Why testy Tommy Lee Jones is my hero | Catherine Shoard

The actor was everything you want from an interviewee – withering, contemptuous and contrarian. I’ll take that over niceties any day

Last week I sat opposite Tommy Lee Jones for seven minutes. He looked just as you’d imagine: face like a landslip, baleful raisin eyes. I asked him some questions, and he responded exactly as I’d been cautioned by the clippings that he might. He was testy and withering, contemptuous and contrarian. Which is to say: he was great. Great copy, if not great fun.

This is precisely what you want from an interviewee: drama, sighs, a little ire. A reaction that isn’t so bland there’s nothing to report – or in this case, to video. Such intransigence fulfils admirably a subject’s side of the bargain: to provide something of note from the meeting.

Jones now enters the hallowed halls of heroes I have interviewed who’ve been prickly and difficult, and who I admire the more for it. I’m certain he, Ben Stiller and Alexander Payne were all justified in their scorn. And right to realise the best way to react is to refuse to play ball – or, better yet, bat it back in your face then point out your butterfingers.

This is miles better than being nice. Nice ignores the innately combative nature of such encounters. Nice leads to nothing fruitful for anyone. Nice means you must totter about on eggshells so as not to break the mood, then later try to extract interest from the dialogue with a pair of tweezers. It’s also better than not turning up at all. It’s long been the hallmark of the really top auteur to decline offers of press. JM Coetzee, Thomas Harris and Terrence Malick let the art speak for itself. Yet if you don’t want to be a performing seal, don’t sign up for the circus. If Malick isn’t eager to supply his audience with clues as to the meaning of The Tree of Life – or even to hear the questions – then he shouldn’t enter it in, say, the Cannes film festival. Such involvement comes with publicity obligations which someone from the movie will have to fulfil. And it’s an especially painful experience all round to hear actor after actor politely murmur they don’t feel comfortable speculating about what their boss might have meant.

Jones wrote, directed, produced and starred in The Homesman (he even sings a sort of theme tune). He makes the call about whether or not to publicise his – excellent – movie. Doing so works: even if he didn’t tell me what it was about, it was useful to be able to ask.

A house with no name

The Harringay Ladder in north London, where I live, is a grand rack of 13 streets and around 2,400 terraced houses; a whopping Victorian estate built in the last 20 years of the 19th century. Each block was assigned to a different builder, so while there is much similarity in scale, there’s also surface difference.

Some houses have bulbous bulls’ heads, accessorised by grapes, jutting out above their front door; others have busts of Greek gods peering over the skylight, moustaches lovingly carved; others complex cornices, ideal for storing 120 years of grime. The most common feature, though, is a little rectangular plaque, mounted between the ground and first floor windows, on which the house name can be proudly inscribed. And almost all remain blank. Once you’ve twigged this, strolling round anonymous row after anonymous row starts to feel a little sad. The baronial ambitions of the builders are still on show in their creations. Even belatedly, the owners ought to do them the courtesy of a christening.

Not your everyday plot

Fans are outraged. One – David Blunkett – has “lost the will to live”. The occasional listener to The Archers clearly mustn’t underestimate the effect of Tom Archer’s recasting after 17 years, plus some newly soapy plotlines. Yet for those of us raised on Neighbours, such switchblade changes were always part of the charm. Characters would pop back from the shops with a whole new body, let alone voice. Beverley Robinson went through two incarnations; her stepdaughter Lucy three. Last month the Aussie soap celebrated the 20th anniversary of Dr Karl and Susan Kennedy, who over their 4,500 episodes have been married and divorced three times, as well as dealing with Susan’s amnesia – which wiped out 30 years of memories after she slipped on some milk – and Erinsborough’s exceptionally high mortality rate, which keeps a doctor busy. Ambridge addicts should dry their eyes: they’ve a lot to look forward to.

Contributor

Catherine Shoard

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
Tommy Lee Jones on The Homesman: 'It's a consideration of American imperialism'

Actor-director says film is a study of 'American history' in the period that settlers were forcing Native Americans off the land

Andrew Pulver

18, May, 2014 @12:40 PM

Article image
Tommy Lee Jones: the modern-day face of the western
A walking one-man Mount Rushmore, the cantankerous Texan is hellbent on keeping the spirit of Monument Valley alive

John Patterson

24, Nov, 2014 @6:00 AM

Article image
The Homesman review – Tommy Lee Jones isn’t quite what a feminist looks like
Hailed as a ‘feminist western’ by some, The Homesman only is up to a point, writes Mark Kermode

Mark Kermode, Observer film critic

23, Nov, 2014 @12:04 AM

Article image
Cannes 2014 review: The Homesman - Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones go west with volatile cargo

Tommy Lee Jones also stars in his second film as a director - a full-bodied quasi-feminist western in which he and Swank's gutsy singleton escort three disturbed women across the mid-west plains

Peter Bradshaw

18, May, 2014 @10:41 AM

Article image
Tommy Lee Jones – ‘Women are objectified and trivialised because of their gender’
The famously prickly actor-director talks about his feminist western The Homesman, ‘malevolent’ Putin and his Savile Row tailor

Rory Carroll

16, Nov, 2014 @6:00 PM

Article image
The Homesman review
Depression, madness and sympathy in 19th-century Nebraska make for a confident, insightful film, writes Peter Bradshaw

Peter Bradshaw

20, Nov, 2014 @10:30 PM

Article image
Samuel L Jackson is my hero. But he’s wrong about us British actors | David Harewood
You don’t have to be a ‘brother’ to play African American roles. In fact, sometimes it helps that we can unshackle ourselves from the burden of US racial history

David Harewood

13, Mar, 2017 @3:18 PM

Article image
Brace for the in-flight movie that never leaves the ground | Catherine Shoard
A new film viewing experience – set up in partnership with an airline – is for the super-rich. Still, it shows how much we now prize luxury in the cinema

Catherine Shoard

10, Jan, 2017 @8:13 PM

Article image
Forget Clooney, Jolie and Denzel: I’ve found the real stars of Toronto’s film festival | Peter Bradshaw
I came here for the films, but now I’m hooked on the TLC provided by Toronto’s T-shirted army, writes Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw

Peter Bradshaw

13, Sep, 2017 @2:39 PM

Article image
The film they ought to make: when Churchill and Hitler nearly had tea | Peter Bradshaw
Amid the glorious mythology about Winston, truths get overlooked. The Nazi leader once stood him up. If that’s not box office gold, what is, asks Guardian columnist Peter Bradshaw

Peter Bradshaw

10, Jan, 2018 @5:14 PM