April 2002 Morgan Speaks : An interview with Morgan Freeman

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Interviewed by Wilson Morales Morgan Speaks : An interview with Morgan Freeman Not many people know this but Morgan Freeman HASN’T won an Oscar yet. In a recent poll taken, most thought that he was a previous winner considering the talent he brings to the screen. There hasn’t been a film where his acting skills lacked. He always brings in his “A” game. He doesn’t mind taking first, second, or third billing so long as his part is meaty and good. He was good in “Glory”, “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Kiss the Girls”. The latter was a box office hit and co-starred Ashley Judd. Chemistry was good enough that they have reteamed to star in Carl Franklin’s HIGH CRIMES. In an interview with blackfilm.com, Morgan speaks his mind on Ashley, the government, and his character. WM: Was Ashley Judd’s casting crucial in you taking this role? MF: Not part of the deal, I actually got this from Ashley, she called me and said do you want to do this? I said, "Are you in it?" and she said, "Yeah, yeah. No, it isn’t anything on paper. It’s just in the wind; it’s in the cards, that’s just the way it’s going to be. I just feel it’s going to happen.” That way, the admiration is on the surface, you can see it. I just adore her. A lot of actresses I dig, but she’s the only one I’ve worked with. Some people just want you because they think your name will do great things for what they’re doing, but Ashley has quite an eye for characters, parts, and stories themselves. You know. Sometimes you feel The need to go against the pull of stardom, you know. People say "You Can’t do that, it’s beneath you." I go back to Ed Wynn there are no small parts, just small actors. WM: Do you think the government, specifically the military, likes to have its image look negative? MF: It seems that we’re always on one side of the fence or the other. When we need the cops or the military, of course, they’re good guys. When things settle down we start looking into the background of the good guys and see all the things they did to make things possible. "You didn’t do that?" But I think you need to because power corrupts. WM: What about having its authority questioned? MF: American credo, if you don’t, pretty soon you can’t. Bush is catching holy hell, the civil liberties union, Amnesty International, the papers in Canada are full of "what does he think he’s doing" and what do we think we’re doing when the Bush administration demanded that the Canadian armed services deliver Taliban and Alikan prisoners to the United States soldiers. They said, "Wait a minute are we just going to be dictated." Well, ultimately the question answered was "Yes." But they are kinda up in arms about it, nationally. People are saying, "We don’t want to be part of that. Obviously this isn’t right, you can’t have a tribunal and deprive people of their rights to due process. Yeah, questioning authority is constant, and ongoing. In our system we don’t have to worry, we’re not going to have a president for life. Okay buddy you go stick your foot in it as long as you have the time, but your time gets shorter and shorter. WM: Did you take any projects for the wrong reasons? MF: What are the wrong reasons – money? Yeah, I mean are you’re going to call that the wrong reasons, it doesn’t sound good. I’d said, "What does it pay?" Oh my God, let me think – Yes." WM: What can you say about Carl Franklin as a director? MF: I like the results of his work. I really liked "Devil in the Blue Dress." And umm, when we were going to do this and I knew it was him, I was looking forward to it. And I don’t know, everything depends on the final product, and Carl is very exacting. What it turns out to be is most important. I’m told this is good product. So what does it matter what I think. When he calls, I’ll be there. WM: First time you step on stage, did you have that perspective that it’s about the end product? MF: No, it’s always about the end product. As far as you, it’s only about how you fit into it. It has nothing basically to do with you as a person. I’ve always been a little hesitant about directing, but to me directing is about captaining a ship. The Captain doesn’t run down to the engine room and shovel coal or check instruments, he has an expert go down there who does that and reports to him. It’s the captain who says, "Let’s go." It’s like "Action, stop the ship, cut." Other people do the rest and you don’t have to get involved about it unless something horrendous goes wrong. But that’s what a captain is, someone who takes all the weight, but that’s not the person giving all the orders. The captain says pretty much, "Let’s put to sea." And then the executive officer and first assistant officer say’s, "Okay, stand by, let’s put to sea." Down the line – the Captain has just been standing there watching it all. WM: Did you get any advice as a child, to get that attitude? MF: I got so much advice as a child. I got a lot of it in high school. I remember in my 20’s one man said to me, he didn’t put it in these words, Satchel Paige put it in these words, but he said, "never trouble until trouble troubles you." Right, in other words, don’t look for trouble. I think my ultimate condensation of all this information came down to "Know what you want." "Know what you want." What you want is so changeable, effected by moment to moment experiences, but I’m such a deep believer that what you want is what you are going to get. For people that don’t believe that, there’s a point where you’re in denial "This isn’t what I wanted, but it is." You get what you want by every day choices you make, all day long, you make choices based on what you want. WM: What do you want right now? MF: I want to be in the Caribbean right now on my boat. I want to be sailing, I want to be gone. Not really, I want this movie to do well so I’m sitting here talking to you. That’s what I really want, the other is what I’d like. WM: Alcoholic aspect of his character? Effort to stay somber? MF: If you’ve met an alcoholic it’s always the first thing uppermost in their mind, alcoholic and drug addicts because it’s so easy to slide off of that, to be caught downward. If you forget for a moment, you met a lovely woman and she says "How about a drink?" You go, "Sure." You’re lost, your gone. What will it take to get you back out of that? I’m not an addict, I don’t have that kind of makeup, but I know that. Quite closely, so it’s terrifying, because very often people that get addicted to substances don’t have any control over it, until they have no control over anything whatsoever. WM: Is there are rule of thumb in playing a drunk? MF: For me, there is, I learned it from Gig Young. What’s the essential thing about being drunk? You feel like you’re not in control, actually you feel like you’re fully in control, but you’re not, you’re struggling to be in control. You’re not struggling to be drunk, you’re struggling to be in control as an actor so the trick for an actor is to struggle for control, not for loss of control. So the guy who is drunk, is to stop and think about what he’s saying. If you’ve had enough to drink the fumes are already there, reminding you maybe you’ve had a little bit too much to drink, let’s have another one. Gig Young, he was the best drunk. I think people who are really drunk don’t do it well. You know who else was a good drunk? Dean Martin, and he was not a drunk, he just had a whole persona around that. WM: Color blind casting? MF: It’s very, very important to me that casting be color blind, because when I was wishing to be an actor, professional actor, you look at movies based on the future, sci-fi, you never saw anybody but white people. So somehow all the rest of the world got wiped out except whites. And I became seriously aware of it…serious aware of it. What do we do to fix that? Well actually I was at the Screen Actors Guild and jumped up and said, "We have to change that. We have to have open-casting." So it’s very important to me that we continue and make this broader, because if you just look out of the world we’re all here, just look at us, look at this rainbow. And I think we are trying real hard.