‘Something is missing’: how Ed Harris unlocked the key to his role in Kodachrome

In 2009, Kodak stopped producing Kodachrome, the colour-rich film that had been used to make slides since it was invented in 1935. The following January, there was an international rush on an unlikely target: Dwayne's Photo, the only high-street photographic shop in the world still processing Kodachrome, in a town called Parsons in Kansas.

The New York Times' weekend magazine ran an article about the weird and wonderful types who made the journey to Kansas with their last rolls. It caught the imagination of readers, many of whom would have recognised that they were reading it in another declining stock: newspapers. Here was another thing being seen off by the digital age. At least Dwayne's Photo and The New York Times gave the old tech a decent farewell.

One of the inspired was novelist Jonathan Tropper, who duly wrote a film script called Kodachrome about a celebrated photographer who, although much weakened by the cancer that will soon kill him, wants to get to Dwayne's before it shuts. The film is directed by Mark Raso, who previously made Copenhagen; Ed Harris plays the photographer.

Harris is 67, so he lived through the golden age of the slide night. "We have so many slides that my dad took on Kodachrome film when I was growing up," he remembers. "We had boxes of them and that was part of my life. Really, a lot of the memories I have are based on those pictures."

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Harris' character, Ben, is a mean-spirited, razor-tongued man whose only son Matt (Jason Sudeikis) has refused for years to speak to him, feeling he has been punished enough in life. Ben's photographs tell another story, however. They are humane, committed, visionary and will earn him a hero's welcome at Dwayne's. Matt works as an A&R man for a music company, but he is another true believer in art who finds himself out of step with the digital world. Indeed, he is on the brink of being sacked for failing to make any profitable signings, largely because his nervous bosses won't take on any of the rock innovators he brings to the table.

Thus begins the road movie, which Raso has appropriately insisted on shooting on old-school film stock. A young woman (Elizabeth Olsen) arrives in Matt's office announcing she is his father's nurse, that he is dying and that he wants Matt to drive him to Kansas. He is persuaded only because it may give him a chance to meet the band that might save his career. Off they go, carping and sparring. It is clear enough where this dramedy of father, son and attractive, available woman is headed, but they have some obstacles to clear before they get there.

Raso says he always wanted Harris as Ben. It is easy to see why; his stencil-sharp face and piercing blue gaze convey intensity without a word having to be said. That forcefulness has made characters who are very different from each other – his gritty John Glenn in The Right Stuff (1983), his Jackson Pollock (2000), his dying AIDS sufferer in The Hours (2002) – similarly memorable.

According to Australian director Peter Weir, who worked with Harris on The Truman Show (1998) – for which he received his fourth Oscar nomination – and The Way Back (2010) once said that shooting Harris was "spiritual … a man who has a past and regrets; there's something in the eyes and the face, you just can't fake it, you can't teach it and Harris has that quality".

Harris thought it would be fun to play a character so much larger than life. "It read like 'oh wow, what an opportunity to be this theatrical guy, this grandiose, pompous arsehole'," he says. On the first day of shooting, however, he told Raso he realised he had it wrong.

"It's not about that at all. It's about a real guy who's a photographer who has been committed to and very famous for his work, who treats people the way he treats people because something is missing inside him."

Raso came to agree, cutting several of Ben's more excessive bursts of temperament. "For me, the heart of the story has always been the father-son relationship," Raso says. "That was my way into it."

But is it really possible to combine art and parenthood? Is it unreasonable to expect that a great artist should also be a good person? Harris grappled with the shortcomings of talent in Pollock, a portrait of Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock in which he played the emotionally frail, alcoholic genius and which he also directed when he couldn't find anyone else he liked who would do it. He has said that he considers it his greatest achievement, "other than being a decent father".

"Pollock was clearly troubled. But if you are a creative person, it's also the effort to overcome whatever it is, whether it's a mental problem, a psychosis or a physical problem, that can often lead to pretty outstanding work. I think that in Pollock's case he fought to create. It was a struggle for him, but he found a way to express himself that meant something to him." He was married for 11 years to fellow painter Lee Krasner. "And one of her lines was that family is the enemy of art."

Harris can't support that. He has been married to actress Amy Madigan since 1983; 10 years later they had a daughter, Lily. Harris, who had his own drinking issues when he was younger, says "if I was not married and I didn't have a daughter, I might not be alive. On the other hand, I'm sure my choices might have been different along the way. Sometimes you make decisions that maybe aren't the most rewarding creatively, but they provide a decent life for your family.

"And there are compromises, I think, for an artist if you are going to be a genuinely caring, loving, present parent. That takes time, it takes energy, it takes thought – and all of that time and energy cannot possibly go into your art as well." It is easy enough to spot those compromises, partly because Harris has made few bones about them: Michael Bay's The Rock (1996), James Cameron's The Abyss (1989), plus a good number of films so awful you will never have heard of them.

"Although I do think having a family enriches you," he adds. "At least if you're paying attention."

Much of Harris' career has been spent on the stage, where he found the perfect fit for his moody masculinity in the works of Sam Shepherd; for the past couple of years, he has found himself adjusting to the different rhythms of television, playing the Man in Black in Westworld. He likes the role, although he finds a job where he is required only a couple of days a week and has no idea what else is happening in the show quite a conceptual challenge. Being on television hasn't changed his life, however. Perhaps a few more heads turn when he walks down the street. Perhaps not.

"I'm usually wearing a hat and glasses and don't walk down the street going 'hey, look at me, I'm in the movies!', you know?" he says gruffly. "Other people ask for it. I don't."

Kodachrome opens on June 7.

Stephanie Bunbury joined Fairfax after studying fine arts and film at university, but soon discovered her inner backpacker and obeyed that call. She has spent the past two decades flitting between Europe and Australia, writing about film, culture high and low and the arts.

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