LOS ANGELES, Jan 22, (Agencies): Harrison Ford speaks in a measured tone and fiddles with a pen cap as he explains that, for him, making movies isn’t about performances.
His characters might be brave like Han Solo, brilliant like Jack Ryan or brash like Indiana Jones — so long as they serve the story.
In “Extraordinary Measures,” which opened Friday, Ford plays the cantankerous Dr Robert Stonehill, a scientist whose disagreeable nature almost overshadows the promise of his medical research. Desperate dad John Crowley must see past the doctor’s prickly personality: Crowley thinks Stonehill’s research could hold the key to a cure for the rare and fatal disease afflicting two of his kids. The two men join in the hope of making a medicine out of Stonehill’s science.
The film is inspired by the true story of the Crowley family, a story Ford read four years ago and found ideal for feature-film treatment. But Stonehill is fiction, an amalgam of different men Crowley worked with in real life, Ford says.

Experience
Ford, an executive producer on the film, didn’t just help bring the Crowleys’ experience to the screen, he helped create his own character — one that would be interesting for the actor and add drama to the story.
“If there’s an easy fit to the pieces, there’s no drama,” Ford says. “So we determined among ourselves to make (Stonehill) a difficult guy, lacking in social skills, not necessarily the best partner ... and we thought that would give us the opportunity to develop their relationship over a period of time and to tease out the drama in their relationship.”
It’s not that Ford was dying to play a cranky guy or wanted to learn the ins and outs of enzyme therapy and Pompe disease. The 67-year-old actor simply would do anything to tell a good tale.
“I make a character out of those things that allow him to tell the story,” he says. “I’m not an actor who will say, ‘Well, my character would never do that.’ If the story requires it, then I’ll find a way of accommodating that in character.
“For me, it’s not about performance. It’s about storytelling,” he continues. “Once I get a clear idea of what I want to accomplish, then acting is just dressing up and playing.”

Nominated
Ford was nominated for an Oscar for “Witness” in 1986 and was named Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Man of the Year a decade later. He won lifetime achievement honors from the American Film Institute in 2000 and the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes in 2002. Yet for some moviegoers, Ford will always be Han Solo or Indiana Jones.
That’s some pretty successful playing. And it was enough to intimidate “Extraordinary Measures” director Tom Vaughan, who credits Ford as “the star of various movies that set me on the course of becoming a filmmaker.”
But Vaughn says Ford diffused his fears.
“He was very much about presenting himself to me as an actor. He said, ‘I’m here to help you tell the story,”’ the director recalls. “I was able to put aside my fanboy feelings of working with Harrison Ford and said OK, I’m a director, he’s an actor and we’re going to tell this story.”
Ford says he doesn’t reflect on his past roles, nor does he seek his next job in terms of parts he might want to play. He just goes where the stories move him, and he doesn’t know where that might be until he gets there.
“I look for those things that I can have an emotional investment in,” he says.
Like what kinds of things?
“I disadvantage myself by thinking, ‘Oh, this is what I’m looking for, this is what I like,”’ he says. “I don’t know what I like. I like what I like.” He likes telling stories, or, as he puts it, “being an assistant storyteller, helping create characters that bring a story dramatic shape and dimension.”
“I love it. I don’t feel as useful any place as I do on a movie set,” Ford says, his measured demeanor giving way to a slight smile. “I’m very surprised and delighted at the luck I’ve had. I’ve been enormously lucky. I’ve had a long run.
“And now I have a chance to play old guys.”

The medical drama “Extraordinary Measures” has been marketed as another “Blind Side,” a true story about quiet heroism, doing the right thing and overcoming great odds. There’s much pulling of the bootstraps and milking of the tear ducts on the way to an ending that only an old grump (yes, we’re looking at you, Harrison Ford) couldn’t love.
But imagine if “The Blind Side” had focused on the legal processes necessary for Michael Oher’s adoption instead of the football and spunky Sandra Bullock and you have an idea of the strange path “Extraordinary Measures” takes on its road to inspiration. The movie, based loosely on Geeta Anand’s book “The Cure,” tells the fictionalized story of the Crowley family, whose two youngest children are afflicted with Pompe disease, a metabolic disorder
that leads to muscle degeneration and short life expectancy.

Learn
Shortly after celebrating daughter Megan’s (Meredith Droeger) eighth birthday, John (Brendan Fraser) and Aileen (Keri Russell) learn that their girl won’t live much longer. The doctor tells them to take comfort that her suffering will soon be over and to look at her demise as a “blessing.”
Cue close-up of Fraser’s face as he tries mightily to affect an expression of steely resolve.
So far, so predictable. John goes looking for the one man he believes can help save his children, researcher Dr Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford). The two form a business partnership. Crowley quits his job, deciding not to passively accept his children’s fate but “roll up his sleeves and fight.”
Since we know “Extraordinary Measures” isn’t going to end with Crowley kneeling by his daughter’s grave, the movie’s success depends on how well the filmmakers convey the family’s journey. Director Tom Vaughan (“What Happens In Vegas”) and screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs (“The Water Horse”) make the strange choice of focusing on funding and paperwork instead of the human drama.
So we spend a lot of time watching Ford and Fraser making investor presentations. We see Ford and Fraser bickering over strategy. Then there’s more presentations. More lab work. More bickering. Much talk of enzymes.

With Stonehill, Ford may well be playing the closest version of his true self he has ever committed to screen — dour, serious, anti-social and, let’s be honest, a little bit dull. He makes Stonehill the angriest old movie man we’ve seen since Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino,” only without the charisma and self-awareness that Eastwood brought to that role.
Given the movie’s monotony, it’s small wonder that Ford decides to occasionally punctuate the stillness by screaming at the top of his lungs. One over-the-top example has already gone viral, the scene where Ford bellows “I Already Work Around The Clock!” to a startled Fraser.
Fraser brings earnest sincerity to the role of the heroic dad, but all the lip quivering in the world can’t overcome the movie’s turgid presentation.
“Extraordinary Measures” marks the first release from CBS Films, a new production company created by the television network. Next time out, they might want to deliver a film that veers a little farther from the kind of fare people can watch at home for free.
“Extraordinary Measures,” a CBS Films release, is rated PG for thematic material, language and a mild suggestive moment. Running time: 104 minutes. Two stars out of four.

Also:
LOS ANGELES: A few years ago, the rise of the Internet portended a new meritocracy in Hollywood.
Agents began scouring websites like MySpace for untapped talent and studios were setting up sites aimed at cultivating creativity. This movement perhaps reached its apex when Diablo Cody, a stripper-turned-blogger-turned-screenwriter whose manager discovered her while searching online for porn, won a best screenplay Oscar for 2007’s “Juno.”
But over the past year agents and lawyers have indicated that economic conditions, industry consolidation, and legal concerns have forced talent agents and managers to be a lot less aggressive when it comes to searching for new voices.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that studios are worried about being sued for stealing ideas and content and have decided they can no longer afford to even look at a script submission unless it comes from an agent or lawyer first. Universal won’t even allow visitors to its website to e-mail without freeing the studio from any copyright liability.
Are studios really scared of folks like Christopher Cardillo, who last year sued NBC Universal, the BBC, and the Travel Channel, after submitting an idea through a website set up to solicit pitches?
These “idea submission” suits are rarely successful. Overreacting to the threat of liability by cutting off access to potential new voices seems counter-intuitive. It would be great to see one studio break from the herd and openly encourage writers to submit their screenplays. Sure, it might prompt a few lawsuits from people who submit and later think a produced movie is too similar to their idea. But it also might lead to the next big movie franchise. Call it an informal “American Idol” for screenwriters.