Q 13

PLAYBOY: You have chronic arthritis, which you moderate by taking a dietary supplement. Is there anything you regret taking--and not necessarily for illness?

James Coburn: Yeah, probably. The experimentation with marijuana, cocaine and all the rest. I was never addicted, and the thing I found was that after a certain period of time, it gets really boring. I just couldn't do it anymore. I find that being clear, concise and conscious is really the best [smiles]. I must say, though, I did like LSD, peyote and other psychedelics. They were interesting. They cleared my head. I once did a thing with a doctor who was giving government-sponsored LSD trips in the early Sixties because the government wanted to know what LSD was. He used people from different walks of life. When it came time to try it with artists, I was one. I'd fast the night before, go to his office--I think he was an osteopath--and he'd tell me what was going to happen. I'd drop the LSD, have a cup of coffee, come back and sit in his office, and go into this incredible journey inside my head. I'd discovered so much life in an almost empty room. I laughed and laughed, really a lot, and enjoyed the kind of strange identification with reality that psychedelic experiences create. I did it because I wanted to see how conscious I was. LSD was supposed to be a consciousness-provoking drug. I found out that, Jesus, if that's what consciousness is, I've got a lot of work to do. Mushrooms are a little different. I guess because they're more organic, mushrooms have an esoteric feel. More of a mystical thing. Peyote, too, I guess because of the alkaloids in it. We used to chew some peyote, go up into the desert around Joshua Tree and run around, jumping from rock to rock, thinking we were great gazelles. I came away understanding a lot more about myself and life. I discovered a place that is not available to us unless we really do a lot of work on ourselves. It goes beyond the imagination, to a reality you can actually experience. That's the important thing about psychedelics.

Of course, they were never used right. People took them just to get high. I haven't had any of that stuff in a long, long time. I think I had gone as far as I could go in that direction; then I had to do the work on myself without them. The chemical thing leaves you stranded someplace, and you need more chemicals. And when you become used to them, they're no longer any good.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: We're at the tail end of a renewed interest in cigars. You're an aficionado of the fine leaf. Will Cubans ever be legal? Will they be less fun if they are?

James Coburn: As soon as it got popular, I stopped smoking. I got tired of carrying all the paraphernalia around. Getting really good cigars became so expensive. And to watch all these women smoking great Cohibas for two inches, then stomping them out--shit. I didn't quit immediately, but it got to be such a scene, a trip; I've never been a joiner.

As soon as Castro dies, there will be a resurgence. The problem is that there's not enough fine cigar tobacco to go around. I don't even know if most people know anything about really good cigar tobacco. The best of it comes from the very best wrapper with no veins in it, which grows in Vuelta Abajo, a few miles outside Havana. There was a blight, and I don't know if they ever got it cleared up. Now, the best wrappers come from New England.

I have several friends who once a year go up to Canada and then fly down to Cuba, pick up a gang of cigars and bring them home. They supply a lot of people, just give them away. Cuban cigars will eventually be legal.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: Which emotion is the toughest to play?

James Coburn: Joy. Think about it: How often do you feel joy? And if you feel it, how do you express it? Greta Garbo could do it. When she played Camille, and she was dying, she had this joyful look because her lover was coming. Watching that scene can rip you apart. I have rarely played joy. It's hard to get there, for a man. It's easier for a woman, I think, because women live on sensation more than men do. Men have a sense of sensation--they enjoy sex and that kind of thing--but it's not like a woman. A woman is really a sexual creature, whereas man is a territorial creature.

Q 16

PLAYBOY: Would you rather play a hero or a villain?

James Coburn: Doesn't matter. Depends on which has the most conflicts and is the most fun. I play a villain like I play a hero anyway [laughs]. A bad guy never thinks of himself as a bad guy. The actor playing someone bad has to think of himself as wanting something badly and whoever gets in the way is going to get it. A villain is someone who steps on the hero's toes, but that doesn't mean you can't go at what you want with great love and tenacity.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: You played yourself in The Player. How do you prepare to play yourself?

James Coburn: You just show up, say "hi," and do what you do. You show up and trust that whatever it is that is you will show up on camera. I mean, that's why you're there, being you. There's a character I've always played when I talk to the press and am out in public. I call it the dancing bear. We dance with the public: "Hi there, how's everything going?" "Yes, yes, I loved the film." Play all of that bullshit. That's the dancing bear act. As long as I know it's a dancing bear act, it's OK. But to be the dancing bear? I don't want that. In The Player I was at a party, and it's easy to be at a party. In fact, that's where I first met Nick Nolte, at the party. The next time we met we were working together.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: For those of us who haven't experienced one, what's a high colonic like? How does it differ from the garden-variety enema?

James Coburn: A high colonic is the greatest release of your bowels you've ever had. It's great. I had 15 of them. I fasted for 15 days, and every other day I had a high colonic. It really cleans the system. It's like a glorious bowel movement for somebody who's been constipated for a week. It's different from an enema because it kind of squirts up, then it kind of cramps, then it flows back out again. Then they pump some more warm water up and you see all that shit that's been up there, for years probably. Your insides get encrusted with mucus. Mucus gets little scales on the inside. These little scales and all of the mucus things break loose, and it cleans out your colon. It cleans out your upper intestine, too.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: You once complained that today's studio execs read only comic books and then try to make them into movies. Do we get what we want or do we want what we get?

James Coburn: That was a couple years ago. Now it's a little different. We've seen breakthroughs. Thank God for Miramax. They keep buying interesting material and churning it out. Other moviemakers are interested in quality. I don't mean the people who make The Blair Witch Project and shit like that; that's like, "I've got $85. Let's go out and buy a camera, rent the rest of the shit and see what happens." For every Blair Witch Project there are probably 300 or 400 that never make it to that point. I believe we accept what we get. I don't think people know what they want. I don't think any executives say, "Let's do that because that's what they want." People just want something new, something exciting. The studios think the audience wants the same thing they wanted last year. Not true. Making movies is serious business. There's so much money and so many people involved. Watch the credit crawls sometime. There are hundreds of names, and each person has an assistant, and the assistant probably has a driver. When we made The Magnificent Seven, the crew couldn't have been more than 45, maybe 50, and that includes all the Mexican guys and the stand-by people. We had one assistant director, one second AD, and we had a Mexican AD. That was it. You'd think it would be faster now, with cell phones and walkie-talkies, all the ADs and production assistants. But it's not.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: When did you know that your Hollywood generation had passed the torch, even if reluctantly?

James Coburn: I guess after winning the Academy Award. I haven't worked since. That's irrefutable evidence right there.