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This'll Learn You Good
Issue 21.8: Edutainment
Posted: June 2006

The Fed Interviews Jon Voight

Rob Trump

The star of Deliverance and Anaconda talks to The Fed's Rob Trump about the philosophy of Baby Geniuses, the turmoil of the sixties, his resemblance to Christopher Walken, and his new film, The Legend of Simon Conjurer.

Rob Trump: Hi, I’m Rob. I’m with The Fed, which is Columbia’s comedy and satire newspaper. Could you tell us a little about The Legend of Simon Conjurer?

Jon Voight: The movie is, for anybody who’s seen the trailer, this movie, you can’t figure out how all of this stuff gets into one movie; there’s a whole lot of stuff in this movie. But if I had to describe it in a very simple fashion, I would say that the movie is about a group of ten dysfunctionals who try to solve a murder mystery. That’s the short version. It’s really: these dysfunctionals are following a gifted teacher, and they cross paths with a murder plot, and then they all have to come together to solve it. My part in the piece has to do with a fellow who perhaps is hiding an evil side; his name is Dr. Crazx. He’s a 400-pound celebrated psychiatrist. His novels are very popular. He’s a person who gets a lot of attention for his negativity, as many people in our society do. He gets the most negative criticism, and he’s one of the most successful.

RT: Can you tell us a little about the mysterious nature of the writer and director?

JV: I can. This fellow, if you look at the ads for the piece, you’ll look at “written and directed by,” and next to it there’s a question mark. The reason why that question mark is there is that we had to put something there, and the director and writer didn’t want anything mentioned about his name. And the reason why initially he took that stand, is because he wants to make a statement against all the vanity of Hollywood, where everybody wants to take credit. There are so many credits in the film, and you see somebody’s name popping up three or four times in the credits, and he just didn’t want any of that. He just wanted to say, “I’m not part of that nonsense.”

So that’s what he did. Then everybody tried to get him, to find out who did it, and all of that. And the more they tried to get it, the more he stood against it; he said, “No, I don’t want my name mentioned.” Now, I just talked to him today, and I said, “Look, ---.” His name is ---. I said, “---, if somebody wants to know, I want to be able to say your name,” because after all, the way I want to represent the movie is not through my character, who is a part of the fabric, but not really the center of the fabric of the piece, certainly not the center of the statement of the piece. I said, “So, I really want to be able to talk about the writer/director, and I want to talk about the filmmaker.” And I said, “You’re all over the documentary.” And he said, “But the documentary wasn’t made by me. If I had made the documentary, I wouldn’t have allowed it!”

(Laughs) So it’s like that. So I go around in that way with him, and then he said, “Do whatever you feel is right, Jon.” But he’s a wonderfully interesting man. He’s a complex man, but all in a positive way. He’s tough; he’s very gentle; he’s full of contradictions. He’s very, very bright, very bright; I don’t know what his IQ is; it’s through the roof. And yet he can make simple spelling mistakes, or he’s clumsy in other ways. He’s got a rawness about him. And that’s part of the film, too. Part of the film is very refined.

If you look at the structure of the script... I hope people like this movie enough to want to get the script and look at it. You’ll see that the structure is quite well worked out; it’s a very interesting tapestry. It stretches the imagination; it’s provocative; it’s a lot of other things, but, it’s a classical structure, to me, there are so many different rivers in the piece that are quite interesting, and they all come together in quite a seamless way, and yet, what happens is, you look at the trailer, and you think, “I don’t believe that all these things could be part of the same story.” So it’s a great work of the imagination, and it has a great moral center, which I think distinguishes it; that’s what I think.

RT: Isn’t it kind of strange that the anonymity of the director might in some sense promote the movie and bring him some attention?

JV: Well, anything that happens that brings attention to this movie, I’m for it. It’s such an unusual piece; it’s a completely original piece. And people will come in and for the first couple of minutes, think, “What the heck is going on?” It challenges you. It’s all for the good. We have this statement that we make; it’s on the ad; it’s on the poster. It says, “This film will provoke the metaphysical mind and may enable us to tap into our own healing process.” I mean, come on, who would say that? You’ve gotta be nuts to say that! But it’s said, and I do believe that it’s a true statement, actually. It’ll provoke many questions, and it really does talk about healing, and it raises questions about the purpose of life, I think. And it certainly raises this big question that is kind of at the center, at the hot core of this piece: “Does God exist or not?” I mean, what a question. Who would make a film with such a question at the center? I don’t know. Yes, I do know. Yes, I know his name, but I can’t tell you!

RT: Do you think part of the whole idea with that really ambitious statement for the movie is that if the statement is so strong as to be a little joking, then it can take on those issues without seeming pretentious? Like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, saying, “This is going to be really, really intense!” and then just doing it?

JV: Absolutely right. I absolutely agree. It also prepares people to see the more serious aspect of it. There is a lot of playfulness. There’s a lot of whimsy in the film. It does a lot of little things. But really, this is a serious piece. Something’s being tried here. It’s a work to try to introduce this kind of piece to an audience. It’s hard to do it. So I think maybe with that statement, it helps. Helps people get to it, say, “Okay, I’m going to take this a little more seriously. Okay, that’s this, this is the... oh, I see, there’s this part too. Okay, good.” It’ll introduce people to the film, and enable people to digest the movie a little more.

RT: Can we talk a little about some of your earlier films, like Midnight Cowboy?

JV: Sure.

RT: I’m not a person who’s very often moved emotionally by films. I watched Midnight Cowboy, and I was just about ready to cry my eyes out at the end. I’m wondering, something with that much emotional power, does that make it really difficult to work with? I feel like the people on the set, just watching you and Dustin Hoffman interact, would have been crying all the time.

JV: Well, first of all, I have to say that movie is a masterpiece. If there is such thing as a masterpiece, in terms of art, then that’s gotta be included in its ranks. It was moving; it was a very touching relationship between these two people. It was acted so vividly that people stepped into the shoes of both characters and cared for these characters deeply, and that’s what made it so moving. At the end, when Ratso dies on the bus – a person who had this dream to go to Florida – and he went down to Florida and then passes away without ever experiencing the life of it. But there’s hope in the film, too, because these people have been able to express themselves to another human being, they’ve been able to have a friendship and loyalty and many things that we can recognize as virtues. Because of their friendship, they have grown.

Certainly Joe has grown; he’s grown to an understanding of many things. He says at the end... he says he understands that his life has been a little bizarre, and maybe some physical work would be... he can do that, something like that. He’s putting down a certain real root at the end of the film, where he was really in a very bizarre thought about life prior to that. And his relationship with Ratso has given him insights, and maybe given him some character. Interesting.

RT: Midnight Cowboy was one of the first really big Hollywood films which was related to gay culture, which was starting to be much more of an entity at the time. How do you feel that things have changed with respect to that since Midnight Cowboy, and partly because of movies like Midnight Cowboy?

JV: Well, first of all I have to say that Midnight Cowboy is not a gay movie. The two central characters were desperate characters, and Joe was just a terribly desperate fellow, just trying to survive. And he was almost victimized by certain aspects of society. And the portrait of gay life was not an attractive one. As a matter of fact, Jon Schlesinger, who directed it, got a lot of flak from his gay friends because of that aspect: it wasn’t romanticized; it presented a pretty rough life. But all those aspects of life, all that... seedy side of life that it portrayed, and the New York City culture, it was interesting because people had not seen it before. So it was an interesting journey, and thank God we cared for these two guys, and we could go “where angels fear to tread.” That phrase is appropriate for that film, because you can go with these two guys, and you know you’re going to be safe, somehow.

There’s a moral quality to this story, in the writing, that keeps you above ground, that doesn’t let you slip. It’s a highly moral film, finally. So anyway, do I think it opened the door because it presented a true portrait to many different areas of life? I think yes, possibly. The truth is always helpful, I think. But if I had to say the one thing that moves us about Midnight Cowboy, it’s the moral character of the piece. It’s a strongly moral piece, and that’s why I’m proud of it, too. I think it presents things in the proper light so you can see the good and the evil and the waywardness and the strengths and the confusion and all of it in its proper setting.

It also presents a pretty good – an interesting aspect of the sixties. For people who didn’t experience the sixties, like a young fellow like yourself, you can see a little bit about what it was. And you see, when Warhol had these parties, with different media, flashing pictures against the wall and stuff like that, and a lot of... and let me say this about the sixties, which we survived to some degree, but not without some scars.

We did do some proper things in the sixties. We did want to find the truth; that’s a positive aspect. But the truth is elusive, and you have to be a strong person to see the truth, so everybody running around saying, “We’re free to do this,” or, “We’re free to do that,” and, “This is the truth,” and, “That is the truth” – there was a lot of very so-called sophomoric behavior, that paraded itself as wisdom, that wasn’t really wisdom at all, and some of it was quite pernicious. The aspect of licentiousness, drugs, the drug culture... the drug culture was not a happy thing that we passed on. And I say we as a generation; that was an ugly thing to do to our society. Anyway, if we could learn a lesson or two from that.

RT: In Coming Home, for which you won an Oscar, there is a really fantastic love triangle that comes into play between you and Jane Fonda’s and Bruce Vern’s characters. Then in a later film you were in, Pearl Harbor, there’s kind of an attempt at a similar love triangle. I’m wondering, while you were on the set of that movie, did you ever feel like standing up and saying, “I did this better, first! This is how you do it! Let me explain!” Because it works great in Coming Home.

JV: (Laughs) Well, that’s good. I thought that... I have great regard for Bruce Dern’s performance in that piece, and Jane’s, too, but, you know, it’s human. We’re not original; we didn’t invent the love triangle, so that’s around, and people get hurt, and as long as there are relationships there’s going to be that possibility, of course. It’s interesting that you bring that up because Pearl Harbor certainly had that as the center. And I thought it was pretty effective; I thought the movie was a pretty good movie. I thought a love story like that at the center was helpful in visiting such a tragedy. Because you need to have something... love stories give you hope; there’s a lightness, there’s something else, and you can sustain a look at really deep tragedy like the incident at Pearl Harbor, where you’re going to view so much death and destruction.

RT: The first Mission: Impossible, which you were in, was fantastic.

JV: I’m glad you think so, young man! That’s great. I agree with you. (Laughs)

RT: Second Mission: Impossible – terrible. You weren’t in it. How much responsibility are you willing to take for that?

JV: (Laughs) For the second one?

RT: No, no, for the first one being so much better.

JV: I don’t know. I do know that I couldn’t watch the second one... it wasn’t interesting to me; it was off a little bit. And I went back, and I did this recently, I saw the third one, and it was so full of amazing things, cover to cover, wall to wall. They have amazing stunts, and the action is very high-pitched right from the beginning all the way through. And it was very well done, and it was very well acted, I must say too. Every category, everybody was on their game. It was an interesting piece, but then I went back and looked at the first one, which I was a part of, and I felt that there was more depth in the story of the first one. Clearly, more depth, and you got more involved in the authenticity of it, and the pace of it. There was something remarkable in the first one.

RT: I was wondering if you could compare your change of involvement in the Mission: Impossible series to your change of involvement in the Baby Geniuses series, where you went from co-executive producer, I believe, in the first one to an actor in the second one, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.

JV: (Laughs) Well, the way they do that is... I have my friends. Steven is my partner, and Steven is a very interesting guy and has really been responsible for a lot of the career possibilities that have opened up for me. He’s a very young case, and he really works very, very hard so that my career continues at a pace. It was his baby, these movies, and I only helped out with them, and then he came to me for the second one, and said, “Can you help in this way?” (Laughs) And I threw in with him, you know.

RT: I was also wondering how exactly one prepares for a role as a media mogul fighting babies in order to enslave the world.

JV: Yes, it’s very hard to prepare for such a complex role. I thought there were a lot of comic possibilities in it, especially at the end when he’s shrinking and he turns into a baby. But I love kids. I love kids. I’m kind of a... people who know me will come in, when I’m in a restaurant, they’ll say, “Jon, Jon, c’mere, I just saw a great baby,” and they’ll show me where the babies are, and they want me to come up and play with these babies, because I’m crazy about babies. The reason why I’m crazy about babies... it’s because I actually agree with the premise of the Baby Geniuses films. The premise is that babies know everything, up until a certain age where they start to forget, and then they enter into this world of lessons and challenges and stuff like that.

But prior to that, they had one foot in the prior world, which was the heavenly realm, somehow like that. If there’s a truth to... reincarnation, let’s say, right? If there’s a truth to that – that souls don’t extinguish at death – if they continue on, then I have to say that these little, these pure souls, before they enter these lessons, they do have a lot. There’s something sublime in the little ones, and it’s quite intriguing. And we have this cycle of life where we’re babies and then we get older: we have an adventure; we make our statement; and we become wise, we learn a few lessons; and then we become addled and we become like babies and are taken care of again.

(Laughs) That’s unfortunately that’s what I have to look forward to, turning into a babbling thing! But there’s also the other side of it, which is that as you get older, you get a little closer to that other realm, too, I think. Unless you’re infected with dementia or something like that, you get a little closer to the real wisdom. Like my mom when she passed away, she was as wise as anyone, and full of fun, and full of passion for life, very, very interesting person to talk to, the most interesting person to talk to. And she knew she was going. She knew she had a limited time left. When she went to that gate, she was really something special. I think babies have that quality too. I think spending time with babies purifies us, kind of like a natural force, and people who are good with babies have a special insight... which means most mothers.

RT: My mother, I know.

JV: Almost all mothers know something special.

RT: Have you ever looked at your IMDb or Wikipedia profiles?

JV: No, I never have.

RT: Never?

JV: No, never have. I think I’m scared of it.

RT: Well, this is something I found on your Wikipedia profile which I thought was kind of strange. Your Wikipedia profile notes that you are often confused with actor Christopher Walken, but for some reason his Wikipedia profile does not mention you! I’m trying to figure that out.

JV: (Laughs) It’s terrible!

RT: It’s the whole internet problem, with peer editing. I’m thinking about going and editing the Walken one...

JV: Do it! No, do mine!

RT: Oh, I’ll do one of them.

JV: It’s an interesting thing. Chris and I know each other. And I have a great regard for his acting; he’s a terrific actor. So to be compared with Chris is absolutely no... it’s not an insult in any sense. It’s a compliment, really. But we do look physically very similar at certain times. It depends on the way I comb my hair in the morning. If I let it grow straight up... I have that wig in Zoolander. I looked exactly like Chris. For several beats, I didn’t know whether I was Chris! (Laughs)

RT: I know a lot of people who were confused by that in Zoolander.

JV: Well, Zoolander was quite confusing anyway. Zoolander, I’m crazy about Zoolander. It was an important movie. (Laughs) And Ben is the greatest, really. He’s a wonderful, wonderful gift to us all. Ben’s insights and portraits into human behavior are terrific, I think. The movies he chooses to do, I mean, you look at Ben’s contribution as a young actor, boy, it’s quite stunning, really, and Zoolander is really very close to the top of that! (Laughs) You have to say... with this you can’t tell when I’m laughing and when I’m not laughing. You’ll have to say “with a smile” or whatever it is.

RT: I’ll put it in parentheses.

JV: Humor is always very needed, and it gives us a lot of insights. You can tell a lot of truth with humor. And you can have a lot of laughs! (Laughs)

RT: On the subject of confusing you and Christopher Walken, could you just give us a few helpful hints to keep you straight? Some easy identifiers, maybe?

JV: Well, Chris is usually... Chris is always him. Chris stays very close to himself in his work, and that’s an admirable thing. Usually if you can’t recognize the character that’s being played, it’s me. If you can’t recognize me, it’s me. If you can recognize me, it’s Chris. (Laughs)

RT: You told a really fantastic story before we started about how you turned from being really into drawing and painting to movies. Could you do a little synopsis or retelling of that?

JV: Well, yeah, I can say this. When I was a young fellow I thought I was going to be an artist, a painter. And that happened when I was three years old. It was a phenomenon. All of a sudden I found this gift. Someone was giving me some paints, and all of a sudden they said, “Wow, look at that,” and they were amazed. And I made something else, and they were amazed at it. So I started becoming this artist at the age of three, with very strong opinions. I remember having very strong opinions about the way the face should be painted, and all of that stuff, when I was three, four, five years old!

And then, when I was in kindergarten, fifth grade, sixth grade, I was brought into contact with movies because my father, who was a golf professional, used to take his three boys – I was the middle child – to the movies all the time. And when I saw movies, I realized that two-dimensional painting was no longer relevant. That there was this other medium, all of a sudden. There was film, which not only has this depth to the visual, but also has music as part of it, and other art forms involved, and stories. So I realized that my little two-dimensional talent was not really enough in this day and age. And I felt a tremendous sadness that I had to retire, at the age of six, from this thing. But it really was a true heart-sickness. And no one would know it.

That’s another thing about children... people perceive children as – many people, I shouldn’t say people generally, but many people – don’t realize how much every individual is carrying. They write people in a very shallow way in their mind. Oh this guy’s this. This guy’s this. But everybody has so much depth, and little children are going through tremendous things, and as a matter of fact establishing their behavior patterns for the rest of the lives, in those early years. In the movie The Legend of Simon Conjurer, we see each of these dysfunctional characters had a seminal moment early in their growing years that defined them for the time afterward. And if they didn’t go back and recognize that, they’d never know the key to their dysfunction. So, good and bad happens when you’re little. You’re going through tremendous adventures. Everybody is; every single human is extraordinary; we’re all little icebergs, aren’t we? We see only a little bit, the peak of it, but the depth of the personality is under the surface, you can’t see it.

RT: One last question, on the subject of things that you’re in that are coming up. Transformers: The Movie. Everyone I know is so excited about it. How sweet is it going to be?

JV: Well, that’s interesting... that you, at your young age, you’re into Transformers?

RT: Transformers? My generation, through the cartoon and the physical toys... a lot of people in college right now were really into Transformers.

JV: Well, I think... this is my opinion. I remember when they asked about Mission: Impossible, I said, “Whatever you think, it’s going to be better.” Something like that. “It’s gonna deliver.” So I’ll say that about this, too.

RT: Wow.

JV: It’s a good story. There’s a good story line about it. And it leaves room for these amazing special effects, which have to create, after all, these extraordinary designs. So it’s not going to be simple-minded; it’s going to be really effective. These designs will be telling. And these characters will be represented. Your favorite characters have made their way into the movie. And now I have to figure out how to make my character... right now what I’m trying to do is to humanize my character, make him interesting, and strong enough. Right now, I have that challenge. But the Transformers are going to be quite impressive. It’s going to be a cool movie.

Jon Voight will be at an open Q+A about Simon Conjurer after a June 2nd 10:20 screening of the movie at the Village East Theater. He will also be at meet-and-greet events on June 3rd from 4 to 6 PM at the Angelica Theater and 6 to 8 PM at the Village East Theater.