Terry Kinney. Need we say more? We always want to spend a few minutes with Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney to find out what he's doing, to laugh at his incredible stories and...well, just because it's Terry. Backstage presented Mr. Kinney with the simple question - what's up for you this fall?
I just turned down a huge miniseries, which was this disaster movie that I started reading, and I got to the point where there's a hurricane over Lake Michigan, and I just closed it. I said to myself, "I think I've read enough." But when I called to tell them no, they said, "But, you know, it's this huge amount of money." And I thought, "Wow. I mean, I'm a whore like everybody else; maybe I could live with this. Where is it filming again?" They said, "Winnipeg." And I said, "See, we're going backwards now. If it were Toronto I might just whore myself." And they said, "Oh no, Winnipeg's a booming metropolis now." And I was like, "Oh come on, even you don't believe that. Have you ever been there?" And this guy went, "Have I been there? Uh, no, but I mean I have a lot of clients that go there." And I said, "You go with me, and then I'll go." They had gotten the money so high, it was so, so difficult to turn it down because it was going to put my kids through college! But I said, "My friends will watch this, do you understand?" And he said, "Um, not really. It seems like a win-win situation to me." I said, "Okay, you tell me one win. You know, just one. You don't have to tell me the other win. Just the one." And he said, "It's a lead role." And I said, "Would you say that Charlton Heston's role in Earthquake was a lead, too?" And he went, "Yes, exactly! It's like that!" And I said, "OK, see, so we're not on the same page."
But last summer, I shot this movie called The Game of Their Lives, which should be released this fall. It's about a soccer team in St. Louis in 1950 that went to the World Cup. They were this very disorganized group that hadn't really practiced together, but they ended up winning a game against the English team, who were the favorites. I play the reporter that brought the story to America's attention - actually the only reporter from America at the World Cup that year. The only problem was that I don't know anything about soccer, and I had to pretend like I did. I had to say things like, "They block it at midfield!" and then I'd have to ask, "What does that mean? Oh, that's good? Oh good! Yeah!" So I just took direction, that's all I could do. But I got to see Brazil. Well,
St. Louis and then Brazil.
I'm also excited about the Steppenwolf film stuff that is coming together really well. We're going into pre-production for Diminished Capacity (adapted from the novel by Sherwood Kiraly) in the spring, and we hope to shoot next summer in St. Louis and Chicago. It's a great, beautiful, funny script. Getting films made, though, is really hard. I've been working on Found in the Street (adapted by the Patricia Highsmith novel) for more than eight years and we're still not in production. It's very, very difficult, because of the world of foreign finance and all of the things that help independent films to pay for themselves.
And I spent time with my wife and kids last summer. I feel like a cook sometimes in my career, with food in a lot of pots - some of which are boiling and some of which I don't know what's happening in them. That's an actor's life and it's a director's life, unfortunately, too.