Original-Cin Q&A: Aaron Eckhart talks up the thriller Wander with Tommy Lee Jones - but what he'd really like to do is host a podcast
Aaron Eckhart has teamed up with director and Niagara Falls, Ontario native April Mullen to star in the thriller Wander.
In Wander, Eckhart plays a paranoid private eye with a troubled past who ishired to investigate a suspicious death in the town of Wande. While working the case, he becomes convinced that it is linked to the same conspiracy and cover-up that previously caused the death of his daughter.
His co-star is Tommy Lee Jones, and the last time the two worked together was in 2003 in Ron Howard’s Ron Howard’s The Missing.
Our Bonnie Laufer chatted with Aaron Eckhart about working on Wander, his Canadian director and some interesting Hollywood stories for good measure.
Arthur (Aaron Eckhart) and his pal Jimmy (Tommy Lee Jones) connect the dots of Arthur’s daughter’s death
ORIGINAL-CIN: How have you been coping during the pandemic? It feels like forever, doesn't it?
AARON ECKHART: “Yeah, it does. It just feels long and I'm ready to get back to work. I had three or four films that were right on the cusp of going, and then the pandemic set in so everything stopped at a grinding halt.
“Sadly, I don’t even know if any of those projects will even happen now, and I feel terrible for all of the people affiliated with the projects losing their jobs.
“I don't know how they're surviving and I think the whole industry is in a real flux right now. Movies might not ever be really seen again in cinemas and that is a huge deal, it really scares me.
“Will we ever have the ritual of going to do a theater again? Making big movies for the theater I think will sadly change. What's astonishing to me is that right now, it’s just gone. I guess they'll figure it out. There's so much money in movie making that something will have to be figured out.”
O.C. Well, for now we have your new movie Wander to discuss, an independent film you shot last year directed by April Mullen, who is Canadian. Arthur, this character you play, has got to be one of your juiciest roles. I can't even imagine what your initial reaction was when you read the script, because this guy is off the charts crazy!
ECKHART: “Are you an actor?”
O.C. I am not.
ECKHART: “The reason I ask is because any actor who would read this script and get to do all the stuff this guy gets to do and turn it down is nuts!
PROUDLY SPONSORS ORIGINAL-CIN
“You’re right, he is off the charts crazy! He is addicted to pills. He has a limp, and I get to hang out in a dirty Airstream out in the middle of the desert. What a challenge for an actor. I was immediately on board.
“Then you go on and see that it is a great thriller, he just lost his daughter in a car accident and his wife is now incapacitated for life and you have to take care of her and can't afford it. The guy is a train wreck and has isolated himself out of grief and doesn’t trust anyone. I mean come on, this is gold. And as an actor, you look at that and go, ‘What an opportunity!’”
O.C. I would guess, he was definitely a challenge but in a strange way fun to play as well.
ECKHART: “Without a doubt. April Mullen, the director, calls Arthur her silent warrior. She paved the way for me to be able to do it.
“I'll tell you a story. On our first day of filming, it was a beautiful sunny day and all the crew was there. She had a tribal Elder come out from one of the local tribes, and his son with a drum, and they did a dance for us. It was a prayer to bless the movie. And then afterwards, in front of the whole crew, April pointed at me and she said to the crew, ‘No one talks to him.’”
O.C. Interesting.
ECKHART: “Very interesting, I never had that before. I didn't know she was going to say that. And all of a sudden, it was the greatest joy for me, because I had no qualms about doing the role.
“She allowed me to really stay in character. I didn't have the responsibility of making idle chatter and wasting my energy. I could put everything into the character. So if I didn't talk to somebody everybody knew why.”
O.C. I would think that you would have to stay in character for this guy because he has so much going on. How did you even get into his mindset?
ECKHART: “I spent a lot of time preparing to play him. Because the timing on this movie was pushed a couple times I had a few months to really get to know this guy and what he is going through.
“Bad things often happen in movies, but the death of your daughter is obviously beyond tragic. To add on top of it, to have that instinctual little voice inside of you telling you something's not right. And then exploring that and nobody believing it when you can see it, that was incredible.”
“Here’s a guy who is able to connect the dots, put it all together and build the big picture and yet nobody believes him. Everybody tells him to leave it alone and that he’s crazy.
“The thing that really got me about the script and the character was this guy stands up to it. He goes on the journey. He's already got nothing else to lose. I liked that about him.”
O.C. You finished shooting Wander just under the wire before the pandemic started. But I understand that post production was interesting with April being in Niagara Falls and under the gun to get the movie finished.
ECKHART: (Laughs) “Oh yeah, we all had to get pretty creative. I remember I was in a hotel room in Arizona. I was down in Phoenix for a day. April texted me and said ‘Aaron, can you lay down these lines?’
“So I went into my bathroom at the Hampton Inn and did the best I could. I think most of the voice-over for the movie was done on my phone. Yeah, it's a new world.”
O.C. It’s been 17 years since you and Tommy Lee Jones were in The Missing together. What is it like to go from working with him then and having the chance to play with him now after all that time?
ECKHART: “Seventeen years, wow, it feels like yesterday to be honest. Tommy is one of America's greatest actors. He's an Academy Award winner. He's an icon. He himself is a director and has gone from small to big films. And he played Two-Face too!” (a.k.a. Harvey Dent, the hero-turned-villain in 1995’s Batman Forever).
O.C. I was going to say that you both have Batman in common! (Eckhart played Dent in 2008’s The Dark Knight)
ECKHART: “Somebody brought that up the other day, but I never thought of any of that when we were working together. All I concentrated on was the character he was playing in this film. Jimmy, my boy with his Hawaiian shirt and his yellow lens glasses and that was all that mattered.
“It's interesting though because when I did that movie with Tommy in 2003, I had done a few movies and had a little success up until that point. But then you're working with Ron Howard and some big time heavyweights like Cate Blanchett. I was probably a little bit more scared of Tommy at that time, you know a little bit more in awe of him.
“It’s rare when that happens because throughout my career. I have been blessed to work with some pretty incredible actors but I have always kept it in check.”
O.C. We all know that Tommy Lee Jones does not suffer fools but I have to say it looked like you both had a good time on this film. I love that your characters have a podcast together, so what would a real podcast be like between you and Tommy Lee Jones?
ECKHART: “Ha, that’s a good question! I think a real one would be about ranching! Tommy is an accomplished rancher. He knows everything about cows and grass and fences and irrigation lines, and I know a little bit about that stuff too. So we could probably do a podcast on ranching!”
O.C. I’m sure you would get an audience for that!
ECKHART: “What I would LOVE to do, because I like to be around world-class actors, is listening to their stories!
“If I'm in front of Sean Penn or Jack Nicholson or whoever it is, tell me a story. How did it used to be? How did you do things before cell phones and the Internet? Tell me great stories from your past. Something like this - here’s a great story told to me by Jack Nicholson!”
O.C. This should be good!
ECKHART: “I once asked Jack about shooting the movie The Pledge. There’s a scene where he blows Benicio Del Toro’s brains out and they splatter all over a wall. He then goes up and he looks at what he did and he finds his tooth embedded in the wall. So I asked Jack what he was thinking when he was looking at the tooth and seeing his brains splatteredl. Jack just looked at me in that Jack way and said, `I counted to 10.’ ”
O.C. Cool!
ECKHART: “It would be so fun to just listen to so many of these veteran actors like DeNiro, Pacino and so many more tell stories. I would definitely listen to something like that.”