UPDATE: Check out our full Elijah Wood interview right here.
Back on August 25th, The Hollywood Reporter let us all know that Emilio Estevez was not done with the film world as his passion project, Bobby, was not going to be abandoned. The article let us know that Estevez had Anthony Hopkins and Demi Moore lined up for his feature on Robert F. Kennedy and now a bit more casting has fallen into our lap.
While doing his press tour for Everything is Illuminated I had a chance to sit down for about an hour with Elijah Wood here in Seattle and believe it or not there was more to talk about than Starbucks coffee. While I am still putting together the rest of the interview, which will cover everything from Illuminated to Elijah’s passion for music I felt this tidbit was too good to wait.
Wood told me that he is up for a part in Estevez’s Bobby and went rather in-depth with the storyline, check out what he had to say below, but be warned there are a few spoilers as far as storyline goes, nothing major, but I would hate for anyone to be upset by it.
Elijah: There’s a couple of things kinda on the horizon, nothing’s properly set up yet.
Q: Anything you can talk about?
There may be a music biography coming up, something that scares the shit out of me. It’s someone I am extremely passionate about, and yeah… That’s coming up, but that’s way in the future.
There’s actually a movie that I am pretty sure will happen called Bobby, it’s kind of just starting. Emilio Estevez wrote a script based on the day that Bobby Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel and it’s basically this really fantastic ensemble cross-section of people from all walks of life at the Ambassador Hotel on the day that he comes to give his speech and was shot, just a fantastic script. Great homage to the hotel, to that time and obviously to that man and kind of what happens to these characters as a result of that happening, and it ends with his speech, it’s really extraordinary.
Q: Did Emilio approach you for this role specifically?
Elijah: Yeah.
Q: What will your role in the film be?
Elijah: Well, it’s a man who is marrying a woman who is actually in love with his brother, but he is marrying this woman just so that he can avoid the draft during Vietnam and he ends up falling in love with her, and they end up falling in love with each other.
It’s like a tiny little snippet of life, I mean all of these stories don’t really relate to a greater picture, it’s just these snippets of life at that time in America, in the Ambassador Hotel.
Q: And the script is just phenomenal?
Elijah: It’s really, really excellent. It’s an ambitious script, I mean it’s a huge cross-section, it goes down to the wait staff and what’s going on with them, and he gets it from all sort of classes, it’s really interesting. The people that manage the hotel and what they’re going through leading up to this speech, and then he gives the speech and was shot and then the aftermath and it ends with the speech kind of trailing off.
And it’s really interesting because the speech is incredibly poignant for today’s world, extremely relevant, I mean it was relevant than, there was obviously social and political strife then too. It was during Vietnam, coming out of the Civil Rights Movement and it was like two or three days previous that Martin Luther King had been shot, but the speech definitely echoes a lot of that, and it is all about us as Americans and as people across the world who need to stand together and to unite our visions and we can overcome this stage.
I mean, I was reading that speech and I was like… Fuck, we need to hear this kinda shit now! So, I actually think it could be a really important film to illuminate an American perspective and an American ideal that doesn’t really exist anymore… very interesting.
As for the speech itself, I have scoured Google looking for it and all I can find is that it was a “rousing victory speech,” which doesn’t help us much, if someone has it or knows where I can find it to share with our readers please shoot me an email.
