Harrison Ford gets behind ‘Firewall’

With more than his share of commercial fortune from his “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” days, plus hits such as “Witness,” “Working Girl” and “Presumed Innocent,” Ford is unconcerned about maintaining blockbuster status in Hollywood.

“I don’t have to be on top anymore. I just have to be available,” Ford said. “Yes, you certainly hope for some success for your films, because there’s a lot of money invested, and you want to see people get their money back, at least.

“But the business is far less predictable than it used to be. The competition is greater, the time allotted in a theater for the movie to find its audience is less, the cost of advertising is higher. It’s just become more complicated, and at the same time, the movies that seem to be making money, become box-office successes, are kinds of films that I’ve never really done that much.”

An airplane pilot, Ford is up to speed on computer-navigation technology but skeptical that many of the latest gadgets are worth the bother. He prefers music on vinyl over digital sources, uses e-mail sparingly and occasionally will watch a movie on a portable device while traveling.

His character in “Firewall” is a techno-whiz, jury-rigging bits and pieces from cell phones, fax machines and MP3 players.

Ford no techie
Ford said he would be lost trying any of that himself, finding technology a perpetual-motion process that forces users to continually upgrade.

“I think it becomes an end in itself. Obviously, the business end of technology is you’ve got to keep changing and improving your products in order to keep selling new ones. So the minute you accept that technology is useful in a particular area, then you’re buying into a whole endless chain of improvements that might be brought forth to deal with something that was really simple before.

“I mean, I used to love making lists. Lists were very important to me. I physically had something I could cross off. It’s not the same anymore.”

Ford feels the same about Hollywood’s new age of computerized visual effects, which have been embraced by colleagues Lucas on “Star Wars” and Spielberg on “Jurassic Park,” “War of the Worlds” and other sci-fi spectacles.

The latest “Star Wars” trilogy clearly was not Ford’s cup of tea (“They’re just different kinds of films for a different audience. Twenty years has made a big difference in the audience’s taste,” he said.).

Keeping it on the human scale
Bigger, better computer pyrotechnics dwarf the drama of the characters’ plight, Ford said. His own climactic smackdown with Bettany in “Firewall” is a bloody, sweaty duel whose stakes are clearly that one man has to die.

“What we’ve lost is the impulse to keep things at human scale. We’ve gone for effect rather than affect,” Ford said. “It’s a shame, because I think this little fight scene in this movie is a good example of how emotionally powerful a gritty little fight scene can be.

“Whereas, a lot of what passes for action in some films I’ve seen is nothing more than a display of kinetics. You don’t even know where the punch came from or who threw it. It’s ‘Pow! Whack! Wham!’ And then somebody can fly all of a sudden. Give me a break. How do people emotionally relate to that? They don’t. They just sit back and then emotion becomes not an issue in it. It becomes just a visual experience.”

The new “Indiana Jones” film will stick to old-fashioned, Saturday-matinee fisticuffs, Ford said.

Spielberg and Lucas have kept the story a secret, saying only that “Indy 4” would take place after World War II. Can Ford add any details?

“It’s set after World War II,” Ford wisecracked, with his characteristic stone face.

And will Connery be back as Indiana’s professorial pop?

Without a pause, Ford reiterated, “Sometime after World War II.”

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