"I wanted it to be a piece of film rather than a video promotional clip. I wanted it to be a short piece of film that would hopefully do justice to the original book and let people understand the story that couldn’t really be explained in the song. So we wanted a great actor — we thought of Donald Sutherland — and he was so encouraging and made it so easy for me. Whenever we were acting, he was my father. I just had to react to him like a child. He made it very easy."
January 1, 1970
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Sutherland