KEVIN BACON: The Hollywood Interview

Nice to see Kevin Bacon win a Golden Globe tonight for Taking Chance. Below is the interview we did with Kevin on the role last March, which originally appeared in Venice Magazine.


Kevin Bacon: Hollywood’s Long Distance Runner
By Terry Keefe


Memo to young stars: If you want to know how to manage an acting career, study the project choices of Kevin Bacon. After Footloose, he was as big as any of the young stars of the 80s, but, a few years later, deftly avoided being lumped in with the pop culture relics of a fading decade by a small role he took in 1991’s JFK, for director Oliver Stone, then at the height of his filmmaking, and press-creating, powers. Bacon’s screen time was brief as gay hustler Willie O’Keefe, who was a key witness in the conspiracy case being but together by Kevin Costner’s character, Jim Garrison, but Bacon was able to showcase his acting chops in a role unlike any he had been seen in before on-screen. Perception-wise, he was also in some very good acting company in JFK, a film which starred Kevin Costner, then one of the biggest names in Hollywood after Dances With Wolves, but also boasted a stellar supporting cast of extended cameos, which included the likes of Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ed Asner, Donald Sutherland, and....Kevin Bacon. And with that, he was no longer regarded primarily as a young star for young audiences, but as a serious actor, in it for the long haul. (To be fair, his promise for more dramatic fare was showcased nearly a decade earlier in 1982’s Diner, but memories of both Hollywood and the public are short.) Strong roles followed from then on, right through to today in A Few Good Men, Murder in the First, Apollo 13, Mystic River, and The Woodsman (a very strong, and under seen, indie in which Bacon plays a pedophile who has been released from prison and is attempting to fight his compulsions), to name just some of the highlights.

Bacon continues to be willing to take supporting roles when the material and the director are strong, and can currently be seen in theaters in director Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, in which Bacon plays Jack Brennan, who was Nixon’s real-life Chief of Staff during his post-Presidency years. He and Frank Langella, as Nixon, share one of the film’s most moving scenes when Brennan, who is as protective of Nixon as if he were his father, cautions the ex-President during a break from the interview taping about the long-term implications of what he might be about to reveal to the interviewer David Frost (played by Michael Sheen). It’s one of the few moments when Nixon is seen to let his guard down, and acts as a climax of sorts to the character arcs of both Nixon and Brennan. Bacon will also be back at the top of the masthead with his headlining role in the powerful HBO film Taking Chance, based on the real story of Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, a Marine who volunteers for military escort duty for the remains of a 19-year old fallen Marine, Lance Corporal Chance Phelps. The Department of Defense provides uniformed escorts for all fallen servicemen and women to wherever their final resting place is, and part of the job of the escort is to make sure that the remains are treated with the proper respect at every step of the journey home. Directed by Ross Katz, Taking Chance takes its time to concentrate on the small details of the trip, from the time the body of Chance Phelps is in the Dover Port Mortuary, at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, to when Bacon’s Michael Strobl takes charge of the transportation, and it is this concentration on detail that the film finds its story as Strobl interacts with numerous Americans along the way. Likely of every political stripe, they nonetheless find a connection with both Strobl and the memory of the young man he is taking back to his parents.

We reached Kevin Bacon by phone on Super Bowl weekend.

Hi, Kevin. Thanks for talking with me on a Saturday morning. I appreciate it.

Kevin Bacon: Hey, happy to do it.

I wanted to talk first about Taking Chance. Did you spend much time with the real Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl in preparation?

Yeah, we spent a couple of days together. I saw his home life, his family, and his kids. A couple of his friends came over, and they hung out there too. They took me around Quantico, where I'd actually been before. Because I had done the research for A Few Good Men. And we went around the Pentagon. He's been working with the Pentagon now for a while. Yeah, so that was pretty much it, you know.


(Above: Kevin Bacon as Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl in Taking Chance.)

Did you feel the responsibility to kind of portray him, personality-wise, close to how he really is? Or, was it more of his spirit, and the spirit of the task he had undertaken, which you wanted to capture?

Well, I think that, there's a certain - I mean, I feel responsibility, obviously, to make characters real people. And I haven't really played many real living people that many times in my life. Actually, real people, living or dead. I didn't feel a responsibility in the sense of trying to do an imitation of him, because, you know, he's not like an iconic public figure. It's not like playing Nixon or something like that. On the other hand, I don't want to feel like me, when the camera's on, you know? And the time between “Action” and “Cut” is the time when I want to feel like I'm walking in somebody else's shoes. So, it was powerful for me to try to, you know, go as close to Mike as possible, and as close to who he is as possible. Even with something technical like the hair. Nobody knew that he had that sort of premature-grey hair thing going on. But, it just seemed like, when we first talked about it, it seemed like that in order to feel like him, and sort of lose myself in the part, that it might be something that we could try. So when I go to work and I put that uniform on, etc., it's nice to have the kind of external stuff, along with the internal thing as well. And also, the mannerisms, the way he sort of moves and speaks and gestures and all those things. So, I did try to get as close to him as I could.

Did you accompany any actual military escorts yourself?

No, I didn't do that, no. I don't know that - first off, I think I would feel kind of uncomfortable doing that.

Okay. That's understandable.

And I also don't know that the military would be all that, you know, hip to doing that. But one thing that was very, very helpful was that we had -- the Marines will, if you work on a film, and they have signed up or agreed to be involved in a film, there's kind of a Hollywood office that'll send technical advisers to work with you. And that was helpful, but even more helpful was, we got some of the guys from the Dover Port Mortuary. And the Mortuary obviously plays very heavily into the film. As it turned out, one of the guys, who not only volunteered and worked at the Mortuary, but also had done like six or seven escorts, he was on the set with me, you know, pretty much the whole shoot. And he was extremely helpful, not just to me but to a lot of the other actors who were playing with me. You know, I had the benefit of having months to prepare, to do a good job with it. Whereas, one of the other actors [in a smaller role] comes in and has an audition, and then they just have to play it for one day -- it's equally important that they know what they're doing.



What do you think drives the people that work at the Dover Port Mortuary? They are portrayed as near-angelic in the film.

It’s a good question, because this guy from the Mortuary, for instance, during Iraq, had done at least two tours of duty. Then in an attack, like six or seven of his friends were killed, and he was wounded himself---and then he wants to go, and be so hands-on, you know, in terms of that job [at the Mortuary]. And that truly has to be a difficult place to work, and yet, it's on the wall there - it says, “Dignity, Respect, and Honor." I mean, this is what they feel, they feel honored to work there, they feel honored to have this job. Something about it sort of transcends just basically working in a funeral parlor. I don't know, there's something about it that's a little more...obviously a little bigger than that.

A big part of the story are the many people Michael Strobl meets along the way that show their support and respect for both his duty, and the loss of Chance Phelps.

That was the thing that Mike Strobl said that really struck him, and, as you know, he's a co-writer on the film, so there's very little embellishment in regards to those scenes. It's very much similar to what his experience was, and I think the thing where he was really knocked out, was how people did react with such compassion and sadness and respect for this kid that they'd never met and they would never see, you know. I think that Mike Strobl was really sort of surprised by that, and also by the fact that, as he told me, he assumed that, given the amount of people he ran into, they probably cut a pretty wide swath in terms of their political views. And yet, universally, they had this similar kind of reaction, you know, so that was kind of part of what the film was about, in terms of transcending the politics of whatever you happened to be feeling about the war.

I think that, whatever side of the political fence you're on, Americans have been dealing with great regret with how the soldiers were treated coming back from Vietnam for a lot of decades now. And I see that change in their treatment of the Iraq veterans, regardless of whether they support the war or not.

Yeah, I don't think it's the same kind of thing as it used to be, in terms of these guys coming back from Vietnam who would often talk about being spit on. For myself, another interesting thing that happened to me is that, because of the structure of the film, I'd go, typically to one location for a day, maybe two, and then we'd move to another location. But at each spot, there would be new actors, and new extras, and new people, you know, involved in the process of making the film. And it involved actors or extras who would just sit by and watch it part of the time. And they were incredibly moved and touched by the whole thing, and even though there was obviously no body in the box, right? But they still had reactions that were similar to characters in the movie, so they would come and they would speak to me about friends and family members who were serving or who had been killed. They would come up to me and say, “Thanks so much for doing this," which, for me - I was a little embarrassed, because it was kind of like "I'm just the actor, you know?" I'm doing the job and I'm getting paid for it, but for some reason people wanted to thank me for making the film. And, like I said, I was a little embarrassed, and I think that was just a little of the feeling that Mike had, when he was thanked for his service in the escort, and he was feeling like it was nothing more than a duty.

Your character has a lot of silent time onscreen, where you're not even really playing against other actors, and so you're kind of playing Mike’s internal life a lot of the time in this film. You have to do a lot sometimes with no dialogue. How do you approach that?

Well, I think that it's one of the challenges with a part like this. It's a reactive kind of part. But it's one of the things that I've tried to do more as I've got a little bit older - the idea of trying to do more with less. I mean, I sometimes will go through, you know, with the script, and go, “Do I really need to say this?” I just think there are sometimes things than can be more powerful than words on a page. The Woodsman was a lot like that. We did a lot of cutting of stuff. I would just go through with the director, and say, “I really don't need this, I don't need this line.” I mean, I guess the challenge is to try to get, somehow, the feeling, and, for lack of another way to say it, sort of put it in your guts, and hope it comes out through your eyes. That's the work. And, you know, luckily I had a director who trusted that that was going to work, that that was going to play.

There’s a very methodical nature to the film. Particularly with the procedure of preparing the body for the shipping, which is pretty detailed. At the beginning, I was worried that this type of pacing would become dull. But the methodical pace of the preparation procedure, and then the escort sequences, just starts to slowly sweep you up into it, and becomes very powerful. You don't even realize it's happening, which is a testament to the filmmaking, but I'm sure this type of pacing was something that was of some concern to [director] Ross Katz, and perhaps you, also.

Yeah, because the impulse is certainly to dramatize it. I think, you know, Ross - his instinct was just to duplicate what the process was for Mike, and if you cut any of that out, then you're not really showing what the process is, and what they go through. I think it was kind of cool that he did that. And I'm glad that you feel that way, because I feel like it does slowly sweep you up, and what, you know, is at first kind of the simple telling of this thing, becomes an emotional journey without your even realizing it, and I think that's really what happened to Mike Strobl. I don't know that when he set out he knew how emotional this journey would be for him. Certainly, a kid from his home town was killed, and nobody ever wants to have to deal with the loss of a life. But I don't think he was quite aware of how much this would affect him.

Let’s talk about Frost/Nixon. You met with the real Jack Brennan, who you portray in the film. How did that meeting go and what were you hoping to learn from it?

Well, you know, interestingly enough, I was in a situation, if I remember correctly, where I had to meet with Jack, almost right after I met with Mike Strobl. Because I think I was starting Taking Chance and then jumping right into Frost/Nixon afterwards. But again, I wanted to sort of try to find the essence of Jack, you know. Frost/Nixon is a much more theatrical presentation of the story. And, again, Jack is not like Nixon - it's not a character that you're going to go, “Oh, my god, he looked and sounded just like him!” [laughs]

But I wanted to sort of get the essence of him, and I spent time with him. I listened to his feelings about Nixon, about his feelings about Nixon's family, and about the time that he spent with him. I have a hard time describing what it is, exactly, but there is something that's kind of different about Marines. And Jack was a Marine. He was a Marine when he met Nixon. Nixon took a liking to him, and I think admired him, and was kind of enamored with Marines, because they were the stuff that he was not made of, you know?

And, then when Nixon left the White House, he asked Brennan to go with him, to become his Chief of Staff, and Jack left the Corps, and started working for Nixon. And I think that his thing was, you know, a sense of duty. He was an honest, hardworking, and committed guy to his Commander-In-Chief, and I also think he had a real admiration of Nixon's intellect. And I also think that, as was the case with many people, in Nixon's kind of inner circle, you could only get so close to the guy, you know, before a wall would sort of come down.

It’s often said that very few people really knew Nixon.

He was socially awkward, and in some ways very, very guarded. They played golf, probably, what, like three times a week or something like that -- and in some ways he felt like he still didn't know him all that well.


(Bacon and Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon, above)


Did Jack tell you what he thought of the film?

I saw him briefly after the film, and he said, you know, he was happy with what I did. He’s seen the Broadway show, and his quote to me was, “I think it's a fascinating and fantastic piece of theatre -- as long as nobody calls it history.” So, I think that some of the dramatic details, he may have taken exception to.

Was that midnight phone call [from Nixon to Frost] one of them?

You know, I never spoke with him about the midnight phone call.

Frank Langella. What really struck me about his performance was that Nixon has been so parodied, that when you see the real Nixon in old films and tapes, it's hard to take him as seriously as you might have at the time. What you get with Frank's performance is how formidable Nixon really had to have been. Did Frank tell you anything about what his process was in developing his Nixon?

Well, to tell you the truth, I saw Frank on the very first day of shooting, for a brief moment, as “Frank.” And on the very, very last day -- but for the rest of the time, he was “Nixon” [laughs].

Really!

Yeah, he came to the set, full makeup, wardrobe, and in character every day, and stayed that way until we wrapped at night. And I never saw him, outside of the work. And so, I would never have the occasion, you know, to ask about what he was doing.

So he kind of treated you as he might have treated the real Jack Brennan then?

Exactly.

Do you remember the Frost/Nixon interviews being aired at all? I only remember them very vaguely.

I remember vividly the Watergate hearings, but I don’t remember watching the interviews. And you know, it's interesting, because I was thinking about why that was, and if you just look at the timeline: When I was a junior in high school, and the Vietnam War was raging on, I was a child of a pacifist household -- we were vehemently anti-war, and anti-Nixon, so when Watergate rolled around, and there was a chance he was going to go down, even though I was a kid, I was fascinated, and was thrilled with the opportunity of watching him, you know, eat it. And then, by the time the interviews came around, which was what, '77, I guess, I had now moved to New York, and was, you know, in my late teens, and off to the races with a movie career, and was completely apolitical. Because I was seriously, you know, trying to become a movie star. Well, if not a movie star, just trying to make a living as an actor, you know, and to get out of the restaurants [laughs]. So, no, I don't remember the interviews at all.

Let’s talk a little bit about The Woodsman. I really love your work in that film, and it has to have been a difficult character to portray, because you wanted to make him somewhat sympathetic and likeable, just so you could watch him onscreen. But you also have to be truthful to what he is.

Yeah, it's not a nice place to want to go to work every day, you know, to step into those shoes, but what I really feel is that often the word “monster” is the one word that comes up when you talk about someone who's committed these horrible, horrible crimes against children. And the truth is that if they were monsters - monsters don't exist - if they were monsters, then we could send a hero to kill them, or there would be a sort of anti-monster laser gun, that could, you know, zap them out. A much more frightening piece of this puzzle is that there are teachers, friends, family members, people in the clergy, politicians, regular people living down the street. And so, all I wanted to do, was rather than just say, “Let me make this guy creepy and as monstrous as possible,” which is the usual kind of approach to playing a sex offender or child molester, I wanted to turn him into a real human being. And that was kind of the point. Generally, the use of the child molester in filmmaking is to make him the worst possible guy so that the hero gets the chance to kill him, and the audience gets to stand up and applaud. You see it time and time again. That’s where that story ends up in cinema. And I actually have kids of my own, so I totally get that. It’s just not what this movie is about. It was trying to look at the person as a human being.


(Kevin Bacon in The Woodsman, above.)

I wanted to ask about the supporting character of Candy, that your character is watching out the window, and who is a potentially another child molester on the prowl that your character intends to stop from doing any harm. In your head, did you play that as if Candy were a real person, or a representation of your character’s own demons?

I played him as though he was real, because I feel like that's the way to play it, but certainly, when he's sitting there beating him up, all of a sudden you realize he's beating himself up. There's a lot going on in his head that just kind of rips him apart. I think that my character in The Woodsman is certainly a paranoid sort of guy. And I think that he is someone who has convinced himself that he's done the time, and so now he's fine, and he's rehabilitated, and, you know, he's paid his price. There's a tremendous amount of denial that's going on with that character -- you know, it's like an addict that thinks they no longer have a problem. That's what's going on with him. I think that movie is about his realization that this is something he's going to have to live with for the rest of his life. That he does have a problem, that it's something that's not going to go away because he got out of prison.

Let’s talk about JFK and your work as the imprisoned gay hustler, Willie O‘Keefe. Looking through your filmography, that film was when I started to look at you a little bit differently as an actor, as you started to transition into more adult roles. Career-wise, did you get a similar reaction from your work in JFK?

It wasn't so much the adult nature of it, as it was the character nature of it, with JFK. Because, you know, I was kind of rolling around, and spinning my wheels, and doing some leads in movies that just weren't turning out, and those were starting to go away, and I remember that, for whatever reason, agents, and people in the studios or whatever, would say, “Once you've played the lead, you have to keep playing the lead.” But it wasn't really working for me, you know, and also, creatively, it wasn't all that interesting to me.

So, I worked with an agent at the time, who said, “You know, you were on the stage, in New York, in the '70s and early '80s, and you were doing, you know, really kinda out there character work. So why can't you do that in movies?” And I said, “Well, I can,” so at that point, I had this meeting with Oliver Stone, and he said, “You got the part," and I went in and did the part, and it completely turned things around for me. It was just great, because, all of a sudden, now I was getting parts that were kind of all over the map. And that's continued. I mean, you know, to go from child molester to Marine --- I'm very grateful that when I do get offered things, that they are a pretty wide variety of guys.

(Bacon as Willie O'Keefe in JFK, above.)

Was the real Willie O'Keefe still alive at the time and did you speak with him?

Well, the name Willie O'Keefe was kind of fictionalized.

Oh, it was a composite character. I never knew that.

Yeah, but there was a guy who Oliver hooked me up with, who Willie was kind of based on, and he was a guy living in New Orleans, who was gay. And so, I had a very, sort of wild night, going around with this dude to sort of like, you know, hardcore gay clubs, stuff like that, and just getting this guy's take on the world. And again, I'm not doing an imitation of him in the movie, but it certainly was helpful to try to get a little bit of his perspective.

Going further back, do you have a favorite of your '80s films at all?

I know this sounds strange, but I really don't go back and look at films. I mean, I do see them. I see them when they come out, maybe twice. I've had a couple of opportunities recently, where people have been nice enough to kind of do retrospectives, and they'll put together kind of like a reel, and it'll really surprise me, because I'll see scenes in films that I have...I just have no memory of having shot [laughs]. And that's kind of fun. But, I mean, in terms of favorites, no, I don't, really.

What’s coming up with the Bacon Brothers Band, in which you play and record with your brother Michael?

We’ve got a brand-new CD, it's called New Year's Day, and we're doing quite a lot of touring. We're really happy with the CD. It's starting to get airplay, which is great. It's been a long time since we've had anything resembling that. And, you know, we're just rattling along.

Have you and your brother played together since you were kids?

Yeah, you know, I started writing songs before I actually even took an acting class.
I was probably around 12. My songwriting was about being heartbroken. When I was very young, I just seemed to always be heartbroken [laughs]. I was always in love with somebody who wasn't in love with me. That's when I started writing songs. And my brother, who's nine years older than me, he was already off on a music career. But we would write together, and I started backing him up with his band, when I was about thirteen, I guess, or fourteen. And in high school, I was playing in bands. And then I took an acting class around the same time, and just kind of fell in love with it, and since my brother was being a musician, I said, “Well, I'll do something else,” so I became an actor.

And then, you know, when I got out of high school, I moved to New York, and started pursuing an acting career. But I alway kept writing, and kept playing, and always would kind of dream, of playing, and playing with my brother. And then, we put the band together, it was like, I guess, thirteen or fourteen years ago, and we just really did it for one gig. And then, with that one gig, somebody else asked us to play. So, we played another one, and then somebody else asked us to play, and then we got a record deal, you know, it just kept rolling around. And we never kind of set out to say, “Okay, I've had an acting career, now it's time for our music career." It was really kind of unexpected. And, in a way, I feel like we sort of follow the Bacon Brothers - it's not like we're leading it, we're just kind of following it.

Do you keep writing songs while you’re on film shoots?

Yeah, I think probably because, you know, if you're working on a film, you have to be emotionally, sort of, in-tune, you know what I mean? Because you're creating, and reliving, or replicating emotional kind of situations. And songwriting, for me, is certainly an emotional exercise. I don't really write like...I won't just come up with a chorus and then try to build a song around it. It's more a question of keeping your heart open, your mind open, and, you know, living experientially, and then finding a song out of that. People have different things that they do in their trailers. Some people do yoga, and other people watch movies, read books. I have a guitar, and I have a computer and a microphone, and it's really a studio. I mean, I basically have a little home studio in my trailer.

You’ve started a website called Six Degrees, with the nonprofit group Network for Good, an idea that was partially inspired by the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.

Yeah, a few years ago, you know, having lived so long with the Six Degrees concept, I started Six Degrees.org (http://www.sixdegrees.org/). And it was the idea of...I was thinking, if you take me out of the equation, the idea of Six Degrees is kind of a beautiful idea, in that it just connotates that we're all connected. And that there is this kind of small-phenomenon, and that whether it's social or environmental, if you do something in your neighborhood, it can affect people down the block, and around the world. And I was trying to look for something to do to give back. So, I started this organization where you can go on the website, and you have all the million charities that you can donate to.

If there's anything at all that's going on in the world that you're interested in helping out, whether it's, you know, a disease, or a place in the world where you think people need help, or the environment, or whatever it is, you can with a thing called Good Cards, and Good Cards are these cards that you can buy, from twenty-five dollars up. And if I buy a Good Card and give it to you, then you can also go on SixDegrees.org, and redeem it for that value, towards the charity that you want.

That’s great. We’ll definitely include links to the site. What was your reaction when you first heard about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game?

At first, I kind of thought it was a joke at my expense. I hadn't really gotten my head around the idea that these guys actually were fans of mine [laughs]. I kind of thought they were going, “Isn't it hilarious that this jackass would be linked to some of the great actors in history?” But eventually I just sort of warmed up to it. I really honestly thought that it would have gone away a long time ago. You know what I mean? I was shocked that it's had the hang-time that it's had. You know, but it's actually, it stayed so much in the zeitgeist for so many years, and I think because...I think it has very little to do with me...I think it's more that this idea of connectivity is true. And as we, you know, with the internet, as our connections grow exponentially, through networking, or information, the information highway, we start to realize more and more how connected we all are. And certainly that's been an important part of the environmental movement. And, so, since it was kind of dogging me for so long, I just said, you know, “Fuck it, I'll try to do something cool with it!” And so now, I'm thrilled to be connected to it. It doesn't cause me any kind of grief at all.

It was a pleasure talking to you, Kevin.

You too. Take care.

Taking Chance debuts February 21, on HBO, at 8 PM ET/PT. Frost/Nixon is currently in theatrical release.

The Six Degrees website can be accessed at http://www.sixdegrees.org/.

The Bacon Brothers Band have information on their tour dates and recordings at http://www.baconbros.com/.

The Taking Chance trailer can be viewed below:

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ANTHONY HOPKINS: The Hollywood Flashback Interview

Sir Anthony Hopkins.


When I was asked by Venice Magazine to interview Anthony Hopkins in September of 2002, then-as-now he was regarded as perhaps the greatest living actor in the English-speaking world. That said, I wasn't sure what, or whom, to expect. Hopkins was known for having a somewhat mercurial personality, as well as not being a man to suffer fools gladly. Fortunately, I found him to be a very friendly, open and erudite gent with a remarkably diffuse and quite brilliant mind. Below, when Hopkins starts talking about his experience on Richard Attenborough's film MAGIC, notice how the conversation shifts suddenly to the Bee Gees, John Travolta and SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, then effortlessly back to the topic at hand. This was my impression of Anthony Hopkins throughout our talk: insatiably curious about everything, even his memories, and able to mentally multi-task with an ease that was quite breathtaking.

Our primary topic of discussion was Hopkins' final turn as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Brett Ratner's RED DRAGON, the second (and completely unnecessary) filming of Thomas Harris' first Lecter novel of the same name, previously filmed by Michael Mann in 1986 as MANHUNTER, one of the seminal films of the '80s. Still, watching Hopkins tackle the role again was great fun, and he obviously relished not only playing Lecter, but discussing the good doctor, as well. Hopkins continues to grace films that dominate at the box office, most-recently in Joe Johnston's reboot of THE WOLFMAN, playing father to lupine-infected Benicio Del Toro.

I've run into Hopkins several times since, and he always remembers our breakfast at Santa Monica's Miramar Hotel that chilly September morning.

ANTHONY HOPKINS SERVES HIS FINAL COURSE
By
Alex Simon

Felt by many to be the heir apparent to Laurence Olivier as the world's finest English-language actor, Philip Anthony Hopkins was born December 31, 1937 in Marga, Wales, the son of Muriel and Richard Hopkins, who worked as a baker. Young Anthony was categorized a "slow learner," and had trouble in school, feeling himself to be an outcast, a stigma which followed him until he left Wales to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

Following repertory work, Hopkins attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and then went on to Laurence Olivier's National Theater, where he distinguished himself as one of the company's most promising young actors. Although he made his film debut with a bit in a little-seen Lindsay Anderson film called The White Bus (1966), it was his turn as the conflicted gay prince Richard the Lionheart in the classic The Lion in Winter (1968), opposite Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, that first brought Anthony Hopkins to international attention.

While the next two decades brought Hopkins solid film roles as well as two Emmy-winning turns on the high-profile telefilms "The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case" (1975), playing accused kidnapper Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and "The Bunker" (1981) a chilling evocation of Hitler's final days, with Hopkins' bravura acting as Der Fuhrer a turn that still sparks discussion, true stardom eluded him, until fate intervened in 1991...

The Silence of the Lambs won five 1991 Academy Awards, include a Best Actor statuette for Hopkins. Along with his newfound star status, a new character was unofficially inducted into the pop cultural lexicon: Dr. Hannibal "the cannibal" Lecter, a role for which Hopkins has become synonymous (although the part was originated by Scottish actor Brian Cox in Michael Mann's 1986 Manhunter). A-list parts have followed ever since, with Hopkins raising the bar a notch or two even in some of his less-than-stellar films. Outside of the theatrical world, Hopkins was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1993, and became an American citizen in 2000, although he still gets to retain his title of "Sir."

Anthony Hopkins sat down with Venice Editor Alex Simon on a beautiful, but chilly, late September morning in Santa Monica to reflect on his life and career.

I watched the previous two films (Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal) before seeing Red Dragon. It was fascinating to watch you evolve into the character of Hannibal Lecter. First question: do you study animals to prepare for your roles?

Anthony Hopkins: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for noticing that.

In Silence, he was definitely a snake most of the way through, but he gradually became more cat-like as the films, and your characterization, progressed.

Yeah, well, I think that even at the end of Silence he was a cat. I love cats. I love watching animals. The main problems I had, really, regarding Red Dragon were that first, I had my doubts about doing it again to begin with, because I thought that doing two was quite enough, and that three was perhaps pushing it. So I thought when Hannibal was over that I was done with the character and I could just move on and live the rest of my life, because I've played a lot of other roles, as well. Then I called my agent, Rick Nicita, one day and said, 'Dino (De Laurentiis) wants to remake Manhunter and call it Red Dragon, which was the book's title. What do you think?' He said, "Well, why not?" and I thought 'Yeah, why not? Absolutely.' (laughs) Then they got Ted Tally to write the script and we met with (director) Brett Ratner in New York, and that's how it happened. I'm really much more laid back about these sorts of things now. I wish I had been this laid back when I was a younger actor, that's just the way it is, I guess. (laughs) But this time, I really wanted to play him with much more ferocious energy, and avoid the jokes. I really wanted to show what a true monster he is. He's a killer. He's a dangerous man, not Mr. Cutesy. This isn't a franchise, like Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is a dangerous man, who's better off in jail. So that's the premise we went with.

Hopkins in Red Dragon.

Certainly all three of the directors whom you've worked with on this series (Jonathan Demme, Ridley Scott, Brett Ratner) are very different. Tell us about Brett.

He's a very bright guy, a very gifted director. Very straightforward in his approach. I think he's one of those NYU Film School guys, and he gave me a fresh look at those so-called "film nerds," because he just loves film. So that was great. He knows his stuff.

Along with author Thomas Harris, you probably know more than anyone about Hannibal Lecter. I think one of the things that makes him so fascinating to people is the air of mystery that surrounds him. We now so little of his backstory, what dove him over the edge to begin with, for example. That in mind, tell us about Dr. Lecter, if you would.

It's funny, Dino wants to do another one and go back into (Lecter's) past. Honestly, I don't know how to answer that, other than to say when I got the script for Silence of the Lambs back in August of 1989, I had never heard of the character of Lecter before, although I had seen Manhunter and liked it very much. But I didn't make the connection when I got Silence of the Lambs. I was doing a play in London at the time, and I decided I didn't want to finish reading it until I found out if it was a real offer or not, because I hadn't worked in America for quite some time. When I found out it was a real offer, I read it, and knew immediately that it was one of those roles that would make a difference for me. As an actor, I guess it's a gift that I have, so to speak, that I can pick up very quickly on what I can play, or can't play. I'm not ghoulishly fascinated by the dark side, but I understand it. I think anything that's masked or shadowy is fascinating to us. I think all the great villains of literature have been dark, shadowy figures: Mephistopheles, Iago, Dracula, Richard III. And I knew just how to play this man. I just knew.

Hopkins' Oscar-winning turn in The Silence of the Lambs.

Tell us about working with Ed Norton.

Well, Ed's a remarkable actor. I'd first seen him in Primal Fear and thought he was brilliant in it. People talk about chemistry and all that. Really, if an actor shows up, knows his lines, that's all you need. I liked working with Ed because he made the decision to play Will Graham very passive. There's one great bit, and I don't know if this was Ed's idea or Brett's, but Ed goes into a little anteroom when he comes to see me in the hospital while I'm reading the file, and he takes his jacket off, and he's soaked with sweat. I thought that was a great moment. He wasn't going to show Lecter that he was intimidated. And I think Lecter has a begrudging respect for Will Graham, even though he wants to kill him! (laughs) He was smart enough to put me away, after all. With Clarice it was a different matter, because here we have this young woman who's been sent down by her superiors and I grow to have affection for her.

And I noticed that, although Lecter maimed one woman, he's never really had any female victims, which leads one to believe he's somewhat chivalrous.

Yeah, I think so. He's not vulgar. (laughs)

You grew up in Port Talbot, Wales. It sounds like your childhood was relatively happy until you started school.

Yeah, school was my nemesis. It gave birth to my dark side. I couldn't accomplish anything in school. But I look back on it with no regrets because it was the rocket fuel that pushed me forward and got me out of there. For the longest time, I thought I didn't fit there because there was something wrong with me, but now I know it was because there was something right with me. But back then, I just wanted to do something to escape from my own inadequacy. I suppose today I'd have been diagnosed with A.D.D., or something similar. o I was very much left to my own devices. I remember my childhood with a lot of fondness, actually, although maybe I've romanticized it. I was born in a beautiful part of South Wales, which has since been ruined by the steel industry. I was born in a place called Margam, which is a beautiful, rural area east of Port Talbot.

Once you left school, and started acting, things got better for you.

Yeah, I've had a wonderful life, actually. Couple of ups and downs like anyone else, but I had it pretty easy, really. I got a scholarship to a local acting school in 1955 when I was 17. The I did my national service, which wasn't a happy time, but I did it. Then I went to RADA after that. I went to a few reparatory companies prior to that. This one director told me "You're pretty rough around the edges still. You've got great energy on stage, but you’re dangerous to work with. You hurt people on stage! (laughs) You're very talented, but I think you need to go to one of those high-falutin' acting schools, which I don't really like, but I think it would be good for you." This man was called David Scasce, he was head of the Manchester Library Theater. So I got a scholarship to RADA after that, and I was old enough by then to pick up the rudiments of the discipline that acting requires, because prior to that, I thought acting was all about pure instinct. Then I went back to work with David Scasce, who was then at the Liverpool Playhouse. When I auditioned for David this time, he said "Well, that's an improvement!" (laughs) So I stayed there for a while, and David gave me some great parts to play, and from there I went to the National Theater under Laurence Olivier. So I've had a great life, an interesting life. I've had it easy compared to a lot of people. I was thinking yesterday when I was speaking to a friend of mine that sometimes we can get so wrapped up in the human condition that we forget about a lot of the good in our lives. I've had a wonderful journey. To be still working at 64, when most people retire, is an extraordinary gift.

I understand that seeing Charlie Chaplin's film Limelight (1951) was the spark that ignited your love of acting.

Yeah, that was a funny, sentimental little film. I was it when I was about 13 years of age, and it really pushed a button in me. I just wanted to be something different. Initially, I wanted to be a musician, then a composer, and then finally I fell into the acting business. Many years later, I was in a movie about Chaplin's life. There I was, with Robert Downey, Jr., sitting in Chaplin's garden in Switzerland, and it was there I learned I had just been nominated for an Oscar. If someone had told me that while I was watching Limelight 41 years before, I would have said 'You're kidding!' (laughs)

Lord Laurence Olivier.

Was Olivier a mentor for you?

Well, he was my employer. I guess he was a mentor for me, and a lot of other people. He directed me twice, and I understudied him in a play and then went on for him. I worked with him once as an actor on-screen, in The Bounty (1984). I wouldn't say we were close friends. I was a generation and a half behind him. I knew him as well as I could, I suppose. He was a pretty colorful personality. He had tremendous drive, and ambition, and was a real force. A very nice guy and a titanic talent. His sort of talent has, in the eyes of cynics, become rather unfashionable. There are people who knock Olivier quite often, but not a single one of them could ever touch him in terms of talent. I thought he was an extraordinary man.

Richard Burton, with whom Hopkins shares a hometown.

I know that you and Richard Burton grew up in the same town. You met him as a kid, right?

Yeah, that was an odd confluence of synchronicities, I suppose. Post-war years, my parents moved from Margam to Port Talbot and took over my grandfather's bakery. That was 1947. And strangely enough, there was a young guy just down the road who was being primed to become an actor. His name was Richard Jenkins. A man called P.H. Burton had sort of adopted him and taught him Shakespeare. My mother went to London with my grandfather in 1949 and went to see a play called "The Lady's Not for Burning," by Christopher Fry, and she saw that there was this wonderful young actor in the play called Richard Burton, from Port Talbot. Early on, it seemed that I only had a talent for drawing and playing piano. There was a woman called Bernice Evans. She was an art student and was the daughter of a neighbor of my father's. She offered to give me art lessons. I used to go up to the Port Talbot post office, and upstairs there was a studio where I would take my lessons. I can still remember the smell of poster paints, sort of a powdery paint. She was a very good instructor. Then one night, the doorbell rang and this young man came up with these intense, bright green eyes. She said, "This is my friend, Richard." He looked at my drawing and said "Oh yes, I like his sailor's boots." (laughs) I got his autograph once later on, but I never got to know him. He was quite an influence on me, because he came from the same town, so I thought, maybe I could become what he'd become.

Your first big break in films came with The Lion in Winter.

Yeah, I was at the National Theater at the time, doing Laurence Olivier's production of Chekhov’s "Three Sisters." I got a phone call and this script was sent to me, and I met Peter O'Toole. I learned the part of Richard the Lionheart and I turned up in Chelsea Park Garden for an audition. This was September, 1967. Peter read the off-camera lines with me, and he said, "You've got the part." Katharine Hepburn had apparently asked him to choose the three sons, you see. She was at that point going into semi-retirement because Spencer Tracy had just died. So that's how I got it.

It's interesting you mentioning Spencer Tracy because you've always reminded me of him stylistically. You're definitely an actor for whom less is more.

(laughs) Yes, I suppose so. I've always admired Tracy, very much. There's no bullshit about him. He just gets up and does it. I've got no problem if people want to spend hours beforehand preparing before they come on-set, as long as they don't keep you waiting. And I've read Stanislavski and did the Method myself, and all that, but now I've simplified it: learn your lines, show up, and get on with it. I think that's what Tracy did, as well. I just saw a marvelous documentary about Dean Martin a few weeks ago. His widow was talking, and she said "Dino loved movies. He loved acting, but he never took it seriously." And Dean Martin was very good, as was Frank Sinatra and all those guys. All those guys, they didn't try to be Marlon Brando. They just did what they did. There's another great story that Martin's widow told: during the filming of Airport (1970), Dino was doing this scene and the actress playing opposite him was sitting in the corner, being very Method about it, keeping everyone waiting. Finally, Dino walks over to her and says "Honey, neither of us is going to win an Oscar for this, let's just do the scene so we can go home." (laughs) That sums it up for me. Get on with it. Do it. You don't need all this bullshit. Either you can do it, or you can't.

Hopkins and Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter.

Tell us about Katharine Hepburn.

She was great, a tough old bird, very formidable. She was opinionated about everything. A lot of people like to eulogize people like Katharine, but all I can say is she was very nice to work with, very professional. She said to me: "I'll give you one note. Don't act, just say the lines. It works. You've got a good pair of shoulders, good head, good eyes, good voice, that's all you need. Just watch Spencer Tracy, that's what he does. That's what all the best ones do." Burt Reynolds once told me a story about Tracy. When Burt was just starting out, he was doing something at Warner Bros. where Tracy was also shooting a film. Burt sort of shadowed him one day and Tracy spotted him. "Whaddaya want, kid?" "Mr. Tracy, can I ask you something?" "Sure." "You must be the greatest actor of all time." "Thanks." "You agree?" "Yeah." "Is there anything you're not great at?" Without missing a beat, Tracy says "Life."

It seems like so many great artists have wrestled with huge personal demons. Do you see a correlation between creativity and dysfunction?

Well, I suppose so. I don't want to romanticize it, but I suppose there is. I saw a very good documentary on the Barrymores the other night. When you look at what a poor, tired mess John Barrymore was at the end of his life, and what a catastrophe that was, it's just so sad. To go insane and either drink yourself to death, or blow your brains out, like Hemingway, it's very sad. Let's just say I don't recommend it. I think creativity can be as pain-free as possible. You can create and still have a good life. I think it's to do with selfishness, some emotional retardation, perhaps. And out of all that tension and all that morass comes something which is beautiful and grand and creative. But again, I don't romanticize it and I don't recommend it. My only demon that I had was that I drank too much. I was very insecure and frightened, but I wouldn't have missed it because I have no choice! It happened. I look back on it as a valuable time in my life. Alcohol gave me a great amount of courage and energy and anger, all things I never would have had the nerve to do. So I'm very grateful to that period in my life, which launched me, in a way. But finally, that kind of fuel rips you to pieces, so I said "enough of this." but now I feel relatively peaceful, relatively happy. I'm not good at being cooped up with anyone for very long. Maybe that's why I wasn't designed for marriage. I'm not good at any kind of relationship with people, really. I mean, I've had a number of good ones, but I get restless and I take off. So I've done my rounds there. I just try not to hurt anyone anymore, and I have hurt people in the past, by pulling away from them. But I guess it all balances out in the end. Life is far too short to live in hatred and anger.

Do you feel that most creative people are born that way? It certainly sounds like you were.

Yeah, I suppose so. I just don't go along with all that rubbish that you have to be miserable. I mean, what's your problem? Being in this business is a lot better than working in a car factory, a lot better than working in a coal mine. What's the big deal? People who moan and bitch and complain about what they do, I just want to say 'Then leave! Get out of it! Go do something else!' I mean, here you are, making a lot of money, with people feeding you on the set, looking after your every need. I just want to kick them in the goolies, you know? (laughs) You know when some of these megaphones of Hollywood show up on these award shows, and just never shut the fuck up? I just want to say 'Accept your award. Say "thank you," and get off!' (laughs) I'm just not interested in all that bullshit. There are surgeons and nurses and teachers, people out there who really deserve awards. Okay, I'll stop ranting now! (laughs)

I heard a story about Olivier once, that he avoided psychoanalysis his entire life because he was afraid that if he were "cured" he'd lose the compulsion to act. Did you ever hear anything about this?

That's interesting. No, I never did. I had an encounter with him once, toward the end of my time with the National Theater, back in '73. I was in a bit of trouble, becoming awkward to work with. Olivier recommended I go see a psychiatrist friend of his. I did for one session. He said my behavior was due to "creative exhaustion," or some crap like that. The problem was, I was drinking too much! So that was the end of my psychiatric therapy. (laughs) But I don't know what Olivier's take was on that. We never discussed it.

Hopkins and "Fats," in Richard Attenborough's Magic.

You've worked with Richard Attenborough both as an actor and as a director. Tell us about him.

Richard's a nice guy, very persuasive, a great salesman in the sense that he gets what he wants from you. He can charm a lot of people. He's a good man. I haven't seen him for a long time. (Pause. Hopkins hears the Bee Gees' "More Than a Woman" playing on the restaurant's sound system) Oh, I love this song! The Bee Gees, they're wonderful. This song reminds me of when I was shooting Magic with Attenborough and Ann-Margret up in Ukiah. It rained non-stop. I remember feeding the ducks in the rain on this lakeside in Ukiah, and this was playing on the radio in the trailer. Saturday Night Fever had just come out. God, that goes back to 1977. John Travolta. Donna Pescow. The Bee Gees were fantastic, weren't they? I just saw Magic again the other night, hadn't seen it for years. It's a good movie. But yeah, Richard's a great guy, loved working with him on Magic and A Bridge Too Far, and the other films. He belongs to that old school, slightly sentimental. Cries a lot. (laughs) I try to avoid sentimentality.

You did two incredible TV movies that you won Emmy Awards for: "The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case," in which you played convicted kidnapper Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and "The Bunker," in which you portrayed Hitler in his final days.

My last dive into the bottle was during my performance as Hauptmann. His widow actually wrote to me for a number of years before she died, at 90 I believe, trying to get her husband's name cleared, and wanting to enlist my help. I'm not so sure he was innocent. They found enough evidence in his house. An interesting side note: there was a man called Schonfeld, one of the first psychiatrists to work on the case, who drew up a profile of the kidnapper, told the police the sort of man they were looking for. He said that they were looking for a lone man, a lone operator. Schonfeld became friends with Hauptmann while he was in jail, on death row. William Randolph Hearst told Schonfeld "Tell Mr. Hauptmann that if he confesses and gives me his exclusive story, I'll make sure his widow and his family are looked after for the rest of their lives. I also have enough pull to commute his death sentence to a life sentence if he'll do this." So Schonfeld took Hearst's offer to Hauptmann who said "I'm innocent. There's nothing to confess." Now that says something to me, also. Maybe he was. There's a photograph of him in the holding cell just after he's been arrested. I used to look at that photograph all the time during the shoot. And he just looks completely neutral. He's sitting with his legs crossed, and is looking in the camera as if to say "What's going on? Why am I here?" But what they did was terrible, commuting his death sentence three times, and finally executing him in 1936. He said to Schonfeld, "Let's get it over with. They’ve killed me so many times already." They had actually shaved his head and were getting ready to take him down to the chair one of the times.

Hopkins' Emmy-winning turn as Adolph Hitler in "The Bunker."

Tell us about your interpretation of Hitler. What were you able to gather about his psyche and personality?

(laughs) Well, he was a jolly, cheery chappie, wasn't he? (laughs) One of the producers said to me after viewing the dailies: "You're kind of making him a nice guy. Could you make him less human?" I said 'What do you mean? He was human, that's what's so horrific about him!' They walk among us. We all have that in us. There was a man, his name was Schuschnigg. He was Chancellor of Austria. Just before the Germans marched into Austria to take it over, Schuschnigg was summoned to Berchtesgaden to meet with Hitler. He said Hitler was quite charming, and he even let him smoke, and Hitler despised cigarette smoke. So they all had lunch: he, Hitler, Eva Braun, Goehring, Goebbels, everything was fine, but he knew something was up. So lunch was over and Hitler showed Schuschnigg into his office, locked the door and proceeded to scream at him for 90 minutes, just absolutely salivating. Schuschnigg said "I knew then and there that I was in the presence of the devil." The other thing I remember in my research is from a woman journalist who interviewed Hitler just before the Munich agreement in 1938. She said "Herr Hitler has over 1,000 books in his personal library, none of which he has read. Of course he doesn't have to, because his mind is made up." I thought that was absolutely chilling! But getting back to your question...It's funny; people ask me things like "How did you play the butler in The Remains of the Day with such stillness?" And my answer is, "Well, I just didn't move very much." (laughs) People want all these deep and complicated answers from actors and the truth is I'm not very complicated. I don't have a complicated mind. I don't have a theological bent, either. I'm not really interested in the powers of darkness, and all that. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that God and the devil were actually the same. Love and hate are very close, dark and light, the yin-yang, you know. It's all very interesting, but I'm a bit superstitious about looking at it too closely.

Hopkins and Joan Allen in Oliver Stone's Nixon.

Of all your performances, I still think your portrait of Richard Nixon is your greatest.

I had a great time doing that, wonderful time. Long before I did the movie, I had been fascinated by Nixon, starting with Watergate. This was right before I came to America, in 1974. In those days, we got the live satellite feed about an hour later than North America did, so I remember watching his farewell to the White House staff and I remember thinking 'This is American history happening and I'm about to go live there and be a part of it!' The extraordinary thing about Nixon is that he was so consumed with the ambition to win the presidency, and that very ambition was the rocket fuel that powered his destruction. He was a brilliant, extraordinary man. I got to know people who knew him. It's extraordinary when you watch him during his farewell speech, when he says "Your enemies only win if you hate them back, and then you destroy yourself." That's when he was at his most real. Someone, I forget who, said "If only he'd showed that side of himself during Watergate, come out and said "Look, we made a mistake. I lied." He could've saved himself. He was very Lear-like, really. A tragically-flawed man. I loved doing that film.

You've been a highly-regarded working actor most of your life, but didn't really hit star status until your early 50s, when you won the Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs. If you'd had that level of success say, 20 years earlier, before you got sober, before you had a really strong sense of yourself, how do you think it would have been different for you?

Well, I can't second-guess myself, but I think I always had a practical, realistic sense of what it's all about. Of course, the ego plays tricks on you sometimes, but I think my father was very influential on me in that way. He couldn't stand all the frills and trappings of art. He didn't understand it, anyway. And I remember him saying once when I was playing some Beethoven on the piano, "What's that you're playing?" I said "Beethoven." He said "No wonder he went deaf. For God's sake, do something with your life!" He just didn't give a damn about all that. So my affectation playing Beethoven and Chopin on the piano when I was a kid, he just knocked the stuffing out of me. He didn't damage me, but he tried to tell met that life's much tougher than that. So I never had any illusions about it all. I'm not sure my experience would have been that different had a role like Lecter come earlier. It's not a question of carving out a career for myself. I never know what I'm going to be doing from one moment to the next. None of us do, really. It's funny, I saw a friend of mine yesterday and he said, "You seem so detached from all this." I said 'Yeah, yeah I am. I just can't get into it at all.' He said "Maybe that's why you're so successful."

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George McGovern 1922-2012

Former United States Senator, and Presidential candidate, George McGovern.

In 2005, I had the good fortune to interview former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern for Venice Magazine, in conjunction with the release of Stephen Vittoria's documentary "One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern," which looked at McGovern's ill-fated 1972 bid for the White House. During our interview, and during a lengthy dinner at Kate Mantilini in Beverly Hills several months later, (which happened to fall on what would have been the 80th birthday of his close friend, Robert F. Kennedy), McGovern was thoughtful, direct, and kind-hearted; a gentleman and a gentle man. When we raised a glass to toast Bobby Kennedy's memory, Senator McGovern said quietly "Bobby made us all want to be better people." A more fitting valediction of George McGovern couldn't be said. Rest in peace.

GEORGE MCGOVERN SHINES ON
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: This article orginally appeared in the September 2005 issue of Venice Magazine.

George McGovern, for a brief moment, looked as if he was the man who could lift the United States out of its moral and spiritual slump that began with the tumultuous events of the 1960s, and seemed to be conflagrating by the minute as a second term of the Nixon administration loomed large on the horizon in 1972. As it often does, fate had other ideas. Instead of delivering the children to the promised land, Senator George Stanley McGovern of South Dakota suffered one of the worst defeats in the history of American presidential elections, winning 38% of the vote to Richard Nixon’s 60%, and losing in the Electoral College 520 to 17. He won in only two locations: Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He even failed to win his home state of South Dakota, whose sons and daughters he’d loyally served for nearly a quarter century. As the man said, history is written by the winners. Less than two years later, “winner” Richard Nixon would resign in disgrace, and over time, George McGovern would come to be regarded as the hero, and savior, he nearly was.

George McGovern grins during a high point in his 1972 grassroots campaign for the presidency.

George McGovern was born July 19, 1922 in Avon, South Dakota, the son of a Presbyterian minister. After studies at Dakota Wesleyan University were interrupted by WW II, McGovern volunteered for The United States Army Air Forces and served as a B-24 Liberator bomber pilot with the 15th Air Force. He flew 35 missions over hostile territory from North Africa to Italy and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. McGovern’s wartime exploits were later recorded by renowned historian Stephen Ambrose in his book “The Wild Blue.”

Eleanor McGovern pins silver pilot wings on her husband, newly-commissioned Second Lt. George McGovern, on April 15, 1944, at Pampa Army Air Field, Texas.


After returning home from the war, McGovern finished his degree at Dakota Wesleyan, then went on to Northwestern University, where he earned a PhD in history, returning again to his alma mater as a professor. Although both McGovern’s parents were Republican, he claimed no political affiliation until the 1948 election, registering as an Independent, and later joining the newly formed Progressive Party, volunteering for the (unsuccessful) presidential campaign of former Vice President Henry A. Wallace. After hearing a 1952 radio broadcast of Governor Adlai Stevenson’s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, McGovern immediately changed his affiliation to the Democratic party, volunteering for Stevenson’s campaign. McGovern stayed active in Democratic politics, winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 1956.

Elected to the senate in 1962, McGovern went on to make a name for himself as a forthright, shoot-from-the-hip liberal who was outspoken against U.S. involvement in southeast Asia almost from the get-go (in spite of voting in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a vote he still regrets). After serving as the flagbearer for the supporters of recently-slain Senator Robert Kennedy at the disastrous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, McGovern became his party’s most outspoken critic of the Vietnam war, co-sponsoring the McGovern-Hatfield amendment in 1970, seeking to end U.S. participation in Vietnam through Congressional action. Running for President in ’72 on an anti-war platform, McGovern’s momentum was interrupted when his running mate, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, was revealed to have been hospitalized for depression on three occasions and been treated with electroshock therapy. Quickly replacing him with Kennedy brother-in-law Sargent Shriver did little to restore the damage that had been done to the once-hopeful campaign. After his defeat, George McGovern went on to serve honorably in the U.S. Senate, losing his seat in the 1980 Republican sweep that later became known as the “Reagan Revolution.”

Filmmaker Stephen Vittoria has documented McGovern’s run for the White House in a new film entitled One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern. Expertly combining archival footage with present day interviews, the film portrays a time long enough past to give the viewer objectivity—objectivity that clearly reveals little has changed in American politics in more than 30 years, particularly with regard to the kinds of people who win elections, and those who should have.

George McGovern spoke to us by phone from his home in South Dakota recently. Here’s some of what was said:

The first thing I’ve wanted to ask you since the 2004 election is, since your ’72 campaign platform revolved around your opposition to the war in Vietnam, let’s talk about some of the parallels you see between what’s happening today in Iraq and what happened in southeast Asia in the 60s and 70s.

George McGovern: One parallel is that neither country posed any direct threat to the United States, although we contended that each country posed a great potential threat to the United States, which turned out to be false in both cases. Secondly, in each case, we knew very little about the culture that we were going into. For example, we were told that Vietnam was just a puppet of China, when actually there had been a thousand years of tension, antagonism and bribery between Vietnam and China, which flared again after we pulled our troops out of Vietnam. China, and the troops that were recently fighting us squared off against each other. It was settled rather quickly, but our government tried to claim that Ho Chi Min was getting his orders from Mao Tse Tung and Beijing, when if fact he was not. But we didn’t know those things, and didn’t know the history of the area, and the same thing is pretty much true of Iraq. We didn’t understand the culture and the wishes of the people there, and we still don’t. A third parallel, although it’s not quite as close, is that what we did in Vietnam was to intercede in a strong revolutionary, grassroots movement that first was aimed at the French, and expelling them from their colonies, which they’d held for a hundred years, secondly aimed at the Japanese who occupied southeast Asia during WW II, and thirdly aimed at us, who came in after the French. So it’s not exactly the same as Iraq, but it’s similar in that there’s this very widespread insurgency moving across Iraq, and I don’t see it weakening in any way. It seems to be becoming more widely spread.

The senator rallies “McGovern’s Army,” with a speech in Syracuse, N.Y., Halloween 1972. When interrupted by church bells, McGovern exclaimed, “The bells are tolling for Richard Nixon!”


Since we all know now in retrospect how Vietnam ended what do you see both in terms of the future of Iraq as a country and also in terms of American involvement.

The only thing I’m sure of is that we can’t dictate the outcome. I have no idea what’s going to happen after we withdraw. I suspect there will be continued internal conflict between the Sunni Muslims and the Shiite Muslims, and the Kurds in the north. They don’t like each other all that well. Whether or not they can get together eventually as a unified country is, I think, an open question. I don’t see how you can ever have a unified Iraq as long as we’re involved there. There’s always going to be a sizable group resisting this American occupation, so the best thing we can do is disengage our forces and then give them whatever help we can in terms of moving toward a unified, sovereign country. Also, I’d like to say that I was very disappointed in General Powell when he went to the United Nations and made what was supposed to be a scientific, factual presentation about the situation inside Iraq that turned out to be pretty flimsy material.

I think General Powell is disappointed in General Powell.

Well, he should be! (laughs) I’ve always had a high regard for him, but was very disappointed in that particular instance. You know, he even had questions about the Gulf War, ten years earlier. He wanted to hold on for six months while we sought an Arab solution to it.

When George W. Bush put Powell in his cabinet, that was the one ray of hope I had, because he was always the one person who had the guts to say ‘no’ to Bush’s dad.

I felt the same way. I had expected we’d get the same kind of level-headed and independent judgment this time, but I’m afraid we didn’t.

You’ve always epitomized what a true liberal stands for. How did your upbringing affect your political and social conscience?

Mitchell, South Dakota, where I still live, is a town of about 15,000 people. It’s in the agriculture part of the nation. While I wouldn’t describe it as a rural village, it’s a town that depends largely on agriculture for its economy. Second to that would be tourism. I was born in 1922, and that year the Depression began in the agricultural state. It didn’t hit the urban areas until the crash of the stock market in ’29. But the entire decade of the 1920s was a depression period for agricultural states because at the end of the first World War, the bottom fell out of the agricultural market. We were poor all during my growing up days, but I didn’t know that because everyone else was poor. But we had to watch our dollars very carefully. I learned at a very early age to practice a measure of economy, which has stayed with me. For that reason, I’m appalled at the way the Bush administration has ignored the huge annual deficits that they’re running, and have rolled up the national debt to an all-time high. They’ve added trillions to our national debt. I think some of those values that I had as a youngster have stayed with me. I’ve also carried with me a respect for the people who work the land, a respect for the elderly who hold on even when it’s difficult, respect for education which transformed my life from beginning to end, and a respect for matters of ethics and morality, and what are sometimes called “the things of the spirit,” and the material values of life: loyalty, truthfulness, diligence, integrity and honesty, those are things you can’t measure materially, but they have important spiritual and moral aspects. Those things were drilled into me as a youngster growing up in a Methodist parsonage.

From his base in Cerignola, Italy, Lieutenant McGovern sent home this snapshot of himself in front of his B-24, the Dakota Queen.

You also did a tour of duty in Europe as a bomber pilot during WW II.

I was in Europe for a year, and in training for a year and half before I went overseas. I flew a full string of 35 combat missions over some of the most heavily defended targets in Europe. We were hitting Hitler’s oil refineries, his tank factories, his aircraft factories, his railway yards. Those were our prime targets.

How did that experience change you?

It gave me a new appreciation for the terrible character of war. I wasn’t a pacifist then, obviously. I’ve never regretted my service in World War II, but I developed a healthy respect for the destructive character of war, and it’s been one of the reasons I’ve been cautious about sending young Americans to die anywhere in the world, but especially in areas like Vietnam and Iraq that pose no threat to our security. When I was in the war, I was lucky that I was in a plane and never saw the carnage close-up.

If you had seen it up close, would your perception of the American role in WW II have been different?

I don’t think so. I thought we had to do everything humanly possible to smash Hitler’s war machine, and I’ve never changed my mind on that. Hitler was a monster, and was leaping across one country’s frontier to another. He was going to conquer Europe, and then take Russia before they got him stopped. He made the same mistake Napoleon made. (laughs)

Initially you thought about following your father’s footsteps and entering the ministry after the war.

I thought about it for a while, and they immediately assigned me to a student pastorate in the suburbs of Chicago. I just wasn’t temperamentally suited to the ministry. So I just moved across the (Northwestern University) campus and resumed and resumed an earlier, long time interest of mine in history. They had a marvelous department there. I still owe those professors a lot. I went all the way through to a PhD on the G.I. Bill, and I’ve never been sorry about that.

How were you not temperamentally suited to the ministry?

I felt awkward in the more or less “priestly” functions: ministering to people, conducting funerals and weddings, giving communion, that part just felt awkward to me. I felt more like a student or a teacher, which is my temperament, rather than giving pronouncements in a church.

Tell us how you decided to make the jump into politics. At the time, you had a certain measure of security as a professor at your alma mater, Dakota Wesleyan, and had a young family to support.

It was regarded as a very reckless thing to do, at that time. The Democrats were not strong in South Dakota at the time. The legislature had 110 people, only two of whom were Democrats. So it was 108-2. It was very unhealthy for the state. I saw a suppression of ideas and an unwillingness to look at other possibilities. So when the state democratic chairman invited me to take a leave of absence and organize a Democratic party, I decided to do it. I worked awfully hard at it, and after a couple years had enough support to run for Congress, and get elected. Before that, I got some 24 people elected to the South Dakota state legislature. Two years later, we elected a Democratic governor. We organized an excellent grassroots base out here in South Dakota, which still more or less exists.

As early as the late 50s you were aware of the situation in Vietnam and very vocal about it.

That’s right. I felt that there were social and political revolutions and upheavals convulsing that whole colonial part of the globe: in Africa, in Latin America, and especially in Asia. I had read a great book by Owen Lattimore called “The Situation in Asia,” which came out in ’49. He predicted these upheavals all across Asia. Even before I went to the Senate, I was opposed to any military involvement by the United States, or any other western country.

President John F. Kennedy appointed George McGovern to be the first director of his Food for Peace program.

Tell us about President Kennedy.

I was in the House when he was in the Senate. I got to know him then, and I got to know Bobby then, too. They were both friends of mine, and both campaigned for me when I was running for the Senate.

When you first met John Kennedy, what was your impression of him, and as you got to know him, how did those impressions change?

He was a highly intelligent person. He was an attractive, appealing figure in terms of personality, carriage and everything. People seemed to warm up to Kennedy almost instinctively. He would speak directly on things, and was a very engaging person. At the time he first started talking about running for President in 1960, I was supporting my next door neighbor, Hubert Humphrey, who literally lived right next door to me in Washington. Hubert actually found us our first house when I was a young Congressman. But when he dropped out after losing a couple primary elections, I switched my support to Jack Kennedy and that support remained from then on. I ran for the senate first in 1960 and was defeated. He always thought that he caused that defeat, because I only lost by 1% of the vote, whereas he lost South Dakota overwhelmingly. He became much more confident after he made it to the White House and at the time he was killed, he probably could have carried South Dakota (in the ’64 election).

Many historians argue that had he lived, history might not have been kind to him in terms of his performance as a politician. Do you agree or disagree with this?

I think a martyred President draws support from everybody, so he wouldn’t have had that going for him, but he also had run into a number of legislative jams in the Congress. Jack was not as skilled as someone like Lyndon Johnson in getting the Congress to do what he wanted them to do. Johnson was a master at understanding the members of the House and Senate: what their vulnerabilities were, what their interests were. He carried a lot of personal knowledge in his head about members of the Senate, in particular. He was even nicknamed “the master of the Senate.” Whereas John Kennedy just didn’t have that kind of long-standing intimate knowledge of the legislative process and the Republicans really handled him with a great deal of hostility, so it’s quite possible that had he lived, those partisan differences might have diminished his widespread popularity, but I just don’t know. I can see, however, how some historians might have come to that sort of a conclusion.

McGovern with Senator Robert F. Kennedy, during RFK's 1968 campaign.

Let’s talk about Robert Kennedy. From everything I understand, as brilliant as JFK was, Bobby had an even more impressive intellect than his brother did. Was this the case? It also sounds like the two of them were very different men personally on many levels. Is that accurate?

I think that John Kennedy was every bit as intellectually equipped as Bobby was. I would see the differences between the two men in this way: after the President’s death, Bobby became a more compassionate and sensitive person than he had been before. It wasn’t an intellectual transformation as much as it was an emotional and personal one. I think the suffering he went through in losing his older brother changed Bobby noticeably, and the notion that he was something of a ruthless, tough politician was a sort of misnomer after the death of his brother. He may have played it rough and tough when he was taking care of his brother’s political concerns in a management role of some kind, but we saw a different side of him when he lost Jack, whom he adored, and had to fend for himself. I think he became a better person, and certainly a more compassionate, deeply caring one in the last years of his life.

Once again, we’re engaging in conjecture, but had Robert Kennedy lived, do you think he would have gotten the Democratic nomination in ’68 and would have won in November?

I don’t think he would have gotten the nomination. I think Vice-President Humphrey had an overwhelming majority of the delegates nailed down. Bobby was campaigning through the last primary, and most of the delegates then had already been picked. As I recall, he had 143, which later went to me when I was talked into becoming his standard bearer after his death. That was the old system of getting delegates, which was done largely by insiders and political and municipal organizations. So I think Humphrey had the nomination pretty well locked in ’68.

You make an interesting comment in the film that you had sympathy for both the Chicago police and the demonstrators during the ’68 Democratic convention.

I think they were frightened of each other. The cops were basically young men too, as were the protestors. The cops didn’t have the educational background in most instances that the protestors had, who were to a considerable extent college students and faculty members. But Mayor Daley probably had it right when he said that riot wasn’t caused by the police, it was caused by the war in Vietnam. I think that’s true.

So you think even if Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King hadn’t been killed earlier that year, the storm was already brewing, so to speak?

I’m not sure. I think that if they had both still been speaking out and counseling for peaceful action, it’s possible they might have been able to head off some of those eruptions.



One thing the film points out is that the Democratic party still hadn’t healed from the split it experienced in ’68. As a result, when you announced your candidacy in ’72, many of your fellow Democrats were scared by you, and viewed you as a radical voice. Did you feel that, at the time?

I knew that was true. I don’t know how they thought I got elected in South Dakota for a quarter century if I was such a radical! (laughs) That was what my enemies put out, though, and conservatives in the press put out the same charges. I always thought of myself as a moderate liberal, a fighter for peace and justice. I never thought of myself as being all that far out. I was described as the candidate of the three A’s: acid, amnesty and abortion.



Let’s talk about the debacle with Senator Eagleton, your initial running mate. How did you go about choosing him to begin with?

Well, it was a last minute thought. We were engaged in the California challenge for 30 days and nights around the clock to save our delegation that we had won by winning the California primary. So very little thought had gone into picking a running mate up to that point. Senator Eagleton we came to after seven people had turned us down. He was recommended by some of the people who’d declined themselves. Senator Ted Kennedy recommended him strongly, as did Senator Mondale. So did Mike Mansfield. There were a number of other senators I respected highly who recommended him. Gaylord Nelson was one. I thought on the basis of that, even though I didn’t know him very well and hadn’t served on any committees with him, that he’d be a good choice.

The tragedy of the situation was that he seemed like a genuinely decent man.

That’s true, and I think he would’ve been a good Vice-President. My inclination was to stay with him until all hell broke loose in the press, but I have to confess that I didn’t know much about mental illness at that point, and had no idea what a manic-depressive was. In fact, I spoke with one of the greatest psychiatrists in the country, Dr. Carl Menninger. He said that he’d been lecturing on mental illness for more than 40 years. He said “I can tell you conservatively that half the American people are scared to death of mental illness and I don’t see how you can carry this election with a man who has a history of mental illness on the ticket. On the other hand, almost every family in the country has had someone in their family suffer from some form of mental illness and they’ll never forgive you if you ask Eagleton to step down.” To which I replied ‘So you’re saying I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.’ He said “That’s the way I see it,” and he turned out to be right.

Let’s talk about your subsequent choice of Sargent Shriver as your running mate. This is a great American and great man who dedicated his life to public service, but he was trounced by much of the press as being “Kennedy-lite.”

He was a wonderful choice and performed exceedingly well. We tried to get him originally, but he was in Russia and we couldn’t reach him. He was a practicing attorney at the time in Washington and was in the Soviet Union on some kind of legal business. He and Eagleton were very good friends, too. I think it was very unfair the way many members of the press treated him and, of course, his record in public life speaks for itself.

Many political analysts have pointed out that the ’72 Democratic convention, while it had a tremendous energy to it, and looked unlike any convention that had been held in the U.S. before, its enthusiasm also contained a great of naiveté, and as a result, was very unorganized, particularly because your acceptance speech was broadcast after midnight in much of the country.

I think that was the biggest mistake of the convention: we forgot we were on primetime television with 80-90 million people watching, until it was too late to get primetime for me. When I finally went on, it was something like 2:30 in the morning on the east coast, so we lost a huge television audience. That was a tragedy and we never really recovered from that. It would have given us a chance to turn it around, and reach some people who didn’t know much about me. If they had seen that, and listened to that speech which may have been the best speech I ever delivered, I think we’d have been in a much stronger place with the electorate. Howard K. Smith, the veteran television commentator for ABC, told me it was the best acceptance speech he’d ever heard. He said “I tell you this because I’m just sick at heart that the country didn’t get to see that.” He told me that about 4:00 that morning.



Tell us about the rest of the presidential campaign, what it was like on an emotional and personal level.

Well, the rest seemed like a relatively brief part of the campaign! (laughs) I’d been campaigning for almost two years. When we finally got the nomination, the rest just went by like a speedboat. We were going night and day, hitting 3-4 cities a day, lived in a jet, hurrying from one town to another. It was almost over before it started, in my recollection.

Did you have a feeling that after the misstep with Senator Eagleton that it was over, or were you still optimistic?

I thought we lost a lot of ground, and we lost more ground when the acceptance address wasn’t heard. But I thought there was a possibility we could have turned it around, and I worked night and day to try and do it, but we just couldn’t break through. Nixon, of course, outspent us probably 10-1, and had that Rose Garden strategy, and lots of film showing him walking along the Great Wall with Mao Tse Tung, winding down the war in Vietnam, and just always seemed so relaxed. We know now he was tearing his hair out, trying to cover up the Watergate situation. If that had been exposed earlier by the national press corps or a congressional investigating committee, as it was after the election, obviously we’d have won hands-down. But unfortunately, I couldn’t get anybody excited about the Watergate break-in and what the implications of that were.

But as an historian yourself, you know that history eventually records the truth, and the truth about the Nixon presidency was revealed. When Nixon and his administration were disgraced, did you feel any sense of personal triumph and vindication when that happened, or did you just feel sorrow for the country?
I felt both. I didn’t feel elated. I felt vindicated. I had been saying in every speech that we were dealing with the most corrupt administration in American history. And I felt somewhat vindicated when those words were proven in sworn testimony, but I can’t say I felt happy about it. I wish the country had not had to go through that and had an alternative come to the fore in 1972, namely myself. I felt that I would be a strong president, and that I could unite the country and taken a healing approach on the divisions in the country, and I think I would’ve succeeded. So I’ve always regretted I didn’t have that opportunity.

But it must be equally vindicating that people continue to approach you to this day, and acknowledge that fact to you.

They do. I couldn’t even put a number on it. Hardly a day goes by that people don’t come up to me in airplanes, in hotel lobbies or on the street and say “I was praying for you in ’72. I wish you’d made it. We’d have had a different country.” I hear that around the clock, so that stays my morale. I know we were right in ’72. I know we told the truth. I know the positions I outlined would have strengthened and improved our nation and our society. I just wish we’d had the opportunity to demonstrate that.

McGovern at one of his final public appearances: the AFI Tribute to Shirley MacLaine, on June 7, 2012.

I’ve always viewed you as a realistic optimist. Bearing that in mind, what do you see as being the major problems facing our country over the next decade, and what are some of the solutions to those problems?

Number one, health care. It’s ridiculous that we’re the only industrial country on the planet that doesn’t have comprehensive health care. I would get to that in what I think is a rather simple way: I would simply start by extending Medicare in stages to different age groups. I would say ‘Congress hereby declares that all Americans from birth through the age of six, shall be covered by Medicare.’ Two years later, all those from seven through eighteen. Two years later, all those from 19-35, and so on. And then everybody would have what I have now, and what every other person over 65 has, and that’s government-paid health insurance. Why should I get all of that at the age of 83, when my grandchildren, who need it more than I do, don’t get it? I think you could sell that to the American people. Secondly, we’ve got to change American foreign policy from one of confrontation, go-it-alone, to-hell-with-everybody else attitude and learn to work in a more cooperative and multilateral way in dealing with international problems. Another thing I would deal with is the collapse of the American railway system. We used to be the number one railway nation in the world, and I’d like to see us achieve that again. We ought to have the fastest, cleanest in terms of the way it’s powered, safest rail system in the world and it ought to be integrated with a modern system of public transit in the cities in America. Then we’ve got to do something about the crisis and cost of higher education. I don’t know how the ordinary, middle class family can send a child to Stanford or Brown or Princeton, or many of these schools across the country. I’d like to see something like the G.I. Bill of Rights, which allowed me to go all the way through to a PhD at Northwestern, a great university, and it didn’t cost me a dime! I even got a living allowance during that time. I’d like to see that extended to all Americans who’d like to continue with higher education. Those are just a few of the things that are on my mind today.

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