popular thinking

HARRISON FORD, THE BOSTON Q-AND-A

I've edited Harrison Ford's Monday night question-and-answer session at Loews Boston Common, because really, do you want to have to relive the whole miserably lame experience, as I did? No, you don't.

Ford doesn’t give up the goods in his new thriller, Firewall, which comes out Feb. 10, but was willing to reveal a little bit about himself, including the answer to his most-asked question: When will there be a fourth Indiana Jones movie?
“Hopefully this summer,” Ford said. “I think there’s a fair chance we’ll have another Indiana Jones.”

Other topics:
With so many scripts he gets, how does he decide which movies to do?
“I do most of the ones I get all the way through. I’m looking for a good story. I’m looking for something different than what I’ve recently done. Another genre, different kind of character. If I’ve been doing dramas I look for comedy…
I do what I think will please an audience. This is a service occupation. We are storytellers and there’s no sense in telling stories people don’t want to hear…
Things that are well made that have a good degree of challenge for me and for the audience…I’m looking for something that will be a good ride.”

Ford normally plays good guys. Would he want to play another villian, as he did in What Lies Beneath? He said he wants to portray characters who evolve or show some progression. “I’d like to play a good guy who goes bad or a bad guy who goes good," he said. “If there’s nothing that happens to a bad guy other than he dies at the end of the movie, that’s not something that interests me.”

With so many memorable roles in his past, how does he put those behind him in preparing a new role? “Different clothes,” he joked. “I do a lot of research, whether its necessary or not, just to stumble around in the world of the character play.” He said most of the rest of his acting involves figuring out how the character would act and “deciding what to do, what the best choice for the film is, in each particular scene.”

What about directing? “No. It takes too long. It’s very hard. And it doesn’t pay very well.” Referenced his friend, actor Bob Hoskins. “He said it was like being pecked to death by penguins. All day long, people coming up to you, do you want this one or that one?” Ford said directing requires a certain temperament and skills that he doesn’t have nor wants to have.

Did he want to be one of the biggest movie stars ever? “I was not interested in fortune or fame. I just wanted to make a living as an actor.”

Ford also said it’s unfair to compare the two Star Wars trilogies, because the newer ones are digital and his were all analog. On his films: “They were like ‘50s Saturday serials.”