{"id":10919,"date":"2016-03-11T07:26:50","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T14:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=10919"},"modified":"2016-03-12T14:35:27","modified_gmt":"2016-03-12T21:35:27","slug":"bridges-talks-about-montana-in-advance-of-missoula-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/03\/bridges-talks-about-montana-in-advance-of-missoula-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridges talks about Montana in advance of Missoula show"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bridges\"<\/a>

Danny Clinch<\/p>

Jeff Bridges will be playing his guitar this Tuesday in Missoula, during a fundraising show for Gov. Steve Bullock’s re-election campaign.<\/p><\/div>\n

Hunger is not political discourse to Jeff Bridges.<\/p>\n

When the actor discusses the inability of children to access food, reduced food quality, the importance of food banks or federal nutrition programs, he evaluates them as societal or communal problems as opposed to explicitly political ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe that something such as hunger can be a political thing,\u201d said Bridges, who in 1983 founded the End Hunger Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to feeding children around the world.<\/p>\n

Bridges and his band The Abiders perform at the Wilma Theatre in Missoula this Tuesday. It will be a fundraiser for the re-election of Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, who, Bridges said, has made childhood hunger and food insecurity a priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see all of us working at it from a bipartisan issue and I have great connection with Republican and Democrat governors on the hunger issue, whether it\u2019s Gov. (Brian) Sandoval (R-Nev.) or Gov. Bullock. I played the Democratic convention a couple years ago with The Abiders, but I can\u2019t say that I\u2019m only supporting one party. Hunger is one of the certain issues I really respond to. And the hunger and the health of our kids is a pretty good compass of where we are as a society. Man, if our kids aren\u2019t doing well, then we are far off course.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March 2014, Bridges organized a meeting with several Democratic governors, including Bullock, to address childhood hunger in their states.<\/p>\n

\u201cI first met Gov. Bullock and his wife, Lisa, as the national spokesperson for the Share Our Strength\/No Kid Hungry campaign,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cI thought that Gov. Bullock and Lisa responded beautifully to the idea of making Montana a \u2018No Kid Hungry\u2019 state. The panel discussed removing barriers to bringing breakfast from the cafeteria into the classroom, and both the governor and his wife were responsive to the federal funding available for after the bell and summer meal programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Approximately one in seven Montanans \u201cstruggle with hunger,\u201d according to Montana Food Bank statistics. While severe hunger and malnutrition are rare in Montana, tens of thousands of low-income Montanans face food insecurity, including nearly 22 percent of children (nearly 48,000 kids).<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Between 2013 and 2015, Montana\u2019s No Kid Hungry program, which optimistically views hunger as \u201ca solvable\u201d predicament, has tripled the number of after-school meal programs, \u201cresulting in 61,000 more meals,\u201d according to the Food Bank. The program has also boosted participation in summer meal programs, \u201cadding two programs\u201d and \u201cresulting in 50,000 additional meals being served.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bridges said that he is aware of the risks of political endorsements but isn\u2019t worried. He rattled off myriad personal reasons he is supporting Bullock\u2019s candidacy. Nonetheless, he said that he has no aspirations to ever compete on the political front; lending his name to highlight and improve food security in Montana, he said, is the least he could do for what he deems his \u201chome state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Bridges is no well-meaning outsider: a 40-year resident and small-town denizen, he is as Montana as unobstructed views and alpine lakes. He met his wife, Susan, at Chico Hot Springs, and he lives in a cabin initially constructed as a prop used in one of the three made-in-Montana films he has starred in.<\/p>\n

His relationship with Montana began when he was selected to play opposite Clint Eastwood in the 1974 movie \u201cThunderbolt and Lightfoot\u201d; <\/em>shot in 47 days in the summer of 1973, almost entirely in and around Great Falls, the film follows a pair of drifters who fall into friendship and criminal enterprise. (Bridges received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.)<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Thunderbolt and Lightfoot\u2019 was an exciting movie,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cI was a young guy and Eastwood was producing (along with Robert Daley) and he was giving Michael Cimino his first shot, his first editorial job. It was filmed partly in Helena, at the Gates of the Mountains, at the Snake River. I fell in love with Montana, I bought a Harley-Davidson, and there was no better place to buy a bike and ride around. My friend Gary Busey was also in the film, and I had a wonderful time to share with him. Clint Eastwood is famous for not wanting to do more than one take of a scene, but Clint was patient with Cimino and he would say, \u2018give the kid another shot.\u2019 It was all a wonderful experience. The light, the mountains, and the people\u2014everything just struck a chord in me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1975 Montana-made film \u201cRancho Deluxe,\u201d written by Thomas McGuane, tells the quaint tale of two modern-day cattle rustlers (Bridges and Sam Waterston) disconnected between a romantic past and a motorized present and the distant memories and principles of the West.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Rancho Deluxe\u2019 has special significance for me because I met my wife during the filming,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cShe was working her way through college, and I couldn\u2019t take my eyes off the girl waiting tables with a broken nose and two black eyes (from a car accident). \u2026 We were married three years later. On one of our first dates we went along with a Realtor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rancho\"<\/a>

Jeff Bridges, right, with Sam Waterston during the filming of the 1975 film “Rancho Deluxe.” Bridges met his wife while working on the Montana-made movie.<\/p><\/div>\n

According to Bridges, a \u201cRancho Deluxe\u201d makeup artist mailed the couple a photograph 10 years after they married, showing the moment they met.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe makeup man was going through his files and found some pictures of me asking Susan out,\u201d said Bridges. \u201cThere we are. I\u2019m speaking our first words, and there she is answering no.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bridges also played in Cimino\u2019s finance-inflated \u201cHeaven\u2019s Gate\u201d\u2014often derided as Hollywood\u2019s biggest box-office disaster\u2014a mismanaged flop that culminated in the disbandment of United Artists. The 1980 movie, based on an 1890 range war in Johnson County, Wyo., starred Kris Kristofferson and was filmed at five different sites in Glacier National Park as well as several areas adjacent to the park, and a few scenes in Idaho and Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Heaven\u2019s Gate\u2019 was shot near the border near Glacier, and Michael Cimino received a lot of bad attention for it, and undeservedly so, I think,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cI consider it a classic, because it really puts you back into what the times must have been like. The movie is leisurely paced, it\u2019s quite slow, but the filmmaking has a rhythm, and I\u2019ve ended up enjoying it more and more over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n

United Artists gave director Cimino absolute artistic control of \u201cHeaven\u2019s Gate,\u201d and he immediately carried the project over the film\u2019s initial budget of $7.5 million. Cimino overspent at least $30 million on props, tools, helicopter rentals and mindboggling set construction. At film\u2019s end, Bridges ended up with a log house that functioned in the picture as a brothel, dismantled it, and had it re-located to Livingston, near the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness.<\/p>\n

\u201cToward the end of the movie, there is a whorehouse in \u2018Heaven\u2019s Gate\u2019 and Michael Cimino said, \u2018Does anyone want this cabin?\u2019 He said that the owner or whoever was going to burn it down. I numbered the logs and took them 400 miles south to Livingston. To this day, I\u2019m living in the \u2018Heaven\u2019s Gate\u2019 whorehouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bridges said his roots as a professional musician have their origin in the unplanned jam and tutoring sessions that took place on the set of \u201cHeaven\u2019s Gate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shot for close to six months on that movie,\u201d he said. \u201cDuring those six months, Kris Kristofferson invited a lot of his friends. On movie sets, many actors play music. Kristofferson brought Ronnie Hawkins, Stephen Bruton and T-Bone Burnett, and our down time was spent making music. Some lifelong friendships started there, and \u2018Heaven\u2019s Gate\u2019 was really the birth of the music that came out later in\u00a0\u2018Crazy Heart.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, Bridges has gone on to become one of Hollywood\u2019s most accomplished actors, a six-time Academy Award nominee; his performance in \u201cCrazy Heart\u201d (2009)\u2014as Bad Blake, the luckless, alcoholic country music singer at the center of the drama\u2014 garnered him his first Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role. At first, he passed on the role of Bad Blake, because the script \u201clacked music.\u201d But when he learned that noted songwriter, musician and producer T-Bone Burnett was interested, he reconsidered.<\/p>\n

In August 2011, Jeff released his self-titled debut album for Blue Note Records, produced by Burnett. He has also released a solo effort, \u201cBe Here Soon,\u201d on his own label, Ramp Records, and a live album \u201cJeff Bridges and The Abiders Live.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 66, Bridges is a guy who loves engaging in art far too much to rest on one medium\u2019s laurels. Indeed, he has been enamored of music (in addition to drawing and painting) since his mother forced him to take piano lessons at age 8, and his interest peaked when he first listened to his brother, Beau, experiment with a Danelectro guitar; in high school, he linked up with a batch of musically inclined buddies for a Wednesday night gathering that continued weekly for 15 years.<\/p>\n

The actor said that music has had special significance in several of his film projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cDifferent assignments through the years have turned me on to various kinds of music,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2018The Fabulous Baker Boys\u2019\u00a0was steeped in jazz and the Bill Evans style of piano playing. You are engaging the music and they put that in the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bridges said acting and music draw from and enhance similar creative forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is not too much difference,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cI remember years ago while preparing for a role in a hotel room, I had the idea for song, and I was really irritated that I had to get back to work. Sometimes I get an idea for a painting while playing the guitar. I\u2019ve found that over the years all of my creativity is connected and it all gets shook up and manifests in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite his fame, Bridges said that on the night of March 15 the fight to end childhood hunger in Montana\u2014and America\u2014will take center stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that with hunger and hunger-related issues, we make these advances, but if we are not watching, these advances go away and hunger just raises its head again and again,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we are not watching, we will lose programs, lose safety nets and lose those gains we\u2019ve made. The gains will slip through the holes if hunger programs are not properly supported or funded.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will be there with (producer and singer-songwriter) Chris Pelonis and you never know what\u2019s going to happen. There will be a lot of improvisation\u2014a guitar, a harmonica, a piano\u2014and we will be getting together and jamming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leading roles. Intermittent touring. Fundraising. Charity work. There is always something sending Bridges off in a different direction, splintering time.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, I spend a couple of months in Montana (and the rest of the year in Santa Barbara, Calif.),\u201d said Bridges. \u201cI wish it were closer to 50-50. That sounds pretty good to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

A night of music and conversation with Jeff Bridges takes place at The Wilma Theatre, in Missoula, March 15, at 8 p.m. General admission tickets are $50 and $500 campaign fundraising tickets include pre-show V.I.P. access to Bridges and Gov. Bullock. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hunger is not political discourse to Jeff Bridges. When the actor discusses the inability of children to access food, reduced food quality, the importance of food banks or federal nutrition programs, he evaluates them as societal or communal problems as opposed to explicitly political ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":10920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[3982,3980,1152,3981,3979,3978,782],"class_list":["post-10919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversions","tag-chico-hot-springs","tag-clint-eastwood","tag-jeff-bridges","tag-michael-cimino","tag-montana-food-bank","tag-no-kid-hungry","tag-steve-bullock","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}