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Haley
Joel Osment calls them "those two
legends."
Living
legends, of course, and they are still
working, in this case with 15-year-old
Osment in a movie called Secondhand Lions,
which opens Friday. The two "legends"
here are curmudgeonly American actor Robert
Duvall, 72, and charming English veteran
Michael Caine, 70.
In
one of the more bizarre Hollywood casting
choices we've seen lately, the two play
Texas-born brothers -- two old farts hidden
away on a dusty Lone Star ranch.
"Isn't
this absurd casting?" Duvall is asked.
"A little bit," he says, with
a mischievous grin. "It is a strange
combination, I guess. But it's Hollywood.
You try anything and he (Caine) is a game
guy. He likes to work. He'll go anywhere
to work."
Anywhere
in this case is Flugerville County near
Austin, Texas. The uncles' lives are thrown
into chaos when Osment, as their emotionally
stunted and nerdish young nephew, is abandoned
by his mother. The two oldtimers reluctantly
take him in and the kid joins the rest
of the rejects on their Flugerville ranch,
including a pack of mongrel dogs, a Babe-like
pig and, later in the movie, a tired circus
lion (hence the title).
"We've
got a second-hand lion," Caine says,
"but the second-hand lions are really
us -- yet we're still lions."
Not
surprisingly, the through line in filmmaker
Tim McCanlies' movie is the predictable,
heart-warming story of how these three
enrich one another's lives. That's routine.
Meanwhile, the subplot is all wonderful
hokum: Caine tells Osment tall tales about
adventures and escapades in Africa and
we see them come to life as lurid, melodramatic
flashbacks shot like B-movies from the
early years of Hollywood.
McCanlies
delighted in casting the cowboy Duvall
and the Cockney rebel Caine as the two
uncles. The characters spend their afternoons
blowing up fish in their pond or sitting
on their veranda firing shotguns at travelling
salesmen who dare show their pasty faces
at the ranchhouse. While both uncles are
reckless weirdos, Duvall plays the crusty
one and Caine plays the more outwardly
friendly fellow.
"The
uncles certainly had the showier parts,"
says McCanlies, who calls Osment's role
"the young weenie boy," a kid
who needs his eccentric uncles to bring
him out of his shell. "They had all
the humour and the eccentric behaviour
and Haley had the thankless task of watching
everything and commenting on it. He does
not have the showy role but I think he's
terrific."
Osment
was cast first. Then Duvall, a native
of San Diego but close to Texas traditions
in his life and work, was cast. "Bobby
I always wanted," says McCanlies,
"for either role, funnily enough,
because he can also play warm and avuncular,
like in Lonesome Dove. He was pretty much
my first choice. I sent it to him and
he said yes.
"He
is one of my favourite actors. He was
in To Kill A Mockingbird, which is sort
of my ... I don't want to say template
... but the one up on my wall that I would
want to emulate. He was also in both Godfather
movies. He was in all of my favourite
movies. And I think he's on the state
flag (in Texas). He's the patron saint
of Texas. Tender Mercies is the state
film of Texas."
In
this case, Duvall also scored points with
Texans because, once he was hired, he
refused to shoot Secondhand Lions in Alberta,
especially after doing Kevin Costner's
Open Range near Calgary, an experience
he did not want to repeat. "It's
a Texas story," Duvall says of Lions,
"so shoot it in Texas."
McCanlies,
also a Texan, says he was delighted because
he wanted to do that, too. But only Robert
Duvall had the clout to get the producers
to move the project to more expensive
Texas from Canada.
As
for Caine, McCanlies "discovered"
him by watching the Oscars when both Osment
and Caine were nominated and the two actors,
separated by generations and 55 years,
still spent friendly time together in
front of the TV cameras. Their personal
chemistry seemed to work for the film.
"Tim
McCanlies was watching the Oscars and
he had Haley cast as the boy and he was
looking for the uncles," Caine says.
"He saw me meet Haley and bond with
Haley and we walked all along the red
carpet and that was my audition -- an
unconscious audition -- for this picture.
That's how I got it. And I also got The
Quiet American from it because Phillip
Noyce was watching me walk along. He must
have seen me talking to an Oriental girl
(now he's joking).
"I
was there last year (Caine was nominated
best actor for The Quiet American) but
I haven't got a part from it yet. I haven't
got any part. I'm out of work."
As
for Osment, Caine is a huge fan. "He
is not a child actor. He is an actor who's
a child. He is the most mature child I
have ever met in my life. Working with
Haley is like working with Robert Duvall.
It is the same thing."
Duvall
certainly liked working with Caine and
found it simple and easy. "We may
be different but I think we have the same
approach to acting and everything. I always
call him the English Jimmy Caan -- good
storytellers and fun guys to be with."
The
movie has comic interplay between the
two, with Caine the foil for Duvall's
biting sarcasm. But neither tried to "be"
funny.
"What
we both did was play it for absolute reality,"
Caine says. "We played it straight
and let the people, the audience, decide
what's funny. Because, if you try to be
funny, you're not.
"I
do this trick on the television: I'll
go along in the movie channels and I'll
turn off the sound and I look at the actors
and, if I can tell it's a comedy without
hearing the voices, it stinks. You just
play the character. Reality is funny,
funny isn't."
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