BOP Interview: Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen
By Ryan Mazie
October 5, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
After debuting The Way in the 2010 Toronto Film Festival (the film has since been re-cut), the father-son team has been traveling the states to promote the shot-on-location, independent film. In the interview the two talk about shooting on film, capturing the beauty of the Camino, and who came up with the idea for the film.
Emilio, I loved that you shot The Way with 16mm film, because it just gave the movie a documentarian feel, where you are there with the characters. It didn’t have a gloss that separated the viewer. So can you talk a bit about making that decision?
EE: When [producer David Alexanian] and I were in Spain, we spent about two months in country prior to shooting, and we met with a couple of [Directors of Photography] on how to shoot it and a lot of the DP’s said, “Let’s use the RED one and go digital.” We got nervous, because you never know what you have; it’s all on a little digital card. We knew that if we shot on film, we would have an exposed negative or something in the can. We also thought the light in Spain at that time of year would be better captured using Super 16.
The cameras themselves are smaller. As we met with crewmembers we would first say, “How’s your English?” and second, “Are you fit?” because we were going to make this journey as a group.
I really liked how beautiful the film looked. Not because the backgrounds were lush or green, but because the land had this otherworldly look to it.
EE: It’s great [our crew] kept asking why we are using all of these wide lenses, and I said, “Because I love the country.” Most Spanish directors are like in here (making a small window with his hands), because they take the country for granted. They are in all of this beauty and architecture all day long, so they weren’t interested in those shots.
MS: Most of the crew had never been to the cities we were at. They knew Spain, but they didn’t know the Camino. … Also we filmed after the harvest, because where we were walking, if we filmed a few weeks earlier, you wouldn’t have seen us with the crops. And that changed the light too.
How much of the Camino de Santiago did you walk?
EE: We walked about 350 to 400 kilometers and we did it in sequence. We started at St James and finished at the ocean, which is 900 kilometers away. The vans would pull the actors out and the steadicam guy would jump out and then the van would go to the other side of town and pick us up after we walked through it. So we wanted it to feel authentic and it to be zero impact on the environment. It is a very green movie as a result of that. We also didn’t get into the way of any other pilgrims on the journey.
MS: All of the people you saw on pilgrimage that weren’t speaking were real pilgrims. They signed off – we kept forms in every language.
What was it like working with the natural environment, and not shooting on an enclosed set?
EE: We were warned about shooting in the North of Spain, because it rains there quite a bit and anybody who has done the Camino will tell you that it rains more than not. So while we were prepping, they said, “Look, you guys can go in September, that’s great. It’s not the best time to film, in May or June there is less rain, but you will never make your 40-day schedule.” So we said okay, and decided to give it a shot anyway. We started September 21st, we ended November 6th. It rained twice. And both of those days we were shooting an interior (both laugh).
Martin, your character is coming out of a very dark place in this movie. But that’s not clear most of the time, being very bottled up. So I was curious how you approached that in us seeing just a heavily grieving man who is at the same time, just closed off.
MS: This is a guy who lived in his bubble. He belonged to the country club, he was a doctor, he didn’t serve anybody but himself, and his idea of a great foursome is on the golf course. He is a widower and is estranged from his son, so he leads a very isolated life. He is very conservative. Emilio had composed the piece, so that there had to be a growth – dealing with the brokenness, then the healing, then community – so that he became a father by the end. He never was a father to his son, and he becomes a father to those knuckleheads on the Camino (laughs).
But it was beautifully constructed. I didn’t quite get it, because he’ll tell you that I’m somewhat gregarious and I like to say hello to everybody. Emilio said, “Wait a minute, that’s not this character, that’s you. This guy would never have voted for Jed Bartlet, is that a clue?” And I said, “Ohhh, okay.” He doesn’t speak Spanish; he isn’t interested in speaking Spanish.
It’s a decision he made at the spur of the moment. He realized that he could finish this walk and make it up for his son and become what he wasn’t in life. But in the scene with the cop where he asks why are you doing it, he responds, “You do it for yourself.” That’s interesting.
ES: That’s the first lesson and there are others along the way. Like any road movie, which this is, the hero, the protagonist, has to learn the lessons. It’s Homer’s The Odyssey, it’s Apocalypse Now. So the first lesson is that you do it for yourself. He doesn’t get that. The second lesson is…
MS: (cutting in) Don’t sleep in shelters! (laughs)
ES: When his character asks the woman if she has ever done the Camino, she says, “When I was young I was too busy and now that I’m old I’m too tired.” Okay, he doesn’t get that. But it starts to peel the layers of the onion away. The next one is with the guy with the cape – the bullfighter who was the innkeeper says, “My father wanted me to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a bullfighter.” So again, it’s these lives unfulfilled, but his son, before he decided to go out, was living the life his father wanted him to have until he said, “Enough of that, I’m going to go out and see the world.”
Martin, I read that you were the one who pitched the story idea to Emilio, so I was curious how that went, because obviously it was good enough that it got made?
MS: He was preparing Bobby at the time. It was 2003, his son Taylor, was working for me as an assistant on The West Wing. We had about six weeks off in the summer of 2003, before we started the new season. So I had this romantic idea that we would do the Camino. I organized a family reunion in Ireland first and frittered away four weeks. When I got to Madrid, I had two weeks left. So me and Taylor were looking at a map and trying to figure out how we could do the Camino in two weeks (laughs). It was ludicrous, so we rented a car and drove it to check it out for future reference.
And in Burgos, that’s the town where the little boy steals the bag, we stayed at a bed-and-breakfast called The Mill. At the pilgrim’s dinner that night, the family that owned and ran the place were serving supper and their daughter, a very beautiful young girl, looks at Taylor, he looks at her, and they have been together since that moment. They married; they live in Burgos, very near the cathedral in the film. So I came home without him thinking, “How do I explain this?” (laughs)
So that was the seed that got planted. Also my father was raised about 80 kilometers from Santiago, so I kind of knew about it growing up and I had this romantic image of it that I would walk it someday. But I just nudged Emilio saying, “There is something really special going on out there on the Camino.” And my idea was about two old guys doing the Camino with a kid who falls in love and they don’t have a clue. And Emilio said, “That’s a one-line kind of joke, let’s expand it.”
EE: It really was a collaboration from the beginning, and I live down the street from him so it’s like (knocks on table), “I’ve got an idea! I got another idea!”
MS: “I know you are in there!”
EE: “You can’t hide from me. Did you write the scene yet? Can I see some pages?” (both laugh)
MS: No one else can get me to work for nothing (laughs).
The Way walks its way into select AMC Theatres October 7th, expanding October 14th, before going wide on October 21st. Go to theway-themovie.com to see which date the film opens near you.