Terrence Howard

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

There are some people out there who like to believe that actors are merely figures owned by the public taste, paid to do a job, and to stick to that job no matter what, staying out of affairs perceived to not be 'their business'. This may have been the rule back in the days of Hollywood's golden age with movie revenues at an all-time high off a prosperous postwar economic high off of World War II.

I've discovered over the time I've been doing this that the many actors I've come across are more than just mere images or mouthpieces. They are real people with great stories to tell because many of them have to live and breathe the roles they perform in.

Quite simply one of the most impressive actors we've had the pleasure of spotlighting here is Terence Howard. Starting out as an often impressive performer in films ranging from Big Momma's House to The Best Man to Hart's War, he soon got even more critical notice in films like Crash and Ray before he got nominated for a Best Actor Oscar as Memphis pimp DJay in the film Hustle And Flow in 2005.

Howard's latest role is as cameraman Duck in the darkly comic thriller The Hunting Party, which he stars in alongside Richard Gere and Jesse Eisenberg. In the film, the three engage on their own on a mission to find a reputed war criminal known only as the Fox, but the hunters become the hunted when their subject mistakenly believe they work for the CIA. We first asked the 38 year-old actor about his reason for doing this particular film.

'What's beautiful about this film is that they told the truth,' Howard No matter if the French got angry or whether the United Nations becomes angry or whether the CIA becomes angry, whether the Haight becomes angry, or when NATO becomes angry, we told the truth and we tried to tell it in a palatable way.'

The film was partially shot in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, two countries that have seen their share of brutal war during the 1990's. Terance shared with us what it was like filming in both those places.

'Well, we had the benefit of walking around with the actual reporters who went in search of this,' he recounts, 'That was the genius of Harvey Weinstein in this movie. The first place we went to, we arrived in Croatia, flew directly to Sarajevo the next day, and we had three weeks in Sarajevo with no responsibility, but to spend time with these reporters, too go up to where the skis at the Olympics took place, to walk to the city, to spend time with those people. They gave us three bodyguards and they were necessary.'

When asked further why the bodyguards were necessary, he explained the reason in no uncertain terms.

'You got people that were hurt, they'd been hurt over there,' Howard replied, 'You know, they don't necessarily have a good opinion about foreigners, after what foreigners came in there and did or failed to do. And now people want to come in there and exploit their little situation. I'm glad they had them, they turned out to be necessary. But looking in the hurt in some of those people's eyes, my God, half of those people who were extras on the set had lost family members in the war. The other half of them had been raped during that war.'

Terence even shared with us a personal experience he had with one such extra while filming in Bosnia.

'There was a girl,' he recalls, 'She was an extra for about three days and she was the one who took us to a lot of places. And she saw that I was a musician and she loved listening to me play. And she told me she always wanted to play saxophone and her father had always promised she'd buy her a saxophone. And I'd asked her about two weeks when he was getting her the saxophone. He said, no, he can't, he died. And I was like, when, and she went, he was killed during those three days that he lined those men up and just systematically shot 8,000 men and boys.'

'And a week goes by, she never asks for anything, I go over there to the music store and asked her to pick out a saxophone,' Howard continues, 'I bought it and we got into the car and my driver's about to drop her off and she gets out to say goodbye, I said, you forgot something. And she's like, I can't take it. I'm like, why can't you take it, and she's like crying, I can't take it. It's too expensive of a gift. And I'm like, no, you don't get it. If I was to die and my daughter wanted a piano, I would want somebody to buy it for her, so just think of me as her father, I'm giving this to you. And her mother caught me, thanked me, and we left like two days later. I didn't keep in touch, but sometimes, I can hear that saxophone. This is what I think we're supposed to be doing.'

Howard also claims that doing stunts for the film in the recreation of often war-torn areas was neither harrowing nor exciting.

'What you had on set, it was very safe, first of all,' he notes, 'You got, I remember, half of the stuff being exploded around you is like cork. So even if a big chunk of it a foot in size hits you, it's not going to hurt anywhere.'

We also learned that The Hunting Party is loosely-based on an article in the October 2001 issue of Esquire magazine article by journalist Scott Anderson about a group of five war correspondents in Sarajevo who whimsically attempt to capture an alleged war criminal on the run. However, Terence was quick to explain to us why the film adaptation was made into a more darkly comical and fictitious tale.

'People aren't into documentaries,' he explains, 'People need to have their ears tickled a little bit. Sometimes you have to put a little bit of sugar into the coffee, to really get them to wake up.'

He also shared what it was like working with actor Richard Gere.

'We talked'we talked because I know too little and he knows way too much,' Terence claims, 'And that's been the basis of our conversation, too. This very, very, very given point. I told him how the shape of the universe is and he's like, the universe, there's many of them. I'm like, come on, man, give me a break, throw me a bone or something. Yeah, that's the beauty of him, very knowledgeable, very smart, and he's not afraid. He realizes you only get 70 to 80 years on this planet, then you're silenced forever.'

Impressed with the account of his experiences filming there, we asked Terence what he'd say in response to people, like conservative talk radio hosts, who think actors, like his co-star, have no business getting involved with politics.

'There's limits, they go for a week, but to spend two or three months there,' he explains, I don't know, but you know one thing, you tell me. When I was preparing to do a film called Awake, I got to spend two months working at Columbian Presbyterian Hospital. In the OR, I watched over 60 heart surgeries up close. When I got to play Thurgood Marshall, I got to spend time in Washington, behind closed doors, with the Chief Justice. When I was playing a pimp, I got to spend time with a pimp, with many pimps. My perspective, in the places I've been, allowed me to see, if I was not to voice the things I said, I wouldn't be.'

'If I had been given an opportunity to see the world, in a sense, I'm a historian, the same way you guys are the modern-day historians,' Howard adds, 'But that's what I am today and I will have my voice heard. And if I have something good to say, I'll say it's good. If I see it's good, I'll say it's good. If I see it as bad, I'm going to tell you that. Because I have the greater responsibility to truth than even a journalist has because my artistic ability only stems from truth. The moment you compromise that is when you lose that ability. We asked the questions, so who's going to give the answers. Now as actors, that is our responsibility. As human beings, that's our responsibility.'

Finally, drawing on his experiences from filming, he gave us this reason for what he believes is the root cause of such violence and strife that had existed for so long in places like Bosnia and now exists in places like the region of Darfur in the Sudan and in Iraq.

'It's lack of justice, man,' Terence concludes, 'It's the frustration from a lack of justice. We are born with God's qualities, love, justice, wisdom, and power. If we don't see somebody in the position of power, to accomplish and bring justice about, we're going to use our wisdom. And we're going to lose a little bit of our love to do something we have no business doing. I mean, it all cries to the same thing, where are we at as a people' And that's what I love about this film, it raises the question, who are we and what are our responsibilities''