RIP Torn is making his very first trip to the Sundance Film Festival, which opens Thursday – but the 73-year-old acting legend cut his teeth in independent movies before most filmmakers there were born.
Though he’s currently best known for his supporting roles in popular Hollywood comedies like “Dodgeball” and the two “Men in Black” movies – as well as his Emmy-winning turn as Garry Shandling’s manager on “The Larry Sanders Show” – he gets back to his indie roots in “Forty Shades of Blue,” a moody drama in which he stars as a legendary Memphis music producer tragically betrayed by his estranged son and his girlfriend.
A respected and prolific stage and TV performer in the 1950s and ’60s, the Texas native was relegated by Hollywood to supporting roles, such as Bob Hope’s buddy in the comedy “Critics Choice.” “I was working out at the gym in 1969 when a guy named Milton Ginzburg said, ‘I read you would do any movie if you could do a lead,’ ” Torn recalled.
“And he threw me this script and said, ‘I bet you won’t do this,’ and I replied, ‘I guess you called me on that.’ “
The movie was the landmark indie “Coming Apart,” a sexually explicit, Xrated drama in which Torn gave a no-holds-barred performance as a troubled psychiatrist. He followed that film with the lead as Henry Miller in an X-rated adaptation of Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.”
Of his vast body of work – the incredibly versatile Torn has played Judas, Lyndon Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Walt Whitman and Richard Nixon – Torn jokes, “with six children, not all of my choices were based on artistic considerations.”
His children – one by ex-wife actress Ann Wedgeworth, three by his late wife, legendary actress Geraldine Page, and two by his companion Amy Wright – will be with him in Sundance for the premiere of “Forty Shades of Blue,” a project Torn holds close to his heart.
“Working on this film was a chance for me to come down to Memphis and be in the kind of place I grew up in,” said Torn.
“I have made several films with musical backgrounds, like ‘One Trick Pony,’ and in this one, my character is a tough but emotional character, sort of a tribute to Sam Phillips, the man who discovered Elvis.”
Director Ira Sachs praised his star.
“He’s a complicated, cantankerous, brilliant man, and we wrestled every day on the set,” he said. “But in the end, I have to say he knew what he was doing more than I did.”
Back in October, Torn won over a Manhattan jury who cleared him of drunk-driving charges after he testified that his seemingly rambunctious behavior in a police video after a fender-bender in Greenwich Village was the result of being injured and tired.
“The jurors could see what happened, and they urged me to press charges, but I’m a former military policeman and I would never do that,” said Torn.
“Actually, they’ve stopped me several times in the 6th Precinct and those guys are terrific,” he said with a laugh.
“Usually they say, ‘Oh, it’s you. Get out of here!’ ”
