Martin Sheen Explores Faith, Family and New Film

Sheen Explores Faith, Family and New Film

Martin Sheen's voice bellowed through the other end of the Norfolk, Va. office phone. One could not mistake this voice from the hit PC game Mass Effect’s Illusive Man, Apocalypse Now, and now his new movie, The Way, written and directed by his eldest son Emilio Estevez.

Moving full throttle into our interview, Sheen inquired about the area code he was calling. He's been to Virginia before as he shot a sci-fi film aboard the USS Nimitz in the 70s.

“I had four brothers in the Navy, three of them were stationed in Norfolk and one was stationed in San Diego. The film was about going back in time to Pearl Harbor and suddenly the Nimitz was involved in the attack. It was called The Final Countdown and it was filmed in Norfolk. We spent a lot of time there in the summer and in 1979. Yes, so I am very fond of your community.”

Personally, I love interviewing people that have a personality and genuinely love to chat; Sheen was an interviewer's dream come true. Maybe that’s why his son Emilio joked in an earlier interview with Beliefnet how people just gravitate to his dad--he's personable to a fault.

Sheen's authenticity permeated the conversation and his passion for meaningful connections. Something he deemed we lost along our own journey. "People, although having their own cross to carry, can minister to others through their own pain. This is what the film is about,” said Sheen who received 10 Emmy nominations and has dealt with his own family struggles of addiction and media circus of his youngest son Charlie Sheen.

The Beginning

Sheen’s father was from Galicia, Spain and his village was north near the Portuguese boarder so he was aware about Santiago. The pilgrimage has been going on since the tenth century and fell out of popularity and was revived in the 1980s and has been a place explored by people worldwide. He was versed on the Camino and the script felt natural.

Sheen plays Tom, a doctor from California who travels to St. Jean Pied de Port, France to pick up the remains of his son Daniel (Estevez). Tom looks to finish Daniel's pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in Spain (The Way of Saint James).

“I had a break in 2003 and I thought now is the time to do this and so my grandson Taylor, Emilio’s son, who was working for me at the time, he was 19, and my old friend Matt Clark also came. The three of us were trying to figure out if we had enough time to do the Camino before I had to return to Los Angeles and begin work again on Season 4 of The West Wing. Obviously I did not have enough time and so I thought rather than hurry this thing along, I’ll just explore the Camino. So we rented a car and we started in Burgos and we drove to Camino and, on the way, Taylor met his future wife at an albergues outside Burgos,” said the former honorary mayor of Malibu, California. “That was the start of the whole adventure in the summer of 2003. When I came home and told Emilio about all our adventures. Taylor returned to be with Julia and they were married a few years later. This is how The Way started."

Playing Tom

You can never really separate from the person you are portraying on screen, said Sheen who considers himself more liberal than his character Tom. Tom’s a very conservative man that stopped practicing his faith, remained isolated and belonged to a private country club. He was a widower and didn’t do any public service and lived through his own pleasure until his boy’s death forces him to become more grounded.

“I could relate to that deeply, deeply inside,” Sheen said. “Of course, the journey is about going from isolation to community. I mean we all have to walk alone. We all have our own personal crosses to carry but we carry them best when we share the burdens with the community and that’s what he comes to with these other three pilgrims that he cannot bear in the beginning. I mean they’re just such a nuisance. They’re millstones and he keeps trying to get rid of them and go off on his own. He’s very independent and self made and American and I can handle this on my own but he misses the whole point until he realizes eventually that we’re all part of community and that’s the best way that we can live faith filled lives and meaningful lives.”

Walking the Camino

Sheen is not slowing down anytime soon. He plans to walk the entire Camino, yes he's serious. He turned 71 on Aug. 3.

“Actually, I’ve done it a couple of times but not with Emilio. The most, I guess, you know, Emilio and I reckoned that we kind of walked at least half of it just filming this time because we’d walk it to practice the scenes, then we’d walk it again and again and again to get it right and then we’d walk it again through the coverage, the singles and the two shots and the wide angles and then we would just walk through what we call montages, you know, where he’d have his cameras set up on the top of a mountain like and we would look like little ants walking in the distance but we were carrying the walkie talkies so he could tell us keep walking, stay in line, move more to your right, move there, so we really did walk an awful lot of it, which was great. I feel confident, yeah, I could do it. I just need that. I would need a more lengthy time. I would need at least eight weeks to do it without really having it be a burden. I could do it comfortably I think in eight weeks.”

The Way

Studios made offers to release The Way but they were looking at it commercially and Sheen and Estevez felt they didn’t really get it. It wasn’t personal. It was business.

“You know what I’m saying? They had a business attitude towards it and we wanted to go with someone that had a visceral feeling about it, someone who was inspired by it who would risk their own investment by choosing to go with us and so that’s what we did. In order to get the attention we need, we have to go on this journey. Hollywood doesn’t really focus much on what’s between New York and Los Angeles," Sheen said.

"...they just feed the big box office things and the fantasies and the cartoons and all that. They rarely get into listening to what people’s needs are or what people’s yearnings are and we really want to tap that because we think that this film can serve as a healing kind of balm for a lot of pain that’s out there with people. People are suffering a great deal. Families are suffering. We’re suffering from war, alienation, arrogance, alcohol, drugs, resentments, anger and disappointment. There are so many people hurting from very difficult times in their lives and it’s all kind of coming to the surface now and so we thought we need to give people something that’s not fantasy, something that everyone can grasp and something they can share with their family.”

No Car Chases, No Violence?

No car chases, no violence? Uh, wait a minute, Martin. How well can the movie do without a snippet of these in the plot?

"It's old time, old fashioned storytelling with a plot and characters that move and take people on a journey. They are people that take the journey with us," Sheen said.

"That’s the word I want to use gratifying. They take it personally because so many of the films you see coming out now, particularly the big blockbusters with all the special effects, are impersonal. You can’t relate to those things. Like these video games that have become big movies and I say this having just participated in the new Spiderman [2012] coming out, but you know, we do these films, we play small parts in big films in order to pay the rent but we play big parts in small films in order to pay homage to the necessity of the spiritual journey. That’s why I do it, you know. It has far more meaning than any other film I’ve done. I can’t even think of a film I’ve done, well I had the very gratifying experience of seven seasons with The West Wing which was I thought I didn’t think I’d get any better than that. Have anything better to be involved in than that and then this film comes along and it’s far more personal. It says to an audience you have a lot, you may have a lot of pain and regret and loss in your life but your life is just beginning and you could use that brokenness to find a deeper more satisfying meaning in your life. Go into the pain and don’t avoid others who are suffering in the same way."

Sheen said there was a feeling of community that was and now has been lost. So we need to be reminded of our humanity and the simple needs that we can only supply to each other and “…maybe our film inspires that. If it does that, I’d be happy as Larry and I wouldn’t ask for anything more.”

Finding Peace

There is a greater sense of peace in Sheen's life.

“You get involved in families—they’re not like you want them to be. They don’t do what you want them to do,” said Sheen who hails from Dayton, Ohio. “Do you love them any less? Aren’t they really a reflection of us? Do they look at us the same way and say why doesn’t grandpa do this or dad do that? We get a better understanding by embracing all their brokenness and shortcomings. I have a prayer: I say, ‘Lord thank you for all the people you put in my life to love and forgive me for not loving all of them.’ There are people in our lives and even in our families at times that are difficult to love. It’s easy to love people that love you. The basic source of my energy in my life I think that so many people are so desperate these days for is transcendence. People are yearning and growing for a kind of deeper meaning to life because life is so difficult these days for everyone. Folks are going through terrible, terrible economic times, and they’re forced through different directions – panic or surrender.”

Sheen on Technology

People are afraid of silence," said Sheen, who failed two computer courses and avoids upgrading his cell phone.

That's alright, by him.

“I’m just sort of in that generation that they’re kind of a like a totally different direction from me. I still don’t have one and I tried to learn how to use one. I failed twice in a course, you know, taking a course. The technology of it just astonishes me. The telephone is about the best I can do. I still write handwritten notes. I still write letters and find it difficult to collect messages that are accumulating on my phone when I’m gone. I do have a cell phone but it doesn’t have any what do you call Twitter or texting. It doesn’t take pictures. It doesn’t receive messages. All it does is make phone calls and it drives me crazy just trying to keep up with it. I don’t have anything against technology. I think it’s quite magnificent. It saves lives and it has opened up an awful lot of remarkable opportunities for people everywhere in the world. I think it’s quite magnificent but it’s just not for me.”

His Inspiration

At times many of us view celebrities the way they appear on screen and forget they are humans with frailties. Sheen is a grandfather like many of you, and sits in amazement at the small things in life, along with losing focus.

“Sometimes if I’m aware of, gosh, sometimes I’m just inspired by the tiniest of things. I play with my grandchildren and I just kind of begin to realize why aren’t I spending more time with these little guys? I get distracted by, you know, the bigger picture. I’m looking at the career and necessity here and there and finances and holding up my end and you get worn out and you forget that the real nutriment that’s needed is there all the time. You just have to go outside and look at it and it is there.”