Richard Gere: Shifting Geres

Q: Let's talk about movies. Do you think that film is the art form of our times?

A: Film is generally soporific now. When I was younger there were movies that had to be seen--it was unthinkable to miss certain directors' new films. You felt part of a movement, a brotherhood. I don't even feel compelled to go to the movies anymore. I'd rather have dinner with my girlfriend than go watch a movie.

Q: What films have you liked over the last couple years?

A: The English Patient. And a film called Before the Rain.

Q: What movies did you like as a kid?

A: I liked war movies and muscle movies like Hercules. Greek myths were interesting to me.

Q: Speaking of war, how did you deal with the draft?

A: That's a long story. I was a conscientious objector, genuinely so. I wrote my essay, went to my minister and my school principal. It was all rejected and they asked me to come in for my physical. I decided there was no way I was going to go to war. I went through the whole scam thing. The big thing then was to have a tattoo--FUCK YOU--along the side of your hand from the wrist to the pinky. And there was the gay stuff, "I'm gay, I can't possibly do da, da, da ..." Anything to get out at that point. I was eligible the first year of the lottery and I had a high-probability number. I got my notice and they still wouldn't give me a deferment, so I split. I just went off to be an actor. Then they started bothering my parents and their neighbors, looking for me. So I came back and ... I don't know if I should tell the rest.

Q: Why not now? They're not going to get you anymore.

A: I just worry about my parents. At that point I had had some psychological problems that were documented. It's unclear in my mind whether they were really psychological problems or something I had trumped up to get out. I showed up for a final physical and showed all this stuff, and the letters essentially said this kid should not go. So they gave me a 1-Y and sent me home.

Q: OK, back to the movies. Do you like your new film The Jackal?

A: I'm not sure what it is yet, because I haven't seen it. It was an oddball script with a lot of possibilities. At worst it's probably one of those yeomanly movies like Air Force One. It could be a little more.

Q: Does your costar Bruce Willis owe you for turning down Die Hard years ago?

A: I just wasn't interested in the whole thing--I haven't made many decisions to do mass-market movies. I don't maintain a graph of where I am in terms of box office.

Q: Didn't you also turn down Michael Douglas's role in Wall Street?

A: How do you know that stuff? I never talk about it.

Q: You've been subject to harsh gossip over the years. What have you learned about how the media reports things?

A: I think it's really healthy to know that none of it is real. None of it is true. The whole thing is illusive. Reality is all illusive, even on a mundane level. Newspapers do not tell the truth. They may tell a little bit of it, but not the truth.

Q: Do you think all is illusion?

A: All. All of it. That doesn't mean it's not there. We believe illusions. And illusions are projections of our minds. It just means that it's not real from its own side. It's only real according to cause and conditions. Interdependently, but not independent. From that sense, it doesn't exist.

Q: If we don't exist, I don't know where to go with this interview.

A: [Laughs]

Q: You put that advertisement in The Times of London denying the speculation about your marriage and sexuality. You obviously felt frustrated by what the press was reporting.

A: That's all a complicated situation--some of it legal, some not. I'm not going to get into that. Any kind of response one makes is probably for the worse. Essentially I don't care. I never really cared. There's a wonderful Zen story: a young student comes to see a Zen master for instruction. The student has a girlfriend in the village, but he leaves her to go up the mountain to sit with the master. The police go up the mountain to see the master and say, "Roshi, there's this girl in the village who said you attacked her." He says, "She did?" So he's convicted of this crime and sentenced to exile. Twenty years later the police come and say, "Roshi, we're terribly sorry, the girl came to us and said she had been jealous of her boyfriend spending so much time with you and that she lied." And he looks up and says, "She did?"

Q: So patience is the key?

A: As you get older you can't take it very seriously. It's hard for me to do these interviews over and over because it's all bullshit. You know you're asking essentially bullshit questions, I'm giving you bullshit answers, but I'm doing it because there's a movie opening and the studio expects me to do it. It's part of the game and da, da, da.

Q: A writer in Esquire noted that you seem to have modeled your career on Greta Garbo--like her, you prefer silence; like her, you have an image largely defined by sexual ambiguity.

A: This was basically a moron.

Q: Why are actors abnormal?

A: Because the job in many ways conspires to keep them emotionally retarded.

Q: How do actors keep from being bitter and cynical?

A: How does anyone?

Q: The Brazilian painter Sylvia Martins once said you were the most ambitious person she'd ever met. That you were Sean Penn before Sean Penn was.

A: She's an old friend of mine. She said that [quote] was a total bullshit statement. Total bullshit. Totally made-up.

Q: Do you consider yourself ambitious?

A: Yeah, I don't think anyone becomes successful without being ambitious. But I think I'm a pretty tempered person.

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