By Jake Howell jake.howell@utoronto.ca

Countdown To Cannes: Tommy Lee Jones

Posted Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014 - 2 Comments »
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The first in a series of snapshots outlining the eighteen directors in the 67th Palme d’Or Competition.

in-the-electric-mist-tavernier-lee-jonesBackground: American; born San Saba, Texas, 1946.

Known for / style: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Fugitive, TV’s “Lonesome Dove” series, No Country for Old Men; The Good Old Boys; a gruff, dour disposition; acting in (and directing) Westerns, both contemporary and period.

Notable accolades: As directing is still a sidebar to the Tommy Lee Jones franchise, Jones’ acting awards usually receive first bill. At the top of the list is his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 1993’s The Fugitive, but close behind are his three other Academy Award nominations (Best Supporting Actor, Lincoln, 2012; Best Actor, In the Valley of Elah, 2007; Best Supporting Actor, JFK, 1992). Jones also won Best Actor at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which he directed. He also can brandish a fistful of BAFTA, Emmy, and Golden Globe nominations.

Film he’s bringing to Cannes: The Homesman, an Old West oater adapted from the 1988 novel by Glendon Swarthout (Where The Boys Are, The Shootist). From the IMDb plot summary: “A claim jumper and a pioneer woman team up to escort three insane women from Nebraska to Iowa.” Winning both the Spur and the Wrangler awards for Best Western Novel of 1988, The Homesman is the seventh film to be adapted from Swarthout’s canon. The film features Oscar-noted  talents Tommy Lee Jones, Hilary Swank, Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit), Meryl Streep and John Lithgow.

Previous Cannes appearances: Tommy Lee Jones’ only Cannes appearance (as director) is 2005’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which played in Competition. It won Jones the Best Actor prize.

Could it win the Palme? On the acting alone, any film with Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep, and Tommy Lee Jones is going to be intimidating. But Jones is directing inside his favorite milieu with the American Old West, and he’s wrangled Academy Award-nominated Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (The Wolf of Wall Street, Argo, Brokeback Mountain) to capture the glorious environments and Academy Award-nominated Marco Beltrami to score the film. While Oscar voters and Cannes juries rarely align, it’s still hard to discount the forces at work here, and the artistic merits of The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada speak to the strength of Jones’ directorial whip-cracking. If The Homesman leaves the South of France empty-handed, it could mean that we have a very strong slate indeed.

Why you should care: Like a cowboy and his rifle, Jones and good Westerns go hand-in-hand. Fans of the genre should look forward to one made by someone who clearly loves them, and Jones has brought along Western veterans and Oscar favorites for the ride. With The Homesman, we’ll also check in again on Hailee Steinfeld, whose last Western outing earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod (2010’s True Grit). If nothing else, though, expect this film to gallop its way into a number of awards categories later in the year.

Follow Jake Howell on Twitter: @Jake_Howell

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Posted in Cannes, Cannes Originals, MCN Originals, Movie City News | 2 Comments »

2 Responses to “Countdown To Cannes: Tommy Lee Jones”

  1. Tina Ellis says:
    April 23, 2014 at 3:51 am

    One of my favorite actors!!!! If Tommy Lee Jones is in it you can bet he’s bring his A game. Anxiously awaiting its arival in the states!!!

  2. Michelle Schulz says:
    April 23, 2014 at 12:20 pm

    I can not wait!! For the release of this film. The trailer is wonderful. Tommy Lee Jones has another Classic Western on his hands!!!

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon