Sam Elliott picked up Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy as soon as the project came his way. “It was the first thing I did,” explained Elliott who stars as a Texas airman named Lee Scoresby in the big screen adaptation of the first book of the series, The Golden Compass. “I started reading the books before the deal was made. You know, I remember calling my agent on a Sunday after I’d finished it. I think I was halfway through the second book and I said, ‘You guys can’t let this thing get away. I don’t care what they’re offering. I want to do this thing.’”
For those unfamiliar with Pullman’s books, The Golden Compass is set in a world populated by witches, incredible fighting bears, and alternate universe in which every human being has an animal attached that’s part of their lives until the day they die. At the center of Pullman’s tale is 12-year-old Lyra (played by newcomer Dakota Blue Richards). Lyra is an intelligent, loyal child who's compelled into taking off on a fantastic journey after her best friend is kidnapped by a terrifying group that experiments on children.
Elliott was drawn into the project because he loved Pullman’s books “It’s just great literature,” said Elliott. “I think they’re quite an incredible literary achievement. I think Pullman happens to be a really good writer and, that said, the first thing that I read was Chris Weitz’s adaptation, and I think it was a pretty accurate adaptation. You know, it’s always the material. The material is what gets me involved in a piece.”
Pullman’s trilogy isn’t the easiest set of books to follow, and Elliott laughed when asked if he was confused while reading the books and/or the screenplay. “I’m confused when I see [the movie]. Yeah. I mean it was very convoluted on many levels, in and out and back and forth from one world and then the other. Who’s good and who’s bad? Who’s the Magisterium? Still I find it very confusing on some levels. …I know a lot of people that were when I talked to them in London. They came away scratching their heads.”
While Elliott’s extremely pleased with the job writer/director Weitz did on the movie, there are chunks of his scenes that wound up on the cutting room floor that he wished would have made it into the movie. “The scenes of mine that were in the film were all longer,” revealed Elliott. “All of them longer. That scene with Serafina [played by Eva Green] was miles longer. And it was good stuff, too. I hated seeing that, but that’s the nature of [the business].”
However if the next book of the His Dark Materials trilogy – The Subtle Knife – moves forward, we will be seeing a lot more of Elliott on the screen. “He figures quite prominently in the second book particularly. It’s some really exciting stuff that I’m looking forward to doing, but I’m not writing the script. Maybe they’ll elbow him out or maybe they’ll embellish him so he can deserve his second billing credit that they so generously gave.”
Elliott’s well known for his starring roles in Westerns, and his character in The Golden Compass is sort of a Western type of guy inside this fantasy world. Elliott acknowledged that aspect of Lee Scoresby was very appealing to him. That, plus the idea of starring alongside some actors he’s respected for years. “I thought it was an incredible mix because you know it was a real daunting thing for me personally to go to London and work with all these English actors like Clare Higgins and Tom Courtenay,” said Elliott. “I’ve been a Tom Courtenay fan since The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner because I was a runner at the same time. I’ve been a Tom Courtenay fan ever since.”
“It’s kind of daunting for this guy who always wanted to make movies to go to work with all these people that have basically a theatrical career with several good movies along the way,” admitted Elliott. “But these are like consummate ‘actor actors.’ And at the same time, within the piece, the character is the only American in the piece with all these otherworldly figures, lots of them Europeans. So there’s a real kind of a crossover there that worked well.”
Each human character in The Golden Compass is accompanied by a ‘daemon’, an animal who is an integral part of the person it’s attached to. The animals can take different forms until its person reaches adolescence. At that point, the animal form is fixed and reflects the personality and soul of the person it’s with. Elliott’s character’s daemon is a rabbit named Hester voiced by Academy Award-winner Kathy Bates (Misery).
While some of the other adult characters had more powerful creatures as their daemons – Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel had a snow leopard, Nicole Kidman had a golden monkey – Elliott didn’t mind his animal cohort was a rabbit. “A lot of people have been kind of looking down their nose at the rabbits of the world,” said Elliott. “You know, it’s not a bunny. Hester’s a jackrabbit. Initially I thought maybe a horse, but that would’ve been kind of [tough] having a horse in a gondola, a flying ship. But maybe a little more macho kind of an animal or something… I didn’t think that way very long because it occurred to me, because of where my family heritage is which is in Texas, I wasn’t born there but my family all hails from there for several generations. I used to go there as a kid a lot to see relatives and every time I went there, there were all these billboards - or signboards in those days - up and down the highways. And in the shadow of every billboard there were hundreds of jackrabbits. I mean like this [demonstrating being packed in]. No elbow room, just fields of ears. So it occurred to me that a jackrabbit is kind of an iconic character in Texas and it made total sense that Hester would be a jackrabbit. The fact that it sounds like Kathy Bates, you can’t do any better than that. I’m looking forward to doing more with her, although we were never there together. It’s an incredible opportunity to work with her.”
Page 2: Sam Elliott on CGI, Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman
