JON VOIGHT
What brings you out to this premiere tonight?
It's for a good cause - the mentoring system, LAMP (Los Angeles Mentoring Partnership). That's a nice thing to pay attention to and it's very, very important. A picture like this has that nice ability to represent some of the good things that teachers are to our society. And of course, this underpaid group that is so important to our future. Great teachers should be applauded in every way and they should be better paid, too.
Is there a teacher in your life that you can look back on and say was the most inspirational?
Well I had many teachers that I can look back on and say that I felt they really cared for me and encouraged me in many ways. One of the teachers was my mother who was a substitute teacher. She had gotten us to a certain age and then she missed us at home. She went and took classes to become a substitute teacher. Sure enough, she showed up when my class, which was a very talented class, wrote a musical. This group asked me if I would do a comedy lead in it and I said I would do it. Then our teacher got sick and my mother came in and directed the whole show. She was brilliant at it; she was just absolutely wonderful. My first experience in front of an audience was really getting direction under the guidance of my mom, and she just happened to be terrific. She just happened to be as good a director as I've worked with, really. [She was] very smart and very encouraging. She gave us a lot of encouragement and freedom, and probably helped us not step on things or do the wrong things. She did it in such a nice way that we all just felt we could do it.
I know that you also have “Holes” coming up soon. Can you tell me a little bit about your role in that movie?
In “Holes” I play Mr. Sir. The book is just a terrific book for kids. It's won a lot of awards. It won the Newbery Award for children's books. A lot of the young people in this country read it as part of their school curriculum. When I read the book I said, “This is great that the school boards are recommending this book, which is so hip and so full of good lessons for kids.” It's powerful, it's an adventure story, and it's got a lot of humor in it. I said, “This is terrific.” I really was moved by the book. It's a terrific book and I think we did a very good job with the film.
You seem to be concentrating on projects that are good for children.
Well that's just so important. I certainly would never turn down anything that would be good for kids. That's the big deal. It's just as much regard as I have for teachers, I have the same regard for the ability of films to do something to lift a person's hopes or to give a little guidance. That's part of my enthusiasm as well - good films for kids are terrific. The films that I saw as I was growing up made a difference to me. I saw “The Wizard of Oz,” or even adult films as I was growing up - “Robin Hood” - these films made a difference to me. The morality they spoke about and the figure of the heroes that I saw then, still stay with me.
