“We’re getting smoked out!”
Coming from Peter Fonda, Mr. “Easy Rider” himself, you might suspect he’s talking about the pot he once admitted puffing on the set of that 1969 film. In fact, the 77-year-old actor is warily watching the Los Angeles wildfires from his Pacific Palisades home as he chats on the phone with The Post. Smoke is in the air. Is he in imminent danger? “Nah. We can do this, and then I’ll run,” he says, with a mellow laugh.
Fonda is a cool customer, just like Edward Johnson, the man he plays in the new Western “The Ballad of Lefty Brown,” out Friday. He’s an alpha-male rancher and newly elected senator whose loyalty to his bumbling second-in-command — Lefty Brown, played by Bill Pullman — mystifies those around him.
“Lefty seems like the sidekick, until the reveal that he’s the whole reason of it all,” says Fonda. “I love Bill Pullman, and he’s wonderful in this. Rarely did I catch him out of character.”
The movie was shot in Montana, where Fonda lived for many years, and on 35mm film, a rarity in this digital age.
“There are people who love CDs, and people who love their vinyl. This director [Jared Moshe] wanted vinyl,” says Fonda. The Oscar nominee (for 1997’s “Ulee’s Gold” and “Easy Rider’s” script) has acting in his bloodline: His father was the Oscar winner Henry, his sister is Jane and his daughter is actress Bridget.
“Lefty Brown” does indeed have a vintage Western look. It could even pass for the era in which Fonda directed his first film, “The Hired Hand.”
“I didn’t look for a Western — it was a script given to me,” Fonda says of that 1971 film, about an itinerant worker who returns home after years away from his wife. After falling in love with the screenplay, he decided to direct it himself.
In both films, violence explodes sporadically, and Fonda has strong feelings about the way these scenes are deployed. He’s not a fan of movies that one goes into knowing there will be blood.
“The use of violence in movies, I’m very particular about it,” he says. “Expected violence is accepted violence. Unexpected violence, you have to deal with that. You can’t just let it go.”
In a similar vein, he appears in “The Last Full Measure,” also shot this year and out in 2018. “It’s about a [Vietnam War] Medal of Honor winner; nothing is flowery, nothing is made up,” says Fonda, who was delighted to have a certain co-star.
“I got to work with Chris Plummer, who’s been a friend since I was 18,” he says. “I said, ‘Chris, we have to continue meeting like this!’ ” And they did: They’ll appear together in the comedy “Boundaries,” another 2018 release.
Fonda says he still appreciates the escape from real-world strife that comes from being an entertainer.
“Whatever the politics are, films and plays are put on,” Fonda says. “The great thing about being part of the circus is: The circus never gets shot during the war.”