Hal Holbrook’s Sunny Disposition

The 84-years-young Oscar-nominee on his new film, Mark Twain and why retirement isn't in his future.

At 84, your career isn’t slowing down at all. Is there such thing as retirement for you?

No, I wouldn’t know how. I’m writing a book now. I’ve written one and I’m writing another, a sequel, you might say. I’m forced to write a second one because the first one got too damn long and I had to stop it. I really enjoy it. I can write anywhere: on an airplane, in the terminal, in a restaurant, anywhere. Other than that, I wouldn’t know what to do. I did a lot of ocean sailing in my life for quite a few years. Would you please explain to me why it is that 30 years ago, I was able to take a month off, get in my boat, sail across the ocean, then come back and work, and now I don’t have time to do that? Because I’m old now, and we can’t figure out yet how I seem to have gotten busier.

I’m sure the Oscar nomination helped with that, too. Have you been bombarded with new career opportunities since then?

Yeah, I have a couple films that I’m scheduling in right now. Being an actor, you get so many interesting avenues you can explore. In the film I just did ["Flying Lessons"], I played a man with Alzheimer’s, so you say to yourself: “Okay, what the hell is it really like?” You start looking into it. I don’t know if you’ve heard about that wonderful and touching DVD box that Maria Shriver put out about people with Alzheimer’s. What I got out of it was three things: One, the terrific vulnerability that came over them without their realizing it, even though they were tough. The second was the tremendous anger that could spring up quickly out of the frustration of not being able to remember or do something. The third was the realization on my part that all of that is only an extension of the things that happen to you when you get to be 80 years old.

There are certain limitations that begin to close in on you. Like, I had to give my boat away. I don’t think I could sail across the ocean alone anymore. I don’t know if I’d have the strength to get the sails down in time when a storm came. Also, I can get up from this chair and walk across the room to get something, and when I get there, I’m goddamned if I can think what it was I went over there for. It doesn’t sound right to say it, but playing this man with Alzheimer’s was not hard for me. [laughs]

Do you have any dream roles you’d still like to take on, or old characters you hope to revisit?

I’ve never stopped doing Mark Twain. I do about 25 or 30 concerts a year with Twain. I never stop adding material, changing and reworking it, but it’s even more shocking and powerful if you don’t update it. You find material that’s striking and relevant to what’s going on today. Like, I just found a piece I’m going to put in the show next time about America’s love affair with money, and the terrible corruption that went on and, of course, is going on now in high places, corporations. How the common folk get it in the ear, they get left. If I can remember some of it, he says: “This is a strange panic, like a blight that has fallen on us. It’s as if a mighty machine has slipped its belt and is still running and accomplishing nothing. The phrase ‘laying off’ has become common. Laying off of two and three thousand men has become familiar. There is a widespread laying-off from one end of the country to the other, with the discharging of one out of every three employees in all the humble, small shops and industries across America.” Isn’t that something?

It is. Do you have any sense of optimism for future generations?

It’s hard to be American and not be optimistic. We have that gene in our national character. But this, I believe, is a far more disastrous event in American history then we even realize today. It isn’t only that we have allowed certain people to plunge this country — and the world, in fact — into a terrible economic disaster through chicanery and greed. This time, unfortunately, it comes at a point in history where we are no longer self-sufficient. We don’t have two oceans protecting us anymore. We are dependent on other countries much more than we were before. We’ve become weakened by the rise of countries like China, which are going to produce much more in conflict with our own best interests. We have somehow allowed ourselves to shoulder our way around the world in an attempt to bring democracy or “the American way of life” to places so ancient that they don’t want it.

The world has changed, and we’re going to suffer deeply if we keep trying to do that instead of spending half the money we spend on a war on helping people to have a better life. Our country has been a pinnacle of hope for so many people. All around the world we’ve had the love and the admiration of so many people, and we’ve lost a lot of that through unwise thinking. Mark Twain said another extraordinary thing: “Shall we? That is to say, shall we go on extending the blessings of civilization to the people that sit in darkness, or should we give those poor things a rest? Should we bang right ahead in our old-time, pious way and commit the new century to the game, or shall we sober up and sit down and think it over first?”

“That Evening Sun” opens in New York on November 6th and will open in Los Angeles on November 20th.

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