“Sooner or later, I used to be driving house from work and I obtained gut-punched with the considered what would develop into of me if one thing ever occurred to Ruvé,” McDonough remembers to us. “I’m on the facet of the freeway in Arizona and the concept simply got here into my head, Rocky or Bull Durham for a grandpa who has to return and save his grandson’s life as a result of he’s dying of the identical tumor that killed his spouse. I simply sat on the facet of the street voice-dictating what I assumed the script could be and I had the entire movie, it simply flew out of me.”
At all times open about his Catholic religion, McDonough’s fast to attribute the concept to divine inspiration (“I’m fairly sensible, however I don’t assume I’m that intelligent,” he quips). However he additionally admits that he made Joe a bull rider as a result of he noticed the game as underrepresented in cinema.
“I used to be in search of concepts as a result of I really like athletics. However while you get to a sure age, you may’t be the athlete anymore. You must be the coach, and I used to be getting bored with being the coach. So I began asking, ‘Who’s the oldest rookie of the 12 months?’ and ‘what’s an previous story?’” McDonough remembers. He discovered his reply in bull driving, however the 59-year-old actor didn’t get to fully meld fiction and actuality, at the very least when it got here to Joe’s feats within the area.
“I needed to be the man on the bull on a regular basis,” laughs McDonough. “I believe everybody is aware of what a knucklehead I’m in terms of stunts and the physicality of appearing in movies. I like it. Being an athlete for thus lengthy, it’s simply one thing that I at all times type of instructed myself that I can nonetheless do, even at my age. However they’d by no means let me get on an precise bull until it was for a [single] shot. However let me let you know this, they beat the residing tar out of me on these mechanical bulls for months and months, and so they’re not straightforward. The quantity of instances I obtained smoked off of that factor and obtained bashed… driving a bull ain’t straightforward.”
McDonough’s dedication to embodying characters isn’t a shock to anybody conversant in his work. He places Joe Wainright alongside Buck Compton from Band of Brothers and Wyatt Kane from Tin Man as his favorites to play exactly due to the depth he brings to them, even after they’re silent. Whereas Joe retains a heat in his taciturn nature, a few of McDonough’s different characters felt menacing of their stillness, corresponding to Dave Williams in Determined Housewives or Damien Darhk within the CW Arrowverse. However that was a talent McDonough needed to study early on.
“You virtually want a Dramamine simply to observe my early stuff,” he admits. “However then I began to pare it down and be so simple as doable in every thing. I used to be watching what John Wayne would do. Folks don’t consider John Wayne as one of many best actors of all time, however he understood stoicism higher than anybody. He’d take that breath earlier than he’d say a line and actually take into consideration what he was about to say earlier than saying the road, after which actually hammering it on the market. Kevin Costner’s nice at that, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, all these guys have been nice at listening to what’s occurring. They’d take a second and say a line, not twenty traces.”