EMILIO ESTEVEZ
AFTER DECADES TOILING IN INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING, EMILIO ESTEVEZ HAS RETURNED TO ONE OF HIS MOST-LOVED CHARACTERS IN ONE OF THE BIGGEST FRANCHISES IN HIS HISTORY. THERE WAS JUST THE SMALL MATTER OF COVID TO DEAL WITH...
Sadly, doesn’t contain the question: which would you rather fight: a Mighty Duck the size of a horse, or a hundred Emilio Estevezes?
NNOVEMBER 2019: EMPIRE meets Emilio Estevez at a private members’ club in London’s Soho to talk about his latest passion project The Public: one of the films he’s made in the years “in the wilderness”. Then, Mighty Ducks the TV show is just a rumour. February 2021: after a failed Zoom, Empire is on the phone with Emilio Estevez, who’s at home in Malibu. Mighty Ducks the TV show (called Game Changers) is not just now confirmed, it’s in the can. While exciting to ice-hockey fans over 40, it’s probably the least dramatic thing that’s happened in the 15 months between our two conversations. A global pandemic (you may have heard about it) has pretty much shut the world down. Everything stood still; in many places still does. Apart from when it came to Estevez, his crew and co-stars, who somehow got a show shot, through pilot stage, into post and now poised to hit Disney+. And here we were feeling accomplished for managing a bit of banana bread and cutting our own fringe…
Hi, Emilio! It’s been a strange year...
It has been very strange since then. It was soon after we met that we started production on the show. And then, of course, we shut down until this past September. So we had this long hiatus in-between shooting the pilot and resuming to finish up Season 1. On one hand I was grateful to be employed while so many millions were out of work and struggling. On the other hand, [I was] questioning the wisdom of going back to work, and at what risk? Because obviously, you can’t… even with the testing, there’s no way to monitor — unless you’re living in one of those bubbles — what the crew and their loved ones are doing, during their weekends, their time off. So regardless of the testing, it was always like, “Okay, when are we going to get shut down?” That fear was always very present.
It must have been strange making a show when so much of the rest of the world had stopped...
It was bizarre. And in truth — and this is something that I didn’t go public with — I got sick early on. And so I got Covid in March, when it was very difficult to get a test. And then it — when you reverse-engineered when I became infected — could have been during the show. I chose not to go public about it. I thought, “I’m going to protect the production.” And there was so much unknown. And so I kept quiet about it and I was of two minds. The first was that as a public figure, if I were to talk about it, I could shed some light. This is a very serious disease, which I think we all knew, but I think a lot of people didn’t know anybody that had it. And certainly the people that I would meet, after I was no longer infectious, would say to me, “Well, you’re the first person I know who’s had it.” It cut both ways. One, protect the show, protect the production and myself to a certain extent. But then being a walking PSA to advocate for wearing the masks and washing our hands and staying away from loved ones to risk infection. So again, I’m sure you can understand it was a very difficult decision for me. And I also didn’t want to be remembered as somebody who got sick on the show, and have that hanging over us. We were very fortunate that we were able to shoot our entire season uninterrupted.
And how are you now? Have you fully recovered?
I have. I mean, there’s obviously some… the long-haul effects are real. And there’s been some brain fog and some level of fatigue and getting my lungs back working at 100 per cent. It was challenging. The first few months were very, very challenging. But thank God I wasn’t hospitalised. And I’m able to work out and be at close to my best, or near dammit.
And tell me about playing Gordon Bombay again in The Mighty Ducks after, what, 20, 24 years?
There are only two characters that I ever would’ve considered returning to — one of them was Gordon Bombay and the other is William H. Bonney [from Young Guns]. And that is in large measure, because — and I know this is going to sound odd — but because I drive a lot, we may have talked about my road trips. Hollywood has a tendency to ignore what’s going on in the centre of the country. And yet they, Hollywood, depends on audiences from the middle of the country to go and see their product. I, on the other hand, I drive through them because I find that’s the best way to get a sense of what’s going on in the country. I would spend time in Ohio and people would stop me on the street and say, “We really miss you in the movies. Is there any possibility that you’d consider coming back as Gordon Bombay or Billy The Kid? We just loved those characters.” If three people tell you you’re drunk, it’s probably time to sit down. So, I thought I’ve been in the wilderness, if you will, in the independent film world for the last 25 years, and really marching to the sound of my own drum. And the great thing and the worst thing about independent filmmaking when you’re on your own is that you don’t have anybody to talk to. And you’re really sort of at sea. And especially if, like I do, I make these films without getting guaranteed distribution. So I go to sleep at night literally sweating about whether or not anyone’s going to see the film. And with this, it was an opportunity to go back to work, to participate in something that I knew people would actually see, and pay tribute to the fans.
The Mighty Ducks 3 was released the same year as The War At Home, which you said was the first time you’d made a film for you. So is this almost coming full circle?
Absolutely. It was a bit of a deal with the devil on The War At Home, where I forfeited my salary on Mighty Ducks 3 in exchange for the studio financing, at least the US part of the budget. And The War At Home was released in four theatres. One of which experienced a flood on opening night.
So three theatres...
So three theatres: one in LA, essentially, and two in New York. And beyond that, it never really saw the light of day. It never got the
wide distribution. And then of course The Mighty Ducks 3 comes out and is released in 2,500 theatres. God, wow, that’s a bad deal.
That must’ve been quite bruising — four theatres for something that you clearly believed in…
Well, of course. But the roads are paved with directors that have good intentions and pet projects that they believe in. Again, that’s one of the dangers of going into an independent film situation where you don’t have guaranteed distribution before you make it.
The War At Home was the first time you worked with your dad?
It was the first time that I directed him. The story was based on a play — I had read it and thought it would make a terrific adaptation. And I thought it would be a terrific role for my father, who at the time had not… The West Wing was still years off. I thought that he hadn’t had a really good role in a film in a while. And so I thought, “This is a great opportunity, not only for he and I to work together as father and son, but also as a showcase for his talent.”
Something struck me when I re-watched the first Mighty Ducks film, which is that it’s really about fathers and sons.
No, indeed. What works best for me in The Mighty Ducks, especially in the first one, is the humanity. And it is about very real emotions, and the loss of the father. And so I think that where that movie works best is not in the jokes, and even not really in the hockey. It really works best when it deals with the relationships. And that’s what we’ve really tried to do [in Game Changers]. We really tried to lean into the relationships with the show, and mirror a lot of the emotion that was present in the first Ducks film. I hope we’ve succeeded. I hope we’ve made a worthy successor to the first film.
Do you think that humanity is the thread in your work, whether it’s independent film, a studio film or this?
I do. I think if anybody is interested in how
I see the world, I think you’d look at Bobby, The Way and The Public. And that’s a pretty fair example of how I see things and how I believe that we’re all connected in our humanity and our brokenness. And I think that’s a common thread, not only in my films, but for all human beings. I don’t think anybody walks the Earth pain-free. I think we all have either generational trauma, or personal trauma, childhood trauma. And I think that that’s key to all of the recent work that I’ve done — examining that level of trauma and how it manifests.
Your social consciousness is apparent in your passion projects — does that come from being a family of activists?
I think that my work has definitely been informed by how I was raised by my father’s activism. Growing up, I would watch on television and see my dad get arrested. And oftentimes he’d be carted away on television and thrown in the back of a police car. And oftentimes he’d be reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and he would look absolutely mad. And as a young man watching that happen to his father — there was a sense somewhat at the time… I was a little bewildered. And you could say maybe embarrassed on some level, I didn’t understand it. Until I started walking my own path and making films that I thought were reflective of how I, again, saw the world and how my view of the world was shaped through his actions, through his commitment.
Do you ever feel a sense of responsibility with a platform and a profile?
I think as artists we have that responsibility. We do have that platform and that pulpit, and there comes a responsibility with what we ultimately put out in the universe for people
to consume. And especially now, where people are consuming all of their entertainment from the confines of their home, where we’re now invited into people’s lives at a level that we’re there… We’re not really competing with a whole lot of other stimulus. So I think that with that comes even a greater responsibility to create stories that matter, content that matters. We can’t just be making widgets. And I know that it’s kind of a Wild West now in terms of the streamers. And it feels like it’s just content for content’s sake, rather than saying, “Hang on. We have a responsibility here to not just create the widget, but what’s going into that widget? What’s going into that content?” And just being mindful.
Doing these bigger projects, does it allow you to do the smaller projects?
Certainly. And it used to be, you’d say, “Well, you do two for the studio and then one for yourself.” Now independent filmmaking is so difficult. It takes so much time to raise the money to go out there and put the project together, to get actors to commit. But in the last decade, all I’ve been doing is the passion projects. All I’ve been doing is the independents. And so that is very costly. Oftentimes we were doing The Way, we were funding the prep on our credit cards. That sort of stress is, on one hand, it’s exciting, if you’re 20 years old, but if you’re a vet like I am, and you’ve got everything on the line, it’s not necessarily the thrill that I go and search out anymore.
You clearly love the character and the world of The Mighty Ducks. But after so long in the wilderness, was it odd to go back into a studio system?
Oh, well, of course. I mean, you know that you’re going back into a world where it’s a machine that is already in motion, that there’s a built-in audience, not only with the franchise, but with the studio... You know that the studio is going to spend a certain amount of money, not only on the project, but also on the marketing and distribution. And you know that you’re going to get out there and be seen. And so there’s a safety in that.
Before the TV show, there’d been rumours for years about a fourth film. Was that ever really in the works?
Well, I think I had heard several rumours like you, that they’d written a couple of treatments for ‘The Mighty Ducks 4’. But nobody ever approached me seriously about it until this situation.
And what is it about The Mighty Ducks, Young Guns, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire — these films that have stuck for decades that still resonate?
Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t know if it’s because of the technology. And what I mean by that is that these were movies that were available during the VHS craze. VHS came into existence and people would play these tapes over, and over, and over again — it was the advent of in-home cinema. And so, families were able to sit and watch your film over and over again. And as a result, I think that these characters and these stories became ingrained in the popular culture as a result of how exhausted these VHS tapes were. As opposed to now, you have a generation of Youtube stars. It’s much more of a disposable generation. And it doesn’t have the same resonance as these films did, 20, 30 years ago.
With your filmmaking, are you creating something lasting, that isn’t just of that moment?
Of that moment. That’s correct. That’s true. And to that, people have, years after the fact, said, “Wow, I’m surprised I didn’t see this film when it came out. My gosh, thank you for making it.” And it was that way with The Way. A lot of people are now discovering The Public who dismissed it when it was released. And Bobby, a lot of people have taken another look and said, “Okay. Now this is not to be completely discarded, [as it was] at the time. This is something we need to take another look at.”
Well, you had a very long-standing ovation at Venice for Bobby.
I did. Yeah. That was fun. Just getting invited to Venice and being in consideration for the Golden Lion. That’s not something I ever aspired to: “Wow, okay. This is cool.”
THE MIGHTY DUCKS: GAME CHANGERS IS ON DISNEY+ FROM 26 MARCH