You and Joan [Allen] seem to have great chemistry. Had you met before? Were these parts written specifically for you both?
The drunk part was. No, it wasn’t. Joan is a world-class actress and she is a tiger. She knows what to do with a great part, so you couldn’t have taken that out of her hands. The fact that it was hard to do and brave to do is true, but if you would have suggested, “Well, Joan, if it’s too hard or if it’s too difficult…” “Nooo.” So she understood exactly what her opportunity was and Mike, with the dialogue, put us in that position.
I was presented with exactly the same thing so a lot of our perceived success comes from his words. If I told a joke right now that was incredibly flat, I’m dumb. If I tell a really great joke right now, it’s just the quality of the writing. You guys are writers. In a sense you are colleagues with screenwriters. It’s the writing community and it’s really the strength of what actors do. They aren’t always that charming. If they’re armed with great writing, they can become heroic. They can become everything that you want. I have to say Joan was our star and Mike is a real field general out there and a great director, I think.
Did you base your role on any particular baseball player?
I didn’t base it on a former player. I actually based it on a St. Bernard. I just felt like he was a guy who went from backyard to backyard to see who was having a barbeque. He was very friendly and no one was threatened by him, and people liked him.
Mike [Binder] is the one who separated the character effectively in the writing by making him a character who avoiding clichés, one of not caring about his past. He was a guy who, normally speaking, wouldn’t want a woman with all this baggage. He certainly should have run the first time he saw her temper flare. I mean, this guy takes a beating. So who could not do that except a St. Bernard who keeps kind of coming back?
Was there any hesitation taking on a role as a baseball player again?
First off, I don’t actually have a problem revisiting things in my life because I took them seriously when I did them. I’m forced to look at them occasionally and so I don’t mind going back. And I don’t mind talking about thing. I don’t feel like I have to live on them or repeat them. But I clearly knew when I saw that paragraph, “Ex-baseball player,” I went, “Oh geez, they’re going to get me and they’re going to say why do you want to do these movies.” …The same [way] that “Field Of Dreams” separated itself from “Bull Durham” and “Love of the Game” separated itself, I felt clearly Mike had given me that room that, yes, he was just an ex-jock, albeit a baseball player. I know my connection so it wasn’t lost on me. That wouldn’t scare me.
You just did "Rumor Has It" with Jennifer Aniston. What’s your take on the writer/director getting fired?
Well, Ted [Griffin] wrote a beautiful script, that's why I did it. And I hadn't started work yet when that particular thing happened. I didn't start work for about three more weeks, two more weeks after that. Ted's a friend of mine. He was at my wedding so you can imagine how I might have felt for him.
The mechanics of how that went down, I've never really been able to uncover. But they brought in a world class director, in Rob [Reiner]. For myself, I made a career of working with a lot of first-time directors, so I'm not really afraid of that. And I've used a lot of first-time people in other capacities, be it cinematographers and production designers. I worked at Raleigh Studios for a long time and I see it's hard to get started. Somebody has to give you a chance. …I don't do that all the time, but I do it.
Did you want to leave the project when that happened?
Instinctually, I didn't want to leave the project. I wanted to complete it with him. I think one of the fun things about a new director is there's a new voice… and sometimes what …you know, I don't know how the material he shot was being perceived. Obviously it was being perceived as either not good or different and what happens is, sometimes an original voice has material that's filmed in an unconventional way. So we're used to looking at it in the same way, and you realize, you know, maybe he knew exactly what he was doing. And I underline the word maybe. Somebody had to make that call on the maybe.
But you know, a part of the pressure that we all breathe in our life will be somebody does something absolutely different than what you're used to, how we're seeing it done. And that's what's at risk when you use a first time person and you don't see what they do. There's maybe a spark of originality and suddenly you start to see movies in a different way. There's a different language.
