James Earl Jones: The Man Behind The Voice
Q: You said you'd never dirty yourself with politics, including black politics. Is that what you think Spike Lee is doing?
A: Oh yeah, master gamesman. I think he says all that bullshit just because he knows it gets in the press. It's irrelevant. It's like he's reinventing everything--like there was no Paul Robeson, no Malcolm X, no generation of directors or actors before him. No racism before he acknowledged it. This stuff has been dealt with ad nauseam.
Q: Spike's not going to be happy to hear that.
A: The people I come to loggerheads with, like Bryant Gumble or Spike Lee, I'm usually talking blind. I'm so busy seeing what a jerk they are, I forget what a jerk I'm being. I was asked whether Spike Lee should direct Malcolm X when I didn't even know it was a proposal. I thought it was just a random question. I said, "Well, I think the story of Malcolm requires somebody who has a lot more experience in life than Spike has."
Q: What were your feelings about Malcolm X?
A: When he stopped playing Elijah Muhammad's bullshit, which was "let's go out and carve out a separate nation," then he was saying very much the truth. The real dream was for people to get their act together.
Q: Let's talk about some of your movies. You weren't very happy with the film version of The Great White Hope, were you?
A: No. I'm not happy with any film I've done. When I got the final script, all the poetic elements were taken out. And the director, Marty Ritt, was too reverent of the play. I didn't know how to do film acting, so I said to him, "How should I prepare?" He said, "Just give me your stage performance and I'll modulate it." I was lost. Only Jane Alexander discovered a film performance that was right for her character.
Q: And yet you were nominated for an Oscar.
A: The Oscar has nothing to with your talent at all. Sidney Poitier won his not for the performance where he showed his most talent The Defiant Ones, but where he showed the most syrup Lilies of the Field.
Q: What's your opinion of Dr. Strangelove now?
A: Puerile. It has a juvenile sense of humor. I think Paths of Glory was, Kubrick's best film.
Q: In the last five years you've appeared in at least 10 films, including Clear and Present Danger, The Lion King, Jefferson in Paris, Cry, the Beloved Country, A Family Thing _and Al Pacino's _Looking for Richard.
A: Often they've been cameo roles. The only one I'd like to have up there in round letters is Cry, the Beloved Country.
Q: What films of yours do you feel speak for you?
A: Rather than focus on them individually, there's a category of film that I accept as my legacy. That is, simple stories, simply told: Field of Dreams, Matewan, The Man, Claudine. And a TV movie, The UFO Incident.
Q: Where do you place films like Sneakers, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Sommersby?.
A: I put them in Cameo Roles Where I Get to Act With All the Stars in One Scene and Go Home.
Q: You have some specific beliefs about electrical fields and about holistic medicine, and aren't you also a long-time believer in primal scream therapy?
A: [Years ago] I took a primal scream therapy class to tap into my emotional life and to get my perception back. I had begun to attract crazy people around me. Suddenly, being a star, you're supposed to be available to everybody, and Hollywood is just rife with snakes. Every child knows a snake when he sees one, but what happened to me was I could no longer sense the presence of evil.
Q: You took on Paul Robeson's family and several influential African Americans like Coretta King, Maya Angelou and James Baldwin to make the TV movie Paul Robeson. Did it make you think twice?
A: No, not at all.
Q: Did it annoy you that so many people jumped on this bandwagon to oppose you?
A: More than annoyed, it deeply bothered me.
Q: What was your impression of Robeson?
A: What was significant was meeting the man himself, hearing him sing, being in his presence, being affected on a magnetic level. I don't know anybody more committed. Gandhi maybe, but Gandhi was low-key. Robeson was out there. He gave up fame, fortune and peace within his own life.
Q: There's a warrior in you--where do you think that comes from?
A: Africa. The last few times I've been to South and East Africa I've always gone to a shaman. The two things that I'm in quest of are, one, the identity of my spiritual totem, and two, the regions from which my ancestors came. In all cases they've been able to tell me three different tribes, two in Zimbabwe and one in Kenya. My father is from the spiritual totem of the lion and my mother the Rhesus monkey.
Q: Is it OK to have it on your tombstone that you were the voice of Darth Vader?
A: You mean have that there and not King Lear? Yeah, fine, cool, I don't care--even though I'm proud of my King Lear.
Q: Is there one line of Darth's that sticks with you?
A: The only one I know is: "I have you now." When kids ask me to do Darth Vader, I say, "You know all the lines, I know none of them. You feed me, I'll say them back at you."
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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Sandra Bullock for the April 99 issue of Movieline.
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