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James Earl Jones lends 'The Voice' to local reading
Sunday, March 19, 2000 By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The Voice. You feel it as much as hear it, deep in the gut where the sound seems to resonate forever. It is the voice of authority, power or evil, depending on how it is used, and it's become a pervasive part of our culture, echoing on film, TV, the stage, radio and even on the telephone whenever we call long distance through Bell Atlantic.
This weekend, James Earl Jones returns to Pittsburgh to lend The Voice to the International Poetry Forum once again. In a phone interview, he talks about the role his vocal presence has played in his career and how poetry has helped him to control a lifelong battle with stuttering.
Q: You've been here before to work with the International Poetry Forum.
A: One of the best moments I've had with poetry was when I was at [Calvary Episcopal Church in Shadyside in 1982] reading Charles Peguy's "God Speaks" with a choir. I was never so impressed by anything in my life.
Q: Impressed with the poem?
A: The whole experience. There's no way to repeat that, but I keep trying to. I've tried reading the poem in other situations; it's not the same. Somehow the way [Forum President Samuel Hazo] organized the whole event with the choir in that cathedral, I was impressed by it. [This time] I wanted to read a poem that my father had always talked about -- the primary poem I'm going to read called "Go Down Death" by James Weldon Johnson.
Q: I understand that poetry was important for you when you were a kid. There was a stuttering problem.
A: I'm still a stutterer, as you might notice as you listen to me. And it was poetry that sort of restored my power of speech. It started when I was about 5 years old, and I didn't deal with it until I was in high school. And you know how it is, boys at age 14 tend to do things. ... Well, I was a closet poet, put it that way. Things that we didn't like to share too much because poetry was sissy. But I did it in secret [until] my English teacher read one of my poems and said, "It's too good for you to have written. To prove that you wrote it, you have to stand up in front of the class and recite it by heart." I stood up and did it by heart, and no stuttering.
Q: So in challenging you, he ultimately helped you with your stuttering?
A: Yeah. He just said, "Write more poems and come into class and recite them to us."
Q: Was that sort of a revelation to you?
A: Oh, yeah. I had given up. Except for talking to the horses and the animals on the farm and saying basic words to my family, I didn't talk at all. There was a certain relief in that. It spared me having trivial conversations with people. ... There's a relief in a way. A refuge in silence.
Q: What was the cause of your stuttering?
A: I have no idea. I don't pretend to have any answers for other people who stutter. It was indicative of traumas. I was about 4, 41/2, when we moved. We came to live in Michigan, and what should have been a glorious journey for a young, Mississippi black boy for me was traumatic. Once it was resolved that the move was going to happen, I was relieved that I'd be with the family at least. So I didn't talk about it. I didn't complain. I didn't ever express it to anybody.
Q: Was your father into poetry?
A: I don't know my father very well. I still don't, because we didn't have a relationship until I was 25 years old.
Q: It was a broken home?
A: Yeah. But he's always said since I've known him that "Go Down Death" was one of his favorite poems. But [until] Sam sent it to me I hadn't had a chance to really look at it. And now I see why it was my dad's favorite poem.
Q: Why do you think it appealed to your father, or why does it appeal to you?
A: I don't know how to answer that. I've not analyzed it. It is pure poetry, for one thing. It is done in the format of a sermon. It is a way to deal with death, which fascinates me ... because we're all going to have one. This deals with it in basically a religious way, but also a very graceful way. The poem itself is eloquent.
Q: Using The Voice to recite a work like this, do you become an orator?
A: I think oration is fairly self-conscious. Orators intone [stretching out every sound]. I'd be a little self-conscious intoning, except in the case of reading for "Sesame Street" or some animations for Disney. The intoning makes me very self-conscious, and I try to stay away from any self-consciousness.
Q: I thought that you were doing that on purpose.
A: I probably was, in the same way I had to do Darth Vader sort of on purpose -- a certain way, a certain measure and giving due to all the possible sounds. But I try not to do that when I'm acting.
Q: In "Field of Dreams," you seem to orate less.
A: I'll tell you a story about that. When the script came to the house, my wife read it before I got home and she said, "You know, except for the long speech that will probably end up on the cutting-room floor, it's a wonderful piece. You gotta do this movie." And as it turned out the long scene was not left on the floor. We had a choice on the day we filmed that speech about baseball. I considered doing it as an oration, and director [Phil Alden Robinson] and I decided [I'd] just say it, just talk it, low-key it. I don't know which would have worked better.
Q: In what situations do you want to use the tool that you have?
A: When you want to impress with the words themselves. When you want to impress with the idea behind the words you don't intone them, you slip them in, you make them easy to grasp. You would whisper them if that got the feelings and the thoughts across best.
Q: Have there been roles that you've taken because they allowed you to use The Voice?
A: No, but I think I've been hired to use that tool ever since "Star Wars." The so-called voice of authority. I don't seek out roles where the voice is important.
Q: Do you do anything to doctor or maintain it?
A: I never got that self-conscious about it, and I don't take that much care of it. I just want it to sound as natural as possible so that the idea gets through and not just the words.
Q: Where do you believe The Voice works best, film or stage?
A: I was trained for the stage, and because I think I know what I'm doing there, I'm maybe more at home on the stage. But I love doing movies. It's like the way facial gestures [on stage] can be a little more exaggerated than on film. The Voice can have the same problem.
Q: Is there a stage role that you would like to adapt to film?
A: I'll tell you one, the guy I played from Pittsburgh in the play called "Fences" by August Wilson. That was a role I would enjoy [adapting]. In contrast to what I did with the "The Great White Hope," which was basically the same performance I did on stage, I would try something different with "Fences." I would try to bring to the role something that I think film insists on -- obliqueness and subtlety -- whereas stage work is much more frontal and unsubtle.
Q: Do you read poetry?
A: Yeah. I want to create a program where I go to universities and read poetry. My favorites would be Carl Sandburg and maybe Walt Whitman and Robert Frost. August Wilson seems to be an ethnic playwright, but he's much more than that. I think politically he's Afro-centric, but August Wilson has written some poetry that is so universal that if I ever got to know him better, I would try to develop a program of poetry of his to read. He's written some fantastic stuff. I don't know if it's ever been published. But August Wilson the poet is something that [people] really ought to know.
Q: Some people may go to the Poetry Forum reading to bask in the glow of celebrities. How can you focus their attention on the messages behind the words?
A: I don't worry about it. There's a certain job you have to do when you perform, and it has to do with focusing. You use the power of The Voice to frame the message. But I don't know. I'm coming for Brooke Shields, myself.
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Event: "Turn-of-the-Century Impromptu," a benefit.