Defending His Role in the Show and Hoping to Get Back to Music

Kris Kristofferson is the St. Sebastian of the airwaves this week, closing his pale blue eyes and turning a chiseled cheek as the arrows of outrage over "Amerika" whistle in from left, right and center.
"Aw, hell, I may never work again after this film," he growled as he swigged an orange juice in the early morning gloom of his room at the Sheraton Grand. "And I don't care. I want to do what I can, but uh, right now what I want to do is go out with my band. I'm so tired of answering questions. It's all backstage and no gig."
Kristofferson was a study in folk noir: black cotton turtleneck, black leather jacket, black corduroy jeans and black suede boots. The only spot of color was a small red button on his lapel, a picture of a muzzy-haired man.
"Sandino," he said gravely. That would be Augusto Ce'sar Sandino, patron saint of Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution.
"Yes. I'm a supporter. I know it's not hip to be ..." Hip is a relative thing in the late '80s, but what's a man who thinks the Sandinistas are swell, the Soviets misunderstood and the Reagan administration all wet doing in a 14-hour saga that makes "Red Dawn" look rosy?
Kristoffersonian thought on this matter falls into three schools:
One -- It's a Dirty Job but Somebody Has to Do It: "I did not want to be involved in anything that increased Cold War tensions or contributed to the simplistic notions that the Russians are the enemy, but the fact is that the film was going to be made, and I felt that it was important that the part of the hero be played by somebody coming from my position rather than somebody coming from the right, a Charlton Heston who was going to turn it into Rambo."
Two -- The End Justifies the Means: "I don't like the idea of putting America and Russia as adversaries, but I did want to be involved in a film that talked about patriotism and talked about the principles America ought to be standing for."
And Three -- War Is Hell: "The thing is, I did what I thought was right. I did it out of a sense of duty, I didn't do it for the money, I didn't enjoy doing it. It was six months of hard work, no laughs, half of it I'm playing a brain-damaged character, you know."
If that sounds too easy, too bad. It's still a free country. "Easy justification!" he said. "It would have been a lot easier not to do the film! It was six months of hard work, of battling over every line of dialogue. And battling because we, all the actors, were worried about the possible effect of the film."
He contemplated his knuckles in silence for a moment.
"Everybody seems to be thinking that I'm out to cleanse my soul. I'm not ashamed of being involved in this film. At least it's about something pertinent. And if people disagree with it, that's good, I disagree with a lot of it, too. If they offer equal time to the other side, that's my side."
Two weeks ago, in Nevada with Daniel Ellsberg, Ramsey Clark, Martin Sheen and 2,000 others to protest the resumption of nuclear testing, he felt the thunder on the left.
"As you can imagine, the place was full of people who were violently opposed to the film. And, uh, it was bizarre, this woman came up and said, 'You can't atone for "Amerika" by doing this.' " He groaned.
"Well, you know I don't feel like I have to answer for 'Amerika.' I didn't create it, and I won't apologize for being involved in it."
He stood up and ambled over toward a box of Kleenex. "Let me blow a nose here -- I've got a killer cold." He sat back down, twisted his wedding ring and sighed.
"Listen, at the far left it's the same as at the far right. What you have is fascism. I said to this woman, 'I thought we were talking about nuclear protest here.' I told Martin after this woman went swaggering away from our table, I said, I'd forgotten how bad these left-wing [jerks] can piss me off, you know? It knocked Martin to the floor."
He was traveling light last week. Two small suitcases, a smaller bag. In a few hours he was flying off to the Evil Empire itself, as part of a delegation seeking to improve communication between the two countries. His third wife, Lisa, a lawyer pregnant with their first child, ordered breakfast from room service. Coffee and orange juice.
At 50, he is seasoned but not sagging. His lined face is tanned and lean, but without the skeletal look it had a few years ago. He runs seven miles a day. And he gave up booze several years ago, after a wild and well-publicized youth of drinking, carousing and cranking out songs -- "Me and Bobby McGee," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "The Pilgrim -- Chapter 33" ("He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction ...") -- that helped define the times. He is serious and articulate, though he mangles syntax from time to time, earnest and self-effacing. And even in black (or maybe it's especially in black), he still looks the romanticrogue, intense and unpredictable.
After more than a decade of films ("A Star Is Born," "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," "Blume in Love," the disastrous "Heaven's Gate" and the more recent "Trouble in Mind"), he's begun making records again. He recently appeared in concert with ex-wife Rita Coolidge. It was their first collaboration since their stormy marriage ended in divorce seven years ago. (Asked what that was like recently, he quipped, "Well, she can't swing at me on stage.")
In "Amerika" Kristofferson plays a Vietnam veteran and former presidential candidate who is drafted, reluctantly, to lead a resistance movement 10 years after the Soviet Union has taken over the United States.
"In a way, he's not so far from me," he said. Kristofferson spent five years as a captain in the Army in the early '60s, getting out just before Vietnam, and once taught English at West Point. His father was an Air Force major general. A younger brother spent the war as a Navy fighter pilot in the Philippines.
His character, he said, "came back from Vietnam very critical of that war, what he considered to be short-sighted about that war. He ran in a presidential campaign and was accused by the other candidates of trying to divide America. He was branded a traitor, something that I never really did understand.
"In the beginning of the film he's a very broken man, disappointed and disillusioned. In fact, for the first three or four hours he can barely talk and he doesn't want to get involved in anything, and as his spirit revives, throughout the thing, he eventually leads the resistance."
Stories about Kristofferson tend to make a lot of his Rhodes Scholarship, and his image has always been that of the head with the head on his shoulders. True to type, he retreated to the library to prepare for this role. "I did a lot of reading of revolutionary tracts, and studying some of Kennedy's old speeches, and Malcolm X, reading 'Fire From the Mountain,' which is a book by Omar Cabezas, about the Sandinista revolution.
"President Kennedy had this great speech at American University saying, three months before he was killed, where he said we had to look into our hearts and really take another look at the Russians, and where communism was repugnant to us in terms of personal freedom, that there were so many things we could admire, that we could relate to in terms of scientific and cultural achievements and acts of personal courage, and the fact that they want to leave the world a better place for their children."
It's possible that "Amerika" upset more people before it aired than "War of the Worlds" did after: the Soviets, the United Nations, left- and right-wing media watchdogs, even the Montgomery County chapter of the Gray Panthers. Though he was surprised at the intensity of the criticism, Kristofferson said he has no regrets. "It caused me some sleepless nights during the filming, but it causes me no twinges of conscience now. I'm especially glad that this debate has gotten so hysterical. The best thing to come out of it will be people discussing relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. I wish that events in the real world could mobilize as much public outcry ...
"And I'm glad it has given me a forum to express my ideas."
Those ideas have remained remarkably consistent over the years, and in the Rambo decade, Kristofferson, for better or worse, sometimes sounds a little like Kris Van Winkle.
In 1979, Kristofferson, Coolidge, Billy Joel and other American rockers played the first and only Cuban-American rock festival, in Havana. According to press accounts of the day, the audience, moribund with government flunkies and bored teen-agers, remained impassive until Kristofferson took the stage and dedicated a song to Fidel Castro, praising him, Che Guevara, Emiliano Zapata and Christ as great revolutionaries.
"I've been accused by those guys that hold up the signs at airports -- one guy said to me, 'Is it true that you were educated at Oxford to be a Soviet agent?' But like the nuns in Central America, I've been radicalized by my experience."
His heart has always been south of the border. "Because I was born down in Brownsville, Texas, and I spoke Spanish before I spoke English. And I was aware of America's attitude toward Mexicans and toward Latin Americans and this sort of treating all of Latin America as our back yard and have been working at it whatever way I can, against that kind of attitude."
Like many celebrities of conscience, Kristofferson has made the trip to Nicaragua to examine the Sandinista regime firsthand.
"They invited me down there after I did a concert for human rights in Mexico. I didn't feel it was necessary to be a supporter of the revolution; I felt it was necessary to be able to defend American policy. Which I couldn't."
And don't talk to him about repression and alleged human rights abuses in Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua. "The Sandinistas are nowhere near as bad [as the contras]!" he said. "When they talk about human rights, the violations they talk about are censorship of the press, or the lack of a pluralistic government. When they talk about violations by the contras, you're talking about murder of civilians, mutilations and kidnapings.
"I think it's really an immoral, corrupt policy, and I simply don't think the American people are aware of what's going on down there."
Political passions are not always healthy for film careers. And doesn't he worry about being dismissed as naive, or worse? Kristofferson shrugged.
"I feel like what I'm doing is telling the truth as I see it and that's my function as a songwriter. You know, I write about things that move me, and things that I think are important. And sing about them. And if people don't like that, they're welcome not to come."

-Mary Battiata, Washington Post, 1987