From John Hughes to Michael Flynn

By Tad Friend

"Left arm straight, head down," Anthony Michael Hall murmured as he took his stance at the Chelsea Piers driving range. His 5-wood carved the air but only grazed the ball, which lolloped gently over the Astro-Turf toward the Hudson River. Hall glared after it. "First of all, plant your fucking feet!" he told himself. "Turn your hips. Be the ball!" When his next shot boinged sideways into the protective netting, he cracked up. "My mother taught me that, to laugh at yourself," he said. The actor, who goes by Michael, had arrived wearing an outfit that seemed to embody this precept: black suit, white sneakers, tomato-red T-shirt, Ninja Turtle-green backpack. "I’m not afraid of color," he explained. "It's my Italian side."

Hall, who in the eighties personified dewy, dorky youth in such John Hughes films as "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club," is now forty-nine. Beneath his sweetly beseeching air lie unruly impulses, so that he calls to mind a security blanket atop an unmade bed. Yet after a checkered career that included a stint on "Saturday Night Live," a drinking problem, a hit show called "The Dead Zone," and various tabloid tussles, Hall is dynamite in the satirical film "War Machine," now on Netflix. Brad Pitt stars as the cocksure general who commands the coalition forces in Afghanistan in 2009, a character based on Stanley McChrystal, and Hall co-stars as General Greg Pulver, a character based on McChrystal's pal Michael Flynn, lately famous as the ex-national-security adviser whose loyalties may have extended to Russia and Turkey. Though Pulver is the command center's director of intelligence, he neither collects nor exhibits any, being a lump of profane seething, loyal only to Brad Pitt.

Hall switched to a driver and began to work up a sweat. The vehemence of his swings broke the ball reloader, and he had to hunt down an attendant. "I’m just a big, dumb Irishman," he said apologetically as the man rebooted the system. "I’m at war with myself! No, not really. But sometimes!" He gave the tee a military salute, recognizing a valorous adversary, then hit a low but powerful slice. "There we go, baby!" he cried. "I think it was the wood. That's what she said. Oh! Boom! If that net wasn't there, the Lady Brett"—a yacht docked at the end of the pier—"would be in trouble!" This was arguable.

Hall said that "War Machine" was the greatest opportunity of his career: "Brad Pitt started calling me ‘the Pulverizer’ on set! What a goddam honor! I felt like Nathan Hale reporting to George Washington. Brad saw that I was a little too committed—committable, even—and he said, ‘Mike, it's great to be prepared. But it's also great to be open to surprises throughout the day.’ And I went, ‘O.K., that's why you’re Brad Pitt and I’m not.’ It helped me be a deeper listener."

He piped a shot down the middle and promptly quit, observing that Robert Downey, Jr., with whom he's writing a sitcom, always says, "Don't end stuck!" Over a Limonata at a nearby café, Hall pulled out a dog-eared copy of "The Operators," the nonfiction Michael Hastings book about the conflict in Afghanistan that inspired "War Machine." He pointed out the passage where Flynn is asked how he got his top-secret security clearance and says, "I lied." The actor popped his eyes playfully and said, "The irony is what Flynn's become, how he's been vilified." He mentioned the conspiracy theory that Hastings, who died in a car accident at the age of thirty-three, had been killed by the C.I.A.—then threw up his hands, semi-disowning the idea. "Politics, wow, who knows? I don't know!" he cried, making the "zip it" motion. A second later, he went on, "I was rooting for the guy, and even in the dark satire we were doing I tried to show his deep patriotism. But you can see the truth in the eyes in politics, just like with an actor."

His own eyes appealed for understanding as he recounted the stations of his path. "John Hughes spoiled the shit out of me," he said. "John laughed and cried at every take—I’m getting chills remembering it." The hairs on his forearm stood erect, like little soldiers. "But I was an embryo on two pencil legs, and the things that work when you’re pubescent and cute don't last." Slugging down the rest of his soda, he continued, "I had an acting teacher who told me, ‘Michael, there are two types of actors: those who act with their ass’—squirmy Richard Dreyfuss types—‘and those who act with their balls.’ " His eyes got moist. "On this movie I got down on my knees and prayed before takes, and then just grabbed my balls and tried somehow to be of service." ♦