Thomas Haden Church Rolls On

The "Sideways" star on his dark turn in "Don McKay" and working with Charlie Kaufman.

This is off-topic, but spiritually relates to the twisty nature of “Don McKay” — when you were working on “Ned and Stacey,” did you know that Charlie Kaufman, who was a writer and producer on the show, was going to be kind of a genius?

The second season of “Ned and Stacy,” Charlie was there the whole year as a writer/producer and I very much enjoyed his company and personality, even though he was as quiet as a finch nesting over eggs. He virtually never said anything. But now and then, I’d go into his office and he and I would talk about this story or that story because I was a creative consultant on the show.

The second season of “Ned and Stacey,” at the very end, Charlie asked me to take a look at a script called “John Malkovich’s Head.” I read about half of it and was like this is the wackiest fucking thing I’ve ever read and possibly the most brilliant. He was like, “What do you think?” And I was like, “Man, I don’t know who’s going to make that, but whenever they do make it, I think some people are going to be really, really happy that it got made.” And he thanked me for indulging him, and now he’s clearly gone on to be a significant screenwriter and director.

When he won the Academy Award for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” I was very happy for him. I was there myself, and he won [best original screenplay] for “Eternal Sunshine” and then Alexander [Payne] and Jim [Taylor] won [best adapted screenplay] for “Sideways.” It was kind of cool that that year I had worked intimately with both winners of the screenplay category.

With your cattle ranching business in Texas, do you find these days it takes a little something extra to get you to get back into acting?

Oh, I don’t know. It’s a full-time job. I have a four-year-old daughter. I’ve got a whole life in Texas and a business, so it’s definitely got to be something that’s compelling. I have to make a living to feel productive on the financial side, but I’m fairly stable in that way, so I want things to be challenging. I want to go and do something that’s meaningful, whether comedic or dramatic or a hybrid — to do something that has merit and that I can be a part of and have impact on an audience. [laugh] I’m not as enthusiastic to leave the ranch as I was ten years ago, but I still love making movies. I love making good movies. And I’m trying to only make good movies.

“Don McKay” is currently without distribution.

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