In “Spring Forward,” Tom Gilroy’s closely observed cinematic portrait of two men at opposite ends of the generation gap, Ned Beatty and Liev Schreiber demonstrate exactly what can happen when great character actors are allowed plenty of space in which to practice their craft.
Beatty may have been put on Earth just to play Murph, a career municipal worker whose final year on the job is enlivened by the arrival of Paul, a hotheaded ex-con who becomes his partner. Schreiber’s Paul is the kind of benign hometown mope who napped his way through high school, and then, instead of joining the army, sought momentary prosperity by robbing a doughnut shop.
Over the course of a year — and seven real-time vignettes, featuring cameos by Ian Hart, Campbell Scott, Peri Gilpin and Catherine Kellner — the characters become fast friends.
That’s it; no somersault kicks in the air, no drug overdoses, no references to Quentin Tarantino movies. The men simply talk, bond and learn from each other, splendidly.
If the roles of Murph and Paul feel thoroughly lived in, most of the credit goes to Beatty and Schreiber, naturally. But without Gilroy’s patient direction and appreciation of complete sentences, his intelligent script probably would have been relegated to the stage.
In the year it took to shoot “Spring Forward,” Connecticut’s four distinct seasons changed naturally, the actors’ beards grew and relationships blossomed among the cast and crew. Spend time with Beatty and Schreiber, now, and it’s easy to see how closely they resemble the men they portray on screen.
Recently, Schreiber found the time for afternoon tea on the patio of the Four Seasons Hotel. He had flown out the night before from New York, on his day off from the Broadway production of “Betrayal.” Tall and athletically built, Schreiber, 33, recalled how much he has enjoyed being a character actor, and being allowed to hone his craft alongside such estimable talents as Beatty, Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Diane Lane and Juliette Binoche, his co-star in “Betrayal.”
He has appeared in 30 movies and television productions in the past six years, in addition to doing a dozen or so plays since graduating from the Yale School of Drama in 1992and spending a year at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
At this pace, he’s likely to catch to Beatty — who has needed 29 years to log nearly 120 substantial screen and television credits — by the time he turns 50. It wouldn’t surprise the 63-year-old Louisville native if Schreiber does it sooner than that, however.
“Liev has a quality that I never really had,” said Beatty the next day over a huge bowl of soup. “He’s a high-achiever. In sports, he was aggressive … he was a good player, whether it was basketball or football, and he’s still like that.
“You’ll be around him for any length of time, and you can’t really spend any time in conversation, because his phone will ring and he’ll be making deals.”
When Beatty wasn’t shooting “Spring Forward,” he could mostly be found at his mountain home, near Sequoia National Park. He concedes that he’s slowed down since leaving the TV show “Homicide” but says playing Murph was too good a gig to pass up.
In developing their characters in “Spring Forward,” both actors were able to draw from memory.
After his parents separated when he was 4, Schreiber looked to his grandfather as a surrogate father. While at Hampshire College, he also befriended another older gentleman, a maintenance worker in the athletic department.
“It was very easy for me to relate to Paul’s desire to be understood and accepted by an older man,” Schreiber said. “I very much wanted my grandfather’s acceptance, his love and respect. That desire is functioning full on in Paul.”
Beatty was also about 4 years old when his family moved inland from a section of Louisville. He found his mentor working inside the school across the street from his new home.
“My dad was out on the road all the time, trying to sell fire hydrants, of all things … I can’t even imagine how difficult that must have been,” Beatty said. “I started wandering over to the schoolyard across the street from where we lived, and I got to know the school’s custodian — James Payne — and he’d let me hang out with him. After a while, he’d let me help him empty the wastebaskets and things like that.
“This man had five jobs. He’d leave his job at the school and go down to Sears, to clean up down there.”
Gilroy has said that he came up with the deceptively simple premise for “Spring Forward” after his mother fell into a post-surgery coma, and he and his father took turns at her bedside. During the time they spent together at the hospital, the two men opened up to each other in unexpected ways.
This delayed-bonding experience later would translate into the lengthy conversations between Murph and Paul, as they went about the menial tasks assigned them by the Parks Department.
If Schreiber still is able to find older actors who can teach him a new trick or two, Beatty finds the entertainment industry sadly devoid of peers and mentors.
“It’s a tradition that we’re losing,” Beatty said. “On the movies I work on, not only aren’t there any actors older than me, there’s no one even close to my age. There used to be guys in their 70s and 80s who were wonderful, like Ronald Neame, who was in his 80s when I worked with him.
“He should be teaching younger people how to direct. How many guys are out there directing who don’t have a clue?”
Of course, longevity can be a mixed blessing.
“When you have a long, beautiful body of work, like I do, you never know what people are going to come up with when they start a conversation with you,” Beatty said. “My favorites are a woman came up to me once, and said, `Do you bowl in Tucson?’ Another time, I noticed a guy on my mountain staring at me, and he asked if I sold him a car once.”
