Matthew Modine talks to Greg In Hollywood about his new film “Opa!” which opens in theaters Friday

It was great to sit down with Matthew Modine recently to talk about his new movie Opa! opening in theaters Friday (Oct. 16). It’s a gorgeous film shot on the Greek island of Patmos and a movie the actor very much enjoyed making.

The last time I saw Matthew was at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver where we had chatted at several of the Creative Coalition events he participated in. We talked about being in the field for then presidential nominee’s Barack Obama’s acceptance speech and Matthew confessed that his seat was in the stands but he maneuvered his way down near the front by schmoozing with delegates!

It’s impossible to not get a little political when talking to the 50-year-old star of such memorable films as Full Metal Jacket, Vision Quest, Married to the Mob, Gross Anatomy and And the Band Played On. Even when plugging a new movie, his thoughts about politics and life are weaved into the conversation.

In the romantic-adventure Opa!, he plays Eric, a straight-laced, high-tech archaeologist who arrives on Patmos looking for a specific treasure and finds more than he bargains for.

“I would have been happy to spend the rest of my life on that island. In many ways, I was like Eric going there,” Matthew says. “What I was going there to discover personally was the antiquity of this civilization, of the Greek civilization. … What I chose for Eric to represent was American thinking and materialism. What he goes there searching for is a material object, the Cup of St. John the Divine, a cup that Jesus Christ may have drank from at the last supper and passed around the table. That would be an amazing thing to find. What he had lost sight of and what was important about the cup was the people that drank from the cup. The teachings of Jesus, that Jesus would have been the first to say the cup doesn’t mean anything, it’s a thing. What’s valuable in life is the relationships we have.”

In the film directed by Udayan Prasad, the character of Eric sees his outlook on life transformed being around the island’s inhabitants and in particular, being with the beautiful and uncompromising Katerina (Agni Scott) who owns a taverna built on top of where the Eric’s find may be.

“What’s important about the taverna is not the building but the people who come to sing and to dance and tell stories and share food and share wine,” says the actor. “What Katerina does is help him to evolve, to be somebody who begins to understand the sensuality of life, of what it is to swim in the sea, to breathe clean air and to be in love with life and to be thoughtful of other human beings, to appreciate life.”

The movie is romantic and beautiful to look at and is something Matthew hopes American audiences will enjoy and perhaps be inspired by.

He says: “We live in a culture where that isn’t valued, it’s a lesson that we could certainly use now in America where so many people are losing their homes and they’ve extended themselves far too far by purchasing things and thinking that money is the more important thing in their life and realizing that the most important thing is the relationships that you have. When we’re on our death bed, we don’t want to be gasping about ‘Oh, I didn’t pay my mortgage.’ What we really begin to appreciate is those people that you love.”

“I think that maybe this economic crisis can help us to become more like our friends from Spain and Italy and Greece. Here, we live to work. We define ourselves by our job.”

To find out where Opa! is showing and to watch a trailer, click HERE.

On the day we spoke, Matthew was to appear at night  at Geffen Theatre in the play  Saves the Alpacas which has him playing a very fictionalized version of an actor named Mathew Modine. (The play ends its run this weekend).

“I did four shows over the weekend, it’s crazy,” he said, “The interesting thing, and the horrifying thing, is that after the show when I come down the stairs, some people think that that’s really me. That I’ve been living in a Winnebago smoking dope for 20 years. If that’s what they want to think, that’s okay.”

“He couldn’t be more opposite me because what he’s really interested in is, ‘What can I do to promote myself? He thinks that adopting a baby in Africa is something that’s going to get him back on the A-list and there are people who do crazy things. People shave their head in the Valley,. I don’t have to tell you who she was. People do crazy, silly shit to get their name in the paper and then there are people who do it for truly altruistic reasons like Paul Newman and the billions of dollars that Newman’s Own has raised. Jerry Lewis and the telethons have been extraordinary. And then there are people who do it for self-promotion and those are the people we’re poking fun at.”