Harrison Ford genuinely loves to work, but I think he’s avoided working at various points in his career simply because he hates promoting his projects. If every promotional spot was, like, the Graham Norton Show, Harrison would probably be more involved in promo. But still, he tries to play the game and when he doesn’t feel like it, he goes full curmudgeon. Harrison is currently promoting the new season of Shrinking, one of his few forays into episodic television. He enjoys the show, he enjoys his character, he loves the writing, and so he’s actually giving interviews to promote it. He recently chatted with GQ, and I was charmed by this piece:
How ‘Shrinking’ fans interact with him: “What they have to say is really unusual in my experience. What they have to say is thank you. They say, “Thank you. We love this show.” They don’t want anything. They don’t want an autograph, they don’t want a picture. They just want to share their pleasure in the experience. That’s something different to what the usual exchange is with a stranger.”
His great run of “dad thrillers” in the 1990s: “It was a very different period in our culture. It was a very different period in the movie business. There was a discernible zeitgeist, and the movies seemed to capture that. It was a street that ran both ways—there was a very close connection between movies and the culture. It was a time when many of our extraordinary filmmakers were still working, the Pollacks and Pakulas and even some guys whose names didn’t start with a P. I was lucky enough to have come up in that period of time, and so I got the chance to work with those guys. To me, that was the extraordinary thing about that time—that I had these incredible guys to work with. It was a great period of my life and I’m really grateful for it.
How those kinds of “adult movies” have basically disappeared: “Actually I feel bad for us. I feel bad that we don’t have these stories around us in the world. I mean, it seems this is a particularly bizarre period of human history, I believe. I certainly hope. I hope that we’ll get through it and begin talking to each other instead of at each other. We will begin to work our way through the international issues and the political issues and all this sh-t soup we’re living in…You can’t sit around talking about how great it was in the past. You’ve just got to make something better in the present. That’s all. I’m not that guy.
On the Red Hulk stuff for Marvel: “I mean, this is the Marvel universe and I’m just there on a weekend pass. I’m a sailor new to this town. Show me the way to go home. I understand the appeal of other kinds of films besides the kind we made in the ’80s and ’90s. I don’t have anything general to say about it. It’s the condition our condition is in, and things change and morph and go on. We’re silly if we sit around regretting the change and don’t participate. I’m participating in a new part of the business that, for me at least, I think is really producing some good experiences for an audience. I enjoy that.
How he chooses his projects at this point of his life: “It’s the quality of writing. It doesn’t matter what the genre is. It doesn’t matter whether it’s on television or in movies. It’s the writing, it’s the story, it’s the character, it’s the emotional experience for an audience or for myself. It’s people that I have some feeling that I want to work with, or it’s a quality opportunity. I suppose I should be sitting on my ass, but I actually love working.”
Getting young people involved in aviation: “It’s a great job and it’s become a field where there’s a great demand for pilots. We’ve been talking about the failure to train American pilots. America trains more foreign pilots than they do American pilots. I’m not being xenophobic here. It’s not about having to fly with American pilots. It’s just that we’ve known for a long time that we needed to train more pilots, and we have done that successfully now. Pilots are making a wonderful living when, 15 years ago, they weren’t doing so well at the beginning of their careers. But it’s a great career, and I just encourage people that are interested in it to give it a go.
On the “death of the movie star” conversation: “Oh, I think it’s rubbish. I don’t think the question is whether or not there are any movie stars. There’s wonderful actors coming up every day. Whether or not they become movie stars is really not the point. If movies need stars, they will find them. I’ve never f–king understood being a movie star. I’m an actor. I tell stories. I’m part of a group of people who work together, collaborate on telling stories. I’m an assistant storyteller. That’s what I am.
I love what he says about movie stars and the great people coming up – that was incredibly generous of him, even if I think it’s true that there are not many real “movie stars” left. He never thought of himself as a movie star though – he always wanted to be an actor, a storyteller, an artistic collaborator. Harrison’s run in the ‘90s really was unmatched – he made banger after banger, films for adults and some of the greatest dad movies of all time. The thing about Marvel films is one of the better explanations I’ve heard from an actor joining the comic-book movie ranks. He’s just like… this is what was out there, so I’m giving it a shot, maybe someone will enjoy it. I also didn’t know that America trains more foreign pilots than American pilots??
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.