The father and son team are one month into a 37-city, 50-day bus tour of the country’s midsection to talk up their new film “The Way,” which opens on Oct. 21 in Dayton, but as early as Oct. 7 in other cities.
“There’s no studio behind this. We are the studio,” Dayton native and Emmy Award winner Sheen said during an interview in the Dunbar Suite of the Dayton Marriott Hotel.
Promoting the project must be doubly hard when repercussions from a family member’s recent meltdown continue to precede you.
Charlie Sheen, who is Martin Sheen’s son and Estevez’s brother, toured some of the same cities not long ago during his notorious and improvisational “Violent Torpedo of Truth” tour.
While his dad and brother were hosting a sold-out screening and discussion of the family-friendly, inspirational and scenic “The Way” at the Dayton Art Institute on Monday night, Charlie was being “roasted” on television’s “Comedy Central” and the starring character he played on the CBS series “Two and a Half Men” was “killed off,” exiting as an urn of ashes that got spilled for laughs.
Coincidentally, ironically or both, Martin Sheen’s character in “The Way” carries the ashes of his son on a pilgrimage through the mountains of northern Spain, leaving some at significant places along a journey that was filmed in 2009.
When asked how Charlie is doing, Sheen said his son “is coming back into the light. He’s much better than he was before. He’s not as good as he is going to be.”
Estevez, wishing to keep the film in the forefront of the interview, answered, “Charlie is fine. If you monitor the Internet, saw the Emmy’s last night or watch Leno tonight, you’re up to date on Charlie.”
Sheen, who’s the kind of man who will seek out the humblest person in a room to strike up a conversation first, also wants “The Way” to have the spotlight. Even though it was off-topic, he admitted, “This has been difficult for all of us. Charlie sort of beat us to the tour. We’re getting hammered with that everywhere we go. But we are family before we are anything else. We love him.”
Sheen said he has “never refused any of my children if they need anything. I hope I never will.”
The theme of a father’s reawakened love for his son is a strong undercurrent in “The Way.”
The two are estranged as the nearly two-hour film begins.
Sheen plays a self-absorbed California ophthalmologist and widower who’s playing golf at his country club one day when he gets a phone call. He learns that his only child — a vagabond son played briefly by Estevez — has died in a mountain storm shortly after setting off on a 500-mile trek that Christian pilgrims and many others have taken since the Middle Ages.
He travels to France, planning to bring home his son’s body.
But after hearing about the journey his son had begun on the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James), he has the body cremated, calls home to cancel all of his appointments for weeks, and impulsively sets off to complete the quest for and with his son.
Along the trail, he learns much about himself and opens up to three others who become his sidekicks — a bit like the Tinman, Scarecrow and Lion are with Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.” The comparison is one drawn by Estevez.
“He’s an eye doctor who learns to see,” said producer David Alexanian, whose other credits include “Where the Red Fern Grows” and the motorcycle road-trip documentaries “Long Way Down” and “Long Way Round.”
Estevez, who last directed the Golden Globe-nominated “Bobby” in 2006, said his main challenge in directing his father this time “was to keep him from being himself — the guy who wants to chat with everyone and sign autographs.”
Estevez leaned on him to stay in character. “You aren’t that guy yet, although you become him later on. You evolve into that,” he insisted. “Basically, I had to protect him from himself.”
A past boyfriend of Demi Moore and a former husband of Paula Abdul, Estevez said that while “Dayton is my dad’s home, it’s as foreign to me as Spain is.”
His own son, Taylor Estevez, now lives in Spain. He met the woman who became his bride while exploring the Camino with Sheen. “My grandson looked at her. She looked at him. That was it. That was the first miracle that came out of this,” Sheen said.
The second miracle, by his accounting, was for “The Way” team to be granted permission to film inside the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela during services. Believed to be the burial place of the apostle James, it also marks the end of the pilgrimage route.
“They’re very protective of that sacred place. It’s a national treasure. Nobody has ever been allowed to do that before in a commercial film,” said Sheen, whose father, Francisco Estevez, was born just 80 miles away. He moved to Dayton, where he met Sheen’s mother, an immigrant from Ireland, in a citizenship class.
Estevez said Monday he intends to make his next film in southwest Ohio.
“It’s going to be about harness racing. It will be a family sports film like ‘The Mighty Ducks’ movies. We’re looking at using Lebanon Raceway and River Downs in Cincinnati,” he said.
“I was going to make it in Michigan, but you have a lot of tracks in Ohio and the people at the Ohio Film Commission have offered some good help. I think this is the best place.”
Sheen said he walked “about half” the Camino during filming. “I did it impromptu, because that’s the way the character did it. That’s the physical journey, but the inner journey is what it’s really about. Dr. Avery (his character) doesn’t know how to get outside of himself to begin with.”
He had the idea of making the film after visiting the Camino following a family reunion in Ireland on the anniversary of his mother’s death in 2003 — she would have been 100. But he couldn’t do it because he was due back for more episodes playing the U.S. president on television’s “The West Wing” (1999-2006).
“I came back and pestered Emilio. I told him we had to make this film,” he said.
“But his idea was too limited. It was basically about two old guys making the trip,” said Estevez, who took up the idea and fleshed it out. “I wanted it to be about a father and a son. I wanted it to be a serious film about relationships. I did this for my dad,” he said.
Sheen said “The Way” “is for everyone. Each of us has to walk our own pilgrimage. We can’t get out of carrying our baggage. This is deeply personal for us. We want it to have a fair hearing, not just a limited release and then go to DVD.”
“We feel it’s a mainstream film,” said Alexanian.
“The best way to prove that is for us to take it to the people ourselves.”
Obstacles or not, that’s their quest.
“This is our American pilgrimage,” Sheen said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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