The Sunset Limited Play Pdf
Emmaline Sasportas
Now comes The Sunset Limited, Jones's television adaptation of McCarthy's 2006 play about a theological debate between a professor (Jones) determined to kill himself and a God-fearing ex-con (Samuel L. Jackson) who has just interrupted the professor's attempt at suicide. The film, which Jones directed, airs Feb. 12 on HBO, and it is based on one of the novelist's lesser-known works, which originated at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre and played off-Broadway in New York. "I read the play a long time ago, and I read it several times since, and I always thought it would be really good," Jones says in a booming voice that does not speak so much as declare. He then pauses, carefully considering his words, which often come out in a spare, two-fisted syntax.
"Tommy Lee is a planner," says Jackson, who's known and been close with Jones since they worked together on the William Friedkin film Rules of Engagement. "So throughout rehearsal, and the whole process of us reading and talking about [The Sunset Limited], he was planning his camera shots, talking to the DP [director of photography]. He definitely had an idea of what the film would look like in his head, before we started to shoot."
Hovering in the wings was McCarthy. During rehearsal, the set was limited to four people: "Sam, me, a script supervisor, and Cormac," Jones says. He calls the experience a "very happy one" and denies that any control issues arose between him and McCarthy, a cultish figure not known for taking things lying down. Indeed, Jones, who jokes that he is "greedy for creative control," seems to have been no less cowed by McCarthy than he is by anyone else. Recalls Jackson: "Sometimes, Cormac would say, 'Well, you know, the actors who did it in Chicago did it that way.' And Tommy Lee would go, 'Well, you got better actors now.' "
Much like the late, iconoclastic actor Dennis Hopper, Jones has parlayed his Hollywood fame into a nuanced, increasingly independent career. His feature-film directorial debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival (for screenplay and for Jones's performance as a West Texas rancher). And the coming Men in Black 3 aside, most of his recent acting roles have been in films made outside the major-studio system, such as The Company Men and In the Valley of Elah.
But if he is considered something of a cultural hero, it's a role he aggressively shuns. An intensely private person, when he is not making films he lives and works on his Texas ranch with his third wife, Dawn, a photographer. Even at this stage in his long career, which took off with his Oscar-winning role in the Harrison Ford thriller The Fugitive, Jones has never accepted the demands of being a Hollywood celebrity. Once, while doing press for Men in Black, he got up and walked out of the room when asked if he believed in aliens. He does not relish interviews, particularly if he feels the questions are too obvious, and he is not above responding to a question with a gruff snarl. (Jackson says that his wife, LaTanya Richardson, who starred with Jones in the 1998 film U.S. Marshals, is good at "defusing" Jones. "She'll grab him by the cheek and say, 'You stop acting like that!' And then tell people, 'Oh, he's not really like that!' ")
Harder questions get a better response from Jones. When asked what he believes the message is in The Sunset Limited, he thinks about it and says: "I don't think there is a message. The idea, it seems, is to make the biggest ideas in the history of the world entertaining and immediate. It would seem, therefore, that the questions become far more intriguing than the answers."
He looks as though he might have more to add, but stops. The precise truth of what he's trying to say has been delivered, and he knows it. His face remains solemn, but in the very corner of his eye there is a barely perceptible glimmer, and you can tell he is pleased.
The Sunset Limited opens January 21 at the Boulevard Theatre in London. The play by celebrated novelist Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, The Road) is a limited engagement scheduled through February 29.
Serving on the creative team is set and costume designer Tim Shortall, lighting designer Ben Ormerod, sound designer John Leonard, and production manager Simon Sturgess. Casting is by Suzanne Crowley and Gilly Poole.
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