Will Patton is an old-school actor. Back in the early days of Hollywood, new actors emerged from the New York City theater scene before moving to the West Coast and trying their hand at becoming movie stars. Legends like Burt Reynolds, Rip Torn, Gene Hackman, and basically everyone from that era paid their dues in New York before they ever starred in a single movie. At 65 years old, Will Patton represents either the last American character actor from that generation, or maybe the first of the next generation.
From his earliest days in television and film, Patton turned heads with his salt-of-the-Earth machismo. He oozes an old-timey sense of Americana that shines through in his new film, Hammer. Set in the midst of a nondescript suburbia, Hammer tells a story of crime, revenge, and the strained relationships between fathers and their sons. Written and directed by Christian Sparkes, Hammer thrives on the bubbling discomfort that comes from an unflinching commitment to exploring the audience's relationship with violence.
While promoting the release of Hammer, Patton spoke to Screen Rant about his work on the film and his views on its themes, as well as his career. He talks about the film's unique depiction of violence, which stresses the psychological and emotional toll taken on the killer just as much as the physical damage done to the victim. He talks about his approach to acting and how his background as a theater actor has informed his approach for decades. He also expresses his desire to return to the world of Swamp Thing, in the potential event the DC Universe series somehow gets picked up for a second season.
Hammer releases June 5 on Digital and Video on Demand.
How have you been holding up in Quarantine and everything going on?
I'm alright. I left New York right before it all went down. I guess I got out in the middle of March, something like that. And then, of course, everything went on lockdown. I've been in the mountains for a long time, now. On my own. (Laughs) I've been talking to people, and I was thinking, a lot of people are thinking, "Okay, I'm either going insane, or I'm on the edge of enlightenment." But maybe it's the same thing! I don't know.
That's the secret. Actually, I've gotten to talk to some New York actors, and I get the vibe they live here instead of on the West coast because they get to be in theater, on stage. Is that the case for you, and was there anything you were working on that had to be cancelled or postponed because of the pandemic?
New York has always been... It's where I made my stand, you know? I came up doing theater there. A couple of years ago, I did another play there, and I was really happy. I don't know... It's just, New York is the place for me. I only go out to L.A. to work, and I stay in a hotel every time I'm there... I shouldn't say this, but I leave as quickly as possible! (Laughs)
I don't get to go out there very much myself, but I kinda feel the same way! So, Hammer, your new movie, is fantastic. Tell me about how these movies come to you, does your agent call you and go, "You've gotta read this script!" or is there more to it than that?
I've found that it really makes a difference to me when the director sends me a letter along with the script that he sent to my manager or agent. Christian Sparkes wrote a really intelligent and intriguing letter about what he was trying to do. That made me want to talk to him on the phone, at least, after I read the script. And I asked him, "Why did you name it Hammer?" Because at the end, I felt like I'd been hit by a hammer! He said, "No, that's not it at all!" It had been based loosely on his own family, and his father's nickname had been Hammer. So that was where it came from, but he kept the name, because I kept saying, "It should feel like you've been hit by a hammer in the end!"
That's great, I was wondering that myself!
So, talking to Christian, I liked him! Another thing that intrigued me was, not only was it personal, but it made me think... Okay, we play around with killing so much in the movies. And we often play around with it in a way that, in really good movies, you'll be in a house full of people, and everybody will be moved backwards by somebody getting their head chopped off. And I'm really interested in a human being having to tangle with what it would really mean to kill somebody, because most of us don't know what that is. Soldiers know. They're affected by it. The rest of us, we watch it in the movies, and we're like, "bang bang," they make it funny. But I was intrigued by the idea of a regular guy sitting in his living room one day, and he has to go out to get some milk. And he's suddenly drawn into this. That was how I got into the movie.
Life is very cheap in a lot of movies. And it leads to people thinking and saying stuff like, "If that was me, dot dot dot." Anytime I hear anyone say that phrase, I get so mad. Like, you have no idea what you would do, because you've never been in that kind of situation!
That's right. I think it's probably something very brutal, something very unexpected, maybe even frighteningly casual in some way. But definitely, we're playing around with stuff that we're not really... I think of someone like Gene Hackman, and when someone got killed in one of those movies that he was in, you kind of feel like it might have actually happened. Maybe because Gene seems like he might actually know what killing is... I don't know why! But lately, I felt we've become a little more... What's the word?
Desensitized?
Maybe, or maybe... I remember one time, I was driving down a highway, and this car was on fire, and there was a young couple running down the road, away from the car. And I stopped the car, and we went and we grabbed some of the luggage out, and we went running away from the car, and the car exploded. And the fire was going out over the highway. And it was really interesting, because every vehicle that came down the highway drove right through the fire as if it was a television show. They did not stop. I remember thinking, this is what it's come to; we're not connected to reality. Our connection to reality could be a little healthier, I think. There's a fire here. Maybe I should stop for a minute and figure out what this is! As opposed to just driving right through and keep on going. I think a disconnect is taking place. We're doing everything on Zoom now, too.
That's been an experience. Adding to that disconnect. But I don't know, maybe with current events, with the protests and the Corona and the riots and the unemployment, maybe the breaking point has been reached?
That feels real! Yeah.
Hammer has such an intimacy to it, that you and the rest of the cast bring to it, and that Christian brings to it. What do you bring to a script to make a character who's so soft-spoken but tough... The kind of parent that maybe their own younger child might be scared of, you know?
He has potential for danger in him, somewhere. Perhaps the danger that's in him is part of what's come down to his son. I was interested in that. You know, when they go into the store and he gets physical with the guy in the store, I thought, "Oh, we have responsibility to what's going on with our children." Part of what Mark's character is, it comes from my character. There's a recognition of this through where events lead. It's not just that I've got this bad kid. This is the blood being passed on, and I have a responsibility somewhere that probably goes back to responsibility someone before me had. The other thing that I wanted to do was just be completely naked. Like I had been sitting in my living room and was suddenly brought into this. So there was no worrying about makeup or hair or even clothes. Christian is really good and tries a lot of different things and won't let himself off the hook. So if you feel a different kind of exploration in the movie, it's because of his efforts to explore and not just go for a typical "action" thing. So hopefully there's some pieces of that in there along with the action.
This is a leading role. You're frequently cast as a strong supporting player. Does it feel like an opportunity or a responsibility, or is it like any other role when you're first or second on the call sheet?
No. For me, it's just, "What's this character?" I don't even think of that. It's just, "What's this character? What is he? What do I want to do? How do I get deeper? How do I figure this out? How do I play this? How do I find this story?" It's that way for basically whatever part I'm playing. Even if I'm a guy who comes on for five minutes, I'm still struggling with that! (Laughs)
Maybe the expectation on the outside would be the opposite, but I find, in my experience, theater actors have less of that ego trip that you might expect... Not to s*** on the west coast like I've been doing for this whole chat!
Yeah, see, you've gotta watch out there, we're getting out of control! (Laughs) But I would say, I've noticed in the feeling. I think anyone who came up doing theater in New York, beating the streets of New York... I think a lot of people get something deep in their blood. They think, "Either I'm gonna fall in the gutter, or I'm gonna act." And they grab hold of that, and there's no going back. I think the work is almost like a higher survival thing for New York actors... I could be wrong, though. I didn't grow up in California and I don't know that experience. But I feel like, out there, if you start in film, then you go to New York and do theater after you've already become a famous film actor, as opposed to beating your head to do theater for years and then doing films. It used to be that all actors came out of New York theater. But that changed a long time ago. It's funny you should mention that, since it goes back to Hackman's time, right? And we were just talking about him before. That's what an actor was. It was someone who fine-tuned their craft on the stage and maybe had enough good chemistry to get to make movies.
Oh right, that's what I forgot to say! When we were talking about the violence in movies, I remembered that one of the movies that traumatized me as a kid was The French Connection. It's not really a terribly violent film, all things considered, but it's so impactful, it forces the audience to really feel those kills.
I was just thinking about that. Someone was asking me to come up with a "favorite movie," and I couldn't really do it. But then I thought, you know, another really scary movie is The Conversation. It's scary in that same way. You get the feeling that it's really happening to somebody. I don't know. It's a perfect movie, probably. It is really scary in the same way French Connection is, I think.
I do want to ask you, not about your favorite movie, but something similar. Your career goes back to the 80s on TV, you've been around the block. You're known today for stuff like Remember the Titans, Swamp Thing, Falling Skies, stuff like that. But is there anything from your career that you've done that you're particularly proud of, but you feel didn't get the recognition it deserved at the time, or even now? Something you want to shout-out for the Screen Rant reader?
There was all that theater work I did, but there's no point in talking about that anymore. The people who saw it... How many of them are even around anymore? (Laughs) The theater work really meant a lot to me. But there's a movie coming out that won both prizes at Sundance this year, called Minari, by this great director, Lee Isaac Chung. They're waiting to release it on the big screen. It's not so much about my work, even though I'm proud to be in it, it's just a movie that I think is really gonna resonate. I did another movie with this great director, Alex Rockwell, who did In The Soup many years ago with Steve Buscemi, Seymour Cassel, and Jennifer Beals. We did a movie last year called Sweet Thing, which was supposed to open at Tribeca this year, and I'm gonna be really glad when that comes out on the big screen. There's stuff that hasn't even come out yet, you know? I think most of the movies that I like, people come up to me and surprise me that they've seen and appreciate them. I wish more people could have seen some of my stage work, because that's where I'm able to edit myself. Nobody has control of the final beats but me, and I can decide how it begins, how the middle goes, and how the end goes. Whereas, no matter how much I like my work in a movie, they're going to do something different with it. Sometimes, it's just as good; most of the time, it's not what I wanted! That's why theater is great for an actor.
There's no camera, there's no editing, it's just what you give to the audience based on their seat!
Yeah, that's right.
Do you think that's lost in... There's a lot of hype for Hamilton coming to Disney+, and they recently put the Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch Frankenstein play on YouTube... Do you think anything is lost seeing these shows in that format?
I probably should be careful what I say, but I would imagine it's totally lost.
That's what I was thinking.
I know they filmed a play I did years ago, Sam Shepard's Fool for Love. It's at the Lincoln Center library. I imagine that you would not really get the feeling, by watching that, of what it was like to be in the room when we were doing the play, you know? It's just a different medium, and I don't think they mix. I can sort of be right upfront about that.
Do you feel like, when you're on stage, the performance changes based on the audience? Do you feed off that energy? What's that relationship like?
I change so extremely every night that directors are scared of me. (Laughs) I don't change the lines, and I don't betray my fellow cast members, but my rhythms and my feelings shift continuously from night to night, and it works. No other actor's gotten in trouble. As a good actor, they're shift with me. But yeah. Man, it changes. Depending on the audience, depending on the feeling in the air. Depending on whatever. The reality of the room. It's fun!
That's amazing. I can't even imagine. So, we're huge Swamp Thing fans at Screen Rant.
Oh, good, man!
And we remain optimistic that we might get more adventures of that story in the future.
Well, it's coming on CW, prime time, this year.
Would you be keen to return to that world if they gave a green light to new episodes?
I'd definitely do it! I loved working with my two leading ladies, Virginia Madsen and Jennifer Beals. We had a great time exploring our dangerous lives (Laughs). So I would do it in a second. I enjoyed it. And I love Mark Verheiden, the creator. He's really wonderful and smart and kind.
You talked about having hard-working sensibilities as a stage actor in New York. There's a blue collar integrity to that, to your work, to the image of yourself that we've seen on screen over the decades. Is that something you've carried with you, cultivated for yourself, or do you just have the right face for it?
I don't know, man. I do know that, for a lot of people these days, it does seem to me that, when you get on a movie set, sometimes you get on some and you know you're in the wrong place when it feels like the publicity is more important than the actual work. That happens more and more because people aren't getting that deep into what they're watching sometimes, so it might as well just be, like, "Here's this flashy moment!" You know? We're getting farther and farther away from real connections. Like, when John Houston used to make these beautiful movies out of really great literature, so you're getting deeper into the story. You feel like it's telling you, "don't make a move while you watch the movie." This movie has meaning, and it wants to resonate, it wants you to feel it.
The Man Who Would Be King is another one that traumatized me, just psychologically.
I guess it's like... There's something in there that feels real in a way we aren't prepared for. Maybe there's a little of that in Hammer, I hope there is.
I love when you find the... I don't want to spoil it, but when you find that incredible image of the snake in the cornfield. I could see some people going, "Ew, gross!" Or just not understanding the meaning of that image, but it's, like, it's terrifying!
There you go! That's when you're going back to literature, making those connections. You have to be interested in layers and metaphors to enjoy that.
Yeah, it really works, it shifts the whole tone into such epic grandeur... But talking about the different generations and how hard it is to men to communicate with each other, especially fathers and sons. If it's not too personal, can you talk a little bit about your relationship with your dad? I know he was a famous writer himself.
My dad just had a stroke this year. Right about the time this whole Coronavirus started happening. So it's been... Those days in the hospital in the very beginning, and now we're trying to understand where he will be best, to help him rehabilitate. So I'm doing a lot of father thinking, too. It's a whole new world when you're dad starts needing your help.
I hope everything works out for you and your family.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for talking to me today, and thanks for all your work over the years.
Thank you, it's been good talking to you. Hang tough!
Hammer releases June 5 on Digital and Video on Demand.