At the LA press day for the film, Harris explained why he signed up for The Way Back, a project which meant he'd be away from his family for a couple of months and would have to endure some pretty harsh physical conditions. "Generally it’s an instinctive response to the material that either some part of my gut says I want to do this or says I don’t want to do it," said Harris when asked how he chooses his projects. "It has a lot to do with whose doing it. Other actors, characters, if it’s new territory to explore... In this case it was Peter. I had worked with Peter in The Truman Show and had hoped to work with him again at some point. So I was very excited when I was told he was doing this movie and interested in me playing a character."
Ed Harris The Way Back Interview
What do you like about working with Peter?Ed Harris: "Let's see, words like 'thorough', 'specific', 'committed', and 'intelligent'. Peter is such a complete filmmaker in the sense that when he decides to make a film about something, he literally puts the blinders on and that’s where he’s at and that’s what he’s thinking about. He’ll research the hell out of it. He’ll talk to people, if it’s a historical situation, about the time and their experiences. He’ll work on the script. He’ll get designers and people involved that he really feels can really bring this thing to life. He’s really specific and pays attention to every aspect of the filmmaking. Whether it’s the sets, the props, costume, makeup and hair, he’s totally attentive and thorough. As an actor you know the guy's going to make a film that works. Whether everybody likes it or not is not the point. The film will come to fruition. What’s on the page will take place in a way that makes sense and works as a film. He was an actor when he was younger and he knows what it takes to do what we do. He communicates well with other actors."
Was it a challenge to go to a lot of different locations to film, rather than working on a sound stage for much of the production?
Ed Harris: "I mean, the fact that I knew we were going to be in the elements because it's part of the story and I knew that obviously once I got out of the gulag it would be outside – I was looking forward to that. I like physical kind of work and I like challenges along those lines. It’s nice to feel you have to have a certain perseverance and a will to do certain things. Certainly this story is all about that."
"We did shoot on a sound stage quite a bit early on because they had created this forest where we could have control of the snow, and some the close-ups in the early part of the story were done on the sound stage. It was like, 'Let’s get out of here,' because the story was about being outside, and finally we did. Once we were outside, we were pretty much outside the rest of the shoot. It was a great four months. It was a really memorable time for me and I enjoyed every minute of it, as difficult as it got at times."
These characters went through absolute hell. Is there anything you did specifically to prepare for the role?
Ed Harris: "I dropped some weight before I got over there. I was doing certain physical things to get myself ready. Doing some physical labor to get some calluses. Also, doing some personal work where I was finding a real centered, quiet place. I think in this situation - you get thrust into a gulag or concentration camp - and it seems to me the only thing that’s going to keep you alive is yourself. You have to find the core of yourself that allows you to do that, and take it moment by moment to do the things you have to do to live. I’m sure any survivor of any of these camps could talk about that at some level, about where they ended up being with themselves to get through it."
What was the most difficult scene?
Ed Harris: "Physically, there’s a scene where we are walking across this field of snow that was about this deep [indicating a foot or so]. There wasn’t a trail; we were just walking through it. That was rather difficult. But the hardest day for me was... Jim Sturgess - when he was sick, it was on the day where we find the well and we are about to die from dehydration. He was really ill that day, and my day was when we were in the desert with these big sand dunes and I had this intestinal thing and I could hardly move a finger. I was dead. We had to drag this thing up a mountain of sand and I was far away from the camera thinking, 'Please say cut!'"
"It was really cold when we started and really hot when we finished, but it was part of what we were doing. It was like the harsher it was and the more challenging it was, the more you felt like you were doing a good job because it was more real."
You talk about the idea of needing the internal resilience to survive this, but given the fact that you and the rest of the cast were all experiencing this at the same time was there kind of an alternate esprit de corps?
Ed Harris: "It was interesting that way because I probably spent more time alone in solitude than I had in a long time in my life because I have a family. But also we spent a lot of time together working together, the group of us, and you depended on everybody. You just depended on them for just being there and sharing the experience with you and everybody’s attitude. No one got to be a problem that way. Peter was very careful in who he cast, in terms of knowing he was getting a bunch of people that could work together and not be divas and not be self-concerned to the point where it would be distracting - that kind of thing. It really was a group like that that pulled together. We were there a couple of weeks before filming and got to know one another, shared experiences with one another, and it was great that way. That was very important to Peter to have a group of people that he knew could stick together and work together."
Where you familiar with this time in history?
Ed Harris: "Very vaguely. I was certainly aware that there were gulags and that millions of people had perished under Stalin, but not near to the degree that I became familiar with it in terms of the research that I did. I was totally unaware of the fact that there were thousands of Americans that had gone to Russia during the Depression to work. There was a great book published in 2008 called The Forsaken about Americans who had gone to Russia during the Depression. I forget the name of the agency; there was an advertisement in the States for workers in Russia in the early '30s. There was actually a book published about Russia’s five-year plan at that time. It was a bestseller in the States for like seven months."
"In the first eight months in 1931, 100,000 people applied for jobs in Russia, 10,000 of which got jobs. That was just in the beginning of 1931. Part of the deal was when you got over there you had to give up your passport to the Russian authorities. When the Stalin purges started intensely in ‘36 or ‘37, you couldn’t get out. They would go to the American Embassy and they would say, 'Sorry, you don’t have your passport. You're stuck here.'"
In many of your roles there seems to be a break within the character. The characters are not quite what they appear to be. There’s always something else going on. How do you add those layers?
Ed Harris: "Gosh, I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to talk about. For instance, reading this script I was aware that this man was affected somewhat with the presence of the young girl, when Saoirse [Ronan’s] character shows up. But in the doing of that it became much, much deeper than that and much more part of his story in terms of his humanity, which has been pretty much shut off in the camp, and how the presence of this young woman kind of brings back to life the shred of humanity he’s got left. Like the scene where she washes my feet...I don’t even think that was even in the script. It is something Peter wanted to do after we had done a couple of scenes together, Saoirse and I. He realized that there was something going on between these two people that had some meaning to it and weight and was important to what the story was about. He said, 'Let's do this,' and it was a really cool thing for him to think of."
In terms of both your character and the story at large, because you can’t obviously include all the details of what actually happened, was there anything in particular you knew that might inform the character that you thought was interesting but you knew you weren’t going to be able to work into the story?
Ed Harris: "A little bit to the contrary in the sense that you would discover stuff while we were filming that you would hope you would get in. We shot a lot of stuff that is not in the movie. But I was constantly working with what I had in terms whether it was making a fishhook or pulling thread out of my jacket twisting it up. I made a fishing line pretty long out of threads from my coat. We had these bone needles we got from the animals we would kill and were able to sew and mend your stuff. It was almost the more we worked, the more we found to deal with for these guys. Once they left the gulag all they had was what they had with them. Trying to make something out of nothing a lot of the time. It was kind of fun because I enjoy that kind of thing."
Do you have to be more reliant on the script or do you have to be more reliant on your work in terms of research?
Ed Harris: "Peter encouraged all of us to continue to explore our characters. He wanted us all to create backstories and that kind of thing. But also to find things that these people would be doing in terms of their survival aspect of things on the journey. They weren’t necessarily scripted. Like the straw hat that Gustaf [Skarsgard] makes for [Saoirse] for the shade, the little umbrella that Dragos [Bucur] makes. I don’t think that was scripted; I think it was stuff that all of us guys were coming up with, and Peter was encouraging all that. Just the wardrobe itself, I think it was my idea to take the lining out of my hat and the lining out of my coat to make a vest. We never left anything. We’d always packed it up and we were either carrying it on our backs or dragging it on that sled. So it was really fun that way to keep track of your stuff. I had my little bag of bones and things that I would always have tied to my waist with a fishhook and some line, that kind of thing. It was a day-to-day thing. You were pretending but you were also very immersed in the reality of what these people were going through, so it was really kind of fun that way."
What’s the biggest challenge with combining marriage, being a dad and a having an acting career?
Ed Harris: "We have kind of worked it out over the years. I have more opportunities to act than Amy [Madigan], who is a wonderful actress, so therefore I spend more time away from home than she does. Other than this, which was four months in Bulgaria and Morocco and it was Peter Weir. I said, 'Fine, I’m gone. I don’t care if it’s six months. I’m gone because I want to work with Peter.' But generally one of the first questions I ask is how long is your shoot and where is it. I don’t want to be an absent father and I haven’t really been over the years, so it's weighing one against the other and seeing where you end up. I don’t feel that I’ve really sacrificed my career for my family or vice versa. It’s been a pretty good balancing act over the years. My daughter is a senior in high school now and she’ll be heading out so I won’t have that concern anymore."
Do you think you'll have the opportunity to revisit the world of Appaloosa and Virgil Cole?
Ed Harris: "I know he wrote three things but Viggo [Mortensen] didn’t want to play the character again. I was thinking of asking Colin [Farrell] but kind of time went by but it's still a thought. The other thing about that is when I read that first book I just fell in love with these two guys and their relationship. I said, 'I’ve got to make a film about this.' So, that impulse is like, to put it out there and create the thing is like, 'Okay, that’s what it is.' I don’t know if I want to do it again. It won’t be quite as fun. It would be great though. I loved doing it and I had a really good time."
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The Way Back hits theaters on January 21, 2011.
