Jeff Bridges had never seen a 1950 film called "The Company She Keeps", in which he, at the grand old age of 9 months, plays, in his words, a method baby. He knew that he was in it but not that his mother and brother were too. He whooped at the revelation. He talked most about the famous box office disaster "Heaven's Gate" in which he plays the small part of a saloon owner John Bridges, a distant relative. It's typical of how cool he is about commerce and box office that he shrugged when I mentioned that its budget spiralled from $7m to $42m. He's still great at talking about this cinematic milestone (or millstone), as if its grandeur was a rare moment when it seemed that cinema could do anything.
"Heaven's Gate" got terrible reviews but many critics now think it's wonderful. Flipping the coin, I asked him which of his films are the real bonafide, copper-brassed turkeys, and suggested that his Barbara Streisand directed "The Mirror Has Two Faces" fits the bill. It's always interesting to watch how someone takes such straight talk and he did so with humour, defending its director but acutely assessing its flaws.
From his worst to one of his best, the Coen brothers' "The Big Lebowski". Jeff Bridges is the Dude in that film. The part was written for him, he wears some of his own clothes in the movie, comes alive when he's talking about it, and is still intrigued at why it flopped in America. At the age of 49 he had made his signature film.
After two hours of talk, we said goodbye. One section of our conversation that hit the cutting room floor was Bridges talking about "Fat City", one of legendary director John Huston's best films. You can see that cut sequence exclusively now.
Big Jeff, less sexy than you'd expect, more chatty than you'd expect, one of the most convincing actors of his generation, as graceful on screen as Cary Grant, drove into the impossible sunshine, back up the hill to Montecito, where he lives. Some women would have killed for the afternoon I'd just had, and American cinema needs Bridges more than it knows.
Read about Mark meeting Jeff Bridges - The Dude.
