Stroke of Genius Interview with Jim Caviezel 3/12/04

Acting Like Jones
One passionate actor learns how to swing like a legend
By Jim Gorant si.com 3/12/04

    When the producers of Stroke of Genius, the upcoming movie about the life of Bobby Jones, set out to cast the lead role, they looked at actors who were good golfers - Chris O'Donnell and Mark Wahlberg, to name a few. At the same time, they offered the supporting role of Walter Hagen to an actor named Jim Caviezel, who's starred in The Passion of the Christ, The Thin Red Line, and Frequency, among others. "Hagen had that sort of jaunty air to him," explains producer Kim Dawson, "and in some of his past films Caviezel has been able to convey that same manner." He was happy then when Caviezel called to say, "This is great, I'll do it." But Dawson was less enthusiastic when Caviezel went on to say, "You know, I can also play Jones." As Dawson saw it there were just two little problems with Caviezel playing the main character - he couldn't play golf and he was a lefty.
    Dawson, who does play, knew that getting Caviezel to swing so that he looked more like a professional golfer than a weekend hacker would be difficult. Getting him to swing like Bobby Jones would be nearly impossible, especially righthanded. Caviezel, though, was not so easily discouraged and went on to make his case to star in the film that opens April 30.
    First, he'd already bought the series of instructional films Jones made for Warner Brothers in the 1930s and begun studying them. Second, he'd been a standout basketball player in junior college, which proved he was athletic. And last, the previous year he'd played the lead in The Count of Monte Cristo, a role for which he'd learned to fence so well that he'd performed all of the on-screen swordplay without a double. "He took offense to people thinking he couldn't do it," says Tom Ness, the director of golf instruction at Chateau Elan golf course [outside Atlanta], one of three teachers who worked with Caviezel. "He told me, 'This is what actors do. You tell me what you want, and I do it.'"
    In the end, Dawson and his partners were swayed. "He has a natural grace as an athlete which was evident when we met him," explains Dawson. "That combined with his attitude, his absolute strength of purpose about the movie, convinced us he was right."
    The part secured, Caviezel flew to Texas for four days of intensive instruction with Jim Hardy before the entire cast flew to Scotland to begin filming. Hardy is one of those golf instructors who's become so big-time that he doesn't even teach regular people how to play the game anymore. Instead, he works with a stable of about 15 Tour professionals and designs golf courses with his business partner, Peter Jacobsen.
    "When he got here he was as raw a beginner as there is," Hardy recalls. "He didn't even know how to hold a club. He literally didn't know how to push a tee into the ground and tee the ball up." But if Caviezel's skills didn't impress Hardy, his attitude did. "James Caviezel is as intense and committed a person as I have ever met. Not only was he capable of deep concentration, but he could sustain it for hours while enduring unbelievable physical punishment. He's a very rare individual - almost spooky."
    He needed to be, as his training sessions with Hardy ran eight hours a day, and involved some very difficult coordination. Jones's swing was a lot different from what we're used to seeing today. He made a big hip turn, cupped his wrist, came across the line at the top and actually let go with the last three fingers of his left hand at the top of the backswing to get past parallel. "The swing was a sort of leisurely unwinding of the entire body," says Hardy. "It was a big swing, like John Daly's, but leisurely, like Ernie Els's. And there was a lot more footwork, with the left heel coming up in the backswing and the right coming up on the downswing. There were times I felt more like a choreographer out there than a golf teacher."
    Likewise, there were times Caviezel felt like he was dancing, or more. "It was a waltz," the 35-year old actor says, "and it was definitely frustrating at times. I remember one day the make-up people were mad at me because we were shooting a scene toward the end of Jones' life, so I was wearing a wig. I couldn't hit the shot I needed to and it was making me so crazy I kept grabbing my hair and messing up the wig. But I knew, if the swing didn't look real, we had nothing."
    When he wasn't dancing with Hardy, Caviezel tried visualization with Ness. "Sometimes he would ask me to swing slowly and he would put his hands over mine and close his eyes, just trying to feel the proper motion," explains Ness. "It was interesting because he had no hang-ups about the outcome of the swing. Most of the time he wasn't even hitting a ball, it was just about getting the motion right. In a way it was a lot like teaching kids. Kids just do what the teacher tells them. Adults get all caught up in the outcome and that makes progress much slower."
    Still, Caviezel understood that to convince golfers in the audience that he was for real he had to work on more than just the swing, so he spent time practicing how to look like a golfer. "Jim knew the word about The Legend of Bagger Vance was that Matt Damon didn't really look like a golfer," adds Ness. "He didn't want that to be the case here. He wanted to have it all down, even the mannerisms. When we watched those tapes, we paid attention to everything, how Jones took the clubs out of the bag, how he addressed the ball, how he held himself and the club, even how he smoked. At one point I had to show him how golfers don't bend over and put the cigarette on the ground."
    When it came time to actually shoot the golf scenes Caviezel was just as exacting. After each righty swing, he, the director and whichever instructor was on-set that day would review the tape. "All I did was make sure it looked like a professional swing, that his hands were leading the clubhead, that his elbow didn't fly out, things like that," says Ness. "No matter what, Jim never complained. He'd keep doing it and doing it until it was perfect."
    The performance impressed at least one discerning onlooker, Bob Jones IV, grandson of the man himself. A sports psychologist who lives in the Atlanta area, Jones IV spent at least one full day on the set at East Lake Country Club, where his grandfather learned to play. "To give you an idea of the level of detail involved," he says, "I got a call from them when they were getting ready to film my grandparents' wedding asking if I knew anything about it. Sure enough, I was able to dig up some photos and find a chapter in a book that described it and they followed those items down to the finest points."
    Several years ago BJ IV and the other surviving heirs, his two sisters and four cousins, formed the Jones Family Heirs Trust, to protect and control the use of their grandfather's name and image. "We just want to ensure that anything associated with him is worthy of his name," he explains. "We used to say we never wanted to see Bobby Jones underwear. Now we say, OK, but it's got to be good underwear."
    Their selectivity applied to the movie as well, which the family had to approve. "We saw dozens of scripts over the years but we passed on all of them. They all seemed to fall into one of two categories. Either they were very factual but lifeless, or they were very reverent and set him up as an idol but didn't really capture the person. This was the first script we read that seemed to not only honor his achievements but to really give a sense of the person, of who he was."
    In other words, "He drank, he smoked, he cursed, he yelled and threw his clubs," as Dawson puts it, "and all of that is in this movie." In fact, these aspects of the script helped attract Caviezel to the project. The actor knew almost nothing about Jones before receiving the screenplay, but was impressed with how the man overcame his flaws and was able to transcend golf. He was also plagued by the question that haunts almost everyone who discovers Jones: "What kind of man turns down the money? He was playing in the tournaments anyway. He was winning, so why wouldn't he just accept the check?"
    While Caviezel still may not be able to answer those questions, he certainly has a better understanding of who Jones was and why he's been such an icon for golfers. But that's not the only way the experience has changed him. "I used to hate to watch golf on TV," says Caviezel, "but now I watch it all the time."