Here's why Hollywood will never trade in Ford for a newer model

Harrison Ford has a new movie, "Firewall," but the first thing you probably want to know is: What's the deal on the fourth Indiana Jones movie?

The deal is it's going to happen. Probably. "We're hoping it'll be soon," says Ford by phone from Atlanta. "We're closer than we've ever been, but there are still some issues with the script."

An actor who is well-known for doing intense work on the scripts he chooses to appear in — he reportedly shaped the "Traffic" role that went to Michael Douglas when Ford dropped out — Ford says his main criterion for choosing a script is knowing what he can bring to it.

In "Firewall," where he plays a bank security officer forced to steal ransom money from his own bank to save his family from kidnappers, Ford and his collaborators talked about how to make sure it wasn't a movie about a bunch of people hanging around a house.

"The situation is somewhat static at a certain point, and I think what was important was to find new and different ways of expressing the tension," says Ford. "A lot of the work had to do with clarifying small elements of the plot and finding moments that were turning points."

Ford says working on the script also helps him develop his performances.

"I usually 'get' the character when I read the script. If I don't, I usually think it's not something for me. I respond to the utility of the character — that's more important for me to understand, in fact, the most important — and then I can focus on where there may need to be work done."

By "utility of the character," Ford means he must understand how the character functions in the script and why he might be the best actor to make that clear. That's likely to figure into the "Indiana Jones" script, for instance, which will acknowledge that its hero is now a man in his 60s.

"I'm looking at the character's responsibilities to the story overall, his place in it all," says Ford. "I look for a good fit between the film and the characters, so each can draw strength from the other. The process is partly intellectual, but when it comes time to film it, you stand and deliver. It's another set of processes. You stop thinking and start doing."

A former carpenter, Ford says that, when it comes down to it, making movies involves the same skills any job involves: "Problem solving. When I say 'problem solving,' I don't mean that everything is problematic. I mean that you make choices about the best way of doing something, and then you have to obtain consensus with the other people who are working on the project."

If all that talk of consensus sounds like a corporate boardroom/cranking-out-widgets situation, Ford does take a businesslike approach to his work. Phone interviews with movie stars are notoriously late and vague, but Ford's phone call arrives exactly on time, and it's clear that he's the one who is making sure he stays on schedule. Toward the end of the interview, he warns that the clock is ticking and there's time for only two more questions.

One of the two final questions inadvertently steers us back to Fortune magazine territory: "What do you want to find out when you meet with a director you're thinking of working with?"

Ford's answer? "It is very important. I'm looking for some overlap, some continuity between the two of us. I want him to feel we'd be good partners in this process."

And question No. 2 returns us to "Indiana Jones and the Something or Other," which it is hoped will start shooting some time this year. Ford acknowledges that, even though it has been 17 years since the last "Indy," Jones is a character he thinks about often, wondering what he has been up to since we last saw him.

"We've had a lot of discussions about where we want to go and how we want to get there," says Ford. "But right now, I'm thinking about other things, so I'll have to wait until we get there."

- By Chris Hewitt, Movie Critic