In ‘Gods’ he trusts

Ted Turner steps out of his hotel room near Georgetown, closes his eyes and clutches his chest. His knees begin to buckle and then he starts to swoon as if he has just been shot through the heart. Why me? you can almost hear the media titan ask.

The talk has turned to the box office prospects for his epic Civil War film “Gods and Generals,” which Warner Bros. plans to release on Friday. When someone mentions that movie attendance could drop dramatically if war breaks out, Turner groans.

“Killed by the war,” he says, his shoulders sagging. “I’ll be another one of the casualties.”

But then he opens his eyes, flashes a smile as wide as the Potomac and approximates a stirring line of dialogue uttered by actor Robert Duvall, who plays Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, in the film: “It’s in God’s hands now.”

It’s a hammy yet hard-to-resist performance by one of the country’s most theatrical tycoons.

He may be down to his last $2 billion or so; Jane Fonda may be out of the picture; he may be peddling bison burgers at a new chain of restaurants. But there’s one place that Turner, who at 64 recently announced he would step down as vice chairman of embattled AOL Time Warner Inc., is still riding high: atop a pet project of a movie whose box office appeal seems skewed primarily toward Civil War buffs and armchair historians. In fact, if you spend some time around Turner these days, you come away with the distinct impression he needed “Gods and Generals” just as much as the picture needed him to get off the ground.

How many other media magnates would sink $90 million out of their own pockets to make a three-hour, 49-minute historical epic with no bankable stars, no steamy sex scenes and a central character given to reading Scripture when he’s not leading his troops to kill Yankees?

How many other media magnates would don a Confederate uniform for a cameo in the movie to utter one line of dialogue, join in a rousing chorus of “The Bonnie Blue Flag” and pick up a union-scale $636 paycheck as part of the deal? Or take time to watch a glacially paced period film more than 50 times -- so many times, in fact, that he claims he can recite any line of dialogue from memory?

Turner is even personally leading the publicity brigade, arriving here recently to glad-hand the public at a local theater complex before yukking it up with reporters previewing the movie at a press junket. A couple of days later, he was front and center on the red carpet at the premiere, where invitees included Cabinet members and a quarter of Congress, along with the film’s stars: Duvall, Jeff Daniels, Mira Sorvino and Stephen Lang.

And guess what. It seems the wily and unpredictable innovator, the man who basically invented cable news as we know it, is a pretty conservative guy when it comes to his movies.

“We’re going against the grain here,” Turner says of his opus, which opens in 1,548 theaters. “This is not your normal Hollywood movie with glitzy stars and lots of bare breasts ... and a lot of foul language. I mean, this is a long way from ‘The Matrix’ or Jackie Chan movies.... This is not a chick flick. This is not a buddy flick. This is not a comedy. This is a historically accurate epic.... The audience will determine whether it’s a [hit] or a flop, but it won’t be a complete flop. This movie will not be a flop, because it’s good!”

At a press screening, Turner sits beside his girlfriend, Frederique Darragon, a 53-year-old Frenchwoman and his constant companion since his separation from Fonda. When the opening credits roll, revealing the logo of his new Atlanta-based production company, Ted Turner Pictures, emblazoned with a giant sail, people in the audience begin to clap as Turner gleefully watches the screen, beaming like a little boy.

When “Cross the Green Mountain,” a seven-minute song written for the movie by Bob Dylan, plays over the closing credits, Darragon points at Turner’s back and jokingly whispers to someone in the next row that he didn’t even know who Dylan was before this project.

“Gods and Generals” is the prequel to 1993’s “Gettysburg” and marks the second time that Turner has joined forces on a Civil War project with Ronald F. Maxwell, who wrote and directed both movies.

The latest film follows the first two years of war in Northern Virginia through the battles of First Manassas, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Both men envision a trilogy, with the third part, “The Last Full Measure,” to focus on the final years of the conflict leading up to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Maxwell says Turner has seen every piece of footage he shot and was not exactly shy about giving his two cents’ worth.

“He’d call me at 5:30 in the morning because he’s on the East Coast,” Maxwell recalls. “The phone rings. I used to think it was somebody in my family calling to say somebody had died. He is so enthusiastic. He cares. He called me from Argentina. He called me from Montana. And it’s always about one thing -- the movie. I told him, ‘Do you want to see my best shot or do you want to see the whole enchilada?’ ‘Everything. I want to see everything.’ So, he saw the six hours. Then he saw five. And he had a lot of say and he is very involved.”

Maxwell maintains that Turner essentially gave him final cut. Still, he allows: “deferring doesn’t mean he’s quiet.”

The colorful Turner, a former America’s Cup yacht race winner who founded Turner Broadcasting System, parent of CNN, TBS, TNT and the Atlanta Braves, admits he has had a bad run of late.

But clearly the man who once talked about running for president has found in “Gods and Generals” a perfect plot line to latch onto in his own dark hours. With his ego in full flight, he compares his current predicament to the humbling retreat of Union forces during the early years of the Civil War.

“It’s been a very difficult period for me,” Turner said. “I lost most of my fortune, lost my position, lost my job and my company all at once. But I’m still carrying on. The Union forces didn’t surrender after Fredericksburg. They retreated and regrouped to fight again and they came back a couple months later and won at Gettysburg.”

Turner points out he could never have made “Gods and Generals” given his current financial circumstances and will complete the trilogy only “if the movie is financially successful and AOL Time Warner stock doesn’t collapse.”

“See, I’ve got to be able to afford to do it,” he says. “It costs a lot of money to make a movie. This one is $90 million. That’s a lot.”

Ted Turner Pictures plans to develop documentaries as well as feature films. “Avoiding Armageddon,” a documentary about weapons of mass destruction, is scheduled to be shown on public broadcasting in April.

To be sure, Turner is not broke -- yet. He remains one of America’s biggest landowners and likes to spend time on his ranches in Montana and Argentina, while making his permanent home at Avalon Plantation in Florida. Through Turner Enterprises, he manages the largest commercial bison herd in North America and has a chain of six restaurants -- Ted’s Montana Grill -- that he hopes to expand to 140 or 150. (“We haven’t gotten to California yet, but we’re coming -- maybe in a couple of years.”)

Still, for a man who talks as if he’s on the ropes, Turner doesn’t seem to have lost his sense of humor -- or unconcealed vanity.

“I weigh the same thing I did when I was in college -- 180,” he says, patting his flat-iron stomach and boasting that the old clothes still fit. Then he quips: “I’m going to have to wear them by the way our stock’s going.”

Turner’s cameo in the movie reprises his “Gettysburg” role as Confederate Col. Waller Tazewell Patton, the great-uncle of World War II Gen. George S. Patton. Turner can’t resist once again pointing to his slim physique and the fact that he kept the uniform he wore in “Gettysburg” and it still fits.

His is not the only cameo in the film. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) put on a white beard and mustache for his role as a Confederate officer, and then-Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) appeared in muttonchops, cheering on Lee at the Richmond House of Delegates. Also appearing briefly were Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.)

Last week’s premiere was held in a city that is tense and fearful of terrorist attacks as war with Iraq looms. The mood was not lost on Turner, who notes that his movie begins in 1861, when tensions were also extremely high in the capital as the nation geared for war.

“This is just a coincidence that we are on the eve of another war as this movie comes out, which is about the start of the most horrible war that America has ever engaged in,” Turner says.

The movie is based on Jeffrey M. Shaara’s book, “Gods and Generals.” Shaara is the son of the late author Michael Shaara, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Killer Angels,” inspired Maxwell to make “Gettysburg.”

Maxwell, whose previous credits include “Little Darlings” and “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” has spent 25 years of his life bringing “Gettysburg” and now “Gods and Generals” to the screen. When he began his journey, no one in Hollywood wanted to make a Civil War film, he said, but perseverance paid off.

“Little did I know when I started that I would be spending so much time in the American Civil War,” he said. “I didn’t start out thinking this would be my life’s work.”

Maxwell said he first tried to interest Turner in “Gettysburg” back in the early 1980s, but it wasn’t until Ken Burns, who produced the acclaimed PBS documentary “The Civil War,” got the two men together that “Gettysburg” was made.

Maxwell got Turner’s approval to go after Russell Crowe to play Stonewall Jackson. There was an $8-million offer on the table and Maxwell said they were ready to go higher, but with time running short, they opted for Lang.

Meanwhile, Daniels came on board to reprise his “Gettysburg” role as Union Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain while Sorvino was cast as his wife, Fanny. Duvall was chosen to portray Lee, a role that actor Martin Sheen performed in “Gettysburg.”

When completed, the film was far too long for a theatrical release, so Maxwell decided to cut large swaths, including the entire battle of Antietam and scenes involving presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth. The scenes will be restored in the DVD version.

Even with the cuts, the theater version of the film is so long it will be punctuated with a 12-minute intermission.

Turner says he isn’t expecting “Gods and Generals” to generate blockbuster numbers the first weekend out.

“We’ll know within the first two months or maybe sooner [if it’s a financial success],” he says. “But I think this movie doesn’t have to have a crushing or smashing opening weekend. It is long, but on the other hand, so was ‘Gone With the Wind’ and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and so is the Super Bowl and so is the NBA All-Star game.”

Turner takes umbrage at the suggestion his movie is lacking star power. “I think we have major stars,” he says. “I mean, Robert Duvall and Jeff Daniels are major stars.”

Turner says that audiences are craving movies like “Gods and Generals” but that Hollywood just isn’t making them.

“If you look at all the other movies,” he says, they are full of obscenities. “I’m so sick of it. I’ve got eight grandchildren and my children don’t want their children to curse. We’re just old-fashioned.” But here, he adds, is a film “without one single curse word, where the husbands love their wives and the wives love their husbands, and there’s not one word of infidelity.” (It does, however, have enough violence in its battle sequences to draw a PG-13 rating.)

Turner loves to be tested on his command of the movie’s dialogue.

“Say a line, Ron,” he tells director Maxwell, while the two wait for a photo session to proceed.

“OK,” Maxwell says, searching his memory. “ ‘Duty is ours.’ ”

“ ‘Duty is ours?’ ” Turner says, a blank expression crossing his face.

“ ‘Duty is ours; the consequences are God’s.’ ”

Turner is stumped.

Maxwell then jumps in with another line of dialogue. “Let’s see you get another one. Um, ‘It is well that war is so terrible ... ‘ “

” ’ ... because if it wasn’t, we’d grow too fond of it,’ ” Turner replies. “Robert E. Lee on the horse at the end of the first act.”