‘The Pool Hall’ Takes Its Cue on A&E; Cable

James Earl Jones, who plays a pool hall owner in “Third and Oak: The Pool Hall,” has a pool table in his suburban home. He piles books on it. But, in case his 6-year-old son ever wants to learn to play, it’s there.

“Third and Oak: The Pool Hall,” a three-character play by Marsha Norman, will be shown on the Arts & Entertainment cable network Thursday (6 p.m. and 10 p.m.) and again next Sunday. It’s the first of four hourlong plays by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights to be shown on A&E; on the first Thursday of every month through February as “American Playwrights Theatre,” a GM Mark of Excellence presentation.

The play takes place in a run-down pool hall that Jones’ character is preparing to sell. His best friend’s son (Mario Van Peebles) stops by and what starts out as a casual chat turns to more intimate talk of secrets, promises, friendship and the high cost of loyalty.

At first, Jones wasn’t sure he wanted to play the character, saying he likes to portray people who are worthwhile. “That was the problem here. I had to accept he was a jerk. I’m playing not a villain but not a right guy. I had to readjust my thinking.

“He is one of the blind ones. I defined Troy Maxson in ‘Fences’ (Jones played Maxson on Broadway) as a man who didn’t distinguish his principles from his prejudices. This is such a man. He seemed gratuitously racialist if not racist when it came to references to people outside his race, particularly to the girl who visits the pool hall. She is blond. She qualifies, in his eyes, for derision.

“I had a problem with that. I don’t like to promote gratuitous racialism at all.”

“I had to understand that white people had never meant anything good to him. He can’t understand how on a romantic level they can mean something good to a young man he thinks of essentially as his son. He can’t see genuine affection and love between people who come from different worlds.

“My character, who’s in a closed society, behaves as if he’s a Mafia don. He expects obedience and the mantle to be passed.”

In addition to Mario Van Peebles (of the TV series “Sonny Spoon”), the cast features Debra Cole.

The author, Marsha Norman, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for “ ‘night Mother.” The other playwrights to be represented in the series are Eugene O’Neill, Paul Zindel and Tennessee Williams.

Jones has been around a long time, but he said that doesn’t mean good scripts are going to come “flowing your way in excess. There are more good actors than good works.”

But the actor stays busy. He was a poet in the film “Field of Dreams,” played civil-rights leader Vernon Jordan in the first installment of “Saturday Night With Connie Chung” on CBS and recently narrated “Ivory Wars,” about African elephants, on the Discovery cable channel.

He has made several movies, not yet released, since “Field of Dreams.” “I have a 6-year-old. I have to keep working. I don’t make multimillions per movie. I don’t think anybody should, frankly,” he said.

The veteran actor was complimentary about the young crowd of actors coming up. “The young man who played my son in ‘Fences,’ Courtney Vance, is in ‘Hamburger Hill.’ It’s on cable and I’ve seen it five times to see his scenes. He’s a phenomenal actor. He ranks with young actors like Eric Roberts, Terence Booth, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Costner. They’re strong without being macho bulls. They’re strong as people.”

Jones next is going to Louisiana to play a man who runs a store in the movie “Convicts.” The wardrobe mistress told him to bring clothes that he wore in “Matewan,” which was about coal miners in the 1920s.

Some moviegoers recognized his voice as Darth Vader in “Star Wars,” though the credits listed the actor inside the costume and helmet. Using his voice was an afterthought, after the movie was shot, Jones said. “I didn’t feel it was proper for me to take credit. I had been a member of the board of directors of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences when Mercedes McCambridge’s voice was in Linda Blair’s body in ‘The Exorcist.’

“I didn’t want to get involved with that sort of thing again. I denied it during the whole exposure of the first episode. I took credit in the third (‘Return of the Jedi’) because I was going to be bumped off.”

When a criticism that black voices shouldn’t be used for villains is quoted, Jones erupts. “That’s a racialist point of view, as destructive, limiting and negative as racism is. I heard a lot of it. That’s when black people who need a platform can’t find anything better to talk about. That’s embarrassing. There are a lot of really important issues and they had to light on that to talk about.”

Jones, whose training was on stage, mostly acts in movies and TV now. “The energy factor gets more and more difficult. I’m not happy unless I have a role that’s totally engaging. I commit for more than six months and I get burned out. If I did a small part I’d be happier, but I wouldn’t be able to make a living from it.

“So I will do less stage work, only special things and probably short engagements. I think my days of commercial theater are probably coming to an end. I’ll go to pasture in movies and TV.”

But he won’t retire. “When we stop doing, we stop being. Most actors can keep functioning till they can’t walk any more.”

He says with a laugh that he’s considering modifying his rich, deep voice for TV commercials. “I just finished doing the voice of a car. They wanted a kind of Darth Vader voice. I did enjoy doing those commercials. I will have to look for another road to do commercials. Maybe some squeaky voice. I don’t know.”