Great pitch got Ed Harris into `Touching Home`
Posted 2010. 4. 25. 20:41+ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/23/PKLE1CUTB3.DTL
Great pitch got Ed Harris into 'Touching Home'
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Ed Harris still laughs about how the identical Miller twins double-teamed him in an alley outside the Castro Theatre a few years ago, persuading him to play their homeless, alcoholic father in their autobiographical film, "Touching Home." They'd never made a movie before.
"They were talking nonstop, finishing each other's sentences," recalls Harris, who'd been honored at the Castro that night by the San Francisco International Film Festival. Noah and Logan Miller had politely ambushed him backstage and got him to step into the alley. They laid their laptop on a garbage bin and showed him the trailer for "Touching Home," a potent drama about their struggle to make it into pro baseball and make peace with their beloved, defeated father. The film, which stars Harris as the self-destructive Charlie Winston, unfolds in the bucolic West Marin settings where the working-class twins grew up.
"They told me about their dad and said I was the only guy to do this," says the versatile actor, who read the script when he got home to Malibu. He called the Millers in Fairfax a week or so later to tell them the story was interesting but that he was totally booked and couldn't make the film. "But they wouldn't let me say no." After meeting with the twins at a Santa Monica Starbucks, Harris finally gave in. He spent two weeks in West Marin shooting the soulful little movie, which opens Friday in Bay Area theaters.
"They were really passionate about this story, really relentless, but not in an unpleasant way," says Harris, on the phone from Santa Monica, where he was getting his Ford 350 truck serviced. ("I'm thinking of getting something more environmentally conscious," he says). "They're very smart, charming gents. I've grown to really care about these guys."
Harris has a long connection to the Bay Area. He starred in the original production of Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love" at San Francisco's Magic Theatre in 1983 (and won an Obie when the show moved to New York), and played John Glenn in Philip Kaufman's "The Right Stuff," shot here. He'll be back this week for a series of "Touching Home" screenings and interviews with the Miller twins. They'll be at the Rafael Film Center's sold-out gala Thursday and at the Crest Theatre in Sacramento on Friday night. They'll do a Q&A after the 1:15 p.m. screening at the Rafael on Saturday and another after the 7:30 p.m. showing at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco.
Harris, whose many film credits include his Oscar-nominated performances in "Apollo 13," "The Truman Show," "The Hours" and "Pollock" (which he also directed), learned a lot about his character from reading the letters that Danny Miller wrote his sons from jail but never sent. Miller, a roofer and carpenter who slept in his truck - often in sylvan Samuel P. Taylor Park, where a number of scenes in "Touching Home" take place - died in the Marin County jail at 59 about a year before the film was shot.
"They were fairly illuminating letters," says Harris, 59. "They described dreams that he had, and a (deadly) scene he witnessed in the Korean DMZ during the Vietnam War. He was telling his sons how much he cared for them. Noah and Logan also sent me a bunch of photos of their dad, which were pretty helpful. You can tell a lot about someone from their posture, and what's going on in their face."
Harris so completely transformed himself into Danny Miller that when he shuffled out onto Love Field near Olema, with his sorrowful eyes and stubbly beard, the twins and their friends gasped in recognition.
"I tried to give it my best," says the modest movie star. "I was tryin' to just be that guy. I'm glad they felt I was getting close to his essence."
Asked to describe his character, Harris pauses for several seconds, then replies: "He was a well-meaning alcoholic, trapped in his disease. He had lot of affection for his sons, but more affection for the drink. He gave his sons a lot. He allowed them to stand on their own two feet, and understand what unconditional love is. They never gave up on him. Whether he meant it or not, he produced a couple of really fine young men."
The Miller twins had never directed before but took to it like pros, says Harris, who had a great time on the set of this low-budget production (Brad Dourif, Lee Meriwether and Robert Forster are also in the cast). "I thought they did a really good job, not just with the technical things, like camera shots, but dealing with the actors," Harris says. "I felt very comfortable, open and free. I told them, 'I like being directed. Anything you want to tell me, tell me. I'm here to help you fulfill your vision.' "
Harris stars in several other films due out this year, including Peter Weir's "The Way Back," a true-life tale about men who escaped from a Russian gulag in 1940 and walked from Siberia to India. Harris plays an American imprisoned as a spy. He plays a married sheriff in Dustin Lance Black's "What's Wrong With Virginia?" (his wife is played by his real-life wife, Amy Madigan), who's been having an affair with a mentally unstable woman portrayed by Jennifer Connelly.
He has a particular affection for "Touching Home," which he hopes will get wider distribution.
"I'm proud of this movie and of Noah and Logan," he says. "They knew the story they wanted to tell and they told it." {sbox}
Touching Home (PG-13) opens Friday at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, the Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Crest in Sacramento.
To see a trailer for the film, go to www.touchinghomemovie.com.
Jesse Hamlin is a freelance writer. E-mail him at pinkletters@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page Q - 28 of the SanFranciscoChronicle