{alltv} Voight sets sights on 'Lone Star'

Acclaimed actor Jon Voight has been drawn to dramatic TV because most movies have become light-hearted pieces of crap.

"The story, the essential ingredient of an intricate and well-written piece, has lost commercial potential (in movies)," Voight said. "We really are focusing on 17-year-olds and we seem to think this is what they want, and this is what they perhaps need, rationalizing.

"There has been an erosion of the real serious piece. Occasionally you get these pieces and they often are award-winning pieces because we're so grateful for them and we want to applaud them."

Voight made his comments while discussing his role on the new TV series Lone Star, which is getting significant critical buzz and debuts Sept. 20 on Fox and Global. For Voight, Lone Star comes on the heels of his role on 24.

"Doing 24 was a way of testing the water and I had a great time on that show," admitted Voight, 71. "I had been thinking about television and one of the reasons is that they're doing some very interesting things.

"Film drama is getting a bit more rare, honestly. The roles are lighter. To get that rare thing that has a little substance is tough. So if you can get a piece that has some substance on a television show, it would be something I'd be interested in doing."

We certainly had noticed over the past decade the high percentage of movies aimed at teens and tweens. But until Voight pointed it out, we hadn't really considered that of the fewer and fewer movies aimed at adult audiences, the vast majority are comedies, rom-coms or lightweight dramedies.

"It has been an erosion over years, I think," Voight said. "With me, I'm an older fella, and I grew up on great films in the '40s and '50s, and we looked for those great pieces. That's why I got in the business, right?

"There have been shifts. The films of the '60s were rougher and angrier, kitchen-sink reality kinds of films. They were daring, people wanted to make a statement, there was a lot of politics.

"But then we got into the era of the blockbuster. And then we got into the era of the action film with all this pumped-up stuff. And then we got into the era of unreality, where everybody is walking around with phony muscles, superheroes, and it became a genre."

Voight acknowledged that "amazing things" have been achieved in the current "unreality" genre. And he particularly applauded the animation of Pixar, where the stories are often more deep and complex than anything you'll find in a movie starring real people.

But the fact is, if you're a serious dramatic actor, increasingly the best place to display your talents has become television, not the milquetoast movie theatre.

"Listen, all of this stuff, all of these technologies (such as the recent 3D movie craze) can give us more paint on the palette," Voight said. "And if you have Rembrandt painting, someone equivalent to a great painter, then wonderful.

"But often it becomes more about that than the story."