The 'Ordinary,' Extraordinary Mr. Ford

“I’m very ordinary.”

It sounds like an ordinary way of describing oneself until you know that the person speaking is, yes, Harrison Ford whose smash-hit starrers like Star Wars, the Indiana Jones trilogy, The Fugitive, Air Force One and Patriot Games have cemented his reputation as the quintessential American hero for moviegoers around the world.

Ford said that back in 1998 when I and Kris Aquino interviewed him in Maui, Hawaii, for Six Days, Seven Nights (with Anne Heche). I would interview him thrice after that — for K-19: The Widowmaker in 2002 in New York, Hollywood Homicide (with Josh Hartnett) in Hollywood in 2003 and last January for Extraordinary Measures (with Brendan Fraser) also in Hollywood.

In all four occasions, Ford showed a humility seldom seen in people of his stature. His footsteps were quiet, very much like those of the late FPJ, and his gait reminded me of Eddie Garcia. He’s so soft-spoken that he talked almost in whispers. It must be the carpenter in him before he hit it big as an actor. Not many of us perhaps remember that in 1979, Ford as a bit player was in the Philippines to shoot Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

In Columbia Pictures’ Extraordinary Measures (showing nationwide starting on Wednesday, March 10), Ford plays Dr. Robert Stonehill, a brilliant but unappreciated and unconventional (read: eccentric) scientist who teams up with John Crowley (Fraser) to find a cure for Crowley’s two children diagnosed with Pompe Disease, described as an “orphan disease” (find out as you read on what it means).

As I mentioned in last Sunday’s Conversation with Fraser, Extraordinary Measures is an absorbing drama that will make even the stone-hearted cry and then laugh with tearful relief over the happy ending.

On the day of our interview, Parade, the Sunday magazine of the Los Angeles Times, came out with a story on Ford entitled Harrison Ford: I’m Trying to Get it Right in which he was quoted as saying, “My children have taught me a lot about parenting. My first child was born when I was 25. Babies raising babies is not a pretty sight. I am much better at it now.”

Ford, 67, has two sons (Ben, 42, and Willard, 40) with his first wife, Mary Marquardt, and two children (Malcolm, 22, and Georgia, 18) with his second wife, screenwriter Melissa Mathison. His youngest is Liam, nine years old, who, according to the Parade article, he “inherited” when he fell in love with the boy’s adoptive mother, Calista Flockhart, 45. Together since 2002, Ford and Flockhart are now engaged.

After the following Conversation conducted (as usual) at a function room of the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, I reminded Ford toward the end of the interview that he described himself as “ordinary” during our Maui interview. So how would he describe himself now?

“I’m older,” he sounded serious and then he broke into a quiet smile.

As executive producer of the movie, how did you come upon the material?

“Six years ago, I read Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Geeta Anand’s Wall Street Journal article and later, her book entitled The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million — and Bucked the Medical Establishment — in a Quest to Save His Children, on John Crowley and the Crowley family. I’ve always been captivated by multiple themes. I found the story very compelling.”

What attracted you to Anand’s book?

“I thought Geeta’s book had something to say about personal courage, initiative, parents’ love and the power to overcome extraordinarily difficult circumstances. If we could wrestle this into the shape of a movie, we would be bringing a story to the screen which would enrich people’s lives.”

And what did you find intriguing about your character, Dr. Robert Stonehill?

“His determination to succeed even in the face of great odds. Playing Stonehill is an intriguing opportunity for me both as a story-teller and as an actor. He’s a composite of people who played different parts in the Crowleys’ story. But for me, he’s also a composite of things I’ve observed in my research. He represents aspects of a scientist and also aspects of a loner, an iconoclast. His relationship with John Crowley is an interesting kind of relationship for me as an actor. Their relationship is sometimes contentious, not at all smooth, but there are also moments of joint purpose. It’s a complicated dynamic.”

Which scene in the movie did you find memorable?

“Well, there are many but one of them is in the beginning when Crowley is on the telephone to the leading researcher (Stonehill). He has no idea that Stonehill is in a T-shirt drinking beer in his office late at night, but the audience does. That’s movie-making; that’s what’s interesting about thinking about how to make a movie visceral and interesting.”

I noticed that you didn’t play Stonehill as a stereotype scientist.

“I didn’t want to play the character as somebody’s idea of what a scientist was. I did research. I went to the University of Nebraska and I met people but not anybody eccentric like Stonehill. I met really well-adjusted, nice people. But I saw the opportunity within the context that I found was real to create a character that is very different from those that I’ve played before. I was fascinated no end by Stonehill and Crowley’s determination to find an ‘orphan drug’ for an ‘orphan disease’.”

What is an “orphan drug?”

“It’s important to understand ‘orphan drugs’ to understand how the work of Stonehill and Crowley progresses. The Orphan Drug Act of 1983 was passed to encourage the development of drugs that have a small market due to their treatment of ‘orphan diseases’ (defined in the US as a disease that [a] affects less than 200,000 persons in the US or [b] affects more than 200,000 persons in the US but for which there is no reasonable expectation that the cost of developing and making available in the US a drug for such disease or condition will be recovered from sales in the US of such drug). Under this law, companies that develop an ‘orphan drug’ may sell it without competition for seven years. Pompe Disease is an ‘orphan disease’ and the drug that Crowley and Stonehill develop through the course of this story falls under this ‘orphan drug’ status.”

I suppose that the science community was helpful in making the movie as authentic as possible.

“Yes, I’ve been gratified by the willingness of the science community to help us work out ways to get the story more correct on a scientific level. In particular, to work out a way of representing the scientific process which is largely practised in the head.”

Is it more challenging playing a real-life person than a fictional character?

“I don’t know. I’ve never played a real-life person except the one I played in K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). Stonehill is not a real-life character; he represents a number of different people whose scientific contributions were part of helping Crowley. But there’s no real-life person that did everything that I did.”

How do you like the idea of playing a real-life person for a change?

“I shy away from playing real-life people. Why? Because I don’t think I’m very good at imitating. I don’t usually take on the obligation of playing somebody people are very familiar with. I’ve been asked to play Robert Kennedy but I politely said no.”

You are so natural in every role you play; you make acting look so easy. How do you do it?

“Research and belief in the power of pretending. And also, I think what I always look for are those things that will help the character tell the story. So I draw the power and authority from the story itself. If I do seem real, I think it’s because I have the ambition to tell the story and not the ambition to put on a performance. If there’s anything I’m sure about is that I need to be useful to the telling of the story.”

I wonder, how do your children react to your movies?

“You know, they haven’t shown any particular interest in my movies because they have grown up around them; it’s so natural for them, nothing special. They go to work with me. None of them has shown any particular excitement about the work that I do.”

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