And Montreal itself is really extraordinary. The crews up there are good, the people are great. Timothy Rhys, MovieMaker Magazine (MM): You shot Affliction in Montreal, didn’t you? When he strode out to greet me, I was a bit surprised because, although he fills the room with his presence, as advertised, apart from the imposing height, toothy grin and father-of-all-pitch-men voice, the first thing I noticed about James Coburn was not the coolness, but the warmth of the man. That all finally changed in March, of course, when he was recognized with an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction. Although I was aware of his crippling bout with rheumatoid arthritis in recent years, it still seemed to me that he was never fully appreciated by Hollywood. And I never understood why, since he’s one of the few actors whose movies I’ll watch for no reason other than that he’s in them. The only problem I ever had with Coburn is that I never saw enough of him. He’s fun to watch, but more than that, even in a cameo, he is a performer who demand to be watched. From the impossible-to-ruffle knife thrower, Britt, in one of my favorite boyhood movies, The Magnificent Seven, to the silky smooth Commodore in Maverick, he has made a career of cool, setting a new standard for every actor who follows him. He was in another room, just finishing a voice-over for a new movie, and as he spoke I recalled some of the characters I’d seen him play over the years. The first thing I noticed was the voice-the rich, booming, God-on-a-mountain voice. Comment James Coburn himself will tell you that it’s sometimes hard to separate the actor from the characters he plays, and since no one in Hollywood has played the Cool Customer longer or better than Coburn, he probably knew exactly what I was expecting as I drove to the Beverly Hills home of his longtime friend and manager, Hillard (“HillY”) Elkins, for the interview I’d scheduled right after I saw Affliction last fall.
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