Exclusive ‘Hard Miles’ Interview: Matthew Modine

On April 19, the new sports drama ‘Hard Miles’, directed by RJ Daniel Hanna (‘Miss Virginia’) and starring Matthew Modine (‘Full Metal Jacket’, ‘Oppenheimer’), will be released in theaters.

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Matthew Modine about his work on ‘Hard Miles’, his first reaction to the script, his character, why Greg pushes his students, how he works with the cast of young actors, filming the bike scenes and his own love of cycling.

You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interview.

Moviefone: To start, can you tell us about your first reaction to the script and why you wanted to play a character like Greg Townsend?

Mateo Modine: What Greg Townsend was able to do is help young people who were in a reformatory, help them be able to rehabilitate themselves and move on with their lives and live productive lives. I think the most exciting aspect of the movie for me was playing a character like that.

MF: Can you talk about Greg’s conflict with his own father and how those issues lead him to push the kids to ride bikes, and what he’s trying to teach them about life?

MM: It was fun because Daniel and I had conversations about it. Were those elements going to be beneficial to a story that already told a great story about helping these young kids live productive lives, to see that the world is bigger than the gang they were in or the troubled home they came from? ? That’s a great story and I was wondering if Greg’s personal story might get in the way of that. Daniel and our other writer, Christian Sander, felt it was important for us to understand why Greg pressures people, because he was pressured by his own father. I think it works very well in the movie. It was probably just that I was nervous about wanting to expose my own difficulties in my personal relationship with my own father, whom I love very much. The problem with being a parent is that sometimes you have to say no and other times you have to be the one who imposes discipline in your home. I guess it’s the way we do it and that the people we discipline always know that it comes from a place of love and affection and understanding of the world that they don’t yet understand, that the difficulties that a young person faces that we will have to go through sometimes They are not nice. So the teachers who help us understand that when we are young, we don’t really understand, because of our youth, the difficulties that we are going to face. So when they say no to something, we think that, foolishly is really the word, we naively think that they are punishing us and they are not. They are simply trying to help us understand that drugs are not the answer and that stealing is not the solution to acquiring the things one wants. So, it’s hard to be a parent. It is difficult to be an educator. I think that nowadays things have become more complicated in the world we live in.

MF: Can you talk about Greg’s conflict with Woolbright and the potential he sees in him?

MM: I think at the beginning of the movie I’m fighting really hard to save the young man on trial who’s being fired and who’s really made great strides in being a good person, and the system discards him and puts him in a more maximized situation. prison. He loses it. Then we have a character like Woolbright who doesn’t seem to care, that he breaks the rules all the time and still doesn’t get punished. So I think Greg has animosity toward him, bitterness because he doesn’t try, and that other kid tried, and Greg failed. So that animosity that he has toward Woolbright is a relationship of frustration.

MF: What was it like working with the young actors who play the students?

MM: Since we didn’t have the budget to have separate facilities for changing clothes and getting ready, we had the production trailer, which was also where the production staff, assistant directors, and wardrobe department were. Everyone was in a tiny little trailer. So, we dressed together, ate lunch together, and complained together about the long distances we traveled. Then we exchanged stories and learned about each other’s lives. One of the actors comes from Puerto Rico, Damián Díaz, and it was interesting to know that this was actually his first film and the excitement of this opportunity for him. Jackson Kelly was a New Yorker and his career was on the way, so it was exciting to be with him. Zach Robbins had played my adopted son in a movie when he was in the single digits in North Carolina. So, it was fun to reconnect with him. So, it was a great, wonderful circus experience that I had never had before on film.

MF: What was it like filming on location and filming the bicycle sequences?

MM: Well the good news is that you don’t really have to think too much about taking action, the bike and the hard miles we were doing take care of that. You just have to react to the things that happen to your body, reacting to the things that other characters say. So it doesn’t require much of what we would say is acting, that you know the lines, you know what you’re supposed to do, you know what you’re trying to accomplish in the scene, and then you just have to react to the circumstances of 110 degree heat. and the hundreds of miles you travel over the course of a day in order to achieve the goal of making the film.

MF: Finally, can you talk about your physical preparation for this film and your love for cycling?

MM: I’ve been biking in New York City since I moved here, since I was 19 years old. Riding a bike is part of my way of getting from one place to another. The longest trips I take in New York City are from Greenwich Village to Yankee Stadium. It’s a great trip. You go through Lower Manhattan, you go through Central Park, you go through Harlem, you get to the Bronx, you enjoy a baseball game, you have a couple of beers, and then you come home at night. It’s magical because the bicycle is really a physical manifestation of democracy. Nowadays you hear a lot of people talk about being in the moment and being present. Well, on a bicycle you can’t be anything other than the moment and the present, because if not, you’ll get hurt. You don’t see the bump in the road, you don’t see the car that stops in front of you or the door that opens and you can get hurt. The last thing I’ll say about making this movie is that it was a real effort that couldn’t have been accomplished without an enormous amount of love from everyone who worked on it, from the producers to the support staff, it was a true labor of love. .

What is the plot of ‘Hard Miles’?

A beleaguered trainer named Greg (Matthew Modine) gathers a group of disaffected teenage inmates for a transformative 1,000-mile bike ride from Denver to the Grand Canyon, battling obstacles and each other.

Who is part of the cast of ‘Hard Miles’?

Matthew Modine in ‘Hard Miles’. Photo: Blue Fox Entertainment.

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