Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. This was probably my most interesting interview at Comic-Con. Peter Fonda, man. I never would have imagined I’d get to sit down with this guy, even for as short a time as 15 minutes… and considering his prolific and interesting career, that’s a very short time. Still, we talk a lot about one of my favorite films, DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY, in which he is the Larry of the title and Susan George is the Mary. So, this interview is divided by 3:10 TO YUMA and DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY. I’m not going to pretend I understand everything Fonda was saying, but I can say I dug every second of it. He was pretty much exactly what I hoped for when talking to him. Very nice, a little out there and always laughing. Enjoy the far out interview!
Quint: I’m a really big fan. DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY is one of my favorite movies, so…
Peter Fonda: (laughs) I had such a great time doing that film and made such a pot of money, it’s unbelievable.
Quint: Oh yeah?
Peter Fonda: Yeah, generally speaking, when you have a profit participation on the back end, you never see a dime… the studio’s not going to let you have it, but it only cost us $1.25 million to shoot it and it make so much dough they couldn’t hide it.
Quint: That’s awesome.
Peter Fonda: I can’t tell you how much, FOX would get pissed at me… I’m sorry, can I say that?
Quint: "What are you talking about?"
Peter Fonda: "This is for print?"
Quint: I’ve probably seen it a dozen times now. I first saw it when Tarantino brought it to Austin. He does a film festival there…
Peter Fonda: I’ve heard that, but I didn’t know that he took DIRTY CRAZY there…
Quint: Yeah and it was one of the early ones and I was a young man… I was a teenager and it blew my mind. It was so much fun and Susan was so…
Peter Fonda: Susan George was great.Adam Roarke and I… every day we would go to work and driving out… the two of us in the same car, which is not usual… normally one actor wants to have their own car and I’ve been out in busses going to set… I’ve worked with Roger Corman. “Roger! Where’s my trailer?” and he would say “See that tree over there?” (laughs) So Adam and I would go to work and we would do all this crazy stuff like The Three Stooges back and forth and our gig was to try to make the teamster laugh. We had a point system, where if there was a shake of the shoulder, that was two points. If there’s a smirk, that was five points. The ultimate part of the game is if we got him out of the car walking away, like he could not handle our… By the time we got to the set, we were both so high in the sense of energy and being nutty and crazy that we could do all of this stuff. You don’t see us, we were driving along and we have done the scene… they’re still rolling, so I’d say “Look at that” and Adam, not knowing what I’m going to do was like “Yeah!” and (makes a sound like a car running over something in the road) and he’d look back and “Man, that was a baby…” “Yeah… five points.” We’d just keep on feeding each other, so when it came to the screen, there was a dynamic between our two characters that you could feel, you could sense… so it transported above just being one long car chase, which it really was and incredibly cool stunts, but it wouldn’t have been as interesting or dynamic for you had we not had characters that you wanted to watch.
Quint: Yeah, well certainly.
Peter Fonda: And I loved that part and the interplaying character being Susan George… She was perfect for it.
Quint: And then you have that great… the great cherry on top, where you get out and you get away just to have that thing come out of left field.
Peter Fonda: I wanted to do a different ending.
Quint: Oh, you did?
Peter Fonda: I came up to Leigh Chapman, the writer, and I told her I said “Here’s what we should do… In a lot of my films I’ve been dying… so this is what we ought to do… get there and say ‘Hey it’s OK, we’ve made it we’re in Daytona and I’d turn back and look at him and we go like that. I turn back and hit the train. The first way is I turn back and look at him… a turn look… and we’d go airborne off a raised railroad track… just give me a car that’s fast enough and I could take all four wheels off the ground… Just go up there and have us suspended… Cut to the same scene ‘hey you can slow down, we made it… we’re in Daytona’ and I turn back and come back and we hit the train.” The first part they’d be like “he made it,” then “what’s that? whoa, he didn’t make it…”
[Quint laughs]
Peter Fonda: We better see that again… That’s when business happens… repeat business. I couldn’t believe that in a little town of Livingston Montana, that played for four weeks… There’s six thousand people in Livingston!
Quint: They loved it.
Peter Fonda: For four weeks…
Quint: I’m going to get so caught up in this and they are going to be upset that we’re not talking about 3:10 TO YUMA…
Peter Fonda: Talk is what I do... walking is another thing I do when motion pictures are happening… Walk and talk is a necessity…
Quint: (laughs) Well, if you’re going to be an actor that’s a pretty big part of it…
Peter Fonda: Well… Lionel Barrymore did pretty good in a wheelchair and he couldn’t even walk, but he sure could talk well.
Quint: Well yeah, then there were the earlier days where people just walked and didn’t talk, so…
Peter Fonda: (laughs) That’s very true…
Quint: Have you ever seen the Glenn Ford Van Heflin film?
Peter Ford: Absolutely and I venture to say that Jim Mangold is the kind of director… I don’t know how familiar you are with his films, like his first film, HEAVY, is really dynamic and worth seeing. Jim doesn’t do remakes… In fact, it was a tough shoot… a lot of cold weather and a lot of wind and dust and it was just so dusty, it was unbelievable… it would come out of my nose and ears showering at the end of the day and we had to go to a place called Diablo Canyon, outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico… None of us liked it… Jim didn’t like it, but it worked great for the character of the film. I came to Jim and I said, “I’ve got it.” “What?” “3:10 TO YUMA: RETURN TO DIABLO CANYON.” “I’d never do that,” he said. I said “Oh no, we’ll call it a Jimmy Goldman film.” He kind of looked at me funny… Jim Mangold would not do a remake. I think what he did was he saw the dynamics of Elmore Leonard’s short story and realized inside that dynamic, there was a character driven action film and that’s a great thing, when you can mix that… it’s almost an oxymoron those two words… a character driven action film is what Mangold is able t o deliver in 3:10 TO YUMA and in that sense, it not only transcends the original, which is kind of bland… they didn’t get into really investigating the characters the way Jim did with Christian [Bale] and with Russell [Crowe] and with all of us in fact. This action-western is infused with characters that have their own dynamics that are undeniable and can not stop watching. When you can deliver that… it’s like UNFORGIVEN, you can not stop watching, because you’ve never seen that before and my mantra is about that, because you know my first film was in western, THE HIRED HAND, as a director… that expected violence is accepted violence…unexpected violence is unacceptable. That’s where I like to go. Because you see Randolph Scott and John Wayne… you know “lead is gunna fly, somebody’s gunna die…” But in THE HIRED HAND you had no idea when this moment of violence was going to come. It came out of nowhere and it was like “ah…” and then there was a long bit of character development and then at the end “bam bam bam…” heavy heavy action and you don’t expect it… it’s unacceptable and you’re left gasping. [At this point he slips into talking about the 3:10 TO YUMA clip that played during the panel, involving his character defending his racing stage coach from robbers with the help of his shotty] You expect some violence when dealing with a gang of robbers and Pinkerton agents and I’ve got a shotgun… I mean these guys don’t stand a chance against me. In three loads I put… three times eighteen do the math… that’s how many 30 caliber balls I put out in three pops. Where everyone else was loading a six shooter… they’ve got take that little plunger and casings out, because they expand when they get hot and then by the time they’ve got their second one in, I’ve already put out 38 rounds of 30 caliber bullets… this is deadly… and that’s the way it should be then, if this guy is a bounty hunter and he’s protecting his stage, what better way to cut people down than with a shotgun?
Quint: Yeah, definitely.
Peter Fonda: So you know that somebody is going to get hurt, but you don’t… when Mangold does the turn around on it, you didn’t expect that to happen. You knew something was going to happen, but that you didn’t expect and this is “Whoa,” and then inside that are these characters that are delivered… Christian Bale playing this rancher who is on such hard times and he has a bum leg and he has all this stuff going against him. His ranch is going to be taken away from him. He’s been dried up by the big money guys that want to take the ranch away for the railroad that’s coming threw… That all is typical western stuff, but the dynamics that Jim Mangold puts inside that elevates it to a new level and the action and the violence… although it can be expected, the way it’s delivered is unexpected, so it’s like “Wow, I didn’t want that to happen…” When you see something like that as an audience, you see… you did not want that to happen, you’ve got a good story going.
Quint: Well, there’s something about the western that really lends itself, especially to this kind of story where it’s just these two big personalities just clashing… just these two great actors being the leads and then the great supporting cast like you and…
Peter Fonda: But there were supporters… we supported these two great actors Gretchen Mol, myself, Ben Foster, who you’ve probably talked to already, who is great in this movie and Dallas Roberts, Alan Tudyk… Kevin Durand… these are good strong characters.
Quint: You’re allowed to be kind of big and you’re allowed to just have these… I don’t know, there’s something about the western really lends itself to supporting those kinds of characters and that’s one of the reasons why I’m kind of depressed that we don’t get many more…
Peter Fonda: That’s true. Well, we’re going to have two more that are coming after 3:10 and if it swings well then… the axiom in Hollywood is “Westerns don’t make money,” Well then explain UNFORGIVEN to me… explain DANCES WITH WOLVES… explain all these…
Quint: The movie industry was formed on the back of westerns… They carried…
Peter Fonda: I understand why we do westerns in movies, it’s the American Mythology and within mythology you can discuss today’s terms in yesterday’s idiom, like in science fiction… you take today’s terms in the future idiom, so this is a great way of developing character. You can teach without preaching. You can develop a problem and you can make it somebody’s problem inside what would be and probably be there… You’re not going to be in the old west. You watch this movie and you’ll see your dynamics set in the old west and suddenly those dynamics are something that you forget it’s your dynamic and it becomes the dynamic of everybody on the screen and therefore you become a part of it. If we’re able to do that in a motion picture, we’ve got the audience. You’re used to watching things happen… “Oh yeah… we’ve seen that,” but when you forget you’re in a motion picture looking at a screen and you’re in that screen… now we’ve put back the dimension the camera loses, because camera’s only have one eye, so we lose one dimension… and we can never put that dimension back, at least none of my movies will, because I am not into 3D. Other people are… that’s great for their type of movies, but for my senses, all the people that make the movie… the entire company… it’s not the cast and crew, it’s the company and if you all work together… all we’re trying to do is put back that dimension in that lens. We can never do it, but if we all get there, there’s something that will happen that’s so magical that when you’re in the theater watching it there’s a chance that I might transport you out of that seat and into that screen and you forget you’re watching a movie. I can do this as a movie maker. I can go to the movies… I love the movies… I love the theater too; I’m a trained stage actor. I can go and say “God that was a great cut… that editors are on their… that was so cool… man that was brilliant to have done that…” I can be away from it and I don’t lose a bit of the story by saying “that was a great cut…” then suddenly drop out of that and be in that moment so much so that I’m going to discover it like those characters are going to discover it. When you’re in that discovering mode with the characters on screen, it’s eye opening, then you get as close as you can to what I do on stage.
Quint: Well and then there’s also an audience experience, because you can actually feel that when you’re in an audience and you’ll know that you’re not the only one transported and there’s something about that shared experience.
Peter Fonda: That’s right. On stage however it’s the sex of what I do… because we have intercourse with the audience and you feel it right away… there’s a dionysm that you can’t get on film, but if we do our job well as a company, your job as the audience is taking it up and you’re transported into the film. If that happens, you want to see it again. If you want to see it again, we a have a repeat audience… if we have a repeat audience, we have a hit film… then we can make another western.
Quint: Yeah, we need to change that axiom.
Peter Fonda: Absolutely.
Quint: Well, what are you doing now? What’s up next for you?
Peter Fonda: Well, this and normally what I’ll say is Ben and I’ll get on a plane at an ungodly hour on Monday morning to go to Boston and normally I’ll say “if there’s film in the camera and money in the bank, what time do you want me there?” If there’s no film in the camera and no money in the bank, you’ll see me when I get there, but you know what? I got paid a lot of dough for this movie and I owe it to the studio, the people who paid me that money, to get every chance to get their money back. I’ve been doing this for forty-five years and I’ve learned how to do it very well and I don’t like doing it in terms of getting up that early to do a morning talk show, so what I’ll do is on talk shows, you know you’re talking to people driving cars to work… how boring can it be… and you’re listening to people that you listen to everyday, but they’ve never heard me on that show and it’s radio, so they can’t see, so I’ll just suddenly take off “I know you’ve been looking at this jar I’ve got sitting here, it’s kind of murky, but you have to believe me… this is Hitler’s brain” and they’ll look at me, because they didn’t expect that and two of the DJ’s whoever it is… the radio jocks… I’ll say “oh yeah, the thing is I’m trading this to a fellow in Paraguay who’s got five slices on Lenin’s brain, so if you know anything about history, you’d realize that the Soviets actually sliced up Lenin’s brain to figure out why this guy was doing what he was doing… he’s a fucking commie… excuse my use of the French-Canadian idiom, but you know the people in the car are like “What’s he saying?” and suddenly they’re listening to the show and all of a sudden I’ll be like “Do always wear your bra outside of your clothes… I love lingerie, but that really is sexy…” that captures it, so suddenly the drive to work becomes very interesting and what I’ve done, rather than being very bored having to get up from bed early to talk to a morning show it becomes exciting to me and I’ll walk out feeling incredible… So I’ll take something that I don’t like doing and I make it fun and you would never know that I’m not liking any minute of it, but I’ll never let you know that, but I know that you know that I know you know… Adam and I would do this all the time. Look… in DIRT CRAZY it was always… “Look, I know you know, but you know…yeah I know that you know I know,’ and we’d just go back and forth until we’d get that level and then start the scene… And Susan George’s watching this like a ping pong game going “Where do I fit in this?” Which is exactly your character in that movie!
With that I was pulled away. Told you it was an experience. And I can say having heard it first hand and listening back over the audio that the transcription is accurate, even cleaned up slightly to make it a little easier to read.
I have one more picture to share with you before I call it a night (I have about 5 or 6 hours I can get before I have to be on the road to actually catch the 3:10 TO YUMA). If you remember, I ran a talkback no-prize Caption Contest for my Dane Cook/Jessica Alba interview. I got another one for ya’. I couldn’t resist.
Much respect to Mr. Fonda. I had a blast with this and a great time talking to the man himself. Can’t wait to see the flick.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
