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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart and now will turn our attention towards a film about a family and how loss and grief can carry us to unexpected places and even help us grow. The film is called The Way. It was written, directed, and produced by my guest, Emilio Estevez. The film Premiered in 2010, and it will get in the words of its writer and director, "second bite at the apple with a one-day theatrical re-release on May 16th. The way follows Tom, a golfing widowed ophthalmologist whose adventurous, estranged 40-year-old son Daniel dies on a pilgrimage on the El Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile trail from the French [unintelligible 00:00:45] to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.

Tom decides to make the trek in his son's place. Tom, the dad who's played by part in Sheen, Daniel is played by Estevez, whose dad is Martin Sheen, along with the friends he makes on the trail who are also making the trek for their own reasons. Tom wrestles with his face and God, and with the last conversation that he had with his son as they drove to the airport, in which Daniel told him, you don't choose a life, you live it.

This isn't the only film from Estevez's past getting attention in 2023. It's the 35th anniversary of Young Guns in the 40th anniversary of the classic The Outsiders. Joining me now to talk about all of it is Emilio Estevez. Hi, Emilio.

Emilio Estevez: Good afternoon, Alison. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Alison Stewart: We're so pleased to have you.

Emilio Estevez: I'm not that old I swear. Contrary to what you-- the stats that you may have in front of you, I'm not that old.

Alison Stewart: I'm right there with you, pal. I'm right there with you. Gen X forever. People look at your bio, they know that you lived in New York when you were a little person for the first 6 years-

Emilio Estevez: That's right.

Alison Stewart: -of your life before your folks moved to LA. When you come back to the city, is there a neighborhood or a part of town that you always visit or you just have a certain affinity for?

Emilio Estevez: Sure. I love coming back to visit the old neighborhood. We lived in every borough, but Queens. Our last address was 86 in Riverside. At the time it wasn't the greatest neighborhood, but that was our last known address here in Manhattan. Then we went off to Mexico. My father was cast in Mike Nichols, follow-up to the graduate, the film Catch-22. My parents believe is that for the family to stay together, we actually had to literally stay together, and so off we would go. We dug in Mexico in a little town called [unintelligible 00:02:38], which is a fishing village, and we lived there for 4 months. That was the story of my life.

It was picking up and traveling and going to where the job called. I guess like being a military brat, it was you dialed into wherever dad got his next mission. We would have these wonderful and sometimes not-so-wonderful immersive travel stories. To go back to the beginning of your question, as I'm sure you know, we just lost Harry Belafonte today. I had the great privilege of working with him on a film I directed and wrote called Bobby.

His role and the friendship that he has with the other character that he has with Anthony Hopkins was inspired by a song by Simon & Garfunkel called Old Friends, and it was old friends sat on the park bench, like bookends. I'm a terrible singer. Just referencing your previous guest, how important that is, and again, just taking a minute to remember Harry-

Alison Stewart: Sure.

Emilio Estevez: -and how instrumental he was in getting that movie off the ground.

Alison Stewart: How do you think your childhood of this moving around a lot, how has that helped you as an artist?

Emilio Estevez: Well, I think that anytime that you are offered the opportunity to travel, you get an idea of how the other 95% of the world lives. When it's immersive travel, when you are dug in a way that you're not living in hotels but you're renting a house or you're renting an apartment let's say, the middle of Rome. You're 13 years old and you're learning conversational Italian. You're 6 years old and you're learning conversational Spanish. You go at 14 years old to the Philippines and you dig in. Well, my mother and father were there for 2 years, but I experienced 6 months of that. I believe that travel, that immersive travel, not only are you experiencing what it feels like to be on a film set, especially movies the size of Apocalypse No. You are really shown how the rest of the world lives in a way that I think informs you as a human being, informs you as an actor and you bring all of those experiences to the roles that you play. Ultimately the movies that I've been fortunate enough to write and get produced.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about The Way. How is The Way having this re-released? This is so interesting.

Emilio Estevez: It really came by way of a couple of things. First of all is that the movie was hung up in bankruptcy for many years, and then it ended up in a motion to abandon rights court in Delaware. A gentleman named Chris Bleano called me. He runs a smaller boutiquey distribution company and he called and says, "There's a way I may be able to help you get this film out of this motion to abandon rights." I said, "Well, great." I said, "Let's start working on this." It was in the middle of Covid, and the idea of certainly was to just get it back on the streaming services, get the DVD back out there, and available for sale.

I said, let's start working on this. Well, along comes Fathom Events. We now have the opportunity to get it out there theatrically again. We're out on about a thousand screens, thanks to Fathom Events. But then about 6 weeks ago, my girlfriend Jackie had this crazy idea. She says, "How about if we bring in Rick Steves the travel icon as a partner?" I said, "Sure, do you have his number?" She said, "No, but certainly we can figure this out. How about we just write him and we called the email him." Which I thought was the most insane idea.

We did, and the next night my phone rings and says, "Hey Emilio, it's Rick Steves. I'd like to talk to you about your email." He wasn't really sure it was me, but the next night we scheduled a Zoom call. Then by the weekend, he was on a Zoom call with Martin and I. He agreed to partner up with us on the film. We boarded a train. We got on the Amtrak. A couple weeks later, took the train up to Edmonds, Washington. Shot for a couple of days with Rick and his crew, and created a conversation where I was the moderator.

I sat between Rick and Martin and I asked them questions about travel and about acting and about faith and about family. It became an hour-long conversation that we filmed, and then we put 20 minutes of that conversation on the tail end of the movie as an addendum piece, and to talk about why travel is so important and why immersive travel can change your life.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Emilio Estevez. We're talking about the re-release of The Way. In this film, this man in his 60s, Tom, he's making this unexpected pilgrimage on the El Camino de Santiago. It's a pilgrimage trail in Spain, after the death of his son on the same trail, and you told Deadline it's a movie that is now more of its time than when we made it. How so?

Emilio Estevez: Well, I think coming out of the pandemic and coming out of our isolation, I believe that people now more than ever are-- Again, this is also my hope is that we're perhaps breaking out of our tribalism that we have this desire to get outside of that isolation that was imposed on us, but also the isolation in the tribalism I think that was happening prior to the pandemic. It was exacerbated by the pandemic, and now here we are looking at each other and saying, "Okay guys, how are we going to get through the next big thing? Whatever that is, how are we going to do that together?"

I think we realize how global the society is and how much we depend on each other, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. I believe that the movie is really emblematic of just not what we need to do, but what we should be doing, and that is getting outside of ourself. Camino can be just a walk around Central Park. A Camino can be a trip to see an old friend or to see a family member. Doesn't necessarily have to be getting on a plane, going to Spain, and doing the El Camino de Santiago.

Alison Stewart: I want to play a clip from the beginning of the movie that re-establishes the relationship between Tom and his son, Daniel. Let's take a listen and we can talk about it on the other side. This is from The Way.

Daniel: You should fly with me.

Tom: Yes, right.

Daniel: Turn the car around, pack a bag, grab your passport. Forget your golf clubs. Come on, a father-son trip. It'll be fun.

Tom: When are you coming back?

Daniel: I don't know.

Tom: You don't have a plan.

Daniel: We agreed that if I let you take me to the airport, you wouldn't lecture me about how I'm ruining my life.

Tom: I lied. Most people don't have the luxury of just picking up and leaving it all behind, Daniel.

Daniel: Well, I'm not most people. If I don't have your blessing, that's fine. Don't judge this. Don't judge me.

Tom: My life here might not seem like much to you, but it's the life I choose.

Daniel: You don't choose a life, Dad, you live one.

Alison Stewart: That's from the movie The Way. That's probably the most we get to see of Daniel in the entire film. It's an important few minutes because it really helps us understand Daniel understands a little bit about Tom, and maybe that Tom's a little bit closed down. What did you hope to accomplish as a writer in that scene, and then as an actor?

Emilio Estevez: As a writer to really set the tone between these two lifestyles. Daniel was leaving the world of academia. He was basically throwing it all away, to go and see the world because he believed in the Margaret Mead world where it's not just in a classroom, it's getting out beyond the borders of safety and seeing the world and experiencing the world and touching and feeling the world. Tom, he's a country club guy. He's in his safe bubble.

I wanted to create the contrast between where Tom was at and where Daniel was longing to go, and hoping that he wasn't going to have the same life as Tom because he didn't really see that was-- That there was no point in that life for him anyway. That was the impetus behind that scene. Also because I was only in the movie, as you mentioned, for so briefly, that it was important that tonally, we get the nature of their relationship upfront.

Alison Stewart: When you think about-- There's a bunch of different people who are on this track who interact with Tom whether he likes it or not [chuckles] in the film, and certain points of it. There's this idea about false starts and what is the right road? When you're on the right road. When you think about people thinking about, "Am I doing the right thing? Am I following the right road? Am I following my bliss?" How did that play into the screenplay that you wrote? Because I really got that as an undertone.

Emilio Estevez: Sure. I think that for Tom, where he was not able to be a father to his own son, he becomes a father to these three other individuals who he doesn't really want to be with them. He's on this track. He thinks he's alone. He thinks he wants to be alone, but in some way, those three people who he pushes back against through two-thirds of the movie, he realizes that he needs them as much as they need him.

When I say they need him, he becomes the father figure that Yost didn't have the Dutchman, that the Irishman didn't have, and the safety male figure in Sara, because we learned through the film, she has been abused, that she had an abortion, that she gave up her child because she didn't want another male in her life to abuse two people now. She says, "I gave up my baby girl so that he wouldn't have two of us to beat up."

I wanted Tom and the other men in the film to be a safety place, that they become her brothers, that they allow her to heal on some level, but they also become a safe male space for her to trust men again. I thought that that was an important aspect as well.

Alison Stewart: This film screened at the Sun Valley Film Festival and you were honored with a filmmaking award there. I wonder when did you know that you wanted to be behind the camera? At what point? Was there a moment? Was it just did it happen? Was it an evolution?

Emilio Estevez: I have always believed that I was a storyteller first and an actor second. I was always inspired. As a young writer, I think I wrote a story and submitted it to Universal for the show Night Gallery when I was seven or eight years old. I wrote a play about George Washington when I was in the sixth grade. I wrote another play as a high school senior about--

It was a two-character play with Sean Penn came back because we went to the same school Santa Monica High School. He came back and helped direct us. I've always been a storyteller. When I was 18, 19 years old, I had read the novel That Was Then, This Is Now by S. E. Hinton, who also wrote The Outsiders and Rumble Fish and Tex. I optioned the book, with the intention of writing the screenplay. Again, I was, like I said, 18 or 19 years old [chuckles]. I was ambitious before I had any real skills.

For me, directing has really become an extension of that. The Way has really I would say, is a film for me that if you want to know how I think about the world, that's the movie to watch. That's the movie, "How does Emilio really feel about the World?" That's it. That's the film. I would say then The Public and then certainly, Bobby. There are a lot of directors who make great movies, but I'm not sure what they think of the world and how they see the world. I would say those are the three movies that if you're curious about how I see the world, those are emblematic of that.

Alison Stewart: A big fan of The Public. I think that's the last time we talked about the public library system. The Way will be released May 16th. Special screening. Keep your eyes open for it. My guest has been Emilio Estevez. Emilio, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us.

Emilio Estevez: Alison, thank you so much for having me on the show. It's been a pleasure.

Alison Stewart: There's more All Of It on the way. We'll hear more about the poet, Phillis Wheatley after the news.

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