Transcript: The Way A Conversation with Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez

MS. HORNADAY: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Ann Hornaday, chief film critic here at The Post, and it is my great, good pleasure to be joined today by the actors Martin Sheen and Emilio Estévez. Emilio is the writer and director of the 2011 film “The Way”--full disclosure, of which I’m a huge fan--and which also stars his father, Martin Sheen. And as we saw in that introduction, Emilio is also responsible for the movie’s re-release tomorrow, May 16th, which is great news for the many, many fans of this movie.

Martin Sheen, Emilio Estévez, welcome to Washington Post Live.

MR. SHEEN: Thank you very much. Delighted.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: Thank you. It's good to be here.

MR. SHEEN: Thank you for those good words.

MS. HORNADAY: Not at all.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: Thank you, Ann.

MS. HORNADAY: It's a pleasure. We all connected when "The Way" first came out. We had a fun bus ride together from the wilds of Northern Virginia into Washington, D.C.

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[Laughter]

MS. HORNADAY: That was a highlight for me, and it's just really nice to reconnect with both of you.

So, Emilio, let's start with you and you got a--we saw a little clip there of your speaking with Jennifer Hudson about why now, but tell us a little bit more about how this all came together and what motivated you to re-release "The Way" right now.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: Well, the film was essentially sitting in movie jail for the last couple of years. It had been involved in a bankruptcy and a court case where it was sitting in a Delaware court, where it was a motion to abandon rights. My term had ended with the previous distributor in addition to that.

And so I got a call from a company, a boutique distribution company called Ocean Avenue. A guy named Chris Bueno writes to me and says, "Hey, man, I think I can rescue your movie out of this movie jail," and so we set about doing just that.

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Enter Fathom Events who said, "We understand you guys are endeavoring to get this movie back out there. We realize it's been taken down off of all the streaming sites. It is difficult to find a DVD. We would like to release your film back out on screens," and so consequently, here we are. The night of May 16th, we're out on almost a thousand screens across the country, which is bigger than the movie ever had the opportunity to be released when it was first released in 2011.

MS. HORNADAY: You know, that's a great story, and it fills me with hope and joy, you know, that these orphan films or these lost gems aren't always lost and that they do have advocates and ways back. And, I mean, I think over the years, one of the questions I get asked most often is why--where's another movie like "The Way"? I mean, people fell in love with this film, those who were lucky enough to see it.

Martin, what do you think the resonance of the movie is today? I mean, it is so--it's so--it was so prescient in so many ways.

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MR. SHEEN: Yeah.

MS. HORNADAY: And then as Emilio said in the Jennifer Hudson interview, it speaks to our present moment just acutely.

MR. SHEEN: Very, very much so. Yeah, very much so. I think that people are looking for something that was sort of heightened during the pandemic, when people began to hear the birds again and smell clean air, despite the horror of the pandemic and so many deaths, and so they were rejuvenated when the pandemic ended and they were permitted to go outside their homes, and then they wanted to go outside themselves. They wanted to touch that sense of the sacred that exists in all of us. They wanted to find a way, as I often say, to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh, and that's what pilgrimage is all about. You know, the flesh is walking, the spirit is listening, and they come together and they form community with all the other pilgrims in front, behind, and right and left of you for the 500 miles from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela. But it is a journey inside as well as a physical journey outside.

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MS. HORNADAY: Indeed.

Emilio, we have--I would like to play a clip right now which gets to a little bit of what Martin was just talking about, and speaking of prescience, you'll see this is--this shows how ahead of its time the movie really was. We'll come back after the clip.

[Video plays]

[Laughter]

MS. HORNADAY: And of course, that's the great Deborah Kara Unger, who is just so sensational in this movie. Great scene.

MR. SHEEN: It's wonderful. It's a wonderful scene. Yeah. I'd forgotten about that.

MS. HORNADAY: Oh, it's--there's a lot going on in that scene, my friend. Beautifully written, beautifully acted and directed.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: Thank you.

MS. HORNADAY: And that dialogue, I mean, it gets so much to this generational divide we're experiencing now with--you can see a Gen Z-er, right, saying the exact same things?

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MR. SHEEN: Yeah.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: "Okay, boomer" Right?

[Laughter]

MR. SHEEN: I'd forgotten that scene.

MS. HORNADAY: Exactly.

MR. SHEEN: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I don't want to spoil it for people that haven't seen the film, but we become friends as we go along. And she reveals a deep pain in her life and a great loss, and she's hoping to really recover it on the--on the Camino. And it's--again, it's the creation of community. That's what she's seeking, and she finds it. Yeah.

MS. HORNADAY: Emilio, the movie--we got hints of this in the trailer that we watched in the clips. This is a movie about a father and a son, and it's about--the beginning is about a father who doesn't necessarily support his son's aspirations and doesn't understand them. Obviously, you and your father are extraordinary close--extraordinarily close and have had a great relationship, but did--have you ever been in that position of either having Martin or your mother, Janet, pushing back on one of your dreams or--

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MR. ESTÉVEZ: I can honestly say that because I think both of them are artists--my mother was--she left Cleveland with a scholarship to The New School from the Kiwanis Club and when she was 19, and she met my father who had just arrived to New York from--and he had left Dayton, so both Buckeyes. Both left Ohio for New York in search of themselves, in search of discovering their art.

And so when I started to sort of put my toe into the water and explore this idea of being an actor, being a storyteller, a director, a writer, they got me. They understood me, unlike Tom who doesn't understand his son, doesn't understand this idea that Daniel wants to go out and travel the world and give his life up in academia and experience life rather than spend time in school. And so--and isn't that interesting, though? Tom can't meet his son halfway, and it takes the Camino and his son's death for him to now have to travel the entire distance to finally meet his son, discover who his son was, and become a father to these other pilgrims that he could never be to his son.

But I would have to say from my perspective, I was always encouraged as an artist to follow my dream. I think at one point my dad, he says, "Well, you know, what about law school? What about, you know, going to medical school?" and that just--you know, I grew up on film sets. I grew up in this immersive travel world where we--you know, we didn't travel for leisure. We traveled because there was--it was work. It was he got a job, and the family went with him. And so it was sort of almost like a being a part of a--part of a circus, right? We sort of went. We'd set up tent, and we lived there for a while. And then we would come home and then only to start it all over again.

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And so I didn't really know any other life than--I caution to say show business because I think it's important to say there's show and then there's business. I've always been uncomfortable with the show but never the business. I love the business. I love the community. I love being part of that, you know, setting up that circus tent, as I said, and going to work, and so yeah.

MS. HORNADAY: We were just--we were just treated as some wonderful family photos from those years, and, Martin, I'm fascinated by your decision and Janet's decision to take the family along. I mean, that was not necessarily the done thing, right? Could you walk us through what made you do--you know, were there pros and cons you had to weigh?

MR. SHEEN: Well, yeah, there were. You know, if you--most of the films I was doing at that time were distant locations, so I knew that I'd be gone for a long time. And I felt the risk of leaving them behind would be something I couldn't bear, you know, because in those days, there were no cell phones. It was not easy to communicate. You had to get to a--from a hotel, you had to go through an operator, and I usually call collect. [Laughs]

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So I thought, you know, we should experience these things together, and it often meant pulling them out of school as they got older. And that got more difficult, particularly in the Philippines, because we were there for so very long. But I still felt that at least we were together, and we could share the pros and the cons of this more than being separated and not knowing what was going on. So that was the main motivation.

I remember some locations. Particularly like for "Badlands," we were in in a little community called La Junta in Colorado for like four months, and we rented a home. And we became part of the community, and the kids were--you know, they'd go down to the movies on a Saturday afternoon and come back, and they'd play in the park across the street. The neighbors would come in, and they were showing Janet how to make the homemade bread and ice cream at the--you know, on the--in the mountain atmosphere because it wasn't the same at sea level, and all of these things, they became--they became part of our family history, and we still relate to some of those days.

I remember Emilio started working on a farm in Colorado when he was 10 or 12. He was driving a tractor, for heaven's sakes.

[Laughter]

MR. SHEEN: I mean, it was outrageous, and that sort of became our lifestyle. It was like sometimes it--you know, they would object to going on these distant locations, and sometimes they couldn't wait to get there because there was so much adventure that lay ahead.

So yeah, there were advantage and disadvantages, but if I had to do over again, I think I'd do it the same way, you know. I'd drag them along--[laughs]--as long as I had the ability to find a place and keep us afloat, you know.

MS. HORNADAY: That's wonderful.

We do have a question from the audience. This is from Susan Zachariasen of Utah, and Susan asks--this is for Martin--how much of 'The Way'--the Camino did you walk, and how hard was it?

MR. SHEEN: [Laughs] Well, I have to confess, I never really walked the entire Camino. We started filming in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, and we ended the filming in Morocco, actually, and the pilgrimage ended in Muxía. But as Emilio has often said, we did the Camino about 40 times, because when you're filming, you have to do coverage. You have to do wide angles and a lot of the walking and climbing and sometimes swimming.

[Laughter]

MR. SHEEN: And so we would have to do it over and over and over again for the coverage, and so although I did not earn a Compostela, you know, which is the completed passport for the entire journey, I did earn the respect of the Camino for what I did do of it. I still long to do it. I would love to do it. I don't know if I'm beyond the age that could make it, but I'd still love to give it a try someday.

MS. HORNADAY: Well, in this--

MR. SHEEN: We reckon that we did about 200 miles, if you figure, sometimes the van would drop us off at one end of a village and then pick us up on the other side of it. But, you know, again, like Martin was saying, it would be take one, take two, take three, and then it would be coverage, where a normal pilgrim just passes through a village one time. So yeah, we figured 200, 250 miles of the actual Camino that we traveled.

MS. HORNADAY: Well, I think that is deserving of at least an honorary Compostela.

MR. SHEEN: Thank you.

MS. HORNADAY: But fascinatingly, this brings both of you kind of for full circle with your family's story, right? Martin's father is from Compostela, and, Emilio, your son, I understand now lives in that area. Can tell us a little bit about the family connection to this place?

MR. SHEEN: My father was Galicia.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: Well, sure.

MR. SHEEN: --a little village in northern Spain on the Portuguese border called in Parderrubias in Souto Revolta, near Tui, which is near Vigo, which is not that far from Santiago de Compostela.

So yeah, we've been to that area many times over the years to visit our Galician relatives and very close to that community. My sister Carmen lives in Madrid. She's been--she's a retired school teacher. She and her husband are both retired teachers in Madrid. And I'll leave the rest of the family connection to Spain to Emilio and his son, Taylor.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: Well, Taylor had gone to Spain to accompany my father during a hiatus during the "West Wing." He was working as his assistant at the time, and so they--my dad had always wanted to go to see what the Camino was all about, but they didn't have the time to actually walk it. So they rented a car, and they drove along the way, along the Camino, and they stopped in a town called Burgos which is, as the crow flies, about two hours north of Madrid if you're looking at the map.

And at this particular Albergue, this place that takes in pilgrims for the night, they stayed, and my son met a young lady named Julia. He's 19 at the time, meets Julia, falls in love, decides to move to Spain, and lived there for nine years. In fact, they got married in 2009, which was the year we started--we started shooting the film.

Taylor worked on the film. He was a co-producer on the movie. He was kind of our fixer along the route, because by that point, he was very fluent in Spanish. And so he's stateside now but certainly goes back and forth between the United States and Spain. His daughter, Alma, my granddaughter, is the sort of the--what I like to call the "second miracle," of this movie--

MS. HORNADAY: [Laughs]

MR. ESTÉVEZ: --the first, of course, Taylor and his wife meeting.

MS. HORNADAY: That is beautiful.

You know, I don't know if you're aware, Emilio. Obviously, we all know and love you and remember you from your years. I don't know. Do you like the term "Brat Pack"? Is it something you--[laughs].

MR. ESTÉVEZ: I--you know, I don't for a lot of different reasons. I think it sort of labeled us in a way that it was kind of unfair. It was sort of--you know, kind of put us in a box to a certain extent.

I think what's interesting and what's sort of not--it's actually in the article, and that is that John Hughes was interviewed for that particular article in the New York Magazine, and he talks about reading my script for "Men at Work." Now, regardless of what anybody thinks about "Men at Work," it's a silly comedy. However, John Hughes said, "This script is--reminds me of something that I would've written. This--the humor, the dialogue, the relationship, the characters reminds"--so that part was completely left out of the narrative of the entire Brat Pack of it all. And it was also--it was David Blum, the writer of the piece, even himself, said that--who read that early draft of "Men at Work" said the film was surprisingly sophisticated. It's too bad that his article about all of us was not. So--

MR. SHEEN: Well, I take your point. So I will not use that term, but your fellow actor from that time, Andrew McCarthy, also did the Camino with his son. And he joined us last week, I think it was, about that journey, and I just--I'm wondering if you have spoken with him about that, if you've connected around this subject.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: I have. In fact, you know, the interesting thing about his journey on Camino, on pilgrimage, is that he found himself on the Camino. He became a writer and found the writer in himself, much like Paulo Coelho did after he did the pilgrimage and wrote--in fact, he wrote "The Pilgrimage."

So again, we're--we see how the Camino de Santiago influences people, inspires people to become themselves, and that's really the overall and overarching theme of the film.

MR. SHEEN: Yeah. Incidentally, somebody sent me a copy of Andrew's book. I'm halfway through it, and I'm having all of these memories of our time. He's in all those places and seeing all those things that we saw and did, and it's quite extraordinary. He's terrific.

MS. HORNADAY: He's a wonderful writer. It's true.

Martin, you know, when we met, lo, those many years ago on the bus--

MR. ESTÉVEZ: [Laughs]

MS. HORNADAY: --we talked about religion and spiritual practice, and you are a practicing Catholic.

MR. SHEEN: I'm going to get it right someday.

MS. HORNADAY: I hear you. I hear you.

[Laughter]l

MS. HORNADAY: We're all pilgrims.

But I wonder what it's like to be a man of faith and a person of faith in what--in--[indicates air quotes]--godless Hollywood. And I don't know how godless it really is. I mean, do you have a community there of fellow believers and practitioners?

MR. SHEEN: I belong to a small parish. A lot of people don't know there's a Catholic church in Malibu. It's called "Our Lady of Malibu," and it's my home parish. And they're very active in social justice, and it's a very, very vibrant community. There's a school from kindergarten to eighth grade, and we just had the first communion class, and it's a very nourishing, very beautiful community.

The larger community in my life is, of course, family, but the community of artists--you know, I don't ever think of myself as working or living or belonging or in any way really associated with Hollywood, per se. I mean, that's a community. It involves a whole lot of other professions as well as movie studios and actors and entertainment. So I think that there are, you know, enough truly creative people who are nourished by their spirituality, which is reflected in their work. And that's Hollywood as much as, you know, people make tank shells in Pennsylvania. You know. It's like--it's a reflection of who we are, where we come from, what we stand for, and what we strive for. And that is a connection to our humanity, the deepest part of ourselves.

And for my own part, I've--you know, I've been an actor all of my life. I have no memory of ever being not an actor. I couldn't identify it when I was a child. I started going to the movies. I was five or six, and gradually, it dawned on me that I was like those people up on the screen. And I knew something about myself then that I cherished, that I was possessed by this image of myself being part of that community, and it possessed me. And I knew that if I did not pursue it, I would never be happy. And that's been the case, and the longer I'm at it, you know, I'm long over the retirement age, but I love it. I love it as much today as I did when I started, because it nurtures the deepest part of my humanity, my spirit. And it unites that thing I talked about before. It's always united the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh, and it's like a form of prayer, my profession, and I know that there are--most of the people in this profession have that sense of it. They may not articulate it the same way I would, but we're creative people, and this is how we sustain our spirituality and our life force.

And it--I think it shows in a lot of the work that some of the great actors of my generation are still doing it today, and it's quite extraordinary to see Al Pacino and Bobby De Niro, to just name two of the greats of my generation, who are still nourished by what they do, and they nourish us. It's always a trip--journey inside, and we see ourselves, the very best and the very worst part of ourselves, and when we see the brokenness I consider it blessed brokenness. And that's the only way that the--that the spirit can enter is through a broken part. That's how God gets in, and that's how--whether you believe in God or not, the one, the other, the--whatever it is, that higher power, that's the only way it gets in is through the brokenness.

So I cherish the brokenness, and I nourish the spirit that allows that energy to flow, that great mystery of just being alive.

MS. HORNADAY: Beautiful.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: And, Ann, I would say I could--I would add to that. There is nothing like watching Martin on a set. First of all, he's never met a stranger. So you have to call him to set 10 minutes before you need him, because he is saying hello to everybody, "Hey, where are you from? How you doing? Wow. What's going on?" So there's all of that.

MR. SHEEN: [Laughs]

MR. ESTÉVEZ: But his energy, his--just his life force, you just see it. You feel him, you know, when he is on the set, and he is just so excited to be on set and to be in that character but sometimes not in that character. Sometimes it was very difficult for him to play this character of Tom, who's a little prickly. He is kind of a grump, and he wanted to be Martin. And I was like, "Dad, you're not you. You will become you by the end. You'll evolve by the end of this. But you are this country club guy. You are this--you know, you're this arch conservative. You're a guy who's not in the world. You are--you will evolve. But in the meantime I need you to be grumpy Martin, not--

[Laughter]

MR. ESTÉVEZ: --not Tom, by the end of the movie.

MS. HORNADAY: I couldn't help noticing in that earlier scene. It's like, wow, that really--that was a stretch because you are not that guy. You are not that guy, anybody who knows you or has watched you on screen.

I have one time for one last question, and it gets back to these--it's extraordinary to me that both of you have been a part of movies and, in the case of the "West Wing," television shows that are really generational touchstones. You have been a part of movies that just capture people's experience and take hold in a way that live on in our imaginations and stand for something. And, Emilio, I guess I'll direct this to you, and I'd love to hear from Martin too. Is that still possible, you know, in this kind of fractured, siloed media culture that we're in? Is that kind of movie or cultural product even still doable?

MR. ESTÉVEZ: Well, I think by the very nature of us talking about this movie, 12 years after the initial release, I think the short answer is yes. I think that if you can make a film that transcends generations, that moves through time, that is still relevant, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years after you made it--I mean, look at this year is going to be the 40th anniversary of "The Outsiders." When you're a young actor--and I think my father can attest to this as well--you're just happy that the director, the casting director said yes. So it's not necessarily part of this plan. You just--it's luck. It's timing. And I think, again, you know, who knew that we would still be talking about "Apocalypse Now" 40 years later or "Breakfast Club" 30 years later or--and "The Way," I believe is that kind of movie that it's going to outlive everybody who's listed in those credits.

MS. HORNADAY: Well, I couldn't agree more. People who are fans of "The Way," I know will be flocking to see it again tomorrow. People who haven't, I strongly recommend that you do because you won't forget it.

And unfortunately, we do have to leave that there, so we'll have to leave it there. Martin Sheen, Emilio Estévez, thank you so much for joining me today.

MR. SHEEN: Thank you so much.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: Thank you so much, Ann. Thank you for your continued support on this. It really means a lot to both of us.

MR. ESTÉVEZ: Hear, hear. Thank you.

MS. HORNADAY: And thanks to all of you for watching. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head over to WashingtonPostLive.com to register and find out more information about our upcoming programs.

For now, I'm Ann Hornaday. Thank you again for joining us.

[End recorded session]

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