As it turned out, playing McKeag was a joy and one of my best performances. I loved the guy, probably because he had all the inner qualities I lacked. He was an anomaly on the rough-and-tumble frontier—he was tough, strong, and capable but also sensitive and kind. He was whole and humane. McKeag needed celebrity like a moose needs a hat rack.
Far more than a number of heroic characters I’ve played over the years, McKeag, without even knowing it, so trusted himself and life that he was comfortable being that rare creature: a humble nobody. And unlike the actor playing him, he was unafraid of the inner silence and vibrant emptiness that informed his soul.
Folks like McKeag seem to have been born whole, with body, mind, and spirit happily integrated, ready to live their lives fully and well. And then there are the rest of us who were either born somewhat broken and in need of considerable fixing or damaged along the way.
Being one of those in need of a fix, playing the sturdy character of McKeag for several months was a revelation. Every day of shooting Centennial I got to actually experience being this extraordinarily together man who could negotiate life’s roughest waters while remaining kind, warm, and loving; a man to whom self-doubt was unknown, who had no need of accolades or external validation of any kind. Playing McKeag, I felt the confidence and wholeness I’d always dreamed of.
Western culture seems to divide us; one part is our individual search for survival and happiness in the competitive world and the other is the possibility of attaining an “inner” life of spirit. Usually we give the lion’s share of importance to the former, viewing the idea of an inner life with suspicion, fearing any hint of self-indulgence or non-Western hocus-pocus. And yet, I suspect our mysterious inner realms of silence and seeming emptiness, however threatening they are to our controlling ego, are in fact the actual source of our life, intelligence, and creativity.
There have been great mystics who believe that this duality is an inevitable source of conflict in our lives and that we must learn to transcend it by ascending in consciousness into full realization of the oneness of all. For a time, attaining this sense of total unity was my goal. It seemed that I had to choose between the hurly-burly of my daily existence and some blissfully detached realm of divine awareness.
I now think that for most of us duality is our lot in life. But I think the chasm between outer and inner, between the seen and the unseen, can be happily bridged by a kind of conscious marriage of body and soul, a wedding of the two like the marriage of male and female or yin and yang. This marriage is not one of convenience, no shotguns needed. It is a love match. A loving mutual interest can unite our temporal lives with the eternal life of spirit, the life of spirit being a kind of communion with and participation in something much greater than ourselves.
While playing the role of McKeag, I felt this holy union was complete within him, unconsciously. Having had this experience of wholeness vicariously through McKeag, I am eager to nurture with loving attention this holy matrimony within myself. As in the marriage of two people, each must relinquish dominance and control in favor of cocreating a life together.
FATHERS AND SONS
My all-time favorite job was a new play by Tom Babe called Fathers and Sons, which was staged at the Public Theatre in New York City. At the center of the story was an aging Wild Bill Hickok, holed up, back against the wall in a run-down saloon out west. Wild Bill passed his time playing poker and boozing and romancing Calamity Jane until his bastard son appeared, hankering to shoot his infamous father to gain revenge and his own few minutes of fame.
Our director, Robert Allan Ackerman, cast me as Bill, the stupendous Dixie Carter as Jane, and a marvelous bunch of cowboy actors we all recognized from old B-movie westerns.
Dixie and I sparked together from the very first, and we had an electric chemistry onstage. Along with her extraordinary talent, Dixie is a classic southern belle, who in a wink can make a man feel brilliant, funny, and sexy all at the same time. I was crazy about her, on- and off-stage.
Tom Babe had a most magical way with language. His colorful exaggerations of western dialogue were sheer delight to speak, lifting his characters into mythic stature. And we each had a song.
During rehearsals Tom kept rewriting the end of the play. First I killed my son. Then we tried having my son, who had tied me to a chair on top of the bar, kill me. In the final version we shot each other. During all my theater work this was the only new play I had ever done. It was thrilling to originate a character and to take part in the creation of the play.
A couple of years later we revived Fathers and Sons at the intimate Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills, produced by Leslie Moonves, who now runs the CBS network. The venue brought me full circle: When I was a kid, the same theater was called The Hitching Post—and played the B-movie westerns that many of our cast had acted in.
SHOGUN
Like some sort of tidal wave, Centennial kicked off a fabulous miniseries ride that surfed me through the 1980s. Of course I had no idea what fate had in store until the roiling waves tumbled me into sixteenth-century Japan.
I first heard the word Shogun in my dressing room behind the stage of the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. I was appearing as Cyrano de Bergerac, and out of the small knot of friends who had gathered to wish me well after the show, a tall man with an open smile and piercing eyes stepped forward to ask if I’d read the book. Not only had I not read it, I seemed to be the only person in the country who had not heard of James Clavell’s bestselling novel about the shipwrecked British sailor who washes ashore in Japan in 1600 and finds himself in the middle of a great feudal war. The man told me to read Shogun, not only because it was a gripping epic tale, but because he thought it would make a terrific miniseries. I would soon come to regard our meeting as fated, for it was through this kind stranger that I found one of my best and most artistically satisfying roles.
I read Clavell’s book as if in a trance. I couldn’t put it down, captivated not only by the political intrigue of Japan’s feuding warlords but also by the classic romantic tragedy of Shogun: the forbidden love affair between the Englishman John Blackthorne and his Japanese interpreter, Mariko. The story resonated with me, sparked my own memory of my time in the East. I had been a soldier once, a sergeant in the army after the Korean War. On a visit to Japan, I, too, had taken comfort in the arms of an exotic and beautiful woman, who led me to bed after a fragrant, languid bath in a deep, wood-paneled tub.
As soon as I finished the book, I called my agent, Flo Allen, at the William Morris Agency. I was obsessed with Shogun, I told her, and wanted desperately to see it as a miniseries for the small screen. I was born to play the role of the dashing Blackthorne, I said. As agents often do, though, Flo brought me back to reality. I was late in discovering Clavell’s book. A movie studio had already snapped up the rights.
“There’s another problem,” Flo said. “And it has a name: Robert Redford.”
I was disappointed by what she told me, but after nearly twenty years in Hollywood, I knew that things could change and often did. I decided to be patient, sure that the expansive, panoramic story of Shogun would prove too difficult for a studio to pare down into a two-hour movie for Robert Redford. After several frustrating attempts to come up with a script, the studio grudgingly surrendered the rights to NBC television.
I called Flo again. “Now,” I said, “now I can play Blackthorne.”
“Fine,” she said. “But your problem has a new name: Sean Connery.”
Author James Clavell was to have an unusual amount of influence on any production. Not only had Shogun sold more than seven million copies since its publication in 1975, but Clavell was also a screenwriter of such movie classics as the original version of The Fly with Vincent Price, The Great Escape, and To Sir, With Love. Along with Eric Bercovici, he was also cowriting the screenplay of Shogun. It was Clavell who wanted Connery to play Blackthorne. And, barring that, the author insisted on a British actor for the part. So much f
or fate.
“Fine,” I told Flo. “We’ll wait and see.”
Sean Connery was soon out of the running for Shogun, after he was offered another role in a feature film that paid much more money. Clavell then suggested Albert Finney for the part, but Finney wasn’t interested, joking that the massive script “had to be delivered on a dolly.” Although there were a lot of other British actors clamoring to play Blackthorne, NBC wanted me. It was the businessmen at the network who persuaded Clavell to meet me.
The author of Shogun greeted me that night in the bar of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, with a firm handshake and an appraising look. We walked to the dining room slowly, Clavell favoring one leg. It was the result, he told me, of a motorcycle accident he’d had in the 1940s. His slight limp coupled with a dueling scar on his cheek gave him the dashing air of a buccaneer. When we were seated at a linen-covered table, Clavell lit his pipe. With smoke curling around him, he began to tell me about himself, a story almost as interesting as the fictional one we were thinking of bringing to television.
The sea was in his blood, he said. Both his father and grandfather were career officers in the British Royal Navy, and Clavell had lived in Hong Kong and other colorful ports of call. Foreign phrases peppered his vocabulary, and, with his British accent, he seemed worldly and sophisticated. It was hard to believe that the elegant, pipe-smoking man sitting across from me had spent three and a half years in Japanese prisoner of war camps, including the notorious Changi Prison near Singapore, where only one in fifteen men survived.
I was so excited during dinner that I hardly ate. I had done my homework; not only had I read Clavell’s novel again and again, but I had researched the subject on my own. I knew Clavell had been inspired by the true story of William Adams, a sea captain who, blown off course by storms, became the first Englishman to visit Japan and later established a trade route with the islands. I felt as if I had studied for an important exam, and I was waiting for Clavell to test my knowledge.
I was also sweating. Not from nervousness but from the layers of T-shirts I wore under my shirt and sport jacket. I had sensed what Clavell wanted was not only a good actor but a big, manly actor for his Blackthorne. So, to prepare for this meeting, I did exercises to lower the pitch of my voice. I’d also been spending a lot of time in the gym, working out with weights. I had firmed up significantly, but on the night of our meeting, I still borrowed an old trick that Don Murray used in his role as a cowboy in Bus Stop: I wore extra layers under my shirt for a brawnier appearance.
Despite our long, intimate talk, I left that night without the part. Clavell was not convinced. So we arranged to meet again, this time at Clavell’s home in Hollywood. I met his charming wife, April, who had once been an aspiring ballerina and actress. Perhaps it was the gentle pressure of his wife, with whom I got along swimmingly, or the not-so-subtle urging of NBC as the shooting deadline approached—I don’t know. But the next day, it was Flo who called me. Blackthorne was mine.
After all those months of suspense, I was ecstatic. I knew in my bones that this great part in this lush tale would completely redefine my career. Each of Shogun’s millions of readers and everyone in Hollywood had an opinion of who should play Blackthorne, but now it was up to me. I knew what an incredible opportunity this was, and I was determined to make it work.
Our first weeks of shooting in Japan were for me an uneasy time of adjustment. Some of the scenes were quite difficult to film, especially the storm sequences that lead to the shipwreck. Full-size replicas of the English ships were built in a giant outdoor tank at Toho Studios outside Tokyo, and for two weeks we acted after dark while the crew sprayed us with cold rain. The ships bobbed and tipped precariously on ancient machinery as huge wave machines transformed the tank into a raging sea. After a few nights of suffering, we actors discovered the medicinal and wonderfully warming effects of Japanese brandy.
But the first of many problems was brewing. The nightly storms that the Shogun crew manufactured irritated local residents who lived near the studio. They complained about the constant noise and activity and sent police to stop the production. Only after James Clavell plied our neighbors with cases of sake were we able to finish the scenes.
Clavell appeared on the set every day for the first two weeks. As if the shoot were not challenging enough, I also had to contend with his lingering doubts about my ability to play Blackthorne. I could feel his eyes following me in every scene. I knew I was being evaluated, held up for comparison with someone else he had imagined in the role. I rose to the occasion, however, and used the added scrutiny to bring intensity and focus to my work. Finally, after fourteen torturous days, Clavell decided he liked what he saw and entrusted his beloved Blackthorne to my care. He left Japan for California. And without Clavell’s constant presence, I was able to settle into my role.
But Shogun ultimately was an arduous experience for everyone involved. The summer turned ferociously hot. I struggled, too, to breathe life into my lines. The script had ballooned to nearly six hundred pages, and I was in almost every scene. Blackthorne’s dialogue at times seemed endless and largely expositional. That is, it delivered necessary information to the audience but didn’t result from emotional exchanges between characters.
But the biggest problem, and the most disastrous, was the war that exploded almost immediately between the American and Japanese contingents of our crew and production team.
Our large Hollywood crew charged onto Shogun’s Tokyo locations like medieval crusaders come to convert the Asians to the American way of filmmaking. Like Blackthorne and his shipmates, the Yanks hadn’t bothered to learn about Japanese customs, pride, or their rigidly complex forms of courtesy. Early in the production one of our crew guys yelled in exasperation, “Haven’t you fuckers ever made a movie before?” It was a crude insult, unimaginable to the Japanese. The battle lines were drawn, and covert warfare didn’t cease until the final days of shooting.
Another mistake was to use female interpreters to transmit director Jerry London’s orders to the assistant directors, who were all Japanese men. At that time in Japan it was unheard of for women to have leader-ship roles in society. Each time the assistant directors were told to do something by the interpreters, they felt as if they were being bossed around by women, and they resented it. As a result, they seemed to screw up purposely as often as possible.
The conflict between the Japanese and American crews grew so acrimonious that the Americans began walking on the near-sacred tatami mats with their shoes on, blasphemous to the Japanese. The tatami mat is never just a prop, even on movie sets. Of course, the Japanese producers were not innocent bystanders in this seething culture clash, bedeviling our production with their unceasing efforts to increase their profits.
And no one bothered to explain to the Yanks that in Japan it was considered impolite to say no, part of their ritualized courtesy and avoidance of confrontation. For Americans, who revere clear thinking and direct attacks on problems, this kind of subtle distinction created a great deal of confusion. You had to listen very carefully to the way in which the Japanese said yes to determine whether they really meant “yes”—or “get lost.”
Even the meals on set proved to be a problem. If the food was too “Western,” the Japanese crew would complain. But for Americans, a diet heavy in sushi and other exotic fare was often hard to swallow. In the larger cities, more variety was available, but smaller locales meant more local cuisine. “We had squid every day we were there and in every way possible: raw, pickled, broiled, boiled, and fried,” remembered producer Eric Bercovici of a shoot in Nagashima.
The American and Japanese crews should have been like two giant wings carrying the same bird, but they weren’t. Perhaps the story of Shogun itself stirred up some of these atavistic feelings among the Japanese about the English missionaries, the tribal conflicts, and the wickedly complicated history of great nations.
The communication problems and lack of cooperation between the two crews alm
ost resulted in disaster during the filming of the tremendous earthquake scene outside of Kyoto. It was shot in an eerie valley etched with deep, naturally eroded trenches. Our special effects expert, Bob Dawson, covered these trenches with a thick layer of dirt on plywood sheets supported by poles that, when blasted with gunpowder charges, were supposed to cave in, giving the effect of quake fissures splitting the earth and swallowing up samurai, tents, and horses.
Seven cameras were set up to photograph the spectacular event. After meticulous rehearsals, the cameras rolled and the charges exploded but nothing happened; no fissures appeared. Rain the night before had solidified the ground so that it wouldn’t cave in.
The company moved to a nearby spot to shoot another scene, while Dawson and three assistants climbed down into the trenches to prepare for a second try at making the earthquake. But just as we were about ready to start filming, we heard cries. One of the trenches had collapsed on Dawson and his men.
It was pandemonium, with Japanese and American crew members yelling and running around. No one seemed to know how to talk to anyone. The crews that by then, very late in the shoot, should have worked like a well-oiled machine, could not even come together during a crisis. Finally, our cinematographer, Andy Lazlo, took charge and came up with a plan to rescue the trapped men. They were freed after an hour of careful digging.
Despite its trials, making Shogun was incredibly rewarding. We were given weekends off, which was unusual for a film shooting on location, where production expenses are often much higher and demand a six-day workweek. On Saturdays and Sundays, my beautiful Japanese interpreter Mieko (whom I didn’t mind at all taking orders from) would show me around Tokyo or Osaka or Nagashima or, best of all, Kyoto.
Kyoto is a treasure, full of magnificent temples and ancient palaces. Once, Mieko and I explored a nearby mountain called Mount Hie, which was dotted with hundreds of temples and small shrines. At one of them, we happened upon a sacred drama performed by a large group of gorgeously costumed monks and priests. Their chanting was punctuated by strange musical interludes with drums and gongs. We weren’t allowed inside the temple, but we could watch and listen through lightly veiled windows. I was spellbound by these dedicated “actors” who performed with such precision and power. It was like sailing back in time to see the origins of my own profession, in its earliest incarnation as purely religious expression.
Shattered Love Page 12
