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"If there is one actor he
makes you think of, who would it be?" the network press representative
prompts over the phone the day after my interview with Will Patton.
"Michael Moriarity?" I ask. "Oh, no -- Brando, definitely Marlon
Brando," she protests. "How about when we were talking about
motorcycles and racing cars and he took off his shirt?' Well, okay --
this writer had to concede.
The way if happened: Will
Patton, the network press rep and your Afternoon TV reporter all met
for the interview in a conference room at the ABC offices on the
Avenue of the Americas. After a somewhat guarded question and answer
period of ten minutes or so, the actor suddenly announced: "I'm going
to take my sweater off. I don't have on much underneath, but I just
feel stuffy." With that, Will Patton flung off his black velour
sweater, revealing a sleeveless, tan-colored t0-shirt, barely
concealing a very definitely worked0out body. In other words, a hunk.
A decisive moment of impact. "
We're supposed to be informal." your reporter contributes. We all
giggle. The ice is broken.
Perhaps is should be
mentioned here that we'd been "negotiating" for an interview with Will
Patton for some months. The actor wants for concentrate on his career,
we were told by his manager. He's shy, we heard via the grapevine. He
doesn't give interviews, etc., etc. Undaunted, we continued our
pursuit. Finally, success. It was all arranged, and by this time, we
have to admit that all of us at Afternoon TV were very curious to find
our more about enigmatic Will Patton.
Just like that television
commercial pitching stockbrokers, "When E. F. Hutton speaks, everyone
listens..." Patton has a similar effect on his audience, whether in
person, or onscreen. When Will has something to say, he says it,
without a trace of glibness or phoniness. Patton has a way of making
it apparent that a lot of thought goes into whatever he chooses to
express. As Will himself explains when asked why he was so reluctant
to consent to an interview, "I'm not much of a talker, I don't know
why, but I feel very private. I've always been that way and I don't
have that many people that I share my like with..." Patton agrees that
sometimes it's hard to verbalize in two minutes what it took two years
to figure out. He has also, understandably, been afraid of being
misinterpreted and wants, as he puts it, "en vrai" -- only the truth.
Will spent a number of years
soul searching, truth seeking, and writing fiction. Writing stories is
in fact, his second love -- acting now being his first, or the thing
he does best. Before Patton came to New York from his hometown in
North Carolina, he took a small detour moving everywhere from
Northwestern Canada to New Orleans. He was traveling, learning,
writing. He was in his early twenties. He was by himself. "I didn't
know what I was going to do," explains Patton. "I didn't have much
money. When I went broke, I mopped oil out of the Mississippi for a
month in order to get a train ticket to New York." Meanwhile, Will
held a number of other odd jobs to support himself such as -- elevator
operator, store clerk, housepainter, demolition work for construction
companies, moving jobs, shoveling coal out of basements and security
guard. Will says he's amazed when he recalls all those things he did
up until three years ago. His stay in New Orleans lasted for about six
months and then he got his ticket to come to New York, not certain
about what he wanted to do. Acting was a consideration, but he was at
this point, pretty much into his writing. Recalls Will, "When I got to
New York, I didn't have any money. I got another job. I went to an
audition -- there was a sign -- a play by Mike Weller for the WPA
theater." He got the part. "It was about a guy that this woman meets
on a park bench and he falls in love with her. He reads Baudelaire..."
Will remembers, "He was an odd character." So, it all began.
How did Will Patton first get
the acting bug? "My parents had a house for juvenile delinquents -- a
farmhouse. My father was a Lutheran preacher; my mother, a preacher's
wife. They used to dress me up in from of all these boys and have me
do dances and different things. I enjoyed that. I was about five, and
I think that's when I first got into trouble."
Was religion a strong
influence on Will? His parents were very religious, he says. He went
to Sunday school because he knew he was supposed to, like everybody
else, but he wasn't really involved or committed to it. Will's father
also worked as stage manager for a theatre on the outer banks of North
Carolina, and when Will was about twelve, he was taken out there. Will
played an Indian in the outdoor theatre in one drama, and continued to
play different parts for several summers. Did he get turned on by it
then? Patton nods yes. "I always found that was the way I could talk
to people."
Will's parents have always
been very supportive about his acting. When he got to college, which
was North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston Salem, Patton began
pursuing acting more seriously. But, he was still very much into
writing fiction.
There was a period during
which Will Patton admits he went through a very self-destructive
phase. "Very self-destructive. Yeah. All of it. I'm much better and
I'm better all the time. You learn, you're either going to die -- or
not. And if you want to live, and you want to make things happen, you
can't be that way. I guess maybe I'm getting so that perhaps once a
year I'll have a self-destructive night and I'll go all out (Will
laughs). Then, I'll have no need to do that." Patton says there was a
time when he couldn't talk about it, but now that it has gotten
better, he can. Does he want to talk about the time he couldn't? Long
pause. "I just had a wild youth. A very self-destructive, wild youth."
Will adds that acting is one of the things that saved him.
How did Ryan's Hope happen?
The part of Ox Knowles is certainly not your average run-of-the mill
soap stud character. Ox first appeared as a returned-from-the dead
race car driver pursued by banana republic killers. An auspicious
start. Patton explains that the casing director of the soap, Meg
Simon, had seen him perform in a number of plays. After attending a
play called "Dark Ride", Simon contacted Will's manager and asked if
he was interested in doing a role on a soap, Says Will, "I never
really thought about it before, but I said yes. I trusted her and it
sounded like a good part."
When he first came on the
show, Will says memorizing lines seemed impossible. But now it has
become easier, a habit you learn. At times, he has "doubled" -- worked
in theatre while taping for the soap, so his work load has been
considerable. As for Ox Knowles, what about his recent involvement
with Delia (Ilene Kristen)? Is he on to her? "She's pretty up front
most of the time," says Will. Doesn't Ox get put off by her
deviousness? "Actually," smiles the actor, "I am beginning to get a
little worried about it."
Ask the real like Delia about
Will Patton and she says they both always wonder, 'what are we doing
on a soap'? They have similar backgrounds in theatre. Says Irene, "I
adore working with Will -- he's so easy to relate to." Their
working methods are very compatible. Ilene explains that they both
like to take chances, working moment to moment to see what will
happen. So, they never set things and no matter show many ties they
run a scene, it's different each time. Says Ilene, "We're very close.
I feel as though I've made a very good friend."
Will's long time friend and
cast member, Marilyn McIntyre (Sydney) describes him as "very
intense." that seems right on. Dialogue from Ox Knowles is almost
always preceded by long pregnant pauses. Then the lines are delivered,
as if the actor didn't know what he was going to say. It's a device
that Brando uses. In real life, people don't know exactly what they
are going to say. Actors mostly have made a choice beforehand and know
precisely what they are doing. The trick is to make it seem as if you
don't, to be alive, spontaneous.
Will Patton the actor and
Will Patton's personal life. Are there ever conflicts? Patton admits,
"Yeah, at times I find that I do need a lot of space." Does he tend to
select friends, lovers, vacation mates etc. in/out of the industry,
who are understanding about his needs? He likes to be able to talk
with people about the work, says Patton. But he also likes to be able
to forget about the work, too. So what he does is conduct
relationships with actors as well as with people outside the business.
What does he do to forget about the work? (the network press rep has
mentioned that Patton like to jog.) "Actually," says Will, "I run real
fact. I don't do that slow stuff. I also punch a punching bag. I
started that when I quit smoking cigarettes. I ad all the energy all
of a sudden. I was like a volcano and I had to do something. So I
became addicted to the punching bag."
Does he ever have doubts now
about whether or not he's doing the right thing in his life -- or
there obstacles to doing what he want to do? "Sometimes," say Patton,
"It's hard to find the material I want to work on. Once in a while
you'll find that thing you want to do. But the rest of it -- you feel
so passive that you always have to wait for this material to come to
you, rather than making it happen yourself. I'd like to eventually
bring the two together and make my material happen for me." With his
character of Ox, Will adds that he's been finding the right material.
"I'm real curious about Ox; there's a lot of stuff I can hook onto
with him." It turns out that Will Patton didn't ride motorcycles, but
says the actor, "I used to drive cars way to fast."
Does Will Patton have some
wild ambitions forthcoming and what's in the works? Will recently
finished filming The Karen Silkwood Story, a major motion picture,
starring Meryl Streep and directed by Mike Nichols. Patton says he has
a small part, "I play this guy named Joe who talks about the truck he
buried." He has two small scenes with Streep. There are other projects
in the process of negotiation at this point, so it would be premature,
says Patton, to get into that. "But -- " long pause. "I'd like to do a
movie with Dennis Hopper. And I like to do things with women. I like
to do things with children. I like women. I like children. I like
dogs. I'd like to write a good book on the level of William Faulkner."
Does Will Patton sometimes
feel he wants to be somewhere else in his life or is there a
consistency about what he wants now? "I find that I'm more and more
consistent. You learn more and more about what you want -- hopefully.
Some people that I think are much older and wiser say to me, it just
gets worse. You don't find out more; you know less and less." Patton
says he hopes that's not true. "Maybe it is. I don't feel that way
now. I feel that you can learn and grow."
The actor needs to be around
mountains and ocean, both of which are in short supply in the Big
Apple. So he says, he gets out of the city, wherever, whenever he can.
Does he find a problem with being recognized since he's been on the
soap? Yes, he does. "I was at the World Trade Center and I
thought I was miles away from everybody, and all of a sudden, I was
just swamped. I mean, it was really scary. It was the worst it has
ever been, except when I was in Texas (on location for the Silkwood
film). I just got out of my trailer on location, and these women came
pouring out of -- I don't know where they came from -- I wandered away
from the set just for a minute and was going to sit on this picnic
table. When it happened this way, you know with all those people, it's
definitely scary." But Will says, he's learned to deal with it. When
he walks down the streets in New York for instance: "I find that
there's a way of carrying myself, so that they don't recognize me. I
just pretend I'm not Ox. Sometimes I can trick them." Unfortunately,
Patton says he can't go to the same places he used to go to before he
was on the soap.
Winding down, we all joke
about fans who rip at your clothes for a little piece of whatever. "It
hasn't happened yet." says Patton. On our way out, an ABC picture
person wants for discuss photos with Will. Afterwards, we head for a
few blocks in the same direction. Will talks about New York City
neighborhoods. "Sometimes they are an assault on your senses." says
he. Mostly, he is quiet. Thoughtful. I have a deadline to meet. Will
heads uptown. Michael Moriarity. Definitely Michael Moriarity, I
think, as I board the Second Avenue bus. |
