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HOLLYWOOD – Actor Jeff Bridges, looking like a Malibu prophet with his bushy beard and surfer smile, says he had a bit of a flashback while filming “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” which fictionalizes the odyssey of a U.S. military program that tried to train soldiers to use mental powers as a weapon (and, yes, to snuff out farm animals by glaring at them).
“I found myself remembering my own experiences in the 1970s when I hung out with John Lilly, the man who invented the isolation tank and did experiments with trying to communicate with dolphins,” Bridges said. “I was a test subject in the isolation tank; it was a box with about 2 feet of water and 1,000 pounds of salt so you would float. John was a guy who would shoot acid – he’d inject LSD straight into his veins – and go in there for 24 hours.”
And what did Bridges discover as his head bobbed in the silent darkness?
“Well, it’s true that when you can’t see out, you start looking in,” he said. “Why is John wearing that `Star Trek’ jumpsuit? Wait, what’s really in this water? What if he’s a mad scientist doing an experiment on me? You get carried away a bit.”
If there was ever a movie that gets carried away with mind games, it’s the quirky “Goats,” which opened Friday and co-stars Ewan McGregor, George Clooney and Kevin Spacey.
Clooney produced the film, based on the book of the same title by journalist Jon Ronson. The movie states in the opening sequence: “More of this is true than you would believe.”
In the film, McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a small-town reporter who loses his girlfriend to his editor and jets off to cover the war in Iraq. He meets an eccentric mystery man, Lyn Cassady (Clooney), who seems like a character plucked from “Doonesbury.” Cassady reveals that he was part of a military unit devoted to the potential use of brain energies to walk through walls, transport consciousness miles away, befuddle enemies and obtain state secrets.
Bridges plays Bill Django, the drug-gobbling leader of the unit, who talks like a mash-up of Timothy Leary, Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Psychic Friends Network. He chuckled at the “years of research” he performed in the 1960s and 1970s to find the textures of the loopy character.
“I find aspects of myself that match up with the guy, and I think about the people I know and my friends through the years,” Bridges said. “I went through those experiences too for the Dude character (in the film “The Big Lebowski”), and some people say this character reminds them of the Dude. I don’t see that, really.”
The Django character is based on Lt. Col. Jim Channon, who did, in fact, lead a New Age program at Fort Bragg, N.C., that trained members to achieve the U.S. Army equivalent of Jedi mind tricks. Bridges sought out the psychic warrior to offer tips for the role.
“Jim Channon is alive and well in Hawaii, and he answered all my questions,” Bridges said. “He’s very gung-ho, and he’s really dedicated to changing the human direction. A lot of the stuff is far-fetched and easy to laugh at, but, in my own personal view, it’s headed in the right direction. We have to find some way besides killing each other. This stuff is bizarre, but I bet whatever is really going on in the universe is a lot weirder.”
Bridges said the film shoot in Puerto Rico and in Albuquerque, N.M., was often amusing because McGregor, as the film’s voice of skepticism, has numerous lines mocking the weird science and comparing it to Jedi Knight mumbo jumbo – a funny twist considering he spent three films swinging a light saber for George Lucas.
Bridges said his favorite scene, though, was when Django secretly dosed himself and the journalist with LSD.
“We had these special contact lenses that made our pupils really big, and to look Ewan in the eyes and see that and know he was looking at mine, it really put me right there, it was easy to get back to that.”
Django is different than the Dude in a major way – Django is focused on a life’s mission, while the Dude likes to go bowling. Bridges, it turns out, leans more toward the latter.
“My M.O. is resistance; I try not to do anything at all,” Bridges said. “I only take projects that come to the point where I have no choice. Whatever sucks me in, whatever beats my resistance, those are the ones I did.”
Bridges, 59, looks a bit like Kris Kristofferson these days. He grew the beard for “Crazy Heart,” a film about a country singer with a lot of mileage who crosses paths with an up-and-coming musician (Colin Farrell). That small film was a jolting change from the one he just finished: “Tron Legacy,” the Disney digital fantasy.
Bridges said he hopes “Goats” finds an audience and that he’s relieved by one early good review – Channon’s.
