James Cromwell feared his scene-stealingSuccessioneulogy would end his career.
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James Cromwells career is a series of milestones.
From his breakout role as Stretch onAll in the Familythrough acclaimed performances inBabeandL.A.
He has opinions on all of it.
He thinks what he feels for Logan is love.
And he thinks it was reciprocated, even though you cant tell with Logan.
Its interesting, the sob story he gives at the beginning of the eulogy, once you personalize it.
So the brothers have been through a lot of trauma together at 4 and 5 and a half.
Then they got to Canada.
Ewan was starting to bring home dead animals.
As Ewan, what am I supposed to say to that?
He got a chance to have a better education and Im at a Canadian school where Im alone.
No one there has my experience.
They dont know what Ive been through.
So the feeling about Logan is,I loved him, tinged withI was passed over by my parents.
Passed over in what way?Getting a foothold being able to execute the organization.
So Ewan has envy and he has anger.
The stifling of dialogue.
The creation of fissures in the body politic, where people can no longer talk to each other.
When do you think Ewan Roy became a progressive?
I said to Jesse, Dont turn this guy into another example of the rich.
Im not like my brother.
I served two tours in Vietnam.
The trauma is palpable.
His anger can be righteous anger.
The French Canadians couldnt stand the English emigres who came to Montreal and made a little enclave for themselves.
I went to one of those public schools and got into some trouble.
So I went to Middlebury College in Vermont.
My parents came to visit me at the fraternity house.
My father took me to Sweden, where he was making a picture,A Matter of Morals.
I was on set for a couple of days.
I didnt really know about the process.
At that point, I wanted to be a mechanical engineer and design sports cars.
I thought,I wanna do this.
So I quit college and told my father, I want to go to New York.
What did he say when you told him that?Dont be an actor.
Youre too damn tall.
He thought,Well, thats good for James.
He just quit college in a huff.
He can work in the theater, and its important.
It melded with my fathers politics.
So I went down South with the Student Political Coordinating Committee.
One time, I handed out flyers for the production at a church.
The deacon told me, Yeah, sure, go ahead, leave them inside.
But the courage, the tenacity, of the people in the movement!
Were not waiting for anybody to give us anything.
Were taking what we need.
And that was the first time I understood the context of that play.
That seems like a formulation that would resonate with you.It does.
Along with, Its easy to be high and mighty when youre warm.
I loved that Ewan experienced that idea at the level of a medieval farmer.
It makes for a more compelling argument than if its imagined in a modern political context.
And that were stillin, right now.
I guess I loved him.
Its all manipulated with him.
Its the thinnest of connections with other people.
As Ewan, I dont have that.
I live a fairly normal life.
Of course, Im very wealthy.
I have 100,000 acres in Canada.
You sleep on a blanket on the ground like all the other guys.
Ewan has lived with iconoclasts, and its rubbed off on him.
Are there rich guys like Ewan Roy in the world?
Have you ever met one?Yeah, I have.
Dennis Kucinich introduced me to Warren Buffetts kids.
It was a vegan meal.
They were interesting and knowledgeable.
And look at Bobby Kennedy.
He came from a Brahmin family, but look what he devoted his life to.
Look at the shit he put up with constantly.
But he didnt lash out, he didnt speak in anger.
Just straight to the point.
Greg is not a bad person; hes a naif.
You put anybody in that situation, it takes an inordinate amount of fortitude to say, I quit.
I cant do this.
Thats that problem in a lot of areas of life, isnt it?
I couldnt remember my lines at all.
I toldMark Mylod, the director, I cant promise you anything.
Just lift your head up, on the odd moment.
My assistant called me up the night before.
I told her, Theyre gonna fire me.
There are gonna be 600 people in that church.
I gotta show up on set, and I dont know this thing.
But everybody gets fired for something!
And everybody had said to me, Oh, I read your speech!
What a great speech!
What are you gonna do with the speech?
And wed gone throughout an entire year where Id worked a lot but was having increasing trouble remembering lines.
I was thinking,What do I do?
How do I fake it?And I was sweating.
The night before the shoot, my assistant said, I think I know whats wrong.
You have long COVID.
And then, a miracle happened.
All the text came back to me.
The speech was bloody beautiful, dont you think?
I think Ewan notices that.
How much of Ewans complicity is apparent in the text of the eulogy?A lot.
And that denial creeps into everything, because nothing is truly felt.
When the Americans got close to the German lines, digging down below, the Germans could hear them.
They could hear the shovel hitting.
Theyre sitting, basically, on their deaths.
Every breath is a death.
Thats how I felt the level of trauma was for those two kids.
But exculpatory: yes.
You either do something or you dont do something.
You either make a difference or you make no difference whatsoever.
You cant parcel it out.
You have to commit.
You have to make a choice.
You have to be able to say, I quit.
I am not going to be a part of the problem.
Im going to be part of the solution.
I see you in handcuffs probably more than any actor I can think of.
Certainly more than anyone who is older than 80.I prefer it to fundraising.
When you are part of an action like that, even if it seems insignificant, it means something.
Gluing yourself to a counter at Starbucks you may think,What the hell is that gonna do?
They dont do it in other places like Europe.
Here, they do it because,Ehhhhh … Its Americans, theyll pay for anything.
That small, petty, picayune thievery is capitalism.
Ive read elsewhere thatBaberadicalized you, and I wondered if thats true.Well, yes, but not exactly.
I said, Dont be silly, Ive only got 16 lines.
He said, Believe me, its an Academy Award performance.
And I said, Ive always been very interested in animal rights and Native American issues.
And he said, I can help you with both.
The good guys always have to be straight, put-upon.
It holds up really well.
We were hoping to convince him to change his mind and recommend that they not execute him.
We marched, we petitioned, we went to the governors office and sat in in his office.
He wouldnt see us, of course.
And so we decided we had to do an act of civil disobedience.
We were arrested and tried for blocking traffic, which was not true.
We did not block traffic.
Not for very long, thank goodness nobody wants to be in there for very long.
But it was an education.
He looked right at me and said, Then are you afraid that youll rape someone?
And I realized that rape, in prison and outside, has nothing to do with relieving yourself sexually.
That, I did not want.
Every institution I can think of is failing.
The electoral system is failing.
Every one of them, all failures.
They cannot make it work because capitalism aggrandizes wealth unto itself.
It doesnt lift the burden.
The technology is being created and disseminated without having any understanding of what kinds of controls are necessary.
What happens to a machine that gains a modicum of consciousness?
Even if it doesnt have consciousness, does it have antipathy?
Does it realize its being exploited?
you could re-create a senators voice so that you cannot tell the difference between the two voices.
When art is disconnected from the human spirit, the work is a lie.
Of course, cinema itself is a lie: just shadows against a wall.
The movie occurs in the heads of the audience.
If the audience looks at work produced with AI critically, it wont get that far.
But if they embrace it because its novel, the novelty may take over.
I support the WGA.
I think theyre a great union.
Theres a lot of spirit on the picket line.
There is nothing without the word.
Is there hope?Yes.
The people have the power.
They just dont realize it.
