A soccer penalty shootout, an (impressive) Elvis Presley impersonation and a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey were all on the agenda at Woody Harrelson‘s Sarajevo masterclass on Tuesday afternoon.
The three-time Oscar nominee graced the stage at the Bosnian film festival for a conversation with film critic Neil Young, hours before Harrelson’s Honorary Heart of Sarajevo ceremony, set to celebrate his decades-spanning contributions to cinema.
At the top of the conversation, Young asked the Natural Born Killers (1994), No Country for Old Men (2007) and The Hunger Games (2012) star about playing 36th U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson in Rob Reiner‘s 2016 film LBJ. The screened clip showed Harrelson, in character, talking on the phone in the White House. He explains to the Haggar Clothing Co. representative on the line that he is “well-endowed” and needs his pants tailoring.
“By the way, that was verbatim,” said Harrelson as the clip finished. “The call was recorded, so that’s exactly what he said.” When Young probed him on why he opted for an LBJ biopic, the actor replied: “I wanted to do it because Rob Reiner asked me to do it, and I really wanted to work with Rob. I just love working with Rob Reiner. I think he was absolutely brilliant, and I think he made a wonderful film.”
As Young took Harrelson — and a feverish audience — through the defining features of his early career, including White Men Can’t Jump (1992) and The People vs Larry Flynt (1996), the pair entertained by coaxing Harrelson into his famed Elvis Presley impersonation, the same bit that prompted the star’s High School crush to persuade him into trying out for the school play. “So yeah, I tried out for a play because Robin Rogers wanted me to.”
Harrelson even regaled attendees with the story of how he landed the role of Woody Boyd on NBC’s Cheers in the 1980s. He had been set for a starring role in the Broadway production of Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues, but he suddenly found himself in the audition room in front of Cheers co-creators Glen and Les Charles and the “possibly the greatest sitcom director in history,” Jimmy Burrows. “Just as she’s opening the door, I blow my nose. I walk in the room, ‘Honk!’ and the entire room burst out laughing. Jimmy Burrows told me later, ‘I knew you had it right then,’” he said.
“I asked everybody,” Harrelson continued about weighing up Broadway and TV. “‘Should I stay true and go back and do Broadway, or should I kind of sell out and do television?’ They said, ‘Do the television show. Do Cheers.’ And my whole life changed because of that.”
After a small sports break showcasing Harrelson’s expert penalty kick in the 2010 SoccerAid match, Harrelson spoke about knowing some of the most prolific actors in the world, including Bill Murray, his Zombieland co-star — “in between the takes he would be sitting there and he’d be writing and thinking, he was constantly working” — and Leonardo DiCaprio: “Leo DiCaprio is such a hard worker, and all of these guys — they’re not just relying on their good looks and charm.”
When Young told Harrelson that he had even managed to win over the hard-to-impress Lauren Bacall, who called the Texan native “a really nice guy,” Harrelson was visibly surprised. “I never heard that before,” he said.
Later, as Young asked Harrelson about receiving his first Oscar nomination for The People vs Larry Flynt, they talked a little about Jerry Maguire — a film Harrelson passed on. “That was a big fuck up,” he admitted to a giggling audience. “They didn’t wanna show me the money! No, I don’t know what the reason was,” he joked. “I fucked up because I read the script, Jim [James] Brooks produced it and I called him and said, ‘Jim, I don’t think anybody’s going to care about this agent.’ He goes, ‘I think you’re wrong, buddy. I think you’re wrong.’ And then about four days later, suddenly Tom Cruise is going to do this part,” said Harrelson. “And I realized, ‘Oh, I think I was wrong.’” Cruise would go on to earn an Oscar nomination for Jerry Maguire, alongside Harrelson that year.
The men opened a bottle of Irish whiskey early in the conversation, in honor of Harrelson’s 1997 war drama Welcome to Sarajevo, which is screening ahead of his Honorary Heart ceremony. “For 10 years old, it’s quite good!” said the actor. “It’s grown a lot [since] back then,” Harrelson continued about coming back to the Bosnian capital. Michael Winterbottom’s film was shot only a year after the city’s siege ended. “We had a curfew and it was very sparse, comparatively. It’s alive and bustling 1787070810, and it’s incredible, the metamorphosis.”
The 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 14-21. Read our conversation with Harrelson’s fellow Honorary Heart recipient, Asghar Farhadi, here.
