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NEW YORK -- James Earl Jones is a barrel-chested, bass-voiced, tenacious man with passionate opinions about life in America. When he speaks, you listen.
It is Jones who declares that A Family Thing, his new film with Robert Duvall, another man with a singular voice, is not just about family. It's a racial thing. And, even more profoundly, it's a human thing.
The story of A Family Thing, which opens in Toronto theatres on Friday, is simple in concept, complex in its emotional interplay. Duvall plays an Arkansas good old boy who, in his 60s, finds out that his real mother, who died in childbirth, was a black woman, the family maid who was raped by his white father. Which, of course, makes Duvall's Earl Pilcher Jr. racially mixed. For a stubborn, racist redneck, that's a mega-ton shock.
Then it turns out that the half-brother the redneck never knew he had is an embittered black Chicago policeman, who is played by Jones. The movie chronicles their interaction when Duvall drives up to Illinois to confront the truth.
"That's all that matters," Jones muses cautiously about truth and the human angle of the story, which is reflected in the movie's title. "It's about family. The same shock would happen if anyone was told their parents were not really their parents. It's wisely called A Family Thing."
But Jones, a political activist in his own fashion, warms to the idea of continuing, skewing his analysis into race relations in the land of the free, home of the brave. "I do like the chance to say something about race. There's a lot at stake in racism. People have bankrolled a lot of their lives in it, in what color they are. Now black people are beginning to do it too -- big mistake! Because it doesn't mean anything."
And it means everything, Jones continues. "The problem is, it's hard to let go. You see it in South Africa (where he filmed the ill-fated historical drama Cry, The Beloved Country last year). The Afrikaners have a hard time letting go of that privilege because they put so much in it. White Americans also (have that problem).
"But you'll notice that white or black Americans have no problem these days saying they're part Indian. They're all very, very proud of it because there's nothing at stake. Culturally it means something but economically it doesn't change your status. It's cool, it's cool. I wish it were so having black blood -- but it isn't so.
"I'm glad this movie has been made because it can address that. But it is essentially about a man who reaches out for his identity."
James Earl Jones was born Jan. 17, 1931, into a family of Mississippi sharecroppers. He was abandoned by his father and, still a child, chose to leave his mother and live with his grandparents, who soon moved their large family to Michigan. The trauma triggered his stuttering crisis -- the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies still stutters to this day despite his extraordinary ability to recite lines flawlessly -- and Jones went virtually mute from age six to 14. An English teacher named Donald Crouch brought Jones out of his shell when he persuaded him to read aloud a poem the boy had written. It was an ode to a grapefruit based on Longfellow's Song Of Hiawatha.
In the written word, James Earl Jones found freedom, his voice and his own identity. He became an actor, first on stage, where he confirmed his Broadway stardom in 1968 in The Great White Hope, winning a Tony award as best actor. The same play took him to Hollywood, where he starred in the movie version and garnered an Oscar nomination as best actor.
In A Family Thing, Jones' character, Ray Murdock, stutters slightly, especially in moments of stress. Jones, who rarely allows his real-life stutter to show up in his on-screen work, says he did it this time "only because the director asked me to." Director Richard Pearce had noticed Jones stuttering during the read-through of the script prior to shooting the film. "He said," Jones remembers, "'That's very interesting: You, the voice of Darth Vader, you stutter. That makes me think differently of you.'"
Doing it as the character in A Family Thing makes Ray "more vulnerable," says Jones. "He's not on top of it. He's not totally together." But he was careful to use the technique "just sparingly" because "I was concerned a little bit that we weren't making fun of stutterers. I don't want to be politically correct all the time but here was a case where I know people would ask me not to make fun of stutterers, because I'm a stutterer."
He's no wrestler, either. But he and Duvall engage in an impromptu wrestling match in a vacant lot during an argument in the movie. Jones is still giggling about the scene, although he sees it has value in forwarding the story. "It brought us to who we are (in the movie). We're really a couple of kids who hadn't come to terms with our lives yet. But I was terrified that I would get hurt, break something. And Robert was just terrified that I would fall on him!"
The burly Jones lets out one of his big-grin, low-rumble laughs that punctuates the sentence like a firecracker's explosion. That's a human thing, too.