And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Frank langella made his stage debut in 1963 in off broadway production of the immoralist. Since then three tonys and nominated for an oscar. Just completed king lear in both the u. K. And new york and now can be seen in draft day about the ruthless world of big time football. Well start with a clip from draft day which he stars in with kevin costner. Sonny, id like to congratulate you. I asked you to make a splash and you did. Is everybody still there. Anthony, how do you already know about this . What can i tell you my boy. It is good to be the owner. Im about to board my plane. Im heading to new york. You are going to the draft . No im going to see spider man turn off the dark. Of course im going. We got bo callahan. Well i guess thats settled. May be. But we still have to take another look at this kid and everything we need to know about him before i can see what we just risked. Meaning all of our jobs. What motivated you to do this one . Oh, money. Money. [ laughter ] i love it. You are so candid and so honest. Well, you know, a fiveyearold chinese girl knows more about football than i do. I knew absolutely nothing about football. But i made two films for ivan. Im very fond of him. We did dave together and we did oh i dont know the movie where arnold gets pregnant. Junior. So since you are not a football fan although you played quite well. I can only assume you may have embarrassed yourself a few times but all of the cameos made by real football stars in this movie. Every time because i dont know many people. Who . This gentlemen walked up to me and we had four lines and i said are you a player . And he said my name is ray kelly. Ray lewis. Ray lewis. See . He was a pretty good Football Player. Very interesting off camera too. Very interesting. Yeah. I thought it was a good movie. A really good movie. Because it is one of those movies. I was afraid it was going to be a movie that you could only enjoy if you were a football fan. Yeah. And it is not. There are so many storylines here about so many of lifes challenges that we all face. Yeah. I thought it was very textured. Yea i do too. You can enjoy it if you are not a football fan. It was also a happy set. Ive been on a lot of sets in the last two years. This was an easy, happy set. Ivan is very good at it and denis leary is a terrific personality and kevin is a very generous actor and i love jennifer garner. Yeah. First time and i meant all that too what i just said. First time, to my mind, that ive ever seen you in a film and ive seen most of your stuff. First time ive seen you in a movie where i never saw the whites of your eyes. You keep those put that shot back up john. You keep your sunglasses on from the first scene to the we never see your eyes. Never. Was that your decision . Yes and i made it in the middle of the first day i shot i think it was the Television Interview and i had them on. And ivan said when will you take them off so i can be prepared . And i said in three weeks when im finished shooting which i didnt know i was going to say. And he said no no weve got to see your eyes. And people have been looking at my eyes for years. So i thought the glasses gave him a distinctive look. You play the owner of the cleveland browns. So you went into it not being a football fan. But what was your take away about the ugly world of football when you finished filming. Well my takeaway was since im a very cynical person, as the same as it is in my field, you know. So much is about money. Even my facetious remark money isnt quite true. It was really my affection for ivan. But my take away was that its just become as has my profession an absurd amount of money being paid to people who are talented but so outsized to ability with actors and athletes, that it distorts the very excitement of what creativity should be. What a creative Football Player should be or a creative artist should be. Did you enjoy playing mr. Molina . Yes i did. I did very much. And also i enjoyed kevin because, you know, hes very easy and very smooth. Especially in sports films, about which he is really remarkably smart. Yeah. So i was just thinking, walking into the studio, that if this movie has a big opening, then it is possible that in just a few days from now you will be in three movies in the top ten at the same time. You are in noah. Im in well in im noah as an 80 foot monster. But you are in there. My voice is. So you are in noah. That muppet project is out now. And the priest. From months tore priemonster priest. You do it all. Noah, the muppet project and this. So if this does well you will be in three movies in the top ten at one time. You are a bad man. Yes but none of them are my movies. Im just a little cog in a big wheel. And then ive got four more movies in the independent world. Why are you working so hard at this chronologically gifted age . Well im asked to do things that are varied and different. I like to work on the stage. Lear was an enormous i hate the word, but challenge is the only word you can come up with. And then at this particular time in life if you are asked to play opposite generals and glen close and then miss pig givgy, how cau say no . Milsz piggy. Ive admired these my whole identify. Theyre interesting and im always doing something in the theater. Everybody loved you in king lear, speaking of theater. At this age you used the word challenge a moment ago. How big a challenge is that . And why put yourself through that . That is a lot of stuff to memorize. You are live. You cant do a second or third take. Why put yourself through that at this age . Actually the question, travis, is why not put yourself through it. Really. The question about everything in life particularly when you get to be 76 is why not put yourself through it. I think the danger of my generation and certainly some of my colleagues is oh ive been there ive done that. Why bother. But my feeling now at this age, and im lucky, im healthy. Im in relatively good shape is if i dont do it now when am i going to do it . And also lear presented something to me that i felt was universal in everybody, which is, who are you when you take your crown . You know, who are you . Because we all wear crowns of some kind. Either of a movie star or a famous athlete or im this and i know you love me because of my crown. But the whole play is about a man who says i dont want to be king anymore. But i want all of you, my daughters to tell me that you love me and how much you love me and how much you are going to keep loving me. And he discovers that it wasnt him they loved at all but his crown. Yeah. A great black poet who put it this way, wear the mask. Yeah. To your point now. At this age, speaking of king lear. Are you still learning things about yourself . Yes. I well, i can say really truly that i have never learned so much about my failings as a man and as a father sometimes and as a friend and as a human as when i played lear. Because i had to face what he goes through. If i wanted to play it well, i had to face within myself all the things i didnt do and wasnt while i was wearing my own crown. And what playing him did for me was force me to look at my own and remove it and try someone wrote a great article in the New York Times a few months ago about men of my generation have to be and it sounds poly anna but its not. Have to be kinder. And you get kinder when you get into my age range. You think back to how really unkind you were and how cynical you were and how you tossed things away and how you tossed people away. And you didnt care because you were climbing some mountain that you thought you needed to be on top of. So when you come to that realization at this age, in part courtesy of your playing king lear, how do you navigate forward . How do you redeem the time . Or is that not possible. How do you mean . How do you make up for . How do you address now at this age those failings, those mistakes, those things you wish you had been . Or is that not not possible at this point . Well certain things happen to you. When i closed in king lear i went into depression for about three weeks and any actor ive talked to whos ever played a major, major role it rips you to shreds. But it does. So what happens is, i dont know if redeem is the right word. You go through a period of regret about your own failings and the things you didnt do in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 6 os. You go through a period of anger at yourself. And where and in what way have i let people down in those earlier generations . And without sounding like some soft shoe salesman you do make a decision to say i think these last couple of decades better be filled with compassion, humanity, kindness. Continue the self journey. And try to be more curious about others. And look at them thinking they are wearing a mask they dont even know they have on. And without trying to pierce it or attack their defense for living, try to react to them differently than you would when you were younger. Because when you are younger you do that, you know. You back up against somebodys defense and you hit them with your own. That sounds like advice you were just offering to me since im just a few years behind you. A few . You are many more than few. Thats good advice though. The question is always how do i get what you just said . How do folks younger than me get what you just said now . As opposed to waiting till we play king lear to figure that out. I say this to my daughter all the time. You can only lead my example. I made lots of mistakes with my kids when they were little trying to tell them what they should think at 14, 19, 25, 30. You cant. You can only lead by example and you can only say it might be better for you if. But nobody can do anything until they are ready to do it. So you can sit down with a strongminded young man of 24, as my son was at a point and say listen, this, this, this and this. And all hes doing in his head is going, well, when is my father going to shut up so i can go out and grab that girl and get in the back of the car. Leave me alone. Let me be 24. And i think there is a virtue in that. I think the opposite of what im trying to do now, when you are younger is to try to spare kids being kids. They have to go through it. If you try to say let me warn you about this. If you want to smoke a little weed, smoke it. If you want to drink a little, drink it. I just have to hope you survive and make your way through. I dont want to overstate this but it sounds to me as if you take your craft as a thespian seriously, as you do, then it almost forces you. It coerces you to grow up. It puts you face to face with your own humanity and the humanity of others. If you are playing the right kind of roles i suspect and if you are taking it seriously. Am i wrong about that am i overstating it . No you are not wrong but there is an opposite side to it. Okay. Which i unfortunately find is true in most actors. You have two choices. You either unzip, get naked theoretically and look at yourself as a result of the work you are doing. As a result of the lear and the part im about to play in the theater. And you use what you are learning from that vis ceration or you cling to the thing for which you were initially loved and you keep trying to reproduce it. Its why you see so many facelifts and so much botox and so much toupees and all that stuff. Because the other side of the coin is a terrible fear of facing it. And believe me, it is frightening. When i identified with what i thought lears problem was and saw it in myself, it was devastating. And lear has two choices, just like i did. Lears choice was i go grab my crown back, start a war and get my kingdom back or i face myself. And by the time he does he loses the one creature that means the most to him, his daughter. He dies in his arms. You have seen and maybe this didnt come easy. You tell me. But you seem so welladjusted to this notion of aging. Well there is no choice. Well there is a choice. Everybody is not as welladjusted to it. Some people go through held struggling and fighting. Well i do. There are periods when i do. It is still amazing to me and will be so unto death what your inner feeling is about yourself and what you catch in the glass as you walk by madison avenue and you see your grandfather looking at you through the glass of a store. And i go what is my grandfather oh its me. Because im walking there and im 28. Right. And i have a full head of hair and im very thin. In my mind im in a place that is different. And then i see what my physical life is. So its there are times when there is nothing you really want to be less than old. But its so well balanced by what you have learned about yourself and what i you have learned about the world and how few things rile you up anymore. What is the best part of it for you . Of being old . You are not old. Getting older. Getting older . Probably this. Probably what were talking about. Probably this shedding of the crueller side of my nature, the shedding of the more competitive side of my nature. The acceptance of it. There is a thing called the death wish, you know. A literal thing. And it doesnt mean you want to die. It just means however were built as we get into these years, some inner part of you does begin to accept the fact that you are heading towards the end. And there is a peace that comes with that. So i would think the best part for me about being older on the days when im not unhappy about it are all those things. Are certain let it go. Just let it go, frank. Dont make such a dont get uptight about these things. They are so unimportant. In part there is a selfish reason for asking you all these questions aside from the fact i could listen to you go on for hours. But aside from that im turning 50 later this year. And for the last year ive been wrestling with this and im starting to get more frantic about the time and making the best use of the time. Because the reality is although you are not a good example of what im about to say, it seems to me that there are only so many years in our lives where we can push our best work, our most productive work. Because as we get older your energy isnt the same. You dont move with the same speed. Your body changes. All these things happen to a point. You cant avoid that. Which means if you are turning 50 as i am later this year that window is going to close on some point at the best moment to push out your best work. I disagree with you. You dont think so . The window will never close. There is nothing like the bravery and strength and extraordinary optimism of a fiveyearold child in a Cancer Hospital fighting to live. It is there inside the spirit. The year has nothing do with it. I just delivered a eulogy for almost my oldest friend. I knew her for 53 years. A woman who died at 103. Great philanthropist. And she died at 103. And my last conversation with her was 24 hours before she died. And she said, when i knew there were dozens of things wrong with her and i knew he had hours really. She said darling, call me soon. That forward thinking see the thing i think that will keep you young. First of all the year doesnt matter, is curiosity. I think that is what can take you to my age and further. The minute you lose that in a way and start thinking the way you were just talking about, oh im going to slow down it is a waste of time. But it is exactly how i thought at 50. I honestly think that through decades. Im so different now at 76 than i was at 66. Certainly. Immensely different. And when i was your age i had two small children. My last kids were born when i was in my 40s. So i still had little kids around me which gave me the illusion of feeling younger. But 50 is incredibly young, travis. Well if its about curiosity i got tons of that. You can tell from my questions. Its why you are such a good interviewer. You are interested in your subjects. That i am. I thought i heard you whisper. I dont what miss why . I cant explain it. Particularly this female in this play. I dont know. I just want it is my job. Im an actor. So why shouldnt i investigate how i would present myself as a female . How id move if i had breasts and that particular shape of hips and long hair . And this particular woman is a powerful, strong monster, really. It is not camp at all. Im not going to do a camp version. I want to inhabit that sensibility. And obviously you think you can pull this off having never done it before. Of course. Of course. I only ask because you talked earlier about the challenge of lear. And this sounds to me like it might rival lear in terms of challenge. Well yesterday we dade reading of the play in new york. And i said to the investors and producers that i got together to see if they wanted to put money in it. I dont want your imagiimaginat too challenged so i put on a Pearl Necklace and earrings and painted my lips red. And just that alone gave me a sense of excitement and adventure. Where can i take this woman . You know. As opposed to can i take this woman. I will be in new york to see that. Good. If we get the money. Im sure you will get the money. I want to see this. Can you get this jonathan . I want mr. Langella to see this. I want him to see that i got the photo that he sent me. I dont know if you can zoom in on that or not. But its a picture of Frank Langella reading his book dropped names which is now in its fourth printing. And on the table beside him is a copy of my book. So all the things concerning me are down here out of focus i should add. And his book is clearly in focus approxima and he wrote to me dear trasvis as you can see i like to keep the important things in focus. Best to you frank. I appreciate that. I loved making the picture. Your zaur a great photographer. I think i was playing yes my daughter is a great photographer. She took the picture on the back. On the back of your book. I was Justice Warren berber when i took that picture in new york working on that. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thats our show for tonight. Thanks for watching as always. Keep the faith. For more information on todays show visit Travis Smiley at pbs. Cpbs. Com. Jane. Program. conis . nininrw it ioxdnrcoconinr the endconinis the best moments on this program. Tonight ancoconrw3coco encorex n of ournr conversationninrconi ai its a timenr unlike when rather was,q televiso az,zi gettingco smaller andnrnir over the l9s5 and innininrxd generics and, show that has a mall or 2 Million People listening, 25 years ago, that would be a piddling little audience. Today, thats as big as a Successful Television show. So in addition to all the quality and this smart audience thats now defines themselves because they listen to American Life or radiolab or whatever
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