Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 20, 1993 TAG: 9303200392
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JERRY BUCK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
GREEDY ROLE FOR GARNER
J AMES Garner says there are no heroes in the HBO movie "Barbarians at the Gate," a tragicomic retelling of the $25 billion buyout of RJR Nabisco.Garner plays Nabisco Chief Executive Officer F. Ross Johnson, who set off the financial hurricane of the nation's largest corporate takeover in the waning days of the Reagan administration in 1988. The takeover became a monumental symbol of the greed and fiscal machinations that marked that period in American big business.
In the leveraged buyouts of the 1980s, the buyers - often top management - borrowed heavily to complete deals. To repay the debt, they typically sold chunks of the companies and aggressively cut costs, eliminating jobs.
"I had to play Johnson absolutely straight," Garner said. "I had to play him as if I believed he was absolutely right. But look at these leveraged buyouts - some companies go under. RJR Nabisco was making a billion dollars a year before the buyout, then it damn near went broke. These people have no conscience about taking companies and stripping them."
"Barbarians at the Gate," which premieres Saturday on HBO, also stars Jonathan Pryce, Peter Riegert, Joanna Cassidy, Jeffrey DeMunn, Leilani Ferrer, Fred Dalton Thompson and Rita Wilson.
Larry Gelbart, best known for writing such comedies as "Tootsie" and "Oh God" and adapting "M*A*S*H" for television, wrote the screenplay.
"The RJR board accepted a lesser bid than Johnson's because he hadn't included some people in the deal," Garner said. "They took it because they were mad at Johnson. . . . He thought he was doing what was right for himself and the company. He said he was concerned about the effect on the employees.
"Johnson belonged to 51 golf clubs. Can you imagine the dues? The company paid for it. They had about 20 aircraft. They threw money around. Some of it was well-placed, so you can't knock it all. It'll be interesting when I go back to New York for the premiere and see if any of these people show up."
Garner said he had met Johnson several years ago while playing in the Dinah Shore golf tournament.
"He's a nice guy, but there are no heroes in this film, I'll tell you that," he said. "I never gave much thought that I was playing his life. What I play is a character, not a real person. I go by what's in the script."
Garner said his involvement began when he got a call from producer Ray Stark.
"I'd said no to a few other things he'd wanted me to do," Garner said. "It was always because of a conflict in my schedule. He said, `This is one you'll do.' He sent me the script, and Larry did a beautiful job. I called Ray the next day and accepted."
The filming of "Barbarians at the Gate" in Los Angeles was not without its own troubles. First, an earthquake on April 22, 1992, caused a delay. On April 29, the Los Angeles riots erupted, causing more delays.
Another recent Garner project is Paramount's "Fire in the Sky," released earlier this month.
Next, Garner will start work on "The Reading Lesson," his fourth Hallmark Hall of Fame. Previously, he appeared in "Promise," "My Name Is Bill W." and "Decoration Day."
Garner's previous television series were "Maverick," "The Rockford Files," "Nichols" and "Man of the People." The first two became classics; the last two vanished very quickly.
"I may do a pilot for CBS," he said. "I play a police shrink in a kind of `Barney Miller' and `Hill Street Blues' thing. I talk to all the crazy cops and people."
While no one would say that Garner's signal quality as an actor is his range, he asserts that there is more to his acting than meets the eye.
"To make it look as natural and easy as anything in the world, that's not easy at all," he says. "But everybody thinks it is for me. They think, `Oh, that's just the way Jim is. Good ol' easygoing Jim.' Well, good ol' easygoing Jim ain't no easygoing Jim. Talk to my wife, she'll tell you. But I try - and I guess I've succeeded fairly well, because I have that image."
The image was, if anything, heightened by a memorable series of commercials for Polaroid in the early 1980s in which Garner sparred affably with the actress Mariette Hartley. If some colleagues sniffed at the idea of an accomplished actor sullying himself as a pitchman, Garner didn't care.
"It's the same thing that they had from Broadway to movies," he recalled. "Anybody who went from Broadway to movies, they sold out. You went from movies to television, you sold out. You went from television to commercials, you really sold out.
"Well, I've managed to do everything except Broadway - and never really lost anything by doing it, any prestige or whatever. McQueen, Clint Eastwood, myself, we jumped from television to movies. They were saying `That's really tough to do,' but the three of us did it without any trouble." He added, "It's your talent; it's not the medium you work in."
As Garner suggests, he's not all sweetness and light. He speaks scathingly about Hollywood's accounting practices, which he got to know intimately when he successfully sued Universal Pictures to obtain his 38 percent share of the profits from "The Rockford Files." "I was after them for almost 10 years before they admitted there were profits," he says proudly. "They'll be paying me for the rest of my life."
Garner's way of life befits his down-to-earth approach to acting. He and his wife, Lois, have been married for 36 years; he drives himself around town and to movie locations in a Ford Explorer truck; he has lived in the same house in quietly fashionable Brentwood for 26 years. Now that his two daughters are grown, he is planning a move to a house he's having built in the Santa Inez Valley, two hours north of Los Angeles.
When it's suggested that he has a reputation for being stubborn and sometimes even antagonistic on the set, at first he demurs. "I've always gotten along with everybody I worked with, pretty much," he says. But then, as a small grin crosses his face, examples to the contrary begin to trickle out. "A couple of little set-to's . . . One with Charlie Bronson, one with another actor, I forget his name . . . " And he recalled telling off a famous film director "because I never could stand a bully."
Despite such remarks, and even after his assertive performance in "Barbarians," it's unlikely that the perception of Garner as "good ol' easygoing Jim" will change. It's also unlikely Garner will worry much about that. Though he says he still gets a charge from working with a good script, he has no qualms about spending six months or more playing golf and ignoring a business that he no longer pretends to understand.
"Some of these producers and directors, they don't even know what some of these older people have done," he says. "I expect fully to go in to see a producer some day and have him say, `Well, what have you done?' I really expect it, because they're 26 years old, and they haven't done or seen anything and they haven't done their homework."
Then Garner shrugs, seemingly as relaxed as any of the characters he has played. "It'll happen," he predicted. "So far they all know me, but it'll happen."