Hal Holbrook: the wise grouchy old man

"It’s time to move Hal Holbrook off the Oscar bubble and into the fold. The 84-year-old actor delivers arguably the performance of his career in That Evening Sun, director Scott Teems’s terrific adaptation of the William Gay short story “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down.” Holbrook plays Abner Meecham, a Tennessean banished by his lawyer son (Walton Goggins) to a nursing home he’ll soon flee in disgust. Hal Holbrook and Emile Hirsch in "Into the Wild" (2007).

Imagine his celebrated character in Into the Wild soaked in vinegar and hung out to dry in the sweltering Tennessee sun, and that’s Abner Meecham. He’s quite the marvel.
-Scott, I’d read you were uneasy about casting Hal because he was perhaps best known for playing Mark Twain, and you needed someone a little rougher. Is that true?
ST: I guess the reason I hadn’t initially thought of him is that I had been kind of programmed by Hollywood to think of Hal as the “guy in the suit.” Or the mustache. Or as the lawyer, the judge, Mark Twain. So he wasn’t initially on my radar five years ago in the conception of this. It wasn’t until we saw how Sean Penn reimagined Hal to be this physical specimen — this outdoorsman, this man of the land — as he did with Into the Wild that we thought, “Aha! That’s who we’ve been looking for.”
Hal Holbrook and Emile Hirsch at Breakthrough of the year Awards (2007).

-What I was searching for was this really searching for was this really specific combination of strength and fragility. You believed that he believed that he had the strength to work this farm; he’s convinced himself he could do it. And we would stand up to this interloper on his land. And it wouldn’t be surprising to you that he’d do this. At the same time, I want you to say, “Please be careful! You’re an old man.” -The first shot of you in That Evening Sun — staring out the window of a nursing home — is kind of devastating. How did you react to seeing yourself like that?-HH: Well, first I react as an actor watching himself act and say, “Enh, I should have done that better.” But I get caught up in this film. I get caught up early on. I have a very strong connection with this man. I like this guy. I like the way he is, and I wonder sometimes if I’m that tough with people. I guess I am; my wife tells me I am sometimes. But she’s so kind to everybody all the time. She says, “You’re so grouchy!” I guess I am. But I hate deception. I hate lying. I cannot stand lying. That’s what makes me so angry about things I see going on around us, behind us, all these Wall Street and political people deceiving us. People are deceiving themselves all over the country. They’ve got one idea, they don’t want to listen to anybody else, on and on. That feeds me. It feeds me up onstage with Mark Twain, because then I get the machine gun out and start really leveling it. It keeps me going". Source: www.movieline.com