Staying Fit
Quiver Distribution/Courtesy Everett Collection
At 88, Tom Skerritt stars in East of the Mountains, S.J. Chiro’s film based on the novel of the same name by author David Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars), about a dying widower who plans suicide but finds truths about life instead. It earned the best reviews of his life — a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the same as Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, and better than Skerritt’s previous movies Alien, M*A*S*H, The Dead Zone and Top Gun. He told AARP about the film, his old pal Robert Redford, his lost Alien death scene and why Harold and Maude did not star Elton John.
Why did you wait until 88 to take your first major film lead?
It’s just part of my focus on building a viable film industry in Washington state. I started The Film School in Seattle, with Stewart Stern, who wrote Rebel Without a Cause. I met David Guterson long ago, and he said, “If we ever make a movie, I'd love to have you be in it.” It came to pass.
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You're the Robert Redford of Seattle’s hot indie film scene — you even played Seattle’s mayor in Cameron Crowe’s grunge opus Singles. And you came up with Robert Redford, right?
Yeah, we were very dear friends in the '60s and '70s. He wanted to be an artist. His teacher tells him, “Your figures are very stiff. Why don’t you go across the street to this acting studio to learn to get a feel of it?” Lo and behold, he went across the street and became Robert Redford.
And you played Reverend Maclean, the father in Redford’s movie A River Runs Through It.
It’s so Americana. I was playing my father — emotionally contained, you never tell your kids that you love them. Nothing has ever moved me as much as that film. Every time I see it, I’m moved on a deeper level. That’s Redford.
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