Escher paintings, where everything's going in a million directions, but it all comes back to a cohesive image."
Keaton explains his conversational style culturally. "I'm more than half Irish, and we talk way too fucking much. How does it feel to know this entire hour could have been pared down to three sentences?"
(It was actually two hours.) He's also a listener, interested in what other people have to say. After watching the public debate over Jeff Bezos' and Richard Branson's recent space flights, he wants to
know, "Well, what do you think about that?" Personally, he's not sure. "If I had that, would I do something like that?" Keaton says. "I admire big thinkers. I admire people who, not just for ego, they
think big. Bezos claims that there's a bigger story here than him saying, I'm so rich, I can go to space. So who am I to say he's lying?"
As much as Keaton is at home here, after so many years, he also stands out. In a town where Trump 2020 signs are still ubiquitous eight months after the election, and someone has painted "Stop the Steal"
on a nearby bridge, the actor has a bumper sticker for a Democratic Montana politician on one of his cars. Keaton, who changed his birth name of Michael Douglas for the Screen Actors Guild, grew up outside
Pittsburgh, the youngest of seven children and an altar boy. His mother, a devoted Catholic, kept her kids home from school to watch Kennedy's inauguration, and his father, a civil engineer, was involved
in local Democratic politics. When Barack Obama was a senator running for president, Keaton introduced him
|
|
at a Montana event, and he campaigned for Joe Biden last year in Pennsylvania. He tries to be judicious about how and when he wades into politics. "I learned a long time ago, you do more damage because
you're famous," Keaton says. "I've told people, you don't want me there. They'll go, Well of course he brought his Hollywood friend. You know what people forget? We all were just some person somewhere in
Cincinnati or fucking Ottawa or f**ing Cleveland."
In Worth, which Netflix will release Sept. 3, Keaton plays attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who took on the agonizing task of dispersing the $7 billion Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund. The movie depicts a
moment in America less than 20 years ago, but it feels like ancient history in its portrayal of bipartisan cooperation amid a tragedy. "I just talked to Ken Feinberg yesterday, and we both said, sadly,
this could probably never happen now," Keaton says. "Nobody had time to stop even to think about [political party]. It was a crisis." Keaton produced the film, which was written by Max Borenstein, directed
by Sara Colangelo, and co-stars Amy Ryan as one of his fellow attorneys and Stanley Tucci as a recipient of the victims' fund. "Without sounding really pretentious... I have a job that might actually change
something, or at least make people think about something, or feel something," he says. "So, when I saw it, I thought, This is a good thing. This one, for sure. We all, if you have a pulse, were impacted by
9/11." Among the film's other noteworthy producers are the Obamas, whose production company, Higher Ground, acquired
|
