Estevez and Sheen find their 'Way'

Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez have taken a couple of major road trips recently.

One, on a big bus, has taken them to more than a dozen cities, including Cleveland not long ago. The trip aimed to promote "The Way," a movie about modern wayfarers walking the 500-mile Camino de Santiago religious pilgrimage through France and Spain. Estevez wrote and directed the movie and his father, Sheen, stars; it opens in some cities on Friday and in others Oct. 14.

The Cleveland visit included an invitation-only screening at Cleveland's Tower City Cinemas to generate early word-of-mouth praise.

Sheen, Estevez and producer David Alexanian have also done interviews during their tour stops. (Quotes in this story come from an interview and from a Q&A with the screening audience.)

"The Way" stars Sheen as an eye doctor who decides to complete the pilgrimage after his son (played by Estevez) dies in an accident early in his own journey along the Camino. On the trip, the doctor meets other travelers, and they all have emotional realizations during their trip.

The reaction from some audience members in Cleveland was comparably emotional, and in many cases grateful for a film that is not about big-budget action and explosions. Estevez has likened the film to "The Help" in its focus on smaller-scale human drama; he hopes his movie can draw something akin to the enthusiasm greeting the other film, which has grossed more than $155 million at the U.S. box office.

"When we were making the film, we said, what's the demographic for this film?" Estevez said. "We thought, well, maybe AARP-ers, maybe backpackers. And we started screening the film, and we realized maybe the demographic is human beings, period. ... We have enjoyed a tremendous amount of success screening to a broad variety of people. ... It left us going, maybe this movie is for everybody."

Sheen, for one, believes that the movie has been marked by miracles already -- and the devout, socially conscious Catholic does not just toss off the word miracle.

There was one involving the film's getting to shoot in Spain's Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, said to be the burial site of St. James.

As late as 48 hours before the production planned to shoot in the cathedral, its operators were refusing permission, Sheen said. No American film had shot in there before. Alternative plans were discussed, but did not seem satisfying.

"We started lighting candles, literally," Sheen said. "Emilio commanded the whole crew -- many agnostics and atheists -- to begin praying."

As if he anticipated skepticism, Sheen abruptly added, "I'm not jokin'. And suddenly the door opened."

Another good sign: The movie shot during what could have been a rainy season, but encountered rain on only two days, Estevez said, and both of those were days when the film was shooting inside.

"The Way" began gestating in 2003 when Sheen traveled along the Camino by car during a hiatus from "The West Wing." Estevez's son Taylor, then 19, was working as Sheen's assistant and went along; in Spain, he met an innkeeper's daughter, moved to Spain and later married her.

"If I wanted to spend some time with my son, I had to figure out a way to work in Spain," Estevez joked. But the idea of a movie about the Camino stayed with him and by 2008 he was working on a script.

The movie, Estevez said, "celebrates family, faith and community, and the best of our humanity."

His next project will be "Johnny Longshot," the first in what he hopes will be a series of family films set around harness racing in Lebanon, Ohio.