An Intimate Conversation with 'The Homesman' Director-Star Tommy Lee Jones

The Homesman — the Western drama opening this weekend — is stark, sparse, and sprinkled with brief moments of comedic frankness. In other words, much like a conversation with the film’s star and director, Tommy Lee Jones.

Most stories written about the 68-year-old Oscar winner inevitably become about the process of trying to interview the famously grouchy actor — which has proven to be a formidable task since Jones rose to fame over 30 years ago. He’s spent much of his career playing quiet men who suffer no fools, a trait that he brings to promoting his films, as well.

The Homesman marks his second big-screen directorial effort, after 2005’s acclaimed The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, also a Western. Jones was sent a copy of the 1988 Glendon Swarthout novel of the same name by his friend, producer Michael Fitzgerald, who thought Jones might spark to the gritty material. Fitzgerald knows his buddy TLJ well.

“I thought we could make a screenplay of it, that had some originality,” Jones tells Yahoo Movies, “and, of course, our lives are a never-ending search for anything resembling originality.”

The novel — and, now, film — tells the story of a lonely woman, Mary Bee Cuddy, who lives in a small town on the western frontier during the 1830s. Steely and determined, Cuddy is derided as being “plain as a tin can,” with no men willing to marry her. She puts them all to shame, though, when she steps up to do what they will not: Volunteer to guide three young women, broken by disease and abuse at the hands of their husbands, back east to where they might recover.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Jones said that The Homesman is “a movie that is about the history of women in my family.” Speaking with Yahoo Movies, he moves to clarify the statement, while still emphasizing the importance of the movie’s gender politics.

“I think there was a bit of a misquote, or at least it was misleading,” he says. “I was simply pointing out that it is a woman’s story, which made it original — and I have an interest in women. My grandmother, my mother, my wife, and my daughter are all people that I’ve known, and they’re women. I’m interested in their condition and everybody else’s. That was part of the originality of this undertaking. And I was happy when I found the story.”

One of the most important women he knows at the moment is Hilary Swank, who is utterly transformed in the role. The two-time Oscar-winner embodies the gaunt and intense Cuddy, who puts her despair aside as she drives her horse-drawn carriage through the rocky, dangerous land. The performance, Jones says, was the result of a lot of hard work.

Swank (left), with Jones, in The Homesman

“Hilary did not have a lot of experience with horses or mules or wagons or plows — and she worked at it all day long, every day,” Jones explains. “At a time when you’d expect most actresses or actors to go to their trailer, and either study their lines or languish in one way or the other, she would go straight to her horse or to the mules and the wagon. She didn’t have any days off. If it was Sunday morning, she would be with her horse at daylight. So I was very impressed by that, and I wasn’t surprised to see her work that hard, either.”

Jones is far less verbose about his own role on screen. George Briggs, the titular homesman, is a wry, grumpy thief who gets roped into the cross-country trip after Cuddy saves him from hanging. The character is a bit of a rascal, providing some needed comic relief. And no, Jones does not have trouble directing himself as an actor.

“They’re simply two different jobs,” he states. “No, I don’t notice any varying degrees of difficulty.”

He also had little problem doing the sort of cowboy work that Swank had to work so hard to master: Jones is a rancher with an extensive interest in cattle, as he explains to Yahoo.

“We’re in the horse-and-cattle business, and those ranches are in central Texas in the northern end of the hill country,” he says. “The headquarters of those ranches is what I would call home, I’m registered to vote in that county. We also maintain a house in San Antonio, where the doctors and the lawyers and accountants are, and the dentists. We have a place in Palm Beach County, Florida. We have a place in Santa Fe County, New Mexico. And a place in Argentina.”

You can see The Homesman this weekend, and then visit Tommy Lee Jones’ dentists in San Antonio.

Photo: Hitfix