E-mail a friendMarcia Gay Harden
airdate September 17, 2007
Marcia Gay Harden is one of Hollywood's busiest actresses. This year alone, she has five films set for release, including Into the Wild, the indie Canvas and Home, in which she stars opposite her real-life daughter. An Oscar winner for her performance in Pollock, Harden was nominated a second time for her work in Mystic River and was a Tony nominee for her turn in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play, Angels in America. She the daughter of a Navy officer and earned an MFA from NYU's theatre program.
Marcia Gay Harden
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Marcia Gay Harden back to this program. The Oscar-winning actress has starred in a number of notable films, including, of course, "Mystic River," "Pollock," and "The Hoax." Her latest project is the new Sean Penn-directed film, "Into the Wild." She also has two other projects out this fall - we'll get to that in a moment. But first, opening this weekend in New York and L.A., here now a scene from "Into the Wild."
[Clip]
Tavis: So this is obviously not a true story. (Laughter) I don't know -
Harden: You don't recognize yourself in there?
Tavis: Yeah, I don't know a kid - that certainly wasn't me. I don't know a kid in America who would look at his parents and say, "Why would you buy me a new car?"
Harden: That's the point of the film.
Tavis: Tell me about the film.
Harden: Well, it's based on a John Krakauer book and almost beautifully cold in the idea of it from the book, called "Into the Wild." It's the story about a young boy, Chris McCandless, who gives up everything he owns, every commercial thing, burns his money, buries some of it, and goes off on a quest to find himself. And he's very angry at his parents, and on this quest he's reading Thoreau and Dostoyevsky and great, great writers, and he walks across America, encounters different people - this is after he's graduated from college.
He chose not to go to Harvard. And he meets people and he really begins to understand who he is as a young man. And always he had in mind that he would be going to Alaska, going to Alaska, to live in the wild and see of what stuff he was made. And so the movie tracks this journey for you. And why I say it's the crux of the movie is because people don't do those kind of journeys anymore; people don't read those kind of books, people don't do - our youngsters, can you imagine doing that kind of self-soul-searching?
And so it was a really wonderful journey that he went on to understand what it was for him to be human in this incredible landscape of America and in the fast-paced, commercial cities in which we live.
Tavis: What drives his curiosity to want to go in search of his humanity and who he is? A lot of us never get to the point even of even being serious about - Socratic about those questions. What drives his search?
Harden: It's a very good question. I think maybe he listens, and I think maybe some of us don't listen. That we buy that which we are handed. This is your journey - you're gonna go to school, then you're gonna go to college, then maybe go to grad school and/or you'll get a job. And then you'll get married. And it's almost this formulaic plan - a blueprint for existence that when you step outside of it, you've moved outside of an incredible magnetic pull of society.
You should buy these things, you should have 1.2 washing machines, and you should have how many plasma screens. It's a very - the suck and gravitational pull of commercialism is huge, and I think he wants to listen. I think he's fueled also by in the family, the parents were incredible. They're still alive, and they're incredible in giving Sean some information about what might have fueled his search, or at least the brutality of him not telling them where he was going.
And I think he felt he was viewing a society in which what he saw around him were lies. And of course, what adolescent doesn't, on some level, feel that? But he felt he was looking for truth and authenticity, and I think that's why he - that nature was the landscape in which to find it.
Tavis: And working on a Sean Penn-directed project is like?
Harden: Oh, it was brilliant. It was like being - watching a maverick, watching a genius man who's rugged and tough and controversial create one of the most beautiful poems you could possibly see. The film is lyrical, it's astonishingly beautiful. He had the work of a great cinematographer, Eric Gautier, and it's absolutely beautiful in what he did.
But he tells it, and even people who've read the book say that when they see the film, Krakauer's book is amazing, but there's a soulful painfulness that I felt Sean really captured in the film. The journey of the parents; the journey of the boy. There's a wistfulness; there's a longing, and just seeing the landscape - the American landscape - is an incredible thing to get to see from Alaska to the wheat fields in mid-America.
It's absolutely beautiful. And it was like watching a maverick paint and write a poem at the same time.
Tavis: The last time you were here in person in this very chair, there are two things I recall about that conversation, one of which is that you were talking - we were having a - part of our conversation was about the scripts - the roles, or the lack thereof, for an actress at this stage in your career in Hollywood. Getting better, getting worse?
And I ask that now, Marcia, against the backdrop of the fact, which I'll talk about in a moment, that you've got two other projects coming out around the same time. So something must be landing on your desk that's getting your attention.
Harden: You know what lands is good writing, and it doesn't - it's not like there's stacks and stacks of it, but occasionally - and of course, these films that are all coming out now, they were shot over a bit of a period of time. So I'm not even gonna say it's getting better or any worse, because I feel like you know what? I whined enough, and now it's time to just get out there and find it and do it and build it and gravitate toward that which I love.
I've been able to find, in my 40s, some pretty good roles, and in Sean's film, we play - Bill Hurt and I play the parents, so it's a - they're smaller in the scope of the film, but they're emotionally - they have a great emotional impact. I'm happy with what I'm doing.
There's another film that I'm doing that I had a really wonderful role in, and then I did - we're gonna have to talk about it in November, but I did a horror film that I loved, and I did a schizophrenic character that I loved in a film called "Canvas." So I feel really grateful that they come. But you know what you do? It's just not that you're looking at the big budget, studio Hollywood movies going "And now I'm gonna buy that mansion," like you probably have. (Laughter)
And now I'm gonna do that low budget, independent, and after I pay my nanny I'm out of pocket, but it's a beautiful role and I'm gonna do it.
Tavis: Which leads me wonderfully to the second thing I recall, speaking of a nanny. When you walked on the set a moment ago and I saw you walking out and I was waiting for you - ready to greet you over here on the set on the stage, I looked and I said, "Marcia's lost some weight since the last time she was here." And I was, like, duh, the last time you were here, you were pregnant with twins.
Harden: That's right.
Tavis: So (laughs) you've lost some weight.
Harden: You know what you were gonna say, it's the last time I waddled onto the set.
Tavis: The last time - yeah, I was trying to be nice.
Harden: He wanted to say it.
Tavis: I was gonna be nice. You waddled onto the set the last time.
Harden: Well, one of your wonderful staff says, "I remember the last time you were here, and I helped you come out." And of course, then we were talking single-file, because there was no room for anyone but me walking in the back.
Tavis: How are those twins?
Harden: They're great. They're turning - they're three-and-a-half, and they're full of vim and vigor and all the beautiful things kids should be full of, and they remind me every day of all that's important in the world that I want to leave to them, which have to do with all the things that you've been discussing, I hear you discuss all the time on your show.
What is of value? What are we doing? What stuff are we made of? What is our country? Who are we? What do we believe in? What will we fight for? And it's that higher sense of good, that right and wrong - because I think you and I had discussed some ancient Supreme Court case, I think, where we discussed Thurgood Marshall and Scalia, and where they'd come to an impasse about an issue and Scalia said, "It's justice according to law," and Thurgood said, "There's no such thing. Justice accords to a higher sense of right and wrong."
And I've always loved that, and so I think about that. And of course children make you touch base with all that you do, and ask yourself well, I feel - Marcia Gay, you should ask yourself to be responsible. You can't be a bigmouth about this war and then not understand that in order not to have it - which I don't want it - that you have to give up the way that you live.
You have to pay more in gas. Are you gonna do it? And I think I will. I will, absolutely. But, like, trying to look at the bigger issues so that in 50 years, my kids inherit ideas of a great nation, and not just behavior of greed.
Tavis: Not that - to your point now, if I can pick up on it - not -
Harden: I know, I'm supposed to talk about movies.
Tavis: No, we've done that. Enough of that. Studio's happy now; we (unintelligible) the project. (Laughter) At least it better be, because I'm going someplace else now. To your point now, though, which I find fascinating, I wonder whether or not, though, having those babies - your comment notwithstanding - changes how you make your choices, then, about the roles you play.
Not that you were making bad choices before, but do the babies inform your decision making differently now?
Harden: Only in that how much time do I have to spend away from home. Not whether the character's good or evil, because I feel like if I'm playing Iago in a play or a film, or someone of that evil quality, my job is to play them in a way that I illuminate something about the human being. Why there is evil; why there is greed. What we can do so that people see something about themselves.
I do play - and it's a little different for me - I play someone, a very religious fanatic, in the Stephen King film that we'll talk about in November when I get to come back.
Tavis: Come on back.
Harden: (Laughs) But for me, it's about how can you illuminate it? If someone asked me to play Medea or a mother who kills her children like the mother in Texas who did, but it's not a thoughtful provocation of maybe what mental illness is or what drove that woman to, or how society ignored certain signs, then I don't wanna do it.
If it's this thriller and it's all about look what people do and it's just sensational, I don't wanna do it. But if it can tell you something about our human spirit - which is absolutely divine and absolutely damaged in the same moment - then I wanna do it.
Tavis: Got about a minute to go here. I think I read somewhere that you're doing some work on - is it fire safety?
Harden: I am. As you may remember, my brother lost his children in a fire several years ago, and my heart is always beating in that place to ask other people to be fire smart. And October is fire safety month, I've been working with Liberty Mutual, and they have fantastic tips on how to keep your home fire smart. And I think in October people should look at them, and I wrote down the website.
Tavis: Go ahead.
Harden: Just if people can go to it, it's called www.BeFireSmart.com, and it's Be Fire Smart as in B-E. BeFireSmart.com. And so they can go to that and look up a lot of tips about it. And it's a very important - very, very important subject.
Tavis: Well, I'm sorry for the loss of your niece and nephew.
Harden: Thank you.
Tavis: But I'm glad that you're doing the work to inform other people now.
Harden: Thank you, thank you.
Tavis: Always happy to see you. "Into the Wild" and then "Canvas" and then -
Harden: "Rails & Ties."
Tavis: "Rails & Ties," and -
Harden: The Alison Eastwood.
Tavis: And she's coming back in November - who's booking that? Did ya'll write that down?
Harden: I'm booking myself. I'll see you guys in November.
Tavis: Marcia has booked herself back on the show in - Luke, you got that? (Laughter)
Harden: Scoot over, Tavis, I'm sitting with you. (Laughter)
Tavis: Nice to see you, as always.
Harden: Nice to see you, too.
Back to September 17, 2007