By JIM SLOTEK --
NEW YORK -- In jeans, boots, T-shirt and jean jacket, Peter Fonda still dresses the part of the King of the Biker-Hippies. "I was just walking out of a photo shoot yesterday and somebody yells out, 'Hey, Easy Rider!" the 57-year-old Fonda says with a grin.
Up close, however, somebody else with the same last name emerges. His is a face with 'America' written on it.
"There were times the camera was on him and I'd be looking through the lens and have to stop and shake my head," says director Victor Nunez. Nunez's Sundance Festival-acclaimed film Ulee's Gold, opening Friday, casts Fonda as Ulysses "Ulee" Jackson, a laconic and inwardly haunted Vietnam veteran-turned-beekeeper, whose solitary life in the Florida panhandle is invaded by criminals who threaten his daughter-in-law and granddaughters.
This "Ulysses," by the way, has a daughter-in-law named Helen and a granddaughter named Penelope. Of the allusions to The Odyssey, Fonda says, "It is an odyssey. It's an odyssey of the heart and of character."
It is, of course, the kind of role Peter's dad, the late Henry Fonda, would have played. And Peter, who has aged tall and leathery, evokes Henry eerily in Ulee's Gold.
"As I've gotten older, people are saying, 'God, you look like your dad!' My physical quality, my bone structure is almost exactly the same, all the way down to my deviated septum. Except my bones are slightly narrower -- as are (sister) Jane's. But I really look more like my mother around my eyes and cheekbone. You'll see in Don't Tell Dad (his upcoming autobiography) there's a picture of my mom, and you'll see the relationship there too.
"I knew there were certain shared traits from Norman Thayer (Henry's role in On Golden Pond) to Ulysses Jackson -- only Norman was 77, and crotchety and I'm 56 (in the film) and crotchety. I mean, there's only 77 plots in the world and it's not a case of me trying to ape my dad."
On the other hand, Ulee Jackson was Henry Fonda in many respects, from emotional repression to beekeeping.
"My dad kept a few hives," Fonda recalls, and laughs. "Oh, this is terrible for me to say, but when Henry Fonda moved into Bel Air (from Nebraska) it was like the Bel Air Hillbillies. Amid these manicured lawns he just wanted to make the best compost in the Los Angeles area, and he was very happy doing that. He had been a boy scout and an eagle scout and a scout master -- as an eagle scout he had all the badges, one of them was for beekeeping."
So there was a family precedent for Peter's role as an apiarist, a producer of Tupelo Honey, one of the "rarest and sweetest honeys in the world" (or so says the Florida State Beekeepers Association, who gave the younger Fonda the honorary title of Beekeeper of the Year).
"I learned off two men who really knew their business, and their business was Tupelo Honey -- which until this movie I thought was just a great song by Van Morrison.
"They (the beekeepers) were very much wait and see about me, how this actor from Hollywood was gonna do. They told me to keep calm and not wear any scents and make your moves slowly. I got stung once -- and wouldn't you know they didn't have a camera on me -- 'cause it was called for in the script and I flicked the bee the way they say to flick the bee, with the stinger out backward.
"I did a lot of thinking about my dad. He had the veil, the whole beekeeper outfit. I remember seeing him hopping around the backyard -- whoop whoop -- he thought he had a bee in his pants. Same thing happened to me the first day -- I was sure I had one in my pants. But there was none. It was just imagination. I'm just sorry he didn't live to see it. He would have been thrilled to see me in this part."
The affection for his father has come after-the-fact. To people who recognize him but can't come up with his name, he replies, "I'm Bridget Fonda's father.
"I say that very proudly because of all the years I had to be Henry Fonda's son. While that may be biologically correct, that's not who I am. But I know who Bridget Fonda's father is, and I love being him." (Bridget is his daughter by his first wife. He has lived in Montana for 22 years with his second wife, Becky, "and I love her every bit as much as the first day we had carnal relations.")
Open, friendly and talkative, Peter Fonda is unlike his dad in demeanor. "I know a Henry Fonda you guys don't know. He was a very quiet man, and we all interpreted that to mean -- 'we all' meaning me and Jane -- that he didn't like us and we'd done something terribly wrong.
"That wasn't it at all. Looking back he was so embarrassed and shy that when we wanted him to say things, we'd drive him deeper inside himself. And when he got onstage with a character and said lines, he'd open up.
"Just imagine him and Jimmy Stewart sitting there building for me, Petey boy, a glider with an eight-foot wing span. These two great men are building this. And this is the conversation... (He goes into reasonable impressions of Jimmy Stewart and his dad) 'I-I-I got part 32-b, Hank.' 'Uh, 32-b goes into G-17.' And this is it, silence for another 20 minutes. They were both like that."
As it happened, after months of assembly by dad and uncle Jimmy, "Petey Boy" messed up the launch and the glider got away, sailing over the hills with both male Fondas driving after it through twisty Sunset Blvd.
"Finally, we couldn't go fast enough to keep up. And we got out and just watched it fly toward the ocean. And I thought, 'My God, we lost this glider and it's all my fault.' I got in the car, terrified, and he had a grin on his face.
"And he said, 'Didja see that, boy? Didja see that?' And I realized this is exactly what he wanted it to do -- just fly away. I look back fondly at that moment. It's what life with him was -- silent terrors and wonderful moments."
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