PAINT THE TOWN, ED (Time Out New York, 2001-02?)

+ http://www.timeoutny.com/features/281/281.ft.harris.html

PAINT THE TOWN, ED

Ed Harris picks up a brush (and the bottle) in his Oscar-worthy performance as maverick artist Jackson Pollock

By Howard Halle
Photographs by Eric Ogden

Plus Throwing down Ed Harris gives TONY reporter Howard Halle an art lesson

If Ed Harris seems agitated today, perhaps it's my fault. Harris is the director and star of Pollock, and I'd asked if he would demonstrate his take on Jackson Pollock's famous "drip" painting technique. We've set up in a studio, but now Harris is balking. "I don't know," he says, "this was your idea." It seems that the brushes aren't quite right. "They should be bigger, wider," he explains.

Okay, so maybe having Harris reassume the role of Pollock - the tortured artist he portrays in his new film as being fickle and difficult - isn't going to yield the most lighthearted interview. But I am getting one hell of a performance: Squatting next to an open can of house paint on the floor, Harris chain-smokes unfiltered Camels; he flickers in and out of Pollock mode with an intensity that justifies the Oscar buzz. (The film opened for a week in December for Academy consideration.)

Intense pretty well sums up Pollock, who emerged in 1944 to front a new American art scene and then died just ten years later. The word also accurately describes Harris, 50, who has made a specialty of portraying men under duress, including astronaut John Glenn in 1983's The Right Stuff, oil-rigger Virgil Brigman in 1989's The Abyss and NASA flight director Gene Kranz in 1995's Apollo 13. Each character was defined by Harris's emotive face: His cheekbones pitch back high and tight, as if he's perpetually strapped into a rocket sled; his forehead slopes into his scalp; his remaining hair gives his head the look of a wispy club. The description would have fit Pollock, too?one reason Harris's turn as the artist is so uncanny.

Pollock is based on Steven Naifeh's Jackson Pollock: An American Saga. Harris's father mailed him the book in 1986 (Harris was drinking at the time, and he believes it was meant as a warning). The photo on the cover immediately struck the actor: "The initial thing was that I resembled him," he says. But the attraction quickly surpassed appearances, and Harris hired two writers to adapt the book. "He was the most frail character I've ever played," the actor explains. "His dad basically left home when he was ten. His mother, while they were close, was more frightening than nurturing."

One of the most intriguing aspects of this life was Pollock's marriage to fellow painter Lee Krasner - deftly portrayed by Marcia Gay Harden as a tough Brooklyn yenta - who put her career on hold so she could foster her husband's. "Lee made Pollock feel like he had a home, like he had the freedom to work," Harris says. This freedom enabled Pollock to create a radically new style of abstract painting?a breakthrough that marked the beginning of America's dominance in late-20th-century art.

But even Krasner couldn't keep Pollock from self-destructing. His bouts with the bottle led not only to his own death, but also to that of an innocent acquaintance. In 1954, a nearly washed-up Pollock drove home drunk from a party. With him in the car was his mistress, Ruth Kligman, and her friend Edith Metzger. The artist swerved off the road, killing himself and Metzger. The film's final scene reflects Harris's belief that Pollock "basically killed" the girl.

Not content to simply play Pollock, Harris decided to direct the film. "It wasn't intended to be my picture, but I was so intimate with the material that I didn't want to hand it over," he says. Costar Jeffrey Tambor, who plays art critic Clement Greenberg, says, "Ed had a clear conception of Pollock, and he directed us toward it. It was a lifetime's achievement."

Harris's approach focuses on Pollock's last ten years. "The book is an 800-page biography," he explains. "I felt we could get to know him well through those years with Lee." Of course, there was also an age factor: "I didn't want to have another actor playing him when he was 21."

As the director in him made such decisions, Harris the actor immersed himself in Pollock's persona. "I think he became Pollock," says Tambor. "It was really weird." Harris made repeated visits to a 1998 MoMA retrospective on Pollock. He spent time at Pollock's Long Island studio, switched to the Camel cigarettes favored by the artist and even gained significant weight to portray those final, dissolute years.

Harris also studied photographer Hans Namuth's 1950 film of Pollock in action. That bit of documentation, which includes a sequence shot from beneath a plate of glass as the painter sets to his dribbling, cemented Pollock's legend. It's also central to Harris's film, a parable about something Hollywood understands - the narcotic appeal and ultimately destructive effect of celebrity. "Pollock was desperate for approval," Harris says. "But when he got to where he wanted to get, it wasn't what he thought it would be."

Next, Harris learned to paint like Pollock - no easy task. The artist would place his canvas on the floor and, moving along the edges, dribble, splatter, splash and hurl lariats of color like an art-world cowboy. To practice, Harris built a studio in Malibu. Tambor remembers going there to talk about his part and catching Harris at work. "It was amazing," Tambor says. "It must have taken him years to learn."

Now leaning over an unfurled piece of canvas, Harris is ready to demonstrate. "Pollock used the flat side of his brush to scoop paint right out of the can," he explains, as he digs for a generous dollop of black enamel. With the tiniest of wrist movements, Harris doles out a fat arabesque of paint that's perfectly Pollock. He eyes it suspiciously. "Pollock had a naive knowledge of some cosmic truth," Harris says, "but it didn't help him live his daily life. He found painting; that was what he could do."

But not every artist, explains Harris, is so self-absorbed: "Directing, you realize that you're not the center of the universe, that there are certain exigencies where you just go with the flow." Harris cracks a smile. "Exigency? What does that mean?" he asks. "I never use that word."

His face - lips stained green from smoking with paint-smudged hands - grows serious again. "That painting isn't very good," he grumbles. Harris straightens up but seems to have trouble putting down his brush. "I wish it was better," he says, finally cleaning his hands. Sometimes, an exigency means you gotta let go.

Pollock opens February 16.

THROWING DOWN Ed Harris gives TONY's colorful author some tips on painting like Pollock "Pollock painted in a fairly small space; I'll bet the fumes got to him," Harris jokes. "Now, I'm going to fuck up your side of the canvas, if you don't mind." "Pollock liked to draw with the paint.... You want to hold the can here, on the bottom, to leave the top more open - that way, you'll be able to get more out." "Pollock liked to hide drawings under the rest of his canvas," Harris explains. "Sometimes it'd be a triangle; sometimes a picture. We really should be drinking to do this." "Do you paint, Howard?" "Just the bathroom," I say. "Ed, I think I need more canvas; this is beginning to suck big-time." Sure, that looks like me, Ed - if I were one of your inner demons.