January 22, 1986 | In Runaway Train, a thriller now on view at local moviehouses, Jon Voight is cast as a hard-boiled, quick-tempered convict who breaks out of a maximum security prison. Later this year, he will be seen as a brutal alcoholic who mistreats his hapless stepdaughter in a drama titled Desert Bloom.
Previously, Voight has been seen as an eager but naive male prostitute in Midnight Cowboy, an embittered paraplegic Vietnam veteran in Coming Home, and an obsessed German writer on the trail of Nazis in The Odessa File. He also has been a student radical in The Revolutionary, a punch-drunk boxer in The Champ, and a businessman forced to fight for his life in Deliverance.
Obviously, when the call goes out for a party kind of guy, Voight’s phone never rings.
To give him credit, Voight has tried his hand at comedy, albeit with disastrous results, in Lookin’ to Get Out. He was appreciably more successful with his sincere portrayal of a dedicated schoolteacher in a rural black community in Conrack. And he took a shot at heartwarming domestic drama as a ne’er-do-well father in the under-rated Table for Five.
But when it comes to pleasing the ticketbuying public, audiences respond best when Voight suffers most. And no one is more aware of this than Voight himself.
“Gee, it’s so funny to me,” he said during a recent Manhattan interview. “I don’t know how I got here. I mean, I used to be very good at comedy. I was always delighted, and delightful, at interpreting comic roles when I was in high school. I’d like nothing better than to make people laugh. There’s something that a comedian does, he makes people laugh at the silliness of it all. It’s a very beautiful experience.
“But somehow, in my career as an actor, I’ve not been the one who has done that in the community. I’ve been the one who has had a career that’s somewhat controversial. My best films have been controversial films. And they’ve had to do with interpreting pain of different kinds, severe psychic damage, like in Coming Home, where I play a man who’s had such horrific experiences.
“In some way, I guess I do have an understanding of pain. I have felt it in my own life, though I don’t think I’ve had it as much as the people I’ve played. As a matter of fact, I’ve felt that I’ve had a pretty good life. But because of my sensitivity, I’ve felt a lot of pain. A certain kind of psychic pain — I can understand it. And that’s why I’ve been drawn to interpret pain in a certain way. I’ve been able to identify myself with most human pain.”
Not that Voight considers himself unduly somber. “I do know that I’ve got a good sense of humor, it hasn’t left me. And I do use it to infuse the roles in some bizarre way. It’s a river under every scene — there’s a little humor in all the things that I’m doing.” Even in Runaway Train, he notes, Manny, the vicious convict he portrays, evidences a crude, self-deprecating wit during many intense moments.
For the most part, though, Runaway Train is deadly serious. And Voight, wearing wind-burn makeup and a Fu Manchu mustache, doesn’t look like anybody’s idea of a comedian in the film.
Off-screen, the blond and blue-eyed actor still has a boyish appearance, even though he turned 47 last month. In conversation, he comes off as easygoing, ingratiating and totally unaffected. When he grins, you know he’s genuinely happy. That’s quite a change from Manny — when that guy grins, you can’t be sure he isn’t just showing you his teeth.
A convicted killer who greets the world with snarling rage and sneering cynicism, Manny appears to be little more than a monstrous thug. But Voight insists there’s something almost tragic about the character.
Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, Runaway Train is based on a screenplay by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Voight sees Manny as a soul-mate to the samurai who have been featured in Kurosawa’s own directorial efforts.
“To me,” Voight said, “the character he most resembles in film literature is the one Toshiro Mifune played in Kurosawa’s Sanjuro. In other words, this weary man who had lived a life of violence, but who knows more than anybody else. He’s a little uncomfortable with women. And, painfully, he has to advise those adulatory disciples.
“The hardest thing about playing this man for me, I suppose, was in the area of his aloneness, his not needing anything from anybody. I mean, he was set on his course. He never allowed himself to feel self-pity, or social needs. He didn’t allow it, because he couldn’t allow it. There was a certain mind fix to him. I must say, I respected this character. He’s a powerful guy. He’s a survivor. But he judges himself harshly.
“He judges people only according to their character, and how they can survive. If they don’t have any guts, they’re gone. They either walk, or they can’t walk. He’s walking a very thin line, so he has very few friends. Very few people — maybe nobody — can walk next to him. And that’s a lonely place to be.”
Does Voight see anything of himself in the character?
“Well, I have been very judgmental of myself, yes. I’m trying, very avidly, to break down that harsh aspect of myself. But, yes, definitely, I’ve been too tough on myself, for sure.
“And, of course, those people who are tough on themselves are tough on other people. And if they’re judgmental on other people, they’re gonna be just as judgmental on themselves. So when you see somebody who is rigid — and I have been rigid, and I am rigid, and that’s a failing — then you can be sure he’s hurting himself pretty harshly.”
Ironically, considering the run of roles he has played since attaining stardom in Midnight Cowboy (1969), Voight had his first major showbiz success in — of all things! — the original Broadway production of The Sound of Music. Even that experience, however, involved a certain degree of suffering.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say I have a lousy singing voice,” Voight said. “But I don’t have a formidable singing voice. I have a nice, light little voice. And I enjoy singing much too much to subject anyone to my singing.” While he was a struggling young actor, however, Voight was willing to audition for any available role on or off Broadway. So when the Sound of Music producers needed a replacement singer-actor to play Rolf Gruber, a dashing young German lad, Voight and his agent, Ron Singer, rushed over to the Lunt-Fontaine Theatre.
“I knew I could play on their sympathies. I would always apologize for my singing — that would take maybe five or ten minutes. And, finally, they’d say, ‘Go ahead and give it a try.’” It’s at that point, however, that casting directors usually stopped being sympathetic. Which is why, when Voight finally sang for Music composer Richard Rodgers, he was prepared for the worst. “I couldn’t take it seriously,” he said. “So I must have been quite relaxed and charming.”
So charming, in fact, that, much to his amazement, he was cast in the musical.
But one night during a backstage party, Voight listened to a recording of the previous evening’s performance. “And look — my voice may be bad, but my ears aren’t. I heard me sing my song, and I wanted to go hide somewhere, send my understudy on. I felt so badly.”
Even so, Voight smiled at the memory.
“I think that’s the reason why I left anything light in the past. I remembered the embarrassment and the pain of that moment, and I’ve made a career out of expressing the pain in the years afterward. My entire career has been based on the painful experience of hearing my own voice singing ‘You Are Sixteen, Going on Seventeen.’ I was traumatized.
“But I was very generous with that trauma — I’ve shared it with many people down through the years.”
