Interview: Bill Pullman on The Ballad of Lefty Brown

As the star of writer-director Jared Moshe's western The Ballad of Lefty Brown, Bill Pullman plays a sidekick turned leading man after his boss (played by Peter Fonda) is murdered and he sets out to find the killer. Pullman said he based Lefty partly on a friend from Montana who was “a third wheel” to the actor and his then-girlfriend, and now wife, Tamara when they were all in their 20s—although his pal, he added with typically self-deprecating humor, didn't look up to him the way Lefty looks up to his friend and mentor. In an interview at his publicist's Manhattan office, the affable Pullman talked about playing a self-doubting beta male, stood up for Jack Kramer, his character in The Battle of the Sexes, and joked about the awards he doesn't have.

You've played comic roles and straight roles. Lefty seems to me to be a little of each. How did you think of it when you were playing it?

It was more the perception of characters around him, that he was a fool.


But he was also a little self-doubting and comically inept, especially at first.

Yeah. Which I think is human. It wasn't really played as comedy.

You reminded me a little of Andy Devine, mostly because of the way you talked, and a little of Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou.

Ah, yeah! Have you seen Cat Ballou? It's pretty wacky, isn't it? I watched it just because Jared said, “You gotta watch Cat Ballou!”

Lee Marvin is pretty amazing in it.

Really amazing. He got nominated for an Oscar, didn't he?

You usually play white male authority figures—including a lot of presidents. Was it kind of fun or liberating to play a beta male for a change?

Yeah. [laughs] It was really nice. I admire people who can do the straight action roles, but I get a little restless. This kind of thing allows for so much more nuance, the ambivalences and his lack of assurance about who he is as a man. Lefty, he's been a kind of taken-care-of guy. He's been a third wheel to [the couple played by Peter] Fonda and Kathy Baker. When we were in our 20s, my girlfriend at the time, who became and still is my wife, we had a third-wheel guy. His name's Tom Morris. When I came to New York, he came with me as an actor. The three of us lived together, and then when I got into movies and I could have an assistant, he would become my assistant—but he never did any assisting. He would sit in the trailer, go to craft services. I said, “Your only job is to watch movies and then when I have breaks I'll come and you tell me what I've missed.” [laughs]

So you kind of modeled Lefty on him?

Yeah. And then, Tom got a part in While You Were Sleeping. [Director] Jon Turtletaub loved him. He was Man With Sandwich. [laughs] He was in the bed next to my brother, [played by] Peter Gallagher, when he was in a coma, and when I came to visit, he was the guy eating a sandwich. Turtletaub used him a few more times in other movies. But he was never good with urban situations, so he's back in Montana—still a good friend. I'd think of him often with this, because he was a kind of taken-care-of guy, but he was his own man too. But he had a different personality from Lefty, in that he never gave me a lot of compliments. [laughs] He was always like: “You coulda done more of that.” Read the rest in Slant Magazine