Tommy Lee Jones doesn’t appear onscreen until about 20 minutes into “No Country for Old Men,” the new film from the Coen brothers. At that point, things have already gotten so creepy – Javier Bardem’s psycho in a Prince Valiant haircut emptying cattle-gun bolts into people’s foreheads, for starters – that you feel yourself breathing a sigh of relief when Jones shows up in a Texas sheriff’s outfit.
It’s about time, you think. Tommy Lee’ll straighten this mess out and still make it home in time for dinner.
Of course, this being Cormac McCarthy as interpreted by the guys who brought you “Blood Simple” and “Fargo,” it doesn’t quite work out that neatly. But that’s the role Jones has come to occupy in our collective imagination. His craggy face, with its unapologetic eye-bags and well-worn frown creases, has become our cinematic moral compass. His Texas lawman character is the closest thing we have to a cowboy of the New West, meting out justice of the complex, modern-day variety.
It’s a role he’s been developing for decades now, though it’s hard to pin down whether he cemented it with 1993’s “The Fugitive,” as a U.S. Marshal trailing Harrison Ford’s Richard Kimble like a bloodhound, 1989’s “Lonesome Dove,” in which he played Woodrow Call, another Texas ranger.
In any case, he’s carved out a unique space for himself: the intellectual voice of righteousness. He’s more likely to be troubled than trigger-happy, but we feel comfortable putting the film’s resolution in his hands, because we know he knows right from wrong, and will shame those who don’t.
We went to the source to find out how he does it – with, it must be said, some measure of trepidation. Jones is, as Roger Ebert has said, “most at home in characters who mean business and do not suffer fools gladly.” And his approach to interviews legendarily hews closely to that philosophy.
“Tommy’s red flags don’t pop up slowly,” offers Josh Brolin, Jones’ “No Country” co-star. “They’re all there in the beginning. But, I mean, somebody who’s too open in the beginning, that’s a little suspicious.”
So it was a pleasant surprise to find the actor if not effusive, every bit the gentleman when The Post called his “people” to arrange an interview, and Jones himself happened to pick up the phone, ready to chat.
“Well, that’s very nice,” he drawls, when we inquire about his feelings on becoming an American icon. “I appreciate you even speculating about that. I just try to take the best of what’s available. And I like working at home – that’s always a plus.”
Home, of course, is Texas, where Jones runs a cattle ranch and lives with his wife and daughter. When he’s not shooting movies, he’s riding horses and hunting. You will not find him in “Just like us!” paparazzi shots, because paparazzi don’t generally like to be near cattle.
In fact, Jones’ enduring popularity seems due, in part, to his extremely low tolerance for sycophants and publicity nonsense of any sort. Many are the stars who’ll high-handedly tell you they don’t like the concept of celebrity, but few of them are willing to call out reporters on stupid questions, as Jones has been known to do.
“This one guy came into a hotel at a press junket,” Jones says, “and sat down – I’d never met the guy in my life! – he sat down and turned his tape recorder on and said, ‘OK, tell me why you’re such a bastard.’
“They make up their minds beforehand,” he says with just a hint of growl. “It’s not a bunch of rocket scientists you’re sitting down with.”
Whereas Jones, as you may have heard, is a Harvard grad with a degree in English literature (and perhaps the world’s most well-known college roommate: Al Gore). Nothing seems to get him as animated as talking about good books.
McCarthy, in fact, is a friend who happened to be one of his favorite authors long before the Coens came calling. But don’t call him a fan, he says: “People are fans of baseball players and rock stars. I think someone of Cormac’s stature would more appropriately be served by ‘readers’ than ‘fans.’
“But maybe,” he says, getting warmed up, “there’ll be, like, Great Writers cards! A Cormac McCarthy card with a bibliography on the back. There’s an idea. I’ll trade you three Philip Roths for one Cormac.”
Jones brought that literary sensibility to his directorial debut, 2005’s “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,” reportedy distributing copies of Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” to the cast, so they could steep themselves in alienation.
And, speaking of aliens, there was his delightfully out-of-left-field role in the “Men in Black” movies. His extraterrestrial law enforcement officer, Agent K, partner to Will Smith’s cocky Agent J, was an unexpected entry in a resume that hasn’t been heavy on the humorous fare. (His Two-Face/Harvey Dent in 1995’s “Batman Forever,” the campiest of the Batman movies, was another.)
More recently, Jones has been sticking closer to home: The landscape of Texas and its neighboring states have played a central role in Jones’ films. Most notable is “Melquiades Estrada,” shot largely on Jones’ own property, but also “No Country,” shot in Texas, and “In the Valley of Elah” and “The Missing,” which filmed in New Mexico.
This makes sense, since Jones at his best is sort of a humanized version of the unforgiving Southwest landscape. “Melquiades Estrada,” which won a best actor award for Jones at Cannes, as well as a best screenplay award for Guillermo Arriaga, was a tour de force of those key Jones qualities. As rancher Pete Perkins, he takes it upon himself to dole out poetic justice for his friend’s murder because he knows the law will fail him.
And in “In the Valley of Elah,” out earlier this fall, Jones starred as the father of a troubled soldier returning from Iraq. Much of the film centered simply on his quietly anguished face, and concluded with a condemnation of U.S. foreign policy that was so shockingly effective because it came from Jones. If anybody is the antithesis of a wacky liberal, it’s that guy. (Just try to imagine, for example, saying that to his face).
Brolin compares his cattle-driving co-star to the emblematic actors of another geographic region: “New York’s got Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. [The West] has Tommy Lee Jones.” When Brolin was researching a western role early in his career, he watched Jones’ old movies to hone his Texas accent: “Blue Sky,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and “Rolling Thunder,” a 1977 vigilante movie which so inspired Quentin Tarantino that he named his production company after it.
But ask Jones about the intensity of the violence in his newest film – there’s more blood spilled here than in all the other Coen movies combined – and he’ll give you a typically plain-spoken answer.
“I don’t think it’s too violent. The subject matter is violence. It’s contemplated by Cormac’s book, and therefore by the movie, because the directors and writer are honest people who respect the author.”
Just don’t ask him to watch “Hostel” or “Saw.”
“I don’t think violence is a good thing when it’s prurient, when it’s offered as pure entertainment,” he says. “I don’t like movies where people get chopped up with chainsaws. I have no objection to violence, but I really don’t like prurience.”
Here you almost get the echo of a character played by another of his famous college buddies: John Lithgow, who starred as the anti-dancing preacher in “Footloose.” ?Jones will take on a character with a touch of the fire-and-brimstone in his next movie, “In the Electric Mist,” a deep-South mystery based on the novel by James Lee Burke.
“I play a detective in a sheriff’s department in southern Louisiana – the guy is quite moral, if not sanctimonious.
“But,” he adds, “he’s a good police officer, and a good daddy.”
And that, he says, is as far as he’s delving into that.?As for what he thinks about the general state of movies today, his response is textbook Tommy Lee: “Most of ’em are in color.”
Tommy guns
Wisdom from five classic Tommy Lee Jones characters
* The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
Pete Perkins: “You try to run away again, and I’ll kill you. I guess you know that by now.”
* Men in Black (1997)
Agent K: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals, and you know it.”
* The Fugitive (1993)
Marshal Samuel Gerard: “Don’t ever argue with the big dog, because the big dog is always right.”
* Lonesome Dove (1989)
Woodrow F. Call: “Better to have [a gun] and not need it than it is to need it and not have it.”
* Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)
Doolittle “Doo” Lynn: “If you knew Loretta, you’d know that ain’t no act.”