about Herbert Walker. One thing that fascinated me when I first saw the trailer was that from everybody, from Brolin down, they don’t really look like the people, but they look exactly like them. I knew instantly who was who in the quick flashes of the trailer and I think of the characters, I think you came in probably more than anybody and just played George HW Bush as a character as yourself. You played it straight. You didn’t try to mimic or pull a Dana Carvey or any of that stuff. Was that a conscious decision?

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James Cromwell: Well, in trying to find the character, after I let go of my political objections to the public persona and try to find something to like, I did develop a theory about his public persona, which is that he’s cut off from his emotions from the lower half of his body because his father was an alcoholic and a very powerful man who believed in Corporal Punishment and I know meted it out in the family, but the family lied internally. The mother said to the kids “Your father is tired,” but he was actually drunk.

So, they lied to the rest of the world, so he learned at a very early age to keep all of that. It was this unspoken life of his, so the voice tended to be slightly nasal and sort of cut off about [Gives an example] this register and maybe a little higher and I had this voice and the first scene, which was the scene of confrontation when W challenges his father to a fight, Oliver didn’t like that I was still and he didn’t like that I was quiet and in control, like “What’s the matter with you?” I said “My son’s acting like a baboon here, I should be still.” He said, “No no, this is your opportunity to be like Prescott! Take control!”

Well by four o’clock in the morning, there was just no more character left. I was just as angry as I would have been if my son had been a jerk and then I realize in that second that I couldn’t bring it back. I had to let that go, because I had done a whole scene a certain way and actually it was a blessing, because the voice would have stuck out as a comment and I didn’t want to make a comment. I wanted to show a dynamic of a father and a son, because I think Bush’s personality is formed by his resentment of and his longing for the love and affection of his father and I think it influences his relationship with Cheney and his relationship with Rove and almost everybody else and that’s what I wanted to show.

Quint: And that’s the heart of the movie. Without a doubt, that’s where the emotional impact of the movie was, for me, was seeing that relationship and seeing in the contrast of the real life fight scene and the dream sequence where there I’m sure is some liberty taken, but you can see the demons that W is wrestling with and it really does… and I love that the impetus was watching the failed campaign against Clinton, that that was the thing that kicked W. in the ass to get him going, because…

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James Cromwell: It is interesting though with the liberties taken in the dream sequence and I was just thinking just with you mentioning that… When he says “You have ruined it for the rest of us, for your brother… destroying the dynasty with this fiasco,” does come with of course in his mind, the Scowcroft article that Bush and Scowcroft put in THE NEW YORK TIMES was a condemnation of the policy that they were perusing and said in so many words, I have not actually read it, but it would end in a fiasco, so Bush unconsciously understands that there is another point of view. He doesn’t accept this consciously. It’s not around him… No one feeds him that.

The strongest he gets is when the guy asks him “Have you made any mistakes since 911 and what have you learned from them?” The fact that his conscious mind cannot come up with an answer means there is some internal conflict there which is manifested in the dream sequence.

Quint: And I think that that’s also a great emotional pay off, too. It was kind of a release for the audience. It’s building and building up to this point and because that never happened in real life, you can’t have a real confrontation. You can’t really have that, but then that’s followed up pretty immediately by the scene that you have with Ellen Burstyn, where you are talking about “I can’t give him advice. I can’t do that.”

James Cromwell: It’s his presidency.

Quint: But you still want to reach out to your son; I think it’s a great conflict. It’s almost a classic tragedy in a way. Is that something that you considered going into it?

James Cromwell: I’m trying to find the right way to say this… A lot of my life and the reason that it took me as long as it did to achieve something professionally and to actually have a career, instead of a careen as I used to call it, from one thing to another…

I remember my father looking at my resume after I had been in the theater about five years and he looked at me and said “Is this it?” I remember… God, that went like a knife in me, because I’m busting my hump to make it work. I can’t do more roles. I can’t play Puck. They’re not going to give me Hamlet. How am I supposed to fit in the world in this body in the theater? Nobody is taking me seriously. You know, I loved my father. I resented the divorce. I took responsibility for the divorce as a six year old, as all six year olds do. In other words, you go through the classic process.

Quint: Did you find that really informed you?

James Cromwell: That’s what I used. I understand that and I sympathize with that. I think it’s formative, but of course it’s not ultimately what you can… At a certain point you have to put childhood things aside and take responsibility for your life if you are going to have a life.

What I loved… When we opened the film in New York, Oliver said “I want to quote Socrates: Know thyself, an unexamined life is not worth living.” The inability of so many public figures to really avoid, either the process of knowing themselves and taking responsibility for that knowledge, but of communicating to us that that we are prone to mistakes, that we make misjudgments… The fact that (Hillary) Clinton could not at any point say “I voted it for it and it was a fucking mistake. That was the best I knew.” A lot of people “knew;” Barbara Lee knew, Kusinich knew… It was there to be known if you didn’t have another agenda and if you are not willing to talk about that agenda and the power of politics of staying within the purview of the democratic party… Sorry.

Quint: No, please go on!

James Cromwell: It’s just that it is the complication of this film that has to be read in by a sympathetic and understanding and knowledgeable viewing, which includes all of the information that comes from (Bob) Woodward’s books and (Ron) Suskind’s books and all the stuff we know it has to inform this film.

If you go in and pretend that you are blank and that nothing has happened and I’m seeing a film that is going to explicate some incredible mystery, “How the fuck did we get where we are?” You are going to miss this fucking film, because it’s incredibly different.

When I read the film and first got it, I missed so much of the politics in the political part of the scenes that I’m not in, because I read too quickly. Then when you watch it and you watch what Oliver has done, the little exchange between Colin Powell and Cheney is devastating which ends with “You could have been president.” “Fuck you.” That’s it and that’s the level. We now know from the Nixon tapes, that’s how it works. It isn’t these very measured reasonable well informed conscientious principal discussion of the issues at hand, it’s the manipulation of ego and ambition and power to achieve ends which have nothing to do with what they state to the rest of the world.

Quint: And always reactionary…

James Cromwell: They don’t even debate now, they just orchestrate.

Quint: I found the movie is very much a love letter to Powell, but then he makes that really sharp point that without Powell giving in and making that speech, everyone is saying that that’s what pushed us over.

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James Cromwell: You see, that one moment when Bush comes around and knowingly leans in and says “Are you with us?” Now Powell’s decision is “I want to be president. In order to be president, I need the Republican Party. I cannot resign on the basis of my principles now without jettisoning my entire career.’ Whereas (David) Kay says “This is a sham. You have lied. I cannot trade access for my principles and I am forced to resign.” I just think that scene and his performance is the base level of humanity that we expect from people in power.

Quint: It’s a great humbling moment within a sea of the exact opposite.

James Cromwell: Duplicity and mendacity.

Quint: Much better words than I can come up with. (laughs) But yeah you talk about the politics of the movie and I love that that’s where it’s focused and I think Stone did a great job balancing the emotional weight of the family stuff and how that influences W, because it’s hard to view him as a bad guy when you see that. Like anything there’s no evil. A lot of people can look at this and see what’s influencing him, what’s on his mind, what his ambitions are, and all of that stuff, suddenly it explains a lot of things that on the surface people might think are just evil or greedy. I guess what I’m trying to say is the movie humanizes him.

James Cromwell: If there’s anything you learn from the film, especially from people on the left, as long as you think in terms of black and white, right and wrong that you are able of making that distinction with assurance, you fall into the same trap for which he governs. We have to look at it as we are all culpable. The reason the congress can’t indict this man or change the policies is because they capitulated all along the way and they are coauthors of it, so we have to stand back at this point and we have to understand that it’s matters of grey and insist that people take that into account and not come at us with the assurance that they know what’s right.

Quint: And it’s hard; people don’t like seeing grey. It’s not as easy. Know thy enemy, people don’t like to do that. People ignore that. That’s what I really like about the movie, it really doesn’t ignore that, but it doesn’t forgive what happened, however it doesn’t necessarily condemn them.

James Cromwell: Well, you can condemn the policies without demonizing the man. I condemn the policies of both of them, just across the board, but they are human beings and that’s it, you just have to understand that.

Kraken: I think Biden said something that I really liked, where he was talking about “In my many years, I’ve learned not to question the motives of people, just question their policies and what they are standing for.”

James Cromwell: You always have to assume people’s motives. It’s always a projection and it’s often not accurate.

Quint: If IMDB is not lying to me, you are also attached to a film where you are playing LBJ?

James Cromwell: If they get the money to do the film, yeah. It’s a conspiracy thing and it’s a great take on LBJ, wonderful.

Quint: Yeah? That’s pretty crazy.

James Cromwell: I did him once before. I just came from ANGELS IN AMERICA and I had no time to prepare, so I did it on the fly, but as shooting went on… I’m very fond of him and he’s a great character to play.

He was a hoot, the last of a breed and a really interesting man, LBJ. That strange mixture of unprincipled politician and really principled and connected to the issues of the people and finally hoist by the cynicism of that bloody city that they govern us from supposedly.

Quint: Well do you see a brighter future ahead for us politics-wise? If all of the polls are to be believed, we are in a good spot.

James Cromwell: I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful, not because it’s Obama, because I’m not voting for Obama, I’m voting for Cynthia McKinney, but I’m hopeful that when he is elected, the American public will have realized that it is not the person you put in office who can ultimately save this country. If it needs to be saved from itself, it’s up to all of us. We have to organize locally. We have to demand responsibility and responsiveness from our elected leaders that they listen to us, finally, that this government is not controlled by the whims and desires of multinational corporations and Wall Street, etc, etc. All of these things have to happen, which could mean that we are on the road to a paradigm shift in ever area; in education and healthcare, in foreign policy.

I am at the same time appalled at the positions that both candidates have taken, but especially Obama on clean coal technology, on nuclear energy as a solution to our problems, on a healthcare bill that includes the private insurance companies instead of single payer. He didn’t even modify it, just name it and say single payer or modified single payer. I know that there are other ways to skin the cat, which I guess is a bad metaphor for me, but going into Pakistan and not treating Osama Bin Laden as a criminal issue instead of a…

You know, what Cheney describes about the expansion of the American Empire and our isolation from the rest of the world and a necessity of maintaining this project for the new American century philosophy that Pearl and Wolfowitz and all these people have all created… Listen, the Democrats buy into that, too, so this whole world’s got to change.

On the one hand I’m very hopeful, there could be a paradigm shift into whatever the next evolutionary step of human beings which I have strong feelings about or as in the pyramids there’s one passage that goes up towards the king’s chamber from the king’s chamber through the metaphor of death, one goes out those two air holes towards source… I know this sounds sort of airy-fairy, but the other one goes down into a pit, a room that leads a pit that leads to utter chaos. The whole human experiment could go in the toilet like the dinosaurs and whatever life form remains will at some point look back on us and look at us like how we look at the dinosaurs. “Oh they didn’t have scales, jeez, they had skin and they sort of liked their young and maybe they were in groups…” I know that sounds very weird…

Quint: That’s alright.

James Cromwell: We live in interesting times. I think the Chinese summed it up.

Quint: Well, what else do you have on your schedule?

James Cromwell: I do this television show called MY OWN WORST ENEMY, so we will see how that does.

Quint: Is that the one with Christian Slater?

James Cromwell: Yeah and they greenlit fifty films after they postponed production because of the strike, so I always hope that something comes up. I have a production company. I have a lot of stories, most of them are political. My company was formed, since I’m not an aboriginal, I can’t tell Native American stories, but I can tell stories about the interface with white western culture and native culture, because in my belief the solution to what ails us comes from native culture and aboriginal people who knew instinctively how to live on this planet. I don’t mean we have to go back and live in teepees, but we have to someway get back to the source and the relationship we had.

Kraken: Some kind of harmony instead of a take relationship.

James Cromwell: Exactly. I have a number of projects. I have a project about the Afghan war at Sony, which at some point I hope will get made. Actually Steve Zaillian, who we approached to do the script, because they greenlit it, he said “I don’t know how it ends,” which is what they have said about this picture. “What do you mean you don’t know how it ends? It ends badly damn it! Just fucking make it up. You think it gets better?” (laughs)

Kraken: You can always just appeal to their senses. “It ends with an alien invasion.” And then just cut that part out of the movie.

Quint: Yeah, and find a nice WB actor and bring him in for two days of shooting.

Kraken: Film it; just don’t leave it in the final cut.

Quint: “Weird, it doesn’t seem like it fits.” “I know, looks like we are going to have to lose it.”

James Cromwell: (laughs) Oh some cynicism.

Quint: A little bit. (laughs)

James Cromwell: That’s reality in that town. That’s a very strange town.

Quint: It’s a very bizarre place. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate you chatting with me and congratulations on the movie.

James Cromwell: Thanks!

See, told you he got impassioned! When he taps into the righteous anger, I won’t lie… it’s pretty intimidating!

I hope you guys enjoyed the chat! More coming soon!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com