This short dispatch comes from Park City, Utah, where I've been holed up working on the movie "Wind River" for the last month. (Utah is an interesting place to be right now, what with the whole state's mood seeming to rise and fall along with the game-to-game fortunes of the Jazz in the NBA playoffs). I've been balancing the joys of new work with the pangs of homesickness that come from spending time on the road. When your kids are young, a month can seem like an unreasonably long period of time to be away - especially when the job's not yet over.
"Wind River" is set in Wyoming in the 1860's, and based on the true story of a young man named Nicholas Walker. With his father already missing and life on the family homested growing increasingly grim, Nick inadvertently caused the death of his best friend, and thereafter found his life unbearable. Desperate, he finally ran off into the wild, where he was taken in by a band of Shoshone Indians, with whom he was able to make a new life. The film is based on a book by Nick's nephew, and we have had the pleasure on the set of getting to meet several of his great grandchildren, who are absolutely blissed out that his story will now be told on film.
I play the Shoshone named Morogonai (Mo-ruh-GOH-neye) who first found Nick and came to mentor him in the ways of the tribe. Morogonai was a follower and great admirer of Washakie, the Shoshone Headman who who has been criticized by many for the accomodating way he dealt with the U.S. Government, but whose efforts secured for his people a place on the extraordinarily beautiful Wind River Reservation in the Tetons. The script implies that Morogonai, who was at heart a wise and peaceful man, would very likely have succeeded Washakie as a leader among the Shoshone, but fate had other plans.
As usual, the rituals of stepping into another character have generated in me a mixture of feelings - a sense of relief and thankfulness for the opportunity, blended with a lot of worry over what the results will be like. It's amazing that after all the years I've been doing this, the true shape of what it is I actually do remains somewhat shrouded in mystery. Even now, as I think back to the first day of shooting, I cringe slightly at how much less alive the character was then, compared to the guy he had become by yesterday. And it's not so much that I didn't know him as well last month (though true) - it's more that I couldn't quite summon the best of my courage, and ended up settling for "medium brave" as an acting temperature. I knew by the end of that first day that "adequate" would have to describe my efforts, and was immediately reminded of Nelson Mandela.
My wife recently shared with me an excerpt of Mr. Mandela's 1994 Inaugural Address, a piece that has been making the rounds in our community lately. I offer it here:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear our presence automatically liberates others."
Nelson Mandela
1994 Inaugural AddressThese are compelling thoughts, and surely few people on the planet can be said to have been forced/allowed to ponder such things at the depth that this great man has. And, while it might be hard to think of anyone who pursues acting on an international stage as "shrinking," I know in my heart that his admonitions very much apply to me - in my life as well as in my work.
My wife has framed this passage and put it on the wall, where it can speak to the whole family as the days go by. When I get back from Utah, it'll be one of the first things that catch my eye, for which I'm grateful. I hope you'll look for "Wind River" toward the end of the year, I hope you'll enjoy it, and I sure hope you won't be able to tell which scene it was that got shot on that first day.
Till the next time,
A
