Documentary on activist actor Ed Asner shows in Sebastopol

With Ed Asner, it's impossible to separate the actor from the activist, the gruff persona from the soft-hearted humanist and man of a 1,000 causes.

“My acting spurs me to be an activist,” he says in a new documentary “My Friend Ed,” which turns a spotlight on the endearing side of one of the screen's most beloved curmudgeons. “Activism provides me the energy to be a selective actor. It's a yin and yang. I cannot live without either.”

The film, directed by Sharon Baker and named “Best Short Documentary” at the New York Indie Film Festival in 2014, will be shown Saturday night, March 5, at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. It will advance the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, which runs March 17-20.

Asner, still a feisty actor and activist at the age of 86 will be on hand for a Q and A session following the film and a small reception afterward.

He was the voice of the elderly adventurer Carl in the 2009 animated hit “Up,” but he may be best remembered as Lou Grant, the flinty city editor of a major metropolitan newspaper tackling important social, ethical and political issues of the day.

The hit TV show was canceled 34 years ago although it was still one of the highest rated dramas on television at the time.

Asner, the activist, became a lightning rod when he lent his support to an organization providing medical aid to El Salvadoran rebels. Always an advocate for the underdog, he saw it as a humanitarian gesture to aid suffering campesinos.

Critics called him a “dirty commie” and major advertisers pulled out of the show in 1982.

“Other than killing a wonderful platform of ideas and costing a lot of people their jobs, I'm guiltless,” he said during a phone interview earlier this week.

No apologies

Asner often speaks in ironies, and sometimes it's hard to tell when he's being droll or deadly serious. But while he offers no apologies for his progressive politics, which includes support for everything from the ACLU and the Animal Defense Council to the Alliance for Global Justice and Veterans for Peace, he does regret the effect his actions had on the people he worked with. As head of the Screen Actors Guild, he was sensitive to the hardship it caused the cast and crew.

“I was too naive to do it deftly. I'm proud that I spoke out against this country's nefarious activities in Latin America, but they're still doing it today. They've just changed continents.”

Impact of show

Asner toyed with the idea of being a reporter until his high school journalism teacher told him he'd never make a living at it.

Looking back now, he said he also realizes how angry real journalists must have felt at the loss of Grant, a fictionalized idealist who was a beacon for ethics in the newsroom at a time when the lines between entertainment and news were beginning to blur.

“I'm sure there were many folks in the world of journalism who appreciated the fact that when I helped present the world of newspapers, I was speaking sometimes for them and for the ideals they espoused,” he said.

“How disappointed they had to be in me.”

He deflects credit for the powerful Lou Grant persona to the show's writers. At the time it was regarded as one of the best written shows on TV.

“I think he (Lou) was written as the ideal with a pudginess and a soft belly, which, if you directed your radar right, could be plunged right in,” he said.

Asner could be speaking of himself. In “My Friend Ed,” friends and fellow actors like Paul Rudd, Valerie Harper, Mike Farrell and Bette White describe him as a man with a soft heart beating under a crusty hide.

Growing up in Kansas City the son of a Lithuanian immigrant, Asner toiled for years, first in blue collar jobs and, after moving to L.A., in a succession of small and one shot parts.

Son Matt Asner reveals in the film that his father was coming off the worst two years of his life when he landed the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” at 41.

After years of playing Lou Grant for laughs, he reinvented him into a serious newsman, becoming the first actor to win Emmys for both comedy and drama playing the same character.

Asner said his favorite role was Axel Jordache in the 1970s mini-series “Rich Man, Poor Man,” for which he won another Emmy. (He has seven in all.).

“It was a good switch for me,” he said. “I identified with the character.”

Still active

Even at 86, Asner is still engaged as actor and activist. He admitted his “ability to chase around the world touting causes” has been curtailed. And while he has actively supported Democratic candidates like Obama, he offered little comment on the current political election other than to observe, “It's so easy to be a naive cynic, to piss on the world generally. It's easy to take cheap shots against other religions, your country and the world.”

He said the issue he feels most passionately about now is the environment.

“I've come to worship the Earth and its creatures. Gaia. I don't have a high opinion of man. I'm a defender of wildlife. I do what I can for them. They have now ceased the restrictions on making the grizzly an endangered animal. Any bear leaving Yellowstone can be plugged,” he lamented.

He also lends his voice in support of autistics. Both his son Charles and a grandson have autism.

Like his fellow Mary Tyler Moore alumnus Bette White, he's not ready to retire.

“I love the work. I'm in my fullest life when I'm working,” he said, adding with snark, “and I need the money.

“I still have one great performance resting in my head, and I want to get it out.

“I don't know what it is. I just know that it's there.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204. On Twitter @megmcconahey.