Wrecks, presented by Geffen Playhouse, opens Feb. 7; plays Tu.-Fri., 8 pm; Sat., 3 & 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through Mar. 7. Tickets: $69-$74. Previews: $59-$64, Feb. 4-7. Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood; 310.208.5454 or geffenplayhouse.com.

Ed Harris sinks comfortably into a chair in a private room off the lobby of the Geffen Playhouse where he opens in Neil LaBute’s one-person, one-act play Wrecks on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s not his first visit to the land of LaBute. In 2005, he did the world premiere in Ireland at the Everyman Palace Theatre and in New York at the Public Theatre (2006). Are there any changes?

Harris in Wrecks

“Ask me that question after we open,” he replies, “because it’s still like…eh… The idea for me personally, when Neil and I were kinda discussing doing it here in LA, was looking at the text and really trying to get back to ground zero with it. With what this guy is saying, what he’s going through, it’s a little bit difficult not to hear these words. You can’t help but fall into the same rhythms and patterns if you’re doing a show every night for eight weeks even though you want it to be alive and new. And it’s fun going back to it because you realize oh, it makes more sense if this is where it’s coming from so it’s just kind of a re-exploration of the piece.

“We tickle it a little bit here and there, changing a few things, clarifying some moments. It’s that kind of thing you realize after you’ve done the show, there’s that one… I never quite… I did it and accepted it but I’m never quite clear what the hell’s exactly happening there. So we talk about some of those things and make adjustments textually that seem to work.”

He plays Edward Carr, a used-car salesman, whose wife of 30 years has died. Is he approaching this production of Wrecks as if it is a new work? “Yeah, I’m trying to except it’s not. I know the guy. Basically. And I’ve lived it. My relationship with the woman who was my wife that I talk about is very real to me. I mean it was established a couple years ago. And it’s deep and it’s real, so I’m not going to eviscerate that emotional contact I have with this imaginary person. If anything it’s deeper because it’s two years later. More the effort here is to just keep penetrating it. It’s a different feeling…and a different set.”

Harris is thoughtful as he puts his hand to his face. His navy blue turtleneck and dark green trousers are comfortable clothes for rehearsal which he has just finished for the day. His graying hair peeks out from under a baseball cap which he occasionally readjusts. He is more at ease doing an interview now, especially with someone he knows, than he was over 30 years ago when he first began acting in movies. In his first film, Coma (1978), he played “Pathology resident #2.”

He recalls, “Anjanette Comer and I did just one day on it. Michael Critchon directed. Then the first real part I had was the Charles Bronson film Borderline. Tom Kibbe was the casting director. When I read for him, he knew I had done theatre. He had seen me in something. And then he introduced me to George Romero for whom I did Knightriders in 1980. I saw Tom not too long ago. He lives in Ireland. He’s a horseman.”

During the late ’70s-early ’80s Ed Harris was a leading force in Equity Waiver theatre. So, will appearing in Wrecks be sort of a homecoming for him?

“Not really,” he shrugs. “Nobody in the movie industry knows I got out of CalArts in ‘75 and all I did was theatre for six years. Fourteen plays. That was a vital time. That was a very exciting time for me. For LA theatre.

“The first thing I did when I got out of school was in a little theatre in Pasadena. I did a new play with Elizabeth Hartman that was being directed by Gil Dennis, who was married to her at the time. After that was Kingdom of Earth, the Tennessee Williams play, where I played Lot who comes down and expires in his mother’s gown at the end of the play, which was a total trip for me. Then a year later I did A Streetcar Named Desire at The Odyssey. That was like maybe ‘77 or ‘78. I don’t remember.”

Following those were others, most of which garnered Harris Drama-Logue Awards including Murray Mednick’s Are You Looking? and a few at South Coast Repertory including The Time of Your Life and True West. His roles varied from Sam Shepard’s Cowboy Mouth at the Pilot to Shakespeare. “I also did a few things at The Globe on Kings Road,” he adds. One of his favorite stage directors was actor Darrell Larson who helmed Cowboy Mouth. “I think I did Are You Looking? first because that’s how I met Darrell. Then we did Cowboy Mouth a year later.”

I reminded him of a legendary story that is still remembered by the theatre community. At the 1979 Drama-Logue Awards, Harris was the only one of the three actors and director who received a certificate for Cowboy Mouth. When he went up on stage to receive it, he tore it into four pieces to share it with Larson and actors Robin Ginsberg and Jack Slater.

“I wasn’t trying to demean the award… not at all. I was trying to share it. I’d forgotten about that.” We laugh over the memory. I tell him I thought it showed a lot of originality.

Kondazian and Harris

Originality describes Harris the actor, whether on screen or stage. He displayed that and daring as Chance Wayne in Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth opposite Karen Kondazian at the Dynarski Theatre in 1980. The sold-out houses made a considerable impact on LA theatre and gained both actors a lot of attention and excellent reviews. Soon after was Prairie Avenue at the Callboard, directed by Warner Shook.

“That’s where I met Amy,” he says. In 1983 he married actress Amy Madigan. Over 25 years later they are still together and have a daughter. With film roles being offered and beginning to be in the public eye, he lessened his stage work and hired John Springer and Associates to handle press requests for interviews. Basically, he did not want to do them, saying he preferred to stay out of the spotlight to concentrate on his acting.

“I think I probably expressed that,” he recalls. “I had a certain idea of purity and how to go about it at the time. When I got to know John, he understood and we didn’t do that much. Perhaps in hindsight, it didn’t make that much difference to tell you the truth. I just always felt funny about people always pumping you, in terms of publicity when you didn’t deserve it.

“I was always into the work. That’s really what I enjoy. Obviously as the years go by and you realize, hey if you want to have a career, people have got to be aware you’re doing what you’re doing, and obviously if people buy tickets that helps, too. Particularly if you’re doing a film because especially nowadays it’s like opening weekend, you know, or see you later. Over the years things develop and you realize, OK, this is my life and there are certain things I guess I got to do. I’d love to say, guess what? Phht! (makes noise) I’m never doing another interview in my life. Not because I don’t like interviews, I just don’t think they’re necessary.”

But he has done his share of print interviews and hitting the talk show circuit…

“Yeah, if you’ve got a film coming out, especially if it’s like Pollock or Appaloosa, something that’s about my own genesis that I really want people to see, you go do this stuff, man.”

Pollock, which he directed and played the title role, earned him a lead actor Oscar nomination in 2001. Also he was nominated three times for supporting roles in Apollo 13 (1996), The Truman Show (1997) and The Hours (2003). His list of nominations for other awards seems endless including five Golden Globes and a Tony for Precious Sons. He received an Obie Award in 1983 for his off-Broadway debut in Shepard’s Fool for Love. The role was especially written for him.

He accomplished pretty much what he wanted with his first directorial effort on film. “It took a long time. I was focused on that for really pretty much of the ’90s. Off and on when I wasn’t doing other things, I was working on this humongous script that Barbara Turner had written. The original script for Pollock was 265 pages alone.”

It was his father Robert who first made him aware of artist Jackson Pollock. “He sent me a book for my birthday in ‘85. Jeffrey Potter’s, To a Violent Grave. Then he sent me another one the following year. I wasn’t that familiar with Pollack’s work at the time. By the time I made the film, I was real familiar with it.”

His wife Amy joined the cast along with Jennifer Connolly and Marcia Gay Harden who received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Lee Krasner. Then, it took several years to get his next directorial project, Appaloosa (2008), in production.

“That was pretty much intentional in terms of my daughter growing up. She was born in ‘93 and we shot Pollock in ‘99. From the time she could understand words, she was hearing nothing except about Pollock. I also know how consuming it had been and how preoccupied I’d been and I just didn’t want to disappear like that. But then I read the book by Robert Parker, who left us last week and was a really special guy. He treated me great. My buddy Robert Knott and I wrote the script; he said go with it. He didn’t charge us a nickel. He said I’ll get paid when you make the movie. I just really liked the guy. I was really sad when he left but at least he left doing something he loved, which was writing.” Parker died at his desk, from a massive heart attack.

“I read it and said, OK, it’s been seven or eight years since Pollock, so yeah, I’d like to direct again. And I want to tell this story because I really love this relationship between these two guys. I guess in Hollywood time, it didn’t take too long to get it together but it sure was an agonizing year trying to get it set up. To me, I think it’s quite a wonderful Western. I was really proud of it. I’m proud of the detail. I’m proud of the look of it, how it’s told. I’m proud of the intimate relationship between Viggo [Mortensen] and myself. It wasn’t meant to be Pollock. You know, Pollock was about…Pollock. This was about two lawmen in 1880.”

He wants to direct another film but doesn’t know what. “I don’t have anything planned. I’m kind of waiting for something to drop down and inspire me,” Harris says as he pulls his right leg up and hugs it as he sinks further into his chair, appearing even more relaxed.

What about directing a play?

Harris

“Maybe, eventually. I wouldn’t mind acting in some theater maybe in the next few years. It’s really more about doing one thing at a time. I don’t plan that far ahead. Sometimes you know you’re going to do a film several months in advance but… I know I got to do this for four weeks, then I got a gig to do in New Orleans. A film called Big Red, which is kind of an interesting indie. It’s really just a week of work but it’s something I thought would be fun to do.”

When asked about the possibility of Wrecks extending, Harris is clear.

“Four weeks. Boom. I don’t know, Lee. You know I could drop dead tomorrow, I’m not planning on it but I’m just trying to enjoy what I’m doing. I do things I enjoy and hopefully get inspired enough to direct another film, a play or whatever. I’ve never really considered myself a director for hire or anything but boy, I love doing it. I love the process of first of all developing a script, or writing a script. I love getting a crew together. The pre-production period of time is very intense but also kind of exciting and I really enjoy the filming. What I don’t enjoy is the fucking bullshit interference from money people telling you how to make your film. That drives me insane and it drives every other director insane but that’s just the way it is here.

“The wonderful thing about theatre is you don’t have some producer telling you how to cut your performance. I don’t mind giving up my performance to a director who I respect. So when that guy has to deal with the guys who finance the film and won’t let him cut the film the way he wants, including myself as a director, it gets very frustrating. This is very freeing to me.”

Harris almost directed Fool for Love for the Roundabout in New York in February 2005. “I actually auditioned people. I had a really cool idea for the set but some work came up or I couldn’t find an Eddie, the character I played. I don’t remember. I was really excited about somebody I thought I had then it kind of got weird. So it just petered out.”

Harris is thinking about doing more theatre, either in London, New York or here. “I literally haven’t acted on stage with another person in a long time,” he laughs, “which I’m looking forward to! It had been 15 years or so before Wrecks since I’ve actually been on stage. You know this is the first play I’ve done in LA since Murray Mednick’s Scar at the MET, which is like 20 years ago. We used to have that theater group at the MET on Oxford. But you know, it’s just the practicality of it. Getting to the damned theatre. It took me 45 minutes to get from 25^th and Wilshire to here the other day at 4:30 in the afternoon. Unless I want to be in the car for an hour and a half, I’ve got to get down here at probably 5:00. And to go downtown, you’re doing eight shows a week at the Taper or something, you know if I had a helicopter… If I was doing a run, I would just stay down there. That’s all I would be focused on so it would be fine.”

For a long time Harris wanted to work with Paul Newman and missed a couple of opportunities but finally got to co-star with him in HBO’s Empire Falls. “I’m really glad I did, too,” he says.

Are there any people he wants to work with but hasn’t? He exhales with a psssss sound, “I don’t know. Ask me on my deathbed and I may tell you a couple regrets but I don’t really have any at the moment.”

I tell him I read somewhere he wanted to work with Stanley Kubrick. “No. Kubrick wanted to work with me. I turned down the part of the sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. He couldn’t believe it. I remember talking on the phone. Kubrick was speechless. He was like… you’re kidding.”

Why did he turn him down? “I don’t remember. At the time, it was my ignorance. It was like I might have just finished… I might have been having some family thing… It was one of those things. I might not have been thinking straight. I don’t know. I mean Lee [Ermey] was great. He was perfect. He was the guy. So, there you go. It still would have been a great experience.”

Are there directors with whom he would like to work?

“Well, I haven’t worked with Scorsese. I’d love to work with Scorsese. I haven’t worked with the Coen Brothers. We were almost going to do something once that didn’t quite work out. There are a lot of young directors… Spike Jonze. I mean my favorite film of the year is Where the Wild Things Are. That film just knocked me out, man. I thought it was beautiful. It would be really fun to work with him. You know, a lot of different people.”

Harris has acted in two films ready for release: What’s Wrong with Virginia? and Peter Weir’s The Way Back. When asked whether he has developed a philosophy about acting, he snorts. “I don’t know if I have a philosophy about it or not. To me it’s a constant process, you know? It’s like living a life. To me, they’re one and the same in terms of the process of opening up; the process of getting larger instead of smaller as a human. It’s your own sense of tolerance and justice and love and whatever. Trying to not limit yourself to how you see the world and I think in the acting thing, it’s really just about being available. I’ve always had this image of just like unzip your chest and you’re basically ripping out your rib cage and going here I am.

“I mean that’s what your job is in some way. Whether you’re playing a person that’s scared to do that or closed up, you still have to have a certain… (he pauses to do a long inhale, then exhales slowly) …largeness of vision to play that guy to his capacity. The more you have in you, the more you feel, the more he’s not doing. It just enriches. It’s about trying to do justice to the one little life you’ve got. And trying to figure that out or not figure it out and let it be whatever it might be. I mean it amazes me, from day to day. How you wake up. How you feel when you get up. Your first conscious thought when you get up day to day. Some days you feel great. Other days you might have had a bad dream, you never know. The first 20-30 minutes of waking up, it’s like where are you at today? It just blows my mind. Fascinates me.

Harris in Wrecks

“I mean actually the last three or four days, I’ve been waking up going, OK, this is a good thing being alive.  I mean I usually do get there at some point during the day but sometimes it’s harder. You know you’ve got some shit in your head you’re thinking about or whatever problems that don’t even really matter, but they do.

“So, yeah, when I come here to do my work, whether it’s rehearsal or doing the show, I’m pretty good at getting that stuff out the window. I’m not thinking about that.”

LaBute directs as well as wrote Wrecks. Since Harris has written and directed film, how does he like working with a writer/director on stage?

“Very much so. It’s not like I can’t have a dialogue with him if I’ve got a question about something or whatever. Especially having done the piece before and knowing there are infinite variations on how this thing can go, a lot of my questions to him are, ‘You’ve seen it Neil. You’ve seen me do it this way, this way, that way…where do you feel it…what’s the most effective way for it to live for you as director? What would you like to see up there?’

“It helps to get some kind of general feeling for the tenor of the thing. I mean the guy’s wife is in the casket on the stage. He’s in his head. There’s another room where there is a viewing and there’s a bunch of people you don’t see but he’s in the midst of it and he leaves. Not physically but he just goes phoom. And he’s in this space and basically he’s talking to the audience. But it’s a theatrical conceit. It’s not somber, you know what I mean? The guy’s tripping out in his head. Reliving their whole life together. Talking about various facets of their life. Some of it’s very funny; hopefully some of it’s moving. It’s got a certain energy to it. A certain drive because he’s going somewhere with it. He’s kind of pursuing something.

“So my questions are just directorial because I could go out there and it could be a heavy duty drama; intense but it’s buoyant. That’s where it works best. That’s where it lives best. It’s great to be able to go out on stage and flow with it. It’s really fun. It’s really great!”

He laughs as we shake hands and he heads out into the Westwood traffic.

Feature image and story image of Harris by Andrew Southam

Story image of Sweet Bird of Youth courtesy of Karen Kondazian

Story image of Wrecks by Michael Lamont

Article by Lee Melville