Monday, November 27, 2006

Jon Voight Interview

This morning I taped an interview with actor Jon Voight for my diocesan radio show. Last December, CBS aired a made-for-TV movie on the life of JP2, and in the movie Voight played Pope John Paul in the years between his election to the Papacy in 1978 until his death in 2005.

It was a great rush to have someone famous on the show; certainly he is the most famous person outside of Church circles that I've had on as a guest. But I also have to say he was very nice and certainly had no "I'm an Oscar-winner" attitude about him. In fact, he's such a "regular guy" that when I called him to arrange the time for the interview, he was talking to me on his cell phone while cleaning his house in anticipation of a trip he was about to take.

We obviously spoke about the movie, Pope John Paul II, which was released on DVD a few weeks ago. We spoke about the research he put into preparing for the role (reading the Pope's encyclicals and poetry, watching footage, listening to recordings of his voice). We spoke about the film's shooting on locations near and dear to JP2's heart: The Vatican and Krakow, and we spoke about meetings he had with those close to the Pope, especially Cardinal Dziwisz, JP2's former secretary.


The interview will be online for a week, starting this Friday, if you click on the link for "Proclaim the Good News Radio Show" to the right of your screen. In the meantime, if you're looking for a Christmas gift for a Young Fogey in your life, or anyone for that matter, it's a 3 hour movie with a bunch of extras on the DVD.

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