IGNFF: How did Longtime Companion and coming off an Oscar nomination lead to Harry and the Hendersons?

DAVISON: I was already in it, before Longtime Companion had a distribution deal. I was already in it, and I was suddenly with the William Morris agency, who were begging me to leave after the first year. My friend, Steven Spielberg – who I grew up with – was in charge of it and I thought he'd have something to do with it, which he never did. I was in love with all my cast and crew and everybody was family. My leading guy that played Harry died. It was really interesting, because Kevin Peter Hall had AIDS and was in the hospital. I would say, "I feel like such a fraud here, being well..." and he said, "You get to tell my story. I don't get that chance. That's your job." So that made it okay for me. Then when Tom Hanks the following year – I heard him say the same thing at the Golden Globes. I told him about Kevin, and he said, "Thank you. Thank you for that, because it really made a difference." It's our job, to be the unsingable heart song the ordinary man may feel but never utter.

IGNFF: Do you think that if you compared the mentality you had earlier in your career, when the ego was bigger, to the one you had as you got older and realized work and career – that the commitment was different? To actually be sticking through something because you had a family and other people depended on you as much as you depended on them?

DAVISON: Right, well that changes everything you know. But, for that time, I don't think so. I always thought I was a New York actor and wanted to do whatever edgy stuff I could have a chance to do. Hence Short Cuts or Longtime Companion or whatever. I really always loved parts with characters in great journeys. Jeffrey Dahmer's dad I just got to do. Nobody saw that, but there's a great little scene in there – how did this guy survive having a monster for a son?

IGNFF: Do you approach certain projects differently? Let's say, Harry and the Hendersons...

DAVISON: I didn't want to leave, because if I left, everybody would be out of work. That's 100 people that depended on me staying there.

IGNFF: But it also afforded you some possibilities like directing, right?

DAVISON: Yeah, I got to direct. It paid nicely, there was that. But my main reason was that every single person, not nary a one, was a good soul. We had fights over scripts and things, but it was always fights with people you love.

IGNFF: Again, it's interesting how you keep coming back to family.

DAVISON: Yeah, I guess so. Always better. A big thing in my life.

IGNFF: When you come off a series like that, what is the perception of others when you're trying to get roles?

DAVISON: It's up to the casting director. If they're a kid, it's the last thing they saw. They never heard of Willard before the remake. They never heard of Short Eyes. They heard of Oz, but you know.

IGNFF: "You're that guy in X-Men."

DAVISON: Yeah, that's who they all think of me as, Senator Kelly, this guy who melts. And that's kind of unfortunate.

IGNFF: How is that balanced between, "I actually have a large body of work besides this," to "At least I'm recognized"?

DAVISON: Right. Well, if they look on the Internet, they could check me out.

IGNFF: That would be research.

DAVISON: Yeah, if somebody is like that. But you never know what's on people's minds. I sat in an audition with David Carradine and Stacy Keach and Richard Masur and Joe Spano, and Ronnie Cox and Robert Gunton – all of us sitting in the room, waiting to do this audition. None of us got the job! Times are weird. I think David's going to have a good hit with Quentin's new movie coming out.

IGNFF: Kill Bill, I think it is?

DAVISON: Yeah, the Charlie's Angels kind of on acid thing.

IGNFF: Now, when you talk about your choices in the '90s, what was your determining factor? I mean, you were allowed a little more flexibility than you were in the '80s.

DAVISON: Right. Well, I had the guts to go up to Bob Altman at a party. He'd always terrified me, and I was scared of him. Now, suddenly, I'm at a party and I'm an Oscar nominee and I go up to him and I say, "I've been wanting to work with you for 25 years. I'll read the phone book – I'll do anything." And then the next day I get a call and my agents say, "You know we've been trying to get you this interview with Bob Altman. We got it!" Yeah, right... thanks, guys.

IGNFF: "Do you think you could bump us up to 11%?"

DAVISON: Yeah, let's bump this up – actually not, because it was Short Cuts, and everybody worked for – it was a big ensemble kind of deal, which everybody wanted the same thing. To work in a great film of Altman, which I think it's one of his best. People agree or disagree, but it's really structured. Unfortunately it's three and half hours long, but like he said, "You know, you can't cut it. All this stuff is great, and it all has a story. Each one has a story." So I got to work with him. He called me up, he said, "Jeff Daniels fell out, do you want to do this?" I said, "Yeah!"

IGNFF: What was it like working on an Altman set in his operating style?

DAVISON: Well, I was terrified. I came in, I was the first one to shoot, and I was shooting with Jerry Dunphy doing commentary, and he wanted me to play one of the owners of the station that reads these things badly. So I figured, "Oh Jesus Christ. Okay, I've got to read the news badly.' I figured I'd listen to these guys, like George Nicolah in which every word has the same emphasis as the next, and each word is as important, and everything. So I was doing that. I was looking at him, and he says, "Okay, let's do the next one." Okay, so I do the next one bad, about Mother Theresa or something, and we do the next one. He says, "Okay. That's it." I thought, "Are you going to fire me?" I said, "Was that good?" He says, "I don't know, you're the actor. I hired you. Whatever you do, that's good."

IGNFF: In your mind, how do you interpret that?

DAVISON: I interpret that as I'm worth something. He wants me to contribute to his film. He wants me to be part of his ensemble. He wants me to come up with lines ... and we did. Andie MacDowell and I were doing a thing. She was looking at a thing, and I'm going off to work and there's five other characters around the pool, and she says, "Well, I'm looking at catalogues here." And I said, "Read me this thing. Okay, you want to buy some of bearded Irises." And I'm out the door, and I say, "Okay, I'll see your bearded Iris when I get home tonight," which I thought was kind of funny. He said, "Yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah – do that." Okay, and we're over in the corner of the frame, and we're in and we're out, but here's Robert Altman following the bouncing ball, which is introducing all of these characters. It was great, it was really wonderful. A part I don't know if I could do again, having a little boy.

IGNFF: How so?

DAVISON: Well, Andie MacDowell and I have a little boy that gets hit by a car, and he was in a coma, and we were waiting for him to come out.

IGNFF: So as far as the emotional resonance ...

DAVISON: Yeah, and then he comes out, and dies. I just so couldn't go there again.

IGNFF: How much does that affect you?

DAVISON: Well, it depends on how deep you get into it.

IGNFF: Do you tend to go deep?

DAVISON: Yeah, I do. I had an acting teacher that said, "You know, you can recall a wretched emotion, you can move the muscles of your eyes and learn how to do that, or you can hide an onion in your handkerchief." I always prefer the onion when I can get away with it. All the great moments – Stella is all onions, through the banister.

IGNFF: Which do you prefer?

DAVISON: The onion if I can get away with it. It's all wretched emotions, but at the same time, you never know. And the same thing in film – it's so difficult, because there are 50 guys are waiting around for you to cry, and they're looking at their watch. Yeah, you're really going to get there. So whatever works. But at the same time, I did this film, King Is Alive, and it was all handheld DVD improv and stuff. And, you know, you're shooting for an hour, and all that stuff gets real, because you've had 10 minutes to work yourself into it. I was working with a great actress, Janet McTeer, too.

IGNFF: Do you find yourself more often than not, not able to resort to the onion?

DAVISON: I'll do anything I can. I'll do anything I can. I won't tell you what it is. Whatever it is, I don't know. Sometimes it's different, sometimes it's real, sometimes it ain't.

IGNFF: Do you ever find yourself where you can't find a touchstone?

DAVISON: Yeah, in Short Eyes. I remember sitting there, and I was banging my head against the wall. Robert M. Young, bless his heart, he's the greatest, he gave me a great moment. Norman Rene, in Longtime Companion, did the same thing. Robert Young looked at me and he said, "You're not going to match, if you have a lump on your head." I said, "It's a 15-minute monologue that stops this film dead. I've gotta tell my life story, and I've got to start hysterical, crying." He said, "Listen, pal, you're there. Forget the stage directions, you're there. Roll it." We got it, it was one take – boom. That's all he needed to say, "You're enough," and suddenly I was free, and I could just jump off the cliff.

IGNFF: How much of that was due to where your head was at, at the time?

DAVISON: Well, I was torn. I was in the tombs for two months, with real guys, with my pants down around my ankles, with real felons saying, "I hope we get this shot before lunch, I'm getting f***ing horny." That's as real as we get. "Did we wash out this toilet before we dunk his head in it?"

IGNFF: That's a union thing.

DAVISON: Yeah, that was a union thing, but it was an independent film, so f*** the union. The first director who was, bless his heart, incapable, was told by the cast that if he came back up there to direct, they'd kill him. So we got Bob Young, and he was wonderful. He was wonderful, he was patient with everybody. Most of the guys are dead now. One guy got murdered ... and another guy got a refrigerator dumped on him. Another guy got his head split open breaking into an apartment in White Plains. They're all gone. O.D.'ed

IGNFF: It's a riveting film, to say the least.

DAVISON: Yeah, and those guys are all gone. I think Joe Carberry's still around, and Jose Perez is still around.

IGNFF: Is it a film that you could do now?

DAVISON: Yeah, sure. If I were young enough, if I were younger. If I was a young guy, I mean, Clark Davis could be older, too, but he's got to be kind of young and sympathetic.

IGNFF: Within the same parameters, could you do another film like it?

DAVISON: Sure. I'm doing an independent Sundance film up in Washington State now, by this young girl, and it's another sort of freebie. It's a Sundance experimental film, but she's written it from her heart, and it's really an interesting, gripping story.

IGNFF: Is there anything that you did earlier in your career that you think, "I couldn't get to that place now"?

DAVISON: I don't think so. I think I could get to more places now. As a kid, I was trying, I was working. I remember Burt Lancaster, sitting out in the desert, saying, "Son, come over here, sit by my rock. You're a hell of an actor, that goes without saying. But I would feel remiss if I didn't give you some advice. You don't use your rehearsal time. You try to give a performance for the soundman. And you give a performance for the man laying the marks. And you give a performance for the girl extras hanging over there. Comes time for your close-ups, you've shot your wad. You can't try to come all at once, you have to give a bit of it here, a bit of it in the thigh here – you build. Then you have a performance. You work with what you've got. I've got the baby blues, the pearly whites. I work with them." He was trying to calm me down, because I would think, "Oh, I'm acting the f*** off the screen, man!" We're standing there, I'm acting! I'm really acting! And he's just standing there. Then I look at the rushes, and there was this whippet bouncing around a bulldog. Burt's just grounded, Burt knows who he is. I don't have a f***ing clue who I am. I'm just ACTING!

IGNFF: And you're not playing to the camera.

DAVISON: No, I'm mad about that guy being killed! So I'm acting it! "Just accept it as part of the desert. Like, hate the desert because there's no water in it." Who are you watching? You're watching Burt.

IGNFF: So it's the difference between acting and being...

DAVISON: Yeah. But the advice he was giving me, it broke my heart when I read the book, because – and I used this quote for the girl who wrote the book about Burt – because it was another great moment in my life and I was arrogant and I thought I knew everything. But Burt was giving me heartwarming advice that he had won the hard way. Because when Burt Lancaster was a young kid, he was a trapeze artist, and he was all over, and everything was big, and everything was all over! Then as he got older and got working more, when he did The Train, he didn't have to do anything. He was just Burt. He had to win the Academy Award with Elmer Gantry first, before he could just be Burt.

IGNFF: Before he had the confidence...

DAVISON: To just stand there. That last moment in The Train, with his back ... with him and Paul Scofield – who I got to work with later when I did The Crucible – but, he didn't do anything. Just his back says everything.

IGNFF: Was it difficult for you to take advice at that time?

DAVISON: Probably so. It was difficult for me to take advice from anybody. I was an arrogant kid. And it's interesting, because I've given advice to kids now, I'm that age, and it's interesting to see that reflected. But they'll remember years later.

IGNFF: So someone will be talking about the conversation they had with Bruce on the set of X-Men ...

DAVISON: Yeah. I'm an old sage, you know ...

IGNFF: But there is experience there, and mistakes that were made that hopefully other people won't.

DAVISON: Yeah. Save yourself some wear and tear as a kid. I mean, that's the part I wish. I wish I didn't have to beat myself so much when I was so young and had a lot of things going for me.

IGNFF: Is it difficult for you to see other actors, seemingly on that same path?

DAVISON: Yeah, sometimes.

IGNFF: There have been actors that you've worked with that have gone astray in the interim...

DAVISON: Yeah.

IGNFF: Is it anything where you feel a sort of, "Hey, listen, calm down a bit."

DAVISON: Well, if I'm asked. But it's not my place to interfere. An actor telling another actor how to act when a director is directing a movie is a no-no. You don't do that. If I'm ever asked for advice or something, I will mention it. Actors have done that, and I don't think my advice is any more worthy than somebody else's. But I certainly make observances during the course of some films.

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Continue on to the fifth installment of Ken Plume's interview with Bruce Davison – in which Davison discusses working with Bryan Singer, working with Dustin Hoffman & Gene Hackman on The Runaway Jury, and more.