Writer/director Emilio Estevez takes a unique look at the day Robert F Kennedy was assassinated in the indie drama, Bobby. Rather than write a film focusing on the man who killed Kennedy, Estevez instead chose to focus on the affect of Kennedy's murder on campaign workers, hotel employees, and partygoers present at the Ambassador Hotel on the day Kennedy was gunned down.
Estevez joined a handful of his cast members at a press conference in Los Angeles to discuss Bobby. Estevez' passion for bringing this particular story to the screen was reflected in the attitudes and answers of his cast.
Emilio, what do you hope audiences will take away from Bobby?
Emilio Estevez: ”Well, I believe the death of Bobby Kennedy was in many ways the death of decency in America. I think it was the death of manners and formality, the death of poetry and the death of a dream. By definition, I believe I am unapologetically optimistic and I am unapologetically earnest. I believe we have come so far away from that. We have fallen away from those traits, and I believe the movie is a reminder of who we were. The best of us has just unraveled.
I believe Bobby, in many ways, was the third strike after Jack in ’63 and Martin Luther King in April of ’68. Bobby was, in many ways, the last straw, the third strike, and we unraveled culturally at that point. We went into a freefall, essentially, and I don’t think we’ve completely put the pieces back together. So, I’m hoping when people come out of this movie they are reminded of a time when this country was looked at in a much different way.
You know, we took the film for a little test drive out in Europe and the European audiences were really taken by the film. They were really impressed by it and I was kind of thrown by that, because I thought we had made a purely American film about an American icon. This guy was ours. Bobby Kennedy was ours. And they said, ‘No, this movie reminds us of the America that we miss.’ I believe that too. I miss her too.”
Demi and Emilio, isn’t Bobby the first film you've worked on together in 20 years?
Demi Moore: “Well, you know, I was still living in Idaho and this was probably, at this point, five years ago. We had been speaking and he called me and said, ‘I’m going to send you something I’ve really been working on. Just take a look at it and tell me what you think.’ [To Estevez] I don’t think you said anything specifically about a role. It was just, ‘Read this. It’s just something that means a lot. I’m really passionate about it.’ And we continued to talk and there was almost money there. So, I feel like I have certainly not been inside it as much as he has, but I have been living with this borrowed passion until it became part of my own for some time. What I’ll also share about Emilio is they say when you take a flame to light someone else’s candle, that it is the only moment that when you give something that you will not loose anything. I feel like Bobby Kennedy was a light who was holding this flame for us all and that Emilio has picked that up and shared all that, I think, through the process of all of us. We are all here for love. It certainly wasn’t the paycheck.”
How was working with Emilio again after all these years?
Demi Moore: “Working with Emilio, there was something just very natural about. As intense as the scenes were that we had, in fact we were laughing all day. It was really - I hate to say it with the subject - but we really just had a great time. I think the material was elevating and joyous. Look, Emilio and I… I starred in the first film he wrote and directed.”
Emilio Estevez: “Sorry about that one.”
Demi Moore; “No… Which I believe if he were making that film as his first film today that it would have been received far differently. Back then it was just considered a B movie. We didn’t have independents in the way that we have today. I think Emilio’s been on a long journey to get to this opportunity, but what he’s bringing forth in this is what I saw him believe in from the very early days. And really, just I can’t say how proud I am that he trusted in me enough. There’s a lot of people he could have sought to do this role and I’m sure who would have liked to have done it.”
Emilio, can you talk about the challenge of capturing the 1960s?
Emilio Estevez: “Sure, you always sweat that out. You want to get it right because if you don’t, you marginalize it. You look at 1968 and it was truly the year that shook the world. You think about how it started with Tet. Walter Cronkite came back from Vietnam and went on the air and said, ‘In the opinion of this journalist, this war is unwinnable.’ And Lyndon Johnson said, ‘If I don’t have Cronkite, I have lost the American people.’ My Lai massacre, Martin Luther King’s assassination…Johnson not going in for reelection…Bobby’s assassination, the Paris riots…The Prague spring. The world was really completely upside down. And so it was incumbent upon us to get it right.
I leaned on everyone. I leaned on my production designer. I leaned on Julie Weiss our costumer, our dp. These were all brilliant individuals who brought the best of themselves to a very, very limited budget. We started with a budget of 5.5 [million], which was an impossible task, because I wanted the scope of the film to be very big. Often times I’d be standing with the cinematographer and I’d say, ‘I want this!’ And I’d look over and he’d say, ‘Uh uh.’ ‘I want this.’ And he’d say, ‘Uh uh.’ ‘I want this?’ And he’d say, ‘That’s more like it.’ (Laughs.) But with a cast this big and a story this big and a canvas truly this big to want to paint, it needed to be big. We had to substitute imagination for a lack of funds.”
