Bobby (2006)
Interview with Emilio Estevez
Emilio Estevez
Bobby is already the fourth film by actor-turned-director Emilio Estevez. The star of The Breakfast Club and The Mighty Ducks made his first movie twenty years ago with his financée at that time, Demi Moore. It was called Wisdom and made him the youngest person to ever write, direct, and star in a major motion picture. Demi Moore can now be seen again in Bobby with lots of other famous people like Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Sharon Stone, Lindsay Lohan, Helen Hunt and Elijah Wood. The film captures the last hours before the assassination of the US-politician Bobby Kennedy. OutNow.CH met Estevez in Venice at the film festival where the film was presented as "a work in progess". So one might expect some changes until the final release in cinemas.
» Das Interview in deutscher Sprache.
OutNow.CH (ON): Is Bobby a film about the past or the present?
Daddy's proud of his son
Emilio Estevez (EE): I began writing the script in 2000. Before 9/11. Before the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it has proven to be incredibly and sadly relevant. This is a great heartbreak. We haven't learned anything from the past. We are going backwards. We all become cynical, apathetic and disenfranchised on a level that has never been seen before. And the governments of the world count on our apathy.
ON: Should it really be one person to take us out of that apathy.
EE: Bobby Kennedy did that. He was on the road. Think about the message that was given to the future leaders of the world with his assassination. Ghandi was shot for preaching peace and non-violence and justice. Martin Luther King was shot for the same thing. John Lennon. Everybody who preaches peace and non-violence ends up on the wrong side of a gun. What message does that teach?
Bobby Poster: Lots of Stars
ON: You grew up during the Vietnam war.
EE: More or less. The news was on all the time. We were news junkies. The exposure was great and I'm thankful for that. To watch the Vietnam War every night when you're six or seven years old that makes an impression. We're a violent culture and we celebrate that.
ON: What do you think about the Bush administration?
EE: The revolution starts with the artists, the writers and the journalists. We need to start asking the bigger questions. We need to stop our fixation on celebrities. I said this in front of Lindsay Lohan. We need to stop our fixation of what she's wearing and who she's dating. We need to re-engage the young people in the process.
ON: Why then having so many stars in your movie?
EE: No name is bigger than Bobby Kennedy, though. Bobby is the star of the movie. It has always been like this. In the casting process I thought of The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure or other disaster movies as a framework for this type of a film. This is a disaster movie but it's a disaster of the heart. It's an emotional disaster. In the end the bulding collapses and I hope I was able to capture that.
ON: How did you bring such an incredible ensemble together?
EE: The biggest problem was how you're going to schedule that. Everybody is just available for six to ten days. And our location, The Ambassador Hotel, was torn down while we were shooting. The walls were literally coming down around us and you could sometimes hear the beep beep of of the bulldozers in that went into reverse. It was madness. There was no rehearsal time.
ON: How much of a "work in progress" is it?
Estevez has a role in the film, too.
EE: When you work with Harvey Weinstein it's always a work in progress up until the release. He'll question me and I'll question him and we'll fight. He originally saw a two and a half hours version of it. Now it was cut down from a three hours version with every scene intact. It's something that will continue. There's a song that Bryan Adams wrote for the film. He was inspired by the film. It is an anthem. But now is the question where we place it. The end is very sober and I don't want to go into this anthem because I think that is a cheap shot. It's like saying we don't trust the movie enough.
ON: Do you see any new Bobby Kennedys on the horizon?
EE: I don't know yet. We can only hope that someone is there and is going to be inspired. I showed the picture to a young state senator in California. He was very moved and he stood up afterwards and said this movie was a call to action. This movie reminded him of why he became a politician. America has been famous for the last twenty years to stamping out political candidates - not leaders. We need to stop fantasizing about gossip and then think about who the next generation of leaders of the world is going to be.
