As “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” rolls through its premiere schedule like a boulder chasing the eponymous hero, Variety spoke with Harrison Ford at the 69th Taormina Film Festival.
On the terrace of Hotel Metropole, Ford looked resplendent in his black tuxedo, reminiscent of the suave version of Indiana Jones that opened “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Despite a curmudgeonly reputation, underlined even more by his role as the scene-stealing psychiatrist Paul in the hit Apple sitcom “Shrinking,” Ford seems to be enjoying his goodbye tour as he celebrates his fifth and final outing as the whip cracking archaeologist.
Below, Ford discusses his favorite scene from “Indiana Jones 5,” the ongoing writers strike and why ordinary heroes are necessary.
I’ve heard you refer to Indiana Jones as an “ordinary hero” in the past. Do you think we need ordinary heroes today in both cinema and culture?
I think we’ve got a lot of ordinary heroes out there. They just don’t appear in movies all the time. I mean, it’s a convention in drama… the unexpected hero, but I have always insisted that I really don’t want to be characterized as playing heroes. I play archaeologists or heart surgeons, or, you know, presidents of the United States who get into a shitstorm and decide to do something about it. But this film was more than that. I’ve just done a Marvel movie [“Captain America: Brave New World”], I know a hero when I see one. He’s got a cape. He can fly or something like that. But this film is not about heroes [like that]…
What’s different?
At first, it’s kind of black-and-white, because it’s 1944. And then all of a sudden, we end that part with an escape from a situation. And we find ourselves a hard cut to 1969. And we see the same man, manifestly the same man, wake up in a New York tenement apartment, and you know, he’s this lazy boy in his underwear with an empty glass in his hand. Because they’re playing god damn rock ‘n’ roll music.
That was my favorite shot of the movie.
It was one of my favorite things I’ve ever done in a movie. And I did it to express his vulnerability and his age. Anyway, I think it’s a great sequence in a damn good movie.
In a press conference, I heard you say how the screenplay was very important to the success of the movie. Do you think that the writers in Hollywood deserve better treatment on the part of studios?
There needs to be greater justice throughout our society, both economic justice and every other form of it. And where things are out of balance, as long as there’s enough information to make appropriate choices, and there’s some room for settlement… I mean, enough information to be able to talk in a language that’s appropriate about what’s really going on. You know, we’re gonna suffer from not having a script. And it’s an economic situation: We don’t have a script here, and we’re going to war over it… over the movie. But we got to work together in all the crafts that make movies; just support each other when we can — and we should.
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” premieres in theaters on June 30.
