Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 28, 1992 TAG: 9203280351
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JERRY BUCK ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Voight stars in HBO's "The Last of His Tribe," based on a true story about an anthropologist who discovers a survivor of an Indian tribe that had been thought extinct. The movie premieres on the cable network tonight - Saturday - at 8 p.m.
"Native people have long been a concern of mine," says Voight, "and when I found that Graham Greene would be involved it really became stimulating."
Voight plays Alfred Kroeber, an anthropologist at the University of California, and Greene is Ishi, who had been living in the wilds until he was found in 1911 and discovered to be the last living Yahi Indian.
Greene was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Kicking Bird in "Dances With Wolves."
The movie also stars David Ogden Stiers, Jack Blessing and Anne Archer. It was written by first-time screenwriter Stephen Harrigan and directed by Harry Hook.
Voight won an Academy Award as best actor for "Coming Home" in 1978. He's also starred in such films as "Midnight Cowboy," "Table for Five," "Desert Bloom," "Conrack" and "Runaway Train."
The list of Hollywood's heavy hitters seen on cable TV is growing.
In coming months, Oscar winners Sissy Spacek and Robert Duvall and Oscar nominee Laura Dern star in movies for Home Box Office. Arnold Schwarzenegger directs his first movie, "Christmas in Connecticut," for Turner Network Television, to be televised in April. Richard Dreyfuss, another Oscar winner, starred in the HBO movie "Prisoner of Honor" last fall.
Steven Spielberg is producing six movies for TNT. Barry Levinson, Oscar-winning director of "Rainman," is developing an HBO miniseries on CBS founder William S. Paley. Francis Ford Coppola is preparing a movie about Lenny Bruce for HBO.
Academy Award-winner Diane Keaton directed a movie for Lifetime and will star in one for HBO. Oscar winner Michael Caine, James Woods and Sean Young will also appear in HBO movies.
Voight played Dr. Robert Gale in a TNT movie about the American doctor who aided the people who suffered radiation poisoning at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union.
HBO's "Tales of the Crypt" has been a place for Schwarzenegger, Michael J. Fox, Richard Donner and Tom Hanks to try their hand at directing small productions.
Voight says he didn't meet Greene until they began rehearsals for "The Last of His Tribe."
"I was deeply impressed with his performance in `Dances With Wolves,"' he says, "but I didn't know what kind of a man he was. With Ishi, you have to fall in love with this fellow. So I wanted to know if Greene was that good an actor or was he like the character. Plus, he had to learn a new language.
"I talked to him, found he had done a lot of theater. He's very gifted, and he was a delightful fellow."
Voight says he is dedicated to preserving Indian culture and is drawn to Indians by their deep spirituality.
"They have a law for every aspect of their lives and a prayer for it," he says. "Before the scenes in which the Yahis are slaughtered everyone came together in prayer. The night before there was a prayer to the ancestors and there was a cleansing prayer.
"We were on a very tight schedule, but the director and every one took the time to show their concern. I believe the result was a better understanding of what the film was about. It was a moment that stayed with us all."
Voight says he learned from a friend who had studied under Kroeber that he was a very dignified man.
"Something happened with Ishi and Kroeber left anthropology for a while," he says. "But then he returned to preserve the language. Something so powerful and beautiful had changed his life."
Voight says what apparently happened between the two was that Kroeber was so interested in his scientific inquiry that he tended to regard Ishi as a specimen. In the movie, Ishi tells him he doesn't think he has a place in his heart for him.
"That's true in a sense," he says. "But at the same time there are the people who helped pass down the heritage. It was difficult for Kroeber the scientist. That's the story of the movie: the scientist who learns from the man he first regarded as an artifact."
Voight grew up in Yonkers, N.Y., where his father, a golf pro, told stories every night.
"Many of his stories were about this wise Indian who talked to the birds and animals. As I grew up I saw portraits of native people as dangerous savages. I think all of us feel something quite horrendous took place in this land. I think you can say what happened to the native people was genocide.
"As an adult I came into contact with the native people and found the picture my father had painted actually existed. I started to focus on their cause because they were demeaned and put down and taken advantage of."
by CNB