Riding shotgun

Southpaw Peter Fonda was delighted to learn from a recent study that left-handed people are more apt to face psychotic mental illness than righties. ``That explains it," he cried with glee. ``Now I get it. No wonder I'm nuts."

Fonda was ensconced in a local hotel room in late July to promote ``3:10 to Yuma," a remake of the 1957 western. With him on the publicity gig was Ben Foster, the young actor who gives a spectacular performance as a stone-cold killer in the film.

We've never known quite what to make of Fonda. He is referred to as a ``Hollywood legend" in a studio press release, which is of course preposterous against a true legend like his father.

Yet in his own weird way, he is. What's legendary about Fonda is the fact he's still here. At 67, he has survived legions of demons, forgotten movies, and God knows what all else to be come, along with old pals like Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, a dean of Hollywood long-distance runners.

Fonda's span is astonishing, from ``Tammy and the Doctor" to ``3:10," which opens here this Friday, 44 years later. From the golden age of the Brown Derby to the scenes at Laurel Canyon and the Hollywood cowboy retreat of Paradise Valley, Mont., the man's been around. Someone from the Library of Congress should tape him because he is a walking oral history of Tinseltown.

He's been Troubled Son of Henry Fonda and Proud Son of Henry Fonda. Brother of Jane and Father of Bridget. ``Easy Rider" star and and counter-culture icon. Eminence grise, or maybe eminence conch-belt turquoise. He's neither Hollywood establishment nor counter-culture now. If counter-culture even exists in Hollywood today, he's past it.

In his latest incarnation, which he performs with brio, Fonda is Forever Young. He talks fluently and smiles easily. He looks fabulous - a tall, skinny glass of water in fine cowboy boots, tight custom jeans, tinted prescription aviators and a large, handsome head - rather like a Ralph Steadman illustration. (The jeans accentuate his stork legs and make you fear for him in shorts.)

At 26, more than 40 years younger than Fonda, Foster eclipses his elder on screen and shows boundless promise. Fonda does fine, but he doesn't have the chops this kid does. Yet it's Fonda you'd love to share a ride to the Berkshires with because he's so damned entertaining. His stories are addictive, pouring seamlessly one into another. If he drops names, it's not to name-drop.

Foster is wound tighter, and speaks with acuity. Stubble hair - his default look between roles - tight leather jacket, white shirt. His eyes take your measure, as they do in the movie. (He bears a bizarre resemblance to Tina Brown.) He's 5-foot-9 to Fonda's 6-foot-2. What they are is an unmatched pair.

In the film, Foster plays Charlie Prince, the lethal number two in a gang led by Ben Wade, played by Russell Crowe. Prince does his dirty work while Wade, who wears velvet, maintains a charming remove until he goes vicious. So how did Foster confect Prince?

``It's name and form," he replies. ``He's the prince, not the king, and with that there's a lot to lose and a lot to prove," he says. ``He's the dog from hell."

Foster poured through archival photos of outlaws, whom he describes as ``desert pirates" because of their outlandish attire. He focused on rock 'n' roll too.

``The research I was pulling came from '70s glam rock," he says. ``Charlie Prince was a rock star and his performance was killing." It helped that costume designer Arianne Phillips had worked with Madonna. Prince wears a creamy white leather coat, black hat, and sports two huge, flashy pistols.

``I also watched a lot of documentaries on mountain cats," Foster continues. ``The way they move and operate - that kind of predator was important to find," he adds. ``I tried to find a certain elegance for Charlie Prince. I went for a more elegant handling of guns. I thought of bullfighters or fencers, the way they hold themselves."

There's more. Foster had never been on a horse. He knew that how he rode was crucial to his credibility. He rode beautifully, but with a formal, military bearing: back erect and right arm akimbo, right hand braced on his right thigh. There's a studied arrogance to this - you see it in British cavalry - but never among American outlaws.

``That was definitely a decision on my part," he explains. ``Westerns are usually sparse on dialogue, so it becomes a matter of physical presence. Very basically, he's the prince. There's a certain royalty and affectation that comes with the position."

Fonda plays Byron McElroy, a nasty bounty hunter. He gave great thought to the weapon McElmore would use - a double-barreled shotgun - because of its critical role in defining the man.

``One of those big brass shells was full of buckshot. Out of each barrel comes nine rounds of .30 caliber ball," he explains. ``So two barrels are putting 18 rounds of ball out there while Ben Foster's character, using those big Schofields, has to reload. That gunfight's on my side."

Fonda then segues into the tale of how he almost died after accidently shooting himself in the stomach with a single-shot revolver when he was 10. He says he was shooting trap with two friends. (With a pistol?) Both of them managed to shoot themselves, too, but came out OK.

Fonda has worked continuously but his memorable work is spare. Some maintain he's been living off the fumes of ``Easy Rider," the 1969 counter-culture big daddy he says he wrote in four hours in Toronto and starred in as Captain America. He co-produced it, too. He directed the cult western ``The Hired Hand" (1971). Others point to his Oscar nomination for ``Ulee's Gold," in 1997, but that was almost 30 years later and now a long decade ago.

Fonda notes that ``Easy Rider" ranks 84th of the 100 best films of the last 100 years on the list compiled by the American Film Institute. However dated it is today - and it is, big time - he feels he's earned the keys to the clubhouse.

What the movie obviously gave him was desperately needed film cred. ``Take `Easy Rider' and I'm out of that box," he says about the shadow of his father.

``There was nothing Henry Fonda about that," he said proudly. ``In fact when he saw it, he said, `I feel sorry for you, son. I'm not sure this is going to fly.' He didn't understand there was an audience out there that Hollywood didn't know how to approach. They were still making `The Glass Bottom Boat' with Doris Day.

``They didn't hear the rock 'n' roll that was coming out. I did. We had our own art. We had our own wardrobe. We had our own songs, our own literature and poetry and painting. We had our own language. What didn't we have? We didn't have our own movie. `Easy Rider' fit that bill."

Foster is confined to no such box. He's free as a seabird and is rising like one. He turned in a boffo performance in ``Alpha Dog" last year and was strong in 23 episodes of ``Six Feet Under." ``3:10 to Yuma" will further burnish his reputation. This fall he'll be in Belfast with Ben Kingsley to make ``Fifty Dead Men Walking," a film about the IRA.

In it, finally, he's relieved to be a good guy: ``I've been playing a few bad guys for a few years now, and I'm bad-guyed out for a while."

Foster will always surprise us. Fonda will, too, in his own way. He is, it turns out, a huge watch man. Has scads of them. He says he's on the board of Swatch. He wore a time piece on each wrist - a Swatch on his left and what looked suspiciously like a Chronoswiss Opus Chrono Skeleton Steel Rose SE, which starts around $10,000, on the right.

``Sometimes I wear four or five just to mess people up," he says, beaming. He's particularly proud of one he says is guaranteed to lose less than a day in 144,000 years. (No typo.) He hoots at the absurdity of the claim, but still had to have the damned thing.

Foster says Charlie Prince is a fatalist. Peter Fonda must be too. He's still standing, in part, because he negotiates the vagaries of life as he defines violence in westerns: ``Expected violence is accepted violence. Unexpected violence is what you have to deal with."

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.