She Likes to Watch

On the phone, James Cromwell sounds like your favorite smart uncle.
The Oscar-nominated actor is warm and self-effacing, with just the slightest touch of gravel.
He chuckles. He raises his voice to discuss a lifetime of activism — animal rights, the anti-war movement, the Black Panthers — then moves to another room when his wife tells him he’s being too loud.
Cromwell appears Saturday at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival when he accepts this year’s King Vidor Career Achievement Award for acting.
The ceremony is at 6 p.m. at the Fremont Theatre, 1025 Monterey St. in San Luis Obispo; tickets are $25 or $20 for students and film festival members. Call 546-3456 or visit www.slofilmfest.org for more information.
Before you go, we bring you some insights that didn’t make the print edition.

As the son of a Hollywood director and two theater pros, was it always expected that you would become an actor?
I was actually going to be a mechanical engineer (at Middlebury College in Vermont). That sounds a lot fancier than it really was: I wanted to design sports cars.
My father came to the Sunday morning after a Saturday night fraternity party at my fraternity house — I think this was what prompted him. It was probably my wonderful stepmother who said, “You know, we should really take Jamie to Sweden.”
So he was making a picture in Sweden and once I saw him working, in my quasi-adult state — I was not an adult but I had pretensions to maturity — I thought, “That looks like a lot of fun. Let’s do that.”

At 6-foot-5, you tower over a lot of actors. Has your height ever been an issue professionally?
It’s been an issue for two groups … Somebody at Fox said, “Y’know, I gotta tell you, it’s going to be a problem because I can tell you more than five big stars who refuse to work with anybody over 6 feet.” So I thought, “Oh well, I guess I won’t be doing films.”
And then Blake Edwards (on the set of “10”). I came in with a wonderful casting director who really liked me and Blake said to the casting director, “What am I supposed to do with that?”
And the casting director said, “Oh, I thought for the cop.” He said, “How tall is Dudley? How tall is he?” He was trying to figure how he was going to get Dudley (Moore) and me in the same shot without tilting the camera.

You’re definitely taller than most people we see in the movies.
When you’re 45 feet in the theaters, you realize that even if you’re small of stature, one way to appear big is to be the lead in a motion picture. That’s as big as you can get. So it attracts people who have issues and who have compensatory behaviors of the Napoleon variety.
The problem is — and it happens on stage as well — it tends to make the person who’s tallest the normal one and everybody else short. So when I appear on stage with a normal-sized actor, I look normal and everybody else looks like they’re Lilliputians.

Besides your Oscar-nominated role as the farmer in “Babe,” you’ve played a number of authority figures: presidents, police officers, military men.
Do you ever worry about being typecast?
When you said typecasting, it (used to mean) that you were given the kind of roles which were one-dimensional and they really only cast you because of the look. They didn’t have to go through any exposition.
I think the creativity as far as casting directors has shifted from their ability to appreciate an actor’s range to being able to very specifically match an individual actor with the qualities a director describes that he wants for a role.
We get established in the audience’s mind as having a particular quality. It is that quality that the casting director sells to the director: You will be getting this kind of performance from this actor. It’s a given.

Do you ever get tired of taking supporting roles?
When you’re a supporting actor, you know what your role is. Your role is to support them and to assist them in the scene so they can keep the level of their performance where they want it to be rather than having to compensate for your inadequacy.
I’m not a believer in, “Listen. As long as the camera’s on me, it’s my film and I’m going to do any damn thing.” … What happens is the story is not told.

You call yourself “a strong opponent of the Academy Awards system.” Why?
The fact that it is a choice between five superlative performances in which one person will win and four people will lose is obscene in my mind.
My solution is that the five nominees gather together in a room. No one is allowed to vote for themselves. And they discuss each of the films and they vote one of them as being the performance that they admired.
To compare what Kate Winslet did in “Little Children” to what Helen (Mirren) did in “The Queen” is an absurd thing to do.
– Sarah L.

So I have a couple of beefs about the film festival’s Surf Night event at the Fremont Theatre last night:

First of all, the Q&A, featuring filmmakers Bruce, Dana and Wes Brown, along with surfer Robert “Wingnut” Weaver, was largely disappointing.
If you have a panel of guests, you need a moderator who will ask good questions — which, of course, requires some preparation. Audience questions are always an iffy proposition too, because people are generally afraid to ask questions in front of a big crowd.

So last night, the panel fielded boring questions like, “What’s your next movie about?” and “How long did it take you to make ‘Step Into Liquid?’ ”

Blah.

Since the guest panel is arguably what prompted the $25 ticket price, they have to be interesting. I have a few suggestions to maximize the enjoyment:

1.) Have a moderator who’s a skilled interviewer, who will prepare thoughtful questions ahead of time.

2.) Have audience members submit questions that can be screened before the show. The moderator can then read them.

OK, I got that out of the way. My second beef is more technical: “Chasing Dora,” the second feature, skipped numerous times, which interrupted the flow of the film. Not sure what could be done to prevent that. I know FuelTV, which owns the rights to the movie, is pretty strict on how it can be screened so there might not even be a lot of copies available.

That said, it was still a thrill to attend the event. Dana Brown’s “Step Into Liquid” aptly carries on the torch passed on by his father, Bruce, creator of “The Endless Summer.” And it’s a blast to see the big wave segments on the big screen.
Dana’s son, Wes, is also off to a promising start. His “Chasing Dora,” made with T.J. Barrack, was a low-budget flick — and certainly no “Endless Summer.” But it incorporates the elements needed for a good surf movie — creative photography, insightful interviews and, most importantly, a good story.

The guests stuck around for a meet-and-greet afterward, which was a nice opportunity for audience members to ask their own questions, one-on-one. I met Bruce Brown personally and asked him what he did after “Endless Summer” — a movie that made him both famous and wealthy.

He made a few more movies, of course (including “On Any Sunday,” a documentary with Steve McQueen), but mostly he kicked back and enjoyed the ride.

“I was a surfer,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I didn’t have to work anymore, so I had fun.”

Now that’s the way to do it.

I told Bruce it’d be great to have him narrate one of his old movies live, just like he did in the old days.

“I probably wouldn’t remember anything,” he joked, standing beside one of the old woody station wagons parked outside the theater.

That’s OK. It wouldn’t matter if he remembered anything; I’d just be happy to step back in time and hear Bruce hold court for a while.

–Pat P.