The director who left Jeff Bridges awestruck: “I remember feeling a little uncomfortable”
When your father is a famous film star, you’re going to meet some cool people growing up. This would have been the case for Jeff Bridges, whose old man, Lloyd, co-starred in movies alongside Humphrey Bogart, Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, and more.
When his own career took off, the younger Bridges made his own esteemed list of Hollywood pals in John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and those are just his co-stars from Coen brothers movies.
Speaking of, Joel and Ethan are just two of the highly accomplished directors Bridges has had the pleasure of working with. He’s been in two of Terry Gilliam’s movies, the acclaimed drama The Fisher King and the absolutely bonkers Tideland, and got his big break in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show. Michael Cimino directed him in both Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and (regrettably) Heaven’s Gate, and he played an ethereal alien opposite Karen Allen in John Carpenter’s cult favourite, Starman.
According to the man himself, however, one famous filmmaker had an impact on him greater than any other. That was John Huston, the double Oscar winner, renegade genius, father of Anjelica, and scourge of Jack Nicholson. He worked with Bridges twice, once as an actor on the black comedy Winter Kills and once as a director for the boxing movie Fat City, and it’s safe to say he left quite an impression on the young icon-in-the-making.
“I was very much in awe of John,” the star told Paul Freeman of Pop Culture Classics of their time together on Fat City. “He didn’t do anything to make me feel any different, which was an interesting directorial choice. But that kind of worked for my character. I remember feeling a little uncomfortable during that show. But I think it’s a good movie. So being comfortable really doesn’t really have anything to do with the final product.”
Released in 1972, Fat City tells the story of Billy Tully, played by Stacy Keach, a has-been fighter who attempts to get back in the ring. Bridges plays Ernie Munger, Tully’s much younger sparring partner who eventually becomes his fiercest rival. The film did well amongst critics—it was the “surprise hit of this year’s Cannes Film Festival”, if the quote on the poster is to be believed—and lifted Huston out of something of a slump. There’s even a rumour that Muhammad Ali saw the film and was gobsmacked at its accuracy.
Huston is one of those directors who come along once or twice in a generation. His staying power was simply phenomenal, as he had hits in pretty much every decade of his career. If you told a random stranger that The Maltese Falcon, Annie, and The African Queen were all made by the same person, they’d probably recommend you see a doctor. If you then told that person that the aforementioned individual also had starring roles in Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Chinatown, and the Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit, they’d cart you off to the psych ward themselves.
It’s clear that Bridges has precisely the right amount of respect for the legend that was and is John Huston. To have worked with someone so seminal so early in one’s career must have been truly head-spinning, an honour most actors would give their left leg for.
