Part of the Solution: Matthew Modine on Acting, Empathy, and Hard Miles

Matthew Modine has been acting in movies for over 40 years. He started out in the '80s and '90s in a string of memorable films, including "Vision Quest," Alan Parker's "Birdy" (opposite another talented unknown named Nicolas Cage), Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket," and two Robert Altman ensemble dramas, "Streamers" and "Short Cuts." At 65, after a solid quarter-century of character work in TV and movies (including "Oppenheimer"), he has gravitas, entering every project with a relaxed air of authority. Modine brings all of his experience to bear in "Hard Miles," a sports drama based on the true story of Greg Townsend, an employee of a juvenile detention facility who turned his passion for cycling into a way to connect with the troubled teenagers under his care, by leading them on a 762-mile bike ride from the facility in Colorado to the Grand Canyon.  "Hard Miles" is an independent film through-and-through, of a type that Modine is known for getting involved in. He's the only name in the cast, the rest of which is filled out with talented newcomers and reliable character actors. He's also credited as an executive producer and helped shape the project with director R.J. Daniel Hanna and his cowriter and producer Christian Sander (who also cast Modine as a senator in the 2018 political drama "Miss Virginia"). Like a lot of the projects Modine says yes to, this one is a passion project. Not only is Modine a believer in prison reform to make rehabilitation as important as punishment, his own family endured a devastating incident of gun violence in the 1960s that shaped his perceptions of life, and eventually landed his traumatized brother, one of the survivors, in a facility similar to the one shown in the film. Did you know the real-life story behind the screenplay before you read it? No, I didn’t. But my brother Russell was in a reform school—I guess that’s what you call it. In the old days, they called it a juvenile delinquent center, but I think the language has changed now, and they call them “homes for troubled youth.” I visited him a lot when he was in that reform school. It’s only from about 15 to 17 years old, maybe 18, that young (particularly) boys get in a lot of trouble. For whatever reason, if they’re from a troubled home, they get attracted to a gang. It’s about three years of extreme immaturity and bad choices young boys make that have an impact, oftentimes a negative effect, on their whole lives.  Did your brother ever talk to you about his experience with the juvenile system? Yeah, my brother’s story could have easily been like the one the film tells. I’m sure that one of the thousands of people that Greg Townsend has helped to successfully [rehabilitate] is like my brother.  My brother Russell and my sister Elizabeth are actually my cousins. Gun violence is something that we know about all across the U.S.A. Gun violence is something that came into my family’s life. My mother’s sister, her husband, came home and shot her, and then shot himself in front of the two children, in front of Elizabeth and Russell, when they were only about 4 and 7 years old. Oh my god.  Yeah. The trouble that Russell was having as he entered his teens was obviously a repercussion of something that happened with his mother and father. Being witness to that was something that he struggled with for many years until he got into his 30s and really got into…being able to speak with a therapist to exorcise the demons from his psyche. It’s a story that I understand.   Greg Townsend has taken thousands of troubled kids on bike rides and had, I think, over a 90% success rate in turning them into productive, good citizens. I thought it was so exciting to be able to make a film that sets an example for our greater community across the U.S. to understand those young people and their difficulties, and not to give up on them, but to help to rehabilitate.  They used to call prisons “penitentiaries” and the root of that word is “penance.” It’s so important that if you do a crime, you serve the time and you get rehabilitated when you’re in the system, whether it’s a reform school or a prison, and come out and get on with your life. You shouldn’t be continually punished for your life for having made a mistake. We have to go back to that idea rather than creating lifetime criminals. We need a system that helps to rehabilitate and educate and gives people working skills while they’re in prison, so that when they come out they can get on with their lives.   I’m so, so sorry about what happened to Russell and Elizabeth. That’s unimaginable to me. He’s a good man, Russell. He lives in Utah. He’s got a whole bunch of grandchildren now. He married someone who has children, so he now has his and hers and theirs that they have together. He’s a good man.  What were the factors that led you to get so deeply involved with this movie? Well, first, it was Daniel Hanna. We worked together on a film called “Miss Virginia,” and I really enjoyed it