Sean
penn has got a box of nails in the pocket of his elegant jacket that he
wears with lack of constraint. He doesn't wear a tie. Relaxed in a easy
chair with his feet on the desk, he looks like a sheriff who is in service
in an isolated police station with nothing to do. But Sean Penn has a lot
of things to do and his shoes are very clean. There's an almost empty bottle
of whisky beside his shoes, at a right distance from the typewriter to
let the typist pour out a drink without disturbing his own meditation on
the page 102: despite of the complicated interconnections between mind
and work, a see through interface, the thin moustaches remind the ones
that the actor Eric Roberts wore playing the sinister character of Eric
Snider in the movie Star 80. This is Penn's look for playing the
sinister role of Eddie in the movie Hurly-burly written by David Rabe.
But Penn's
mood so lively, cordial, warm, even though just a little on the defensive,
immediately puts him in the constellation of the people with whom it's
a pleasure to start a conversation. The color of the eyes is not a distinctive
feature in Eddie's character, but Penn's eyes are an astonishing blue.
In that
chromatism
orbit his dichotomies. And some expert of Cahiers du cinema would
be able to write about 30,000 words to try to explain them. It's just the
evident inscrutable of his intelligence and talent synthesized by those
blue eyes, that fascinate a wide public: the best actors of his and other
generations, women and writers.
Sean Penn's
offices in San Francisco are situated inside Francis Ford Coppola's buildings
and it was funny to see Penn to talk about the Godfather's father
with his thumb pointed at the ceiling.
Coppola has
added a lot of participation as screen player to his career like Sean Penn,
who has written and directed two films: The Indian Runner and The
Crossing Guard. It's available also a novel version of Penn's last
film, this is written by David Rabe. Pointing at David Rabe's photo that
is in a frame of Penn's office wall, he quotes the words of Hero,
the song n° 9 from David David CD. Then he turns on the stereo at loud
volume.
..."When I
listened to this words," he says, "I took a picture in my mind of this
man and I thought that we must have gone to the High school at the same
time and, maybe, at the same places. I phoned him and it was exactly so.
We ended up writing a sreenplayer based on the character of the girl that
appears in the first song of the album". It's called Welcome To Boomtown.
The conversation
between Sean Penn and me was based on literature. We talked about Gabriel
Garcia Marques, David Rabe,Allen Ginsberg, William Faulkner and Charles
Bukowski. So, we talked about poetry, theatre and novel.Penn's interest
in literature and theatre are not a recent passion, but he discovered them
when he was a student at high school. One of his most important experience
was the interpretation of Eddie in Hurly-burly on stage. Now he
is busy in doing the same character, but in a movie that will be on the
big screen in '98.
Hurly-burly
is a work that takes place in a close space, out of Hollywood's schemes.
We can say
the same thing regarding San Francisco, where Penn, who has been living
here for a little time, says that he can take the useful distances,
for him and people like him, (pointing his thumb above!), to avoid the
distortion of glamour of money and fame, that are typical in the South
of the State.
Penn's
studio production is called Clyde is hungry. We talked about that
during our meeting and it seems that Clyde is hungry of honest movies.
Movies that cost less than £1.111.111 at minute, but that can be
able to make us reflect without overwhelm us. Movies that can make us thrill,
but without masturbating. Not Hollywood movies.
While our
conversation is going to end the phone rings, as it did several times before,
but usually it had been ignored. But, this time, the partner of the studio
production, Michael Fitzgerald, opens the door, saying to be sorry for
the interruption, but the call is important.
"I'll take
one minute" Penn says. "No" he goes, "Yes, he hasn't read it yet? Listen,
wait a minute. Can you tell him something for me? Just...No, listen, just
tell him that reading it costs nothing, but a bullet costs 25 cents. OK?
What? No, no. That's all. All right? Yes, OK. Thanks". Fitzgerald smiles,
then he goes out from the room.
I must say
that Clyde has got the right teeth to satisfy his hunger.
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