When he emerged from the small boardroom, it was hard not to stare at the guy on a cell phone pacing about the waiting area. A man on a cell phone isn't a particularly unusual sight, but this was Harrison Ford. It wasn't hard to picture Indiana Jones wielding his whip or Han Solo brandishing his blaster in place of the phone.
After finishing his call, he told us in his low, gravelly voice that he was making an "executive decision" to start the interview even though one journalist was still missing, so the five of us took our seats at a table with Mr. Ford at the head.
We only had a half hour to ask him about his upcoming thriller, "Firewall," in which he stars an unsuspecting security specialist whose family is taken hostage in a high-tech bank robbery. But Ford's commanding presence in such close quarters had caught us off guard, and there were a few moments of awkward silence before we eased into the interview.
Question: What is it about this movie ["Firewall"] that made you come to talk to us? You are the kind of actor whose name will sell a movie by itself.
Harrison Ford: Well, to be frank, I don't know why this happened to me, but I've continued to age. It is a fact of life that the younger members of the audience are more interested in people that are approaching their own age than other actors.
Because this is my job - this is my "business" - I am conducting myself like a businessman. I need to reach out to people of your age in order to help ensure the success of this film. People spend a lot of money to make a movie, they pay me a lot of money, and I do whatever is within my capacity to ensure that that movie has been well spent. If you want to go through the reality context, I am a profit participant, and I want to see the movie be successful...
Q: Is it more important for a movie of yours to be enjoyable for a wide audience than to perhaps sacrifice the large appeal for a film that is more artistic or has a serious theme?
HF: I think there's room for both, and I have an interest in both. As far as a serious message is concerned, it is very difficult to make a film with a serious message ... but I find that, sometimes, serious themes presented in the context of a film often co-opt the issue and provide a sort of neat package that can be resolved in two hours ... a movie ending and not a real life ending, so that you may talk about serious issues, but it's very difficult to create an argument in film that changes the way people behave.
You can offer them an experience that may change how they behave, but not an argument. Because people that resist that point of view will continue to resist that point of view, and find that they are not moved, because they know that they are in the world of artifice - not in the world of real life.
So there are movies that I've done that have serious themes; "K-19" [": The Widowmaker," 2002] has a very serious theme. I think from a career perspective a lot of people would say that was not a good choice to play that role. The core audience that has experienced me in the past was not interested in seeing me play a Russian submarine captain, an enemy of the United States, so to speak.
Well, that's the reason I did it: to bump against the barriers, so to speak. Having bumped, then you want to get back into something that works, try and do different kinds of films. Not all serious, not all not serious; different genres, different kinds of characters...
Q: Is there any film that you have seen that you wish you had made or been a part of?
HF: [1962's] "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Q: Any reason why?
HF: I think it was that rare film that confronted a social issue and was successful in changing the way people think, [the way people] thought. Now that flies completely in the face of what I said earlier, but what can you do?
Q: There's also word that you are working with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on a new Indiana Jones film - can you tell us anything about it?
HF: I can't really tell you too much about it. We're closer than we've been in the past; we're hoping it will come together fairly soon.
Q: What aspects of Indiana and working with Steven Spielberg make you want to return to the role?
HF: Oh, they are just fun; they are just great, fun movies for the audience; it's a big engine of entertainment. They are fun to make, a fun character to play. I like working with Steven, we have a good time.
Q: When you read a script, is your visualization of the movie usually congruent with the finished film?
HF: Really good question. Well, things change. The first reading of the film for me is really important. That's the moment, the one time when I get a really clear emotional reaction to the story and to the character's dilemma.
Every time I read it after that I'm informed of the first experience. But that's the critical one for me, and I make my choices on what to do pretty much based on the first time I read it, to have an affinity for the material, an understanding of the material, and an understanding of the character. If I don't understand the character on that first reading, I'm not likely to do it unless I can see a way to fix it...
I used to have this old Russian lady architect that I worked with on building one of my houses, and I [came] in after everything has been planned down to the gnat's ass, and I say to her, "Jeez, I'm sorry, but last night I had this idea and I want to do this."
And she said, "No limit for better" [in Russian accent]. No limit for better. And that's what I think is important: keep working on it, keep pushing to do the best you can. Make everything...clear and emotional, and add to the power of the story...
Q: You've been quoted in the past as saying you initially just wanted to earn a living as a working actor. Have you found any new motivations or rewards for making films as your career has progressed?
HF: Yeah, to me it's a matter of going to a war zone and fighting your way out, trying to get out with your ass intact.
I choose a movie because it has the potential to be good. The process of compelling them to be good, causing them to be good, is a day-to-day moment-to-moment, every-moment-counts situation. It's intensely engaging. That's, for me, the reward: It's good hard work. It doesn't make you sweat, but it still gives you the same feeling of having accomplished work. You look at a pile of logs that need to be split or a script that needs a story to be told, and you say, "Okay, let's roll up our sleeves and get to it." And that kind of engagement in something that is so critical still keeps me interested.
Q: Could you tell me about your conservation efforts?
HF: I've been on the board of an organization called Conservation International, which you can find out about on the Internet, for the last 15 years. We work in 40 countries around the world. Our main emphasis is on preserving biodiversity, as that is the key to the health of the planet...
We work with indigenous communities and try to provide an economic benefit for them for sustainable development. We work with the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and other people that seem unlikely... we work with Walmart, with BP [British Petroleum], and in all of those cases we have been able to lead them to what we call 'best practices' in their field, which influences their customer's sense of nature and sense of responsibility of that company.
