It's been a while since Clive Owen's had to carry a movie on his broad shoulders, and in the upcoming Scott Hicks film The Boys are Back, he's front-and-center with nary a gun or glamorous love interest at his disposal. In a more intimate turn, Owen plays sportswriter Joe Warr, who struggles to raise both his six-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty) and a teenage son from an earlier marriage (George MacKay) after his wife dies of cancer.
Adapted from Simon Carr's memoir, The Boys are Back espouses Carr's philosophy of always saying yes to your children, and Owen says it caused him to examine his own relationship with his daughters, Hannah and Eve. In a conversation with Movieline last week in Los Angeles, Owen opened up about his cinematic and real-life families, the nature of grief, and whether or not he's gearing up to do a sequel with Spike Lee.
To me, your most striking scene in the film is when you're going through this tragedy with your wife, and your best friend tries to console you by telling you that things are going to be OK. It's as though you seize on his words to lash out at him.
It's funny you mention that scene. It was an important scene, and part of the reason I wanted to do the film is to explore all these areas. I thought the script was very good and I was very keen to make sure it didn't get soft and sentimental, because grief is tough. Grief is not palatable, it's not clean. It's very messy and all-over-the-place and that was a scene where... [Pause] I've lost somebody close. And the reality, when you really strip it down? You don't get over it. There's no real consoling with somebody who's lost somebody. It's just awful. You'll go through time and you'll carry on, but you never quite recover. That to me was a little scene of somebody saying, "It'll be OK," and it's like, "It won't be OK. That's what it won't be!" I'm sure over time we will live our lives and everything, but it's totally not OK.
For as much as the film touts Carr's philosophy of "free-range parenting," there are some downsides. His house becomes a total mess, for one.
The whole thing collapses, really! It does become really clear that you do need at least some structure. I mean, if nobody's doing the washing up, it's not going to work, d'you know what I mean? [Laughs] It's a guy pushing his sort of theory, and I think there's validity to the point that we say no too quickly, that we're sort of locked into our own thing, that we're not accessible enough to children's needs, but he takes it too far.
Do you say no too quickly?
It made me think about it. When I did this film, I thought that maybe we don't keep loose enough with our kids. But I mean, our house is not a strict house. I have the lowest status in my house -- my kids run the roost. They run free enough. I've always loved being a parent. I love my girls, I'm very proud of them, and the fact that they're such nice kids is something I take enormous pride in. It's different for me, though, because I'm an actor and I go away a lot. When I come back, it's hugely important to really spend the time and man-hours with them because I know that I might get a film and I might not be around for a few months, so when I am there, they are the priority. Doing the school runs, being with them, just experiencing their lives as much as possible is the priority.
Your character Joe goes through the same sort of thing: At the beginning of the film, he's away from home for work more often than he's around.
Exactly, and suddenly he's got to be there and fully available.
How much of that is a consideration when you're agreeing to do a new film, that you'll have to leave your family behind for an extended period?
The only thing I've stopped doing is trying to do films back-to-back. Spending a lot of time away and then going straight to another film, the time gets pushed too much. I've gone into a rhythym where I try to do a film and then take considerable downtime after it, so I'm away and then I'll definitely be at home. That gives me the freedom to go anywhere and do any film, because I know I'm not going to do another one straight away afterwards. You know, going to Australia [where the film was set] is a long way from London! But my family came, they came for two weeks and had the best time out there.
And in a sense, you're developing a surrogate cinematic family while you're away from your actual one. You're playing a parent to two children again -- they're just not yours.
Yeah, my little one came out and took one look and was like, "Who are these kids hanging out with my dad?" [Laughs] That's what the film was, that's what we we were exploring in the film. It was important to do that.
The film is adapted from Simon Carr's memoir, but you're not playing Simon, you're playing a Simon-type fictional character named Joe. How similar is your performance to the real Simon?
I never met Simon until the very end. Deliberately. I read the script and was very taken with it, it was a beautifully written exploration of parenting. I read his memoir, which was very different because it was sort of anecdotal...some of it was very powerful and moving, and very funny! There was a huge amount of humor in it. But that was kind of enough. I think if I'd have met him and seen him and seen how he spoke and how he was, I'd have been thinking about it, and I needed to be free to just go in and interpret it as I'd seen it.
Is there such a thing for you as too much preparation for a role?
Yeah. I'd say in terms of if you overwork scenes, you can blow them out a little bit so that they're overdone and you sort of lose the aliveness and spontaneity because you've overworked them. Especially in a film like this, it was very different for me because I do prepare a lot, usually. I read the script an awful lot and I come prepared, but when you're working primarily with a six-year-old boy, that all goes out the window. He's so unpredictable and alive, and the key to the film is that you believe our bond, our relationship. It's very much about keeping loose and available to him, really. If he goes in a direction, you try to go with him, because that's what the film rests upon.
How do you establish that rapport with a child actor?
Well, I like kids, generally. I like hanging with kids. I made sure I took the time [with McAnulty]; I told Scott, "I've gotta get out there early," and I took him away for a few days without the crew, without his parents. I took him to safari parks, fun fairs...I needed him to trust me, especially since I was interested in exploring the tougher elements as well, and to push them. For me to do that, I needed him to know we were just playing and that it was safe with me. I didn't want to scare him, I didn't want him to think, "Why is Clive acting weird at this moment?"
So what was Simon Carr like when you met him?
Kind of different from what I'd expected, but full of the humor and intelligence of the book. It was very memorable meeting him, because he was with the two boys, who were that much older.
And had you met the two boys before?
No, and they met the guys who played them. It was very weird because they were incredibly similar. The older boys were quiet, nice, sensitive, met each other politely. The younger ones were crazy, mucking around, very physical...that's such good casting!
For as much as the film's mantra states that you should always "say yes" to a child, you still have to bend Nicholas to your will to make this movie. How did you strike that balance?
It was a very free set. Nicholas was given free reign and he tore around; we didn't keep him locked up. He'd be running around, outside jumping on the trampoline, and we made it feel like a playground for him. We knew that the film was about capturing that magic, and the fact that he's so full of life is why he got the part. We weren't about to take that out of him by keeping things too structured.
You might be number-one on the call sheet, but it's him the film rests upon.
You just have to be terribly sensitive and aware of these tender ages. It's not just about getting your film done. I mean, the whole film is structured around Nick -- the whole movie. The whole script! We had to be ready to change at a moment's notice if he was, like, over-tired. We had to accommodate that, and that's why Scott was the perfect director, because you need tremendous patience and understanding, and he had that with him. Nicholas had the time of his life on this movie, but you've got to be sensitive.
Are the rumors true that you're hoping to do an Inside Man sequel sometime in the next year?
They've commissioned a script, so they're keen to get one going. It's just about whether the script's there.
Do you have any idea what the story's going to be?
[Big smile] A little bit, yeah. It will be completely dependent on the script and Spike and myself liking it, whether it goes forward. But it is something that they're keen to do.
Was that a working environment you're happy to reprise?
I had a great time with Spike. Great time. I really enjoyed the film and I thought he did a great job on it. Spike is just great, so if the script is good, I'll defnitely do it.