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Bruce Greenwood plays JFK as a man, not an
icon, in the story of Cold War
brinksmanship
By Loren King, Globe Correspondent
Bruce Greenwood wasn't interested in playing an icon. The Canadian actor, best known for his roles in Atom Egoyan's films ''The Sweet Hereafter'' and ''Exotica,'' plunged into the role of John F. Kennedy in the political nail-biter ''Thirteen Days'' with the tenacity of a scholar determined to convey the essence of the man at the center of what Greenwood calls ''the harrowing fortnight'' of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962.
''My shallow acquaintance with Kennedy was based on media and the prince who presided over Camelot with grace and wit and alacrity,'' says Greenwood in an interview in Boston. ''The more studying I did, the more I realized intellectually he was driven; he was a voracious reader and, at heart, a serious man. Fortunately, the script doesn't take us to Camelot. It takes us to the serious side of diplomacy in the hands of very capable, albeit young, men. I wanted to serve that.''
''Thirteen Days,'' directed by Roger Donaldson and co-starring Kevin Costner, opens Friday in local theaters. Greenwood's extensive research into the Kennedy White House began even before the first of many auditions for the prized role. ''The day I left'' for an audition in New York City, ''I downloaded audio files from the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum on the Internet: a letter he dictated to his dad - `Dea-uh Daad,''' says Greenwood, mimicking the famous Kennedy cadence - ''and a phone conversation he'd had with Eisenhower, and I listened to those on the plane. I went racing [into the audition] with my headphones on. I didn't have any body language whatsoever. I thought I'd use a bit of trickery with the hair. I thought, well, rather than try and do that singular thatch he had - my woods aren't nearly that thick - instead of trying to comb my hair that way, I'd just leave it messy and let them think, `Well, fine, we can deal with the hair.' I went in and just made a wild swing at it.''
The only thing he avoided in his voluminous research - he read stacks of books and watched hours of archival audio and film footage - was William Devane's highly regarded portrayal of JFK in the TV drama ''The Missiles of October.'' ''I watched five minutes of it and then I didn't want to see any more,'' he says. ''I didn't want - if I made any of the same choices as Devane - I didn't want my take to seem derivative in some way. I wanted to be free to interpret it in my own way.''
In addition to re-creating physical aspects of Kennedy - Greenwood's gait alludes to the president's back problems and his chronic pain - there was the formidable task of mastering the vocal inflections. ''It's not for me to say if I was successful. I'm a barn door of opportunity in that regard; I'm sure I'll get lots of potshots,'' the British Columbia native says, laughing.
But what kept Greenwood preoccupied was conveying the president's intellect and resolve during the 13 days that brought the country - in the famous Cold War phrase - eyeball to eyeball with the Soviet Union and to the brink of nuclear war. He wanted to depict, without cliche, the elusive qualities of backbone, leadership, and intellectual acumen of a man desperate to avoid war.
''He really listened,'' Greenwood says. ''I remember one piece of footage of one meeting where for 10 minutes he does not speak. When he does, he is clearly a step ahead. I found great value in watching him listen. There's famous footage from the Oval Office [when Kennedy is] trying to decide how to approach the steps of the schoolhouse with [George] Wallace, and he is just listening and Bobby [Kennedy] and Ted Sorenson are talking. He just listens and the wheels - oh, man.''
To get this careful thought process across, Greenwood employed what he calls a ''basic acting thing'' while Kennedy is listening to his advisers. ''I had a half-dozen other responses [in mind]. Before uttering what I was bound to utter in the script, I would decide which of those half-dozen others not to mention. So I was occupied with alternatives.''
In dramatizing one of the pivotal political events in modern history, ''Thirteen Days'' structures the film dramatically to give a central role to Kennedy friend and adviser Kenneth O'Donnell. That's the part played by Kevin Costner, who co-produced the film and without whom it would not have been made, Greenwood says. ''You needed a huge megastar with that kind of weight. He ain't the hero of the piece. It's to his credit that it was made at all. ... He loves this particular time, when young men rose to be better than they could ever have expected.''
Although O'Donnell's role in the crisis is ''up for conjecture,'' says Greenwood, the daunting amount of research about this event is full of differing accounts and clashing perspectives. ''You can't get it right. It's `Rashomon,''' he says. ''It is incredible how many perspectives there are on this fortnight alone. Any historical drama by nature - it's false architecture to say it's a true story. At the end of the day, this is another perspective on these events.''
In using the O'Donnell character in relationship to President Kennedy and his brother, the attorney general, ''Thirteen Days'' reminds audiences that the trio of Boston Irish outsiders was often in an adversarial relationship with Washington insiders, most notably the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In particular, the film shows General Maxwell Taylor (Bill Smitrovich) and General Curtis LeMay (Kevin Conway) pushing the president to strike quickly against Cuba after the missiles are discovered.
''After the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedys were less inclined to believe what these generals were saying,'' says Greenwood. ''In defense of the generals, they laid the equation out on the table and, given years of military history, there was only one answer. Kennedy wasn't a military historian; he must have felt, to some degree, that they knew what they were talking about. To rely on his heart and his instinct to guide the world out from this shadow ... to distill what was going on in the mind of the other leader across the world ... to distinguish truth from fiction and wishful thinking ... the way he and Bobby bought time is a remarkable lesson in the deft handling of one of the most impossible crises.''
It was the symbiotic relationship between Jack and Bobby that, for Greenwood, held the key to much of the president's character. ''They battled and baited one another but I think at heart there was love and respect that surpasses many relationships of any description,'' he says. ''Steven [Culp, who plays Bobby] and I spent a lot of time together; we are both guitar players, so we had a way to groove together early on, and spent time hanging out. Without sounding too actor-y, we worked on the tension - when [the brothers] gave each other space; when they are most comfortable; and when they completely ignore the space because they have to be cheek to cheek. All those photos of them, with their arms crossed, their heads tilted like doves towards one another as though really sharing a message from somewhere else. Steven is physically bigger than I am and with the Kennedys it was the reverse, so he carved himself down physically. He lost 10 to 15 pounds and worked hard in the gym to become wiry and reedy the way Bobby was. I, on the other hand, was required to deny myself nothing and eat as much as I could to try and pulp up.''
''Thirteen Days'' was shot ''in a dusty warehouse in the middle of Glendale,'' says Greenwood. Yet his eyes glisten as he recounts the final day of shooting: ''You opened the big bay door to the set, and there's the White House, and the closer you get the more real it is. You walk into the Oval Office and it's in color and in three dimensions and everything is as it was [in 1962]. The last day we were shooting, the space was destined to be used for some other picture and they were taking it down and everybody was just really undone by it, to a man. There was tremendous respect for how we were trying to serve all these men. Historian Evan Thomas wrote, `Some myths are true.' This was the Kennedys' finest hour. It was clearly a coming of age for them and to try to describe that intellectual and emotional journey in the course of two and a half hours ... it was something to be attempted, anyway.''
That journey, for Greenwood, is summed up in the film's final shot: the brothers, alone, on the White House portico. They notice O'Donnell, and Bobby calls to him to join them. ''As inside as O'Donnell's been during the course of this harrowing fortnight, he looks out there and those are the guys. No one will ever separate or come between them or sway them from this inspired growth curve,'' he says.
The crisis was, for both Kennedys, a deeply personal and life-shaping one. ''At the end, it wasn't about using [the crisis] to make political hay; it wasn't about us going face to face and poking the other guy in the eye and knocking the chip off,'' Greenwood says. ''It was much more profound than that and much more human: If we are going to proceed and prevail with humanness, we are going to have to see the other side as human as we are.''
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/007/living/Reliving_Thirteen_Days_+.shtml
Thirteen Days