Times Online (UK), June 21, 2007
From The Times
Always raising the stakes
Robert Duvall tells our correspondent that it is his insatiable curiosity that keeps driving him on
Will Lawrence
While shooting their latest movie, Lucky You, Eric Bana asked a question of his fellow actor Robert Duvall. "We were talking about the old days," he recalls, "the 1960s and 1970s, and I said, 'How did you survive? All your friends were doing loads of coke and going into rehab . . .' And he looked me at said: 'Hobbies! You got to be interested in other things'."
One of Hollywood's true elder statesmen, Duvall is a man to whom it is worth listening, and Bana's observation is readily borne out by the 76-year-old actor's interest in an eclectic mix of subjects. His liveliness belies his age, and as he settles down in one of the fancy antechambers in the Grand Hotel in Rome, he talks keenly on a range of topics, from politics to horses, from food to football.
"I've played so many characters, but never a professional poker player like L. C. Cheever," Duvall says of his character in the new film. "And, truth be told, I didn't know a straight from a flush. I had no desire to be a poker player in a movie so I had to kind of work backwards. I don't usually like to rehearse, but I really had to work for this."
Duvall's dedication to his profession seems as strong as ever, and while, for example, his old friend Gene Hackman has worked less and less, Duvall has kept on making films.
"I like working if I'm interested in the subject or the part," he says. "I'll stop working when they have to wipe the drool off me!"
Duvall's 45-year career began in the early 1960s, although it was during the golden age of 1970s American cinema, when the likes of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola kept an independent spirit burning within the studio system, that he first flourished. His five collaborations with Coppola alone constitute a small but highly distinguished career.
"You're right," he beams. "That would make a good small career, and I'll tell you what: in the early 1970s, when I did THX 1138 with George Lucas, which was my first lead role, I thought that guy would go on to be the greatest director of his generation. Greater even than Coppola, but I was wrong. When Coppola and I did The Rain People, I couldn't figure him, or maybe he couldn't figure me out, and while I enjoyed it and thought he was good, it was only when we did The Godfather that . . . well, I gave him a lot of respect for that."
For the first two Godfather films Coppola earned not only the respect of the man he cast as consigliari Tom Hagen, but also the respect of millions the world over. He shot two of the greatest films in the history of American cinema. And he shot them while under immense pressure from the studio.
"Even as he made it, there was a stand-by director there on set, in case the studio had to fire Coppola," Duvall says. "The hostility with Paramount was unbelievable.
"In fact, Jimmy Caan told me this wonderful story that the studio had wanted Marlon Brando to come in and do one scene for The Godfather: Part II. And one of things that Brando had put in the contract was that he'd only come and do it if they fired the head of the studio. Needless to say, he didn't come in and do the part!"
Brando may not have joined Duvall and Coppola for The Godfather: Part II, but the three were reunited on the trouble-plagued set of Apocalypse Now, in which Duvall's Colonel Kilgore earned him the second of his six Oscar nominations. In a recent BBC poll, Kilgore's iconic utterance "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" was voted the all-time most popular piece of movie dialogue.
"Apocalypse was an unforgettable experience," Duvall recalls. "It was crazy. Dennis Hopper was so hopped up on dope; he did 50 takes on one day. Or 48 at least. Francis was going nuts, screaming: 'Will you do it my way!' And Hopper said: 'Listen, mother******, I've directed, acted and played Gabby Hayes all in one movie, and what have you done?' It was a mess and we were lucky no one was killed.
"But what's funny is that while people internationally remember me most for Kilgore, in most of America people recognise me from Lonesome Dove. And of all the parts I've played, and while The Godfather was much better directed, Lonesome Dove is my favourite. I love westerns."
Duvall has appeared in a posse of westerns, from his early outings playing the likes of the legendary outlaw Jesse James in Minnesota Raid and nasty Ned Pepper in True Grit, right through to recent work like Open Range in 2003 and the mini-series Broken Trail, directed by Walter Hill. It was in the 1989 TV epic Lonesome Dove, however, that Duvall truly earned his spurs, undertaking all his own riding as he played the grizzled Texas Ranger Augustus McCrae.
"You have Shakespeare, the French have Molière, the Russians have Chekhov, America has the western," Duvall says. "I loved the character in that film. I did OK in The Godfather [for which he got his first Oscar nomination], but playing that Texas Ranger, well, I had eight hours to do it in! But I do love the genre as a whole, and I'm hoping to direct a western myself soon. It's about the Pony Express. I just need to raise the finance."
Should he raise the capital, the project would be his first outing behind the camera since he directed and starred in The Apostle a decade ago. That film, which told the tale of a Southern evangelist preacher, was well received, his performance on screen earning him another Best Actor nomination. He wanted to carry on directing, but could not find anything else within Hollywood that excited him.
"I get disillusioned with modern Hollywood," he says, "especially all these big-budget films. With $100 million you could make ten great independent films. It's a shame, although that can make it more interesting, searching for things that interest you, working with young people. You can learn a lot from them, as they can learn from you. You've got to keep learning and taking an interest. You got to have hobbies."
Given Duvall's remarkable longevity, this is a lesson well worth learning. Eric Bana, for one, has already taken note.
_________________________________________________________________cbs.com, June 26, 2006
Robert Duvall: The Cowboy Tango
Actor Zeroes In On Westerns ... But He Can Dance, Too
(CBS) Robert Duvall won raves for "The Great Santini" back in 1979. From Marines to cowboys, Duvall can play just about any role - including, it turns out, gracious host, as CBS News Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver learned during a visit to his farm.
You can call him Duvall, or Bob, or Bobby. But his childhood nickname was Bodge.
"My brother couldn't say 'Bobby,' so he said 'Bodgy,'" Duvall explains. "My old man called me Bernie. That was another nickname. We were into nicknames."
With all those nicknames, it's no wonder that Duvall has been able to transform himself into so many characters in more than 80 films, including the overbearing Marine pilot in "The Great Santini"; an evangelist preacher in "The Apostle"; and Duvall's favorite role, Gus McCrae, the philosopher cowboy in "Lonesome Dove," who could ride and shoot with the best of them.
Now Duvall has made another epic Western called "Broken Trail" for the AMC network. This time, he plays a cowboy named Print Ritter who goes on a horse drive across the west with his nephew, played by Thomas Haden Church. Duvall describes the movie as a trip during which they "pick people up along the way ... kind of a character-driven piece of two men and their journey."
They even rescue a group of terrified Chinese immigrant girls from forced prostitution:
It was Duvall who came up with the idea for the movie, He is also executive producer, and says he exercised his right to re-edit the film, He thought the first version was exactly opposite of how he'd conceived of the story.
What was "the opposite vision," in his opinion?
"More gunfights, you know. More action, less emphasis on humor, less emphasis on behavior. And we got a lot of resistant but we did it, and 90 percent of what you see is our edit - my edit."
For 75-year-old Duvall, this project is especially important because he calls it the closing chapter of his Western trilogy, along with "Lonesome Dove" and the 2003 release "Open Range."
He says he thinks the Western genre is important because "it's ours. It's ours... It's American. The English have Shakespeare, the French have Moliere, the Russians have Chekhov. The Western is ours."
But despite his love of the West, Duvall makes his home in the rolling countryside of Virginia, on about 360 acres. "It's not a lot in Texas," he says. "It's a lot here, though. It's a lot here."
Did he ever feel that not living in Hollywood means that he's not around the action and he might miss out on something? "Well, sometimes," Duvall says. "When you go to a party there, somebody will say, 'Oh, I got a part for you.' Nine times out of 10, it's all hot air. Sometimes being there all the time will lead to a part, but it doesn't really hurt."
In Virginia, he says, he's "always, always thinking, 'What's next? What's next?'"
Virginia was one of many places Duvall spent time when he was growing up, His dad was in the Navy. In fact, it was his parents who suggested he go into acting. Duvall went to study in New York, where he hung out with other fledgling actors like Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman.
"I knew Gene. A wonderful guy," recalls Duvall. "We'd look for jobs and then we'd end up forgetting the job and going to a 42nd Street double feature. Then Dustin came back and slept on his kitchen floor. And some of those were good times. But now, once you make it, I never see those guys... It's strange, it's strange."
He ended up doing well in theater and in television. But most Americans got to know Duvall through his film work. In 1962, in "To Kill a Mockingbird," he played the role of Boo Radley, the neighborhood crazy man who turns out to be a hero.
But a decade later, after a string of other films, Duvall was cast as Tom Hagen, the family counselor in "The Godfather," a role that earned him an Oscar nomination, He got another nod a few years later for playing Lt. Col Kilgore in "Apocalypse Now," in which he delivered the famous line, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like victory."
Says Duvall, "People come up to me and say it to me as if they're the only ones in the world besides me that know that line."
He has had six Academy Award nominations in all. But the movie for which he won was "Tender Mercies," in which he played Mac Sledge, a down-at-the-heels former country-western singer.
He sang every song himself. That was part of his deal.
"They were trying to get around it," says Duvall, "but I said, "No, no. This has to be part of it. You cannot dub later. I have to do that.' Yeah."
Tell him that people constantly refer to him as one of the great actors of our time, and Duvall counters, "Well, that's all relative. It's a matter of opinion, you know."
But, when he looks at it objectively, he says, "What makes what I do work? It's this, what we're doing right now: talking and listening. ... That's the beginning and the end. The beginning and the end is to be simple."
On a personal level, life has not been so simple for Robert Duvall.
Somehow, Braver points out to him, along with everything else, he found time to get married - a lot.
"Oh, I thought you meant in the movies," Duvall says. "No. A lot? A lot? Yeah, well, I've lived a lot."
His fourth wife, 42 years his junior, is Luciana Pedraza. They met in Argentina, but it was he who got her interested in one of his favorite pastimes: tango, the Argentine national dance. He even cast her in his film, "Assassination Tango," a film Duvall wrote and directed.
They tango well together - like professionals. Duvall points out that Pedrama once represented her province in the Miss Argentina competition and she won a category called "Miss Elegance."
"They're big into elegance," Duvall says. "Elegance is a word they still use there."
Meanwhile, Duvall just keeps going.
"It's been a good career, a wonderful career. And it's not over yet... There's no drool to be wiped, you know, so I mean, I mean I got things I want to do," he says.
"It's like the line from 'Lonesome Dove,' hopefully: The older the violin, the sweeter the music."
_________________________________________________________________Chicago Sun Times, June 25, 2006
Ridin' the dusty trail with Robert Duvall
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
In "Broken Trail," Robert Duvall plays a cowboy, one who has to go potty in the great outdoors. But it's 1897 and there's no toilet paper. He ducks behind brush with a fistful of the granddaddy of toilet paper, this paper-ish stuff called "therapeutic papers." His cowboy nephew calls out to ask him if it has splinters in it.
"Beats corncob," Duvall shouts back.
It's moments like that in "Broken Trail" which seem true to the Old West. And it reminds viewers not to whine about living in our cushy times.
But before you get holier-than-thou about how civilized life has become with its fancy toilet paper, keep in mind the evils in "Broken Trail" resemble parallels of today. Duvall's character, Uncle Print, and his nephew Tom are herding horses over hill and dale when they end up having to give safe harbor to five Chinese women who were shipped to the States to be prostitutes.
Those women's families sold them into the sex trade -- exactly the way many parents around the world still profit from enslaving their kids.
In "Broken Trail," everything new is old again. There are rape scenes and killings. Tom (the excellent Thomas Haden Church) blows one guy's thumbs off and hangs another. There's murder and sad stories for everyone, and acts of generosity in response, all of which you'll find somewhere in 2006.
Duvall, 75, is somewhat familiar with news stories about the contemporary slave trade, but when he was helping write and produce "Broken Trail," he apparently hadn't thought of the miniseries as a contemporary parable.
"It goes on in every country, I guess. Those things go on."
In fact, he claims, American Indians, among others, sold people into slavery.
"So," he says, and unleashes the wisest celebrity sentence of the year, "everybody did everything to everybody."
"Broken Trail" isn't hardscrabble action. As Westerns go, it's a character-based miniseries. It's often a romanticized version of cowboys, with jaunty music playing while they brand livestock. It's not romanticized at all when bad things happen, like hangings and sexual assault.
It starts with the Chinese slaves being inspected. They try to cover their nipples to no avail. An inspector spreads their legs. This scene's not shot and edited as grisly as it could be, but it's no glorification either.
Duvall sees the principal characters as flawed heroes who rescue the women but sometimes reluctantly.
"He's a good guy and a bad guy. He's a decent guy," Duvall says of his character Uncle Print.
Writer Alan Geoffrion strived to make "Broken Trail" as genuine as possible, right down to the "therapeutic papers," people dying of tick fever, and a lamb shepherd who wears a mishmash of fur around his shoulders.
"He even had cowboys read it and check it for authenticity," Duvall says.
Duvall and Geoffrion pitched it to Hollywood as a movie, but studios didn't bite. They ended up at AMC, where Duvall was happy to be, but he had to fight to keep others from turning the miniseries into a nail-biting adventure.
"They kept saying it needed a 'B' plot. I'm not sure it needed that. We had a lot of problems with the rewrites. They would rewrite, and then Al and I would come in at night and rewrite the rewrites.
"The thing was going off in another direction, with gunfights and action. This is a character-driven piece, so we had to make sure we could keep it on track that way."
The dialogue isn't filled up with a bunch of throwaway cliches, although Duvall's character has a few lines of wisdom to dispense, like "Never use money to measure wealth," and "It's a great life, when it ain't rainin' or snowin'."
It could have been far grittier in look and feel, especially when one bad guy says, "I'll let you have a stab at the almost-virgin for a buck apiece." A raped slave whispers, "I am a ghost." Director Walter Hill ("48 Hrs," "The Warriors") keeps the tone and texture even-keeled to let words and behaviors speak for themselves.
There are a lot of nooses in it. There's a noose on a man's neck, a noose on a horse, a metaphoric noose on the necks of the prostitutes.
Some viewers probably will sympathize with a horse that falls when its rider gets shot. But Duvall says no horses got hurt, unlike in older Westerns.
"Those are falling horses. They're trained to do that. They pull the rein a certain way. The horse will rear and fall. They dig a little pit there to make it more soft when they fall in."
"Broken Trail" was filmed in the Canadian Rockies near Calgary, not too far from where "Brokeback Mountain" was shot.
"It's like Texas without the accent," Duvall says, and "no colder than Chicago."
Chicago, he says, is where he's been the hottest and coldest of his life. The hottest?
"I worked there 14 years ago. Hotter than the Philippines or Houston was Chicago. Remember, it was, like, 117 and the old people died."
Duvall will come back again relatively soon, to see a tango place called Duvall's Club that's being opened in Little Italy by his nephew Billy, a brother's son who lives here.
"I like Chicago. I used to come once a month. I was the voice for United Airlines years ago. I got tickets to anywhere in the world," he says. "Then when I changed agents, they got mad at me and took it away from me -- instantly -- and gave it to my friend Gene Hackman. So I don't come to Chicago."
Too bad. It's a great city, when it ain't rainin' or snowin', aside from the occasional prostitution trafficking that goes on.
_________________________________________________________________Newsday, June 25, 2006
FAST CHAT: Robert Duvall
Erica Marcus
Trim in blue jeans and cowboy boots, Robert Duvall looks at least 10 years younger than his 75 years. And he carries himself with markedly less self-importance than that of the doormen and desk clerks at Manhattan's Essex House Hotel where he met Newsday's Erica Marcus. The actor was in town to promote "Broken Trail," the two-part original movie that premieres on AMC Sunday and Monday.
"Broken Trail" tells the story of veteran cowboy Print Ritter (Duvall) and his nephew, Tom Harte (Thomas Haden Church), who set out from Oregon with 500 horses they mean to sell in Wyoming. Along the way, they cross paths with an unscrupulous character who is transporting five Chinese girls from San Francisco, where he purchased them, to the brothel that placed the order. Although neither Ritter nor Harte consider themselves human-rights activists, they cannot ignore the plight of the Chinese girls and become their protectors.
Duvall sees "Broken Trail" as the third part of a Western trilogy that began with the acclaimed TV miniseries "Lonesome Dove" (1989) and continued with "Open Range" (2003), in which he co-starred with the movie's director Kevin Costner. In nearly 100 movies, he has made an indelible mark on virtually every film genre since his 1962 screen debut as Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird."
- You've acted in both theatrical movies annd TV movies. Is there a difference in the way you approach the roles?
There's no difference. If it's quality, it doesn't matter if it's Broadway, Off-Broadway or off-Off Broadway.
- But what about the way TV movies are madee?
When you make a TV movie, you have to pay attention to the editing. You have to be careful not to use too many close-ups because then you lose the body language - body language is essential. In "Broken Trail," there's a scene by the river where Tom and I are skipping stones. Without this [makes a sidearm gesture of throwing a stone], that scene would just become talking heads.
- But TV movies can sometimes be longer thaan theatrical ones.
With a miniseries, you have more time to develop the character. We originally talked to CBS about "Broken Trail." They only wanted to give us two hours. With AMC, we had four. With "Lonesome Dove," I had eight hours to develop my character Gus McCrae.
- How did "Broken Trail" take shape?
I knew the Haythorne family in Nebraska. This guy Waldo Haythorne's grandfather drove 700 horses from Oregon to Nebraska. I took Alan [writer Geoffrion] to meet them and he said, "I'd like to write this story for you." The next day, I called him and asked how he was getting along with the story. It was Alan who came up with the part about the Chinese girls.
- This role seemed tailor-made for you. I ssaw a bit of Gus McCrae in Print's talent for making biscuits. And the scene where you dance with Greta Scacchi - did that come from your interest in the tango?
The biscuits, yeah that was Gus. But the dancing, no. I was just doing a two-step like I've seen in Texas.
- You've played a lot of old cowboys. Any yyoung ones?
Well, at this point I only can play old cowboys. But I did play one in "True Grit" when I was younger.
- You seem to do pretty well on a horse.
> I've been riding for quite a few years. I own a few horses at my place in Virginia. My wife just bought me a horse - half Andalusian, one-quarter Arab, one-quarter thoroughbred. Don Manuelo. He's 10 months old.
- I wondered how the three of you managed tto drive 500 horses in the movie.
Three of you could handle about 300 horses. What you do is first you wheel them [drive them in a circle] for about the first 12 miles, those are critical. Then, they pick an alpha mare to lead them.
- What has been your favorite role?
Gus McCrae.
- And the role that is closest to you own ppersonality?
Probably Gus.
- What is it about "Lonesome Dove"?
Well, the book [Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel] was a great book. The challenge was to make a movie that was as good as the book. As opposed to "The Godfather," which was a good book, but was a great movie.
- I wasn't going to bring it up, but you - that is, Tom Hagen - have my favorite line in "The Godfather." It's when Michael has the idea to kill Sollozzo and McCluskey. He says that McCluskey was a crooked cop and that the newspaper people might like a story like that. And Tom says, "They might, they just might."
I don't remember that. I like the scene where we're about to kill Abe Vigoda [Tessio], and he asks me "Can you get me off the hook? For old times' sake?" And I say, "Can't do it, Sally."
- Do you think "Deadwood" has made TV safe for Westerns?
I don't consider it much of a Western; it might seem like one if you lived in one of the two provincial coasts. I call it a Western that starts in the Bronx and ends about 15 miles west of Buffalo.
_________________________________________________________________Orlando Sentinel, June 24, 2006
Tall hat, tall role for Duvall again
The actor saddles up once more for a uniquely American character.
Hal Boedeker | Sentinel Television Critic
PASADENA, Calif. - His most popular role? That's easy, Robert Duvall says, picking Gus McCrae of Lonesome Dove.
Strangers bring up McCrae, a cantankerous cowboy in the 1989 miniseries, more often than Duvall's big-screen roles in The Godfather, Apocalypse Now or Tender Mercies, for which he won an Oscar.
"Even though it's television doesn't mean it can't be fine," Duvall tells TV critics. "I've seen performances on television that match anything in feature films. Depends on what it is and who the individual talent is."
Duvall, 75, saddles up for another TV Western in Broken Trail, a two-part miniseries that premieres Sunday and Monday on AMC. Duvall, who is an executive producer, talks effusively about the new project.
"I think our cast of actors [is] better than Lonesome Dove," he says. "I'm not saying it's going to be that good, but at least we have a standard to go to. And we tried hard."
Matching Lonesome Dove would be difficult, as that adaptation of Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ranks among television's finest productions.
Still, Broken Trail gives Duvall another showy role that should please fans. He plays Print Ritter, a veteran cowboy who faces several major challenges in 1897. He's moving 500 horses from Oregon to Wyoming. He's trying to help his estranged nephew (Thomas Haden Church). On their difficult journey, the two men rescue five enslaved Chinese women who have been sold into prostitution.
Church, an Oscar nominee for Sideways, relished the chance to work with his idol after studying Duvall in True Confessions, The Great Santini and other films. Church relayed his feelings in a letter to Duvall after completing Broken Trail.
"I wrote in the note that he inspired me to choose acting as a profession for the dignity of it," Church says. "By virtue of working with him, he was going to inspire me really for the rest of my life."
Director Walter Hill says it was a privilege to work with Duvall during the 45-day shoot in Calgary. Their first film together was Geronimo: An American Legend, a 1993 Western.
"You're getting the creme de la creme," Hill says of Duvall.
Oscar voters have felt the same way, nominating Duvall six times. He was in the supporting category for The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and A Civil Action. He was in the lead category for The Great Santini, Tender Mercies and The Apostle.
He didn't win an Emmy for Lonesome Dove, a decision that still rankles award experts. (James Woods took the prize for My Name Is Bill W.) But Duvall recognizes he was part of something enduring.
"It is a great novel, and we try to approximate that quality in the film," Duvall says.
"The American cowboy and the Canadian cowboy and the South American cowboy relate to Lonesome Dove more than anything," he says. "And people say, 'When will you do another Lonesome Dove?' And I say, 'Not for another hundred years, because it's very unique.' "
Duvall says his character in Broken Trail could be a cousin to Gus McCrae. "McCrae, although he couldn't consummate things, was much better with women than this character," he says. "This guy is not good with women."
The actor cites the plot about the Chinese women as giving Broken Trail a distinctive wrinkle. Duvall says the public remains fascinated by Westerns even if fewer are made these days.
"When they do come out, people love them very much," he says. "The Western is ours. I always say the English have Shakespeare. The French have Moliere. The Russians have Chekhov, and so forth and so on. The Western is uniquely ours."
cnn.com, June 23, 2006
On the 'Trail' with Robert Duvall
Actor performs and produces Western 'Broken Trail'
Friday, June 23, 2006
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- "Deadwood." "Into the West." "Brokeback Mountain." Don't tell Robert Duvall the Western is dead.
"People are always saying that, but they're always makin' em as they're saying those words," says the iconic Academy Award-winning actor who stars in as well as executive produces the two-part Western adventure "Broken Trail," premiering Sunday on AMC, 8 p.m. EDT.
"The French have Moliere and the English have Shakespeare," continues Duvall, "but the Western is ours. It's a part of our culture."
The four-hour saga attempts to bridge a cultural divide using the classic tale of the old West to introduce the little-told stories of the atrocities perpetrated on Chinese girls who were enslaved as prostitutes in frontier mining towns.
"The introduction of the Chinese women makes it a special thing; it's what gets it off center," says director Walter Hill, who won an Emmy for his work on the "Deadwood" pilot.
"This is obviously not a blood-and-thunder type Western," he says, "it's more character driven, and it's driven by a rather elemental situation which I thought made a terrific premise and the kind of crucible that characters are revealed under."
Shot entirely on location in Alberta (which Duvall considers the next-best thing to Texas "without the accent"), "Broken Trail" -- AMC's first original made-for-TV movie -- is set in 1897, the waning days of the American West.
Veteran cowboy Print Ritter (Duvall) and his estranged nephew, Tom Harte (Oscar nominee Thomas Haden Church) have agreed to undertake a 1,000-mile horse drive from Oregon to Wyoming, hoping to make their fortune on the sale of the herd.
Along the way, they become the reluctant guardians of five abused and abandoned girls (played by "Desperate Housewives"' Gwendoline Yeo, and Canadian newcomers Caroline Chan, Olivia Cheng, Jadyn Wong, Valerie Tian) who have been sold into servitude by their families in China.
Their attempt to care for the girls runs into problems due to language, custom and circumstance, including bandits intent on kidnapping the young women for illicit means. There's also the constant challenge of pushing the herd along.
Writer Alan Geoffrion drew on the true-life stories of Nebraska rancher Waldo Haythorn -- a friend of Duvall's -- whose grandfather at the turn of the century took a herd of 700 horses to South Dakota, and of Donaldina Cameron, a San Francisco woman who saved over 3,000 Chinese girls from prostitution during that time.
"I wanted to do a story that showed a different aspect to America in the Western experience, because it was made up of so many people," says Geoffrion, who has adapted his screenplay into novel.
"One of my feelings," Geoffrion says, "is that women were really strong. The guys shot one another and stabbed one another and did all those things, but the women still had to be there.
"Most who found themselves in prostitution led awful lives, and few of them ever came out of it. Some did, and there are great stories of women who triumphed over this."
Maintaining distance
With the 12-plus hour days, Duvall tried to lighten things up during the down time, usually inviting cast members to dine together in the evenings.
Haden Church, who coincidentally is a rancher in his native Texas, felt it was important to the story to maintain his distance -- both physically and emotionally -- from the women during production.
"I wasn't rude," insists Haden Church, now in production on "Spider-Man 3," "but I definitely kept my distance because I felt like when they first meet the girls, and for a good way on the trail, he's kind of wary of them.
"You want there to be some mystery with who these men are because the girls are incapable of understanding who they are -- they couldn't be more diametrically opposed -- and I really wanted to maintain that dynamic."
This is also why Gwendoline Yeo refrained from hanging around with castmates during the three-months shoot.
The Singapore-born actress allowed herself, instead, to draw on the loneliness she remembers of the time she immigrated with her family to San Francisco.
"Being able to channel that understanding of going to a foreign land, of feeling invisible again, and being able to access the invisibility, I think that's what these women felt," she says during a lunchtime interview in West Los Angeles.
She gets teary-eyed. "To think a hundred years earlier, if I immigrated then, I wouldn't be here, I'd be on a ranch or in the mines."
"I always thought this could be iconic for the nation," says Duvall of the film. "In these times when people malign us a lot [on immigration issues], this country was built on people that were complex, that had good qualities and bad qualities.
"And this is good for the country to see, the world maybe, that there were good positive things that went on with these people in those days."
sfgate.com, June 22, 2006
'Broken Trail' explores the classic Western with a Far East twist
By JANICE RHOSHALLE LITTLEJOHN, For The Associated Press
Thursday, June 22, 2006
"Deadwood.""Into the West.""Brokeback Mountain." Don't tell Robert Duvall the Western is dead.
"People are always saying that, but they're always makin' em as they're saying those words," says the iconic Academy Award-winning actor who stars in as well as executive produces the two-part Western adventure "Broken Trail," premiering Sunday on AMC, 8 p.m. EDT.
"The French have Moliere and the English have Shakespeare," continues Duvall, "but the Western is ours. It's a part of our culture."
The four-hour saga attempts to bridge a cultural divide using the classic tale of the old West to introduce the little-told stories of the atrocities perpetrated on Chinese girls who were enslaved as prostitutes in frontier mining towns.
"The introduction of the Chinese women makes it a special thing; it's what gets it off center," says director Walter Hill, who won an Emmy for his work on the "Deadwood" pilot.
"This is obviously not a blood-and-thunder type Western," he says, "it's more character driven, and it's driven by a rather elemental situation which I thought made a terrific premise and the kind of crucible that characters are revealed under."
Shot entirely on location in Alberta, (which Duvall considers the next-best thing to Texas "without the accent"), "Broken Trail" - AMC's first original made-for-TV movie - is set in 1897, the waning days of the American West.
Veteran cowboy Print Ritter (Duvall) and his estranged nephew, Tom Harte (Oscar nominee Thomas Haden Church) have agreed to undertake a 1,000-mile horse drive from Oregon to Wyoming, hoping to make their fortune on the sale of the herd.
Along the way, they become the reluctant guardians of five abused and abandoned girls (played by "Desperate Housewives'" Gwendoline Yeo, and Canadian newcomers Caroline Chan, Olivia Cheng, Jadyn Wong, Valerie Tian) who have been sold into servitude by their families in China.
Their attempt to care for the girls runs into problems due to language, custom and circumstance, including bandits intent on kidnapping the young women for illicit means. There's also the constant challenge of pushing the herd along.
Writer Alan Geoffrion drew on the true-life stories of Nebraska rancher Waldo Haythorn - a friend of Duvall's - whose grandfather at the turn of the century took a herd of 700 horses to South Dakota, and of Donaldina Cameron, a San Francisco woman who saved over 3,000 Chinese girls from prostitution during that time.
"I wanted to do a story that showed a different aspect to America in the Western experience, because it was made up of so many people," says Geoffrion, who has adapted his screenplay into novel.
"One of my feelings," Geoffrion says, "is that women were really strong. The guys shot one another and stabbed one another and did all those things, but the women still had to be there. Most who found themselves in prostitution led awful lives, and few of them ever came out of it. Some did, and there are great stories of women who triumphed over this."
With the 12-plus hour days, Duvall tried to lighten things up during the down time, usually inviting cast members to dine together in the evenings.
However, Haden Church, who coincidentally is a rancher in his native Texas, felt it was important to the story to maintain his distance - both physically and emotionally - from the women during production.
"I wasn't rude," insists Haden Church, now in production on "Spider-Man 3,""but I definitely kept my distance because I felt like when they first meet the girls, and for a good way on the trail, he's kind of wary of them. You want there to be some mystery with who these men are because the girls are incapable of understanding who they are - they couldn't be more diametrically opposed - and I really wanted to maintain that dynamic."
This is also why Gwendoline Yeo refrained from hanging around with castmates during the three-months shoot. The Singapore-born actress allowed herself, instead, to draw on the loneliness she remembers of the time she immigrated with her family to San Francisco.
"Being able to channel that understanding of going to a foreign land, of feeling invisible again, and being able to access the invisibility, I think that's what these women felt," she says during a lunchtime interview in West Los Angeles. She gets teary-eyed. "To think a hundred years earlier, if I immigrated then, I wouldn't be here, I'd be on a ranch or in the mines."
"I always thought this could be iconic for the nation," says Duvall of the film. "In these times when people malign us a lot (on immigration issues), this country was built on people that were complex, that had good qualities and bad qualities. And this is good for the country to see, the world maybe, that there were good positive things that went on with these people in those days."
tvguide.com, June 22, 2006
Trail Leads Robert Duvall Back to TV
by Mike Flaherty
It is, as they say out on the range, a sight for sore eyes to see Robert Duvall back on TV in AMC's first-ever original movie, Broken Trail. The two-part, four-hour film (airing Sunday and Monday at 8 pm/ET) stars Duvall as grizzled cowboy Print Ritter, who leads his estranged, taciturn nephew Tom Harte (Thomas Haden Church) on a harrowing horse drive from Oregon to Wyoming.
The ragtag travelers embark on your classic Western odyssey, complete with smallpox, bloodshed and outlaws, but with a twist: Duvall, who also served as executive producer, was intent on putting people, not shoot-'em-ups, center stage. "I tried to say, 'Let's just keep this very simple. Talking and listening,'" he recalls. In fact, he oversaw an 11th-hour re-edit of the film, which restored "90 percent-plus" of his intention. "It got back to what it should be: a film of character-driven moments, not action." Along the way, Print and Tom rescue five Chinese women from sex slavery, as well as a "working girl" named Nola (Greta Scacchi), who offers the old cowpoke her proverbial heart of gold.
For Duvall's character, the journey is also one of redemption for a tragic, heartbreaking past. "Print wants to kind of mend family relationships on this horse drive," he explains. "He wants to make amends to his nephew. And then these Chinese girls are thrown upon us, and they become like surrogate daughters." (In fact, he notes, the project's original title was Daughters of Joy, which was period slang for prostitutes.)
Appropriately enough, Duvall spoke to TV Guide from the comfy confines of his sprawling Virginia ranch, where the remarkably spry septuagenarian lives with his dance partner (and costar of his 2003 thriller, Assassination Tango), Luciana Pedraza. With the smell of fresh hay in the air, the Hollywood legend spent a leisurely afternoon recounting celluloid adventures past.
Print Ritter is the latest in a line of damaged men in Duvall's repertoire. The character is reminiscent of his Oscar-winning turn as Mac Sledge, the has-been country singer from 1983's Tender Mercies, as well as hotheaded preacher Sonny Dewey from Duvall's 1997 film, The Apostle. "They're guys who have histories but can't make things work," he says. "I always try to find the contradictions in a character, a moment of vulnerability in the guy. That's what makes drama."
Trail also marks the latest in a long line of Westerns for Duvall: "I always say the English have Shakespeare, the French have Molière, the Russians have Chekhov, and the Western is definitely ours."
Of course, more than anything else, Trail will evoke fond - scratch that, passionate - viewer memories of Lonesome Dove, the landmark 1989 miniseries that landed Duvall an Emmy nomination for his enthralling portrayal of complicated ex-Texas Ranger Augustus McCrae. Duvall cites McCrae as his favorite role - and, set against a storied half-century of acting, that's saying something. "I'd rather play Augustus McCrae than Hamlet or King Lear," he says.
Duvall is rare, maybe unique, among Hollywood actors in having left his stamp on a pair of homegrown genres - the other, of course, being the gangster movie.
Having etched a monument to character-actor greatness in his portrayal of The Godfather's Mafia consigliere Tom Hagen, Duvall maintains his appreciation for a well-executed mob tale. "A couple of years ago, Godfather II was on TV - I didn't turn it on to see me - and I thought, 'Let me watch five minutes,'" he recalls.
"I couldn't turn it off!"
Robert Duvall's path leads down 'Broken Trail'
By TERRY MORROW
Scripps Howard News Service
13-JUN-06
At 75, Robert Duvall is open to new trails.
"I always try to think to myself, up to until the day I stop, that life is about being in the potential," he says in a telephone interview. "I always want to have something to give and learn."
Despite being nominated for five Academy Awards, Duvall doesn't dismiss television. He is the star and executive producer of "Broken Trail," a two-part Old West miniseries airing 8 p.m. Sunday and Monday, June 25-26, on American Movie Classics (AMC).
"Trail" marks the first original miniseries for the channel, known for playing such decades-old iconic films as "The Man From Snowy River" or "The Day The Earth Stood Still."
Though championing "Trail," Duvall is even humble about whether it could be regarded as a "classic," as the channel's name suggests its programming is.
"It could become a classic," he says. "That's left up to the individuals (watching). We had some rewrites that had to be done. When the first cut came in, it didn't fly with me.
"What you see is our cut. You have three or four people always with a point of view in these kinds of things. Sometimes, you have to take a stand if you are going to stay true to the vision."
Among his opinions: full body shots of his character and tighter shots of co-star Thomas Hayden Church. "For me, from the waist up, you can see the body language and the gestures more," he says. "My character was very stoic, and I thought that needed to be seen."
Veteran film director Walter Hill ("Last Man Standing") was behind the camera of "Broken Trail," which was inspired by a true story. Production took four months and was shot mainly in Canada.
Duvall plays Print Ritter, an uncle who enlists his estranged nephew (Church) to help in a drive of horses across the Midwest near the end of the 1800s. Along the way, they help free Chinese women, who have been sold into slavery. Print and his nephew bond with the women, who cannot speak English, and face other dangers along the way.
"I think the western is ours," says Duvall who was also part of CBS's epic western miniseries "Lonesome Dove." "The English have Shakespeare. The French have Moliere. The Russians have Chekhov ... and the western is uniquely ours ... it is our genre, and it's our thing."
Duvall says he never regards of himself as a star, even though he's stopped at airports for autographs or asked for a photo to be taken with strangers over dinner.
This trait is perhaps why he's able to tap into "every man" roles so easily _ whether it's a wayward minister in "The Apostle," the larger-than-life figure as in "Stalin" or the lonely rancher wanting to connect with family in "Broken Trail."
"I always try to find the vulnerability in a guy," he says. "You always have to find that vulnerability without forcing it or being melodramatic. I also try to find that dark streak, which is off set by a certain vulnerability."
Next up for Duvall is a return to the big screen with "We Own The Night," with Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix, about a father and son facing the wrath of the Russian mob. Doing more television could come, Duvall says, but a series is unlikely.
"I always said if I ever did a series it would be at the end of my career, and I would have to play a mute gunfighter," he says. "I don't have to learn a line."
Houston Chronicle, January 14, 2006
Jan. 14, 2006, 12:49AM
TELEVISION
At 74, Duvall takes everything in stride
Acclaimed actor saddles up for another role as a veteran cowboy
PASADENA, CALIF. - Five reporters stand around Robert Duvall, and one asks what the Oscar-winning actor would do if he weren't a performer.
"If I weren't an actor? Maybe a rancher, I don't know," he replies.
Don't be deceived by the brevity of his answer. Duvall is surprisingly amiable, and there's no hint, other than the deference of those around him, that he's aware of his greatness; 43 years of acting with dozens of roles and six Academy Award nominations for acting. He laughs and responds to any question thrown at him. He's 74 and in no hurry.
Duvall is here to discuss Broken Trail, the first original film by cable network American Movie Classics, which will air the two-part drama in June. He co-stars with Thomas Haden Church.
Duvall and Church go back before Broken Trail, kind of. They share a chuckle over their first meeting, more than 15 years ago at the Adolphus hotel in Dallas.
"No, I don't remember," Duvall says about the encounter, his blue eyes twinkling and his lips curving upward. But Church evidently has told him about it.
"He was the concierge," Duvall says. "He helped me with my bags."
On a more serious note, Duvall thinks Broken Trail could be another Lonesome Dove if it comes out right.
It's not a brag, just a comparison. One that comes naturally.
Print Ritter, the part he plays, is a veteran cowboy. He and his nephew (Church) undertake an arduous 1,000-mile horse drive from Oregon to Wyoming.
In Lonesome Dove, the 1989 TV miniseries based on Larry McMurtry's best-selling novel, he was Augustus McCrae, a Texas Ranger who, purely for the sake of adventure, led a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. He partnered with another crusty Ranger (Tommy Lee Jones).
"That was my favorite (role), Lonesome Dove," he says. "I don't care if it's television, off-Broadway, Broadway, film ?that was my favorite.
"(But) I like this (new one) a lot. It's right up there. They're like cousins. If we get it right."
Duvall is the project's executive producer. Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hours) is the director. Hill is still cutting, so further details about the film are scant.
So Duvall took the opportunity to comment on his great career. He recalls his Oscar win, a best actor honor for Tender Mercies. Did he realize it was going to change his career?
"It didn't change my career. It made me a little more important at airports.
"But the night I won it, I ran to the urinal and placed my Oscar on top."
He laughs gustily.
"It's sitting on our farm in Virginia on the mantel. And across from it ?and I say this with great pride ?I have a letter from Marlon Brando that I maybe like even better than my Oscar. He had some nice things to say to me about The Apostle (the 1997 film Duvall directed)."
Duvall won't say what the letter said. He changes the subject and talks about young actors today.
"I think the bar has been raised. Maybe we've helped, I don't know. I think the young actors are better than ever. I really do. I'm not saying they're more interesting than the old guys, 'cause all those old guys, Cagney and others, were great personalities. But the level of acting has come up. ... I think they're more advanced at a young age, more than certainly I was. I was always kind of a late bloomer and (I'm) still kinda bloomin'."
This from Boo Radley (To Kill a Mockingbird, his first movie, 1962).
This from Frank Burns (M*A*S*H) and Tom Hagen (The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II). From Frank Hackett and Bull Meechum (Network, The Great Santini). Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, Mac Sledge, Max Mercy (Apocalypse Now, Tender Mercies, The Natural). From Sonny Dewey (The Apostle).
Next will be Broken Trail's Print Ritter, as Duvall is still kinda bloomin'.
jam.canoe.ca, January 13, 2006
Duvall gives Alberta the thumbs-up
Outspoken actor likes the province 'more than the rest of Canada'
By BILL BRIOUX -- Toronto Sun
PASADENA, Calif. -- "Alberta is okay." That's Robert Duvall's take on Canada, never his favourite place to work.
The Academy Award-winning actor was at the TV press tour Wednesday to promote the U.S. cable feature Broken Trail, a four-hour, two-night western directed by Walter Hill and co-starring Thomas Haden Church. It's coming to one of the Corus-owned stations in Canada, probably in June.
A native Californian, Duvall has been blunt in the past about runaway film and TV production. Shooting this movie seems to have softened his stand somewhat. "I like Alberta more than the rest of Canada," he told a conference room full of mostly U.S. critics. "They're more like us. Calgary, Alberta, is more like Texas without the accent, really."
Duvall, who just turned 75, comes by his tough talk naturally -- he's a direct descendant of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In the past, he's dismissed Canadian actors as short on talent. "I eat my words when I said there weren't good actors there," he declared Wednesday. "But you have to look for them, because the system keeps showing you the same ones over and over again."
He's impressed with the ones he met this time, including Olivia Cheng, a Chinese Canadian from Edmonton better known as a Global news reporter as well as a Western-based print journalist than as an actress. ET Canada has just tapped her to string for them as well.
"I guess a lot of people didn't recognize that I was an actress as well," she said after the session. "I've sort of been forced out of the closet with this high profile project."
She's one of four Chinese Canadian actresses who co-star in the film as young women who have been sold into prostitution. Hardened cowboys Print Ritter (Duvall) and his nephew Tom Harte (Church) come upon them in the middle of a 1,000-mile horse drive and attempt to set them free.
"It was so good to be around such energy," Duvall said of Cheng and his young Canadian co-stars.
Known for her hip-hop and culture reports, Cheng said she offered to teach Duvall some hip-hop moves if he'd teach her to tango. (she was a fan of his 2001 film Assassination Tango). "And he goes, 'What the hell's a hip- hop?'" says Cheng, who managed to show him a few arm roll moves. Duvall says he never really got it, but joked that "she wasn't very good at the tango, either."
Cheng said working with Duvall was intimidating at first, but not for long. "In the movie, he's a surrogate father to us and in real life he made a real effort to get to know us. He was so kind and generous and immediately put us at ease."
Duvall praised the Bews family of Alberta, the seasoned ranch hands who wrangled horses on the shoot. He'd worked with them before and requested them for Broken Trail. "They are top-notch cowboys, they have wonderful horses and I just like them," says Duvall, who was tempted to take one of their dogs plus the horse he rode in the movie back to his Virginia ranch.
As for the Alberta scenery, Duvall had one word for it: "Phenomenal." He was blown away by a summer snow shower that left the mountains west of Calgary "looking like Tibet.
"I was once was on a boat with an old guy who had traveled all over the world," he told the Sun after the press conference. "I said, 'Where's the most beautiful place in the world?' He said, 'The Canadian Rockies followed by the fjords of Norway.' "
Film Stew
DUVALL, HADEN CHURCH AND THE WESTERN TRAIL
by Shelley Gabert 1/13/2006 at 11:39
In the shadow of Brokeback and Deadwood, the basic cable networks are doing their best to make the traditional longform western popular again.
"People often say westerns don't sell," suggests actor Robert Duvall at this week's Television Critics Association Press Tour. "But every time we make one people definitely watch."
Duvall stars with Thomas Haden Church in the two-part Broken Trail, AMC's first original scripted project but the eight time the prestigious creative team of director Walter Hill (48 Hours, The Warriors, The Long Riders, Last Man Standing, etc.) and cinematographer Lloyd Ahern has collaborated. Their past credits include Wild Bill, Geronimo, An American Legend (which also starred Duvall) and, of course, the Deadwood pilot, for which Hill (pictured at bottom) won an Emmy.
"You know, I always say the English have Shakespeare, the French have Moliere, the Russians have Chekhov, and so forth and so on," Duvall ovserves. "And the western is uniquely ours, combined with Alberta, Canada. From Alberta to Texas, it is our genre, and it's our thing. So I think there's always a sporadic interest in the western, whether it comes and goes it will always live, as the tango will always live in South America."
Broken Trail is the story of two cowboys, Print Ritter (Duvall) and his nephew Tom Harte (Hayden Church), who herd 500 horses from Oregon to Wyoming but along the way meet up with a trafficker of five Chinese girls, who will be forced to serve as prostitutes at a local mining camp. Ritter and Harte rescue the girls but at great risk to completing their journey. The film also stars Greta Scacchi (Jefferson in Paris, The Player), Gwendoline Yeo (The Magic of Ordinary Days) and newcomers Olivia Cheng, Valerie Tian, Jadyn Wong and Caroline Chan.
"You know, it's like we got to make the best movie we can, and by God, you know, we got to pick this big, heavy bastard up every day and move it six inches and then come back and do it all over again tomorrow," enthuses Haden Church.
"But, you know what, at the end of the trail, you're like, holy sh*t, you know, we accomplished a pretty remarkable task. Believe me, working with those horses every day is a blood inspiring feat every single day, especially when they would get out of control and they'd be charging right at you, and everybody would be yelling at me to stop the herd."
Certainly, Duvall admits to really enjoying working on Westerns and riding horses. He also praises the film's wrangler's. "I insisted that the Bews be on the movie," he recalls. "Horses are collectively a character in this movie so we needed everything to be right. They're equal to any cowboy family on either side of the border. And right after this movie was finished, they went up to Edmonton and won the National Champion Working Ranch Rodeo of all the ranchers in Canada."
Duvall also bought a horse a year before shooting began to literally get back in the saddle, riding every day at his farm in Virginia. And it's clear Church enjoyed working with the wily old veteran.
"I actually met him when I was in grad school and I was working at a hotel, the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas," Church remembers. "But when I was a freshman in college, a movie came out called True Confessions, it's one of his more obscure performances. But it was directed by a man named Ulu Grosbard, and he co-stars with Robert De Niro, and it's a tremendous tale."
"Bob is absolutely just towering in it. And it really was an inspiration. It was such an inspiration of a performance for me that it was really right about then -- that and The Great Santini and for so many performances of Bob's, going all the way back to Mockingbird, that I thought, you know, this is an actor, but this is a man who has tremendous dignity and poise in the roles that he chooses."
At the end of shooting, Church gave Duvall a gift, along with a special message of thanks. "I wrote in the note that he inspired me to choose acting as a profession for the dignity of it and that, by virtue of working with him, he was going to inspire me really for the rest my life to choose projects that have dignity and have poise and are going to be things that I can reflect on for the rest of my adult, professional life as choices that were made for the right reasons."
"That's who he is. I remember I saw Matt Damon in an interview with Charlie Rose and he said, ¡®The Apostle should be a primer for all actors.' And it should be required viewing because of the power and the resonance and the complete -- the complete nature of a performance by an actor. And I applauded that. I was by myself, you know, naked and sweating in my apartment."
Broken Trail is a trilogy of sorts for Duvall, coming after Open Range and Lonesome Dove. That last film, the actor says, is the one he's most identified with today and one that stands as a contemporary bible of the genre for real-life cowboys.
"People come up to me on the street and speak about Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove more than The Godfather or any of the other films I was fortunate enough to be in," he marvels. "People always ask, When will you do another Lonesome Dove,' and I say not for another hundred years, because it's very unique."
_________________________________________________________________
scotsman.com
Scotsman on Sunday
Sun 14 Mar 2004
All quiet on the western front
When people talk to Robert Duvall, they like to remind him that they, too, love the smell of napalm in the morning. Lawyers identify with his efficient consigliere in The Godfather. And Scottish football fans may reflect on his efforts to bring authenticity to a film about the beautiful game by employing footballers as actors and staging a punch-up on the pitch.
Duvall has been in the saddle for more than 40 years, but his wild ride seems far from over. A horseman born and bred, he nevertheless got "bucked off big-time" two months before playing an 1880s trail boss in the forthcoming western Open Range, directed by Kevin Costner. He broke six ribs, convalesced gamely, then did his own riding scenes. "If it had happened a month later I wouldn¡¯t have had time to heal."
He admits that the accident left him "a touch nervous" about getting back on a horse, but there was no keeping him out of the stirrups for long, especially as he has a fondness for westerns. His own favourite role was as the deceptively laid-back Gus McCrae in the television mini-series Lonesome Dove. "The western is our genre," he says. "The English have Shakespeare, the French Moliere, the Russians Chekhov. We Americans have the western."
Open Range is a very Kevin Costner vision of the west, a masculine landscape where men speak low, slow and infrequently. When they do open up, they are revealed as prairie philosophers, decent men with deep convictions. Set against an epic backdrop of big-sky country, the film has all those classic themes of loyalty, freedom, love and revenge, with a balletic 15-minute gun-battle climax against the main villain, played by Sir Michael Gambon. Before a take, says Duvall, Gambon would defuse the tension by imitating Duvall¡¯s bow-legged gait, reducing both the actor knight and the Hollywood prince to uncontrollable laughter.
These good-humoured high-jinks sound at odds with Duvall¡¯s reputation for intensity. But he is full of contradictions. There are few actors who have left such an indelible mark on film as him. His share of roles in classics include Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, Kilgore in Apocalypse Now and the tough-love father in The Great Santini. He has played everyone from Joseph Stalin to Dwight Eisenhower, Adolf Eichmann to his own ancestor Robert E Lee. Yet these days he seems to care more about his off-screen obsessions (a quirky assortment that includes tango, football and horses) than conventional success.
A lean, balding man with pale green eyes and a quick, crinkly smile, he is strikingly ordinary in appearance, but flashes of his screen characters surface constantly as he talks. It¡¯s a one-man, non-stop film festival ranging from cowboys to cops, criminals and a bunch of small-town folks and workaday guys. Nominated for an Academy Award five times, he won Best Actor only once, for his born-again country singer in Tender Mercies 20 years ago. Again, contrarily, it¡¯s one of his less memorable films.
Paradox feeds Duvall¡¯s work. The children in Mockingbird believe Boo is a sinister monster, when he is actually a gentle giant who will eventually save them. "You have to find the contradictions," he says of acting. "I think people are like that in life."
Much of his inspiration for nuance and gesture is drawn from people he encounters in life. For Open Range he recalled the cowboys who worked on his uncle¡¯s farm in Montana. "You meet these guys and you file them away. It¡¯s nice to hang around them because you learn about people, and that can only help your acting."
As well as watching real people, Duvall is also an observer of other actors¡¯ skills and doesn¡¯t hold back the praise when he comes across a performance of merit. Around the time My Name Is Joe was released, Peter Mullan was touched when he received a fan letter praising his accomplishment, then astonished when he registered that it had been sent by Robert Duvall.
"Oh, yeah, he was terrific," yelps Duvall when I remind him of this. "He did a wonderful job in My Name Is Joe, absolutely." So does he make a habit of sending fan mail to other actors? "No, no," he says firmly, and then immediately counters this. "Well, I¡¯ll drop a note. Or if I know a friend of theirs, I¡¯ll say, ¡®Tell so-and-so that I saw them in a movie and I thought they were terrific.¡¯
"I saw this western that was made recently, called Wild Bill, and Jeff Bridges was just terrific in it. Now Jeff Bridges is from the beaches of LA, and to me he is a better actor than most of those guys who came out of the actors¡¯ studio or the group theatre. Just a kid off the beach. Talent is individual, it can come from anywhere."
Of course, as well as penning billets-doux to gifted actors, he can also be marvellously tactless about those who don¡¯t impress him. Asked to describe the experience of being directed by Costner, Duvall begins unenthusiastically, "He¡¯s a professional actor and as a director he has a vision. Then we stop and do what we do. He¡¯s like any other director, really..."
Duvall grows a bit more candid. "His westerns are still imitations of films that have gone before rather than the true west, I feel." He then essays a late save: "But he knows how to do that well."
Duvall is also too candid to gussy up the downside of playing Apocalypse Now¡¯s Bill Kilgore, whose napalm speech was recently voted the most memorable cinema line of all time. "People come up to me all the time and quote it, yeah," he says wearily. "And they always behave as if only they and I know the line, nobody else does." Then he brightens a little. "When I was doing research for The Apostle, all the preachers told me that they didn¡¯t go to the movies - and then one of them said, ¡®Oh, I hear you had a famous line: I love the smell of gasoline in the morning¡¯." He laughs heartily.
IF ANY actor can be said to be incapable of a false moment, it is Duvall, whose sinewy performances have no use for easy glamour. He was born in San Diego in 1931, the son of an admiral. At school he was so aimless that his parents, recalling his flair for doing sketches at home, suggested he pursue acting. "They shoved me in that direction," he says, "just to find something I could enjoy." His drama class debut got him his first A grade.
After two years in the army serving in Korea, Duvall went to New York in the 1950s and trained at the Neighbourhood Playhouse. His friends in cramped accommodation were struggling actors Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman: "Dustin used to sleep on Hackman¡¯s floor. Then my brother, me, Hoff and about three other actors rented an apartment together and we would visit Hackman at the weekend. His wife would cook big Italian dinners and we¡¯d all lie down on the floor. Afterwards we¡¯d have a nap then get up and have dessert. Those were good days, but now I hardly ever see those guys. Hackman lives in Santa Fe. I live in Virginia. Hoffman has about 65 houses all over the world. But back then we had great times together. They were good guys. When we do see each other, we pick up again right where we left off."
For almost a decade he worked odd jobs and struggled until - through his friendship with playwright Horton Foote - he won his first role as the mentally handicapped Boo Radley in the 1962 film version of Harper Lee¡¯s To Kill a Mockingbird. The rest is history.
Now 73, Duvall remains engaged and involved in life. He has no plans to retire - "they¡¯ll have to wipe the drool off me" - and makes film after film. Between pictures he rides on his Virginia farm, travels and is an accomplished tango dancer. He has been to Argentina more than 30 times, he performed the tango at a 1999 White House state dinner for the president of Argentina, and he wrote and directed this year¡¯s pet project Assassination Tango, to capture and communicate his feelings for the dance.
"It¡¯s an expression of both the joy and sadness of life. It¡¯s sweet, it¡¯s sensual and it¡¯s sexual all at once. It¡¯s also deeply personal. It¡¯s whatever you want it to be. It¡¯s very special."
His co-star in Tango is his long-time Argentinian girlfriend, Luciana Pedraza. Although not formally trained, he knew she could handle it, he says, because she could weep her way out of a parking ticket. To prepare, she had English lessons and a year of acting exercises and rehearsals and, to make the role feel real, Duvall recruited Pedraza¡¯s two-year-old niece to play her daughter.
They have been together since 1996 but have yet to marry, perhaps because Duvall has already had three wives. He married a model called Barbara Benjamin in 1964, but they split up in 1975. Duvall simply says: "Things burn out." Perhaps this is not surprising, given the actor¡¯s temper, which is quick and explosive. While starring in American Buffalo on Broadway in 1977, he got so frustrated by a woman gasping at his character¡¯s unrefined rants that he finally threw a handful of peanuts at her. This intensity has made it difficult for women to live with him. A four-year marriage to actress Gail Youngs ended in 1986, and a four-year marriage to dance instructor Sharon Brophy finished in 1995. Youngs called him a tortured soul, driven by a perfectionist¡¯s zeal.
These days, Duvall¡¯s life seems calmer. He met Pedraza on a Buenos Aires street. On their first date, Duvall introduced her to the tango, a culture that was chic years before but had since gained a coarser reputation. With Duvall it was love at first dip. When she told him she was 24 (he was 66), he feigned panic. "¡®Oh my God, Policia!¡¯ We joked about it." Pedraza¡¯s father, who is 20 years younger than Duvall, also possesses a sense of humour: "He said, ¡®I don¡¯t know whether to call you father or son.¡¯"
Now the couple have a domestic life consisting of walks, horse-riding and tango, with a few star perks thrown in. Duvall has his tuna salad shipped from a New York City deli and his barbecue is sent in from Texas because food is another of his obsessions. When filming Second-Hand Lions with Michael Caine in Texas last year, he laments that, because Caine¡¯s wife Shakira is Muslim, "She doesn¡¯t eat pork, so they didn¡¯t partake of the wonderful barbecue places all over Austin. Still, she is a very wise and very charming woman; she made sure we had dinner together once a week because he and I played brothers and she was keen to keep that bonding going off-camera."
Duvall¡¯s own films as a director have all been semi-documentary. His first, We¡¯re Not the Jet Set, profiled a Nebraska farm family. Angelo, My Love, a drama set in New York¡¯s gypsy community, was largely improvised because "gypsies can¡¯t read". His preacher feature, The Apostle, was similarly salted with non-professional southern actors to give the film a convincing flavour.
For 13 years, he circulated his story of a Texas evangelist who sins then saves, but no one took it up. In the end, Duvall not only wrote, directed and starred in the film, he spent 5 million of his own money making it. His faith paid off, and The Apostle was not only critically well received but managed to turn a modest profit.
Even so, his next pet production, A Shot at Glory, took six years to make its way to the screen. Finally, in 1999, he came to Scotland with director Michael Corrente and a tiny budget to make his football film. Despite the game having a lowly status in the United States, Duvall sounded remarkably authoritative on topics such as "Jinky" Johnstone or the Christmas-tree formation when he was interviewed at the time, and he remains passionate about football and latterday pin-ups: "I love Michael Owen - a brilliant athlete and my favourite player."
A Shot at Glory was billed as Scotland¡¯s biggest football film, although this is hardly a competitive category, given that Gregory¡¯s Girl was made for buttons and, more recently, The Match turned out to be the Cowdenbeath of scripts. However, A Shot at Glory did pair Duvall with Ally McCoist, the most unlikely coupling since Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams in Carry on Doctor. He even cast McCoist against type, as a starry, womanising ex-Celtic striker reduced to slumming it in the bowels of the league table. It was an honourable debut by McCoist, but at the time it was overshadowed by his off-screen performance with Patsy Kensit.
Duvall remains proud that he and the director found a surprising acting talent in McCoist, outwith the penalty box. "Ally McCoist walked across the lobby and we said, ¡®We¡¯ll put him in the movie,¡¯ without a screen test. We knew that was it. I had talked with guys like Russell Crowe, who was busy anyway. But as good an actor as those guys might be, they can¡¯t do what these guys can do on or off the field - that¡¯s the beauty of it."
Remarkably, news of McCoist¡¯s legendary elastic punctuality was known even to Hollywood, and on the first day Corrente was dispatched to tackle McCoist on the topic. "After that, he was never late. When I told Albert Finney that I was going to act with Ally McCoist, he said, ¡®Oh, the footballer? Sharp as a tack.¡¯ And he is. Ally¡¯s a character, man."
Duvall hasn¡¯t given up his interest in the beautiful game; when we speak, he is halfway through filming a new untitled project with Elf comedian Will Ferrell. "It¡¯s a nice movie about kids¡¯ soccer," Duvall says. "This will really be my first comedy, although there has been humour in some of my other characters. Sometimes the best humour comes out of behaviour rather than saying things to make someone laugh."
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independent.co.uk
Robert Duvall: The Grand Old Dude
At 72, Robert Duvall could spend his entire year collecting lifetime-achievement awards. But, as he explains to Neil Young, the film offers just keep coming, and, like his characters, he's no quitter
A mask of silent concentration, bracketed by a pair of outsized headphones... The face once described as being fit for Mount Rushmore would today look at home on Mr & Mrs. This is the San Sebastian Film Festival official press conference for Kevin Costner's new Western Open Range, and Robert Duvall is sharing the stage - just as he shares the screen in the movie - with Costner and the young Mexican star, Diego Luna (of Y tu Mama Tambien fame).
The assembled Spanish press, however, seem oblivious to everyone except Costner, resplendent in white cowboy hat, black shades ("I've got an eye injury, I'm not trying to look cool, honestly!"), and those outsized translation headphones. Eventually, even the genial Mr C starts to get a little embarrassed. "Look, guys, I'm sure some of you have some questions for the guys up here with me - Mr Luna and Mr Duvall, who, I don't have to tell you, is a living legend." Duvall continues to squint impassively into the middle-distance, until the next journalist raises his hand and blithely begins: "Senor Cost-nair..." Everyone cracks up, and the Rushmore granite cracks into a broad, wry grin.
A few hours later, Duvall finds himself in the more relaxed, intimate and opulent setting of a suite in the Hotel Maria Cristina, the fanciest address in this bijou Basque resort, and where, everyone in town never tires of repeating, the Spanish royal family used to stay during their summer vacations. These days, the place is more associated with Hollywood royalty, as the film festival regularly lures the biggest names with its "Premio Donostia" lifetime-achievement award.
Duvall, who only the week before had been honoured with a gold star on the Hollywood "Walk of Fame", could probably spend the whole year away from his Virginia base, shuttling between film festivals to receive such plaudits. "Yeah," he says, "I was supposed to go to Sweden, and Belgium, too, but it all conflicts. It's hard, you know. But I'm gonna be around for a few years, I hope. I'm not gonna quit for a while..."
Like most movie stars, Duvall is shorter and slighter than you'd expect from his screen appearances. He doesn't get up from his chair throughout the interview - he did, after all, reportedly break six ribs when thrown from a horse during rehearsals for Open Range - but he's a surprisingly compact, slightly hunched figure with a potbelly beneath his grey short-sleeved shirt: not so much a "grand old man" of the movies as a "grand old granddad".
It's as hard to imagine Duvall looking young as it is to imagine him with a full thatch of hair, but he looks every minute of his 72 years - he'd make a much more plausible movie OAP than his seniors Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood. Then again, Duvall's private life reinforces the old adage about books and covers: the thrice-married star's girlfriend Luciana Pedraza (co-star of his next directorial effort, Assassination Tango) is 31, the pair coincidentally (and romantically) sharing their birthday of 5 January.
And Duvall's eyes are still the same intense, cobalt blue (they remind me of the Ted Hughes line about "hard circles of animal clarity") - the man in real life is very much the calm, watchful, alert presence familiar from roles like The Godfather's Irish consigliere Tom Hagen. Talking about a subject - or, rather, a person - that interests him, however, he's suddenly "on". As when I happen to mention that I'm from Sunderland, for whose football team Ally McCoist - Duvall's co-star in the little-seen 2001 tartan-soccer drama A Shot at Glory - once played.
"Where is he! Where is that guy?!" yelps Duvall, pretending to scour the room in search of the man he described as "80 times better for this part than [original choice] Russell Crowe, and more charismatic... Olivier could never kick a ball, but McCoist is a very natural actor". The film's lack of success hasn't changed Duvall's opinion one jot: "McCoisty - what a character! I said to Albert Finney, 'I'm working with this guy McCoist, the footballer, I'm gonna make an actor out of him', and Finney said [puts on gravelly posh Finney accent], 'Shahp as a tack!'. He was right.
"McCoist was a good footballer, of course, but not as good as Michael Owen - I love Michael Owen, he's great." Alive with enthusiasm, Duvall recalls: "He almost beat Argentina single-handed - I got on the phone to people, I was saying, 'You should see this kid - he's brilliant'. I looked into his record, and I found that in your version of 'little league', when he was 12 years old, he scored 13 goals in 18 minutes in one game. Incredible!"
Duvall's praise of Owen is entirely in character with a man who seems to delight in embodying the "frontier spirit" that prizes individual effort - tellingly, the only bad word he has to say for anyone during the whole interview is reserved for a union representative with whom he crossed swords on the set of his self-directed 1997 Deep South drama The Apostle: "Some arrogant guy came down with loafers and no socks from Baltimore, from the cameramen's union." Duvall, neatly turned out in black jeans and brown suede cowboy boots, is dismissive: "He wasn't gonna give an inch, and eventually I made peace with this guy, even though he was very arrogant."
With a career studded with authority figures, and having been, since his arrival in town, notably keen to distance himself politically from fellow-Donostia recipient Sean Penn (his co-star in Colors in 1988), it's clear that Duvall is a long way from the caricature of the Hollywood actor as bleeding-heart liberal. Born in San Diego - the capital of the US Navy - into what he calls "a military family" (he's a direct descendant of General Robert E Lee, no less), Duvall moved around "all different parts of the country", according to his father's postings.
While himself a decorated soldier, Duvall only served in the army for a year before drifting into acting. "My parents kinda pushed me into it because I was... floundering. They figured maybe I could do that, because I'd do skits around the house - I sang because my brothers all sang a lot. I was pretty petrified at first, but I got to like it. In the beginning, I went to New York to be a theatre actor, then I ended up in films, which I prefer. I'd rather do that than eight performances a week on stage.
"For a while it was hit and miss - I was looking to make a living, I'd gotten married, I had two step-daughters... it was hard. Until I did M*A*S*H with Altman, and then I made a few good movies with Horton Foote - he's one of our great writers, from Texas. He provided me with some great roles, such as Tender Mercies [for which the six-times Oscar-nominated Duvall won 1983's Best Actor award]."
Though he rejects the suggestion that he is offered "Robert Duvall-type roles" ("I've played a Cuban barber, cowboys, Stalin..."), the actor does admit to being drawn to roles in which he can put to use the vivid characters that he has met down the years - even such an apparently unlikely figure as the legendary Celtic footballer Jimmy "Wee Jinky" Johnstone: "I met a lot of characters in my time, Texas, here, there, all over. The biggest I ever met was Jimmy Johnstone. We spent about two hours talking. What an entertaining guy, just to sit and talk for two hours. People say the Scots are dour, but they're not: they're like the Italians, they throw things, they curse!"
He delights in recalling a Scottish cowhand who worked on his uncle's Montana ranch: "Morrison... I actually saw him once run up on a quarter-horse - a speed-horse, good for a quarter of a mile - and touch it on the neck. He roped a baby coyote once. A natural veterinarian, amateur - all the professionals wanted to know his secrets, but he wouldn't tell 'em. A terrific guy, used to pitch horseshoes, was the champion of Montana.
"So all that builds up, to play these parts, like Boss Spearman in Open Range. It all gives me the... the security to play that kind of part."
It's a security that Duvall has built up very patiently over the years: "All the time, in the Sixties and early Seventies," he recalls, "I always figured that I was sort of a 'late bloomer' - I felt my time was later than guys such as Jimmy Caan, De Niro, Pacino. It's later now... I guess I'm still around! In fact, I'm getting more offers than ever - that's fine with me. They want me to do Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea..."
A glance at the Internet Movie Database reveals a somewhat less lofty future project, that will see the living legend return to familiar (Astro)turf: "Untitled Will Ferrell Soccer Comedy (2005)." The perfect vehicle for a Duvall- McCoist reunion, perhaps?
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telegraph.co.uk, 2003-10-27
'I can dance a pretty good tango'
Robert Duvall is best known for his portrayal of stoic tough guys in films such as Apocalypse Now and The Godfather. But, as Michael Shelden discovers, he is taking his career in a new direction ? thanks to a glamorous Argentine girlfriend 40 years his junior
It's a good thing for Robert Duvall that it takes two to tango. Otherwise, he might not have discovered the love of his life. Fifteen years ago, he became obsessed with the tango after seeing it performed in New York by a visiting troupe from Argentina. Between films, he began travelling to Buenos Aires, where he took dancing lessons and haunted the tango clubs at all hours.
Then, one day, seven years ago, he was walking in the city when a beautiful young woman with long dark hair and a willowy build approached him.
"I hear you like to tango," she said. Luciana Pedraza was not a dancer herself and was relatively new to the city, having been brought up in the mountains to the north. But she wanted to meet Robert Duvall and knew about his secret passion.
A few nights after they met, he took her dancing and found her to be his perfect partner. They have been inseparable ever since. Once they had tangoed, nothing could keep them apart.
"I had been to Buenos Aires many times," he recalls now. "I love the city, and I've seen a lot of pretty women there. But she was something special. We clicked right away.''
It didn't even matter that they were born thousands of miles and many years apart. Duvall was 65 when they met; Luciana was only 24. When she told him her age, his first reaction was, "Oh my God, policia!" But to his surprise, nobody seemed to care, least of all Luciana.
"The age difference has never bothered her," he says, shaking his head, as though still amazed by his good fortune. "We go everywhere and do everything together. It's like we've always known each other.''
But for those who know Duvall only as a stoic tough guy in films such as The Godfather, his fascination for the elegant tango - and his romance with a young Argentine - may come as a big surprise. As an actor, he is brilliant at playing madly possessed vulgarians, and is most famous for his part as the rampaging, surf-loving Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, who goes into battle with loudspeakers blaring Wagner.
How can he play such a convincing madman and also do the tango? The question makes him laugh. "It's all about acting. The tango is a very expressive dance, and is great for an actor. You get into it the same way you get into a really good part. It's wonderful.''
At first glance, he looks more like Colonel Kilgore than any of his other characters. He walks with a kind of swagger typical of military men and is wearing a pair of cowboy boots made from the skins of wild pigs. "Very soft," he says of them, as we sit at an outdoor cafe in Beverly Hills.
But just as you begin to suspect that he will abruptly launch into an impassioned tribute to napalm, he starts discussing instead the short fiction of Chekhov and Borges. He is, in fact, a man of so many interests that his curiosity seems boundless. Mention some obscure fact in his presence, and he will leap on it - quizzing you until he's discovered whether he wants to know more.
Even now, at 72, he has a boyish charm, and it isn't difficult to see why his age doesn't matter to Luciana. Slender and energetic, he certainly looks much younger than his years. His skin is attractively freckled, his smile is infectious and his blue eyes are alert and bright.
Speaking in rapid bursts, he fixes you with those penetrating eyes and leans forward, punctuating his comments with a finger -stabbing the air. He is intense, but not intimidating.
"I like outdoor cafes," he says, with sudden enthusiasm. "I'm fascinated by the coffee shop mentality. People staying awake at odd hours, discussing their lives. That's one of the things that I like about Buenos Aires. You can leave the tango clubs and find a crowd at 3am, drinking coffee and staying up until dawn.''
He is rhapsodic on the subject of Buenos Aires, praising its public gardens, its casual elegance and, of course, its women. It's as though the whole city became for him a kind of fountain of youth, reinvigorating a career that was already spectacularly successful.
Since he met Luciana, he has added at least a dozen more films to his long list of credits, which go all the way back to such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird - with Gregory Peck - and M*A*S*H, The Natural and Tender Mercies (for which he earnt an Academy Award).
His latest films are Secondhand Lions, a coming-of-age comedy co-starring Haley Joel Osment and Michael Caine, and Open Range, a cowboy epic with Kevin Costner.
"I broke a few ribs when I made that film with Kevin," he says with a wince, grabbing his side. "I fell off a horse. But I'm fine now. And I loved making that movie because I think Westerns are great. The Brits have Shakespeare, the French have Moliere and the Americans have the Western. It's our national art form.''
As befits a cowboy with a taste for Borges, Duvall divides his time between a large farm in Virginia and his beloved Buenos Aires. He and Luciana have a house in the foothills of the Andes, but prefer to stay in hotels in the city when they go back to Argentina. He wonders out loud whether it's time they went to the altar. She has never been married, but he has had three wives and endured three difficult divorces. So why tie the knot again at 72?
His eyebrow shoots up, and he scratches his jaw, thoughtfully. "Or why not get married? Maybe we should. I've been thinking about it.''
There's nothing stopping him. It's not about money. He has made enough of it to support any number of wives and ex-wives. And he has no children to worry about. ("I would have had them if I could," he says, ruefully.)
In any event, he seems genuinely confused by the subject, as does Luciana's family. They have warmed to him, but when he met her father - who is Duvall's junior by many years - the man looked at him and said: "I don't know whether to call you son or father.''
The fact is that he is restless by nature and needs diversion. The son of an American admiral, he was on the move constantly as a young man. His father's career took the family to various ports, and young Duvall grew up rootless.
His life was heading nowhere in particular when his parents talked him into giving the theatre a try. At the little college he attended in Illinois, he had shown some talent for acting, but wasn't ready to make a career of it until his parents gave him a push. The next thing he knew, he was in New York, struggling to win bit parts in small productions. Among his friends were two other actors who, like him, were enormously talented but lacked the conventional looks to get the lead in a Broadway play.
"Gene Hackman and I were close, and one day he told me about a good friend of his called Dusty Hoffman. We all got together from time to time and had a lot of laughs. We all started as character actors, and I still like to think that's what I am.
"All three of us have had long careers because we play characters instead of just trying to be stars. I like the stage, but I do prefer being in movies because you can get it right and move on. I don't want to do the same part eight times a week when I can do it once on film and try something else. As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between the theatre and the cinema is that an actor has to speak up a little more on stage.''
He inhabits his parts so completely that fans assume he must be as mad as Kilgore and as calculating as Tom Hagen in The Godfather.
"I can't be all those people I've played," he says, laughing. "But the fans do identify with these characters. I don't know how many people have come up to me over the years and repeated to me, as though speaking a secret, 'I love the smell of napalm in the morning.' They act like only the two of us know that line. But what's funny is that they often mangle it, substituting gasoline for napalm, or whatever comes into their minds.''
And how does he react?
"Usually, I just smile. I don't mind - except when they come up and say things like, 'Mr Hackman, I've always enjoyed your work'.''
To stay one step ahead of his old buddy, he works relentlessly to improve his talent. He began making a deliberate effort long ago to collect eccentric friends and acquaintances whose real-life characters he could observe and study.
"I like real people, not the make-believe stereotypes that Hollywood often gives you. The studios are happy to accept the caricature instead of the real thing, because it's easier to sell. You can finance and market caricatures a lot easier than complex human beings.''
To make movies that interest him, he has often had to finance the projects on his own and he wrote and directed one of the best independent films of recent years, The Apostle, which came out in 1997 and stars Duvall as a preacher trying to save his own tortured soul.
Having collected a whole host of oddball characters on his midnight wanderings in Buenos Aires, he was inevitably drawn to the city as the setting for another independent production. A true labour of love, the recently completed Assassination Tango features Duvall as an American killer sent to do a contract hit in Argentina. But the thriller aspect of the story is soon overshadowed by the world of the tango clubs, an often seedy environment that so fascinates the assassin that it diverts him from his mission and draws out his humanity.
Not surprisingly, the assassin falls in love with a young tango dancer played by - you guessed it - Luciana Padraza. In a scene that sounds a lot like real life, Duvall's character asks hers: "If I were younger, would I have a chance with you?" She replies: "You have a chance now. Welcome to Argentina.''
As he describes the film, Duvall glows, as though recalling a pleasant dream. He won't say it, but he seems especially proud of his dancing in the film. When I press him to evaluate his own performance, he blushes and turns uncharacteristically shy.
"On a good day," he finally admits, "I can dance a pretty good club tango. I'm not bad."
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The Times (UK)
Film
October 26, 2003
Robert Duvall - still in demand at 72
Obsessed with the dance as much as his acting, Robert Duvall is every bit as singular as his finest screen roles, says Stephen Applebaum
After four decades of keeping it real as an actor, Robert Duvall, at 72, is in greater demand than ever. He has appeared in four films in the past year and a half, he tells me as we hide from the blazing Sicilian sun at the Taormina BNL Filmfest, where his fourth directorial effort, Assassination Tango, is screening, and he needs a holiday.
As he sits on a sofa nonchalantly chewing gum, his lively bright-blue eyes sparkling youthfully, it is obvious that life is treating Bobby — nobody calls him Robert — well. However, it is not just the steady flow of work that is putting a smile on the thrice-married actor’s face. His seven-year relationship with Luciana Pedraza, a loquacious, self-possessed 31- year-old Argentine beauty who makes her screen debut in Assassination Tango, is apparently also in enviably fine shape.
Duvall might not have achieved the star status of a Robert De Niro or an Al Pacino, but that is no bad thing. Having resigned himself early in his career to the role of character actor, he has practically made the pursuit of authenticity his life’s work. Whereas Pacino’s personality informs everything he does, Duvall, whether playing a napalm-loving warmonger in Apocalypse Now or a street-smart legal adviser to the mafia in The Godfather, eradicates his own ego from the frame, disappearing inside the skin of a character. An actor’s actor, he researches his roles with the diligence of an ethnologist, hanging out with cops, drunks and Bible-belt evangelists in an effort to learn what makes them tick. “You go from ink to behaviour,” he says, “and the most important thing to me is behaviour, not in an indulgent way, but in an organised way.” “Bobby’s very intense,” Pedraza warns, “and when you tell him to bring more pace to his performance, or get mad, he will go nuts.”
Michael Caine witnessed Duv- all’s explosive temper recently while shooting Secondhand Lions. “It’s quite violent for five seconds, then it’s gone. People get quite scared,” he told People magazine. “It only happened once or twice,” laughs Duvall, brushing the subject aside. Still, his outbursts are notorious. Back in his early acting days, when he appeared in Waiting for Godot in Boston, he allegedly threatened the life of the director, David Wheeler. He also fought constant battles with Bruce Beresford on Tender Mercies, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar.
Such moods are not confined to the workplace, either. “He gets mad very often, or used to,” reveals Pedraza. “But I don’t pay any attention, because I know it’s not serious. I know it has to do with other things from the past and not us,” she offers, cryptically.
It is surely no coincidence that Duvall’s characters in the self-penned and directed films The Apostle and Assassination Tango, where he plays John J Anderson, a New York hit man hired to liquidate a general in Buenos Aires, have short fuses. Other auto- biographical influences, such as his strict religious upbringing and continuing love affair with the tango, also surge through these films.
Duvall does not like to analyse his own work, but, whether he acknowledges it or not, watching Assassination Tango is like looking through a window onto his life as an actor. Anderson’s wife, oblivious to the fact that her husband is a professional killer, complains that he becomes someone else when he does a job. While sequences portraying his immersion in Buenos Aires’s tango culture play precisely the way you imagine Duvall researches a role.
“Could be, yeah,” muses Duvall. “I check people out. Still do. I’ve got tapes I watch of tango dancers, because if you have a hobby, you try to be as obsessed with it as you are with your profession. So you go to the source and see how well it can be done.”
Duvall has built a dance studio on his 360-acre Virginia farm, and practises tango whenever he can. “It’s a very quiet, sweet, peaceful thing,” he says. Leaning forward conspiratorially, he whispers: “I like it better than acting sometimes. Sure, if something goes well between ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’, it’s the same thing. But with tango it’s more like an informal, nightly version of live theatre.”
As he talks about his obsession, I read him a quote from his second wife, Gail Youngs, saying that, his joie de vivre notwithstanding, he is a “tortured soul driven by his need for perfection”. The result is an almost comically excruciating exchange as Duvall repeatedly mishears the word perfection as affection. “Oh, perfection,” he says at last. “Maybe so, yeah. But I think a lot of people are like that. You just want to get better and better, but in doing that you have to stay relaxed, I think.”
He seems to have adopted the same attitude in his relationship with Pedraza. She approached him on a street in Buenos Aires when he was in the city filming Eichmann, and they have been practically inseparable ever since. Although he habitually laughs off the age difference by pointing out that they share the same birthday (January 5), just 41 years apart, he admits that he was initially worried about how people would react to their being together. Luckily, his best pal, the actor Wilford Brimley, had some sage words.
“He said: ‘Listen, my friend, I want to tell you something. The worst thing in the world for an old man is an old woman. But when she says “Action”, you’d better come up with something.’ I never forgot that,” says Duvall, laughing raucously and slapping his thigh.
With things going so well, is he considering walking down the aisle a fourth time? “I’m not sure,” he says, lowering his voice. “I like marriage in certain ways, but I always refer to it as a funeral.” He laughs nervously. “It’s a Freudian slip, of course,” he continues.
Serious one minute, almost laddish the next, relaxed yet driven, Duvall is as riven by contradictions as his best characters. Although a septuagenarian, he shows little sign of slowing down. He broke six ribs in a riding accident while preparing to play a trail boss in Kevin Costner’s latest western, Open Range, but still turned in a performance that, according to the influential critic Roger Ebert, “elevates Open Range from a good cowboy story into the archetypal region where the best westerns exist”.
As he’s obviously still having fun making movies, when is he likely to retire? “Not until I start wiping the drool off my chin.” You would be unwise to bet on Duvall giving up, even then.
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Indiewire
March 31, 2003
"Fictional Realities Out of Life's Realities": Robert Duvall on "Assassination Tango"
by Andrea Meyer
Everyone loves Robert Duvall, the actor. Whether your favorite is "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now," "Falling Down," "Tender Mercies," or his unforgettable debut as Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird," most film lovers would agree that Duvall is one of Hollywood's great actors. For a guy who's been performing since the '50s, it's astounding that Duvall has never slowed down, with almost 100 roles to his credit and parts in more recent films that include "A Civil Action," "Deep Impact," "John Q.," and "Gods and Generals." The energetic 72-year-old has at least four films coming out in the next year.
More surprising than his prolific work as an actor, though, are Duvall's writing and directing chops. In 1997, he wrote, directed, and starred in "The Apostle," a film that earned a place on more than 75 critics' Top 10 lists and won its maker the best picture, actor, and director prizes at the Independent Sprit Awards, in addition to his fifth Oscar nomination. The gritty story of a Southern preacher who seeks redemption after committing a crime of passion employed a mix of actors and nonprofessionals to give audiences the impression of diving right into the middle of a world they probably never had seen before.
Now the multi-talented Duvall brings another of his scripts to screen with "Assassination Tango," about a hitman who goes to Argentina to knock off a general and ends up getting seduced by the world of tango. Featuring his real-life girlfriend, 31-year-old Argentine Luciana Pedraza, in her acting debut, this film uses the same ingredients as his previous one -- improvisation, non-actors, departing liberally from the script -- to create another intriguing foray into a world unknown to most audiences. Duvall created a fascinating character for himself and let him bounce between the streets and dancehalls of New York and the small tango clubs of Buenos Aires, bringing many of his passions to screen.
indieWIRE: "Assassination Tango" is an amazing character study. John J. is extremely complex: He's so tightly wound you never know when he's going to spring, yet he's full of love. How did you conceive of him?
Robert Duvall: A guy who does what he does for a living well and does it well enough so he can have time to do other things. There's this scene with Ruben Blades, coming in from the airport. I just began to improvise and I built up this whole thing for my character without even thinking about it when I wrote it, how I fought in Korea and how the trade carries on into life and that's what I do periodically to make extra money. But that's a guy who wants to find a home after many years and settle down and have a wife and stepdaughter, but yet he has these jobs that he does. And he loves social dancing. When he goes to Argentina, he gets stuck there, much to his chagrin, but in so doing, he falls in love with the tango and wants to bring that knowledge back. It's just about a guy who does what he does well. He does it well enough to have hobbies on the side.
iW: What was your inspiration for him?
Duvall: It was my interest in the tango that brought me to the whole thing: the music, Buenos Aires. How can I get somebody to Buenos Aires? For what reason? I wanted to connect Buenos Aires to New York through the social dancing. Somebody told me that one of the best mambo dancers they ever saw was a wise guy from Brooklyn. That's the myth, that to be a better dancer it's better to be from the underworld, which isn't necessary. The guy who works at the bank can be a good dancer, but that's the myth. In New York, too, it's the guys from the neighborhood who are good swing dancers. So, I tried to connect the two just to see where it went. When I wrote it, I wrote it in a month and put it in a drawer and forgot about it for awhile until the right time was gonna come to work it out and try to sell it.
iW: With all that improvisation going on, I guess what we see on screen is very different from the script you wrote.
Duvall: I'd improvised with Luciana for about a year or more. If I was on a movie set, I'd put her with an actor opposite me, just to practice, to improvise, to learn the game. For instance, she has a two-year-old niece who's so dear to her. We said, Okay, we'll fictionalize your part so you have a daughter, we'll make her real niece her daughter, and if she hadn't had a niece, we wouldn't have done that. You've got to grab things and use them and make fictional realities out of life's realities. In the cafe scene, she decided the night before what she might ask me. I didn't know what she was going to ask me. And she distanced herself from me very much that day, like she didn't know me, so in that scene it was like a timid thing. It was like, What do we say next? How do I approach this guy? What do I think of her? We rolled two magazines of film and that was it. It wasn't like coverage for hour over hour, over the shoulder, get the close-up, get the this. We rolled two magazines, went to the edit room, and got an eight-minute scene. We sent it to the powers that be, and they said, 'Where did this scene come from?' And I said, 'This is the way I want to work.' I don't know if it was totally appreciated, but that's the way I like to work.
iW: As a director, you create these amazing, extreme characters who must be so much fun to play. Are there parts of yourself that you identify in John J?
Duvall: He's a guy obsessed with learning something new, a guy who wants to love a family, who's never had a chance to love before, to have that sense of family, that sense of friendship and loyalty among friends. Those things are in me, so I just explore them. I'm not a killer, so the actual part of pulling the trigger was play-acting. That's just play-acting.
iW: Was the entire film shot in Buenos Aires?
Duvall: Yeah, except for one aerial shot. We have a wonderful set director from Italy, and she designed it. It's $50,000 a day to film there. It's $100,000 a day here. We didn't have a budget. We had six and a half million. What did they have for "Gangs of New York"? $110 million? They used 147 gallons of blood, and we used six thimblefuls. Look at that ratio! We only had x amount of dollars, so we had to shoot down there, which is alright with me, because I love it down there.
iW: Where did your love of Argentina and tango come from?
Duvall: It happened a few years back. It's a wonderful hobby, and I kept going back and back, and I met my lady from there and I developed a script and everything and it's an ongoing thing. We bought a home in the foothills of the Andes, an old Spanish colonial home, and fixed it up. It's just a pretty neat city. When you sit down to eat, they serve you, rather than going into a cafeteria line on a movie set. They have a sense of style and very good crews there. The guy was so fast with lighting. We set the scene, we staged it, he said, 'Okay, we'll call you when we're ready,' and by the time I reached for my tea, he said, 'We're ready.' It's nice. I like to work fast. You don't have time to sit around in your trailer, like in so many big movies, you sleep in between, and they knock on your door and say, 'Okay here we go again'. It's good to just move.
iW: What's the difference between directing and acting for you?
Duvall: It's all the same. It's an extension of myself as an actor that I wrote it. It's an extension of myself as an actor when I act. It's an extension of myself as an actor when I direct. You know, I try to relax everybody like I like to be relaxed if I'm an actor. I try to direct other actors the way that I would like to be directed by a director, saying let's start from zero without thinking of getting anywhere, in other words without thinking about the result. Let the process bring you to the result within time.
iW: What are some of your favorite moments from your career?
Duvall: I've had a long career. "Apocalypse" and then there's "The Godfather" and when I played the Cuban barber in that movie with Richard Harris ["Wrestling Ernest Hemingway"]. One of my favorite parts was for television when I did "Lonesome Dove." I just did another western with Kevin Costner, which is almost up there. He gave me a great, great part to play. The western is America's genre. No one can do it but us. The English do Shakespeare, and we do Westerns. Spaghetti Westerns were okay, but it's our thing.
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The American Enterprise, March 2003
TAE Chats with Robert Duvall
By John Meroney
Robert Duvall's version of Robert E. Lee ought to pass muster with the most scrupulous of Civil War buffs. Costumed in Confederate regalia, with technical help from the same make-up artist flown in from Italy who helped create Duvall's hardened look as Augustus McCrae in the 1989 television miniseries Lonesome Dove, the 72-year-old Duvall bears a strong resemblance to Lee. Both actor and general also share a northern Virginia ancestry, and the powerful influence of fathers who were prominent military men.
Duvall's father, William Howard Duvall, was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy during World War II. "Bobby" grew up in military towns such as San Diego and Annapolis, graduated from Principia College in Illinois, then spent two years in the Army. More recently, he has been travelling in the upper echelon of the film world, starring in movies like M*A*S*H, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The Great Santini. He has been called "the best we have, the American Olivier" by New York Times critic Vincent Canby.
Duvall, however, is dismissive of nearly all Hollywood trappings. He abhors the vast sums of money studios commit to disposable pictures, saying "You should see the stuff they waste money on." And he will tell you time and again that filmmakers have either caricatured or ignored heartland America--which he tries to rectify with the projects he personally champions. "The average workingman has dignity that the Hollywood establishment has overlooked," says Duvall with real passion. "These Village Voices, these provincial rags of New York City," he laughs.
"You've got to get out and travel--you've got to get out and look. The center of this country, and the South especially, have been patronized and made fun of. If I can do anything at all in my work to show what dignity is in the common person, then that's what my life is really about."
Duvall insists that even rednecks, for whom Hollywood reserves its most severe venom, should have their fair shake. In his 1997 film A Family Thing, which Duvall produced himself, he plays a bigoted Arkansas hardware store owner who discovers that his mother was black. When he travels to Chicago in his red pick-up to find the African-American brother he's never met (played by James Earl Jones), a powerfully sincere and touching portrayal unfolds. Likewise, in The Apostle--which he wrote, directed, starred in, and edited in an annex to his house--Duvall asked Billy Bob Thornton "to play this guy who objects to integrated worship services, without judging him. I wanted to avoid condescending to these people."
"We need to have real people up there on the screen," says Duvall. These days he cares not a whit for Hollywood acclaim. "I got into acting because I wanted to act, not become a star." Most films, Duvall complains, "patronize and put quotation marks around everything. You want something real. It's either real life, or it's phony. There isn't anything bigger than actual life."
One of the most memorable characters in The Apostle, a radio station owner/announcer named Elmo, was played by a man from Arkansas called Rick Dial whom Duvall recruited from a furniture store. "I had to have him," says Duvall. "We needed to work around his job, and our costume guy would put Rick's arms out and fit him for clothes while he was selling a dining room set. He's a natural actor, a good citizen, you know--a church-going man. Someone sent him a script with bad language and Rick said, 'I can't do that. What are all those little ladies who come in to buy furniture from me going to think about me in a movie with four letter words?' I love this guy."
One thing that keeps Duvall close to reality is spending time on his 250-year-old northern Virginia farm. His little hamlet of The Plains is a long way geographically, politically, and spiritually from what Duvall calls the "mink-coat liberals" who live in Beverly Hills and Brentwood. But the split-rail fences and rolling meadows are also a long distance from where Robert Duvall himself stood 25 years ago. He was then an impetuous up-and-comer who fancied himself a Manhattan urbanite while starring on Broadway in David Mamet's, American Buffalo. "I thought I was on the Upper West Side's side," he says, laughing. His journey since then has taken him a long way. Among other things, "Virginia became so special to me--historically speaking. And beauty-wise, as well."
The recent project that seems to resonate most with Duvall's affection for Virginia is Gods and Generals, the new Civil War saga from filmmaker Ron Maxwell, which was filmed in the Shenandoah Valley and nearby Maryland. Maxwell had wanted Duvall to play Robert E. Lee in his earlier masterpiece Gettysburg, and Duvall had agreed in concept. "But when we finally went forward with it in the winter and spring of 1992, Bobby wasn't available," says Maxwell. He ended up casting Martin Sheen for the part instead. With Sheen now committed to his NBC drama The West Wing, "we went back to Duvall. It was full circle," states Maxwell.
The role seems to have come easily for Duvall. "I didn't have to read a hundred and fifty books on the guy, that's for sure," he says. "He was from northern Virginia, and that's exactly where my father was from, and they were both professional military men. My father was definitely a Virginia gentleman, so I just spoke with the accent of my dad."
Duvall didn't have total freedom to develop his character. He had read that Lee went to Gettysburg in a horse-drawn hospital cart because his hands were maimed by being bucked off his horse, Traveller. "I said to Ron, 'Why can't I be soaking my hands in a bowl of warm water and epsom salts in order to make it much more human and just let the scene develop?' The guy flatly refused. I didn't have as much carte blanche as I thought I might." Nevertheless, both actor and director seem pleased with the result. "Bobby gave an outstanding performance," Maxwell says.
Ironically, Duvall's family on his father's side, though Virginians, all had pro-Northern sympathies. "We grew up knowing that Lee was a revered figure. After all, my father's people were Southerners. But they were pro-Union behind enemy lines." Duvall's grandfather was actually named Abraham Lincoln Duvall.
In many ways, Duvall's personal situation epitomizes America's Civil War: mixed loyalties, love torn between different sides, a situation as mixed and complex as human feeling. And that's the way Duvall decided to portray Lee. "He was a revered guy. But you've still got to present the character the same way you would any other one. You've got to play him as a human being."
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Toronto International Film Festival
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Assassination Tango Press Conference
On the second day of pre-production for Assassination Tango - actor Robert Duvall's fourth directorial effort and a Special Presentations film at this year's Toronto International Film Festival - life and art became entangled.
"A well known couple was assassinated in a very posh vacations spot in Northern Argentina at three in the morning," explained Duvall during the press conference for the film. "Across the bodies, a sign was placed saying 'the gringo was here'. It was so much like our story, it spooked us, especially since the victims were the parents of our production manager. It was a very strange set of circumstances that almost brought us to a halt."
Assassination Tango is a thriller that plays out in the world of Argentine tango. John J. (Robert Duvall) is a hit man who's hired to kill an Argentine general in Buenos Aires. He is forced to prolong his stay in the city when the general stays out of town longer than expected. While he waits for his target's return, he meets Manuela (Luciana Pedraza), a tango dancer who teaches him the sensual dance. John eventually completes his hit, but his chances of evading capture grow slim when the country tightens security. "Anything that happens in your imagination can happen somewhere in reality, " said Duvall.
Duvall, who owns a house in Argentina and refers to the country as his second home, revealed that he has been dancing the tango for more than 15 years. But, he questions his proficiency. "When you go to Argentina, nobody likes anybody's dancing. They're worse than actors," he jested. "I have become better within a small circle."
The director wrote the screenplay for Assassination Tango a number of years ago on the suggestion of his friend Francis Ford Coppola. After completing The Apostle, he dusted off the script and asked Coppola to read it. Coppola immediately agreed to finance the film and joined the project as executive producer.
The movie marks Pedraza's film debut. The actress is Duvall's romantic partner, and a native of Argentina. She revealed that the part she plays was intended for another actress who failed to return their phone calls offering the part. Although Pedraza said she has no immediate plans to do another film, she noted that she enjoyed working with Duvall on the project. "I was amazed with how he is able to get things from both actors and non-actors," she explained. "Manuela is another side of myself, she isn't somebody else. Maybe more shy, and with different moods. There's always another side of yourself that you can present. Some directors are afraid to let actors bring something to the table, but Bobby welcomes the actor with his ideas."
Duvall contended that because Argentineans live by their wits, they tend to be very good, natural actors. He also admitted that he prefers a more improvisational style of shooting. "As soon as you utter the words 'take two' it becomes scripted," he said. "We tried to turn it around and let the process come from these people. They're kings of their own space, I'm not. I can't tell them what to do."
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Premiere, March 2002
Robert Duvall Acts Civil
By Aimee Agresti
When director Ronald F. Maxwell arrives in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, odds are that war will break out almost immediately. For Gods and Generals, the prequel to his 1993 Civil War epic Gettysburg, Maxwell is transforming the picturesque riverside tourist town into the gritty urban battle zone of Fredericksburg, Virginia - circa 1862 - to tell the story of the rise and fall of legendary war hero Stonewall Jackson. And once the 19th-century facades of homes and shops have been built, the dirt has been laid in the streets, and the 300 Civil War reenactors have suited up in their blue and gray, Maxwell will send his actors - including Robert Duvall as General Robert E. Lee and Stephen Lang as fellow Confederate General Jackson - into one fierce battle.
"The other day we filmed a scene where Jackson rides through the town to see the devastation that's been wrought," Lang (Gettysburg) says. "It's a scene of absolute sadness and carnage: smoke and broken furniture and fires in the street, feather beds chopped up, butchered civilians - the real horror of war. How pertinent is that these days?" However, he adds, the film, which also features Mira Sorvino, Jeff Daniels, and C. Thomas Howell (the latter two reprise their Gettysburg roles), "is not about flag-waving to me. It's a part of the ongoing discussion as to what constitutes a democracy. Any process that welcomes dissent, well, sometimes that dissent can reach the level of a street brawl."
For Maxwell, Gods and Generals marks 15 years that he's devoted himself to the war. "The more I read about it, the more I find it an unfathomable subject,"says the director, who hopes to finish off the trilogy with an adaptation of The Last Full Measure, by author Jeff Shaara, who also wrote the book Gods and Generals. "Every generation of filmmakers will make movies about it." But not all of them will be lucky enough to have Ted Turner Pictures pony up $54 million. The donation might have helped secure Ted Turner a cameo (along with senators George Allen, Phil Gramm, and Robert Byrd), and it has made it possible to shoot much of the film close to the sites where the actual events occurred.
Some of those locations were especially familiar for Duvall, who felt unnaturally at home in Lee's shoes. "I'm related to the guy way back on my mother's side, and my father's side of the family lived in northern Virginia, where Lee was reared," the actor says. "So that's something I could identify with. It's just part of my bloodline."
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Reuters/Variety
FEATURE-Multitalented Robert Duvall shoots for diversity
Fri May 3, 7:30 PM ET
By Jill Serjeant
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor, director, screenwriter, producer, singer, tango dancer, Robert Duvall has done it all. But Robert Duvall, playing a Scottish soccer manager?
It's as much an unconventional career as unconventional casting for a man whose 40 years in the movie business have seen him play everything from a Mafia lawyer and a Pentecostal evangelist to Joseph Stalin and a washed-up country singer.
Mixing up roles, alternating between leads and character parts, is the way Duvall, 72, keeps himself fresh and his passion intact for the movies he really wants to make, and write, and direct, and finance.
"Somebody once said to me, you want to play the things that are in your dreams," said Duvall, explaining how he woke up one morning about 10 years ago with the idea of playing a Scottish soccer manager.
The result -- "A Shot At Glory" -- took six years to make its way from Duvall's imagination to the screen and another three to be released in the United States, where soccer is still a Cinderella sport.
Produced by Duvall's own Butchers Run Films, the movie charts the David versus Goliath story of a lowly Scottish soccer club on an unlikely journey to the Scottish Cup final.
Duvall plays the gruff, stubborn manager Gordon McLeod, wielding an accent that he said took 10 months to master.
KEEPING IT REAL
One of Duvall's proudest achievements is using nonprofessional actors to play the soccer players, including beloved Scottish Rangers striker Ally McCoist in his film debut as a washed-up soccer star.
"Ally McCoist walked across the lobby and we said, 'We'll put him in the movie,' without a screen test. We knew that was it."
"I had talked with guys like Russell Crowe, who was busy anyway. But as good an actor as those guys might be, they can't do what these guys can do on or off the field -- that's the beauty of it," Duvall said.
The quest to make it real and keep it fresh also dominated Duvall's next personal project -- the movie "Assassination Tango," which he wrote, directed, starred in, and danced in.
Duvall found a showcase for his musical talents in "Tender Mercies," the 1983 movie in which he wrote and performed his own songs and which finally brought him a best actor Oscar after previous nominations for "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now."
Duvall dismisses his singing voice, recalling an album he made in the 1980s with the help of Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, which was never released.
But the tango long has been a consuming passion, marked by a chairmanship of the U.S. Tango Academy, numerous visits to Argentina, and stunning displays at the White House during state dinners for South American visitors.
"The tango is the most misunderstood dance in the world. The extreme is the rose in the teeth, sexual and dramatic. But there are different manifestations, and it has always been caricatured and overdone for me," said Duvall.
"So I have gone to the real source and drawn my own story from that. There is enough tango to make it work, but none of that overly dramatic stuff," he said.
SEDUCED BY THE TANGO
Duvall plays a hit man who is sent to Argentina on a job but finding himself delayed there, becomes seduced by tango dancing. The movie is due out in the autumn and also features nonprofessional actors, including Duvall's Argentine girlfriend Luciana Pedraza.
"Once you get those non-actors to a certain point they can put the professional actor on notice. ... At what point do you come home and say, 'Now I am an actor' -- because you took some classes? Who's to say?"
"People get this misconception about the 'professional actor' who comes to work, punches the clock, nine to five, doesn't cause problems. And yet a lot of the times, he brings nothing to the table fresh," said Duvall.
Despite chiseled looks that biographer Leonard Maltin once said would not look out of place on Mount Rushmore, Duvall has never suffered from typecasting.
His other recent roles include a car mechanic in "Gone in Sixty Seconds" and a police negotiator in "John Q." He has just completed a role as Civil War Gen. Robert E. Lee, of whom Duvall is a direct descendant.
"I like to work. I like working. I'm going off to do a Western with Kevin Costner next. Each movie is diverse from the other. You always look to find fresh things to do," he said.
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CheckOut.com
Los Angeles, CA
Tango and Cash
June, 2000
Robert Duvall speaks the truth.
His resume speaks volumes: To Kill a Mockingbird, M*A*S*H, Bullitt, The Godfather, The Godfather II, The Conversation, Network, The Great Santini, Apocalypse Now, The Natural, Sling Blade¡¦ Robert Duvall is unquestionably one of the greatest actors living. Duvall deftly shifts from in front of the camera to the director's chair and can easily wear the hats of producer and writer as well. He moves comfortably between supporting roles in big budget action flicks -- like his current gig in Gone in 60 Seconds -- and leading roles in smaller films such as The Apostle, which he also wrote and directed. At 69 years of age, he doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.
A consummate storyteller, Duvall and I chatted recently about Gone in 60 Seconds and, at length, a whole lot of other things.
Did you learn to boost cars?
No, I don't even care about cars. I let (my girlfriend) Luciana drive me everywhere. I just drive an old car. But I hear that the young people came in with their parole officers and showed the other actors how to really steal them. I heard it was quite fascinating. I guess when you're that good at something like that, that's what you want to do. You buck the law and challenge it if you're that qualified of a thief. It can be seductive. I imagine to know how to steal a car in 60 seconds or less, that must be an amazing thing. But there is hard time to serve with stealing a car.
In the film, you were kind of the Yoda of car thieves¡¦
What is Yoda? They even wrote that in the first draft, but I said, "Forget that, let's do it another way." I never saw Star Wars. I know a few others who haven't seen it. I don't know if I'm Yoda or not, but we all got along great.
Well, I'm sure the young cast members looked up to you as a mentor. Like Scott Caan. You, of course, worked with his father. How was it working with him?
They both are great. They play baseball. They play basketball. They work. They did everything. Vinnie (Jones) said Scott wakes up in the morning and pats himself on the back. If he was chocolate, he would eat himself! But Scott's great, and Jimmy's great. I love them. They're great guys. I was with Jimmy the other day and we had a long lunch down at Typhoon's. I like to go lunch with friends and sit for hours and just talk and carry on. He's a great guy. He made Godfather I vibrant with his jokes and personality. Brando still talks about his jokes from twenty-five years ago.
How about Nicolas Cage?
I never met him before. He was more to himself. I was more with the other guys because our trailers were close to each other. Between takes, it would be more than an hour-and-a-half of waiting. It was fun because you got to hang out with these guys. We played soccer and games, joked around. Jones would talk; it was great. I really think the young actors are really better than ever. There is so much information and good people around.
You're at a place where you can just take movies as gigs -- for the money -- and then turn around and do something with questionable commercial viability that you're incredibly passionate about. How do you balance that?
This was a great job for paying. It certainly doesn't hurt to have your face spread all over the world. You still try to do a good job, just like you would do for the ones you are more passionate about. I like to mix them up. It's an interesting approach. I get a lot of supporting parts and I play the leads in some, but mostly the smaller ones.
And yet you were vocal about turning down Godfather III because you thought it was a calculated move to cash in?
It was a money issue for everybody. Why would Coppola wait 25 years to make a third one unless he wanted to buy another hotel or something?
Is maintaining that balance how you've sustained a career of nearly fifty years?
You get to a point where it works for itself, but you have to help shape it. I play a lot of supporting parts in bigger films and play leads in what I want to do. Once in a while, I get a lead in a bigger film, but, you know, that's fine with me. A part is a part. I try to do as well in the little films as I would in the big films.
Is it ever work for you -- like a job job?
Yes, it's a job sometimes, but it is fun. We complain and carry on sometimes, but it's a wonderful profession, and I enjoy working. I get off into many things now, more than before.
You were just in Scotland shooting a soccer film. Can you explain a little about it?
Michael Corrente and I talked about it during Christmas three years ago and in less than three months, he raised nine million dollars. How he did it, I don't know. Legitimate money, too! (laughs) It's called A Shot at Glory.
It was called The Cup, but then they had those monks that came out with the same title -- I actually enjoyed that movie a lot.
It was a wonderful experience because so often with athletic films, you don't see the athletics done right. With the real players, it was wonderful. There's difference between this and most athletic films -- like a football film that I saw recently -- they didn't understand football when they filmed it. As a football fan, I didn't get it! Over there, to begin with, we hired the guys from England that shot the World Cup. We brought them up and they filmed all the football matches. Then they hired a soccer editor to come and edit. All 22 actors at any given time during the film could have been 22 professional players. So they knew what they were doing.
Without screen testing him or anything, we gave the lead to Ally McCoist, the highest scorer in the history of the Rangers at the end of his career. He was terrific. And he was just a natural actor. He has a talk show over there, and (legendary forward) Georgie Best didn't show up. He just got drunk and didn't show up. So, Ally, he put a cardboard copy of Best and improvised the whole show. Ally McCoist is a very quick guy. So we hired him to play the young lead. He was terrific.
And you play a coach?
I play a coach. An Irish coach. I worked on the accent for months.
Is the film finished?
Yes. It's a nice story, and it worked better than I thought it would. When I finally saw it with the music, with that added dimension, I was pleasantly surprised. We had the guy from Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler. He did all the music. It was beautiful music. Then at the end, they had two prominent football commentators come in and watch the film with the music and improvise as they watched the movie and give their commentary as they would at any given match.
Are you planning to sit in the director's chair again soon?
I am going to direct next year. Francis Coppola liked my script for a Tango film, and he is going to find some producers for it. You know, he could green light any movie and get 10 million dollars. He can loan to himself.
What's the Tango film about?
The connection between Buenos Aires and New York through social dancing and the Underworld. And about this guy who has to go down there for a certain reason and he gets hooked on Tango. This great dancers who died several years back in Argentina -- one the innovators of the way they dance in circles there -- he once said that it is sort of a myth, but yet it's a guide, too, that to be a good tango dancer that you should be a thief, a pimp, a bookie, some kind of criminal. Well, you know, it's true.
I know Underground guys in New York that are terrific dancers who never had to go to a dance class. So Frankie Gio is an actor, he was a heavyweight boxer and terrific swing dancer. He was in Roseland one time and got into trouble, and the bouncers took him out and worked him over, but they couldn't knock him out and he was on the ground, so they were thinking he would make a good bouncer, so they hired him while he was on the ground. His grandfather had actually lived in Buenos Aires, along with a lot of other relatives that he has. There's a connection about this sense of Underworld people. They're good dancers. You don't really have to be a pimp or a thief, but that's the myth.
I know you've turned down roles before because you felt that the violence in those films was portrayed irresponsibly. Where is the line between responsibility and irresponsibility?
Maybe everyone is a hypocrite at some point. There was a movie I was offered some time back and they asked me if I could kill my own kid, and I couldn't take that part. People worry about the NRA when they should be worrying about the violence in movies. Both should be addressed, but there is so much violence in movies, and they talk about "political correctness," but they do whatever they want to do to make money. That's the bottom line. Maybe that's the way it should be because it is a business. There's a lot of double standard out here, I think. Maybe not the whole industry, but certain individuals.
You don't mean violence per se, though? You're talking about unrealistic, exaggerated, hip violence, right?
Absolutely. It's damaging. Kids, people, adults, these images are always flashed. The politicians sometimes don't address it because they like to be around Hollywood people. No one is held accountable.
And the ratings don't work?
Well, how is Mission: Impossible rated PG-13? Is somebody buying someone off?
How do feel about Chuck Heston and other outspoken Hollywood advocates for the NRA?
I don't know him too well. If that's what he wants to do. There are problems besides the NRA. I don't even own a gun, but I don't hold it against people who do. I was in the Army. Out here, there's a joke -- not a good joke -- but they say you have 2 ¨ö cars per family, and in Texas there's 2 ¨ö handguns per car. I don't know much about Heston. If that's what he wanted to do.
How do you reconcile the violence in The Godfather?
There was a lot of violence in that, but it was native to those people, indigenous to that culture. And there's violence in my Tango movie, but I don't think it's overstated. Mission: Impossible makes it look like it's chic and somebody said it desensitizes the violence. I'm not on a box preaching, I just think that there is a double standard in this town. Whatever is going to sell tickets.
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Transcript of an interview with Robert Duvall, at a local radio station in Scotland, on Wednesday 21st July 1999
Ally Gourlay :- "First of all Mr Duvall, the film you're making - "The Cup" - what inspired you to start.......
Robert Duvall:- "Oh I don't wanna talk about "The Cup", I wanna talk about the Rovers, they're great. It was just this idea we had, the writer there (points across), Dennis, and it's a film we're gonna do over here, we'll be here for two months, about Scottish football and it's gonna be interesting.
AG - "And How are you enjoying your time down at Stark's Park (home of Raith Rovers FC).
RD - "I'm enjoying it very much except for the weather but yeah, it's wonderful here.
AG- "Do you take a big interest in football back home ?"
RD- "American football I'm big into but I've always loved what we in America call soccer, you know, following the women winning the World Cup in front of 93000 people was unbelievable and they play well. I'd rather see women play soccer than basketball because they play it really well, so I've always liked European soccer.
AG- "And now you've been down at Raith Rovers with John McVeigh (Rovers manager). Do you enjoy watching the team play ?"
RD - "Oh Johnny ! Yes, I enjoy getting in the dressing room and listening to him getting into it ( giving team talks).
AG: "He's quite a character isn't he ? "
RD "Oh Yeah, he's a real motivator"
AG "Are you going to be around long enough to see them start their league season"
RD "I'm not sure, I think yeah, We have days off on Saturdays and as Rovers play on Saturdays I'll be able to come up and see them, and I'll probably be here this Saturday because they said they're not gonna let me go home because they haven't lost a goal since I've come, so maybe (laughs) I'm a good luck charm"
AG "I know that the clubs supporters, and the local press, are hoping that you'll take more than a passing interest in the club. Is that a possibility ?
RD " Oh I don't know yet. I'm up to here (points to his neck) getting ready for this project but I certainly enjoy being here and I wish the best for John because he's a terrific guy and a talented coach and manager.
AG "You've struck up a good friendship with John McVeigh"
RD "Yeah he's terriffic. He reminds me of a guy who used to be a great wide receiver for The Houston Oilers way back, but John has better character because he's a real family man. But you see he's a real hard man but a good man. I just did a film with Vinnie Jones ( ex Wimbledon and Wales defender, famed for his hard man antics and constant suspensions. More recently star of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrells). John said "You Tell Vinny that he better be glad that I retired from playing football before he came along" (laughs loudly) and I did, I told that to Vinnie .
AG " And you've enjoyed the good old Scottish hospitality ?"
RD " Aw you bet !!"
AG "Final question Robert, How do I get a part in the film " (laughing)
RD " You'll have to ask John McVeigh that, he's the casting guy around here (laughing).
AG "Thanks very much Robert, thanks for your time"
RD "Thank you Ally"
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Entertainment Weekly, February 19, 1999
1999 OSCAR NOMINEES SPOTLIGHT: Best Supporting Actor
Anyone else would've played the opposing counsel in "A Civil Action" as a textbook bad guy, but he made him practically...Human
Where's the justice? That's the question more than a few disciples of "The Apostle" asked when Jack Nicholson strolled on stage last year to accept the Best Actor Oscar for "As Good as It Gets." So this year, Duvall took the law into his own hands -- playing a canny corporate defense attorney in "A Civil Action."
The movie version of Jonathan Harr's true-life legal story was supposed to focus on John Travolta's Jan Schlichtmann, a venal ambulance chaser whose battle against two giant corporations accused of poisoning a town's drinking water -- and causing leukemia in several children -- transforms him into a frustrated crusader.
But the movie turns out to be as much about Goliath as about David, thanks to Duvall. As opposing counsel Jerome Facher, he turns our expectations inside out: Rather than play Facher as a clichéd corporate sleazebag, Duvall injects the stereotypical white-shoe Boston Brahmin lawyer with surprising depth and complexity. He's an old-fashioned Yankee coot -- a crusty eccentric who eats brown-bag lunches in the stacks of Harvard's law library; carries a tattered old briefcase covered in decals of cartoon characters; and bases his moods on the fickle fortunes of his beloved Red Sox.
Duvall's signature trick is to bring a sympathetic side to such ethically challenged figures. Who can say with certainty whether he was playing heroes or villains in "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now," and "Tender Mercies" (which snagged him the 1983 Best Actor Oscar)? Anyone who has looked at these morally ambiguous characters has seen a bit of themselves. So when Facher grins like a Cheshire cat and asks Travolta, "The truth? I thought we were talking about a court of law," you're hearing the voice of a jaded old-timer who knows all too well that rarely in this world is there any such thing as justice.--Chris Nashawaty
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Sunday January 10, 1999 Doing the Hollywood shuffle
Robert Duvall tangos around movie making's ups and downs
By BOB THOMPSON -- Toronto Sun
HOLLYWOOD -- He's not exactly a Virginia squire, but Robert Duvall does have an 80-hectare farm in that state. He uses the spread for his base, and the breeding and riding of horses.
In other words, 67-year-old Duvall is a country gent stranger in this city slicker movie land when he is here to meet, to deal, to cajole or, in this case, to promote his latest movie, A Civil Action.
Duvall is good at all four of those things, mostly because he is as honest and as straightforward as an actor can be. He has learned to roll with the sniping, the pettiness, the dishonesty and the self-indulgence.
"Yeah, uh-huh," says a smirking Duvall at a Century City hotel. "I've been acting for many years. I guess you learn a few things, or at least get taught them."
What most moviemakers have learned about Duvall is this: If you have a pivotal co-starring role in your picture, get Robert Duvall.
Writer-director Steve Zaillian pursued him for a specific portrayal in A Civil Action, and was rewarded for it with what most critics are calling an award-winning performance. Duvall will likely be Oscar-nominated for his part as the quirky company attorney battling John Travolta's personal injury lawyer in an environmental case.
If he does get the Oscar nod, it would be his second Academy Award nomination in a row. Last year, Duvall was honoured with a best actor nomination for his self-financed directorial effort, The Apostle. He eventually lost out to Jack Nicholson's As Good As It Gets role.
What The Apostle did for Duvall was add to his impressive acting stature established with The Godfather and solidified with Apocalypse Now.
Before that he had made a name for himself as the pious-lecherous Frank Burns in the movie M*A*S*H*. His first movie part came in 1962 as To Kill A Mockingbird's mysterious hulk Boo Radley.
Like Duvall says, "I've been acting for many years." And still he acts when he wants to and does what he wants to.
"Yeah," he says. "I pretty much do whatever suits me."
If that means earning a huge paycheque in a big-budget disaster film like Deep Impact, so be it. If that means hustling to make a film about his other obsession, the tango, then he'll do that, too.
Presently, and in keeping with his particular and peculiar tastes, Duvall has signed to star in a movie about soccer -- in Glasgow of all places.
"It's in the very tentative stages," reports Duvall. "I'm the coach of a fictional amateur team that plays for the Scottish Cup."
Duvall has already made some fact-finding trips to Glasgow. "Interesting people," says the understated San Diego-born son of a military man with some Celtic blood on his mother's side. "Beef is nice in Glasgow. Smoked haddock, too."
Sounds like the on-location movie might be fun, but Duvall shrugs in response.
"We're waiting for the production company to tell us to get started. They've been very vague."
Meanwhile, he's still pushing for his tango picture, and he's still keeping in tango shape by dancing as often as he can with his Argentinian girlfriend, Lucianna Pedrazza.
"It's a year or so away," says Duvall who will star and might direct the film scheduled to be shot in Argentina. "It's about a modern day event there, in the world of the tango."
He chuckles at the thought of showing the movie in Argentina, not to mention showcasing his tango abilities.
"I dance okay," he says. "But even if I do, the Argentinians still pick out the faults. Everybody rips each other, really rips each other, on the tango down there.
"It's the only place I've been where style is everything. I was eating in a cafeteria with a truck driver friend of mine once, and he corrected my table manners."
Unlike the people who populate the movie industry, Argentinians say what they think in front of you, not behind you.
"Amen," Duvall says.
"Y'know, The Apostle grossed close to $25 million, and it cost $5 million to make. It would've made more, I think, if they had showed it in more theatres.
"And then you would think that the Oscar would've helped with some leverage getting financing for my tango thing, but it hasn't."
Duvall laughs off his last statement. He's amused, not angry, by the contradictions of his chosen profession -- moviemaking.
"Oh yeah," he says, "Definitely. Yeah, definitely. Nothing makes any sense out here.
"Yeah, I remember one production company guy told me, 'Hey, if you had brought us Tender Mercies, we would've financed it.'
"This is after it did okay, and I got an Oscar for that country singer written by Horton Foote.
"So I brought them The Apostle, and they turned it down."
As he says, he's been in the film business for a long time.
"You persist, you struggle, and you don't take anything for granted," he concludes. "In the long run, it makes the outcome even better."
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George, January 1999
In his new movie, A Civil Action, about a small town where children have been devastated by industrial pollution, Robert Duvall plays one tough lawyer -- which is fitting for a guy who speaks only the bald truth
By Josh Young
The setting couldn't be more bucolic: a rolling 360-acre farm just outside The Plains, Virginia, a one-horse town of clapboard houses and rambling roses. And the man on the proverbial soapbox couldn't be more revered: Robert Duvall, the Academy Award-winning actor who has gained legendary status for his stunningly precise performances in at least a dozen of the most important films of the last century. In this majestic moment, Duvall's rant is pure irrepressible vitriol. The target: America's favorite songbird.
"Barbra Streisand crossed a picket line of women in Las Vegas and sang for something like $20 million for two nights," Duvall complains, batting the air with a who-needs-her gesture. "I'm not a big Barbra Streisand fan. She said if George Bush were re-elected, she'd move to England." His voice trails off, then guns back. "Well, let her move. Let her move! Fast!"
The 68-year-old actor who has spent four decades hiding in salt-of-the-earth American stoics on-screen is starved for political conversation, even if the political talk on this day is more what someone in these parts might call a good old-fashioned turkey shoot. "I always find that there is a catch with people like her, some form of hypocrisy," Duvall continues. "Barbra Streisand won't go to Colorado because they passed a law that was a little prejudicial to gays, but I'll bet she'll go to Havana, Cuba, where they quarantine gays."
Dressed in faded black jeans, black zippered boots, and a black Patagonia sweatshirt, Duvall sits on a white couch in the living room of his picture- book, Ralph Lauren farmhouse, amiably grousing. He finds the feminists' take on Washington's sex scandals particularly maddening: "Kelly Flinn didn't love her country any less than Bill Clinton loves his country, and she was ousted," he says. "I laugh at the feminist movement. They have such a double standard. I think people like Gloria Steinem want to be next in line with Bill Clinton on a one-to-one sexual level. They think, If this chunky little Monica Lewinsky girl can get him, what about me? Judge [Clarence] Thomas and [Senator Robert] Packwood were amateurs compared to Clinton. Amateurs!" After a beat, he hits his point. "But they were conservatives. It's all partisan politics."
Duvall admits his own political radar has been more sensitive since he stared into the maw of Sam Donaldson across a rope line. "Mr. Duvall," Donaldson barked, "tell us about the president's mood!" It was three days after the Lewinsky scandal broke, and Duvall was at the White House for a presidential screening of the film The Apostle -- his 13-year labor of love, which he wrote, directed, starred in, and financed. He says Clinton reminded him of a high-level Pentecostal preacher, not unlike the flawed evangelist Duvall played in the film. "Clinton's a wheeler-dealer, and from afar he repulses you, but one-to-one he's different," Duvall says. "There's something about his wooing of Hollywood that is so rife, yet when you meet the guy, he's interesting to sit down and talk to."
That night, the guests at the screening seemed to fancy themselves the Dian Fosseys of political primate study. They debated what it meant when Bill and Hillary Clinton held hands during the movie. When asked about the coincidence that Farrah Fawcett, who played Duvall's cheating wife in The Apostle, and Clinton took a bathroom break at the same time, the actor rolls his eyes and whistles. "Well," he says after a long pause, "you know what Tommy Lee Jones, who roomed with Al Gore at Harvard, says about all this. He says, 'I'm for pussy. What's wrong with more pussy?'" Duvall leans back and breaks into laughter.
Bobby Duvall -- no one calls him Robert -- is a guy who likes a spicy conversation that plays with life's ambiguities. The talk traverses politics, religion, and history, touches on his first love, the tango, and always slingshots back to the subject of food. (Case in point: If one brings up Duvall's battles with Australian directors Bruce Beresford on Tender Mercies or with Simon Wincer on Lonesome Dove, Duvall tells you that the best Greek meal he ever ate was in Melbourne.) Although he's met three presidents (Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan) and everyone who is anyone in Hollywood, he'd rather talk to regular folk any day.
"It's very easy for people in Hollywood or Hyannisport or these rich enclaves to say so-and-so should be penalized for not hiring certain minorities," Duvall says. "But Hollywood is the most anti-affirmative action town in America. You name me one black or Hispanic head of a studio or agency. They may throw out a token. But they shouldn't criticize General Motors when they're worse. Worse! And yet they're all in bed with the president. It's too easy."
Duvall continues with his favorite theme, hypocrisy. "Oliver Stone says Hollywood is the most democratic town in America," Duvall says. "If it's so democratic, why isn't there a policy that allows any actor to go up to the front gate of a studio and try out for any movie? It's a caste system. One guy asked me, 'How can you be an actor and be a Republican?' I can vote either way. But how can you boil it down to [political affiliation]? All the atrocities against blacks in the South were committed by Democratic sheriffs."
Duvall shakes his head and rubs his forehead. "In some people's eyes, a guy who stays in the ghetto and beats his wife and votes Democratic is better than someone who votes Republican. It's another form of keeping the blacks down."
This isn't a guy who keeps his opinions just to himself. In 1994, when Disney was trying to build its doomed historical theme park near the Manassas battlefield eight miles from his farm, the actor drove to a congressional hearing and lent his name to the opposition. To this day, he remains disgusted with Disney chairman Michael Eisner. "I wanted to build an amusement park in Eisner's front yard," he quips. "This guy had a Republican governor [George Allen of Virginia] in one pocket and all of the Clinton administration in the other pocket. He was so arrogant and so definitively tacky."
In the war of words, Allen called Duvall and his fellow activists smug. "I said, 'If I'm smug, I learned from the master, Michael Eisner,'" recalls Duvall, who refused to take Allen's phone call the day after the meeting. "If anybody was smug, it was the Disney contingent. They were full of shit. They were saying it was for education, but it was for money. They were putting up a theme park on historic grounds in the name of whatever, and I'm sure Mr. Gore and the rest of them thought it was pretty nifty."
Fear of being black-listed by Disney's movie divisions crossed Duvall's mind but didn't curb his rhetoric. "My theory is that no matter how many enemies you make, you can always work for their enemies," he says.
This month, Duvall gets to exorcise some of his political passion on the big screen. He plays corporate lawyer Jerome Facher in A Civil Action, based on the best-selling book by Jonathan Harr. The true story involves a group of families in Woburn, Massachusetts, who accused the huge companies, Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace, of contaminating local wells with chemicals that caused the death of their children -- six deaths in all. A fixture on the New York Times paperback best-seller list for more than two years, the book examines how corporations can pollute the land and hide behind the fine points of the civil justice system -- which comes off as more of a system than as civil or just. "The story resonates with so many people because it goes right to the heart of civilized living," explains Jan Schlichtmann, the families' attorney. "How do we treat each other? How do we treat the earth? This story is about how, if we don't get it right, we're going to kill each other."
Although the plaintiffs in A Civil Action weren't successful in court, the cause against corporate polluters won a larger victory. The groundbreaking research done by the plaintiffs' experts was the first time a scientific and medical link was established between local pollution and cancer. The information caused the EPA to intervene and push W.R. Grace, Beatrice, and four other companies into a $69.4 million, 50-year cleanup program in Woburn. The book's success has made the case national, and corporations are now changing their approach from contention to contrition. When a high incidence of children with cancer was recently discovered in Toms River, New Jersey, the offending companies agreed to share information with the families to find a solution. Of the lasting impact of A Civil Action, Schlichtmann says, "It changed regulatory behavior, it changed company behavior, and it changed community behavior." He adds, "In the end, the families won. Proof of that is they're making a movie out of it."
Duvall's character, Facher, who defends the conglomerate Beatrice, is an esteemed litigator and master of the vicissitudes of the court system. To prepare for the role, Duvall relied more on an offhand comment from a lawyer he met on the Boston subway than he did on what the real-life Facher told him. "[The guy on the subway] said my guy was cold, like ice," Duvall recalls. "He's not a bad guy, but the implication was he's not necessarily a good guy."
Duvall found Facher's own recollections tainted by the prospect that an Oscar-winning actor was playing him in a big Hollywood movie. When Duvall pressed the lawyer during a dinner they had together, Facher sugarcoated his actions in hopes that Duvall would paint a more sympathetic picture of him than the book did. "I said to Facher, 'Come on, you hid [evidence],'" Duvall says. "He just laughed. Everybody has a price, and everybody loves Hollywood. Once the camera was up, this guy wanted to be there every day."
Schlichtmann, played by John Travolta, is a crusader who risks everything to bring out the truth. But A Civil Action isn't a simple tale of good versus evil. "Nothing's black-and-white," Duvall says. "People go to environmental meetings in Hollywood in their gas-guzzling Mercedes. There are always two sides."
The dramatic subject matter of A Civil Action made for a tense shoot. Duvall says he became paranoid one day when Travolta kept forgetting his lines, but Travolta assured him it was the pressure. Travolta now says the shorthand he and Duvall developed while filming Phenomenon eased the workdays. "When a movie is tough, it's easier to get through when you know someone and love them," Travolta says. "There is an effortlessness and an easiness about how we act together."
Travolta was so eager to work with Duvall again that he invited him to be in his next film, The General's Daughter. (Duvall wanted some time off.) "We're on the same wavelength as people and as actors," Travolta explains. "I'm so fond of Bobby and have so much respect for him that it's just a blast to be with him. We have the same feeling about life. He loves food and dancing, and I love food and dancing." When asked about Travolta, Duvall says, "He's great, just great, and he's always looking for a good hamburger."
One of Duvall's secrets to creating authentic everyman characters is the time he spends outside of Los Angeles and New York, cities that most actors only leave for location work. It's not that he doesn't love New York (where he used to have an apartment) and Los Angeles (one of his favorite cities) but, as he puts it, "When I talk to certain people from Kansas City or San Diego or Vancouver individually, I find more insightful questions asked than in New York."
Born in San Diego, Duvall grew up the middle child of three brothers in a working-class, Republican household. (His older brother, William, taught music at the University of Wisconsin; his younger brother, Jack, is an attorney.) His father was a Navy admiral, and his mother ran a cooking business. He attended grammar school in Annapolis, where his father was stationed, and high school in Maryland and St. Louis. His mother was a Christian Scientist, which led him to Principia College, where he majored in government before he discovered theater. His relationship with his father was remote until the end. "My dad was somewhat of a segregationist, but I found out that in the last part of his life he would send a pittance to [Southern Poverty Law Center co- founder] Julian Bond," Duvall says. "It's the last thing I would have expected from my father. I was very touched by that, very touched."
Duvall attributes his own political philosophy, moderate-leaning conservative, to his parents. He voted for Clinton the first time around to get rid of George Bush, but his ideal presidential ticket would include Colin Powell and Elizabeth Dole, not necessarily in that order. The only candidate he ever endorsed was New York City mayoral candidate Roy Innis, who, years earlier, had gotten into a shoving match on The Morton Downey, Jr., Show during a discussion on black leadership. "Any guy who would throw [activist] Al Sharpton on the floor gets my support," he says.
Duvall's film career began when Horton Foote suggested him for the role of the reclusive Boo Radley in the 1962 classic To Kill a Mockingbird, which Foote adapted. Since then, Duvall has portrayed characters in such films as MASH,The Godfather, Network, Apocalypse Now, Falling Down, and Deep Impact, all of which have brought political and social realities to life. The Apostle is probably the only movie ever admired equally by Howard Stern, Pat Robertson, and Billy Graham. Duvall is so loved in Texas because of his performance in Lonesome Dove that when Ann Richards was governor, Duvall told her he could unseat her; she agreed. He has also played historic figures Joseph Stalin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jesse James, and Adolf Eichmann. "For me, it's really about the character, not the issue," Duvall says.
If one chums the Hollywood waters with Duvall's name, one gets no shark attacks, only reverence. Irwin Winkler, who produced True Confessions, which starred Duvall and Robert De Niro, explains, "He has no ego." Nominated for five Oscars, Duvall won best actor for the 1983 drama Tender Mercies. Along with cops, mechanics, cowboys, singers, preachers, he has even played a black man, James Earl Jones's half brother in A Family Thing. In more than 100 roles, Tom Hanks marvels, "Robert Duvall has never hit a false beat in his life." And Gene Hackman calls him "hands down, the best film actor of my generation."
For his part, Duvall admires Brando, whom he describes as immensely gifted but lazy, and James Caan. "The set comes up a level when Jimmy's around," he says. The only actor he hated working with was Klaus Maria Brandauer, on The Lightship. "I don't know if his problem is that he just happens to come from the same country as Hitler or what," Duvall quips. He is also impressed by today's stars. "Young actors today are better than ever," he says, putting Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton at the top of the list. "They knock each other, but these are good actors. I don't care what anybody says."
As for critics "Let me put it this way,'" he says, answering the question with a story. "When I did Stalin, some critics didn't like it. But Nikita Mikhalkov's father, who was Stalin's personal poet, said I touched the soul of Stalin. It depends on who you're approved by."
Of the directors he's worked with -- a list that includes Robert Altman, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Sidney Lumet, Barry Levinson, and Ron Howard -- his fondest memories are of the films he made with Francis Ford Coppola. He directed Duvall in The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and the first two chapters of The Godfather. (It doesn't hurt that Coppola also introduced him to the tango.) "You can really mess with Coppola," Duvall says. "I walked into his house, and he's got a picture of Mao Zedong, so I say, 'What's a capitalist like you got a picture of Mao Zedong in your house for?' He turned and walked away."
Coppola visited Duvall in Virginia to convince him to return as the consigliere to the Corleones in The Godfather Part III. Duvall prepared his mother's crab cakes for Coppola, who had been pestering Duvall for the recipe for years. That afternoon he relented and wrote it out, but Coppola forgot to take it home. "He kept calling for the recipe," Duvall remembers. "He was more concerned that he forgot the recipe than whether I would do Godfather III."
The talks ultimately broke down over money. "That's all anybody was doing it for anyway," Duvall says. "If he's gonna wait 20 years, it's about money. Francis lives big. I said, 'You can pay Pacino twice what you pay me but not three or four times as much.' Francis had a very arrogant lawyer. It was beneath him to discuss it, so I said, 'Well, ciao.' I didn't miss any great experience." Coppola responds, "It was a blow to the film, but I was the one who was pretty much the loser in that." Indeed, Duvall never sent him the crab cake recipe either.
Duvall seems more comfortable analyzing his three failed marriages than deconstructing his acting techniques. "On my last two marriages they had to sign a prenuptial, and that's kind of a defeatist thing going in," he explains. "The first one, I wanted out, and that was the hardest thing because of the guilt. I'm not Jewish or Irish, but I had some guilt because I left her! The second one would've stayed. She was a good person underneath, and in some ways I cared for her the most. This last one would've taken the farm."
Duvall's third marriage, to Sharon Brophy, ended like a scene from a movie set in a small southern town, with the sheriff removing her from the property. Duvall says the downward spiral began while he was on location and his wife had an affair with the pool man. "In my house!" he fumes, banging the table. He adds that he has since redecorated. Duvall says the town really started buzzing when Brophy and her boyfriend threw naked swimming parties. "I've got some kind of a name to protect," Duvall says.
Through all that, Duvall is angriest at Brophy for making his tango dancing suffer. She was the first American dancer to perform on Broadway in Tango Argentino, but she refused to practice with Duvall. "I lost two years," he complains. "It's like marrying somebody who has the same religion -- until you're married."
Now he is happily living with his 26-year-old girlfriend of two years, Luciana Pedraza. She is tall and beautiful in a simple, South American way. He met her on one of his excursions to Argentina, the birthplace of the tango. "I picked somebody I knew nothing about," he says. "But I quit marriage. I'm no good at it. I let Luciana know that going in."
The two share a January 5 birthday and a passion for soccer, tennis, food, horses, and the tango (which they practice in a barn that he has converted for the purpose). Next to Duvall's Oscar on the fireplace mantel is a framed letter from Brando praising The Apostle. Brando closes the letter by telling Duvall to stop looking for his tangerine, because it doesn't exist. "I have no idea what he's talking about, but I found my tangerine right here," Duvall says, standing up to hug Pedraza.
When Pedraza leaves the room, Duvall confides that he's intrigued by the contradictions in her. "When I had to kiss Miranda Richardson (in The Apostle), Luciana was upset," he says. "I couldn't have dinner with the actresses in my movie to go over their parts, yet she liked The Unbearable Lightness of Being, with two women on top of each other. It's a double standard. When I told her my next film is going to have a violent love scene, she got on her knees and said, 'Oh, please don't.'"
The morning of conversation has made Duvall hungry, but he's nervous about taking me to the Rail Stop, the town's only restaurant, which he recently bought. It's the first day that lunch is being served under his ownership, and Pedraza, who manages the restaurant, has already reported a few kinks.
But when we stroll into the place, Duvall's apprehension turns to shock. It's as if he's playing a small-town restaurateur who can't believe his good fortune. The place is packed. As he greets the locals, a matronly woman bounds out of her chair and offers her hand. "Mr. Duvall, I drove five hours to eat here and meet you," she gushes. He clutches her arm. "Well, bless you," he responds.
We sit down at a small table in the back corner. Duvall leans forward. "I hear people say what it really comes down to is that we live in the best country in the world," he volunteers. "I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure we're better than Italy or England. I'm not so sure we're better than France, although I wouldn't want to live in France. We have the potential to be. We're like a big kid with a lot of talent that makes a lot of big mistakes.
"People put the English down, but at least they stood up and fought the Germans and didn't throw everything down and run to lunch like the French," he continues. "It goes back to an old friend who was a lifeguard. He saved three people's lives, and by the end of summer, nobody would speak to him. You save somebody's life, you've got something over them. We saved the French twice, and they still dump on us. They're great with food, but I can get a meal in this country that equals that."
Suffice it to say, the world need not worry about Bobby Duvall finding a meal that suits him. In tiny Plains, he can sate his appetites, enjoying acclaim, fame, and the affection of a young brown-haired beauty. No wonder he sympathizes with the president.
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Reformation and Revival
An Insightful Look at Modern Evangelicalism
John H. Armstrong
Rarely do I review Hollywood films, at least for wide public use. This is especially true of films nominated for Academy Awards. Since evangelicals retain mixed reactions to the cinema in general, specifically to popular film as an art form, I generally steer away from the subject. The degrading aspects of the whole Hollywood subculture rightly trouble us. Much that is produced is outrageous and worthless. Yet, as noted by Dennis D. Haack in a recent article in our quarterly journal:
One part of modern culture which is easily 'plundered' is cinema. The enormous popularity of the movies makes them a good point of contact with the unchurched. Because movies tend to reflect the cultural consensus, it is possible to use modern film as a resource to help Christians comprehend the world and life views of those who do not share our deepest conviction.1
In the case of the recently acclaimed Robert Duvall film, The Apostle, evangelicals are given a rare Hollywood glimpse of themselves that is all too uncomfortably accurate. This is very definitely not a film which serves up Hollywood's distorted image of Pentecostal subculture. Duvall's script begs us to look at ourselves with a richness of insight rarely produced within our own ranks.2
After reading several reviews of The Apostle (specifically by evangelical critics) I decided to see the film for myself. I was definitely not disappointed. Duvall might well make us forget the stereotypical charicature of Elmer Gantry, a prospect we can only hope for. This story, and the performance of Robert Duvall, is such that I can only believe the Academy really did Duvall an injustice in not granting him this year's award for best actor.
The Apostle is the fictitious story of a Texas preacher ("Sonny") who grows up as a boy in the 1940s and 50s, learning to preach, as so many do, from early childhood. His congregation is racially mixed, economically and socially poor, and deeply Pentecostal. Sonny is a warm, genuinely caring, sincere man, who truly loves to preach. His kind of preaching, like so much in this context, is both engaging and direct. The outward success which follows Sonny results in him pastoring a large church, along with his wife (Farrah Fawcett), in an east Texas town. Sonny arrives at a home meeting to find out that he has been voted out of his own ministry, through the efforts of his estranged wife, who has recently been sleeping with the youth minister. Repeatedly Sonny seeks to pressure his wife into returning to him. He uses the methods all too common in evangelical sub-culture - strong manipulation mixed with Bible verses and piety. When his wife refuses to respond Sonny takes matters into his own hands, finally striking the youth minister with a baseball bat in a fit of rage. As a result of his problems Sonny flees Texas, eventually to start over in Louisiana.
Upon arriving in a small town Sonny privately baptizes himself the 'Apostle E. F..', in a display of quintessential American religious experience! He argues with God, begins to reach out to downtrodden souls, takes to the radio waves, refurbishes an old church building, and starts an entirely new ministry of evangelism and compassion. Within weeks the Apostle is able to reproduce the results that Sonny knew in Texas before his problems began.
Though the movie is a bit tedious at one or two points the depth of the main character carries the story well. Several scenes are indicative of E. F.'s personal attractiveness, especially when he stands down a racial bigot (Billy Bob Thornton) who threatens to bulldoze his church building. E. F. challenges him to repent and to embrace the love of God. This portrayal is genuinely moving yet even here nothing approaches the closing scenes in which Duvall gives one of the best portrayals of an 'altar call' ever scripted and presented on film.
Marvin Olasky, writing in World magazine, disappointingly portrays Duvall's performance as one in which 'the character lacks depth, and the film, sadly, ends up as a cartoon.'3 How little Olasky actually understands evangelicalism, especially of this variety. In Olasky's attempt to rebuke President Clinton, a favorite target for magazines like World, Olasky misses the whole point of this movie. Sonny actually depicts many hugely successful evangelical ministers in our time. Olasky, in his monochromatic approach to evangelicalism, actually fails to appreciate just how accurate and carefully nuanced is Duvall's depiction.
Far more nuanced and appreciative of this excellent movie is the insightful comment of Otto Scott, a decidedly Christian critic who writes a monthly commentary on contemporary culture from a historical perspective. He notes that:
Robert Duvall was attracted by their [Pentecostal ministers] dramatic qualities some years ago, and spent over a decade trying to talk some Hollywood producers into making a film about them - to no avail. Hollywood has its own views about Christians -and they are far from warm. Eventually Duvall made his own movie at his own expense, which he personally directed, and in which he stars in several ways. He began each day's shooting, we are told, by reading the Bible aloud to the players. The results will probably be shown for decades to come, for it radiates the true faith of a sinful man.4
The scenes in which Sonny wrestles with God in prayer ("I don't understand Lord, you always call me Sonny, and I always call you Jesus"); in which Sonny preaches with such pathos (emphasizing faith and commitment to Christ); and in which we are given marvelous insights into a very positive, and all too rare, social conscience in which Sonny touches the lives of common people with earnestness and love; these are all very real! (I sometimes felt as if I had 'been there and done that', especially with regards to Sonny's 'open' views on racial matters.) The sincere efforts of Sonny to share Christ with people in a car wreck, presented early in the movie, and the closing scenes of the Apostle E. F. giving the memorable altar call, while the police wait to whisk him away, are all too close to reality to be passed over as 'a cartoon.' While Olasky reacts to various elements of the movie as 'hackneyed' I find them profoundly believable and quite convincing.
Sonny is, in reality, a tormented soul - a real sinner troubled by his own moral failures yet profoundly devoted to preaching Christ (as he feebly and poorly understands Him). His life is anything but phony! He is not the charlatan figure Elmer Gantry at all. He is the real product, plain and simple, of an evangelical religion all too common in twentieth century revivalism. Sonny is most definitely not a hypocrite! Sonny is an extremely confused man who never clearly understands the biblical Gospel and yet at the same time strangely embraces what he does understand with utter sincerity.
I did not find myself dismissing Sonny as Duvall's warped image of an evangelicalism acceptable to President Clinton. Indeed, the character in this movie is much like the evangelical religion our President seems to favor. President Clinton really does know the Bible quite well, loves the revival hymns of his Southern roots, and sings in the choir of a conservative church! He really does meet with evangelical leaders and pray for God's guidance. It is time more of us realize that President Clinton is 'one of us', at least in terms of his being a good evangelical in the mainstream. No, Mr. Olasky, The Apostle is the right movie. I do understand exactly why President Clinton loved it. And you miss the point when you attack President Clinton in your criticism of this movie.
The simple fact is this - The Apostle depicts all too clearly the kind of Christian message that many of Olasky's World readers find appealing, should they ever bother to actually see the movie. (When I saw the movie the first time -yes, I have already seen it twice - many people were in tears at the end and some even applauded as Sonny continued to sing the praises of Jesus on a prison chain gang!) What Olasky fails to realize, in his constant assault on President Clinton, is that The Apostle is a wonderfully scripted, sensitively written, and extremely accurate depiction of an increasingly popular evangelicalism that speaks of God's grace with great feelings, while attributing salvation and Christian growth to man's free will and hard work. Sonny is the consummate Pelagian! His religion is a 'do it yourself, pull yourself up by the bootstraps Christianity' which looks to God for help to finish the job. Sonny (as our President) failed morally, but so have large numbers of our most popular evangelical ministers. If evangelicals persist in seeing their grave ills as residing particularly in the White House they will never come to true repentance! Sonny may have been a bit too sure of himself, but so are large numbers of present leaders in the church.
I am far more concerned that Sonny reveals to us that we have 'met the enemy and the enemy is us.' Evangelicalism needs to take a long penetrating look at itself and then return to the Word of God with deep and honest repentance. The Apostle might actually facilitate such a look if it is viewed with a discerning mind and a warm heart.
No, I did not find this 'a cartoon.' I found it a haunting film (though entertaining in another sense, as most films are designed to be) that made me say, with profound feeling and gratitude, "There but by the grace of God go I."
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Newsweek; U.S. Edition - April 13, 1998
SOCIETY
THE `APOSTLE' SPEAKS
PLAYING A SOUTHERN PREACHER HELPED ME UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF HOLY GHOST POWER.
BY ROBERT DUVALL
ALMOST 30 YEARS AGO, I stopped off in a little town called Hughes, Ark., for the night. It was a whim, really--I was about to play a character in a play who was from there, and his line that ``it's a 30-mile ride from Memphis back to Hughes'' had just stuck in my mind, so I jumped on a bus. When I got there, I figured out pretty quick that the local church was the only show in town. I went in and sat in the back and listened to these two country preachers. Over the years, I've forgotten the substance of their sermons. But I never forgot the wonderful cadence and rhythm of that preaching. It grabbed me pretty quick that as an actor, this was something I would like to do.
Filmmakers hardly ever depict spirituality with such a strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit, and when they do, it tends to be patronizing--full of charlatans and snake handlers. (I've heard folks in Hollywood refer to the whole of Middle America as ``flyover people,'' the terrain they squint at from the airplane window.) But what I really wanted to do was try to understand what these preachers go through and what they believe, and to portray it in an accurate way. So when I first approached various studios about this movie 15 years ago, they wouldn't go near it. First of all, any actor has trouble getting an independent project off the ground. But what made it tougher was that there wasn't the obvious ``hook'' of indicting the religious right. The title character of ``The Apostle,'' Sonny Dewey, wasn't a caricature or an Elmer Gantry type. In the end I financed the film myself; it's probably the only movie ever greenlighted by a CPA.
It turned out that I probably made a better film because no one would touch it back then. I never would have had the wonderful scenes in the movie of a whole group of ministers doing tag-team preaching, or the shot of the auditorium full of African-American men chanting ``Jesus Power,'' because these things came from years of research. When I decided I was going to write, direct and act in ``The Apostle,'' I knew I would really have to know my stuff. I went all over the United States listening to different kinds of preachers, even going to six Harlem churches in one day. I'd sit and take notes, or just watch, and the wonderful imagery that ended up in the movie almost all came from ordinary preachers. Lines like ``Mama, we made news in heaven this morning'' and ``I'm on the Devil's hit list'' came out of their mouths before they came out of mine.
I was raised in the Protestant faith, to believe in Jesus Christ and his teachings, but our church was nothing like Sonny Dewey's. So I have to admit, some of the carrying-on I saw struck me as so much surplus electricity at times. I did my best not to pass judgment, and tried to just understand how they were thinking of the Holy Spirit as something that just comes up and grabs you. But one Sunday, at one of the churches up in Harlem, I did have a moment where I felt something. We were singing along with the wonderful choir, singing ``What a Friend We Have in Jesus,'' and I felt a certain quiet, emotional uplift. It was a stillness, more than any kind of noisy exaltation. I suppose that at that moment I could have stood up, like people do, but I didn't. What I did do was when I wrote Sonny's last sermon, I included a part about a ``still, small voice'' that can touch you. Because that was my experience.
Since ``The Apostle'' has come out, the reaction has been just overwhelming. Marlon Brando wrote me a really insightful letter, and I heard the Rev. Billy Graham saw it twice and responded positively. (I figure that between Graham and Brando, that's pretty much both sides of the fence.) But I think the reaction that meant the most to me came from a woman who ran up to me in the airport in New York and said, ``I saw your movie, and the Apostle was just like my uncle back in West Virginia. He preaches every week in his own garage.'' If the character I created was as real to her as her uncle, that's good enough for me.
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Thursday, April 9, 1998
Keep the faith
Robert Duvall never lost sight of his pet project, The Apostle
By NEAL WATSON -- Edmonton Sun
Brothers and sisters, on this fine day let's say a hallelujah for Brother Robert Duvall. Hallelujah, I say, for Brother Duvall who took on Hollywood's stogie-smoking studio satans and whupped them but good. Who needs $200 million and an ego the size of hell's square footage when the Almighty is on your side - sort of a celestial executive producer. It was Brother Duvall's calling to show us the way from development hell to those luxury screening rooms just beyond the pearly gates, my brothers and sisters.
Brother Duvall taught us that hard work was enough to vanquish the devils who told us that salvation was only $8 and a trip to Dante's Peak away.
I turn my back on these mercenary mephistopheles who send their henchmen, like Kevin Costner in The Postman, to tempt us. Say a prayer for Brother Duvall, the Apostle.
He didn't end up as Hollywood's king of the world, but the story of Robert Duvall and his quest to make The Apostle proves nice guys, with enough of their own cash, can still call the shots in Tinseltown.
Titanic director James Cameron stands to make $100 million US from his box-office behemoth, not to mention all those Oscars.
But Duvall's long struggle to bring The Apostle, which he wrote and directed and starred in, to the big screen is a much sweeter success story, and one that has already passed into Hollywood lore.
The actor, responsible for such indelible film portrayals as The Great Santini's Bull Meechum and Apocalypse Now's napalm-loving Lt.-Col. Kilgore, refused to yield his script about a tormented Pentecostal preacher to the rewrite studio gods. Said gods refused to finance the picture.
Duvall, as passionate about doing the story of Euliss (Sonny) Dewey his way as your average fire-and-brimstone preacher is about a Sunday morning, put up $5 million of his own money to make the movie, which opens in town tomorrow. The result: virtually universal critical acclaim, a fifth Oscar nomination for Duvall, solid box office and, happily, a cheque to cover the actor's own investment.
"I feel great about everything," said a friendly, relaxed-sounding Duvall over the phone from his Virginia farm earlier this week. "It's kind of a highlight. I accomplished something kind of unique."
The Apostle is an anomaly among the sub-genre of films about men of faith. This is not the story of a Jimmy Swaggert-like con-man, and it is not a film that refuses to accept that genuine faith is possible. Duvall said he didn't want to make another film about corruption and hypocrisy, in the tradition of Elmer Gantry.
"There's got to be a guy like Sonny somewhere - a very sincere guy that errs. And a good portion of the religious and secular communities have accepted the film."
Born in San Diego and raised in Virginia and Montana, Duvall says he had no personal experience with the kind of preaching we associate with the southern U.S. But filming in Arkansas 30 years ago, Duvall sat in the pews, enthralled, watching what he calls "the only truly American art form, other than some of our music."
While he nails the performance rhythms of the Pentecostal preacher with mesmerizing effect in The Apostle, Duvall likes to avoid the histrionics when it comes to his own beliefs.
"In a quiet way, I never stopped having faith," he says. "I do believe in what I believe. I believe in one god.
"I think sometimes you've got to entertain those beliefs in a quiet way. Sometimes when you beat on your chest, like some of these guys do, you leave yourself open."
Duvall's quiet lifestyle on his Virginia farm won't last much longer. He will be taking The Apostle to the Cannes Film Festival and there will be many more interviews - he points out there are more than 200 million Pentecostals worldwide.
He has two movies in the can, the asteroid disaster flick Deep Impact and the drama Civil Action, opposite John Travolta and written and directed by Oscar-winner Steve Zaillian (Schindler's List).
"As a hired hand, I still get good scripts,'' he says. "But as far as the kind of scripts along this (Apostle) line, it's something I might help to design."
He talks about a film centred around tango - one of Duvall's passions - and a project about soccer.
And, who knows, if the going gets tough in Hollywood, maybe Duvall will go his own way again.
Maybe he will write another cheque.
It depends on whether he's called once more.
Sunday, April 5, 1998
Toughing it out
Robert Duvall fought to make The Apostle
By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun
HOLLYWOOD -- For The Apostle, Robert Duvall put his blood, sweat, tears and cold hard cash on the line.
The Apostle is the story of Euliss Dewey, a Pentecostal minister from Texas whose prowess in the pulpit is matched only by his turbulent private life.
In a moment of rage, Dewey attacks his wife's lover and must flee from the police.
Dewey tries to destroy his past, repent his sins and rebuild his life.
In order to get The Apostle made, Duvall invested $5 million US of his own money.
He'd shopped the project around to most of the major and independent Hollywood studios for years, but nobody was interested.
"They basically said that movies about these fundamentalist preachers simply didn't work. There wasn't an audience for them," recalls Duvall.
This wasn't what Duvall wanted to hear. He'd been working on the idea and the character for more than two decades.
"I was obsessed with the character. I knew I could make it work."
At first, Duvall tried to find a writer who would convert his ideas into a screenplay.
He couldn't find any takers, so 14 years ago, he sat down and wrote the screenplay himself.
"I was never a good writer, but because I had lived with this character for so long, the movie basically wrote itself. I actually wrote it in long hand in about six weeks."
Duvall showed his finished script to award-winning American writer Horton Foote. "He gave me a few minor suggestions, but said it worked. It's basically remained the same all these years."
Three years ago, Duvall's accountant told him he had the financial resources to fund the movie himself, so he went in search of a director.
He talked to Francis Ford Coppola, Ulu Grosbard and Richard Pearce, who had directed him in the past.
"They each told me I was too passionate about the material to let it go and that I should direct it myself. They assured me it was common sense, not hubris."
So Duvall became all things to The Apostle.
"I gave myself the right to yell at myself. For the most part, I didn't have to, though there were a couple of days when I was in a bad mood and that was pretty harrowing for me and everybody else on set."
With the exception of Farrah Fawcett, June Carter Cash and Miranda Richardson, who play the women in Dewey's life -- and Billy Bob Thornton, who has a cameo late in the movie -- most of the cast are non-professionals.
"They didn't start out as actors, but we sure turned them into actors before we were done," says Duvall.
One of the most astonishing performances of the non-professionals comes from Walter Goggins, who plays the young mechanic who becomes Dewey's most dedicated follower.
"Walter had been saved as a teenager, so he understood the emotions," says Duvall.
"When I save him in the movie, it was as if he was reliving that original experience.
"Everyone on the set was riveted to him, including me. Thank heavens the cameras caught the moment. I don't think we'd have got such honest intensity a second time."
Duvall, 67, is the son of a Methodist father and a Christian Scientist mother.
"Because my parents were so religious, I attended church regularly. I've always been a believer."
It was Duvall's parents who encouraged him to pursue acting.
"We were a military family. We'd all band together and put on little entertainments for our guests.
"My mother had been an amateur actress and there was lots of musicians on my father's side of the family. I inherited my mother's histrionics and my brother was a good singer."
During the Korean War, Duvall served in the American Army. After his tour of duty, he enrolled in New York's Neighborhood Playhouse acting school.
Duvall shared a small apartment with fellow aspiring actors Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman.
He made his screen debut playing Boo Radley, the mysterious stranger who befriends and protects three children in To Kill A Mockingbird.
It was playwright Horton Foote, who had observed Duvall in acting classes, who recommended him for the role. Foote had written the screenplay for To Kill A Mockingbird. More recently, Duvall has completed a role opposite John Travolta in the drama A Civil Action and will play a Scottish soccer coach in a small film being shot in Scotland this summer.
Then there is his new obsession: A film about the tango. "I don't feel a day is complete if I don't dance. Fortunately, my girlfriend is from Argentina and is as much in love with the tango as I am.
"I have a film mulling about in my head now. I'm just about ready to commit it to paper."
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Thursday, April 2, 1998
Duvall praises Toronto
The Apostle director takes part in baseball kickoff
By PAUL SAMBLA -- Toronto Sun
From preacher to pitcher, a grateful Robert Duvall returned to Toronto yesterday to throw out the first pitch at the Blue Jays home opener.
It was here last September that Duvall launched his film The Apostle at the Toronto Film Festival.
His role as a born-again evangelist in that movie earned him a best actor nomination at last month's Academy Awards ceremony.
Beforehand, he dropped by Planet Hollywood to thank the city, and donate to the restaurant memorabilia from the film.
"Six months ago, the Toronto Film Festival was a very welcoming time for us and our film. We really appreciate it," he told the 100 fans who waited to get his autograph.
Though he was only asked a week ago to throw the first pitch, the 67-year-old was confident he could do a better job than others.
"I can throw it further than George Bush," Duvall boasted. "I think he threw it about three feet and it dribbled.
"I'll get it there all the way. I don't know in what style, but I'll get it there."
Duvall's co-star in The Apostle, Billy Bob Thornton, who's in town shooting a movie, had planned to join his pal at Planet Hollywood, but was called away to film at the last minute.
Duvall was in a good mood, praising Toronto's food, and wishing he could stay longer to go riding with his equestrian buddy Ian Miller, who rode Big Ben to two world championships.
Duvall even joked about Joan Rivers, on her pre-Oscar broadcast, asking the five-time nominee and Oscar winner for Tender Mercies if he'd been nominated before.
"She's out in space somewhere," he said.
The Journal of Religion and Film
"The Apostle": An Interview with Robert Duvall
Bill Blizek and Ronald Burke
The JOURNAL editors recently had the opportunity to interview Robert Duvall about his new movie, "The Apostle". The interview was especially interesting because it is so much Duvall's own film. He wrote the script, starred as the lead character, and directed the film. When no Hollywood studio would produce it, he also turned to his own production company (Butchers Run Films), put up his own money (five million dollars), and produced the film himself.
Many people have interviewed Duvall in recent months about the film and about his entire movie and stage career. We focused our interview more narrowly on the picture of religion in the film and on the morality of the lead character Duvall plays, the preacher, Eulis "Sonny" Dewey.
Some Fake; Some Great
What does Duvall think of southern Christianity and revivalist preachers in general? He has a fascination for them which began more than thirty years ago when he visited a Holiness church in the small town of Hughes, Arkansas. He says that he was intrigued by the cadence, rhythms and honest faith he witnessed in the songs and tent-meetings there. For Duvall, these revivalist tent-meetings are "an important part of American culture." The preaching is "a distinct American art-form."
"The best preacher I ever met," says Duvall, "was a 96 year-old black man from a little church in Hamilton, Virginia. He seemed to me more spiritual than the Dalai Lama or Mahatma Gandhi. This guy was great. He had a great cadence of preaching, a great honesty." Duvall invited a Jewish film-director friend and his Catholic wife to hear him preach. "It was terrific," Duvall recounts. "The director told me a year and a half later that he could never get the preacher entirely out of his mind. He was that impressive."
"A lot of these preachers are phony, but a lot of them are not."
It was from the same black preacher that Duvall borrowed an introduction and a song. The preacher ended every sermon with the same words: one day he expected, he said, to get into a little airplane. He would fly off not to London or Chicago or New York or any earthly city. He expected on that day, his last day, to fly past the sun and the stars and directly into heaven. Then the preacher would pause and the whole congregation would begin to sing, "I'll Fly Away."
That kind of borrowing, from the actual preachers and congregations of Holiness churches, is typical of the film.
Sonny is an ordinary guy
What about the lead character, Sonny himself? Sometimes he seems pretty good, sometimes he is pretty bad. What was Duvall saying about Sonny?
He pointed out there have been other movies about Pentecostal religions, but they never gave the people and their religion their due. Movies such as "Leap of Faith" (Steve Martin and Debra Winger) and "Elmer Gantry" (Burt Lancaster) were fakes. "They patronize," Duvall says. "They put quotation marks around the preacher. They don't give the minister or his congregation their due."
"Some religious people might ask why I would make such a movie and emphasize that this evangelical preacher has weaknesses. And my answer is that we either accept weaknesses in good people or we have to tear pages out of the bible. I would have to rip the Psalms out of the bible and never read them again. Because no one less than the greatest king of Israel, King David, the author of the Psalms, sent a man out to die in battle so that he could sleep with his wife. And that was a far more evil thing than anything Sonny would ever, ever do.
"So here's King David, the great poet of the Psalms that we laud and he did something that was far worse than anything this present preacher would do. But because this is today, and not removed romantically to the past, we judge Sonny quickly and harshly. But, you know, he's just an ordinary guy. He did not commit premeditated murder. He didn't go to that church social and the baseball game with the intention of killing the young preacher. It just happened. Smack!
"I still wanted to show that crime doesn't pay. He didn't have a great lawyer, and he didn't get off without punishment. No more than Karla Faye Tucker should have gotten off without punishment in Texas, despite what Pat Robertson might have thought. Crime does not pay. If you are saved and accept the Lord, you cannot use that as an excuse to avoid punishment.
"Sonny doesn't escape punishment. But he's a man of action. After killing the man, guys like us would probably wait around to be caught, but Sonny takes action. He knows he's done something wrong. It happened involuntarily, and so he leaves. He kneels at the crossroads and prays, "Lord, lead me." He abandons his car and goes off to do something to make himself better.
"No, he was never a bad guy. He was a good guy. But he did something bad. So he is full of good and bad. Sonny's a good guy; he believed he had a calling from the time he was twelve; and he errs like most characters do, you know?
"He's a kind of percentage mixture at the beginning and at the end. There's a certain percentage chance he will do good and a percentage chance he will again err. But he knows he has erred and that he needs confession and redemption.
"He's working in the restaurant in Bayou Butte, Louisiana and he sees his new woman-friend, Toosie (Miranda Richardson), whom he has dated a couple of times. She's together again with her family at the restaurant. That really hits him. He suffers a broken heart. Humanly, he knows he has defeated himself. He has himself sent her back to her husband, back to her family. But that "success" hurts him. He has the pain of a man losing something, his relation to Toosie. It was something he had thought might become beautiful. But he knows it's right that she's back with her husband and her children.
The Power of the Holy Ghost
We asked what Duvall thought about the value of the Pentecostal revivalist religions. In the movie's beginning, Sonny stops at an accident scene, finds a wrecked car, and a guy and girl lying motionless inside it. He reaches through a window, puts the girl's hand on the boy's, prays for them, and then her hand moves. Was there a message in that?
Duvall: "Definitely. When we did it, I said to the cameraman, frame down to her." And so we showed her, and I put her hand on her boyfriend's hand so we are all connected. And I wanted that look: her hand to move, to show that the power of prayer works. The healing of someone. The movement of something. God moving in mysterious ways. Exactly. This power is based on the biblical authority, there two or more are gathered in my name, I am there. Every time I saw that I got goose pimples on my arms. That scene really tells a lot: that Sonny is doing good work and that the power of the Holy Ghost was there.
"Sonny knows he is serving the Lord. He walks back over to his own car, where his mother is waiting. " Mama," he says, "we made news in heaven this morning, we made news in heaven!" Yeah, that scene was meant to be there. It was the power of the Holy Ghost.
"There was a guy there, a tough old Holiness church guy, watching us film. And he said later that when he heard Sonny say those words he also got chill bumps. That told me those were the right words. It meant something to those people themselves, in their churches. It was definitely meant to be there. The power of the Spirit.
"The scene sets the stage for the rest of the movie. Sonny tries to help people and God can heal. God does guide the lives of individuals and does fill them with the Holy Ghost."
People's Own Religion
In "giving people their due," Duvall used many non-actors who were part of the small-town Holiness churches. What was the objective there?
Duvall: "I tried to mix the non-actors with the actors. I tried to turn the whole film-making thing around as much as possible. I didn't want to come in and tell them what to do. I wanted them to show me what they do. That is why we used non-actors with that kind of background.
"The assistant director, who helps coordinates the scenes, holds the non-actors within certain limits, but within those limits their performances are a very spontaneous thing. Like those little twin boys, playing in the church aisle. How are you going to direct them? You don't direct them. They were born into these churches. So when they want to jump up and down, they are going to jump up and down. That't why we used so many non-actors. We tried to let the story come out from their own community.
We asked Duvall about two of the most prominent characters in the church scenes, Sister Johnson and Sister Jewell. We learned that neither was a professional actor and that both exemplified the religion to which they belonged.
Duvall: "One we got from one of the Holiness churches in Lafayette and one came from Shreveport. There was a state-wide convention of churches. Ed Johnson, the casting director, and I went there and watched. And the whole Louisiana mass choir -- we got them for the movie. We chose a guy who had just been confirmed as a minister and another from way out in the country in Louisiana. We tracked him down after he had been at the state convention.
"And Sister Jewell, who gave testimony, that was all her own testimony. She came up with it herself. That is what the people in the Holiness churches do. So we just planned it as much as we needed. We put the camera on long lens and just let things happen. We wouldn't say "Now it's your close-up time. Are you ready?" Instead of doing it that way, like in most movies, these people never necessarily knew when the camera was coming on them."
Off the bulldozer and accept the Lord
We asked where Duvall had gotten material for the script. Again it came from the people themselves. He said he had been collecting stories and phrases for more than thirteen years, in pretty disorganized fashion. But he collected a lot of stories and phrases he used in the film.
Duvall: "Yeah, I know a preacher, Paul Baggett, who was with us in the team-preaching scene (in New Boston, Texas, outside Fort Worth). He told me that years ago a guy came on a bulldozer, planning to destroy his meeting tent. So Paul took out the bible and put it in front of the bulldozer. He said, "Go ahead and go over my bible." And the guy wouldn't do it. He had a pistol and everything, but he wouldn’t do it. Later he was saved, but the reason he was coming there with the bulldozer was because his girlfriend had already come to the tent and been saved. And so now she wouldn't shack up with him anymore! That't why he was so mad.
"So I pieced Paul's story together with another one that reinforced it. This story was about a guy who was going to put a firebomb in a church in the Bronx. The preacher dared him to come in and the guy got down and accepted the Lord. So maybe we are all on a kind of search . . ."
Sonny's strength
We asked about Sonny's strength. He seemed to weather so many storms and disappointments and yet come out with happiness and re-dedication.
Duvall: "Yeah, he does. He sees things positively. You are the first ones to say that, but I remember way back, when I first thought of the character, I knew I wanted him to be really sanguine. I envisioned a guy who would just keep going, seeing the will of the Lord, and not be like those that might just sit on their hands.
"Sonny always has one foot in really trusting what he believes in, even though he errs. If someone took your church, like Jessie took his, and if someone took your wife, like the youth minister took Jessie, it would be a hard thing to deal with. He didn't intend to kill anybody, but it happened on the spur of the moment. "Oh, my God!" he knows he's done something wrong.
'I gotta leave,' he thinks; "What do I do? Lord, lead me,"he says. He still depends on the Lord, you know, even though he has sinned. So he begins an odyssey, the whole film is an odyssey journey.
Both loud and soft
We saw there was a lot of shouting in the film, loud singing and Sonny shouting personally at God. And yet there also were some important moments of quiet. Did that have special meaning?
Duvall: "You're sure right. It did. Sonny shouted as loud as Job ever did. There was nothing wrong with shouting at God. I like that scene where I go through the commandments. And then I say, "The 11th commandment, "thou shalt not shout," (pause) does not exist!" Yeah, I made that up. Right there. That's the way he felt and the way these people felt.
"But I wanted to make something else obvious. Sometimes these people yell and carry on, and sometimes they get quiet and are sincere. There's that time I was sitting alone in the borrowed pup-tent. We re-edited that scene to make it clear. I am sitting there, meditating, listening for "the still, small voice" [I Kings 19] of Jesus. As it says in the bible, there is a time to go in thy closet and the Father will reward thee openly." There are two sides to these guys.
"And then, just before I go into the church to preach with Brother Blackwell (John Beasley from Omaha), I step back. I just want a moment to myself. I got that from watching these preachers. They often want to be alone for a second. They turn around and bow their heads. And then they go to do something."
Different religions, same goal
"Another thing I want to emphasize is the cultural contrast I saw between religions. By the time we were finished cutting, that was not obvious. Like Catholics have a lot of mediators, going through saints and Mary or whatever. But I love the directness of these people. They relate directly with God, not going through anything.
"Protestants in general, but especially these people, say things to God directly, like I do in the film: I always call you "Jesus"; you always call me "Sonny".; I'm on the devil's hit-list; I'm gonna get on Jesus' mailing-list! ; Holy Ghost explosion,short-circuit the devil! ; I'm a genuine Holy Ghost Jesus-filled preaching machine here this morning! I use those phrases in the film. I heard them from the preachers and from the people. These were their terms. God is immediate to their lives.
"Sonny sees a Catholic priest blessing fishing boats as they leave the harbor. He says, " you do it your way, and we do it mine. But we get it done, don't we.?" That's the tension between religions. There are different forms and prejudices, but I wanted Sonny to show an acceptance of another religion because both were trying to achieve the same end
"Faith helps Sonny feel positive about the future. That was something I wanted to show in the movie. We all have a cradle-to-the-grave journey to make and, in between, what do you do? There's got to be something hereafter. And I think, underneath, what Sonny wants to do is constantly to make amends so that he is ready for that day when he is called home. So that's kind of like the underlying thing and we all think of it."
The Final Product
Last of all, we wanted to know if Duvall was happy with the final product. How did the final editing go?
Duvall: "Just before release, we got another opinion, and thirty minutes were cut, but the cuts stung me. We lost the ethnic points, the religious differences. Previously, things had added up and it's so easy to mess them up. So it was a tough time for me. I had painted myself into a corner: the shorter the film the more showings you can get and the more money it would make. But some things I didn't want to lose.
"So, I sat down and addressed sixty things I didn't like about the cuts, explaining them, and so on. Then the final version went to about two hours and fourteen minutes and it was, to my eye, like a trimming process rather than a degutting, which is what I felt before had happened. That would've been death. I would've gone crazy.
"But this way I like it. It's more trimming than slashing. Cutting here, this, that, taking a little out of the flat patter scene. Oh, it's okay. It's better.
"But the thing about it, which is really nice, is that people understood the film. Like in New York, in hip New York, they got it. And then I was worried about the religious side, but the 700 Club wants me to talk on it. So like, you know, it's being accepted. It is a strange crossover. Very often some of the religious miracle plays you see on television can be very corny, I find. And so simplistic. But here's one that's different.
"Somebody said, "Well, maybe you're finally showing the south the way it is instead of making L'il Abner out of it." And you know, that was my intention. I wouldn't even want to go near the subject if I didn't give people -- these people -- their due. Whether you totally agree or not, you don't have to. There't a lot of it I do like, a lot of it, but I want to give them their due and once again turn film-making around so that the story comes out from them. It is very important to me.
"I even heard that David Denby, in the New York Review, said it was the best film ever made in America on a religious subject. He's a guy who usually rips everything and he really ripped Tender Mercies. But he knows you can't write those people off. You get below the Mason-Dixon line and you have some of the best music, culture, the two races, the literature, and it's so rich, so deeply rich in many things. So why not try to get it right if you're going to make a film of southern religion? That's what I wanted to do."
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CBN, 1998
An interview with Robert Duvall, author, director and star of The Apostle
PAT: Well, our next artist, I should say guest artist, is an Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe award winner who is best known for his dramatic roles in films like The Godfather, Apocolypse Now, and, of course, the series, Lonesome Dove. Now, he's got a smash. It's number 9, I think, in America. He produced it, he wrote it, he directed it, he starred in it and it's got him another Academy Award nomination. Here's a brief clip from this movie in the theaters right now, called The Apostle.
PAT: Extraordinary movie. Will you please welcome to The 700 Club, Mr. Robert Duvall. Good to have you with us. You have some fans here. The Duvall fan club came with you. Before we talk about the movie, we are here in Virginia and I want to clarify one thing. I saw one report that you had a farm in Virginia with 200 acres and one report was 350 acres. I want to clarify. Is it 350 or 200?
ROBERT: 360.
PAT: Neither one of them was right.
ROBERT: I got a beautiful place on a foreclosure. It's up near the plains, Virginia. In Middleburg. It belonged to Jack Kent Cook's son. Jim Wiley helped me get it. It's a beautiful place and I love it. My dad had been from Virginia.
PAT: I thought you had some roots back here.
ROBERT: Norfolk, Virginia. Naval Academy grad.
PAT: He was an admiral.
ROBERT: Yes he was. They were Southerners, but they were pro-union. There is a lot of that. They named my grandfather, Abraham Lincoln Duvall.
PAT: He was very popular.
ROBERT: My dad was a native Virginian. Always.
PAT: Let me ask you about this movie. It is really a powerful piece. Who did you have as a model? It's like you modeled after somebody or was it a composite?
ROBERT: It was a composite. I spent many years all over the United States. I remember going to six churches in one morning in Harlem. One after the other. For months, I'd be in Texas doing research and I just went from place to place. They were very fascinating men, you know. At the essence in the rank and file, they are wonderful people. You hear the bad side from movies and the press. When you get out in the rank and file, they're wonderful people.
PAT: This movie wasn't a put-down, but you certainly didn't gloss anything over. I mean, it was totally inter-racial. Your guy got his training in black churches.
ROBERT: Well, you know, I used to hang around with, you remember, old J. Charles Jessup. I wanted to show a person right from the beginning that it was genuine and sincere in his calling even though he erred. It is so easy to find movies, kind of a perpetual thing in Hollywood, to reeducate the public that there's always an indictment on this segment of America.
PAT: Anybody that has a Bible is automatically the crook. It's a stock character whether it s a western or whatever. You believed in this so much you put up your own money. You put $5 million on the line for this show.
ROBERT: Yeah, I did. I couldn't get a nickel out of Hollywood. I couldn't get a nickel out of New York City, or Chicago, or Texas. Got a lot of hot air in Texas. I love that state.
PAT: I won't comment on that.
ROBERT: I love Texas, but it sort of had to be. I'm very grateful that October Films picked up my money back and change. They're doing a wonderful job.
PAT: You've got a nomination now for an Oscar with it. It was a great performance. There was some great theological interplay in that man's character. Did you think of all the theology you were putting into it, or were you just showing something that appeared to you?
ROBERT: Well, yeah through the years, I studied the Bible to make sure I was based on a spiritual reality. I addressed certain things in my own way. That first scene, I had in the middle in the first go around. When I rewrote it, I put it up front because I wanted to show that the guy had a calling and was a good guy. It wasn't one of these things that's got this big redemptive thing. I knew a woman who's mother was a preacher and she'd get these premonitions in truck stops and go right into action as she preached the stoppage of blood from Ezekiel. I got that, all these stories I didn't make them up. The bulldozer scene. Paul Baggett down in Tennessee, a man had tried to bulldoze his tent one time so he put his Bible right in front and said, "Go ahead brother, I don't want to be where you're sitting if you go over that Bible." Then old J. Charles Jessup, he said when these cowboys tried to break up his camp meetings in Fort Worth, he said, "I would just tap them and they would carry them out." He said some people would leave and some would stay. There's a lot of colorful people.
PAT: Black and white. Like tag-team preacher team.
ROBERT: Oh yes, Holiness churches there's always been a mix.
PAT: That's the amazing thing. We talked about segregation in the south, but there was tremendous integration in that phase in society. The thing that struck me, you look at this character and you wrote him and conceived of him, but he had a character like David. The guy wanted to fight, he was lusty in his life and yet he wasn't . . .
ROBERT: He wasn't as bad as David. David sent a man to die so he could lie in bed with his wife. My guy would never do that. Ever. Never.
PAT: Just hit him with a baseball bat.
ROBERT: That was out of passion. It wasn't predetermined. So therefore when we think of things romantically in the past it is easier to accept that than somebody who is a redneck guy in front of us.
PAT: The thing is the man, he really loves God, he really is straight, he loves people, he's a man of the people. He's very humble but at the same time, we'll use this term, carnal nature. That carnality had never been given over to God. Did you go into all that? It's very profound.
ROBERT: Well one of the great preachers of Texas told me that he has to fight that sensuality that goes back and forth between the women of the congregation and himself. He has to subdue that. James Robison. He's a great preacher.
PAT: James had a tremendous deliverance. He was literally set free from those things.
ROBERT: He's a wonderful preacher.
PAT: Oh he's a terrific guy. Did you use him as one of your examples?
ROBERT: No, it was some of his scriptures I used. That thing with the nails (would) you put your son (through that)? There was a scene that was cut down where my character prayed for his own death. I had seen James do that. So I picked things and tried to use life as a guide rather than fictionalizing and make it up like it had been done in films in the past.
PAT: I tell you, it's so funny. I can't get it out of my mind.
ROBERT: I tried to turn the whole process around and let it come from the people. That's why I took people out of the churches and made them actors. When they were right, that set the professional actor on notice, to be pure. Like the one-legged man. The bayou man. He doesn't even go to movies. He's a wonderful man. He's a preacher from Dallas, Reverend Cole.
PAT: He's a real man.
ROBERT: Absolutely. Never acted before. I told him just play this scene the way we practice our lines in the hotel.
PAT: He was so natural. The whole thing was so natural.
ROBERT: Course I rolled 20,000 feet of film at first to get him to be natural. Tricks are legitimate in the filmmaking. Once you get it, it's pure. So however you get it is fine.
PAT: When it was all over, the poor character gets the shaft. But I guess you pay for your sins, but it was very tragic. Or was it, the conclusion?
ROBERT: If you do a secular crime, you go to jail. While you're in jail, you can glorify God. In that final chain gang scene, Ray Lameer, the sheriff down in Vermillion parish, we do that. He said, "In work detail, if we need some carpenters, we'll go out and arrest them. If we need more plumbers, we'll go out and arrest them. We make up our work detail." So I use real sheriffs in the work gang in the end.
PAT: In your own life, this thing must have had a profound effect on you. You can't do a movie like that without it affecting you personally.
ROBERT: Whatever I have to bring to the table spiritually I can't judge. We're going to be judged one day. All I can say is that I believe in one God and Jesus Christ. I do believe that. Maybe not the way everybody does, but I have my own way. It's a private thing and I believe in that special uniqueness.
PAT: It came through on this one. Is there a message to it?
ROBERT: I don't do something for a message, but one of the messages might be that there is a valid thing out there in the United States. There is an authenticity to spirituality at the core of these people. It's not to be patronized and taken lightly.
PAT: It's a tremendous movie. I do commend people to see it. You may not think it's the prettiest in the world and this man isn't the one you want as you're pastor.
ROBERT: I've found worse. So he's okay.
PAT: All I can say is congratulations. It was brilliant work. You just keep going on. You don't want to stop. What's the next stop?
ROBERT: I just finished a nice movie with John Travolta. I'm developing a thing I've always wanted to play, an over-the-hill-soccer-player coach from Scotland. I've got a guy who came back with all this information.
PAT: You'll have an accent like Mel Gibson?
ROBERT: More. Thicker, thicker. It's an interesting profession. You try to show the humanity of the people first. And whatever is second.
PAT: You did such a great job on Tender Mercies. Did you write any of The Apostle?
ROBERT: It was all my writing. I did terrible in school in writing. I wrote it out in longhand. It took me five weeks. I couldn't find anybody to write it so I did it myself. The more I got into it, the more I said these people have to be represented other than has been done in the past.
PAT: It was brilliant. The tension in between it was so subtle.
ROBERT: One other thing. During the tent scene there were seven conversions.
PAT: Are you serious?
ROBERT: On the way back, one of the teamsters started having an experience and all the preachers just jumped on him and saved him right there. It was great. I'm serious. Paul Baggett will tell you that.
PAT: That's great. By the way, we had some students from Regent University working on the film with you. Some of our graduates.
ROBERT: Yes, from the sound department. Wonderful people.
PAT: I commend it to you ladies and gentlemen. It will be a very moving experience. It's one of these extraordinary movies that comes down the pike only every so often. And this was a good one.
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People Online Chat Transcript :
Actor Robert Duvall - March 19, 1998
When critics describe Robert Duvall's performance in "The Apostle" as one of the greatest in that actor's long, distinguished and amazingly varied career, you know that you are about to witness something quite extraordinary. Duvall, after all, was Tom Hagen, the consiglieri who oiled "The Godfather's" moral ambiguity; Duvall was Bull Meacham, the impossible father whose expectations no one could live up to in "The Great Santini"; Duvall was Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, riding the bombs with Wagnerian flair in "Apocalypse Now"; he was Boo Radley in "To Kill A Mockingbird", Gus McRae in "Lonesome Dove" and Mac Sledge in "Tender Mercies" - for which he won the 1983 Academy Award as Best Actor.
Duvall, in other words, has given many brilliant performances.
But as the philandering Pentecostal preacher Sonny Dewey who goes underground when he snaps in a moment of violence, Duvall may have given the performance that will define him in audiences' memories for years to come.
"The Apostle" was a labor of love for Duvall who spent thirteen years of his life and five million dollars of his own money nurturing the film - which he also wrote, produced and directed - from its first inception to its screen debut. The film costars Farrah Fawcett, Miranda Richardson, and Billy Bob Thornton. Duvall's other directorial efforts include "We're Not the Jet Set", a portrait of a Nebraska rodeo family and "Angelo, My Love" about New York's mysterious Gypsy community. In 1992, Duvall formed Butchers Run Films so he could become more actively involved in all elements of film development and production. The company's first co-production, "A Family Thing", which was written by Billy Bob Thornton and teamed Duvall with James Earl Jones, earned a Humanitas Award.
For his acting work in "The Apostle" Duvall has been honored for the third time with a nomination for Best Actor by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences. PEOPLE Online talked to Mr. Duvall on March 19, 1998. Here's what he had to say..
PEOPLE Online: Good evening all! I'm Patrizia DiLucchio, this is PEOPLE Online on Yahoo!Chat - and tonight's guest is actor Robert Duvall who wrote, directed, starred in and produced the film "The Apostle," for which he has been honored with a Best Actor nomination this year from the Motion Picture Academy. Mr. Duvall -- what inspired you to keep trying to make this film against all odds, even pouring your own savings into getting it made?
Robert Duvall: I just figured the more I was refused, the more it spurred me on. It was something I had to do. It was a must. I hadn't seen a film like this done before. I wanted to try to put this subject in fiction form.
Skeptic998 asks: In the opening scene of the movie, Sonny stops at an accident scene to pray over a critically injured couple, and it appears that they are emotionally if not physically better for it?
Robert Duvall: Right. He does that. The inference is that maybe they're resurrected at that moment. They're helped, healed, uplifted. That's why I put that scene up front. I knew a friend's mother who used to go to accidents and pray for the victims.
Studmuffin79 asks: What is your biggest fear as an actor?
Robert Duvall: Perhaps that I won't be truthful in any given situation. I've always tried to keep that sense of truth, of life behavior within movie time.
AkivaG asks: What was your inspiration for "The Apostle"?
Robert Duvall: I remember attending a small church in Arkansas and I saw a preacher preaching and I had never seen anything like that. I was fascinated. Since then it's been a continuing thing. I've researched the subject. It's ongoing, up to and during the time of filming.
Mr_chatmeister asks: Mr. Duvall, thanks so much for joining us this evening. Do you have any spiritual practices or philosophy that you use in your work or your life?
Robert Duvall: I just have my own way of believing and praying and contemplating. It's personal and private. I believe in one God and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Kind of a quiet personal approach to things.
CitizenC asks: Mr. Duvall, what is the most challenging role you have ever played as an actor?
Robert Duvall: Stalin.
Goatwax asks: Were you surprised by your Oscar nomination?
Robert Duvall: Not really. I feel that the movie is as good as anything I've done. It was a pleasant surprise, but not unexpected. The movie didn't write itself or direct itself. I'm sorry the movie wasn't recognized in a fuller way. I always see a movie in its totality and not in terms of my performance.
Goatwax asks: How big of a risk is it to write your own movie?
Robert Duvall: The risk is the financing. To act, direct and write. Each capacity is a risk. They're all intertwined. It's all part of a wonderful challenge. When Horton Foote, the Texas playwright, supports what I do that's good enough for me.
Aelgifa_Galadriel asks: How difficult was it to keep yourself interested during the production of such a long project such as "The Apostle"?
Robert Duvall: It wasn't difficult at all to keep up my interest. It had to be done, it was a natural execution.
CC1982 asks: Have you been swarmed with designers trying to sell you their suits for the Oscars?
PEOPLE Online: Or loan them...
Robert Duvall: No. Just a few. My girlfriend has had people approach her about her gown, but I went with Hugo Boss who sent me over a beautiful tuxedo. It will suffice.
Mr_chatmeister asks: In one of the interviews I read with you about "The Apostle," you mentioned that a teamster watching the filming of a revival scene had a personal revelation. Have you ever had a personal experience that transformed your life or perspective in any way?
Robert Duvall: Not quite like that. It's been a continuing thing. I think the experience of being reborn is a very personal experience. To standardize it is very difficult. Religion attempts to standardize it. But I find no place in the Bible where it's standardized. Being reborn on a daily basis throughout my life is the thing. No one has the definitive answer. Interpretation is very personal. I've had special revelations in my life, but they're very individual, not related to any denomination. I don't think anyone has the definitive answer. Man cannot judge what is eternal.
Dsj_syndicate asks: Mr. Duvall, how would you interpret your role in "Apocalypse Now" compared to the novella Heart of Darkness?
Robert Duvall: I didn't read the Heart of Darkness. "Apocalypse" was written by one guy and then Francis changed it. And then we messed with it, so I can't really give a specific answer to that.
Eenie2 asks: How was Farrah Fawcett chosen to play your wife, and was the character intended to be younger than you?
Robert Duvall: Yeah. I chose her because she's a wonderful actress. And why not be younger than me? I won't even go into specifics about how much younger my girlfriend is than me. These aren't unusual occurrences when folks have younger spouses.
Bradcayea asks: How does it feel being nominated for an academy award?
Robert Duvall: It feels very good. It's such a spectacle that it's hard to explain what it really might mean. Whatever it really means, it's a good feeling, a certain recognition. To be nominated is great...to win is even better. This is such a competitive business. The arts are just as intensely competitive as any other business.
BluAngel69 asks: Hey Mr. Duvall! How's yer tango coming along?
Robert Duvall: That's what I went over to Tucson for. My girlfriend is from Argentina. I've written a script about the tango I want to direct and act in. The older you get, tango becomes more of an emotional thing than a physical thing. It becomes more and more meaningful.
Acting4567 asks: What parts of yourself did you use to create this complicated man of faith?
Robert Duvall: Many sides of myself. Whatever it took to parallel the situation I tried to find in myself. It's always you beneath the character. You just have one heart, one psyche, one soul. Whatever it needed to be I had to grab.
Teach2er asks: We loved you in "Lonesome Dove." Any plans for another miniseries?
Robert Duvall: No plans now. I don't do a lot of TV. I did Eichmann for Turner, but I won't do another thing like "Lonesome Dove" for a hundred years. If the right miniseries came along, something on that level, I would be interested. For the most part, though, I'd rather do motion pictures.
Gritslady asks: What kind of relationship did you acquire with Tommy Lee Jones in "Lonesome Dove"? You seemed to have a very special rapport with each other.
Robert Duvall: We were friends, without socializing that much. We hooked in together vibe-wise. It was very pleasant and profitable to work with Tommy. Very enjoyable and productive. Nothing we had to work at. Everything fell into place.
DRAMATICIRONY asks: Did you enjoy working on the "Godfather" movies?
Robert Duvall: Yes I did, very much. Coppola's "The Godfather" and "Godfather II"... it doesn't get any better than that. Especially Godfather I, with James Caan, Marlon Brando.
Gibley5 asks: Robert, what your fondest memory of working with John Wayne in "True Grit"?
Robert Duvall: When I got in this yelling match with the director in the San Juan Mountains. Wayne got a kick out of it. That was my fondest memory.
Eikciv97 asks: Was your role as Boo Radley in "To Kill A Mockingbird" your first role ever? My students always ask me that when I show the film.
Robert Duvall: Boo Radley was my first motion picture character. I'd done a lot of TV and stage work before that. Horton Foote and his wife were instrumental in getting me that. We had a 35th anniversary at Paramount a while back.
PEOPLE Online: What was it like seeing Jem and Scout all grown up?
Robert Duvall: It was interesting. They don't look the same. Jem looks very different. I saw them at a special evening for Gregory Peck a few months ago. There is a certain resemblance still there.
Spidey_Yo asks: What role did you have to put the most research into in order to make the character believable not only to yourself but also to the audience?
Robert Duvall: I try to put as much research into all of them as I can. The most? I think "The Apostle." The research process was ongoing for many years. It was on the back burner for a while, but it was always there. That was probably the most intense. Maybe also the Cuban barber in "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway." I put a lot of work into that.
Goatwax asks: Does this movie portray any of your personal feelings or experiences?
Robert Duvall: Definitely. It's an extension of my feelings. Anything I try to do as an actor, writer or director draws a lot from myself. There's always a melding process between personality and the other facets of production.
MIrish13 asks: What was the best practical joke played on you on the set and what was the best one you played on someone else?
Robert Duvall: The mooning process on "Godfather I." We mooned each other from car to car, with Brando and with Donald Sutherland. Donald, as an aftermath, waterskied by me at a beach in Florida and mooned me.
Avidmoviegoer asks: Is the success of this film an answer to your prayers? Have you ever had an answer to your prayers?
Robert Duvall: I didn't pray that it'd win an Oscar. It's a fulfillment, a sort of answer to a prayer. I just got some awards from a Christian organization, Dr. Ted Baer who's a spokesman for the Christian community, bridging the gap between Hollywood and the religious community, presented it. Answers to prayers are an ongoing thing. I think the film will have a long life. Badger80 asks: How does a major celebrity maintain his or her private life without alienating the media and risking one's career?
Robert Duvall: You wouldn't risk your career by alienating anybody, unless maybe you shoot someone in Hollywood. When you go into your own private world, people honor that. When you go to work you go to work. There's a time for everything.
Preacher8765 asks: You have said that you have always been attracted to and fascinated by these charismatic preachers. What in particular fascinates and attracts you to them and this subject matter?
Robert Duvall: One of the true American art forms is the American preacher. It's always fascinating to me to see who's sincere and who's not. When you separate the chaff from the wheat, there's definitely some wheat. It hasn't been really treated well in the movies. These men have never been really given their due. I wanted to do it right, to give a legitimacy to it.
Fanducci asks: Mr. Duvall, now that you've created something as personal and passionate as the possible, what can you do for a follow-up?
Robert Duvall: I'm always looking for things. This is really the highlight of my career. There are certain projects I want to do. Now I want to produce, direct, write and act instead being just a hired hand. There are a few potential ones we're working on now.
PEOPLE Online: Can you tell us about them? Or would talking about it jinx it?
Robert Duvall: I finished "Civil Action" with John Travolta. There's one on soccer we're developing in Scotland. I play a Scottish coach. There're others....the one on the tango. Not too much I can speak about concretely, both as a hired hand and my own projects.
A_l_v asks: I'm wondering how you "release" yourself from a film after it's done. E.g. "Apostle" must have taken so much emotional energy out of you. Do you live with that character long after it is done or are you able to detach yourself from it/him soon after?
Robert Duvall: It's all play acting. The good part stays with you. There are many stages. When something goes well, you can leave it behind for the evening. I've been a professional actor for a long time. When they say "action" you can get right back into the mood. It's in and out. That's better, because you're more in touch with yourself. The more relaxed you are the better your acting.
Gittarman asks: Mr. Duvall, I personally feel that you deserve the Oscar for all the work you put in "The Apostle," but my question is how do you feel about the nomination?
Robert Duvall: I feel good about the nomination. If I win anything, I want it on the merit of my own acting.
_Bridget asks: What part have you wanted to portray, but have been unable so far?
Robert Duvall: The big one was "The Apostle." The tango project. There are many things I want to play still, but I don't know what they are until they present themselves to me.
Eurythmic_gal asks: I had a little problem with the scene in "The Apostle" when Sonny hit the guy in the playground. If Sonny was fervent about his religion don't you think he would not take a violent approach to that situation?
Robert Duvall: Well, once again, we're humans. King David in the Bible was a great sinner. He sent a man off to die so he could lie with Bersheeba. This was in the heat of battle. If that's objectionable in the movie, well, that's how things sometimes happen. It's not like Christians are perfect. My guy had to go to prison to pay for the secular crime, but he was saved in the end. You have to create a dramatic situation. Reality is better than fiction. These are all things that have happened to preachers I've known.
Hurricane68 asks: Of all the directors you've worked with, which would you say influences you most when you direct?
Robert Duvall: That's hard to say. I take a little from each: Coppola, Altman. Kenneth Loach. Nikita Makaokoff from Russia. There are many directors I have tremendous respect for. They've been my guides, my models for how I like to approach things as a director. I've worked with some and watched many. And there are some I don't want to be like.
Skeptic998 asks: Did you do anything emotionally and spiritually to prepare yourself for your role as not only the writer and actor but also as the director of the film?
Robert Duvall: I did many things. Constantly read the Bible. It was a quiet process through the years just getting myself ready. Visiting churches, visiting preachers, thinking about Christianity, constantly looking for ways to bring what I had to the table morally and emotionally. Constantly analyzing without making a big fuss about it.
Artistry asks: It seems to me that you don't go in much for external characterizations ... yet, as Dr. Watson in "Seven Percent Solution" (one of my faves), you did the accent, the physicalization, the whole schmeer ... why did you choose to do so? And what drew you to the role?
Robert Duvall: I thought it was an interesting project, to go to England and throw myself to the wolves. I do characterizations with accents, I did Eichmann, and the Cuban barber. I've definitely played these kinds of roles. But you most always make sure it's coming from you. I see people do it where it's not coming from them, and that's the pitfall.
JAKE_SKY asks: Is it true that a New York drama coach told you you would never succeed in the "business"?
Robert Duvall: I've never been told that. I've gotten bad reviews by provincial rags on the Eastern seaboard. I find more insightful reviews of "The Apostle" in the heartland than in NY and LA. I never really studied with that many people.
PEOPLE Online: Our final question for the evening:
SpiceyGurly asks: What is some good advice that you want to give to kids that want to follow in your footsteps?
Robert Duvall: If they want to be serious actors, on a professional level, I recommend going to NY, LA or possibly Chicago, or some other large metropolitan area where they have legitimate theater. Learn your craft. Do stage work. If you're going to put it on the line you have to go to a large city.
PEOPLE Online: Mr. Duvall, thanks so much for joining us online this evening. I know who I'm rooting for on Oscar night.
Robert Duvall: Thanks. Nice to be with everyone.
PEOPLE Online: Thanks to everyone in the audience who joined us. Great questions. This is Patrizia DiLucchio for PEOPLE Online on Yahoo!Chat -- goodnight all!
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Tuesday, March 17, 1998
Gospel according to Apostle's Duvall
Creator pleased with film after long genesis
By BRUCE KIRKLAND
Toronto Sun
HOLLYWOOD -- Not many moments get Robert Duvall off his 200-acre Virginia spread, but the Oscar festivities managed to move him westward.
The cowboy-casual Duvall is even donning city slicker designer duds Monday night to celebrate his best actor nomination for his role in The Apostle.
"I like to dress down," says the snickering 67-year-old actor at a Four Seasons Hotel suite. "At the Emmys one year I wore a rental."
For the '98 Oscars, "it's a Hugo Boss tux," Duvall reports almost apologetically.
He blames his Argentinian companion, Luciana Padraza, whom he says has "made me become more style conscious."
Getting educated about the Oscars was not required, however.
Duvall is a Hollywood survivor -- "I've been cynical about the industry, and enamored by it," he admits.
He is also an Oscar night veteran after showing up for nominations in The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Great Santini. In '83, he was 'aw-shucks' after winning his Oscar for Tender Mercies, where he played the tough-luck country singer.
As coincidence would have it, the Tender Mercies Oscar inspired Duvall to refine his Apostle script for the screen. "The Oscar was supposed to give me good leverage," he recalls.
As the studios would have none of it, Duvall and The Apostle had to wait 15 more years to become a film, and only when writer-director-actor Duvall put up $5 million of his own money did it get made.
"I am not bitter and I am glad I had to wait," says Duvall of the movie profile dealing with a rascal southern preacher.
"Had a studio completed it when I first wanted to do it, there would have been too many marketing elements to patronize the moviegoer."
Yet diplomatic Duvall is quick to add, "I never want to be overly smug about how things have turned out."
Indeed, in any other Oscar year, Duvall would be a cinch to pass on those sentiments at the Shrine Auditorium podium as the winner Monday night. He has tough competition in two other actor icons -- Jack Nicholson (As Good As It Gets) and Dustin Hoffman (Wag The Dog).
Still, the cagey veteran refuses to discuss the winning-or-losing likelihood, or what it means to compete against his friends.
He will talk about The Apostle, which opened in Toronto recently after its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival last September.
"Yes," says Duvall chuckling, "I guess as the years went by the movie aged well. I am happy. It's something I've always wanted to have behind me."
After Monday night, it just might be.
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Robert Duvall
By Al Weisel
US Magazine, March 1998
"TOO MUCH TALK," WAS HOW ONE studio exec rejected the script for The Apostle. So, Robert Duvall, who wrote, directed and stars in the movie about a fallen preacher who finds redemption in the pulpit of a predominantly black church, put up the $5 million for the film himself.
Now the movie that Hollywood didn't want to make is generating the kind of slow-burning Oscar buzz?in particular for Duvall's performance?that another labor of love, Sling Blade, did last year. With paradoxical subtlety, Duvall plays a showy man of the cloth without ever being a showboat himself. Of course, Duvall is quite capable of a revelation or two. At 67, he remains one of Hollywood's most versatile actors, with a gift for bringing larger-than-life characters down to earth, from his Oscar-winning turn as a has-been country singer (Tender Mercies) to Oscar-nominated roles in The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and The Great Santini.
So convincing is Duvall's Texas Holy Roller that it may come as a surprise that the actor is not from the Deep South. Although the thrice-divorced Duvall now lives on a Virginia farm with his girlfriend, Luciana Pedraza, an equestrian from Argentina, he grew up in Annapolis, Md., where his father was an admiral in the Navy. Like the characters he portrays, Duvall is full of contradictions. He can be perfectly frank about his politics (don't get him started on "mink-coat communists") and the people with whom he has worked ("[True Grit director] Henry Hathaway was an a--hole," he says), yet he is also generous: It was his open-mindedness that persuaded a family of New York Gypsies to let him tell their story in his feature-film directing debut, 1983's Angelo, My Love, and it is what helped him crawl into the skin of The Apostle's Bible-toting sinner.
Critics are calling 'The Apostle' one of the best American films about religion ever made.
I tried not to make it just that, but that's at the core of it. Like a film about a man on a farm is about the man first and the farm second.
You were raised a Christian Scientist, right?
I don't go to church, but that would be my belief.
Have you ever had a profound religious experience?
One guy said Duvall could do a better movie if he was born again. Who knows. I was in a church in Harlem where they sang "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," and I had a very quiet emotional experience. If I was of that persuasion, that would suffice for me as a conversion.
The movie is very racially mixed.
When [Luciana] came up from Argentina, we went to a lot of churches. After a while she finally said, "Bobby, you think we'll ever go to any white churches?" In many churches in the South, there's an integrated thing.
What about your own upbringing?
It was more segregated. My people weren't bad people. My parents just didn't grow up that way: My father was a segregationist, yes, but he didn't talk about things. He used to send a small pittance to [civil-rights activist] Julian Bond. He never even told us: So that's a contradiction. What makes people interesting are the contradictions.
You were in 'Sling Blade,' and Billy Bob Thornton is very moving as a complex bigot in your movie.
I knew Billy Bob had been married to a black woman and was the only white drummer in an all-black band; and then I'd seen him around redneck guys, and he's comfortable around them. So he runs the gamut without much judging.
You've made a number of movies with Francis Ford Coppola. Why didn't you do 'The Godfather, Part III?
Why were they doing this? They were doing it for money, because Coppola's always looking for money. He lives high on the hog. I figured if I was going to do it, come up with some real money.
Is Brando a strange guy?
When we did The Chase, he was talking and he turned to act as an extension of what [occurred before the scene]. I think that offhandedness is pretty special. I learned that from him. I said to my [then] wife, "We're going to be like brothers. I love this guy." Then he wouldn't even say good morning for eight weeks. He'd just walk past you. I wasn't used to people like that.
Which one of your characters would you most like to be?
I don't think I want to be a preacher, but I like this character a lot. I guess Lonesome Dove's Texas Ranger. He liked women and tried to give them their space and respect. Maybe the older I get, I get a little more intelligent about wives, or myself.
Make up the title for a country song that would sum up your life.
"I've Done It My Way, and If I Have to Do It Again, I'll Do It My Way Again." Or if it was a gospel song, "We All Have to Do What We Have to Do Between the Cradle and the Grave."
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Premiere, March 1998
Soul Authority
Robert Duvall puts his money where his heart is to make 'The Apostle'
by Jason Matloff
Thirteen years ago, actor-director Robert Duvall visited a small Arkansas town to do research for his character in an off-Broadway play. Hoping to kill some time, he wandered into a church. Simple as it was, what he saw struck a deep chord in him. "I was impressed," recalls Duvall. "There was a lady preacher and a man preacher with an acoustic guitar, and I thought I'd like to do this [onscreen] some day." About five years later, he completed a script for The Apostle, not knowing what a battle it would be to get the actual movie made.
The battle now won-The Apostle, a sweeping, touching tale of a flawed but sincere preacher named Sonny (Duvall) trying to atone for his sins, has received rave reviews, and both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics gave Duvall their Best Actor awards-Duvall's air is one of contentment. The intensity of his deep-set, keen blue eyes notwithstanding, the legendary actor, who made his mark in some of the most memorable American films ever (The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, to name two) is positively serene as he sits down to tell the story of how he turned a dream project into reality.
Duvall shopped his script around to all the major studios and independent companies but heard only rejections. One particular meeting delivered a harsh lesson about Hollywood's definition of loyalty. "After I did Tender Mercies, one studio head told me, 'Look, if I'd known, I would have backed it,' " Duvall says. "So I took The Apostle to him and he said no. So it's malarkey. The bottom line is it's a business, and that's the way it is."
Eventually it was Duvall's personal accountant who showed him how he could make the picture. "He told me that I was financially set to help swing it-so really my CPA green-lighted the movie." Duvall poured $5 million into the project, violating the golden rule of never putting your own savings into your own film. It's a rule the actor is used to breaking. "I've directed three films, and it's all been my own money." Given the material Duvall has chosen-pictures about people Hollywood generally ignores or, worse, doesn't even realize exist-it's not completely surprising that industry support has been almost impossible to come by. His 1977 documentary, We're Not the Jet Set, was an endearing look at a redneck Nebraska family; the 1983 feature Angelo, My Love followed the adventures of an extremely charming young Gypsy boy in New York City.
Having laid out his own money, Duvall could cast his movie without having to defend his risky choices. He had worked with a group of nonprofessionals on Angelo, My Love and wasn't afraid to put screen novices like one-legged preacher Brother William Atlas Cole and country songwriter Billy Joe Shaver in The Apostle. That gamble paid off in rough-edged, authentic performances. The choices Duvall made for the professional actors in his cast seem, if anything, even more risky. But TV-movie staple Farrah Fawcett displays subtle excellence in the pivotal role of Sonny's wife. The writer Horton Foote (Tender Mercies), a friend of Duvall's, was knocked out by a woman he took to be a Texan nonactress in the part of a secretary and must have been equally knocked out when Duvall informed him, "That's [actress] Miranda Richardson from London, England!"
In an I'll-do-your-movie-and-you-do-mine maneuver, Duvall enlisted another pal, actor-director Billy Bob Thornton, to play a racist thug. Duvall had contributed a pivotal cameo to Thornton's breakthrough, Sling Blade, and had previously appeared in A Family Thing, which Thornton coscripted.
Duvall, who recently completed acting work in A Civil Action, is clearly hoping that the acclaim he's received for The Apostle will help him launch other projects, including one on one of his life's great passions, the tango. "I have a very nice career as a hired hand, and I make good money," the Oscar winner says. "So maybe now I'm set enough that I can do a few of these on my own."
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The Dallas Morning News, March 9, 1998
Robert Duvall's Behavior Hasn't Always Been Saintly
By Jane Sumner
Bobby Duvall may be America's premiere actor, a rugged charmer and seeker of truth, but he's no pussycat. Ask anyone who worked on ``Tender Mercies'' in Waxahachie, Texas, in 1981, and they'll tell you about his battles with director Bruce Beresford.
``We used to just stand back and let 'em go at it,'' a crew member said. One day the embattled Australian was so irked that he walked off the set and flew home to New York. After the dust settled, Duvall carried off a best-actor Oscar for his quiet, subtle turn as a country singer on the way back from the skids.
``The Oscar was nice to get,'' he says. ``It's a prestigious thing.'' But the gold man with a sword and no genitalia (as his old friend Dusty Hoffman pointed out) didn't help get financing for the film that brought his third best-actor nomination.
``Back in those days of the beginnings of `The Apostle,' my agency tried to use that as leverage to get financing or studio backing or whatever in California, and it didn't work,'' he says.
The Oscar winner wagged his film project all over the country. ``In California, we went to all the studios, all the smaller people out there, people in New York, all over. In Texas, we went to some oil people. You get a lot of hot air and a lot of cocktail parties. That's what they want is the cocktail party so they can meet such-and-such. After that, it was all downhill.''
In the end, the actor anted up his own $5 million to fund the film. ``But it worked out best this way because we were like a law unto ourselves. We were doing it - sink or swim - on our terms.''
His accountant who gave the film its green light is happy, he says. And it hasn't hurt the careers of others involved, either. Midwestern actor John Beasley, the retired preacher who gives the Apostle his old church, has acquired a manager and moved to Los Angeles.
To bolster the film, Duvall has appeared on talk fests from Pat Robertson's ``The 700 Club'' to ``The Howard Stern Show.'' ``I'd rather do Howard Stern than some of these hypocritical preachers,'' he says. ``Better any day!'' The actor was on his way out the door to do ``Regis & Kathie Lee'' when he learned of his fifth Oscar nomination. ``I was traveling so much I was shellshocked. I'd forgotten all about it.''
Since he plays a man struggling with his soul while hiding from the law, he's often asked about his own religion. ``I have my own set of rules procedurewise as far as religion. I believe in one God and Jesus Christ, but I do it my way. Yeah!''
The son of a distant admiral dad and strong, outgoing mom grew up in a Protestant home. ``Those hymns and songs (in ``The Apostle'') I've known all my life. `I Love to Tell the Story,' I probably put that in there because I had a real feeling for it.''
Now that ``The Apostle'' is behind him, there are other things he wants to do, like make a film about what he calls ``the actor's dance'' - the tango. He admires British filmmaker Sally Potter's ``The Tango Lesson,'' about life lessons she learned from the Argentine dance and tango master Pablo Veron. ``That guy may be the best tango dancer in the world,'' Duvall says. ``I know him. He's brilliant. She's (Potter) good. She did very well for somebody from England and the whole thing. He was the lead dancer of the Folies Bergere. My girlfriend's from Argentina, and she said it was like dancing with a ghost.''
Since his mute film debut as the ghostly Boo Radley in ``To Kill a Mockingbird'' (1962), Duvall has played more than 100 film and TV roles. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the making of ``Lonesome Dove,'' the CBS-TV miniseries that has become the stuff of legend.
Along with ``Apostle'' posters and CDs that people brought for him to sign at Blockbuster Music last week were copies of ``Lonesome Dove.'' One fan said she came because she loves the way Duvall sits a horse. The trouble is he doesn't sit one as much since a spill a few years ago left him with a broken pelvis. ``I had a bit of a crack-up, the same crash that Christopher Reeve had. I love to ride those jumping horses, but I can't really do it anymore.''
On the ``Lonesome Dove'' set in Texas, the highly focused actor greeted director Simon Wincer with the news that he didn't like Australians, didn't like directors and please stay out of his face - or words to that effect. That war raged all the way up the trail to Ogallala, Neb.. When that dust settled, Duvall had an Emmy nomination. He lost the prize, though Wincer won for his direction. Author Larry McMurtry may have created Texas Ranger Augustus ``Gus'' McCrae, but Duvall inhabited him. The epic raised him to archetype status.
Even if the actor, who doesn't subscribe to ``the Method,'' fails to win an Oscar for troubled, resilient Sonny in ``The Apostle,'' he already owns a bigger prize - a place in the nation's heart for garrulous, chivalrous Gus in ``Lonesome Dove.''
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People, February 23, 1998
Talking With . . . Robert Duvall
OSCAR NOMINEE'S DIVINE OBSESSION
Ever since Robert Duvall walked into a small Pentecostal church in Hughes, Ark., 35 years ago, he has been obsessed with the fervid believers he witnessed there. "I'd never seen this on film," says Duvall, 67. The Apostle is the triumph of his vision: The veteran actor wrote, directed, starred in and paid for the $5 million film about a Texas minister who sins as passionately as he preaches. After no studio wanted to make it, "my CPA greenlit the film," Duvall jokes. His performance just earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor; if he wins, his Oscar will have company on the mantel: He took home the award in 1983 for Tender Mercies.
Duvall, who lives on a 360-acre Virginia farm with girlfriend Luciana Pedraza, 26, says, "I don't go to church; I have my own thing." But he acknowledges parallels between himself and the preacher: "I have a temper like him." At first Duvall, who also directed Angelo, My Love (1983), feared acting and directing would be overload. But after Francis Ford Coppola encouraged him, he went ahead, casting Farrah Fawcett as his onscreen wife and Billy Bob Thornton in a small but key role.
Duvall says he had no trouble directing real churchgoers in the film: "I try to turn it around and let it come from the people." The seven-week shoot near Lafayette, La., and in Texas went so well that he and Pedraza even had time to go dancing at night. Duvall, who has two grown daughters, met Pedraza, an events planner, on location in Argentina in 1995--after splitting from his third wife and vowing never to marry again. The subject of his next production? Another obsession: the tango. "I've fixed up a dance floor, so we practice," he says.
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Cinemania, February 18, 1998
The Apostle Duvall
One of America's great actors becomes a writer-director, too
by Elizabeth Snead
Robert Duvall is considered one of the greatest American actors of all time. But never mind that. Do as he says, and just call him "Bobby."
Discovered by Horton Foote in a student play, the young Duvall was recommended by the writer for his first film role. In an eerily powerful, although non-speaking, role, he played the retarded hero, Boo Radley, in To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck.
Among his finest film moments over the succeeding decades: Consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather films, Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies, a retired Texas ranger in Lonesome Dove(1989).
Now Duvall, 66, has written, produced and directed his first feature film, The Apostle, which has gotten rave reviews in limited release and scored him his fifth Oscar nomination. In this quiet, moving tale set in the Deep South, Duvall also acts, playing yet another memorable, lovable but deeply flawed character, Sonny Dewey, a charismatic Pentecostal preacher brought down by his own frailties and passions but redeemed by his faith and ability to transform a community. The film also features Oscar-nominee Miranda Richardson, Oscar-winner Billy Bob Thornton and the infamous Farrah Fawcett in a surprisingly raw portrayal as Dewey's adulterous wife.
Duvall got the idea for the film after visiting a small church in Arkansas 13 years ago. But there was no studio interest in financing the small, odd film, so Duvall finally finished his labor of love one and a half years ago with his own money.
Here, Duvall talks about the struggle to make and find a distributor for his film, his casting decisions and use of nonactors in key roles, his fascination with preaching as a true American art form and getting Fawcett to be quiet and come out of the bathroom.
You had quite a long struggle to get The Apostle made.
Tell me about the beginnings of the idea. I was meandering around Hughes, Ark., for research for a part, and I went to one of those little churches years ago. That was way back. I saw those people, and it was very interesting to me that I had never seen that culture, that American art form.
You financed the whole thing yourself just to get it made?
My CPA greenlit it. Nobody out here did. ... So, we kind of had to do it ourselves. But when we showed it in Toronto (at the film festival), it was like a bidding war, and it went on until 1 in the morning, and they said that if it went to the next day, it would dissipate, maybe just fall apart. Therefore, it was consummated that night, and it was pretty interesting to watch.
How have the religious folks responded to the film?
Somebody just told me today that a friend of mine from New York who shot the film has a friend who said that his cousin, a Jesuit priest, saw the film and loved it. So it's interesting that the Catholics would like it, too. Some of them.
It's a touching, warm film. Your character is so human.
You start off disliking him, and then you see all the good that he does for people. I wanted to make him a good guy. That is why I had the scene in the beginning with the car crash. I had that in the middle of my first draft, and I put it up front because he is a good guy. He feels like he has a calling. He is human, he makes errors and then he has to pay for that eventually.
We haven't seen Farrah Fawcett do this kind of performance in quite a while.
You have to do a lot. She is great to work with when you get her going. She always wants to talk. I'm more, "Let's just do it." It was hard to get her to dye her hair. She spends 95 percent of her day in the bathroom. ... But once she comes in, she's fine. Just getting her there is the thing. That's the work. But once she gets there, she knows what to do.
When did you find the one-legged black fellow?
That's Wes. I knew him years ago, and somebody said, "I have got this preacher who would be good for the part of Blackwell." His wife was a wonderful gospel singer, and he is this wonderful, outgoing guy. He is a preacher. What does he know about movies? I don't even think he goes to movies. ... He lost his leg about 10 years ago. I keep saying, "Here is a black guy with one leg, and I got another black preacher who is blind." I was waiting for Farrakhan to take some shots at me. It just so happened to be my theory that "So what if they have a handicap, give the guys a chance. They can cut it." I am not so sure how I stand on affirmative action. I am not sure I am for it. But the casting guy said to me, Bobby, you have got to put some white people in this movie. On my side of the camera, there was a wonderful mixture of black and white people. It worked out nicely, in a good way.
And that is the reality of that area.
Absolutely. I talk to these journalists, the guys from San Diego, Philadelphia, Atlanta. But this one journalist from a little town, who grew up in Louisiana, he was smarter than the guys from New York! He asked better questions. This guy grew up in a town of 2,000, and he hit it right on the head: Only the Pentecostal church had integration, growing up. People said, "Well, did you make that up?" And I said, "No, it is in existence. That is the reality."
How did you get that preacher speech pattern down so well?
I watched those guys for years. I listened in churches all over the United States. The blacks can hold a note, sing it. The white guys do the cadence; some black guys do the cadence, too. I like the older black Baptist preachers more than the black Pentecostal preachers. That is the old art form of whooping. This old guy, Jasper Williams in Atlanta, [is] a terrific preacher. I hear he has a course on it: Whooping 101. It is a wonderful expression.
The best preacher I ever saw in my entire life, all-around, was Ishmael Williams from Hamilton, Va. He was 96 when he passed away. He had a wonderful style, but he also had wonderful content. He was a wonderful, kind man. I have only seen pictures of someone more spiritual than him, the Dalai Lama or Gandhi. He had something so special. I would go to his churches, and I got all that stuff about the little airplane flying to heaven and the whole church singing "I'll Fly Away." That is exactly what he used to do in his church. I got that whole idea from him.
Perhaps people don't see preaching as an art form because of the TV evangelists and their commercialism.
It's a shame, 'cause it is really an art form. Some of them are OK on TV, but they emphasize more of the spectacle than the content. The spectacle may be great, that aspect of the performance, but it becomes too spectacle-oriented. To me it's just deplete of spirituality. You have got to have your tithes, but it is so obvious. When you get out in the rank and file, there are some wonderful people, excellent people, who really believe. Churches were like the rock of a community. We have lost that. We have suburbs, and there is not that same family-type feeling, with the church being the center. In the black community, those preachers were spiritual leaders from the time of slavery till today. Up until a few years back, all those guys in the South voted Republican, the party of Lincoln, and then shifted over to FDR and Kennedy.
You weren't particularly worried that religious people would dislike the film?
No. I knew I was going to do it in a way that was going to give them their due by turning it around and letting it come from them, whenever I could. So, if they have trouble with it, you better not cast the first stone, as far as I am concerned. If some people get offended and don't want to see my movie, that's fine. But that doesn't mean the great poet David who slew Goliath didn't deviously send a man to his death so that he could lie in bed with Bathsheba. So, if they don't want to see my movie, I'm not going to rip out the pages of the Psalms and not read that part.
What is your favorite film you've been in?
This would be my favorite film, as a film. And the character of Sonny right up there, but Lonesome Dove ... I have done a lot of films that I like. The Godfather is a great movie. They were great movies Coppola made.
You have had an amazing career.
More and more. I have a great career as a hired hand. But with this film, I've realized I want to do more things on my own. I have more confidence now about directing. I feared it for years, put it on the back burner, hoping it wouldn't happen but really wanting it to happen. When we finally started, the fear dissipated, and it was very harmonious.
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Entertainment Weekly, February 13, 1998
Faces of the Oscar
The Academy Award-winning actor is born again as a writer, director, and all-around independent spirit. His chances for another Oscar could be divine.
BY BRUCE FRETTS
SOMETIMES GOD AND THE INDIE-MOVIE BIZ both work in mysterious ways. Last September, Robert Duvall was unspooling his Southern-preacher feature, The Apostle, at the Toronto Film Festival, showing it to an audience for the first time. His personal stakes were sky-high: Duvall not only wrote, directed, and starred in the film, but spent $5 million of his own money to make it. Less than halfway through the screening, executives from Miramax and October Films headed for the exits.
What looked like a bad omen turned out to be a show of faith. "We left the theater to chase the movie, to do a deal," explains October copresident Bingham Ray. "We had colleagues still in the theater, and we were checking on the cell phones with them for updates on where it was going."
"It was one of those frenetic scenes you see in a movie and say, 'That doesn't really happen,'" marvels Apostle's 28-year-old producer Rob Carliner. "But it really happened." The bidding war escalated between October and Miramax. By 1 a.m., a deal had been struck: October would shell out $6 million for worldwide distribution rights, earning Duvall an instant $1 million profit on his high-risk investment.
Then the spinning began. Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein told EW that he'd passed on The Apostle at that price. "Harvey Whatsisname said he wasn't interested, but he was," snorts Duvall. "He was bidding, believe me."
It was a miraculous turnaround. For years, Duvall couldn't get one company--much less two--interested in funding his pet project. Now his performance in The Apostle has won him honors from the L.A. Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics, and he's a good bet for a Best Actor Oscar nod (the film is also a dark horse for best director, screenplay, and picture).
Duvall, 67, had long wanted to play the naturally theatrical role of an evangelist, and after financing fell apart in 1983 on The Kingdom, a proposed Sidney Lumet David Mamet flick about a pair of clergymen, Duvall sat down to script his own minister movie. A self-described "pretty crappy writer in school," he finished his first draft of The Apostle, about a Texas Pentecostalist who hightails it to Louisiana on the lam from the law, in six weeks.
For 13 years, he circulated it to anyone who would look at it--and everyone passed. "One agent said, 'If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to see this movie made,'" Duvall recalls. "I don't even know if the guy knew he was lying, but it was so obvious that he didn't give a sh-- about it." The combination of a risky theme ("You say religion and [studios] run for the hills," says October's Ray) and a less-than-bankable star (despite a 35-year film career that includes a Best Actor Oscar for 1983's Tender Mercies and nominations for The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The Great Santini) didn't add up to big bucks in the suits' minds.
Finally, in 1996, Duvall reached into his own pocket; as he's fond of saying, "my CPA, Joel Jacobson, greenlit the picture." "It was the ultimate crapshoot," says producer Carliner, who first met Duvall while working as a production assistant on HBO's 1992 bio-epic Stalin. "We wanted to be fiscally responsible so Bobby wouldn't have to sell his farm [in Virginia] to make it happen. Every single decision stopped with him."
Including casting. A fan of Farrah Fawcett's work in grim TV movies like The Burning Bed, Duvall offered the actress her choice of the movie's two major female roles: the pastor's straying wife or his radio-station-secretary love interest. The flighty Fawcett opted for the latter, then changed her mind. But when Duvall tapped British thespian (and avowed admirer) Miranda Richardson for the secretary, Fawcett decided she wanted that part back. Remembers Duvall, "I said to [Carliner], 'Tell her she either plays the wife or she's out of the movie.'" Adds Carliner, "She wanted to be in the movie--that was the bottom line."
Duvall filled out the cast with Billy Bob Thornton (who had directed him in Sling Blade), country singers June Carter Cash and Billy Joe Shaver, and a host of jen-yoo-wine Southern church folk (to preserve the film's grassroots feel, he didn't want professional extras "who read Variety and The Hollywood Reporter between takes").
Location shooting in Texas and Louisiana ran smoothly in the fall of 1996, with production finishing one day ahead of its six-week schedule. Editing was a bumpier ride, given the film's leisurely pacing and improvisatory aura. "The first cut was about four hours. I don't know why--we only had 115 pages in the script," says Duvall. The Apostle was whittled down to two and a half hours for the Toronto and New York film festivals, then tightened (at October's urging) to 2:13 with the aid of Walter Murch, the Oscar-winning editor of The English Patient.
After releasing the film briefly in December to qualify for the Oscars, October (whose biggest previous hit, 1996's Secrets and Lies, grossed $14 million) blitzed Academy members with cassettes of The Apostle and is now rolling it out in theaters again, hoping to follow Miramax's successful Sling Blade model and capitalize on potential Oscar nominations. That movie "wasn't making any kind of money until the nominations," offers Carliner. "Then all of a sudden, it was like, Boom, where did this come from?" (Over the weekend of Jan. 30, The Apostle averaged a promising $11,156 per screen at 50 theaters.)
As the film expands beyond urban areas, October will market the film to Christian audiences with a gospel soundtrack featuring such artists as Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, and Sounds of Blackness. "There's a big Bible Belt market that's always been patronized by Hollywood," says Carliner. "The windfall from embracing that community could be huge." Still, October doesn't want The Apostle to be pigeonholed as a religious flick. "It's not just for Christian audiences," proclaims Ray. "It's for anybody who has ever sinned and sought to redeem themselves."
Maybe that's why President Clinton enjoyed it so much. After Duvall attended a mid-scandal White House screening on Jan. 24, "Clinton said, 'This touched me,' and he [put his hand near] but didn't touch his heart," beams Duvall. "The President responded to it because, man, he grew up in Arkansas. He knows what these churches are about. When he became governor, he'd go speak in them to get their votes."
Even if Duvall doesn't get enough votes for another Academy Award, he says The Apostle has been "the highlight of my career, in many ways. I've done a couple jobs since, and I can't hardly remember them." Among those gigs: a backwoods eccentric in ex M*A*S*H cohort Robert Altman's The Gingerbread Man ("I wanted to work with him one more time before we both hung it up," Duvall says); an aging astronaut trying to save the earth from a comet in DreamWorks' summer-event movie Deep Impact; and an attorney opposite John Travolta in Steven Zaillian's A Civil Action. He's also producing a Thornton-coscripted Merle Haggard biopic for United Artists and wants to direct another movie he's penned about a not-so-secret passion he shares with Argentinean girlfriend Luciana Pedraza: the tango.
That sounds like a lot of work for a senior citizen, but Duvall says he's ready for action: "I bloom later. People retire young today. It'll be a long time before I want to retire." Amen to that.
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Philadelphia Inquirer, February 5, 1998
Wearing all the hats Robert Duvall has done it all for his powerful new movie, "The Apostle": He wrote, financed, produced, directed -- and, of course, he stars.
By Steven Rea
Euliss "Sonny" Dewey is a Pentecostal preacher out of Texas, a man of earthly passions and heavenly aspirations, a husband and father with a hankering for women, a gun in his glove compartment and the belief he's been called upon by God. He is the invention of Robert Duvall, performed by Robert Duvall in the richly satisfying The Apostle -- a movie written, financed, produced, and directed by, yes, Robert Duvall.
And whatever else you say about the apostle E.F., as Duvall's character comes to call himself on his tumultuous odyssey through the deep South, he's no caricature.
"I wanted to make this guy real," says Duvall, on the horn from Hollywood the other day. "I didn't want to be condescending or patronizing, the way movies about preachers usually are."
In The Apostle, which opens tomorrow at the Ritz Five and Ritz Twelve/NJ, Sonny commits a violent crime in a moment of anger and is forced to abandon everything for a new life. His journey takes him to a sleepy Louisiana town, where, armed only with the ability to fix cars and to woo people with his words, he assembles a congregation and erects the One Way Road to Heaven Church.
Duvall turned 67 last month. He has just about the same number of pictures to his credit, beginning with his haunting portrait of simpleminded Boo Radley in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird, and including his cool study of Corleone family counsel Tom Hagen in the first two Godfathers and his Oscar-winning portrait of a troubled country singer in 1983's Tender Mercies. It was about the time that he was making Tender Mercies, in fact, that Duvall witnessed a Pentecostal service in tiny Hughes, Ark. He knew right then that he wanted to capture the elation and theatricality of it in a movie.
And it only took him 15 years to do it.
"I was going to do another film on the subject first, and I'd done a lot of research, but that fell through," reports the actor, on a break from shooting Civil Action, a courtroom drama in which he stars opposite John Travolta. "I'd done so much research I just decided I had to write my own. That was 13 years ago. I wrote it in about a month."
Duvall, who had directed a documentary (1977's We're Not the Jet Set, about a rodeo family) and a feature about Gypsies (1983's Angelo, My Love), showed his script to some directors -- Francis Ford Coppola, Ulu Grosbard, Ken Loach.
"Everyone responded to it, but they also said, 'Well, maybe you should direct it because you understand the subject matter. You understand the character.' "
Duvall set about finding a studio to finance the project. For whatever reason, nobody came forward. "Eventually it became a matter of now or never . . . and about a year and a half ago my CPA decided that maybe I was OK enough financially to swing it myself."
As Duvall is fond of saying, "my CPA green-lit the picture."
Joining Duvall in the picture is a mix of seasoned actors, country music stars and amateurs. There's a Billy Bob (as in Thornton, of Sling Blade) and a Billy Joe (as in Shaver, of "I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal [ But I'm Gonna Be a Diamond Someday ] " fame). June Carter Cash -- who long ago studied at Sanford Meisner's storied Neighborhood Theater, thesping upstairs with the pros while Duvall was downstairs taking classes paid for by the G.I. Bill -- plays Sonny's mother. Rick Dial, an Arkansas furniture salesman, is a radio DJ. English actress Miranda Richardson gives an uncanny performance as a Louisiana secretary who catches Sonny's eye. And Farrah Fawcett is taut and edgy as Sonny's adulterous wife. About Fawcett, Duvall says, "I don't know whether you saw The Burning Bed. . . . This is brilliant acting she did, in the moment, as good as any of these top feature women. "She's a bit ding-y to work with," he adds with a chuckle, "but she understands this kind of woman. Yeah."
Appearing on Letterman last week, the night after Fawcett was a no-show, he and the host exchanged jokey speculations as to the actress' excuses. But it's a testament to the force of The Apostle's story that Letterman also made a rare foray into serious discourse with Duvall.
Clearly engaged by the film, he asked his guest whether The Apostle's Sonny went around building churches and reciting the Bible because "he has accepted Jesus Christ as his lord and savior, or is he doing this just because he's good at it?"
"What do you think?" Duvall responded.
"Because he's good at it," Letterman returned, with the manner of an eager student.
(Letterman also asked Duvall about showing his film at the White House the weekend after the Monica Lewinsky story broke. Duvall sat in the first row of the first family's screening room, one seat removed from the President and Mrs. Clinton as they watched The Apostle -- and, reportedly, liked it immensely.)
A few weeks ago, The Apostle landed six nominations, including best feature and actor, from the Independent Spirit Awards for indie films. Duvall's performance won him the Los Angeles Film Critics Association actor nod, and a nomination in the same category last week from the Screen Actors Guild.
In a year when studio biggies such as Titanic and L.A. Confidential are expected to dominate the Academy Awards, Duvall's little "preacher film" is considered the dark horse. Does he think about the Oscar nominations -- to be announced Tuesday in Los Angeles -- and an acting or writing bid?
"If you're human, you think about it, absolutely," he says. "I would be a liar if I said no. And if that happens, it's wonderful. I know it's a long shot . . . but I would love to see the film itself be up for some things.
"Last year all these independents were in prominence, and now the studios [ have re-emerged ] . And some of the films they're touting are pretty good, so that's OK. They have a legitimate case, obviously. But I would love it if the movie would get some recognition."
Nowadays, when he's not working -- or when he is working, putting The Apostle together on a computerized editing console -- Duvall lives on a farm in Virginia in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. After three marriages, Duvall's companion is Lucianna Pedrazza, "my girlfriend from Argentina." The pair fly off to Buenos Aires often -- the actor has become a passionate tango dancer, and hopes to make a film set in the "social dancing underworld."
Don't expect that project, if it happens, to offer simple characters, or caricatures, either. Duvall has always been drawn to complicated figures, eccentrics, people working out conflicts of the heart and soul. And because of that, there has been a faction from the Pentecostal world that has not taken Duvall's portrait in The Apostle well.
"I've heard some people thought it was a little rough," he notes, gearing up into preacher mode. "But I always say no matter how bad my guy was, he wasn't as devious and evil as the great psalmist David who killed Goliath, who sent a man off to die so he could lie with Bathsheba. That was a pretty evil thing he did. . . . "If some of the religious don't like it for those reasons, then I say don't throw the first stone, because you may have some faults of your own. It's like cowboys would rather watch John Wayne than a real docudrama about real cowboys. Everybody wants a romanticized version of themselves, and maybe some of these preachers are the same way. They want to watch a miracle play, or something on TV like Touched by an Angel. . . . Maybe they like that, but I'm not about to do that."
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The Kansas City Star, February 5, 1998
IN HIS HANDS
Robert Duvall put his soul and money into 'The Apostle'
By ROBERT W. BUTLER - Movie Editor
More than 30 years ago a young stage actor named Robert Duvall stepped off a bus in tiny Hughes, Ark., for a brief visit that would spark a lifelong fascination with fundamentalist religion and result in the new movie "The Apostle," in which Duvall plays a troubled preacher.
As Sonny Dewey, a man who has lost his family and his church but is determined to start over, Duvall gives what may be the best performance of his long career. It already has earned the 67-year-old performer Best Actor honors from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics.
And both Duvall and "The Apostle" -- which he wrote, directed, starred in, produced and financed with $5 million of his own money -- are certainly in line for Oscar nominations, which will be announced Tuesday.
The seed of the film was planted in 1962 when the then-unknown actor landed a role in an off-Broadway show.
"The play was about a character born and raised in Hughes, Ark.," Duvall said the other day by telephone from his 200-acre horse ranch in Virginia. "And I thought I ought to at least see what the place was like."
Duvall recalls getting off a bus in tiny Hughes on a Sunday morning and wandering through the town, attracting the curiosity of the local sheriff, who gave the stranger some funny looks ("which maybe he should have," Duvall said, laughing). Finally, to avoid further scrutiny, Duvall stepped into a little church and into the middle of a loud Pentecostal worship service.
"This plump lady was preaching, and she had this terrific style. Very intimate with God. There was one guy playing guitar and preaching and singing. The music was really wonderful. And I thought to myself that these folks took God very literally, and that someday I'd like to play one of them."
No born writer
The son of a Navy admiral, Duvall was reared a mainstream Protestant. He was fascinated by the fabulous showmanship embraced by the preachers, a showmanship in the service of God.
In the ensuing years Duvall would become one of the greatest American film actors, appearing in such classics as "M*A*S*H," "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now" and "Network," and winning an Academy Award for "Tender Mercies" in 1983.
But he never gave up his idea of playing a fundamentalist preacher. Over the years he visited small churches, North and South, black and white, to collect material and talk to believers.
He was encouraged to write the screenplay by his mentor, playwright Horton Foote, who had scripted "Tender Mercies." Duvall approached the job with trepidation.
"I'm no born writer. In school I flunked writing. But in a way I didn't write this movie. I just borrowed things that I saw. When Sonny prays and says, `I always called you Jesus; you always called me Sonny,' that came directly from a preacher I met. That's how he talked to God."
Duvall -- who made his directing debut in 1977 with the rodeo documentary "We're Not the Jet Set" and in 1983 directed "Angelo, My Love," a fictional film about a gypsy boy in New York City -- decided to direct "The Apostle" as well. He didn't trust Hollywood to approach the material with the sensitivity and respect he felt it deserved.
"We didn't need another movie making fun of these people or putting them down," he said. "If you're going to do that one more time, why even bother?"
Son of the South
Once again, Duvall plays a Southerner. Though his resume of roles is wildly varied, many of the most memorable have been characters born and raised below the Mason-Dixon Line: the spooky Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird" (his first film), the washed-up country singer in "Tender Mercies," the Depression-era father in "Rambling Rose," the engaging Texas cowboy Gus McRae in TV's "Lonesome Dove" and the Arkansas mechanic who discovers he has an African-American half-brother in "A Family Thing."
"My mother's people all came from Missouri and Texas and my uncles lived in Virginia," Duvall said. "Something has always drawn me to the South -- the juxtaposition of the races, the culture, the writing, the storytelling. It's one of the more interesting parts of the country, one of the last to retain its regional personality. The problem has been that with all this richness, it's easy to caricature. I've never wanted to make a mockery of it."
Finding financing for "The Apostle," though, was a problem.
"After I got the Oscar for 'Tender Mercies,' this woman studio executive came up to me and said, 'If you had come to me, I would have financed that movie.' And I thought, 'Oh, would you?' So years later I went to that same woman for 'The Apostle' -- and she turned me down.
"In Hollywood they talk big when it doesn't count.
"I showed the screenplay to one guy and he said, 'There's too much talk.' I pointed out to him that about all these preachers do is talk from morning to night.
"But it just didn't fit any formula they'd seen before. They'd say, 'So this Sonny guy is a charlatan, right?' That's the only way they could see it working."
Say 'Amen'!
Finally Duvall dipped into his bank account for $5 million and spent seven weeks filming in Lafayette, La. With the exception of a few leading roles, all the performers were real churchgoers Duvall had met and befriended while doing research.
"In a situation like this you expect the professionals to help out the beginners. What was funny was that once the non-actors got in their praying groove, they taught the actors. They set the tone. I never had to tell them what to do. Hey, they do this every Sunday.
"And if I got lost in the middle of a scene, all I had to do was yell, 'Somebody give me an Amen!' And they did. They covered for me."
The church scenes in "The Apostle" look real because they were real, Duvall said.
"You know the opening scene, the flashback with the old blind, black preacher? Well, he had fasted for 24 hours before coming in to preach that morning. I tell you, it wasn't a film set. It was a church service. We shot 45 minutes and I told him he could stop, but he couldn't. He just kept going -- singing, moving around. It was great."
Duvall said he kept rehearsals to a minimum and placed his camera far enough away from the action that the technology of moviemaking didn't intrude on the reality of the worship.
"I try to have the camera accommodate the actor instead of the other way around," he explained.
Making its debut at last fall's Toronto International Film Festival, "The Apostle" quickly found a distributor in October Films, which ponied up $6 million. "I got all my money back. Plus change," Duvall said with obvious satisfaction.
He's so happy with the outcome that he's planning to produce more independent projects, including movies about tango dancing (an enduring passion), soccer and a biography of country star Merle Haggard.
"I can always have a great career as a hired hand," he said, "but I want to be in control. I want to get things done that otherwise wouldn't get done."
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The Christian Science Monitor, February 5, 1998
'The Apostle' Rewrites How Religion Is Depicted on Big Screen
Robert Marquand, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BOSTON -- Partway through Robert Duvall's new film about a Southern evangelist, a Louisiana redneck astride a bulldozer confronts the One Way to Heaven church and its integrated congregation.
In full view of the members, who are having a bake sale, the pastor, played by Mr. Duvall, puts a Bible in front of the huge iron blade and says, "no more." The redneck tries to move the Good Book but breaks down crying. The pastor follows him to the ground, pleading that he not be embarrassed about faith: "It's OK to cry," he says, "I'll cry with you."
"The Apostle," which opened in 50 cities around the facecountry last week, is already becoming a phenomenon - an unusual achievement for a film that deals directly with religion and redemption. Even religion scholars, many of whom are skeptical of faith on film, say the movie is the first authentic portrayal of a religious style whose believers are a large, growing subculture in the United States.
"It's the most explicit treatment of evangelical religious sensibility I've seen," says Harvey Cox, who led a discussion about "The Apostle" with the Harvard Divinity School faculty after a private screening last week. "One is stunned by Duvall's performance. But beyond that, it is a film about sin and redemption, something Dostoevskian, deeply theological, not churchy. It's in-your-face theology."
Hollywood seldom deals head on with faith. Indeed, Duvall's "The Apostle" was rejected for 13 years by producers. While faith may enter a script as a foil or plot device, few films have dealt centrally - and sympathetically - with ordinary churchgoing people trying live their lives as if God existed. "The Hollywood line is, 'How could interesting stories emerge from such uninteresting people?' " a critic notes wryly.
Fresh portrayal of ministers Movie characterizations of ministers, too, depict spiritual leaders who are either ineffectually meek and mild, or hypocritical shysters as in Burt Lancaster's classic "Elmer Gantry." In the 1992 film "A River Runs Through It," the minister-father gives a moving sermon about finding ways to love those who reject love. But religion there is tucked into a family story. It is not the center of the story, as it is in "The Apostle."
"The Apostle" is "the first picture in modern times that accurately portrays a holiness-style white preacher without making him an object of ridicule or evil personified," says James Wall, editor of The Christian Century.
For Duvall, who not only stars in the film but who also wrote and directed it, "The Apostle" was an act of faith - one he financed for $5 million. Its genesis dates to the early 1960s, when Duvall was working in rural Arkansas and marveled at the cadence and rhythms at meetings of small-town revivalists. Not until 1984 did he have time to write a screenplay, but no Hollywood studio would touch it.
Kudos abound
Now everyone wants a piece. Film critic Janet Maslin of The New York Times rates "The Apostle" as the second best film of the year, after the epic "Titanic." The Chicago Tribune says it establishes Duvall as "the finest male actor" in the US. Cognoscenti expect an Oscar nomination. Even President Clinton watched the film at the White House on the weekend before his State of the Union performance Jan. 27.
Critical acclaim includes awards ranging from the National Society of Film Critics to the Los Angeles Film Critics Association to generous spreads in newsweeklies like Time.
Commercially, it was the hottest per capita seller last weekend - not surprising, given the buildup. ("The Apostle" is in 50 theaters; "Titanic" opened last month in 3,000.) On Saturday, the 7:30 p.m. show in the Upper West Side in Manhattan sold out at 1 p.m. "We've been selling out 3 of 4 shows," says Michael Silberman, a vice president of October Films, the distributor. "If we only did half that well, we'd be happy."
Duvall plays the character Sonny, a foot-stomping "power of the Holy Ghost" minister who has preached since the age of 12 when he got religion in the black churches of rural Arkansas. As an adult, Sonny is a larger-than-life figure who wears sunglasses and drives too fast in a boxy, gas-guzzling car.
But he is also a sincere man of the Word who prays, it seems, nearly every moment of his waking life. In a powerful opening scene, Sonny pulls over at a traffic accident to put a Bible on the car and whisper prayers to its bleeding and barely conscious occupants.
Sonny's wife, played with artful weariness by Farrah Fawcett, schemes to take his church away and has an adulterous affair with the assistant pastor. Sonny kills the man with a baseball bat, then flees to Louisiana. After nights of self-confrontation in the bayou, he rechristens himself "Apostle E.F." and feels led to a retired black minister in Cajun country. Together, the two restore a battered church, which benefits from the spiritual growth of the Apostle as he faces up to his crimes. (The shots of worship in "The Apostle" use local Pentecostal worshippers, not actors.)
Duvall, whose father was a Methodist and whose mother was a Christian Scientist, is no stranger to alternative films. "Tomorrow," a haunting picture adapted from a William Faulkner story in which Duvall plays an illiterate Southern field hand, took 10 years to release. Other projects include "Farewell, My Love," a self-financed film about Gypsies inspired by the eloquence of a Gypsy boy Duvall heard on the street.
Yet the actor is best known for sharply defined characters who wrestle demons, or are demons. His portrayal in "Apocalypse Now" of a manic air cavalry leader in Vietnam, Lt. Col. ("I love the smell of napalm in the morning") Kilgore, has become an American classic. His depictment of a gung-ho fighter-pilot and disciplinarian dad in "The Great Santini" captured a certain kind of military type.
In 1983, Duvall won the Oscar for his rendering of a broken-down Texas country singer in "Tender Mercies." (That picture is also a film about redemption, though unlike "The Apostle," the audience realizes only at the end of the movie that it is about Christianity.)
Transcending race and class
As a Harvard Divinity School professor notes: "It was moving to see a realistic presentation of church as a gathering together of people who haven't lost faith, and how that grows in them when the real thing is present. It's something that transcends race and class and is passed on to children."
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indieWIRE, February 3, 1998
From Godfathers to Apostles: a profile of Robert Duvall
by Tom Cunha
Legendary actor Robert Duvall takes his third stab at directing -- after a 1975 documentary "We're Not the Jet Set" and 1983's "Angelo My Love" -- with "The Apostle," a small film about a Pentecostal preacher who, after assaulting his estranged wife's boyfriend, flees to a small Louisiana town and forms his own congregation with the help of a retired preacher. Duvall (who also scripted and stars) creates a balanced portrait of a religious man who, while serving as a beacon of inspiration to his followers, is nonetheless haunted by his own demons. The depiction steers clear of the fanaticism that Hollywood often brings to such characters, instead painting him with respect and humanity.
"He has weaknesses. Pros and cons. He's not a fanatic," says Duvall, "I just think it's part of his background, that's his way." This labor of love effort is a crowning achievement for the veteran actor of such American classics as "M*A*S*H," "The Godfathers I & II," "Network," "Apocalypse Now" and "Tender Mercies." Himself a religious man, Duvall says of the experience, "I think the movie will stay with me more than maybe any other movie I've done."
Duvall was inspired to write the modest $5 million project thirteen years ago. "I was passing through Arkansas years ago, I went to one of these little churches. It was a woman preacher and another guy. I had never seen anything like that. Right away I said, 'boy someday I'd like to play one of these characters.'" He adds that the practice of preaching is "a true American artform. It's kind of theatrical in a good way."
It was, however, a long haul getting this story to the big screen. "Nobody really wanted to talk about it or get behind it. Agencies don't want to get behind it because they don't make any money. So, therefore, you're really on your own."
After countless pitches to studios and twelve years of basically hearing "thanks but no thanks," Duvall realized that the only way his dream project was going to happen was by coughing up the funding himself. "I put it on the back burner hoping it wouldn't happen because I was afraid of it. But then I knew I had to do it because it was something I was committed to. Each year I would say 'it's now or never.' And then last spring it was really now or never and my CPA said I think you have enough money to back this. My CPA is such a cautious guy and he greenlit the movie. Not my agency, not any studio, he did."
Any trepidation Duvall had about taking on the project soon dissolved once production started. "Once we started, all those fears kind of melted away. We had seven weeks. I wanted twelve to do it but we had seven weeks. We finished early. Three of those weeks were five day work weeks. We finished everyday around five or six. I never felt tired. It was a very harmonious experience. We edited at my farm in Virginia."
The risky venture seems to have paid off. He has thus far won Best Actor honors from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics, and his work, as well as the film itself, is being universally hailed, some of whom have called this his finest performance to date. Quite a compliment considering his unforgettable work in "The Godfather I & II," "The Great Santini" and "Tender Mercies," for which he won an Oscar.
Speaking of Oscars, nomination announcements are right around the corner and speculation is strong that Duvall may be a contender for the gold this year. "It would be nice," admits Duvall, but he remains reticent nonetheless and cites his Emmy nomination for the 1989 television miniseries "Lonesome Dove" as an example of his expectations being let down. "If I ever got an award, it should have been for that. So you never can tell. I've seen people win awards for terrific work. I've seen them win awards and you say, how did they win that?"
While Duvall will remain first and foremost an actor, or "hired hand" as he calls it, he definitely wants to direct more in the future, even if it takes another 12 years to kick start his next project. "I don't think it will take as long this time. Even if I have to put up my own money again."
Among the directors whose work Duvall admires are Ulu Grosbard (who directed him in "True Confessions"), British helmer Kenneth Loach ("Ladybird, Ladybird"), Nikita Mikhalkov ("Close to Eden") Emir Kusturica ("Underground") and Lasse Halstrom (who directed him in the Julia Roberts vehicle "Something to Talk About") who Duvall particularly hails, "You name me one director in the history of Hollywood that ever did a film with the sensitivity and the beauty of "My Life as a Dog." Beautiful film. I never saw a film out of this country like that. He really goes for behavior."
Duvall is also praiseworthy of vets Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman, the latter of whom directed him in PolyGram's current release "The Gingerbread Man." "He's great to work with. I hadn't worked with him in years." So how was it different working with Altman this time around as compared to their collaboration on "M*A*S*H" back in 1970? "Not a lot different. We're all getting older and Bob's gotten heavier and he has weak knees and he walks slower, but it's still the same nice aura on the set. He's an interesting guy. It's fun working with Altman."
While Coppola is one director Duvall holds in high regard, he nonetheless opted not to return for the third installment of "The Godfather" in 1990. "The only reason, I bet my bottom dollar, that they were doing that movie was for money. Why wait fifteen years? I said look, if you're going to pay Pacino twice what you pay me that's OK, but don't offer me three times less than what you're going to pay him. So we said forget it."
Duvall will also be seen later this year in "Deep Impact" about a comet that's headed towards the earth, and "A Civil Action," which pairs him with his "Phenomenon" costar John Travolta. In the meantime, directing-wise, he has a couple of coals in the fire which he is optimistic about, "I always felt like a late bloomer. My career is better now than ever."
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The Sacramento Bee, February 1, 1998
Movies and Ministers
As writer, director and star, Robert Duvall puts all of himself into "The Apostle"
By Dixie Reid
SAN FRANCISCO -- Robert Duvall's rough-hewn believability in "Lonesome Dove" made a Western icon of the character Gus McCrae. And before that, he was convincing as the Texas-born country singer Mac Sledge in "Tender Mercies," a role that won him an Oscar. As genuinely cowboy as he acts, Duvall himself does not favor pointy-toed boots.
"Nope," he said, poking out feet clad in soft leather dress boots. "And I prefer to ride jumping horses, although I don't do that anymore because I got hurt. My girlfriend bought me a buggy; I drive a surrey now." He laughed, wagging his hands up and down as if holding the reins.
These and other revelations came out of an interview with Duvall, who was in San Francisco the other day to promote his movie, "The Apostle." He is its executive producer, director, writer and star. "The Apostle" opens Friday in Sacramento.
Duvall spent the afternoon talking with one reporter after another in a boutique hotel before heading out for TV appearances. It must've been exhausting, but he was as gracious and relaxed as if hosting folks on his own front porch.
He is 67 years old now, a leading man with character actor looks. He was never conventionally handsome, and now his face is soft and lined. He isn't very tall and doesn't have much hair. But his eyes glisten with laughter and mischief, and he is charming, animated and absolutely engaging.
In "The Apostle," he plays an evangelical preacher from Fort Worth, Texas, named E.F. "Sonny" Dewey, whose long-suffering wife (Farrah Fawcett) has tired of his womanizing and manages to wrest away control of Sonny's church. Meanwhile, she's carrying on with the church's youth minister. So Sonny, drunk and jealous, one day confronts the pair at his childrens' Little League game and whacks the youth minister in the head with a baseball bat.
Realizing he's finally gone too far, Sonny flees Fort Worth for Louisiana's bayou country, where he renames himself the Apostle E.F. and establishes a ministry in a predominantly African American community. He preaches fire and brimstone in his One-Way Road to Heaven Holiness Temple, and waits for the past to catch up with him. "The Apostle" is a story of redemption. Sonny is a better person by the story's end.
Duvall wrote the script 13 years ago, based on something he'd seen a dozen years earlier.
"I was doing an Off-Broadway play, and I was playing a guy from Hughes, Ark., so I wanted to see if there was really a Hughes," Duvall said. "There wasn't much to do there, so I went to this little church. It kind of stuck in my mind."
He never forgot the female minister preaching in cadence about butter beans and God, and a parishioner playing guitar and singing hymns.
"They had a joyful air of worshipping," Duvall said. "I thought I would really like to play one of these types sometime, because I've never really seen that before."
Duvall wanted to tell a different story of evangelicals than Hollywood had done in such films as "Elmer Gantry" or "A Face in the Crowd" -- both of which dealt with hypocrisy and corruption. He leaned on his elbows, squinting his blue eyes in that Robert Duvall way and said, "The little I had seen was like a cycle of re-educating the public to the same thing: the guy being a shyster. It was all caricatures. That didn't interest me a bit.
"I wanted a guy who is, for better or for worse, a complete human being, who always believes he's called to do something good. So he's not a bad guy. He's a good guy, with failings, like anyone," Duvall said.
Even though friends such as screenwriter Horton Foote ("Tender Mercies" and "To Kill a Mockingbird," which was Duvall's first film) gave the script their blessing, Duvall found no one willing to pony up $5 million to make the movie. He finally financed it himself.
Most of the filming was done in Lafayette, La., with an eclectic cast of actors and non-actors. Duvall cast real fundamentalist preachers and churchgoers to play themselves. Country singer June Carter Cash, who's married to Duvall's friend Johnny Cash, plays his mother, complete with liver spots.
Duvall laughed. "She's maybe a year older than me."
Billy Bob Thornton, of "Sling Blade" fame, has a small role as The Troublemaker. Sonny's friend, Joe, is played by Billy Joe Shaver, a Texas-born singer-songwrit who's performed at the Palms Playhouse in Davis.
"Billy Joe!" Duvall shouted. "Nobody knows him. I don't know what made me think of him. I had met Billy Joe once, and we sent him a script and he sent a tape back. It was so real, I couldn't believe it. After the second day (of shooting), he said, 'Hell, I've got this licked.' When June Carter Cash dies, he's sitting there, and he's got that sadness in him. He's wonderful."
Rick Dial, in real life an Arkansas furniture dealer, plays the owner of Boutte Bayou's radio station. He allows Sonny to preach live on the air, in exchange for Sonny's working at his automotive garage.
Duvall leaned back in his chair and howled. "We had to work around Rick's schedule, because he was going back and forth to sell furniture when we were filming. He was so good. I said, 'Rick, gosh, when they take me away at the end, your skin turns another color of grief. How do you do it?' Rick says, 'Hell.' I tried to boil it down to where everybody was just themselves."
Duvall wanted the movie to feel real, like a documentary with a soul. So he scheduled very little rehearsal time.
"I told (the cast), 'We don't have to get anywhere. Let's treat this like a line rehearsal. Nothing's precious. Make it off-handed.' We tried to reach for a common denominator of really good, pure behavior.
"The one-legged bayou man," Duvall said, "he doesn't know anything about movies. He's just a preacher out of Dallas, and I made him an actor. He has such an innate sweetness, such a goodness about him. And the blind preacher in the beginning of the movie, he fasted for 24 hours before he came and preached the opening credits. Yeah. I found him way down in the country somewhere in Louisiana."
Duvall got a performance he didn't expect from actor Walter Goggins, who plays the auto mechanic who befriends the Apostle E.F.
"He'd gotten saved in a church in Georgia when he was a kid," Duvall said, "and the preacher went bad or the church broke apart and he got disillusioned with religion. And at the end of the movie, when he (Sam) got saved, it was like (Goggins) got re-saved on film." Duvall shook his head. "He was so emotional from the ground up. He was great."
And Duvall's portrayal is as good as anything he's done. Fans can add it to a long list of memorable performances: Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird"; Frank Burns in Robert Altman's original "M*A*S*H"; a Mafia lawyer in "The Godfather" (for which he received an Oscar nomination) and "The Godfather, Part II"; and the crazed colonel in "Apocalypse Now" who loved "the smell of napalm in the morning." That role also earned him an Academy Award nomination.
Duvall was also nominated for an Oscar for "The Great Santini," in which he played a macho Marine fighter pilot, and he received an Emmy nomination for "Lonesome Dove," the Western epic based on Larry McMurtry's novel. Both Duvall and "The Apostle" got rave reviews when the movie premiered at last summer's Toronto Film Festival, and now there's talk of Academy Award nominations.
"Oh, it would be great if any of that happens," he said, "but after 'Lonesome Dove' got nothing, who knows." He shrugged.
Duvall was born in San Diego in 1931, into a military family that finally settled in Annapolis, Md., when he was 10. He went to college in Illinois and, after two years in the Army, enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. He shared an apartment with two other unknown actors, Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman. Duvall now lives on a 200-acre Virginia farm, a place he says is as pretty as any he's seen.
In 1992, he created Butcher Run Films so that he could become more involved in movie development and production. The company's first co-production was 1996's "A Family Thing," written by Billy Bob Thornton and starring Duvall and James Earl Jones as long-lost half-brothers. Now, Duvall is looking for someone to direct a movie about country singer Merle Haggard.
"He's a character," Duvall said. "He's like a little hillbilly leprechaun. One time they gave me one of those things to fill out for George magazine and where it said, 'If you were president, who would be your poet?' I wrote down, 'Merle Haggard.' "
Duvall also is working with John Travolta (they made "Phenomenon" together in Auburn in 1996) on a movie based on Jonathan Harr's nonfiction book, "A Civil Action." He has a writer working on a script about an over-the-hill Scottish soccer coach, whom he will play. And he's written a script about the tango, which he will dance.
"I love to dance tango," he said. "I know San Francisco is a big tango city."
Asked if any divine revelations came to him after making "The Apostle," Duvall closed his eyes and didn't speak for a few seconds.
"I'm not sure I can put it into words. Yeah, I think so," he said. "I want people to see it and maybe it'll bless some people and touch 'em. We all have our individual journeys from the cradle to the grave, and maybe one of my best contributions will be this film.
"I think an underlying theme to the movie is that we do worry about what's next when this life is over," he said. "Either through curiosity or love or fear, we face that. Sonny was somewhat preoccupied with that, and maybe I am too. Maybe it'll be a gentler journey now. I don't know."
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The Washington Times, January 30, 1998
Different type of mission for Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall resides on a farm in Northern Virginia between Warrenton and The Plains. But New York City was his base of operations for marathon promotional duty earlier in the week on behalf of his new movie, "The Apostle," which begins an exclusive Washington-area engagement Jan. 30 at the Cineplex Odeon Dupont Circle in Washington.
A conspicuously personal production, "The Apostle" was written and directed by Mr. Duvall. He also plays the troubled, salvation-seeking protagonist, a fugitive evangelist named Euliss "Sonny" Dewey or, while on the run from disgrace and murder charges in Texas, "The Apostle E.F."
This handle reaffirms his calling while providing temporary concealment in a small Louisiana community where Dewey pursues grass-roots redemption by organizing a new congregation with the blessing of a retired black minister, admirably embodied by John Beasley.
The film opened exclusively in Los Angeles before the end of 1997 to qualify for Academy Awards consideration. That strategy led to a strong showing by Mr. Duvall within the critics' associations. He was named best actor of 1997 by the Los Angeles Film Critics and then the National Society of Film Critics, whose membership had access to advance videotape copies of "The Apostle."
He received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor in "The Godfather" in 1972 and for his role in "Apocalypse Now" in 1979, plus a 1980 bid as best actor in "The Great Santini," all anticipating his Academy Award-winning performance in "Tender Mercies" in 1983.
Though overlooked in the recent Golden Globes competition, Mr. Duvall presumably remains an Oscar contender. An Oscar-winning regional sleeper of 1996, "Sling Blade," ought to encourage Mr. Duvall. He played a small role in that film for writer-director-actor Billy Bob Thornton, an Arkansas native who began putting his home region on the cinematic map a few years ago in "One False Move."
Mr. Duvall and Mr. Thornton also were associated on "The Family Thing," another 1996 release, co-written by the latter and co-produced by the former, who played a leading role. Mr. Thornton has a minor role in "The Apostle," as a surly racist who gets humbled by Mr. Duvall's character.
Lest we forget, Mr. Thornton is on friendly terms with President Clinton. So it wasn't too surprising when "The Apostle" had a special White House showing last weekend. "A very nice affair," Mr. Duvall testifies during a telephone conversation. He confirms that the president was in attendance and implies that he might have been a useful consultant for "The Apostle" if unencumbered by burdens of state.
"Mr. Clinton knows a lot about churches in Arkansas," the actor explains, "and we chatted about that a little at this gathering. The whole idea grew out of a trip I made to Arkansas back in 1983 or 1984. The theatricality of certain Pentecostal ministers was what first captured my interest."
Shot for the most part in Lafayette, La., "The Apostle" was budgeted at $3.5 million and came in at $5 million. "They fooled me," Mr. Duvall comments.
"I fell for the myth that Louisiana was a right-to-work state. It didn't seem to be where our movie was concerned. It's all right now. We got the investment back when October Films [an independent distribution company acquired by Universal recently as its art-film auxiliary] bought the movie, but I had some anxious days. The most difficult aspect of this kind of filmmaking is getting it off the ground. You can't afford too many expensive shocks."
Mr. Duvall's directing aspirations have played second fiddle to an enviably distinctive and sustained career as a character actor. Now 67, he made a memorable film debut 35 years ago as the ominously protective Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Scarcely a year has passed in which his presence has failed to count.
American movies of the past four decades have been considerably enhanced by Duvall impersonations, from such well-remembered titles as "True Grit," "M*A*S*H," the "Godfather" epics, "Apocalypse Now" and "The Natural" to such relatively obscure or underrated ones as "True Confessions," "The Paper," "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway" and "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution." (He was an adroit Dr. Watson to Nicol Williamson's Sherlock Holmes.)
Mr. Duvall has principal roles in two 1998 major releases: the courtroom melodrama "Civil Action," which stars John Travolta, and the science-fiction spectacle "Deep Impact," which pits several co-stars against an Earth-bound meteor. It will be racing "Armageddon" to the screen with more or less the same pretext.
"It should be quite a showdown," Mr. Duvall speculates. "I guess both movies have teams of astronauts going after those big rocks. I think we get in our licks first."
Mr. Duvall edged toward film direction 20 years ago with a documentary feature about a rodeo family, "We're Not the Jet Set." In 1983, his Oscar-winning year, he also directed a semidocumentary fictional feature, "Angelo, My Love," set among an unsavory Gypsy clan in New York City.
"The Apostle" is a tour-de-force acting showcase for Mr. Duvall in many respects, especially when the tarnished preacher is in front of a microphone or a receptive congregation. Nevertheless, it also demands more directing skill from the star. Mr. Duvall's cast includes such fellow pros as Miranda Richardson, Mr. Thornton, Mr. Beasley and Farrah Fawcett (in a small role as Dewey's estranged wife) intermingled with nonpros recruited in Louisiana and such semipros as Mr. Thornton's hometown pal Rick Dial, a cheerful presence in both "Sling Blade" and "The Apostle."
Mr. Duvall acknowledges, "I'd like to move a little more systematically toward direction. I guess I couldn't move much slower. But it's also hard to resist good roles -- and time-consuming to do one after the other if things are going well and you're still in demand. Actors are always afraid that next job might not turn up. To make something like 'The Apostle' practical, I kind of have to work for token pay, so you need to be cautious and thrifty to make that possible."
Mr. Duvall was disappointed by the tepid response to "The Family Thing," an interracial domestic comedy-tear-jerker. He thought it would have more appeal for a family public. It didn't perform nearly as well as the British import "Secrets & Lies," which also hinged on a revelation about interracial kinship.
"People tell you they can't find anything wholesome or inspiring at the movies," Mr. Duvall observes, "but when the crunch comes, they go for violence far more often. We took a big bath on it. Not many people wanted to see it."
Born in San Diego, Mr. Duvall is the son of a career naval officer, the late William Howard Duvall, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served in both the Atlantic and Pacific in World War II. The family lived in Annapolis from the late 1930s through the war years.
Mr. Duvall didn't catch the acting bug until he was in college, majoring in history and government at "tiny" Principia College in Elash, Ill. He switched his major to drama, served two years in the Army after graduation and then made a concerted bid for an acting career in New York. He studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and roomed for a time with two other auspicious beginners, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman. A first marriage during the formative years of his career produced two daughters but ended in divorce. Mr. Duvall remarried in 1992.
One of the curious aspects of "Apostle" Dewey is that he endeavors to atone for his gravest sins, especially an assault that proves fatal, without directly confronting the Satan that lurks inside him. He performs a self-baptism and then works diligently to create a new ministry and devote himself to benevolent and pious deeds. Still, there's always an ominous swagger and self-righteous threat shadowing his need for redemption.
Mr. Duvall feels more protective about the character than spectators may. "I don't think he's half as evil as King David," the actor argues, reaching back into biblical antiquity for a flattering comparison. "There's someone who deliberately arranges a death in order to satisfy his lust. My guy acts on impulse when he's brutal, but he would never do anything like that. His repentance is absolutely genuine. People tend to patronize someone at his social level. He doesn't get as much credit as the big guys, because he stumbles and falls in this anonymous, hick-town way, then tries to make amends in the same humble terms. The guy's a good guy. He errs, and he'll have to pay a heavy price, but he's not a bad guy at all."
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The Boston Phoenix, January 29, 1998
The Word of Bob
While in Boston last fall playing a ruthless lawyer battling John Travolta in the locally shot Class Action, Robert Duvall found time to chat about The Apostle, a film that he wrote and directed and in which he plays a member of another maligned profession -- pentecostal preachers.
"From the days of Gone with the Wind they've gotten a caricature treatment from mainstream entertainment," says Duvall of the intolerant, repressed, hypocritical, corrupt image these men and women of God have taken on from the media and movies. "The only time I ever saw it done right was a cameo played by Ned Beatty in Wise Blood. True, some of these guys are a bit too vocal about being judgmental and it'll come back to haunt them. Like that guy Jimmy Swaggart -- I mean, come on. But I think they all basically want to do good. Sometimes the ones that get on television are seduced by nouveau riche-ness and everything goes out the window. But when you get in the rank and file with these people, black and white both, there are some wonderful people."
It was in the rank-and-file of fundamentalism that Duvall first was inspired to make The Apostle.
"Way back I was doing an Off Broadway play and I played a guy from Arkansas, so I thought I'd just stop off in that area, just to see what it was like. I bumped into a bunch of roadworkers from northern Louisiana and I went to one of their little churches round the corner. It was my first visit; I'd never seen that on television or on a movie or anything, these kind of guys, these preachers. I figured it would be interesting to play one someday, so I put it in the back of my mind."
Way back, apparently. It would be more than a dozen years before Duvall invested $5 million of his own money to make the film. This was money well spent: the film, and in particular Duvall's acting, has been critically hailed; he's been voted best actor by the National and Boston Societies of Film Critics and is a dark horse for an Oscar nomination. Part of the electricity of his performance is in his preaching scenes -- he indeed seems to be channeling the Spirit.
"The character could be a mechanic, he could be any guy, his profession is secondary," Duvall demurs. "But the fact that it's this profession, it makes it different, so you have to do a lot of homework. So it is a different experience. But I think that the overall acting is about the same. After a couple of takes you know when it's right, the director knows when it's right, and you're kind of on the same wavelength.
"On the other hand, though, I was in a church in Harlem once where we went to six services in one morning, and I sat up there in the chorus with members of the Metropolitan Opera. They sang one of their songs and during the course of that singing I really had quite an emotional experience. It could have been interpreted as a complete thing if I had wanted to, if I had gone that way. But I didn't; I'm not of that persuasion."
Moving from the sacred to the profane, second-time director Duvall (his first film was Angelo, My Love, in 1983) was bemused to hear that sometime actor Quentin Tarantino would be reprising Duvall's old stage role of the killer in Wait Until Dark (the show gets a pre-Broadway run at the Shubert Theatre next month).
"Is he an actor, too? He's a talented guy. And he might be good in that part. I did it on Broadway, but I did it so long ago. He'd probably be better at it now. He won't have to wear a mask; he's pretty scary as it is."
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Time, January 26, 1998
Divine Inspiration
Robert Duvall's The Apostle tops a dynamic career. God--and Oscar--may be on his side
By RICHARD CORLISS
He seems to live in the skin of characters whose skin you might not even want to touch. His trick is to find the surprising private clue: that, say, Adolf Eichmann, whom he played in a TV movie, "loved his kids, doted on them. That gave me a starting point." Or that Stalin(an Emmy-winning HBO turn) could force himself to talk sympathetically to his daughter--"I felt that was as good a work as I've done." So to get inside America's greatest underrated actor, we should look for that secret quirk, that strange but true passion...
Robert Duvall loves to tango!
Books on the tango decorate the living room coffee table on his 200-acre Virginia farm. Tango records are scattered about. A favorite partner in this dance fever is his dark-haired, thirtyish live-in mate, Luciana Pedraza, who hails from an upper-class Argentine family. The news has to flummox moviegoers who'd have guessed that the only music the 67-year-old actor could move to would be a Sousa march.
A rear admiral's son who grew up on Navy bases around the country, Duvall is best known for playing men with a military bearing about them, a sense of history and tightly coiled power. Think of Stalin and Eichmann, but also Eisenhower (twice), Jesse James, Joseph Pulitzer, Holmes' Dr. Watson. He doesn't just embrace their contradictions; he Heimlichs them to compelling life. The men may be good or bad or (Duvall's favorite) both; he will inhabit them forcefully and without editorializing. His credo of acting is his credo of life: "Don't judge too quickly. Don't patronize. Don't make statements. Don't set people aside. Give them their due."
Since his 1962 debut as Boo Radley, the monster and savior of two Alabama children in To Kill a Mockingbird, Duvall has given more than their due to some indelible movie creatures. The names Frank Burns (MASH), Tom Hagen (The Godfather), Lieut. Colonel Kilgore (Apocalypse Now), Bull Meechum (The Great Santini), Mac Sledge (Tender Mercies) and Gus McCrae (Lonesome Dove) summon sharp, overlapping impressions. The odor of anachronism hangs on most of these characters; they are uneasy with and suspicious of the modern world. While everyone else has gone slack and disorderly, they mulishly hew to an old or private code they dare not question. They alone remain semper fi.
To this gallery, add two miscreants from films opening this month: The Gingerbread Man's Dixon Doss, a wily Georgia eccentric who is sort of Boo Radley grown old and gone wrong; and, more important, E.F. ("Sonny") Dewey. E.F. is the Texas preacher in The Apostle, a complex, cantankerous drama that Duvall wrote, directed, stars in and--after all the studios turned down the $5 million project--paid for. This renegade Pentecostalist has the spiel and showmanship to fill a tent or a temple; when E.F. talks, people listen. "I'm a genu-wine, Holy Ghost, Jesus-filled preachin' machine this mornin'!" He can woo a dying man to the Lord, but he can't heed his own gospel. He menaces his frazzled wife (Farrah Fawcett) and clubs a rival with a baseball bat; when the man falls into a coma, E.F. shows no regret or remorse. He flies away, landing in Louisiana and hoping to build another church. Jesus' retailer needs a new store.
Is E.F. a madman? A hypocrite? A messed-up guy chained to his one gift? In his brave, alert performance, Duvall typically doesn't try to reconcile, or even explain, the discrepancy between E.F.'s life-defining faith and his death-defying sociopathy. He leaves the judging to audiences. His job, which he does better than anyone else in movies, is to watch the world with those icy blue eyes.
"It's the main work he does as an actor," says Billy Bob Thornton, whose Sling Blade was partly inspired by Boo Radley, and who plays a pivotal cameo in The Apostle. "He observes characters." Screenwriter Horton Foote (Mockingbird, Tender Mercies), who recommended that Duvall play Boo Radley, praises his "eye and ear for specifics of character. He has a feel for the Southern idiom, but he brings variations to it. For Tender Mercies he tape-recorded people, then studied the accent till he got it right."
Duvall is an ethnographer at heart, pounding the back roads, keeping his eyes open, taking notes. "I don't watch other movies to study acting," he says. "I go to documentaries. And I learn from people. There are things you pick up--one mannerism or gesture, one little subtle thing." Before making Lonesome Dove he was visiting the Texas home of Slingin' Sammy Baugh, quarterback for the '40s Washington Redskins. "He had a way of pointing"--Duvall cocks a finger and throws his hand in the air--"and a particular way of talking. I put that into the character." Thus did an old football star become a driven cattle driver.
The Apostle required 35 years of watching and waiting. In 1962, during rehearsals for an off-Broadway show in which he was to play a man from Hughes, Ark., Duvall broke up a transcontinental trip to stop in Hughes. "I got off the Trailways bus," he recollects, "and wandered into this little church. There was a lively preacher; the congregation was stomping and moving and feeling the spirit. I said I'd like to play one of these guys one day." When he asked Foote to do the screenplay, the author encouraged the actor to try it himself. In 1984 Duvall began writing. "I pieced it together from stuff that I had found out about this kind of life, just traveling around and absorbing like I do."
Sonny is a composite of preachers from rural Texas, Virginia and Tennessee. "I listened to the way they whoop," he says, "then hold the note and cut it with a cadence." If you expect a Jimmy Swaggart-style spellbinder, who coaxes near operatic melodrama from his rich baritone, E.F. will disappoint you. The narrow range of Duvall's voice can convey muscle and danger; the music is lacking. His whoop is a thing of will, not an expression of soulful exuberance. For that, listen to the real preachers Duvall hired for small roles. Black or white, they'll have you lining up to be baptized in the nearest creek or bayou.
On his farm, Duvall is a gentleman farmer who has just finished renovating a barn into a posh party space, with a bar, a pool table and, of course, a dance floor. He can afford it. October Films paid $6 million for U.S. rights to The Apostle. He also earns a nice paycheck on gigs like this year's Deep Impact (sci-fi with Morgan Freeman) and A Civil Action (courtrooms with John Travolta). That leaves something in the bank for his own projects; he and Thornton are planning a Merle Haggard biopic. "The best of it all," he says, "is I'm a late bloomer. I get better as I get older; I learn more and have a lot to draw from. I'm going to try to maybe direct some things and produce some others. But if my film company was suddenly destroyed--which won't happen--I have a good career as a hired hand."
And in the unlikely event that his film career dries up, Duvall could try Broadway. We hear they're auditioning understudies for Forever Tango.
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San Fransisco Chronicle, Jan. 25, 1998
Duvall Relied On Faith To Create 'The Apostle'
Actor spent his own money to make film about preacher
Ruthe Stein, Chronicle Staff Writer
For 12 years, Robert Duvall tried to get money out of Hollywood to make a movie about a Pentecostal preacher who presents himself as an apostle. Duvall best known for his roles in "Lonesome Dove," "The Great Santini" and "Tender Mercies" (for which he won a 1983 Oscar) -- wrote the script for "The Apostle," depicting the title character as a true believer who brings joy to his congregants Duvall thinks this may be one reason he met with such resistance. The film industry traditionally has shied away from movies about the evangelical movement; the few that have come out, such as "Elmer Gantry," "tend to patronize the preaching world and caricature preachers," he says.
As time passed and financing seemed less and less likely, Duvall, who was brought up Protestant and says he "didn't stop believing" after he stopped attending church, had a few words with a bigger power than the head of a studio.
"I didn't say, 'God, please do this.' The way I believe in praying is if something is meant to be, there will be a disposal of events that will make it happen," Duvall says between sips of water in his hotel room. In a stylish brown leather jacket, his hair preternaturally dark, he looks younger than his 67 years.
GUIDED BY HIGHER INTELLIGENCE
"It's not like you press a button. You have to follow a system and do intelligent things. But maybe there is a higher intelligence above us all that guides us without our saying, 'Oh, please do this or do that.' "
Secular guidance came from his accountant. Going against the firm belief in Hollywood that filmmakers should never use their own money, Duvall decided to bankroll "The Apostle" himself. With all the acting jobs coming his way in recent years -- "more than at any time in my life" -- his accountant told him he could afford the $5 million it would take to make the film. "This could be the only movie ever green-lit by an accountant," Duvall says, laughing.
Duvall ended up producing, writing, directing and starring in "The Apostle." It also stars Farrah Fawcett, Miranda Richardson and Billy Bob Thornton. The positive response to the film, which opens Friday, has left Duvall feeling "vindicated that at least I did what I wanted to do and that I didn't need anybody out here."
Duvall was named best actor by the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics and is being mentioned as an Oscar nominee in several categories. "I'd like to see it nominated in the best-movie category," he says.
The idea for the film goes back 36 years to the time right before Duvall's film debut in "To Kill a Mockingbird" (as the reclusive neighbor who protects Gregory Peck's children). Researching a stage role, Duvall visited a small town in Arkansas where his character was supposed to live.
There was nothing in town except a small Pentecostal church. "So I went there one night and watched this service. I'd never seen anything like it," Duvall recalls. "It had a lady preacher and then a guy got up with a guitar and preached and sang. And I said, 'Boy, I want to do something with this someday.' "
Duvall thought he finally was going to get to play a grassroots preacher in a movie called "The Kingdom," which Sidney Lumet was to direct in the early '80s. Over nine months, Duvall went to Texas whenever he could to hang out with preachers and "try to get their kind of cadence."
When "The Kingdom" got scuttled, this material went into "The Apostle," along with everything else Duvall knows about the evangelical movement. An early scene where his character, Sonny, reads a passage about blood from Ezekiel to car-crash victims comes from a female preacher Duvall heard about years ago.
"She would quote that passage to people in car wrecks. I put that scene up front because I wanted to show from the start that Sonny is a good guy. He believes in what he believes," Duvall says.
Sonny's sermon at the end was taken from a 96-year-old preacher Duvall admires. "He has a wonderful preacher style. I picked up his motif in the final sermon when Sonny goes, 'I've got my own little airplane, and I'm going to take off. But I'm not going to Dallas-Fort Worth. I'm going to heaven,' " Duvall says in a preacher's lilting rhythm.
LIMITED WRITING EXPERIENCE
Although he wrote his own songs for "Tender Mercies," Duvall had limited experience with dialogue. However, "The Apostle" script "came easy to me because it was an extension of myself as an actor."
He also incorporated things about himself into Sonny, whose passions drive him to commit an act of violence for which he seeks redemption. "I have a passion for things that make me grab onto life," he says.
Duvall is so low-key that this side of him isn't immediately apparent. But it's there between the lines of his life story. He's been divorced three times, the last time from a dance instructor he met while taking tango lessons.
He now shares his Virginia home with Lucianna Pedrazza, an Argentine businesswoman he met on the street in Buenos Aires while making a TV movie there.
"I invited her the next day to tango. I showed her a tango step. We did a dip, and we dipped into great dangerous territory," he says.
A serious student of the tango, Duvall plans to write a movie about the dance. The two other films he has directed also have been on subjects that intrigue him. His 1977 documentary, "We're Not the Jet Set," was about a rodeo family; his first feature, "Angelo, My Love," made in 1983, was about New York Gypsies.
Even with this experience directing, before stepping behind the camera on "The Apostle" Duvall extracted a promise from director Ulu Grosbard, an old friend, to take over if it became overwhelming. A week into filming, Duvall knew that wouldn't be necessary.
When he was at a loss to know how to direct one of the church scenes, "I would say, 'Give me an amen,' and that would give me a few minutes to collect my thoughts. That's the way those preachers do it -- they always look for that cadence to see what's next."
To add authenticity, he cast members of congregations. "People ask me how I directed the little boys in the movie to jump up and down," Duvall says. "I didn't have to direct them. They were born into those churches, and they know what to do at any given moment."
As an actor, Duvall has sometimes thought directors get in the way with their instructions. So he kept things on his set "offhand," telling the cast to "treat it like we're just rehearsing and we don't have to get anywhere."
When Fawcett, who plays Sonny's unfaithful wife, wanted to know more about her character, "I said, 'Let's not even talk about it. We'll just do it,' " Duvall recalls.
He hired her in part because he was impressed by her performance in "The Burning Bed." Also, "I sensed she had had domestic problems, that she knows about this kind of thing --breakups and possible violence," he adds.
Fawcett seemed fragile when she accompanied Duvall to the Toronto International Film Festival last September (not long after her dazed appearance on David Letterman). "It's an ordeal for her to get anywhere," Duvall acknowledges. "People say she spends 90 percent of her time in the bathroom. But she wasn't a problem. Not at all."
"The Apostle" picked up a distributor, October Films, during the Toronto festival. Suddenly Duvall, who had worked on the film with a small group of people, had outsiders looking over his shoulder. October Films brought in veteran film editor Walter Murch ("The English Patient," "Apocalypse Now") to cut the film, which originally ran 2 1/2 hours.
"That made me nervous at first because nobody discussed with me what they really wanted," Duvall says. "But what people really want is closer to two hours so they can get more of a turnover and get more money."
Some of the trims were restored at Duvall's insistence. For instance, he wanted to keep a scene in which two female church members get into an argument. "I wanted to show that not everything is utopian."
"The Apostle" now runs two hours and 14 minutes. "The tempo is a little different, but it didn't hurt things," Duvall says. And he is delighted with one addition: Lyle Lovett singing during the final credits.
The ministers he's heard from have liked the movie. But the best compliment came from Francis Ford Coppola, who directed Duvall in the first two "Godfather" movies.
"We had lunch the other day, and at one point Francis leans over and says, 'How do you direct actors?' " Duvall recalls. "When he said that I went, 'Oh, oh, that's good.'"
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Newsweek, September 18, 1972
Man of Many Faces
"I don't know your name, but you sure were good in 'The Godfather'," said the heavy-set conventioneer when he recognized the familiar screen figure lounging across from him, dressed in tennis whites, in the lobby of Key Biscayne's Sonesta Beach Hotel. "And by the way," the man added in a joking reference to the film's most macabre scene, "I've got a horse I need to get rid of...think you can help?" Robert Duvall, who played the mafia lawyer Tom Hagen in "The Godfather," smiled his thanks as the conventioneer headed for the bar, not bothering to ask the actor's name, still thinking of him as the guy who set a horse up to be bumped off. After fifteen years of steady work and superb performances on stage and screen, the gifted, 41-year old character actor with the quietly handsome features and thinning blond hair remains an unknown figure to the majority of American moviegoers.
Duvall's relative anonymity is an ironic reflection of his integrity as a performer. All his roles - the mentally retarded Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird," the toadying bank official in "The Chase," the uptight, hypocritically pious Army doctor in "M*A*S*H," the inarticulate but deeply feeling feeling dirt farmer in "Tomorrow," the crazy Jesse James in "The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid" and of course the cool, brainy consigliere in "The Godfather" -- are typical of the work of the great character actor, the kind of performer who doesn't seem to have his own personality, even his own face, but becomes completely the character he is playing. "I try to bring as much truth to my roles as possible," Duvall told Newsweek's Sunde Smith. "Sometimes, when I'm acting, I have the sense that I'm doing what I do in real life. Like telling someone about a death. I go about telling the other characters as though it were happening. You can't totally divorce your acting self from your real self."
Duvall's real self has made him one of the most sought-after actors in the business, and recently no fewer than four Duvall films were playing New York simultaneously. He is currently finishing work in Florida and Nassau on "The Masters," a jewel-thief caper with Donald Sutherland and Jennifer O' Neill, in which he plays the head of an investigative agency. The film has lurched through some disastrous days - two directors have quit and the leading lady dropped out because of illness - but Duvall has filled his time playing tennis, which is his favorite pastime, along with ornithology. He often conducts guessing games by phone with California friends, flawlessly warbling any number of exotic bird calls.
Audition: But his gift for imitating people preceded his gift for imitating birds. Born the middle child of a rear admiral in San Diego, Duvall found out early that he had a natural gift doing mimicry. "I remember as a kid at a family dinner one guy was eating spaghetti, elbows and all, so I dug in just like him, slurping away. My parents almost killed me." But they didn't. Instead, they did the next best thing - they encouraged him to act. He graduated from Principia College in Illinois with a drama degree and, after a hitch in the army headed for New York, where he did bit parts and auditioned at a restaurant for the role of maitre d'. The restaurant cast him as its dishwasher. Television work led Robert Mulligan to cast him in "To Kill a Mockingbird." During the shooting, Duvall met his attractive, dark-haired wife, Barbara, a former oop-oop-a-doo girl on "The Jackie Gleason Show." The Duvalls now live in an old, fifteen room Dutch Colonial house in upper New York State with Barbara's two teen-age daughters from her first marriage.
Duvall's gift for characterization is a blend of instinct and observation. "I knew this laborer from New York, a second generation Sicilian, and used him as my image of Eddie Carbone in 'A View From the Bridge.' I found a couple of guys in an insurance agency here for my current part. You can't be the guy exactly, but I always find someone to pattern my performance after." For his next picture, "Badge 373," in which he will star with Verna Bloom as an Irish cop who avenges his partner's murder, Duvall invited two policemen to his house. "One was Irish," he says, "and one was Italian. But...if you closed your eyes, you couldn't tell which one was which. I look for the contradictions in my characters and use them to develop the role - like the contradiction in Tom Hagen between his book knowledge and his street knowledge. Once, I built a part by combining all my uncles in Virginia."
Duvall is an independent type, known for his frequent scuffles with directors. "The movie industry is a very caste-conscious business," he says. It's a director's medium in a lot of ways, and I don't try to be a hard guy to work with. But I decide what I'm going to do with a character. You live all your life with yourself and you come in with a stranger, he can't tell you what to do." This attitude comes not from arrogance but dedication. "No one in my family is as possessed as I am in this manical way. Like, when I'm on the tennis court, I have to be a champion...do the absolute best."
But even the super-serious Duvall has his lighter side -- even his silly side. One of the sillier fads among the movie crowd these days is an adolescent delight in "mooning," the display of the posterior, a crazy impulse which no doubt has some deep-rooted atavistic origin. At a recent party in Key Biscayne, Donald Sutherland opened a closet door and there was a barebacked Duvall, bent over, his hands clasping his ankles. Well, what else can you do when nobody remembers your face?
ROBERT DUVALL'S 'VEIN OF TROUBLED LONELINESS'
By SHEILA BENSON (1983)
The superlative "Tender Mercies," which opened Friday at the Fine Arts, provides the other half of a bracket in the proud career of Robert Duvall. Eleven years ago, Duvall made "Tomorrow," directed by Joseph Anthony and adapted from William Faulkner's "Knight's Gambit" by Horton Foote, not coincidentally the screenwriter of "Tender Mercies." A lot of people, Duvall included, think that "Tomorrow" was the actor's best work in his more than 30 films.
About 185 people in the United States saw "Tomorrow," which was spottily released. A hundred of those must have been critics -- never has a performance been so fiercely championed and so little seen by the moviegoing public.
In it, Duvall played Jackson Fentry, a Southern dirt farmer, inarticulate to the point of strangulation. He takes in a frail, pregnant country women (Olga Bellin), who has collapsed on the road by his shack. He nurses her, almost wordlessly, through the last months of her pregnancy, insists that they have a last-minute marriage ceremony (although she is still married to the man who threw her out), then raises her baby son with a fierce and amazing protectiveness after the woman's death in childbirth.
To those who have seen "Tomorrow," the sequence in which the little boy, now about 7, is taken from Fentry forever by the boy's brutish uncles remains one of the most wrenching sequences in film.
What "Tender Mercies" contains, under Australian director Bruce Beresford's fine direction and with Foote's lean, pure screenplay, is Duvall's other best performance. His Mac Sledge is fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jackson Fentry as a work of great simplicity, dignity and insight.
Besides their rural Southern roots, the two characters share another common trait: They are capable of an extraordinary love. Fentry's is for the child, whom he names Jackson 'n' Longstreet, after the two generals his own daddy fought under. He is the child's whole world and the boy is his, and Fentry carries him with him as a baby even while he picks cotton in the fields.
Mac Sledge's love is for the calm, remarkable young Vietnam War widow he marries (Tess Harper in a quiet, hauntingly beautiful debut) and for her little boy (Allan Hubbard, equally remarkable), and for the world of music itself. He has had another passion, alcohol. It ruined his last marriage and almost killed him, and in cutting it out he's also severed any connection with his past life. That included a successful country-singer wife, still embittered by her years with him, and their teen-age daughter, whom he has not been allowed to see since the divorce. But Sledge has also cut himself off from his deepest means of expression, writing and singing his songs.
We see just the place music has in his life as Mac drives to Austin to one of his ex-wife's concerts and sits somberly in the audience, listening to her do a slickly produced, empty version of his love songs. We have already sensed the difference in the two. Dixie (superbly played by Betty Buckley) is the ultimate professional country entertainer. She gives the people a show; costumes; wigs, standard patter and a genuinely fine voice. Fine and just slightly hard. Mac Sledge, you suspect, simply stood there and sang his songs as he felt them.
And Duvall's face in this one short scene is a mirror of all these elements, pride at his songs, disdain for what is happening to them, and ultimately, pain because he believes he has lost his gift -- or destroyed it.
Impacted emotion, the aborted gesture of love, these qualities are further links between Jackson Fentry and Mac Sledge. They may also be qualities we think of as Duvall's own, because he has done them so well and so frequently. What writer David Thomson so perceptively refers to as "a vein of troubled loneliness that testifies to the staring severity of his face" marked many of the roles of Duvall's first 10 years. They were frequently regional parts, and not uncommonly losers or outsiders, beginning with the wordless Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird," or Janice Rule's hapless husband in "The Chase." (To complete the circle begun in their Neighborhood Theater days, Horton Foote was author of both those screenplays.)
It can't be said that "Tender Mercies" expands Duvall's range, but it deepens and reinforces his strengths, which are unique in American films. To call Duvall the American Olivier, which has been done, may be a little grandiloquent unless what is meant is Olivier's (hopeless) desire to disappear entirely inside a wide range of characters. Duvall hasn't the Olivier magnetism, nor the Olivier theatricality, and he has rarely been allowed the full range of roles given Olivier.
For one thing, directors have rarely used Duvall for characters with a wide streaks of humor in their makeup. Drollness, yes; you think here of his Dr. Watson in "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" or the first few moments of the motorcycle cop in "The Rain People," grandstanding to catch Shirley Knight's attention. And mistakenly, few film directors have considered him for roles with much sensuality (except possibly as the outsider in George Lucas' "THX-1138"), a strange omission considering his intensity. "M*A*S*H's" lustful Major Burns was also a religious fanatic and the price this comedy exacted for his sensuality was a straitjacket.
But strength, intelligence, introspection, tight control, a faintly Messianic quality ("Apocalypse Now," "The Great Santini") and , of course, absolute dependability have been Duvall's hallmarks; what Thomson calls his quality as "the perfect shortstop amongst a team of personality pitchers." The most outstanding example of this is his many-layered performance as Tom Hagen, the self-effacing consigliere of "Godfathers I and II," whom Duvall himself had described as "a millionaire gofer."
Now, suddenly, we have another side to Duvall, a rebuttal to his supposedly missing qualities of humor and tenderness. He has directed and written a richly comic, eccentric, affectionate and slightly frightening film, "Angelo, My Love," opening in New York in mid-April.
The film grew from a Duvall habit of vacuuming-up details of character around him. In 1977, at 71st Street and Columbus Avenue, he overheard an impassioned sentence from a lover to his lady. "Patricia, if you don't love me no more, I'm gonna move out to Cicinnati." What caught Duvall was that Angelo, the lover, was a 7-year-old Gypsy boy who probably came up to 20-year-old Patricia's belt-buckle. Nevertheless the macho intensity behind the sentence was bizarrely real.
With that moment as his starting point, Duvall plunged into the world that is forever them vs. us, the world of Gypsies vs. gadjos. He has come back six years later with this devilishly fascinating entertainment. It is close to cinema verite except that Duvall created a plot and a script. But none of the Gypsies could read, so most of the film was a sort of free-form improvisation.
No small part of "Angelo, My Love's" interest is in considering that Angelo, a hot, lying, funny, intuitively perceptive and absolutely amoral little street Adonis with smudgy, soulful eyes, is the polar opposite of every character Duvall has ever played or every conservative value Duvall has ever publicly espoused.
The film is compelling. Where it feels dangerous is watching Duvall lose some of his film maker's objectivity. And that may be because simply being around Angelo has the fascination of an interview with someone from another planet--a seductive, deeply disturbing alien raised in an entirely foreign moral code.(The film is actually Duvall's second as a director. The first was a critically well-received but little-known documentary, "We Are Not the Jet Set" in 1977, about a Nebraska rodeo family.)
There are still not enough demands on Duvall's range. He may indeed be, as another critic has suggested, the best we have working in American films today. If so, we might hope that "Tender Mercies" might make his human and tender side obvious to writers and directors who may not have seen just those qualities in "Tomorrow" 11 years earlier.
Newsweek/April 23, 1984
A Chameleon's Craft
Oscar-winner Robert Duvall is not a movie star; he's an actor.
I love the smell of napalm in the morning...it smells like victory. -Robert Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in "Apocalypse Now."
In Malibu, the morning after the Oscars, there are no chemical scents in the air. But the smell of victory fills the secluded, rented house where Robert Duvall, just awarded a best actor Oscar for his performance as Mac Sledge in "Tender Mercies," is celebrating. His wife, actress Gail Youngs, is fielding phone calls. Outside, several large and hardy Texas pals cavort in the sun; inside, their subdued wives sit with noses buried in magazines. The night before, Duvall couldn't get all his country friends into the post Oscar ball. So he left, reluctantly passing up the food ("I love rack of lamb intensely') and took his very un-Hollywoodish entourage over to Johnny Cash's bungalow to feast on 27 hamburgers.
Country Singer: Duvall's mixed feelings about Hollywood were perfectly evident in his ambivalent acceptance speech; he allowed that the honor of the Oscar for his performance as the recovering alcoholic country singer meant no more to him than the validation he got from real country singers like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. If Hollywood has always stood for glamour and larger-than-life emotions, Duvall stands for the opposite. "Moviemakers talk about a higher level of reality. But I don't think there's anything bigger than life. I mean, life is so rich, I don't think you should tamper with it," he says. Keep it real: that's the Duvall esthetic, and by devoting himself to scrupulous, egoless authenticity he has become the most respected character actor of his generation. He's an actor's actor, who thinks an actor should never appear to be acting on the screen. When he directed "Angelo, My Love," his documentary-style fiction about urban gypsies, he shouted his credo to leading man Steve Tsigonoff: "No frigging acting!"
Duvall will never be a movie star. A star, by definition, is always greater than the sum of his part or parts. His personality spills over the boundary of his role, filling in the cracks with myth. Duvall, in contrast, exorcises his own personality when he plays a part. Is the "real" Robert Duvall the methodical, efficient consiglieri in "The Godfather"? The competitive, macho pilot in "The Great Santini"? The obdurate, loyal cotton farmer with the deep, backwoods drawl in the Faulknerian "Tomorrow"? The tough Catholic cop in "True Confessions"? The rabid war-lover in "Apocalypse Now"? Inward, tight-lipped Mac Sledge? Obviously the wrong question to ask.
It is sheer speculation, but perhaps Duvall, who was born in San Diego in 1931, first learned his chameleon's tricks as the child of a rear admiral, forced to adapt to new roles as the family shunted from base to base. He went to Principia College in Elsah, Ill., then studied acting at Sanford Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse in New York under the GI Bill.
His obvious affinity with Southern rural characters comes, he says, from his roots -- east Texas on his mother's side, Virginia on his father's. "Tender Mercies" didn't get the country out of his system. He's currently looking for financial backers for a movie he's written about a Pentecostal preacher, in which he will also star. "I've done more research for the part than any other." he says. He's about to fly to Nashville to record an album of country and Western songs. He plays a tape of a single he's cut, and the voice is not like Mac Sledge's in "Tender Mercies," but a pure, sweeter country tenor. In the current "Stone Boy," he plays a taciturn Montana farmer and father unable to deal with the accidental shooting of his older son by his younger son. It's a modest, supporting role that he took in order to be part of an ensemble that includes his good friend, Wilford Brimley, his wife, Gail (who is terrific as the bedraggled wife of womanizing Frederic Forrest), and Glenn Close. He thinks his evangelical movie will be "my exit from country themes."
Battle: Duvall is clearly no prima donna with other actors, but woe to the director who does not give him enough space. Back in his early acting days, when he appeared in Boston in "Waiting for Godot" with another novice named Dustin Hoffman, he's said to have threatened the life of director David Wheeler. The Duvall temper exploded on the set of "True Grit" when director Henry Hathaway advised co-actor Glen Campbell to "tense up" when the cameras rolled. Those were fighting words to Duvall. "I ultimately think a director is judged by what he gets from the actors," Duvall says. "The actor's the guy that's gotta be given the room, because it's his face that's going up there. The two worst things a director can say are 'pick up the pace' and 'give me more energy.'" Pleased as he is with "Tender Mercies," Duvall fought a constant battle with director Bruce Beresford, who didn't create the loose, relaxed environment Duvall believes actors require. "He never once said 'What do you think?' to the actors."
Duvall is an avid follower and critic of his colleagues. He is wildly impressed with the Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, the star of "Mephisto." After he saw the movie, his wife reports, "it was the only time I ever saw him intimidated by another actor." He admires Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro and the English actor Frank Finlay, and feels that Sean Penn may be the most vesatile young actor. "Most actors are just waiting for their turn the talk," he complains. "They don't know how to listen." You look into the eyes of some of those British actors and they're just waiting for their cues."
When Dolly Parton hollered out Duvall's name on Oscar night, the crowd at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion let out an appreciative roar. Even the maverick New York actor, suspicious of Hollywood hype, had to admit that "it was a nice feeling, knowing I was the home-crowd favorite." For a character actor who approaches each role with the diligence of an ethnologist on a field trip into the soul, it's hard to say what his gold-plated statuette will mean to Duvall's career. A certain anonymity suits him. Let other actors hog the spotlight. He prefers to travel light, unencumbered by a star's persona, in pursuit of that most paradoxical actor's goal -- a perfect imitation of reality.
People, April 23, 1984
The Consummate character actor takes a giant step up to stardom with his first Oscar-winning performance
"I was never any good at sports when I was a kid, " says Robert Duvall. "Didn't come into my own athletically until I was a grown man. I'm a tennis nut now -- play every chance I get and sometimes, hell, I even win. Nine years ago I placed fifth overall in that Superstars thing they have on television. I really trained for it. Even so, after the 100 yard dash my legs were fluttering like crazy. Then I saw Rafer Johnson lying there, flat on his back. He'd been in my heat. The great Olympic decathlon star."
He cackles and rubs his hands, all energy, glee and fierce competition. A moment later he's seated on the couch in his finely appointed, high-ceilinged apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, strumming a guitar and singing "Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain." The voice is dry, sad, grave, the whiskey-rough drawl of a hollow-eyed human ruin who seems to bear within him all the debris of love and death in rural America. In the background a pair of caged white doves sings a liquid counterpoint. Duvall's wife sits beside him on the couch with real-life tears in her eyes. Tender mercies, indeed.
Duvall is a man of seeming contradictions. Flashes of the characters he has played in 33 films over the past 21 years surface constantly during the conversation. It's a one-man nonstop film festival evoking images of cops and outlaws, fanatics and physicians, a shy Alabama recluse and a macho Marine corps fighter jock. The conversation, quick and eclectic, ranges over subjects as varied as the best way to handle rattlesnakes (for an upcoming role as a Pentecostal preacher), opera (Duvall loves singing arias), Philippine headhunters (he met a few "during my my second tour of Luzon" -- while filming "Apocalypse Now") and fly-fishing for trout on Montana's Smith River, a recent enthusiasm. From time to time he pauses to refuel: fresh tuna salad, ginger ale. "I want my work to be true," he says over and over. "Pure. Not a false note from the start to the finish." It is hard to tell with Duvall if his art is the sum of his life or the other way around. Perhaps even he doesn't know.
For a moment he sits in repose: a lean, balding sandy-haired man of middle years with pale gray-green eyes, a hooked nose and slightly discolored teeth, not particularly large or small(5' 9 3/4", 170 pounds). Rather ordinary. On a big-city street and certainly anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, you'd pass him without a second glance. Yet Robert Selden Duvall is one of the most intense, most versatile actors in the world today, a star of strange brilliance.
The star was born 53 years ago in San Diego, California, but grew up on the East Coast. "Mainly Annapolis," he says. "I was a Navy brat. My father started at the Academy when he was 16, made captain at 39 and retired as a rear admiral. William H. Duvall." He pronounces it doo-VAWL, speaking fast, almost excitedly -- a sharp contrast with his often taciturn screen presence -- and with just a taste of the Tidewater in his accent. "'Willy' is what we called him. Didn't see much of him during World War II -- he had a destroyer command in the Pacific. He died a month ago."
Annapolis was an exciting place for a boy during the war years. Duvall saw young would-be naval officers come and go, some never to return. He grew up in a brotherhood of opera buffs. His brother William teaches music at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and when he, Bob and their younger brother John (who today serves as Duvall's attorney) get together, they inevitably end up singing.
When their father did manage to get home from time to time, the reunions were intense. Duvall remembers going hunting with him once. "I killed a quail," he says softly. "I remember it got up and winged out, fat and brown and very fast, and I swung with it like my dad taught me and -- pow! -- it folded and fell in a puff of feathers. Later I shot a squirrel -- in the tail --." He shakes his head ruefully. "My dad finished it off as it ran up the tree. When we got home, my mother cooked them for us." The close-set eyes soften: He can taste that game supper again.
Like most kids of the era, he was a movie-lover. "Today, looking back from what I've learned about acting," he says, "I'm not a great admirer of the actors of the past. But God, did I love the stories! There was a serial, "The Perils of Nyoka". I couldn't tell you what it was about, but I didn't miss an episode. "Gunga Din" was my favorite." Most young boys in those warlike days probably would've identified with one of the three tough British sergeants in that film, played by Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Victor McLaglen. "I dug Din," he says. "Sam Jaffe's part, the humble waterboy who in the end proves the bravest of them all." Even then, the contradictions were taking shape and with them, the character actor.
But "I've done my share of soldiers too," he says, "even Eisenhower on that TV miniseries "Ike". Bull Meechum in 'The Great Santini' was the most rounded. I researched him thoroughly -- hung out at Marine air stations, El Toro and Beaufort, and those guys are *really* competitive. Jet pilots have to be."
Duvall himself never experienced combat, though he spent two years in the US Army as an enlisted man during the Korean War. "That's lead to some confusion in the press," he says. "Some stories have me shooting it out with the Commies from a foxhole over in Frozen Chosen. Pork Chop Hill stuff. Hell, I barely qualified with the M-1 rifle in basic. I was better with the bayonet, though. In fact, my sergeant said I was great. I'd give it this..." He spins an imaginary rifle, leans forward menacingly with a John Wayne scowl, thrusts and yells, "Yaaaaaahhhhhh!" You can feel the cold steel in your belly. "It was all acting talent," he laughs.
From the Army Duvall moved on to academe: Principia College, a small school in southern Illinois across the Mississippi River from St.Louis , Mo "I studied drama," he says. "What else? Hell it was the only thing I was any good at." In 1955, bachelor's degree in hand , he drifted east to New York and enrolled at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Among his classmates there: Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, and James Caan, all of whom remain friends to this day.
Duvall's first break in the New York theatre came in 1961 with a role in "Call Me By My Rightful Name." During his Neighborhood Playhouse days, he'd impressed the playwright-screenwriter Horton Foote in a production of Foote's "The Midnight Caller". When Foote was in Hollywood writing the screenplay of Harper Lee's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird", he recommended Duvall for the part of Boo Radley, the pallid, misunderstood recluse -- wrongly perceived as the essence of evil -- who befriends the children through whose eyes the story unfolds. Duvall got the part, the first of many in which he would depict a troubled but basically decent son of the post Snopesian South.
Elements of that character -- tough, mystical, sad, eminently skilled at whatever trade he plies, vulnerable yet vengeful, in William Faulkner's phrase " a human heart in conflict with itself" -- crop up in nearly every role he's played. Most powerfully, at least to date, in Mac Sledge of "Tender Mercies." "I love those people, " he says. "I can't learn enough from them. Southerners, Texans, cowboys and country singers, the sort of folks you see all lean as leather out there in the Southwest or up along the Rocky Mountains. How tough and vengeful and loving they are, how serious and religious on the best sense of the word. Part of it is the mystery at the heart of Fundamentalism. It's the link that was struck in the South, at least between the whites and the blacks. You don't see that in the North. My father was a Virginian -- born and raised in Lorton, near Alexandria -- and way back, in the early 1800s there was French Huguenot in the background. A fellow named Maureen Duvall. A *man* named Maureen! We had ancestors that fought on both sides of the Civil War. Maybe that's where my fascination with those kinds of people comes from."
Movie work came thick and fast after the success of "Mockingbird", but Duvall has tried to keep in touch with the New York stage. In 1965 he won an Obie as Eddie Carbone, the tragic, love-torn longshoreman, hero in a revival of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge". He did "Wait Until Dark" through most of 1966 and as recently as 1977 was on Broadway in David Mamet's "American Buffalo". That sojourn in New York proved a turning point for Duvall, both personally, and professionally.
One of Duvall's fellow actors in "Buffalo" was John Savage, whose kid sister, Gail MacLachlan Youngs, dropped by one evening to say hello. Savage introduced her to Duvall: The legendary electrical charge went "zap!" "The first night we spent together, " Duvall recalls with something like wonder in his voice, "she was too embarrassed to face me in the morning. She left while I was in the shower." Youngs listening to his revelation, blushes all over again. "I'd never done anything like that before," she says. One thing, as they say, led to another -- Duvall's second marriage, her first. They were wed in August 1982 on an island off the Maine coast near Boothbay harbor -- New England's equivalent of that bleak, beautiful America he admires in the wastelands of the South and West. Youngs, now 31, grew up in a theatrical and musical family. Her mother was an opera singer, and Gail shares with Duvall an appreciation of all those orotundities from "Aida" to "Zarathustra". Until she met Duvall, Gail herself had no serious acting ambitions. Marriage changed that.
About the same time they met, Duvall spotted one of those street faces that draws him to New York. It belonged to a young gypsy named Angelo Evans. From that chance meeting grew the movie "Angelo My Love" (1983), which Duvall wrote and directed and Youngs produced, a near documentary of gypsy life in the Big Apple that already has begun to establish a cult following. Youngs got her first chance to act opposite her husband in Duvall's latest film, "The Stone Boy", in which she plays -- with Duvallian intensity -- a blowsy former cocktail waitress out of Reno who's the Duvall character's sister-in-law. "Gail fell in love with the story about five years ago,"Duvall says, "and turned me on to it too. We shot it entirely on location, mainly up in that wide-open wheat country around Great Falls, Montana. Hey, only two million bucks, and just 21 days from start to finish. That's the way to bring in a movie. It was ensemble acting all the way -- Fredric Forrest, Glenn Close, Wilford Brimley, real professionals. Even the kids were first-rate." He laughs. "It's dangerous playing against kids. Without even trying, they can upstage you, outshine you. You've got to stage even purer than they do," he says, ever the competitor.
A few weeks before the Oscars, Duvall visited his favorite New York restaurant, Eleanora's on West 58th just off the Avenue of the Americas. While Duvall wolfed down a plate of frutti di mare, the talk shifted naturally from life to art.
"I guess the main reason I want the Academy Award is for the artistic power and freedom it gives you," Duvall said between forkloads. "The right to choose your own director, to have control over the project as we did on "The Stone Boy." Among film directors, Duvall has something of a reputation as a maverick. Bruce Beresford, after "Tender Mercies," complained that Duvall tried to tell him how to make the film. "Hell," said Duvall, "I was just trying to tell him to leave me alone. Any director who never asks you, 'What do *you* think?,' well, he's in trouble. The way I see it, an actor's job is to get off camera as fast as possible."
Meanwhile, though, the pre-Oscar hype had to be kept at full volume -- interviews, talk-show appearances, all the grins and glad-handing. Youngs must have been thinking this as she watched Duvall bend over the last of his spaghetti: His bald spot stared at her like an unswept boulevard. "Bobby," she said, "you need to get your hair cut."
"Yes, dear," he said absently, busy corralling the elusive pasta. "I'll do it first thing tomorrow."
"I meant that in the singular."
He looked up, puzzled, then patted his shiny pate and laughed. Two of his upper teeth are darker than the others. No hairpiece, no caps, no makeup for this actor.
"Bobby really likes who he is," Youngs said. "There's nothing false about him. I'm not saying that because I'm his wife -- there's a lot about him, believe me, that I don't like. But he's true. What you see is what you get.
Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, January 31, 1989
'Lonesome Dove's Duvall -- the 'Real People' Actor
By DIANE HAITHMAN
Times Staff Writer
Though he walked away from the CBS miniseries "Lonesome Dove" satisfied with the finished product, actor Robert Duvall says the frustration of working in television have led him to consider giving up acting on the small screen permanently.
Duvall - an Academy Award-winner for his performance as downtrodden country singer Mac Sledge in "Tender Mercies", and a veteran of "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now" and the controversial 1988 film about Los Angeles street gangs, "Colors" - complained in a recent interview that "too many chiefs" in the collaborative medium of network television put the creative integrity of TV projects at greater risk than in feature films.
"There's always some kind of conflict somewhere down the line with the networks," Duvall fretted mildly. "It's not like the director's in charge, like in movies and films. It [television] is too compartmentallized - there are too many chiefs, probably uneducated chiefs, I feel, in certain areas."
Duvall said he loved his role as ex-Texas Ranger Gus McRae in "Lonesome Dove," and eight-hour, $20-million saga of the Old West based on Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. "It's a beautiful slice of American history," Duvall said. (The miniseries begins Sunday and will air nightly from 9 to 11 p.m. through Feb. 8)
But he didn't love making the miniseries, in large part because of last-minute casting decision that Duvall decries as typical of television.
"There were problems on the set, arguments about the way it was done," Duvall said. "This is because the network says they're deciding, deciding, deciding. And that is a roundabout way of sabotaging a project, and that's very disconcerting.
"In a feauture film this wouldn't necessarily happen, but in network TV it does. You have people making recommendation of who's going to be in [a project] based on the ratings, which is understandable to a point," he continued. "But yet, when you infiltrate all the parts with that, then to me, that gets to be why people don't want to do television, and I would think hard before I do another one."
Although Duvall said there were "other examples" of last-minute casting problems (which he declined to specify), his main gripe about "Lonesome Dove" was over the casting of one small but pivotal role: that of Blue Duck, a half-white, half-Native American renegade who was Gus McRae's arch enemy during his Texas Ranger days. Blue Duck returns to terrorize Gus and the other members of the Hat Creek Cattle Co. as they journey from the dead-end Texas town of Lonesome Dove to the more fertile ground of Montana during the course of the film.
After considering a number of actors for the role, the producers gave it at the last minute to Frederic Forrest.
Duvall was displeased because a full-blooded Comanche Indian whom he had recruited to perform a screen test for the role was rejected. Duvall's choice, who was not a professional actor, got a lesser role in the film.
"They wanted a name," Duvall complained. "Somebody suggested Rudolf Nureyev; somebody else wanted Klaus Kinski. I mean, it was ridiculous. Now, Freddy [Forrest] did all right in the part, but Freddy was not right for the part, and he knew that. And when they brought him in, they didn't give him a chance to prepare - the poor guy was frantic."
Although Duvall credited producers Suzanne de Passe, Bill Wittliff and Dyson Lovell for doing battle with the network to preserve the integrity of the film, Lovell said it was he, not CBS, who made the decision to cast Forrest as Blue Duck.
Indeed, Lovell said the network maintained a hands-off posture with the producers. He said he sought in his casting choices to blend well-known TV stars with feature film actors to create "a special-event package." The cast includes Diane Lane, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover, Robert Urich, Richy Schroder and D.B. Sweeney.
Lovell called the Nureyev idea "an absolutely grotesque suggestion from some casting person" and said his own first choice for Blue Duck was Charles Bronson, who was unavailable. Forrest, he said, was on the original list of actors considered for the part. Lovell said it was he, not the network, who believed the role cried out for a name actor.
"I was in touch with Bobby [Duvall] during the initial casting process because I valued his opinion, you know?" Lovell said. "I wanted to hear what he said. Very often, I would run it by the network and see what they said as well. He probably is not used to a producer needing to be in such close touch with the network."
Whether control of the project rested with the network or the producers or a combination of the two, Duvall's sensitivity to having his own casting preferences challenged underscores an attitude that he readily acknowledges: He has reached a point in his career where he wants to be in control without interference from anyone.
As an actor, Duvall completely loses himself in his characters. He refused to be photographed during this interview, for example, preferring instead to have a photo of him as Gus used, and he doesn't mind that his varied collection of character roles have left him without anything you could call a star identity. The soft-spoken Virginia native likes being able to travel the country anonymously, observing the enigmatic rural denizens who intrigue him the most. "I'm not a big, neon-sign actor, recognizable," he said happily.
"People ask me: 'What's your statement?' I don't have a statement," he said. "I just want to see a character in a situation."
But Duvall does want his creative input, if not his face, recognized in a big way. He is currently trying to sell Hollywood on the idea of backing a script he wrote for himself called "The Apostle," about a small-town preacher. He has been lurking in the back pews of churches from the rural South to downtown Los Angeles to better understand the charisma of the leaders of the congregations. He's been tring to sell the script for years.
Disgusted by the poor quality of films that turn up on the critics' annual "10 Best" lists, Duvall doesn't understand why he can't get Hollywood to put its money behind "The Apostle." But then, that's the way it is - I shouldn't be surprised," he said.
"And then the European guys come over here and do movies that are terrible. I mean, they do good movies over there, and then they come over here and try to understand this country and they're terrible. And they get money! There's no accounting for taste."
A man whose own tastes are eclectic, Duvall also has a passion for the tango - but recently turned down an opportunity to do a movie about the birth of the dance.
"It's one of the worst things I've ever read in my life," he fumed. "It had nothing to do with the birth of that dance, with the music, with Argentina. But it might sell. A more pure thing, more valid thing, might not be as commercial."
One role that Duvall would love to play, commercial or not: Gen. Robert E. Lee, "perhaps the greatest man who ever trod this planet. He was a greater man than Lincoln, even," Duvall said.
"I think if I do Lee, I want them to make me look as much like Lee as they can. I want to hear the first recording of a Virginia guy that was ever put on tape, vocally, just to see how they talk," Duvall mused. "In these costume dramas, I think people tend to play the period, rather than a real human being in the situation. Hopefully, that's what we did [in 'Lonesome Dove'] - made them real people."
ROBERT DUVALL
Gigaplex, 1995
Since he made his film debut more than 30 years ago as spooky Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, it's hard to imagine an actor who has portrayed a wider range of characters than Robert Duvall.Think of crazed Col. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, crafty consigliere Tom Hayden in The Godfather, country-western singer Mac Sledgein Tender Mercies, or his personal favorite, cowboy Gus MacRae in the acclaimed TV miniseries Lonesome Dove. Now he costars with Demi Moore in The Scarlet Letter.
The Oscar-winning actor finds serenity in his many non-Hollywood pasttimes. On his Virginia ranch, he rides horses, including "a wonderful jumping horse" that was a surprise Christmas gift afew years ago from his Days of Thunder co-star, Tom Cruise. Duvall also actively engages in birdwatching, tennis, singing, songwriting,and, believe it or not, dancing the tango.
Q: As a young struggling actor, your social circle included Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, James Caan. Do you still pal around together?
A: Not much. Once people become successful, for whatever reasons it goes like this. I don't know if that's true in other professions;it might be. We talk about each other with the fondest of memories and respect. I see Dusty maybe once every 3 or 4 years. Jimmy I don't see much anymore. I used to bum around with him a lot and have great times. We used to call him All-State, cause he likes to drive boats, rope in rodeos, play the horn; he does everything! He was a lot of fun, but that was way back. The memories are the things you live off of really in those relationships.
Q: You all used to hang out on the Upper West Side [of Manhattan].
A: There were 6 of us who used to live in one apartment there:my older brother; Dusty; this friend who was a cantor, a terrific singer; and two other actors. We used to have great parties.
Q: You also had some odd jobs in those days. Midnight shift at the post office?
A: Yeah, and I quit after 6 months. The security was great, I had money in my pocket; I'd never had that before on my own. So I quit because I knew that [otherwise] I'd be there ten years later. You go through different jobs with the optimistic feeling that you're not going to be doing this someday, and fortunatelyit worked out that I didn't have to, that I could just chuck a job and know that eventually I could make a living at what I really wanted to do.
Q: Inspiration for all those struggling New York actors who are sorting mail.
A: Yeah, it's a tough business. A lot of times [young actors]will say, 'What should I do? What's your advice?' I say, 'Stay in Texas. Stay in Nebraska, or wherever, cause there's a lot of community theater.' It's tough going to New York or L.A.
Q: Your early battles with certain directors are infamous. Do you find that you're able to call the shots more often now?
A: I always did call the shots! If they hire me, I want to do it my way. Way back, I worked with a director once, and I said,'If you don't listen now, you'll be on your own. That's all I want you to know.' I think the good directors leave you on your own, and then can make suggestions and make it better. But not hovering and pampering, as I call it. Some of the old-time directors tended to be a little bit dictatorial, and I think it showed in some of their work.
Q: We're speaking of Henry Hathaway, perhaps?
A: Yeah, he was a wonderful guy, but he just... I mean, he once said, "When I say, 'Action!' tense up, goddamit!' Imagine [quarterback]Johnny Unitas saying, 'Tense up!' You know, we try to stay relaxed,even in an emotional scene. Intense is different than tense.
Q: And this was in True Grit, with John Wayne.
A: Yeah, it was an alright experience. I took the job mainly because I wanted to see that part of Colorado. It was so beautiful down there.
Q: Do you often select roles on the basis of location?
A: Yeah. London, Buenos Aires, Texas: those are my three favorite places to work. I'd do a film just to go there. And I enjoyed The Great Santini in South Carolina. The Carolinas are wonderful.I love that part of the country.
Q: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Did you have any idea when you played that scene [in Apocalypse Now] that it would become a cinematic classic?
A: No, I didn't think of it, but now that I look back it's the kind of line that obviously would become that. It's a pretty nifty line.
Q: We missed you in Godfather III. Any regrets about not joining the project?
A: No, not really. I felt it had been done, and why wait all that time? The premise was okay, but I don't think it was as good as the other two. But Frances is obviously a big talent, and one of these days he's going to have another really good movie.
Q: You often refer to certain roles as being your Lear or your Othello. With your theater background, do you harbor Shakespearean ambitions?
A: No, I don't. If it came along at the right situation, I would give it a shot, but I don't think to accomplish certain things in acting you have to do Shakespeare. It might be interesting to do a Shakespeare character in a film, but I don't know if I want to lock myself into a long run on a Broadway stage. I wouldn't mind playing King Lear maybe someday.
Q: We hear that the tango is a special passion of yours.
A: Yeah, I like to dance the tango. I'm a club dancer, not a stagedancer. The stage tango is not really the tango. The club dances are less polished and more improvised. They're more subtle and less production-oriented. I've become very involved with that.I've even developed a tango script that I really want to do.
Parade, May 27, 1990
IN STEP WITH Robert Duvall
BY JAMES BRADY
YOU WANT TACT, DIPLOMACY, POLITE evasion or a brisk "no comment"?
Then don't call up Robert Duvall and start asking questions. Because what you get from Duvall -- as great and versatile an actor as we have -- is the truth, unalloyed.
For example, I wanted to know why he was down South making an auto-racing movie with Tom Cruise instead of being off in Rome once again playing the consigliere, Tom Hagen, in Godfather, Part III?
"Look," he said. "You know how cheap they are. [Director Francis Ford] Coppola came to my farms in Virginia to ask me to do the film, and I fed him on Maryland crabcakes from my mother's recipe, and he called me a couple of days later, and I got the impression he was more interested in the recipe for the crabcakes than getting me to play the role. There are two or three other actors in that film being paid more than I was offered. That just isn't right."
I also brought up the subject of age, another no-no for most actors. Was he depressed about approaching 60? "I get that next year," Duvall said, "and I'm still doing things I shouldn't do. I'm conservative in my lifestyle, but in my work I take risks. I know more now, so I can do things -- some things better than when I was young."
As for that "conservative" lifestyle, one of his passions is horses -- which includes jumping fences, riding in competition... the works. Does he ever win? "Once I beat my trainer," he said. "But another time, when I was on Broadway in a play, I broke my pelvis. Out of work 11,12 weeks." Without pay? He laughed. "That's right. You don't get paid."
Duvall has four Oscar nominations and a Best Actor award for Tender Mercies. His own favorite role was as Gus in TV's Lonesome Dove. But there are so many memorable roles, going back to the tiny but crucial part of Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird through The Great Santini and the colonel in Apocalypse Now.
Now he was in Daytona Beach, Fla., making Days of Thunder with young Cruise. "Sensational, a great guy," Duvall said. "You know, he's a race-car driver in this movie, and he said, 'Get in. I'll drive you around the track.' And I said, 'Listen, I'm driving with a pro -- not with some amateur,' so one of the drivers took me around eight laps, and I got out. Green! A couple of minutes later, they tole me Cruise had just come within a fraction of the track record."
Duvall thought a moment. "I'll tell you the kind of guy Tom Cruise is. At Christmas, I woke up to find a $25,000 jumping horse in my driveway. A present from Cruise."
I asked what kind of day Duvall was having in Daytona. "The sun's out," he said, "which is good, because it's about all this place has going for it. Sun and a track and an ocean full of frozen fish."
People 1/17/94
BALANCING ACT
Robert Duvall feels a strong kinship with the gentlemanly Cuban retiree he plays in Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. He even wears his character's two-tone shoes. "I love Latin culture," says Duvall, 63, who speaks Spanish and studies the tango, Argentina's national dance. For this movie, Duvall saturated himself in Miami's Cuban culture. "I went to social clubs, bingo halls and dances, soaking in the aura, the Spanish gentleman thing," he says. "I'd grab something and use it on the set the next day." But the inspiration for his Latin-style dance, which opens and closes the film, comes from New York City, where Duvall makes his home. "I know a Cuban guy who one New Year's Eve danced with a glass of water on his head. That kind of control is what I emulated in the movie."_________________________________________ While Duvall burns with a slow flame
By Ann Oldenburg
USA TODAY
NEW YORK -- Robert Duvall isn't going to buzz with excitement about anything. It's not his style.
But he will graciously allow you into his grand Manhattan apartment -- where he says legendary tenor Enrico Caruso once lived -- for a chat.
The Oscar that Duvall won for 1983's Tender Mercies watches from atop the mantel as the actor and his third wife, Sharon, do the tango on the living room floor.
Without music and without much prompting, the two glide across the open, slippery wood space.
Now, sitting stiffly on a nearby couch, Duvall says he is developing a script around the tango, but was never considered for the role in Scent of a Woman that required Al Pacino to tango and won him an Oscar.
"No, no," he says. "People said, 'How did he do?' I said, 'He did pretty good for a blind guy.'"
Duvall quietly chuckles.
His newest character, from Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, a Cuban with a strict sense of routine, almost stole his heart as his favorite alter-ego.
"It's right up there" with Gus, from Lonesome Dove, says the quiet Duvall. "It's like a tie. About even."
When he's talking about Lonesome Dove, you can hear pieces of Augustus McCrae. When he's talkin about his cowboy character in Geronimo, you can hear an Oklahoma/Texas poke. And when he's talking about Walter in Hemingway, Duvall slips into his thick Cuban accent.
"Oh, s&etilde;nor!" he says mimicking the barber who shaved him once a week during filming. He spent time with Cubans in Miami, immersing himself in research, even before he got the role and right up until the final day of filming when he ate at one restaurant, only to make sure he ate dessert at a different restaurant for the experience.
"Even during the Christmas break," he says. "We drove from New York to our farm in Virginia, I made sure I had a Cuban limousine driver."
He's happiest when he's on that farm -- so much so that he's buying a new, bigger, more private one for his Jack Russell terriers (one is named Gus), horses and other assorted animals.
"Big fat pig," says Duvall, with his typical chopped sentences. "It got so big. He used to do a figure 8 between your legs. Now he's too fat."
He chuckles, shaking his head.
Hemingway made him think about getting old, as it did his co-star Richard Harris, whom he met a long time ago watching a rugby match. Harris didn't remember the meeting, says Duvall, 63.
After Hemingway, Duvall recalls, "I said to him, 'You'll remember me now?'"
Slipping into Harris' voice, Duvall says, "Till the rest of our lives..."
April 1, 1996
Robert Duvall's long walk home
Actor's boyhood memories inspire new film
By BRUCE KIRKLAND
Toronto Sun
NEW YORK -- Robert Duvall, son of a U.S. Navy officer, grew up as a redneck in a family that openly supported segregation of the races in the U.S.
In both San Diego, where he was born, and Annapolis, Maryland, where he grew up near the naval base, Duvall entered a rigidly white world of the 1930s and '40s.
Now, as a man in his mid sixties and one of the most respected American actors of his generation, Duvall finds himself wrestling with those demons in a new film called A Family Thing, which has just opened in theatres.
Duvall stars as a good ole boy from Arkansas. As a racist, he is shocked when he suddenly learns his family's secret: His real mother was his family's black maid - she died giving birth to him - and he has a half brother in Chicago who hates him because of that tragedy. Enter James Earl Jones. The movie chronicles their stormy relationship and delves deeply into the question of personal identity. In the case of Duvall's character, `What's self-loathing got to do with it'.
Duvall has a big stake in A Family Thing. It was born from his idea. He produced the project. He hired Arkansas writers Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson to craft the screenplay, and Richard Pearce (The Long Walk Home) to direct it.
And he bristles at suggestions from some people attached to the film that its true theme is family, not race relations.
"It's about family, sure, but it's about race too, without trying to be `messagey' or preachy," Duvall says.
Well known for his stubborn streak and outspoken nature, Duvall also has strong ideas about racism that do not nestle comfortably into politically correct agendas.
"People may disagree with this, but I think it's a natural thing. It happens. In many countries it happens. And it has to be dealt with. Everything is in degrees, but there are a lot of guys like him (his character in A Family Thing) around.
"My family were separatists, they weren't integrationists," Duvall continues, careful not to use the word racist when he is referring to his own family thing. "Yet they're not bad people. They're limited.
"I was a product of that too," he muses quietly. "It's better now," he says about race relations in America, stopping himself for a long pause before qualifying: "Sometimes better, sometimes worse. I don't know what the answer is. Maybe in 300 years everybody will be cream colored."
Meanwhile, he has helped to make a film that he hopes will be salve in the wounds of racial hatred. As Duvall had to do in his own life, his character in A Family Thing has to learn simple truths about human nature and racial equality.
As a producer, Duvall faces some hard facts about such movies as the low-budget, intensely personal A Family Thing. Despite positive critical reviews, despite the high-profile cast, A Family Thing will struggle at the boxoffice.
Which is why there are not more movies like it, Duvall laments. "The bottom line is how much money it makes. Having a message or being therapeutic is secondary to making the dollar, don't you think?" he says bitterly about Hollywood and its obsession with violent action pictures.
"People criticize Dole (U.S. presidental hopeful Bob Dole, who is campaigning against media violence), but I think he is right," Duvall says. "There is too much gratuitous violence in movies. It's all for the money. It sells tickets."
Better you should spend your money on A Family Thing, he figures. It's important. It's personal.
THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
DUVALL IS THE QUIET VIRGINIAN
ROBERT DUVALL doesn't like to attract attention to himself.
Although he is one of the most highly respected actors of this generation, people tend to think of him more in terms of the last role he played rather than as a ``movie star.''
``Well, I don't think it's worth a lot of talk,'' Duvall said quietly as he sat in a New York City hotel recently. ``I mean, the idea is to be loose and relaxed and go for the character. Acting is planned, but the planning is kind of, well, SPONTANEOUS.''
Duvall, who lives on a 200-acre farm he identifies as ``near Warrenton,'' claims Virginia as his home state. Even though he was born in San Diego, the son of a Navy officer who rose to the rank of rear admiral, he was raised in Fairfax County and lived briefly in Newport News.
Trim and athletic, he looks a good deal younger than his 65 years. In spite of the varied characters he's played, he keeps a hint of a Southern accent - a reminder that he has created such memorable Southern characters as the feeble-minded Boo Radley in ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' a gung-ho military father in ``The Great Santini,'' an aging cowboy in the miniseries ``Lonesome Dove'' (his favorite) and his Oscar-winning role as a washed-out country singer in ``Tender Mercies.''
He was asked to play Gen. Robert E. Lee in the mammoth Ted Turner production of ``Gettysburg'' but turned it down ``because I think he's one of the great characters of all history and I want it to be just right when and if I do it. I was worried that that project seemed rushed. I was also worried about the makeup. With the right script, I'd love, someday, to play him.''
Duvall's latest creation is Earl Pilcher Jr., a middle-aged Arkansas redneck who runs a tractor-repair shop and has always adhered to local tradition until he learns that his mother was black. Earl is taken aback. He goes to Chicago to seek out the policeman who is his half-brother (James Earl Jones).
The movie, ``A Family Thing,'' is a project that Duvall suggested, promoted and produced.
``The idea just came to me,'' he said. ``What if a working-class white man learned that he was part black? What would be his adjustment? I brought just the kernel of the idea to Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, two really good writers. (They wrote the cult hit `One False Move.') What they came up with was amazing. It's a movie about healing. It's a movie about learning. The script turned out better than I could have hoped. The characters are well developed.''
The balding Duvall was wearing a plaid sports shirt and khaki trousers - hardly a hip outfit - for his big-city visit.
``My family background is Virginia and Maryland,'' he said. ``The family, way back, were tobacco farmers. I grew up in Fairfax County and never even considered becoming an actor. I didn't see many movies when I was a kid. Ironically, it was my family that pushed me into acting, when I was in college, about age 20.''
Duvall is so modest that you never know if he's underselling himself, but he claims that ``my parents pushed me into drama because I was just about flunking out in everything else (at Principia College in Illinois). It was during the Korean war and they were worried that I might flunk out and have to go to Korea. When I started taking theater classes, I began to make all A's. Before that, I didn't even know what an A was.''
As far as acting goes, it's been like that ever since.
He went to New York and trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Good friends were Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, who were also struggling actors. ``I knew Gene first. He introduced me to Dustin one day when he was coming back from one of his first jobs, on the TV show `Naked City.' When we were struggling, and without jobs, we talked a lot about acting. Now that we're successful, we never have time to see each other.''
Boo Radley, Gregory Peck's neighbor in ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' was his first movie role.
``I prefer films to theater,'' he said. ``I like having a second chance at a scene, but I never like to do more than two or three takes. If you go beyond that in repeating it, it's not spontaneous. I like to do a role and then leave it. These guys don't stick with me. Once I've played them, I'm through with them. I can walk away.''
Duvall made an uncharacteristic appearance in the tabloids last year when he reportedly caught his third wife, Sharon Brophy, having an affair with the pool repairman at his Virginia home. He threw her out, and the divorce proceedings are still storming.
He met Brophy when she was a cast member of the ``Tango Argentino'' troupe, and she subsequently became his tango teacher. The tango is one of his passions.
``I can't quite explain it,'' he said. ``The tango is more than just a dance. I practice almost every day. It's a dance you can practice alone, and, sadly, I don't have a partner now.''
He just returned from Argentina, where he played the infamous Nazi Adolf Eichman. (``A very good part,'' he said.) He brought back his own personal tango teacher - ``a little guy, a former jockey, who is great. The tango is a national pastime in Argentina. This guy can jump up on a table and dance.''
Duvall has two grown stepdaughters from an earlier marriage.
``It's hard to get back to single life again,'' he said. ``Dating is a pain. Back when I was young, the other guys would say, `Bobby, take off the hat and be the bait.' Now, I have to be my own bait for getting dates. Being a movie star helps. Women will talk to you, but that doesn't mean anything. A relationship is a very tricky thing. It's not easy to develop.''
He's vague about the location of his Virginia farm but says that ``it's in fox-hunting country. I'm very fond of riding, but I'm backing off the equestrian thing a little. I came in fourth in one riding competition, but the Chris Reeve thing is a little bit daunting. I've pulled back. I'd rather break my ankle tango dancing than horseback riding.''
As for Earl, his role in ``A Family Thing,'' he said: ``It was important for this movie to be low-key. The plot sounds melodramatic. It was important that it not be. Earl is an intelligent man. Just because he's a working-class man doesn't mean he's dim. I often think that so-called `rednecks' get a bum rap in movies. Earl goes to Chicago and he learns that his black brother is, after all, just another person, but a special person too. It's totally about family - and what that means.
``One of the most interesting things about this picture is that it shows that older people can adjust and change. It's the young people in the script who have trouble adjusting. Young people, contrary to what we hear, are often set in their ways and don't want to change.''
Jones said that he was eager to take the role in ``A Family Thing'' ``just for the chance of working with Bobby Duvall. Working with Robert, I knew I had to settle the issue of film subtlety right away,'' Jones said. ``He is the most subtle of actors. I had to get on that level.''
Tuesday, July 2, 1996
Robert Duvall can do it all
He plays a country doctor who appreciates the weird gifts of an alien-inspired Phenomenon
By JIM SLOTEK -- Toronto Sun
CHICAGO -- You appreciate the good things people say about you for about a minute. Bad is forever.
"Man, I just got cut to pieces by reviewers when I was young," says Robert Duvall. "I had to get off a bus once, I had such a bad review in the New York Times."
The review was of Shaw's play Major Barbara. Duvall was in his 20s. "It said `Shaw had invented some impossible young men in his plays, but never one so revolting as the romantic interest in this one. And the character is made even less palatable by Robert Duvall, whose spine tends toward a figure S, whose diction is flannel-coated and whose simpering expressions are moronic.'
"Years later this same woman gave me a glowing review for The Godfather. I guess I'm a late bloomer."
Indeed, with hundreds of roles behind him since then - from Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird, to Tom Hagen in The Godfather, to Augustus McRae in Lonesome Dove, the 65-year-old Duvall has never been more in demand. And as an A-list supporting actor, he's fairly review-proof - whether he appears in Something To Talk About or bombs like The Scarlet Letter.
Duvall's record of scene-stealing continues with his role as the mischievous, avuncular town doctor in the metaphysical tear-jerker Phenomenon (a real scamp, his character "moons" patients from his office window).
The film stars John Travolta as a garage mechanic who is struck by an alien light and becomes a supergenius with weird powers. While everyone else is torn between fear and a desire to exploit him, only Duvall's doc appreciates Travolta's divine gift.
"I'd met Travolta a few times, and he asked for me specifically, so I was flattered," Duvall says. "I liked the part, the movie has a nice message. It's positive."
And it was quick, on the heels of his work on a pay-TV film about the capture in Argentina of war criminal Adolph Eichmann by Israeli commandos. "It's interesting to play a guy like Eichmann. You can't play him bad from his point of view, because he isn't bad from his point of view. You have to try to find vulnerability - like his love for his son ... (laughs) which is about the only thing I could find."
Duvall admits: "I've been working a lot lately. What can I say, I enjoy working." But the money has to be there, hence his refusal to appear as mob lawyer Hagen again in Godfather III. "They wouldn't offer me what I wanted, and that's all anybody did it for was the money. Why would Coppola wait 15 years to do it, if he didn't need money?"
So what about The Scarlet Letter, the Demi Moore laugher that had English teachers throughout North America howling in outrage? "Well, I didn't think it was as bad as everyone said. But he's kind of an arrogant guy, (director) Roland Joffe. He did one good movie in The Killing Fields and that was it. I enjoyed the job though - Vancouver and Nova Scotia, it was terrific. But boy did they rip that thing - whew."
Duvall lives on a Virginia horse farm, where "I have a dance floor in my barn. I keep fit doing the tango." Although these days he's short a dance partner, being involved in a divorce from dance instructor Sharon Brophy.
"It's kind of weird puttering around the place by myself," he says. "I'm a creature of strange habits - like for example I can only fall asleep reading a script.
"The day I retire I won't have any more scripts to read. That'll be the day I croak, I guess."
Thursday, November 7, 1996
Chameleon Duvall portrays Adolf Eichmann
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- In addition to the movie roles that have won him acclaim and an Oscar, Robert Duvall has a body of work in TV that could earn him the title of history teacher to the masses.
In TV miniseries and movies, Duvall has played Second World War titans Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Now, he's adding another war figure to his library of roles -- one of history's ogres, Adolf Eichmann.
In The Man Who Captured Eichmann, first airing Sunday on the U.S network. TNT, Duvall gives a chilling performance as the tender family man who had no problem sending children to Auschwitz.
An SS colonel who escaped to Argentina, Eichmann was the architect of Hitler's Final Solution -- the shipment of European Jews to death camps.
In 1960, Eichmann was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli agents and spirited to Israel, where he was tried for crimes against humanity and executed two years later.
"He kept his work totally on an administrative level," Duvall said. "He justified that he was just a member of the state, following the order of the state, so that it became abstract."
Eichmann never considered his work evil, Duvall said. He claimed to be a machine-like instrument of policy.
Duvall, perhaps best-known for his work in The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and his Oscar turn in Tender Mercies, said he is always looking for a character "that he can bring something to."
He came across the book Eichmann in My Hands, an account of Eichmann's capture by Peter Malkin, one of the Mossad agents who grabbed the SS man off the street in a Buenos Aires slum.
Duvall, who also served as executive producer of the movie, decided to make Eichmann's story with his own company for TNT.
Known as a meticulous researcher, Duvall sought out older residents of the German community in Buenos Aires to study mannerisms and speech patterns.
Director William Graham said Duvall actually met with a man who worked for Eichmann and asked what he looked like. Co-producer Rob Carliner said the Argentine man told the actor, "Begging your pardon, sir, he looked like you."
True enough. Even without heavy makeup, Duvall achieves one of his eerie, chameleon-like transformations; he completely resembles the bureaucrat who personified "the banality of evil."
Filmed in Buenos Aires, the emotional core of the film is a series of encounters between Eichmann and his captor Malkin, played with quiet intensity by Arliss Howard.
Duvall visited Malkin last year and said the former Israeli agent found himself reluctantly drawn into a dialogue with Eichmann while the fugitive was hidden in a Mossad safe house.
"Malkin said it was like sitting on an airplane, together on a long ride," Duvall said. "It was that kind of intimacy."
For Duvall, the opportunity to make the film becomes a way to reach a bigger audience with a story that is part spy thriller and part contemporary history.
"You reach millions on television," he said. "In a strange way, you can reach more people than you can in a feature film."
LEGENDS OF DUVALL
THE MAN WHO CAPTURED 'EICHMANN'
Entertainment Weekly, November 22, 1996
by Dan Snierson
Just how painstakingly acute and gut-grippingly honest are the characters Robert Duvall brings to life on screen? Take his personal favorite, Lonesome Dove's crusty Gus McCrae. "When I was down in Texas, I told [then] Governor Ann Richards I could run against her and beat her," the 65-year-old actor says, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "And she said, 'You're right.'"
Duvall's latest exercise is liable to attract more Nazi hunters than voters, as he convincingly becomes infamous SS officer Adolf Eichmann for the TNT movie The Man Who Captured Eichmann (Nov. 16, 17, 21, 23). The creepy role seems a fitting task for the Oscar-winning actor, whose resume of 50-plus film roles includes everything from a washed-up country singer (Tender Mercies) to a devoted Mafia consigliere (The Godfather) to Joseph Stalin (Stalin). "He has an extraordinary ability to find the truth in a character with a minimum of Sturm und Drang," raves Lionel Chetwynd, who wrote the Eichmann teleplay. "You'd be standing there talking about politics or football when the assistant director would say, 'Ready for you, Mr. Duvall,' and in the time it took him to walk 100 feet to the set, he became Eichmann."
That transformation actually began about four years ago when Duvall picked up Peter Malkin's Eichmann in My Hands, a detailed account of the Israeli secret agent's 1960 intercontinental journey to bring the Nazi fugitive to justice. Duvall, who also executive-produced the TNT adaptation (shot on location in Argentina), found himself enthralled with the deceptively gentle portrait of Eichmann. "I still can't figure out why the guy had a certain crystallization of self-righteousness that made him continue to obey the law of the land," Duvall says, shaking his head. In one of the film's most ironic scenes, the man who masterminded millions of executions asks his Jewish captor for "permission to wipe" after using the toilet. "Was he a psychopath?" asks Duvall. "Does the Everyman have it in him? I don't know."
These days, with Eichmann safely behind him, Duvall is directing and starring in The Apostle E.F., a big-screen drama about a Texas Pentecostal preacher who flees to Louisiana after accidentally killing his wife's lover. (After 15 years of seeking studio backing, Duvall--thrice divorced and living in rural Virginia--is financing the film himself.) Then he'll focus his attention on a suspense script he's written, a tale about a New York hitman caught up in the Buenos Aires underworld of Duvall's ongoing obsession--the tango. In other words, don't expect him to stroll into the Geritol-sponsored sunset any time soon. "I've mellowed some, but I haven't slowed down," Duvall says. "I got a lot I wanna do."________________________________________ Variety, January 14, 1998
The Gospel According To Robert Duvall
By Robert Hofler
HOLLYWOOD (Reuters) - Robert Duvall gives hope to late-bloomers everywhere. At age 57, he says, "My career is better than it ever was. I have to slow down so I can do some of my own projects rather than just be a hired hand."
What makes Duvall's career better than ever is his just-released "The Apostle," which establishes him as a certified triple-threat: actor-director-writer.
It helps, too, that "The Apostle" is a critical hit and has earned Duvall a Golden Globe nomination, as well as a few nominations in various categories at the upcoming Independent Spirit Awards.
Although the Academy Award nominations won't be announced until mid-February, the actor has the inside track to winning a second Oscar for best actor. (He won back in 1983 for "Tender Mercies.")
Much has been made recently of Duvall's screen debut as Boo Radley in "To Kill a Mockingbird," especially now that the classic film is celebrating its 35th anniversary.
From there, he segued to a starring role as the psycho killer in the Broadway premiere of "Wait Until Dark" with Lee Remick (later turned into the Audrey Hepburn vehicle for the screen).
Nothing much happened for Duvall's movie career, though, until the 1970s with the first two "Godfather" films, in which he played the Corleone family's faithful consigliere. Was he simply underappreciated as an actor throughout the 1960s? Duvall says not.
"Maybe I didn't have a lot to offer back then. I hadn't lived much."
His career has been a long, slow burn ever since, but Duvall says he has no regrets about not bcoming an overnight star in his youth.
"Maybe it's better that it didn't happen to me. You do lead after lead. It's like you're doing a TV series on a motion-picture level. Then people start to say it's the same old thing."
Duvall, as he is prone to do, gives an example:
"Sandra Bullock does one lead after another. Maybe some people don't know that she can do some really good work. It's OK what she does, but she did really good work in 'Wrestling Ernest Hemingway.' But now she's doing leads, and they're just average movies. Someone may have talent, but you don't necessarily see it because they're just grinding out leads, as opposed to a nice juicy supporting part."
Duvall has this way of saying precisely what he thinks. About that Demi Moore megadud "The Scarlett Letter," in which he co-starred, he says: "It was a maligned film. I don't think it was as bad as people said it was. (Director) Roland Joffe sets himself up as an arrogant guy, so people go after him. All the critics said, 'Why ruin an American classic?' The point is, how many people have read 'The Scarlett Letter'?"
On being directed by uber-director Stanley Kubrick: "I wouldn't work with Kubrick. I really don't like the performances in his movies. I know he's supposed to be a great director. I think you're an actor's enemy when you approach it that way. Sixty takes. What is that about? It shows he doesn't know anything about directing. With a guy like Kubrick directing me, there would be a civil war."
On why he turned down "Godfather III": "They were doing it for money, so let's bring something to the table. Then my agent talks to some arrogant lawyer who represents (director Francis Ford) Coppola, some idiot who's trying to tell me how much I'm worth.
"And all I'm saying is give me half as much as you're paying Al Pacino. Don't give him three times as much as you're paying me, that is insulting. I'll live with double. They wouldn't do it. So forget about it. Everybody was doing it for money anyway. Why else wait 15 years to do a third one? You didn't need to do a third one, it was just money."
Fortunately for the movies, Duvall acts as well as he talks.________________________________________ Robert Duvall's Un-Hollywood Take on Movies
David Sterritt, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
NEW YORK --Robert Duvall has "wanted to play a preacher" since a long-ago trip to an Arkansas town, where he spent a few days researching a stage role. The town's most interesting feature was its church, and the church's most interesting feature was the high-energy minister.
Duvall has realized his ambition in "The Apostle," which opens this month after acclaimed showings at the New York and Toronto Film Festivals, and a one-week December run to qualify for the Academy Awards.
He directed the movie from his own screenplay, and he plays the riveting title role: Sonny Dewey, a Pentecostal preacher who flees his Texas town after his volatile temper flares in a sudden burst of violence. Rebuilding his life in rural Louisiana, he starts a new church - knowing his "One Way Road to Heaven" ministry will turn in a less happy direction if the law ever catches up to him.
Of all the roles Duvall has played in the past, perhaps the most beloved is the down-but-not-out country singer of "Tender Mercies," scripted by Horton Foote, who has served Duvall as a mentor and confidant. While that movie also touched on Southern fundamentalism, Foote considered the religious material a sidelight rather than a compelling topic in its own right.
By contrast, Duvall wanted to create a nuanced portrait of the evangelical community, capturing its full complexity without lapsing into Hollywood-type corn, condescension, or cynicism. "We were representing what these people really are," he said in a recent interview, "without making fun or caricaturing them."
This meant staying true to his own vision of the subject - developed through careful research in Southern and Northern churches - despite temptations to stylize or overdramatize it. Audiences have grown so accustomed to media-shaped versions of life, Duvall notes, that artificial scenes often look more "real" than material drawn from actual experience.
"It's funny," he says with a smile, "but a lot of real cowboys would rather see a John Wayne movie than an actual, good documentary about guys like them." Bucking this trend toward formulas and stereotypes, he sought an authenticity for his independently made movie that few studio pictures could equal.
One device for reaching this authenticity was to supplement his expert cast - Farrah Fawcett, Billy Bob Thornton, Miranda Richardson - with nonprofessional performers from the localities where the movie was filmed.
"If you just work with [nonactors] on their own terms," Duvall says about this technique, "it'll turn out fine. It's like improvisation in a good sense, without self-indulgence. You have to put limits around them, then give them freedom within that.... I'd get together with people sometimes before a scene, but we didn't rehearse much. I'd say, 'This has nothing to do with acting, just do like you do every day....' "
With both professionals and nonprofessionals, Duvall's goal was a spontaneous acting style that grows from the feeling of the moment rather than the planning sessions and story conferences of most commercial productions.
"I tried to keep the camera back a ways," he explains, "and shoot a little more offhandedly than you'd have for other kinds of movies.... I had ideas about how the [final version] should be, but I didn't worry about it.... If something was happening - like when a guy was really feeling the spirit in a [church] tent - I'd say to the cameraman, 'Don't just look at it, go shoot it! I know we can use it somewhere!' " Duvall has directed two films before: the acclaimed documentary "We're Not the Jet Set," about a farming family, and the superb "Angelo, My Love," about a Gypsy community. In them he developed a distinctive style by melding real-life material with flexible cinematic structures. "The Apostle" continues his unique approach.
It also contains what may be the most indelible performance of Duvall's rich career, which includes landmark roles like the consigliari in "The Godfather" and the Vietnam officer of "Apocalypse Now." He says his acting experience laid the ground for his behind-the-camera activities.
"Writing and directing are like an extension of myself as an actor," he explains. "The beginning and end of it all should be behavior, within movie time and fiction form.... I try to have the camera accommodate the actor more than the actor accommodating the camera. "
This Man Can Tango, Too!
What's coming up on Robert Duvall's busy slate? Sports and dancing, but not necessarily in that order. For his next outdoorsy role, Duvall hopes to over-the-hill soccer player" working as a coach in northern England or Scotland - a man who's seen better times, like the country singer in "Tender Mercies," and whom Duvall would surely play with the same mixture of acute observation and quiet compassion.
Duvall is also itching to make a movie on his current passion: the tango. "My girlfriend is a tango dancer," he says, "and I've gotten to really love that music." He has already written a screenplay that moves between North and South America. Locales include the underworld domains of New York and Buenos Aires, where much of the action takes place - with tango scenes to tie the story together and provide propulsive rhythms.
Duvall will direct this picture as well as kicking up his heels on screen. He may start the project as soon as "The Apostle" is properly launched. Let the dancing begin!
The Christian Science Monitor, January 23, 1998
Robert Duvall:
American Cinema's Greatest Living Actor
By Gavin Smith Nov/Dec 1997
What inspired The Apostle?
RD: I've just always wanted to play one of these preachers. Many years ago when I was in Arkansas, just wandering around, I saw preachers who had music around them, a guy on a guitar, and this kind of thing has always interested me. There was a [project] called The Kingdom; Sidney Lumet was gonna direct and Mamet was gonna do rewrites--a strange duo for this subject. Hollywood said I wasn't right for it. The two guys who wrote the script approached Horton Foote after it fell through and asked him if he could help revive it: "Could you talk Bob Duvall into playing the lead, because we wrote it for him?" Horton said, "Well, Bobby's doing his own script since that's fallen through." I'd gone once a month for ten months to Texas, stayed with friends and went to all kinds of churches doing research. Because of the whole sense of being in that community, really trying to immerse myself, sop it up and learn stuff, when The Kingdom fell through I just kept going.
What would The Kingdom have been about?
RD: As I remember, it was about two preachers, different aspects in their whole approach. It was a pretty good script.
Were they grassroots preachers?
RD: They came from grassroots, but there's a contamination process that seems to set in with some of these preachers once they get into that nouvelle-riche realm, television or whatever; they can really become insufferable in their self righteousness. It's a joke. Within the nucleus of this movement, there are some very sincere, honest people. But maybe they couldn't handle it when they got this sudden power; I don't know, maybe some of them don't even want it. The thrill of it is to try to show this world the way it should be shown.
I saw clips of Elmer Gantry and it was all patronization time by Hollywood, putting forth caricatures and these quick, easy images of what really isn't. So that's an education process. When people would say, "Are you gonna make your guy this way?", I said, no, he's an honest guy who lives what he believes, but he has weaknesses like anybody else, hypocrisy ... no more nor less than any Hollywood producer or guy that runs a studio who are making the decisions about this.
I called up Harry Crews, the novelist, a very talented guy. He wrote one script that was okay, but then I figured, He's gonna write a script and explore those people--what if it goes so far in one direction that I don't know how to pull it back? I've gotta jump in and do my own. Horton Foote encouraged me.
I direct as an actor, as an extension of that; and I feel that whatever I may offer as a writer ... I was a terrible writer in school, I don't consider myself a writer. What I know and what I think I understand about behavior, what I look for in behavioral terms ... because that's what I've been doing for many years anyway, taking something that's nothing more than ink and transforming it into behavior. Even though the concept may be there, it's still ink.
What really got under your skin about playing a preacher?
RD: An actor always looks for challenges, and this was a wonderful challenge, something I felt I could do. I'm not saying other actors couldn't, but I felt I had a bead on this guy. It was very challenging in a titillating, alive way. I wanted to see if I could recreate the rhythms, the temperament, the whole makeup and aura of the guy. I was afraid of having to direct it, but Coppola, Ulu Grosbard, Richard Pearce all told me I should; they sensed I understood it maybe more than they would if I would have called them in to direct. I didn't wanna come up with an indictment or a critique of these people--I wanted something from their point of view. From within their midst but not really of them. To come into that realm and take out of it and put forth what I feel is there.
That's really an actor's approach.
RD: I think so. When I was in those churches I was very objective; I kept saying, I'm not really a part of this, yet I am but I'm not--I'm very cut off from it. But maybe that's the way it had to be. I searched in a very enthusiastic and fun way, to really glean what I had to glean from it.
Did you ever feel swept up in it?
RD: In the music, sometimes, the singing. One time in a very classic church in Harlem, the Metropolitan Opera Choir were singing "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," and a very quiet emotion came over me. I could count that as a conversion, if I were of this persuasion, but I just took it to be a very wonderful, personal feeling. I certainly could have counted it as a conversion if I had been looking to be converted. Sometimes people get swept up and that is very genuine; other times I think it's a mass [psychology] thing, so the individual has to be careful.
In a sense, preaching is another uniquely American art form, like jazz or the Western. Was that important to you in how you related to it?
RD: Very. I wanted to find the style of preaching and approximate that as well as I could, as I tried to in Tender Mercies with the singing. And that's a big part of the infatuation for me. There was a line I took out of the script (because it got very long) where I said, "If preaching is in any part of my body, it's in my blood and it'll be there until the day I die and go to heaven." And preachers are very good storytellers; I've been to churches where a guy will take one line from the Bible and then go on for an hour and a half, putting on almost impromptu plays or improvisations. When people give their tithes, it's just their entertainment. They might shy away from saying that, but it's true. It's a form of entertainment for their spirituality.
I noticed there are a lot of jokes in the sermons in the film.
RD: Oh yeah, there's a lot of humor. They're always keeping that audience alive.
There's a cutaway after the accident scene at the start of the film where the girl's hand moves. It seems to suggest some kind of miracle.
RD: Definitely. When I first saw it, it gave me goosebumps. That was meant to be. [My character's intervention] could be a miracle, or some working that's very therapeutic. Maybe there's something to the power of prayer. But he did say "one may live and one may die," and the young man already speaks, and you see her lifeless. And then she does move her arm. And it just happens to be a nice spiritual payoff.
What directors have influenced you?
RD: When people ask me that, they say, "You worked with Ron Howard, you worked with this other person...." And I'll say, "Well, Ken Loach." That kind of stops them in their tracks, which I kind of like to do. That movie of his, Kes--it was like, when I came out, I was a little confused. It wasn't a documentary, I knew it was fiction, but.... Scorsese sometimes can do that, his New York films. And that Yugoslavian guy, Emir Kusturica--When Father Was Away On Business was stunning; he's good with actors. Another film that was good was My Life As a Dog.
Weren't you in one of Lasse Hallström's films?
RD: Yeah, [Something to Talk About]; it was okay. I think sometimes when those guys come over here, they miss the point. That's why Kenneth Loach doesn't come: he's smart, plus he doesn't want to work here anyway. I tried to get him to come direct Tender Mercies, but he didn't want to, which I can understand. He liked my Gypsy film very much, which I sent to him. I met him once for coffee, and we talked a few times on the phone. I asked him if he knew a good writer to write a soccer script, set in northern England. Someday I'd like to play a soccer coach, an over-the-hill soccer player; that's been in the back of my mind for awhile.
Which directors that you've worked with have had the most influence on you as a director?
RD: Ulu Grosbard on stage and in True Confessions, very much so. Coppola in a different way: he's more of a literary guy than a behavior guy sometimes, but I watched one of those behind-the-scenes documentaries and I realized he knew a lot about acting. He said to an actor, "I don't care where you end up, just go." A guy like Kenneth Loach or Scorsese or Ulu Grosbard helps you by setting the atmosphere, and then it comes through you anyway. I've seen actors who've worked with these guys be not nearly as good under other auspices. People say "bigger than life," but nothing's bigger than life. And now people are stuck on this term "over the top." Granted, sometimes there are people with big personalities--and they're not over the top, their temperament is such that that's what it is. You play within the confines of the temperament--it's going to be big at times and not over the top.
When you're directing and acting in the moment, do you sacrifice anything as an actor?
RD: Maybe not in this situation [The Apostle]. Maybe I could have used help--you never know what another eye might bring. I've worked with wonderful directors, and usually you know when the take is good, and they know when the take is good. You look at them, they look at you; you're pretty much on the same wavelength if you're working in the same way. I know when it's okay. I worked with a crazy Polish director, Jerzy Skolimowski [on The Lightship], and he said, "In directing yourself, you prepare the whole situation and then at the last minute you step in front of the camera." That's kind of the way it was. I kept telling everybody it was just like a line rehearsal, just a simple throw-it-away, nothing's precious, make it offhand so it's like life; and that way I could arrive at a sense of behavior that was like life within picture time, instead of having to act out concepts and let's sit down and rehearse--that can be dangerous unless the director really knows what he's doing. So we just kinda went with it each day. And that's the way I work as an actor myself.
But aren't there other things the director can do for an actor besides deciding if the take is good? A director may say something to an actor just before the cameras roll that gives them something they wouldn't have had.
RD: It doesn't happen often. I'm sure that it's happened to me--in a bad way more than a good way. Sometimes you want to say, "Please guys, back up--let me do it, otherwise you put on the costume and you do it." The best directors I've worked with leave you alone. Maybe they'll tell you something, say, "You wanna try another one?" And without too much direction, just by trying another one, something might happen. A guy like Kenneth Loach arrives at things through improvisation, and therefore you both find the way you want to go instead of just results. Going for results can be dangerous. But I know what you're saying. On True Confessions Ulu Grosbard said, "You don't have to worry about getting anywhere, just see where it goes, forget about energy." Usually it's the other way round--directors want [snapping fingers] energy, pace--which is what's wrong with so many movies: you just see everybody up there trying to do something.
A wonderful director like Stanley Kubrick--some of the worst acting performances in the history of cinema are in his movies. The guy that's coming back, Terry Malick, you see nice performances, so it depends on who that somebody is.
Are you as an actor in any way dependent on the director?
RD: Yeah, you rely on the director to let you alone and see what you do. A lot of times when it's warfare it can still come out okay--it's a resistance thing. But it's better when you're on the same wavelength.
The Austin Chronicle
Life, Death, and Dance
Robert Duvall and Luciana Pedraza come to Texas to Talk
'Assassination Tango'
March 14, 2003
BY SARAH HEPOLA
Austin Chronicle: Your films seem particularly interested in portraying people as real people. You even use nonactors, in this case a lot of tango dancers. Where did that idea originate?
Robert Duvall: Way back when, I saw the movie Tess by Kenneth Loach, the English director. And I came out going, "Whoa, I know it's not a documentary, I know it's fiction, but what a thin line." I always try to do that when I direct and act. I try to mix nonactors with professional actors and be as lifelike as possible. Sometimes they put the professional actor on notice -- no bad habits, it's their first time up, nice to work with people like that.
AC: Whose idea was it to cast Luciana as Manuela?
Luciana Pedraza: I knew it was going to be a good film, and so I asked for the challenge. Bobby never thought of me for that part. He suggested somebody else, and I think she's horrible. So I said, "Before you choose her, I'll do it." It sounds very easy, but it's a big responsibility. All these big names involved -- Francis [Ford Coppola] producing the film. And the fact that I'm his girlfriend, you're even more exposed.
RD: Nobody said anything, but you could sense the apprehension. Well, I don't know about Coppola. I'm not big into nepotism, but I knew we were on the right track with her. What was that one movie I did with Denzel Washington? [John Q.] We'd be on location, and she'd be improvising with him. She's a natural. To live in Argentina and have your own business and deal with the corruption down there, there's a lot of living by your wits. She's gotten herself out of jams by acting in a natural way, so I knew she could do that. We personalized things in our real life and put them in this imaginary set of circumstances. For that coffee shop scene we just set up two cameras and improvised for eight minutes. No script, just went.
AC: There's a good deal of improv in this film.
LP: Which is good for me, because I cannot read the script. I can't learn lines.
RD: Even in Spanish?
LP: Even in Spanish. I tried to do commercials in Argentina, but it didn't work. It's a limitation for me if I want to be an actress. So with this film, I'd remember which points I had to get across -- like I have to say, "You're from New York" -- but if something else came to my mind, I did have the freedom to put it on the table.
AC: Did you two meet in Buenos Aires?
RD: Yes, seven years ago tomorrow, I think. No. Seven years ago today.
AC: How did you meet?
RD: On the street. She approached me.
LP: I didn't want to, but my friends said, "Go invite him to our party. He loves the tango." So we walked around the block and talked. I said, "Mr. Duvall, here's my card. If you wanna come to this party, my friends would love to have you," with no expectations. And he came.
AC: Were you a fan of his?
LP: I didn't know who he was. He thinks I'm lying, but I swear to god. [laughs]
RD: Sure. [winking] She knew who Daniel Day-Lewis was.
LP: But I think it worked better, because I got to meet him, instead of the movie star. He was Bobby. And still, to me, he is just Bobby. And then I saw him working on The Apostle, and saw some of his other films, and I was able to admire his work.
AC: You've called Buenos Aires your second home.
RD: Oh yeah, it's my favorite city.
AC: What do you love about it?
LP: I think for Bobby it's a place where he feels at home, a place where he feels he has a family. He can go to coffee shops where there's always people --
RD: Three in the morning, hundreds of people. Not like the United States, more like Spain. They know my movies, so I'm accepted there. They're a little bit arrogant, like the French. But they're also warm. I like the music, the tango.
AC: You've been interested in the tango for some time.
RD: It's a hobby I've had for several years. It's always good to have a hobby. It's not like riding a jumping horse, where you can break your neck. You might stub your toe, but it's not as dangerous.
AC: How were you first introduced to the tango?
RD: Fifteen years ago I went to Tango Argentina in New York, and afterward I met some of those guys. They said, "Come on, I'll show you some stuff." And then another one would say, "Don't go with him, he's no good." They all rip each other, just like in Argentina. María Nieves, who plays the aunt in the movie, she was one of the premier dancers with Tango Argentina at one time. She'd been dancing for 45 years, but for a while she was living alone, working as a cleaning woman. Now she's in a musical comedy, getting rave reviews. God bless her, I love her. And Géraldine Rojas, who plays the young sister in the movie, some people think she's the greatest dancer in the world now. And she's only 21. I've known her since she was a kid, and I used to dance with her when she was young, and if I didn't dance good, she'd walk away. Maybe only one time did she kind of smile and enjoy it. But now I don't ask her. She's got a little bit of a big head.
AC: Luciana, how long have you been dancing tango?
LP: Seven years.
RD: If she wanted to, she could dance professionally. She's very elegant when she dances, which is a word that's used in Argentina a lot. We don't use it so much in this country. But it's attached to the tango -- even if you're a scoundrel, you can be elegant. Fino, one of the greatest dancers I ever saw -- Fino meaning fine, that was his nickname because he danced so fine -- he'd call tango "sweetness."
AC: So do you have any plans for Austin? Any two-stepping at the Broken Spoke?
RD: We were out at the Broken Spoke in the fall with Billy Joe Shaver. Luciana's doing a documentary about him. But now we don't have much time. I went to Sullivan's last night. We used to eat there a lot when I worked on Secondhand Lions. We'd eat with Michael Caine and his wife. It was nice. I genuinely like Austin, but we don't have time to do much. But we'll have a pleasant taste in our mouths when we leave.
Robert Duvall and Luciana Pedraza in Assassination Tango (2002)
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The Onion A.V. Club
Robert Duvall Interview
April 30, 2003
The Onion: How did you become interested in the behind-the-scenes aspect of film making?
Robert Duvall: It was the '60s or '70s, I was in Nebraska working with Francis Ford Coppola on The Rain People, with Jimmy Caan, and I met an interesting family of people, trick riders. After that, I came back six times over a two-year
period to do kind of a documentary on this family, called We're Not The Jet Set. That got me into wanting to do some films, and I've done four altogether.
O: What about their lives interested you?
RD: It was very specific to that part of the country, but even in that part of the country, they were unique among their friends and peers. I just wanted to document that and put it on film, because even as an actor, you try to represent different parts of the culture of your country, or foreign cultures. That was what I wanted to do then, and since then, each project has dealt with a specific community or a different culture.
O: How does acting in a film you're directing differ from acting in a movie someone else directs?
RD: It's the same. Instead of having someone up there saying, "What do you think? Would you like to do another one?" you say, "I'm feeling pretty good. How do you feel? I'm satisfied with it. Let's move on." Instead of having somebody out there saying that to you, it's more like a mental check. When you've done enough, after one or two or three times, you know that it's okay. You can look at the monitor, too, and that helps a bit.
O: Does it make it harder or easier to act when you're directing yourself?
RD: It's harder but easier. It's supposed to be more difficult time-wise, health-wise, sleep-wise, everything, but I feel more exhilarated at the end of the day doing both than I do just acting, where you sleep in between takes and when they're ready for you they knock on your trailer door. When you're doing both, you're always on the move. I like to work quickly. Like on Assassination Tango, the guy said, "We'll set up the shot and call you when we're ready." So I'd be reaching for my tea and they'd already be ready. They were that fast, and I like to work fast. On The Apostle, too, we worked very fast.
O: How did The Apostle happen?
RD: Way back when I was doing an off-Broadway play, I was in Arkansas, near Memphis, and I went back to see a friend. That night, the sheriff gave me a funny look, and there was no place to sleep, so these highway workers let me bunk in with them. It was a nice little town. All the stores were owned by Chinamen in this little town in the middle of the South. I didn't know what to do, so I wandered into a little white church and saw my first Pentecostal service, and I thought it was really something, culturally and spiritually. I thought, "Someday, I'd like to play one of these people," so I developed a screenplay.
O: Did you do a lot of writing before that?
RD: No, no. Anything I try to do, I figure, has to be an extension of myself as an actor, and something that I understand
from the ground up. I can't just do anything--it has to be something that I understand. I couldn't be a writer for hire, because I wouldn't know how to do that. It has to come from myself as an actor.
O: Did it take a long time to go from writing to filming with The Apostle?
RD: It did. Everybody turned it down. Eventually, my CPA green lit the movie. [Laughs.] With the Tango movie, I put it in the drawer and left it for a while. When I took it out, the second person who saw it was Coppola. He saw it and liked it, so he bit.
O: Is there any particular director who influenced the way you direct?
RD: I found my own way, but I like some of the Iranian films. I liked the film The Apple, about a 17-year-old. But I would have to say, I keep going back to Ken Loach. I like the way he works. He listens rather than looks. I like the way he
gets behavior, and he does improvisation in a good way. If an actor gets stuck, he can help them in certain ways. Certain directors give freedom, and I've worked with them. But I've noticed that sometimes when actors get stuck, the director doesn't necessarily know how to help them. A director who gives you freedom but can also help an actor who gets stuck, that's the kind of guy Ken Loach is.
O: What's it like being directed by Coppola?
RD: Coppola's good, too. He lets you come in with stuff. He's very good with stories. With The Godfather, he picked very good actors and let them try things, and he'll suggest things. He gives you a nice freedom, as good directors do, and
doesn't say, "Do it this way!" [Pounds on table.] Some of the old-timers did.
O: When you first read the script for Apocalypse Now, did you realize what an impact your character would have?
RD: I don't know about that. I thought I might like to play it, but they offered it to somebody bigger than me. Then he turned it down, so they only had to ask me once. The name of the character that John Milius had written was originally
called Colonel Carnage, so they tempered that down from Carnage to Kilgore.
O: Do you think it takes a certain temperament or personality to be an effective director?
RD: No, there are all kinds. Some yell, some are quiet, and you like to look for the quiet ones. The ones that can be buffaloed, that's not so good, but there's all kinds. I know a guy who worked with [Roman] Polanski, and after three
weeks, he just quit. There could have been legal repercussions, but he just quit because the guy was a maniac to work with. But Polanski's a talented guy. My favorite film of the year was The Pianist.
O: Who's been the most difficult director you've worked with?
RD: I don't know. They're okay. Way back, old Henry Hathaway in True Grit said to some actor, "When I say action, tense up, goddammit!" You don't want somebody to tell you in a scene to tense up. But you're trying to find ways to work with one another, and you try and find common ground.
O: In the films you've directed, you've worked with a lot of non-professionals. What's the appeal of working with them?
RD: The appeal is that once you get them to a certain level, they'll put a professional actor on notice. They'll be just as pure and good, and they have no bad habits. They bring something fresh. And you try to populate your film with people from the community you're filming about, making actors out of them. I used to go to Pentecostal churches in the South and say, "She looks interesting," and make actors out of them. If they're willing to do it, and they're willing to try it, then you get them loosened up and let the process come from them, and you get good stuff. You get gems.
O: You obviously played a memorable character in your first film, To Kill A Mockingbird. Were you worried that you'd get typecast?
RD: No. I've always had the good fortune to get different kinds of parts. But it was a special guy, Horton Foote, who helped me get the role. He wrote the screenplay. I remember when I went up to do it, Harper Lee--I think that was the
only book she ever wrote--sent me a telegram that said "Hey, Boo." It's a nice part, and it was a nice project to be part of.
O: What made you want to make a movie about the tango?
RD: I just have always liked the tango, and I began to piece together an imaginary story connecting the world of social dancing to the underworld. The best dancer in Brooklyn was a mambo guy, and also a wiseguy. In Buenos Aires, they get that. It's a myth, but they used to say that you'd be a good dancer if you were from the underworld. It's true that some underworld guys are good at dancing, but a guy from a bank, or an interviewer like yourself, can also be a good dancer, if you're a talented individual. So I tried to connect social dancing to the underworld. I didn't know why he'd go to Argentina, but then I thought, "Why not have him knock off one of the generals?"
O: Were you interested in Argentina's political situation?
RD: It interested me to a point, because it's a corrupt country. I don't know if it's institutionalized, but I think it's what brought the country down.
O: You have a home in Argentina. How would you compare living in Argentina to living in America?
RD: I'd never give up my country. I'm an American. But down there, I must say, at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning in Buenos Aires, hundreds of people are in the streets and drinking coffee. There's something there that's not in this country, and I like that a lot. They get up kissing, and when they finish, it's lunchtime. They can be arrogant but warm. The French are arrogant and arrogant. In Buenos Aires, they kind of look to the French somewhat, but I love it there. I like that city more than any other city, because you can go to coffee shops at any time of the day. There's something about it. I've grown used to it, and I've been accepted there.
O: You financed The Apostle yourself. Were you worried?
RD: Well, I just jumped in and hoped for the best. It was almost sabotaged by one of the guys bidding on it, but we got our money back plus. I didn't make a lot of money, but I felt great because I got it done and got October Films behind it.
O: It doesn't exactly have the most commercial subject.
RD: Yeah, well, they could have put it in twice as many theaters as they did, especially in the Bible Belt.
O: How did winning the Academy Award for Tender Mercies affect your career?
RD: It didn't really affect it one way or the other. It was nice to win. That was it. It's okay, but it didn't do anything special.
O: Didn't it give you any kind of leverage?
RD: Not really. I went in right after that and tried to get money for The Apostle, but couldn't get it. Couldn't get a cent. But it's better that I did it years later, because it seasoned and got richer.
O: Why was it was so difficult to get that film financed?
RD: Other actors have had the same experience. They'd rather do a schlocky project about the same thing you're going to do and pay you big money and not help you finance this one. It's a funny irony, but actors have always had problems getting money for independent movies.
O: How would you compare making Assassination Tango with making The Apostle?
RD: Well, it's two very different subjects, but using the same sort of process. It's two things that interest me very much. The same people you might use in a documentary, if you're doing a documentary, you can use in the fiction form. So I try to go from that aspect. Both were very enjoyable, and I liked doing both of them.
O: Do you get recognized a lot?
RD: Sometimes. Always enough to be flattering, but never enough to be a nuisance--not like Tom Cruise or those guys. They can't walk down the street.
O: What do you generally get recognized for?
RD: Boombox kids are like, "Hey, man, I seen you in Colors." Guys from North Carolina recognize me from Days Of Thunder. Different things, but a lot of people recognize me from Lonesome Dove. In the city and the country, especially in the West among cowboys, they'll tell you, that's the one.
O: What films of yours do you think have been overlooked or underrated?
RD: Everybody always goes way back to The Outfit. Underrated? Overlooked? Maybe True Confessions, which is overlooked in that people love it, but people tend to go for the obvious ones, critics and the public alike. So what? That's
life.
O: It seems like at this stage in your career, you've already done just about everything an actor can do. Are there any things you haven't done yet but would like to do?
RD: I'd like to direct more, but I don't have any projects going. Around the corner, there's always something. I just did a Western with Kevin Costner. It's a great part. Almost equal to Lonesome Dove, which is my all-time favorite. I play a trail boss. It's a traditional Western, and it's going to be nice, I think. I hope.
Robert Duvall
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Robert Duvall & Billy Bob Thornton
Interview, March, 1998 by Elizabeth Weitzman
ROBERT DUVALL: Hey Billy Bob, how you doin'?
BILLY BOB THORNTON: Whaddaya say, Bobby?
ELIZABETH WEITZMAN: How did you two first meet?
BBT: I told my agent that I only wanted two things out of him, and then he could retire. I said, "I wanna work with Robert Duvall and Jim Jarmusch, and that's all I need."
RD: We worked together first on The Stars Fell on Henrietta, and then Billy Bob and his partner [Tom Epperson] wrote that beautiful script, A Family Thing.
BBT: Bobby came to us and said, "I'd like to play a man who finds out he's black." And we said, "Well, that's a tall order."
RD: [laughs] Yeah, I guess it was.
EW: You're from such different parts of the country yet all four of the movies you've done together are Southern. Why is that?
RD: Well, we traveled around when I was growing up, but my father's people were from Virginia. They were Southerners but pro-Union. My grandfather was named Abraham Lincoln Duvall. And actually, a lot of my mother's relatives were
from Texas, and I'm related to Robert E. Lee, way back. So I have some roots, and a kind of feel for the South because of my background.
BBT: Before I met Bobby, I just assumed he was from Texas. There's very few actors who can play Southerners who aren't. I think because of his people being from there, he's got it in him. You just couldn't do it otherwise.
EW: Your roles in The Apostle and Sling Blade could so easily have been patronizing in less careful hands. Do you feel and I'm really referring to all the Southern characters you've created, from Tomorrow [1972, starring Duvall] to Primary Colors - any responsibility to correct the stereotyped images of the rural South that are still so pervasive in the rest of the country?
BBT: I do, for sure. That's a terrible thing, to go to a movie and see a caricature. I think a lot of it is because there weren't many filmmakers from the South early on. And so you got guys from the Bronx and California makin' movies about
Mississippi, butchering Southern dialect.
RD: We've always made better city movies in this country. You know, we don't glorify the Ku Klux Klan - because they shouldn't be glorified - but I don't know how much worse they are than the Mob. And we certainly take great pains to glorify them, so my point of view is, if you can make a hundred gangster movies in New York, why can't you try to make one authentic preacher film?
BBT: And I'm certainly not claiming the South's any better than anywhere else, or a better place to make a movie about, but it does have a real knack for scandal, and I think that's a wonderful thing to explore. So movies about the South shouldn't just be about how great it is. Part of the interesting thing is how screwed up it is, too.
RD: Billy Bob has said he wants to write the definitive American tragedy - the Hatfields and the McCoys - and no New York actors will be allowed in it.
BBT: That's right. Matter of fact, we're gonna have armed guards.
EW: To keep the New Yorkers out?
RD: Yeah!
EW: Do you share an interest in Southern writers?
BBT: Well, I don't know as much about the contemporary ones. I mean, I'm not a real well read guy, but the people I do read, I kind of read all their stuff. Faulkner had a brother named John that not a lot of people know about. Matter of fact, Bobby, I've got to get you a couple of his books, 'cause I think you'll love them.
RD: He was a good writer too?
BBT: He was terrific. And a lot funnier than William.
RD: William you kinds gotta decode when you read, don't you?
BBT: [laughs] Yeah, it's kinda like reading physics - Southern physics.
EW: Billy Bob, it seems there's a pretty strong connection between Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird and Karl in Sling Blade. Did you have that in mind when you wrote the script?
BBT: Not consciously, but a lot of times you do something and don't realize your influences until somebody points it out to you or you sit back and look at it. And not only Boo Radley, but Bobby's character in Tomorrow.
EW: There are similarities between Karl and Sonny in The Apostle, too, in that they're both compassionate, instinctual, good men who've done bad things.
RD: Nah, there's no real kin between them.
EW: What about between the two of you? In the larger aspects, the way you're both willing to be one-man shows to make the films you want to make, and in the smaller details, like casting country musicians and nonactor natives, your working styles seem to have a lot in common. Is that actually the case?
RD: Could be. I fit into his style and he fits into mine. I try to minimize the word action because I don't like a beginning. It's just a continuation of life into the imaginary. And I think Billy's the same way.
EW: Watching both Sling Blade and The Apostle, I also noticed that each of your characters was instrumental in the redemption of the other.
RD: Coincidence.
BBT: Absolutely. There's not but three or four stories in the world. It's just how you treat them. I like to do simple stories and have complex characters. I start out thinking about who the people are, 'cause a story don't mean anything if you
don't have interesting people. That's why when you see one of these big action movies, and you've got a bunch of nameless, faceless people fighting Sylvester Stallone or Harrison Ford, you're not scared of them. But if these same bad
guys go out to the 7-Eleven, buy a burrito, and start talking about the football game, well, that makes them real people. And it makes you more afraid of them.
EW: Both your movies were very hard sells and then became surprise successes. Why do you think movies that stereotype Southerners and rural areas are so much easier to get made than Sling Blade and The Apostle?
RD: Well, people see the exploitation aspect whether they admit it or not. They make movies like The Beverly Hillbillies, or whatever corny stuff, because the obvious and caricatured is easy to do - even starting way back with Gone
With the Wind. People like to watch artifice more than they do the real thing. A lot of movies are patronizing from whatever point of view, but it's so easy to do with the South because it's accepted, and it's expected. Those are the ones that make the money, it seems like - the ones that are always passing judgment.
BBT: I tell you, if you went by Hollywood's idea of Southern movies, you'd think all that happens down there is lynchings. I used to start out a show I did in a theater by saying, "OK, y'all know my name's Billy Bob, so you probably
think I married my cousin and screw goats." But I also said, "Just remember this. If it weren't for us, you wouldn't have a great deal of your literature, and you wouldn't have any music. Because modern music comes from the South of the United States. Without it, all we'd have would be classical music and polkas."
RD: Maybe a little violin music from Nova Scotia.
EW: Billy Bob, can you talk a little bit about the degree to which you intended Sling Blade to be a religious film?
BBT: Well, I definitely wanted to make a comment on religion, which was mainly that it's not a bad thing at its core. I kinda get upset by people running down evangelists. If somebody believes in what they're doing, I don't know how you can knock it. There are guys who come on TV and take people's social security checks and drive home in a $100,000 car. But that's not what all Southern religion's about.
RD: And some of the Southern white religions should be just as valid in the liberals' eyes as black religion. The black church is accepted, but often in a patronizing way. A lot of blacks have the same outlook as whites about certain social issues from a religious point of view. You know, I got more spirituality from one meeting in the church of this ninety-six-year-old black preacher near my home in Virginia than from any picture I've seen of the Dalai Lama or Mahatma Gandhi. I don't know what the Richard Geres would say about that, but this guy was a very spiritual man and the most impressive preacher I'd ever met in my life. Now, he was politically incorrect, but he would be excused because he'd been subservient to whites all his life and he'd got another set of standards. I remember one Sunday I was sitting there and he said, "Ain't no thieves going to Heaven, ain't no pimps going to Heaven, ain't no robbers going to Heaven, ain't no homos going to Heaven!" You can't say that now. But he said it. It was pretty interesting. But if a white guy said that - ooh, look out.
EW: When you make a movie that deals with religion in such an intimate way, does your personal sense of spirituality necessarily affect the movie you're making? And do you feel more spiritual or more connected to religion?
BBT: I think a little bit of both.
RD: Certainly it elevates the human experience, emotionally and culturally and spiritually, a few notches when you work in a situation like that.
EW: I know this is a very big question, but is there an overarching quality you could pinpoint that draws you both so strongly to the rural South on a visceral level?
BBT: Well, I think it's magic. It's a very supernatural place. Supposedly, the South is very close-minded. There's not a lot of emphasis placed on runway models, but I think the South is a lot more open-minded to the spiritual aspects of life. Maybe, as Bobby was saying earlier, not a lot of Southerners follow the Dalai Lama, but they're certainly open to ghosts and things like that. I think the imagination is very alive down there. You feel more of a sense of soul, or the spirit, in the South. That may sound like hogwash, but that's the way I feel.
RD: The genuine manners you see in the South, the friendliness and openness: Those are nice things. Except if you get up in the hill country - they're a little more closed.
BBT: Oh, absolutely. There's a lot of those people in the sticks that don't want you back there. I used to repossess furniture and TV sets and things like that, years and years ago, and we used to go out to a settlement outside of Malvern
[Ark.] where they were all relatives; everybody out there had the same last name, which the community was actually named after. Boy, they didn't want you out there. At all.
EW: One last question: What do you think was the immediate point of association for you, the thing that initially attracted you to each other?
BBT: Well, I had the advantage of having watched Bobby for a long time.
RD: See, Billy Bob, he jumped into directing and everything far younger than I did. You know, I'm a late bloomer. But when he met me, he was all ready to write for people and write for himself, and act for himself, and direct for others, and direct for himself. I call him a triple threat: a hillbilly Orson Welles. [laughs] I think I like Sling Blade even better than the great thing Orson Welles did - what was the name of that movie about Rosebud? I think Sling Blade was pure.
BBT: Yeah, it happened very naturally, and like I said, Bobby was somebody who had been a hero of mine for a long time.
RD: Now he's become a hero for me.
BBT: What I respond to in Bobby is that he does things very real. It's all about being naturalistic and not contriving anything, not pushing it.
RD: People talk about things that are "bigger than life." There's nothing .bigger than life. Life is big and beautiful as it is. You just have to take selections from life and put it in fiction form. When you see that, it's just great.
EW: Thank you both very much.
BBT: OK, thanks a lot.
RD: Thank you, ma'am.
Robert Duvall and Billy Bob Thornton
BBC - Films - Interview
Robert Duvall
Gods and Generals
Interviewed by Stephen Applebaum
Of all the actors in "Gods and Generals", your delivery sounded the most naturalistic. Did you have a hand in writing your dialogue?
RD Nah, I didn't have any input. They wrote those speeches. It was like a history lesson. The thing that saved me in that film was not the fact that on my mother's side I'm related to the guy. The thing that gave me the hook to the character was that bloodline right into my father's people. Like Lee they are from Fairfax in northern Virginia, just across the Mason-Dixon line, so it's a speech pattern I know. It was an honor to play Lee, he was a great general.
Compared to you, everyone else sounded rather stilted...
RD Yeah, well, it was a fight for the other actors because of the syntax and so forth. They're thinking of doing a third film but they can't, they've lost too much money. That would be Lee's heyday. I don't even know if I want to do a third one. It was long hours, but I suppose it was OK. I mean I only had to roll out of bed in the morning, because where I live in Virginia is right near where they shot the film.
How did you get involved in Kevin Costner's latest directorial venture, "Open Range"?
RD Well, a year ago, Kevin Costner called and said, "Don't take anything because we got something. I can't tell you what it is but it's great." So I probed and probed and finally I found out it was a western. We shot it in Calgary, it's set 100 years ago, and it's a true western with a great gun battle. I play a trail boss and it's a great, great part.
Is this a genre you enjoy?
RD Look, the English do Shakespeare, the French do Molière, the Russians do Chekhov - we do westerns. Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns, I feel. To this day, I still think [TV western] Lonesome Dove is my best part.
Gregory Peck died recently. What are your memories of working with him on "To Kill a Mockingbird"?
RD I was very touched when I heard he passed away. They told me and I went on the radio just moments after it happened. "To Kill a Mockingbird" was my first film and I came in at the end of the movie, just as my character [Boo Radley] comes in at the end of the book. It was a wonderful introduction when I came on the set. Gregory Peck was very gracious and accommodating to me and everyone else. So my memories of him, professionally and personally, are that he was very much a gracious person who seemed to be very inclusive of all peoples.
Robert Duvall in Gods and Generals
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IndieLondon - Your London Reviews
We Own The Night - Robert Duvall interview
Q: Do your friends call you Bobby?
Robert Duvall: Yeah. When I was a kid my name was Bodge because my brother couldn’t say Bobby, he said ‘Bodgee’. And as I became older I became Bob and now it’s Bobby Duvall. But my parents never called my Bob, they always called me Bodge.
Q: What keeps you young and enthusiastic to tackle films like We Own The Night?
Robert Duvall: Well, my wife is younger and that helps. Hanging out with young people is good and she’s got me doing yoga now and if I eat a meal, I really try to a little exercise to work it off. You know it’s so easy to put it on and I love good food. If I have a plate of pasta I go home and I do 100 of these crunches and a little yoga, so I try to do a little exercise, not a lot. I don’t believe in going to the gym or any of that stuff. When I met my father in law he said: “I don’t know whether to call you father or son.” [laughs]
Q: In We Own The Night you are the patriarch of the family. Is that a role that you recognize in your own life?
Robert Duvall: I don’t know, I think my wife is the general [laughs]. So, I don’t know if I’m a patriarch in my family. My mother always ran the show, even though my father was in the military. So I don’t know if I’m a patriarch or not. I guess I don’t really have any real say in the matter. I only have stepdaughters. I don’t guess I fit the role of patriarch in life.
Q: There’s a lot of suppressed emotion in the film. How did you approach that?
Robert Duvall: I say to my wife, I cry for money. If they pay me, I’ll cry [laughs]. If it calls for it you can plan it, I find, and if it happens it happens. I try to choreograph certain scenes almost in the back of my mind without even talking to the director about it, so then if it happens it happens, it’s legitimate. Usually with an emotion it’s almost more moving than if you let it come out. Sandy Meisner, the acting coach, once said: “If great acting is crying then my aunt Tilly could be another Brando…” All the women tried to cry in his class. I don’t mind showing emotion at all. It’s necessary to find the conflict in the character
Q: Your generation of actors is recognised as one of the best. Do you see young actors that you admire working now?
Robert Duvall: The young actors are better than ever. There are great young actors and just as good as my generation. Maybe we help raised the bar and the standard but there are wonderful young actors out there including these guys.
Q: Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman were your friends early on. Do you still keep in touch with them?
Robert Duvall: No, it’s a very fickle business. I haven’t seen Hackman in years and yet when we did Geronimo it was: “Hey, how are you doing man? Good to see you…” And then it was “action” and we started acting and then “cut” and we start talking again. It was like we picked up where we left off but I haven’t seen him since… 15 years ago.
Dustin I see every now and then, at the Four Seasons or wherever, and it’s very natural to see him. Maybe it’s easier in London but we got 3,000 miles separating us: Hackman lives in New Mexico, I live in Virginia. But Hoffman has five houses all over the world, so we don’t see each other so much.
Q: Do you have friends in the business?
Robert Duvall: I keep in touch with James Caan some. Paul Gleason died and he was a very good friend of mine. I bump into Jon Voight now and then. But other than that I don’t have too many actor friends. It’s a kind of strange business that way, kind of fickle – for eight weeks you become friends and then it goes out.
Q: Do you think about the past or concentrate on the future?
Robert Duvall: More the future, but you do think about the past. I don’t watch my films too much. I’d love to play a gypsy. I loved what Brad Pitt did in Snatch and I’d like to play an American gypsy. I don’t watch my films too much, some of them I haven’t seen [at all]. I like to see it maybe once and then I’ll think about it now and then. I’ll think about Lonesome Dove more than most things.
Q: You are closely associated with the Western. Where does your love of the genre come from?
Robert Duvall: It’s our deal. The English have Shakespeare, the French have Moliere and the Western is definitely ours. When I was a kid I went to my uncle’s ranch in Montana for two summers – he had a big cattle and sheep place out there. And you know, when I first went to Hollywood I would take out a horse every day – bare back, English saddle, western saddle – and I learned to jump a horse, so I would have a seat on a horse, because most actors can draw a pistol but they can’t ride a horse. So I wanted to do Westerns and it served me well. I think Westerns are our thing.
People say they don’t sell but they do sell and as soon as you make them they say: “When are you going to do another one?” In England, they love Westerns, wide-open spaces and all that. I just like doing ‘em. At the end of my career I thought maybe I could do a gun fighter in a Western who is mute, so I wouldn’t have any lines [laughs].
Q: Do you rate the Godfather films as highly as we all do?
Robert Duvall: Oh yes. They were great films. And somewhere between Coppola and the English director, Ken Loach – who gets very good performances from his actors – is James Gray.
Q: Having worked with Joaquin Phoenix in We Own The Night, how do you rate him?
Robert Duvall: He’s a very talented guy. I said to him: “You’re a lot better than I thought you were.” Because he was always fumbling around. He’s very good in the movie.
Q: What do you mean fumbling around?
Robert Duvall: Well, I never saw what he was doing. He was always moping around and grabbing at me. But I think that was some kind of design with the director to get into my space. He was very good and Mark [Wahlberg] too, they’re both very talented guys. Mark Wahlberg would fight a bear, that guy. He’s a tough kid – he went to jail and everything. It was interesting that Mark would play that guy. I couldn’t quite believe it when I saw it. But that was the character and they both did them very well.
Q: Your father was in the Navy. What did he make of you becoming an actor?
Robert Duvall: Yeah, he worked with the British Navy during the war, he was a career naval officer. He went to the Navy academy when he was 16-years-old, off the farm in Virginia. He was a quiet guy and with my mother, they were the ones who pushed me into acting, which is unusual. I kind of floundered around looking for things to do until I found my niche. But they were supportive. My mother was an amateur actor.
Q: Apocalypse Now has gone down in movie history, not simply because it’s a great film, but because there were so many setbacks and traumas during the shoot. What are your memories of the film?
Robert Duvall: For me it was OK. I did the first six weeks and then came over to England and worked on The Eagle Has Landed and then went back and finished up Apocalypse months later – it went on and on and on over there. It was interesting to do it. They had me in a cowboy hat and boots and it didn’t seem right, so I did a lot of research and they actually wore cavalry hats and spurs as kind of an honour to the last century, the cavalry. And I found out in between that the head general for the Air Cavalry was crazy, he used to deer hunt twice a week along the Cambodian border and he got shot down and killed doing that. And they would go into north Vietnam and they would hook a bicycle from the helicopter and steal it, they were crazy guys.
Q: One of your lines in the movie, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning..” is famous. Do people quote it to you a lot?
Robert Duvall: [laughs] Yes! I run into people who quote that line it’s as if it’s a private pact between them and me and only they and I know it. Hey, everybody does it. When I did The Apostle one of these preachers said: “I don’t go to the movies, but I hear Robert Duvall had a famous line in a movie – I love the smell of gasoline in the morning…” [laughs]
Q: You’ve directed films before. Any plans on directing again?
Robert Duvall: I got an idea for one we’re working on now. It’s kind of a border movie, which is very controversial in America, and very complex, nobody has a solution, 72 countries come across that border illegally. So, we’ll try and do that but I don’t know where we’ll get the money.
Q: You seem to work as much as ever. No plans to retire?
Robert Duvall: Yes, the work comes but not as much as it did a few years ago. You keep going until you run out of enthusiasm or until they have to wipe the drool or whatever. There’s always something out there. But they make all these remakes and yet there is so many good original stories, like this one in We Own The Night, out there.
-We Own the Night Cast -
Eva Mendes, Robert Duvall, Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix
THE NEWS ARCHIVES OF CINEMA CONFIDENTIAL
Robert Duvall of "Secondhand Lions"
09/19/03
Have you ever given the “What it takes to be a man” speech to a relative of your own?
RD No, never did. I think women are more prone – I think guys don’t do that so much. Men are more covered. They’ll be short to the point, if anything.
How was it working with Haley Joel Osment who, being so young, has so much experience already under his belt?
RD He did fine. He was wonderful and always ready. I said to people directing him, “Leave him alone. He knows what he’s doing.”
Did you give him any advice?
RD No. I always found that the actors that did that in the past weren’t so good and the better actors didn’t do that.
How important is it for you to do these smaller movies every once in a while?
RD Smaller? This is smaller? (Laughs) This is going to make $100 million dollars! This is a pretty big movie, I think. Smaller budget you mean?
Yeah, a little under the radar…
RD Oh, I see what you mean.
It’s smaller compared to something like “Gone in 60 Seconds”…
RD Yeah, but “Gone in 60 Seconds” was gone in 6 seconds. (Laughter) Don’t you think that Hollywood would rather do an $80 million dollar movie than $10 or $8 million dollar movies, knowing in the back of their mind that it might fail anyway? They think so big out there. But they thought big on the other end on this one cause they kept the budget lower. Same as on “Open Range.”
When the cameras roll, do you take as much pleasure in acting today as you did 30 years ago?
RD More. More relaxed. Good things are coming my way now. I get more offers now than ever. Like I got an offer the other day to perhaps do a remake of “The Old Man & The Sea.” So, a lot of nice things, so I still take pleasure. When I don’t, then maybe I’ll [stop]. I’d like to direct a little bit more but that’s a special thing.
Do they make stars too easy nowadays? Has Hollywood made too many overnight successes?
RD There are some great young actors out there right now, I think better than ever. But I don’t know what you mean by overnight success because that wanes anyway. Everybody wants to make films and be filmmakers and there’s a certain amount of credence of rising to the top.
Hollywood has changed so much since you’ve started out in this business. Has it become better or worse?
RD I don’t know, it’s hard to say. The better part is that it used to be as if it were independent filmmaking within the system. Now it’s about the big blockbuster movie. I guess it encourages people to make those. I just came back from Argentina and some of the best directors and actors in the world are down there. They’re talented people down there! They don’t need Hollywood.
Do you think, though, that Hollywood has opened its doors to foreign films more openly today than they did several years ago?
RD [They] go over people’s heads some. I’m not saying just foreign films because we get the best foreign films but not all foreign films are great. But you know, they have that foreign film fan in Hollywood and sometimes, the foreign films are better than the American films that win the Oscar. To me, “Son of the Bride,” the Argentine film was much better than the Yugoslavian film that won the award that year. I think people are aware of these movies. One time, I was working on a film and the producer and director said, “We have the best actor,” “We have the best producer,” this and that. It could be an arrogant thing. I said, “You name me one director in the history of Hollywood that made a film like ‘My Life as a Dog.’ Name me one movie that came out like that.” Hollywood doesn’t always have all the answers. They think they do, but they don’t.
Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, and Haley Joel Osment
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Film Society of Lincoln Center
A lifetime in the moment: Robert Duvall:
American cinema's greatest living actor
11/21/97
- What inspired The Apostle?
RD I've just always wanted to play one of these preachers. Many years ago when I was in Arkansas, just wandering around. I saw preachers who had music around them. a guy on a guitar. and this kind of thing has always interested me. There was a [project] called The Kingdom; Sidney Lumet was gonna direct and Mamet was gonna do rewrites--a strange duo for this subject. Hollywood said I wasn't right for it. The two guys who wrote the script approached Horton Foote after it fell through and asked him if he could help revive it: "Could you talk Bob Duvall into playing the lead, because we wrote it for him? Horton said, "Well, Bobby's s doing his own script since that s fallen through." I gone once a month for ten months to Texas, stayed with friends and went to all kinds of churches doing research. Because of the whole sense of being in that community, really trying to immerse myself, sop it up, and learn stuff, when The Kingdom fell through I just kept going.
- What would The Kingdom have been about?
RD As I remember, it was about two preachers, different aspects in their whole approach. It was a pretty good script.
- Were they grassroots preachers?
RD They came from grassroots, but there's a contamination process that seems to set in with some of these preachers once they get into that nouvelle-riche real, television or whatever: they can really become insufferable in their self-righteousness. It's a joke. Within the nucleus of this movement, there are some very sincere, honest people. But maybe they couldn't handle it when they got this sudden power; I don't know, maybe some of them don't even want it. The thrill of it is to try to show this world the way it should be shown.
I saw clips of Elmer Gantry and it was all patronization time by Hollywood, putting forth caricatures and these quick, easy images of what really isn't. So that's an education process. When people would say. "Are you gonna make your guy this way?", I said, no, he's an honest guy who lives what he believes, but he has weaknesses like anybody else, hypocrisy ... no more nor less than any Hollywood producer or guy that runs a studio who are making the decisions about this.
I called up Harry Crews, the novelist. a very talented guy. He wrote one script that was okay, but then 1 figured, He's gonna write a script and explore those people--what if it goes so far in one direction that I don't know how to pull it back? I've gotta jump in and do my own. Horton Foote encouraged me.
I direct as an actor; as an extension of that; and I feel that whatever I may offer as a writer ... I was a terrible writer in school, I don't consider myself a writer. What I know and what I think I understand about behavior, what I look for in behavioral terms ... because that's what I've been doing for many years anyway, taking something that's nothing more than ink and transforming it into behavior. Even though the concept may be there, it's still ink.
- What really got under your skin about playing a preacher?
RD An actor always looks for challenges, and this was a wonderful challenge, something I felt I could do. I'm not saying other actors couldn't, but I felt I had a bead on this guy. It was very challenging in a titillating, alive way. I wanted to see if I could recreate the rhythms, the temperament, the whole makeup and aura of the guy. I was afraid of having to direct it, but Coppola, Ulu Grosbard, Richard Pearce all told me I should: they sensed I understood it maybe more than they would if I would have called them in to direct. I didn't wanna come up with an indictment or a critique of these people--I wanted something from their point of view. From within their midst but not really of them. To come into that realm and take out of it and put forth what I feel is there.
- That's really an actor's approach.
RD I think so. When I was in those churches I was very objective; I kept saying, I'm not really a part of this, yet I am but I'm not--I'm very cut off from it. But maybe that's the way it had to be. I searched in a very enthusiastic and fun way, to really glean what I had to glean from it.
- Did you ever feel swept up in it?
RD In the music, sometimes, the singing. One time in a very classic church in Harlem, the Metropolitan Opera Choir were singing "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," and a very quiet emotion came Over me. I could count that as a conversion, if I were of this persuasion, but I just took it to be a very wonderful, personal feeling. I certainly could have counted it as a conversion if I had been looking to be converted. Sometimes people get swept up and that is very genuine; other times I think it's a mass [psychology] thing, so the individual has to be careful.
- In a sense, preaching is another uniquely American artform, like jazz or the Western. Was that important to you in how you related to it?
RD Very. I wanted to find the style of preaching and approximate that as well as I could, as I tried to in Tender Mercies with the singing. And that's a big part of the infatuation for me. There was a line I took out of the script (because it got very long) where I said, "If preaching is in any part of my body, it's in my blood and it'll be there until the day I die and go to heaven." And preachers are very good storytellers; I've been to churches where a guy will take one line from the Bible and then go on for an hour and a half, putting on almost impromptu plays or improvisations. When people give their tithes, it's just their entertainment. They might shy away from saying that, but it's true. It's a form of entertainment for their spirituality.
- I noticed there are a lot of jokes in the sermons in the film.
RD Oh yeah, there's a lot of humor. They're always keeping that audience alive.
- There's a cutaway after the accident scene at the start of the film where the girl's hand moves. It seems to suggest some kind of miracle.
RD Definitely. When I first saw it, it gave me goosebumps. That was meant to be. My character's intervention could be a miracle, or some working that's very therapeutic. Maybe there's something to the power of prayer. But he did say "one may live and one may die," and the young man already speaks, and you see her lifeless. And then she does move her arm. And it just happens to be a nice spiritual payoff.
- What directors have influenced you?
RD When people ask me that, they say, "You worked with Ron Howard, you worked with this other person...." And I'll say, "Well, Ken Loach." That kind of stops them in their tracks, which I kind of like to do. That movie of his, Kes--it was like, when I came out, I was a little confused. It wasn't a documentary, I knew it was fiction, but.... Scorsese sometimes can do that, his New York films. And that Yugoslavian guy, Emir Kusturica--When Father Was Away On Business was stunning; he's good with actors. Another film that was good was My Life As a Dog.
- Weren't you in one of Lasse Hallstrom's films?
RD Yeah, Something to Talk About, it was okay. I think sometimes when those guys come over here, they miss the point. That's why Kenneth Loach doesn't come: he's smart, plus he doesn't want to work here anyway. I tried to get him to come direct Tender Mercies, but he didn't want to, which I can understand. He liked my Gypsy film very much, which I sent to him. I met him once for coffee, and we talked a few times on the phone. I asked him if he knew a good writer to write a soccer script, set in northern England. Someday I'd like to play a soccer coach, an over-the-hill soccer player; that's been in the back of my mind for awhile.
- Which directors that you've worked with have had the most influence on you as a director?
RD Ulu Grosbard on stage and in True Confessions, very much so. Coppola in a different way: he's more of a literary guy than a behavior guy sometimes, but I watched one of those behind-the-scenes documentaries and I realized he knew a lot about acting. He said to an actor, "I don't care where you end up, just go." A guy like Kenneth Loach or Scorsese or Ulu Grosbard helps you by setting the atmosphere, and then it comes through you anyway. I've seen actors who've worked with these guys be not nearly as good under other auspices. People say "bigger than life," but nothing's bigger than life. And now people are stuck on this term "over the top." Granted, sometimes there are people with big personalities--and they're not over the top, their temperament is such that that's what it is. You play within the confines of the temperament--it's going to be big at times and not over the top.
- When you're directing and acting in the moment, do you sacrifice anything as an actor?
RD Maybe not in this situation [The Apostle]. Maybe I could have used help--you never know what another eye might bring. I've worked with wonderful directors, and usually you know when the take is good, and they know when the take is good. You look at them, they look at you; you're pretty much on the same wavelength if you're working in the same way. I know when it's okay. I worked with a crazy Polish director, Jerzy Skolimowski [on The Lightship], and he said, "In directing yourself, you prepare the whole situation and then at the last minute you step in front of the camera." That's kind of the way it was. I kept telling everybody it was just like a line rehearsal, just a simple throw-it-away, nothing's precious, make it offhand so it's like life; and that way I could arrive at a sense of behavior that was like life within picture time, instead of having to act out concepts and let's sit down and rehearse that can be dangerous unless the director really knows what he's doing. So we just kinda went with it each day. And that's the way I work as an actor myself.
- But aren't there other things the director can do for an actor besides deciding if the take is good? A director may say something to an actor just before the cameras roll that gives them something they wouldn't have had.
RD It doesn't happen often. I'm sure that it's happened to me--in a bad way more than a good way. Sometimes you want to say, "Please guys, back up--let me do it, otherwise you put on the costume and you do it." The best directors I've worked with leave you alone. Maybe they'll tell you something, say, "You wanna try another one?" And without too much direction, just by trying another one, something might happen. A guy like Kenneth Loach arrives at things through improvisation, and therefore you both find the way you want to go instead of just results. Going for results can be dangerous.
But I know what you're saying. On True Confessions Ulu Grosbard said, "You don't have to worry about getting anywhere, just see where it goes, forget about energy." Usually it's the other way round--directors want [snapping fingers] energy, pace--which is what's wrong with so many movies: you just see everybody up there trying to do something.
A wonderful director like Stanley Kubrick--some of the worst acting performances in the history of cinema are in his movies. The guy that's coming back, Terry Malick, you see nice performances, so it depends on who that somebody is.
- Are you as an actor in any way dependent on the director?
RD Yeah, you rely on the director to let you alone and see what you do. A lot of times when it's warfare it can still come out okay--it's a resistance thing. But it's better when you're on the same wavelength.
- What do you do as a director when an actor can't solve an acting problem?
RD In Angelo My Love, I wanted a specific moment about how Angelo's mother loved him when he's being reprimanded by her. She was okay, but something happened, so I pushed her aside and off-camera I became the mother. As we do, another actor off-camera, we try to help each other. So when I said, "How much do you love me?", Angelo said, "Up to Heaven," and he got very emotional and I was a bit emotional. In that instance, I became that character and it worked. [On The Apostle] I tried to make sure everybody were themselves. I said, "Let's not act, what I've written isn't precious--let's just see where it goes." And these were talented people, so they came up with things.
- Do you see a conflict between the director's job of telling the story and the actor's need to explore the moments truthfully?
RD I thought about that. I said let's keep the story moving. (You realize that sometimes when these directors keep asking for pace, a portion of that is justified.) Eventually we had to pare scenes down or cut them out completely, but the sense of talking and listening ... the actors understood the logic of the demands of each scene which would be different from simple talking-listening. But it still boils down to, I talk, you listen, and that's what I wanted more than anything. Things are going to happen if talented people are relaxed and go that minimum route rather than the more result-maximum route.
- As an actor, when you edit do you feel that you want to preserve the integrity of a take and the moments in it, or do you feel free to mix takes to create an edited truth?
RD Yeah, sometimes precious moments have to go. It's better to cut around things rather than into them.
- Can a director make a performance in the editing room?
RD Find it. If you don't have it, I don't think you can find it. A chef has to have good produce to make good food. Rearranging and mixing takes are legitimate cheating as long as it comes out somewhat pure. But when you have a good take, you try to stick with it, not out of laziness but out of clarity--instead of forty takes, which can get confusing in the editing room.
- How has your directing evolved from your first film, We're Not the Jet Set, through the documentary style of Angelo My Love?
RD There's maybe a little more structure in The Apostle, and the way of filming is a little more conventional, but it's still the same sense of letting those people and their society dictate what the fictional form will be, and then turn it around so that as much comes from them as possible. That's why we peopled the churches with real people. If I got stuck I'd just say. "Give me an Amen," and they'd know what to do. You try to get from them what they're about without judging them. In Angelo My Love the one actor I got was Timmy Phillips, who played the teacher at the beginning. He was a wonderful improviser--had he not known how to improvise as an actor, he couldn't have kept up with that Gypsy boy, who just improvises in life and was able to do it in front of the camera as well. They were natural actors. so I just pounced on that.
- How were you attracted to the Gypsy world of Angelo My Love?
RD I met the kid in '79 when I was living on 71st and Columbus. I saw this kid and I didn't know what he was. He had a diamond ring and a blue suit. He was 7 and he was trying to kiss this 25-year-old woman. And he would stand there and a guy would go by and he'd say, "Hey mister, do you have the time?" And the guy would say, "Quarter to 3." Eight seconds later another guy would go by and he'd say, "You got the time?" "Quarter to 3." Then another guy would come along: "Hey man, you got the time?" I said, "Angelo, what are you doing?" He said, "I wanna make these people work for me." This 7-year-old kid. In that society the kids are privy to everything, all the tricks and chicanery.
- How did the story evolve?
RD I just kind of pieced it together. Some guy had written a Hollywood script that wasn't right; I conferred with Horton Foote and he said, "No, do your own." I did my own and he said, "I like this better. It's fresher, it comes from them more." A simple story, but it held it together. It took four years to get off the ground, and in the meantime I hung around with them. All of that was valuable time: it seemed to be wasted on one hand but valuable on the other.
- You didn't whitewash them; you show some of their negative aspects.
RD Yeah, that's right. They'd say, "Oh, we don't do those things." Well, they do. The scene that I like so much is with a Puerto Rican lady who was the editor's aunt. I didn't say to them, "Hustle her"--I just said, "Just try to find out where she lives." So they hustled her. I didn't have to direct them, they knew how to do that. I whispered things to her and we just kept it alive, made it real within movie time, and she didn't quite know that it was being filmed.
- You get the sense that they can be predators.
RD Absolutely. What about the last scene, when Angelo is listening to the radio preacher and he telephones the man he thinks they may have killed.
He wanted to check to see if the guy was still alive, see what's there with that guy who's been the adversary. In The Apostle I call up the Farrah Fawcett character, my wife, to make sure she's there, and then hang up. My parents died, and one time I called their number, maybe just to see what was there. People do strange things. In We're Not the Jet Set, it's a very conservative area out there. A kid crossed a wire fence to steal some corn and he was electrocuted. There was a court case and [the man who electrified the fence] was brought in and the charge was dismissed. So B.A. Peterson used to call this man and say, "John So-and-so?" "Who is this?" "I'm that little boy you killed. I'm calling you from heaven." "WHO IS THIS?" And then he'd hang up.
- Why did you make We're Not the Jet Set?
I was doing The Rain People with Francis Coppola, and there was this interesting family out there in Nebraska. The father was a good-looking guy and he had all these kids. They were rednecks and performers, but they were Episcopalian; it was a strange combination. And he said, "All you boys on the movie come on down anytime, ride our horses, make yourself at home, you getting any pussy?"--all in one sentence. So funny. We were there about six weeks and I thought, boy, they should be in a film, just the contradictions of this patriarch. So after a few years I took a cameraman down there together with my [then-]wife and we went there for two weeks about six times and filmed. The cameramen ... one guy was on dope and the camera would wander off [the subjects]; another guy shot tight and wanted to keep all the film to himself; finally we got the right guy and matched it all together. John Cassavetes really liked it a lot and he sent me a script to direct. And when I worked with his wife [Gena Rowlands], she said, "Oh, we all liked Angelo My Love."
- Did the film turn out as expected?
RD In any film there's always an unexpected turn. You say, Oh wow, I missed that moment, but Oh, I got this, and if you try to recreate stuff it's too hard. And you always try to get the humanity and warmth even in a family that's at each other's throats; you always try to get that vulnerable side. Though it's a documentary, you shoot it as if they're scenes. I understand this film the other night about Neil Young [Year of the Horse] was interesting, but a little weak as far as the humanity of the people; it was just about the music, instead of getting in there. When George Lucas did a documentary on The Rain People, Francis was in there cursing and practically throwing things at Shirley Knight, saving "What are we going to do?"--it was like a scene. Somebody allowed that to happen; it shows interesting stuff instead of just what wants to be shown. So we got some pretty interesting stuff, these people got pretty loose in front of the camera. They might be aware of it as an actor might be, but they might just regard it as a lamp or something--I know it's there but I'm into this.
- So you didn't feel they played things up for you?
RD Not so much. I think you've got to watch for professional actors playing up more than you do the nonactor. The nonactor can get inhibited or nervous. If you give people what they can do, then that's gold, film-wise. You've got to give people what they can do.
- In what way is the character you play in The Apostle most like yourself?
RD I don't know that he's like me so much, but I think every character you play has to be somewhat like yourself; it comes out of you someplace. I think the fun-loving aspect a little, or the ceremonious part; I have that side that wants to jump out and exalt sometimes, not necessarily religiously, about the things that I like. My passion is like his passion.
- Do you try to find the common ground between you and a character?
RD No, I don't really think about that so much. Maybe that's there, unspoken or unconscious, that there's just something about a part that I figure maybe I can do that.
- Does playing a person with a strong spiritual side present an acting problem, or do you feel you have your own spirituality to draw upon?
RD I think whatever I have I have, and it's either there or it's not there to draw upon. Once again. it's a man first and a farmer second. You have to define that first whether he's a preacher or whatever the occupation is.
- You don't have to come up with an "as if" even, for expressing that spirituality?
RD Sometimes that can be unconscious if you just let go; if you have such zest and love for something, it might come with it. I don't necessarily work with "as ifs," but I think the "as ifs" can be unconscious. If they're conscious they're sometimes harder, but I think [snaps his finger] those substitutions come to me in an almost unconscious way as you do it. If you're in a play night after night, then maybe you have to substitute, and that newness works, in the fact that you feel your life come back. Sandy Meisner had a sign over his desk, "There's no right and wrong, only truth or non truth." Certain film critics and people working in film should learn more about it. I've seen people get great performances honored with accolades, but they're a little short on the truth [chuckles].
- But if you're portraying the inner life of somebody who, on his terms, is filled with the Holy Spirit when he preaches, don't you have to decide if that's real for you?
RD Good question. I always wonder that about the real guys when I see them. Because they say there's a difference, and it could be between emotion and that. In many of them 1 don't see the difference in terms of behavior. It's such a personal and individual thing. It's a very good question--I've thought about it very much. Who's to say what somebody feels? The people who pass judgment on it and say, It's this or this, very often are the ones I feel don't have it anyway. So it's a pretty touchy thing. I've seen a lot of preachers, and if you really watch them it's like, Come on guys, come on. I found some preachers" imaginations spin them. I think the people that really feel something are real quiet about it.
What you ask is the beginning and the end of it all--that's the question people wrestle with in life: can we really communicate with God? Some people say they do, but do they really? I'm not so sure a lot of them communicate as readily as they've stated. I've seen people taken over by the Holy Spirit and it's definitely a type of emotion. Maybe within that, there's something deeply convincing that's coming from someplace. Years ago, speaking in tongues was considered more or less leaning towards the Devil; now it's accepted. I don't know what the difference is. The people who speak out the most for it on the verge of judgmental, are the people I expect the least from, as far as truth. I would be more comfortable around the people who put it in question and don't know.
- When Sonny wakes up in the middle of the night, he seems to think God is telling him to go to his estranged wife Jessie's house? As an actor, do you have to make that real?
RD It's the same God that's supposedly warning her that's leading him on. He has a premonition--where does that come from ? During World War II my mother woke up and sat up and begin to pray, and my father would be in a precarious situation in the North Atlantic fighting the Germans. So, those kinds of things bring people in touch with something, as far as protecting those around them.
- As Sonny's beginning the last sermon, the police officer enters and he loses his composure for a moment. Did you make a choice for yourself there?
RD It just happened. If I had made a choice I would have said, This is the way I would like to it to go, this direction. I just got kind of emotional; it was all a little improvised beat within what was happening.
- What kind of link did you seek to make between Sonnys spiritual charisma and his sexuality?
RD It's always been the Achilles heel of everybody in power. A big, big preacher I know, a nice man, once told me, "It's amazing, there's a wave of sensuality that goes back and forth between me and the women in the congregation. It's something powerful, something you have to fight." That's interesting. So maybe preaching, which supposedly has this spiritual basis, is accompanied by a lot of sensuousness. I tried to suggest that Sonny was a womanizer. Still, his main love is dealing with those who evangelize.
- Was the itinerant Texas oil prospector you played in The Stars Fell on Henrietta a kind of preacher figure to you?
RD Yes. I had a whole scene where I preached, "Between Heaven and Hell there's a place called Earth, and in that Earth we find Oil." I improvised the whole thing, and somebody said, "Those words aren't in the script." It wasn't my film so it had to be cut, and the producer, Clint Eastwood, took it over from the director--there were a lot of egos floating around. But I thoroughly enjoyed that character; it was one of my favorite parts, [and] a wonderful script.
- But he's also a trickster figure.
RD Yeah, he has a cat, like a witch; he believes in something supernatural. I didn't try make Sonny a trickster. although he has his moves.
- How much of your acting derives from observation of the world around you and how much from what you find in yourself ?
RD Oh, it's a mixture. You prepare yourself, you think, you look around--it all feeds your imagination, it's a hodgepodge--and then you just go with the moment and try to stay in the moment. Like my friend Wilford Brimley says, "When they say `Action,' you better come up with something."
In England they work more with their imaginations. Over here, maybe if an actor's got to play a cowboy, go out and try being a cowboy, what's wrong with that? Olivier said to Dustin, "Try acting." Well, that's fine, that's true: but also try being in the moment [snaps fingersl, which Olivier never was. He was a great actor in one way, but there are different ways. Mastroianni, who I love, said, "So many American actors want to suffer instead of act," which is true. But sometimes if you're suffering the right moment, which he could do, that's when you're suffering--when the camera's rolling.
- When you were beginning as an actor, did you try too hard?
RD I've always been a late bloomer. I did a lot of theater, did okay in some parts here and there, but I hadn't lived a lot. A lot of kids today are better actors as youngsters than we were. In some ways they're more sophisticated, more open--they have TV and movies. When I was coming up, in some ways I had a sheltered background and I feel I didn't have much to offer. I feel like I got better as I got older.
- Now that you're well-known, is observation of people's behavior harder to do unobtrusively now?
RD I still can in my own way. Sometimes I'll say to a guy, "I'm using you, I'm studying you." And being well-known opens doors for me. Now I'm playing a lawyer, so I'm going to the Supreme Court to hear this litigator argue, and I'm going to call the real guy I'm playing. I don't necessarily need to meet him, because nobody knows who they are, but maybe just to talk to him, that could open a door, I could learn something. If I was unknown I could go into courtrooms easier and so on, but this way is another way.
- Was emotional freedom ever an issue for you as an actor earlier in your career?
RD I had to fight for it more at one time. Now it's not much of a problem. Sometimes on a TV show I'd have an emotional scene and I'd be okay, but I was trying to go for the real thing, and that's harder to do. I could approximate it, skillfully, [but] then it's not the real thing. - The real thing is hard to get sometimes--where do you draw from? Sometimes it's just not there.
Yeah. And as you get older you get better. An emotional scene now is easy, but to get a glass of water and take it over there can be hard sometimes.
- Over the years, has there been an aspect of yourself that you've had to cultivate in order to grow creatively?
RD To be more aware of myself, more aware of people, to be laid back enough to be open and to expand and not be judgmental. Actors are as vicious as these guys on Wall Street or anyplace. Maybe it's always that way, but I'm really surprised when some of the young actors I know rip the shit out of each other. So you have to give credit, and by giving credit it keeps you on guard: if you feel somebody's good, then you come up with something. You shouldn't feel you have all the answers, you shouldn't become that arrogant, because then you stop growing. So you say, Oh God that guy's good, ooh, I don't know, let me try something. To admit that keeps the growth process going.
- In Colors you play a veteran street cop who has all this accumulated wisdom and self-assurance. Did you draw upon your own command of acting to find that level of authority?
RD I think so. But also for instance I went around with Roy Nunez, who was a technical advisor. I'd seen the way he related to hookers and kids; he'd walk that line and be very friendly with them.... In one scene with a kid I improvised a line. I asked the kid if he was scared and he said no. I felt his heart and I said, "Your heart s racing like a hundred-yard dash." I had seen Nunez do this with a kid to mess with him, to deal with him that way. I didn't tell the director [Dennis Hopper]--he welcomed those things. That's experience.
- Was the dynamic between you and Sean Penn reflected in the mentor-reluctant student dynamic of the characters?
RD I'm sure, yeah. We had an argument once in a restaurant, and he called a month later to do this movie and I said, "We'll just keep arguing." There was an edge there which was okay.
- Your death scene at the end was really extraordinary.
RD I told Dennis that I wanted to improvise. We did it in one take mainly; we did other takes but I said, "Sean, protect me in the editing room." I thought that a macho cop, mortally wounded, might call out for the woman closest to him. So he says, "Someone call my wife." Just the attack of the scene gave me a very cold, vulnerable feeling, as opposed to the death scene in Lonesome Dove where he goes out on a romantic wave, thinking of his sweetheart that he'll never have.... It's all playacting. It's fun, too. You hit that emotional thing [snaps finger], but when you hit it, it's like a nice game in the back of your head. Just by saying certain words, certain things go through your head that might trigger off something or introduce something that's a surprise to you.
- So there's no specific emotional preparation?
RD Well, probably it didn't hurt any the fact that I was separated from my wife and it was an emotional thing that in my own life I didn't have somebody to reach out to and be real close.
- I've always liked The Chase, even though it's flawed --
RD Yeah, it's pretty flawed. They should have shot it in Texas, not Hollywood. I was doing A View from the Bridge off-Broadway with Ulu Grosbard, and it was helping my career quite a lot. But on the other hand I wasn't making much money and I had just got married and I had two stepdaughters and The Chase was $30,000, money which I'd never seen or heard of before. So I got out there, and I'd been playing Eddie Carbone, talking budda-bing, and now I was playing a guy from Texas and I had to take about four hours to talk myself out of this New York rhythm.
- What was Brando like to work with?
RD When I first worked with Brando he called me into his dressing room and we talked. I said, "What do you think of the script? I think it's okay." "I think it's pretty shitty," he said [laughs]. Then I said to my wife, "This guy's great, we're going to be like friends!" And then we spoke a little on the set--and after that, for about eight weeks he wouldn't speak to me. I thought, What a narcissistic peacock. He seemed full of himself. A guy with all these causes--he can't say good morning to people [laughs]. I'd told my wife we were going to be great friends, and I figured out he probably knew I'd expected that, so he snubbed me. It was nice to work around him even though he wasn't a particularly pleasant guy.
- Could you reflect on your career long professional relationship with Horton Foote?
RD My career at one point was like a railroad track. After I did The Godfather, pretty many things happened, and the other railroad track I had was Horton Foote's work. If I had had nothing but that, it would have been a nice little career. It goes back to the Neighborhood Playhouse, when I did hook into a part emotionally, which it's always hard for a young actor to do. In The Midnight Caller I had to weep every night and come on stage drunk, and it seemed to go over pretty well. One night the lights went out and we kept going. Horton came to see it with Robert Mulligan and Kim Stanley, and they liked it. A few years later they were casting To Kill a Mockingbird and Horton's wife Lily remembered me, and then they saw me on "Naked City" in an episode called "The One Marked Hot Gives Cold," about a guy who's falsely accused of child molesting, and they said okay and I got the part. Then we did his play Tomorrow off-Broadway about 1966.
- In the film version of Tomorrow, your characterization seems to be built in a subtractive way, stripping away all expressivity.
RD Right. That was my signature performance--until Lonesome Dove. The guy could have been a relation to the guy in To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a nice thing to do after the play, but I wouldn't see it for a year because certain people cut out certain scenes and I had no say. One scene I thought they cut out they did put back in, and if I hadn't seen it I would have gone nuts. I couldn't believe people could do that to a film.
- What was the change in the character in terms of an arc?
RD I don't know if people change, I think they alter. The guy was opened up in a way because he found love. It gave him a new lease on life even though it was internal and you couldn't see it on his face.
- I have to ask you about your performance in The Lightship. It's a curious film and a bizarre, colorful character, but it's one of your best.
RD They told me in Venice that [John] Schlesinger voted me down to get the best-actor award; he said I was too flamboyant and thought I had made a mockery of gay people. I may have been broad, but I think I was accurate in what I did I don't think I was out of my temperament. I wanted to be flamboyant, what I would do as a flamboyant guy. (When I see Schlesinger's movies, I don't think he's any master of directing actors.)
It was nice working with Skolimowski--crazy fella, a daredevil. And I wanted to work with [Klaus Maria Brandauer]; he's a talented guy-insufferable. He'd knock guys off their marks, put his head over the camera, offer the makeup girl $100 to sleep with him, and then turn around like it was everybody else's fault. I played along with it, I figured I had to get through the movie. I didn't know how to win with the guy. It was hard to go to work every day. In one scene I started singing "What a Difference a Day Makes," I heard a Gypsy woman do that once, and he got so thrown by it--when he got insecure he'd get close to you. I loved him in Mephisto--that's what I mean about a big temperament. The guy's talented, but I think he's burned his bridges. Skolimowski liked it if you did something bizarre. Like when I grabbed Arliss Howard and jitterbugged; I'd seen two Filipino guys jitterbug on my father's ship when he was captain. Some critic said I'm sure it's a performance that Duvall would want to forget--I liked what I did in it! It's a little on the perverse side, and if you do something a little perverse, people tend not to like that. I really created that character.
- All the mannerisms and affectations and business?
RD Yes. It wasn't in the writing.
- What made him tick?
RD Just the sense of a bizarre adventure, to go out and live dangerously. A peacock, the kind of guy who'd do a striptease, Southern, aristocratic William [F.] Buckley a little bit, a guy that's learned to live with his affectations.
- When I was rewatching it, I remembered hearing that you had been interested in playing Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.
RD Not true. They came to me. I had lunch with Jonathan Demme and we talked about the possibility. Gene Hackman was going to direct it originally and he wanted me to play the part.
- Would you have done it with him?
RD I'm not sure I would have. I don't like a part like that. It's too ... it's like when they offered me the part in a movie with Sean Penn where I killed my son. I did want to play the lead in Schindler's List, but they wanted a younger guy.
- Is the kind of work you have to put in as an actor different in a supporting role as opposed to a lead?
RD No. You always try to make it as true as possible.
- I'd like to touch on a few memorable supporting roles over the years and what ideas you brought to them. You're in one scene in Sling Blade, one camera setup, sitting in an armchair, and you seem to be in a world of your own.
RD I'm in my own reverie; I was trying to go for a sense of senility, not knowing what's there. I had a dog who died and I think it's still there.
- What was your idea for Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now?
RD I enjoyed that. My idea for him--I did a little research in between the two times I shot and found out that the head of Air Cavalry used to go deer hunting twice a week and got killed that way. To overcome the tedium and boredom of war, they played games. One Israeli general always looked for a place to snorkel dive. They know their craft and their trade well enough, like us actors, that they look for crazy things to do when they're working. Kilgore was a guy who liked to surf, he had a hobby, and in this particular war they could exist side by side.
By the time the movie came out - I didn't care, it wasn't my project - but there was a scene Coppola edited out where I save a baby's life. I say, "Put him in my helicopter." So he's saving a baby after he's probably killed its parents. We'd heard this was a true story. Maybe somebody told Coppola, "Let's make this guy one way or the other," but it was another contradiction and a nice moment.
- How much of the behavioral stuff was written and how much was from you?
RD I always felt a lot of me was in there, in a good way.
- The way your character leaves the film--leaving the frame with an unfinished sentence - is very memorable.
RD Yeah, "Someday this war's gonna end," meaning: it's better that it's over, but boy we're having good time. This is what guys become military men for, whether they admit it or not. If you're a military man, it's better to have ribbons for combat than for no combat, I would think, so I guess there's always some yearning for war. Like the line in The Great Santini, he's a warrior without a war.
- What about his physicality - the way he struts ?
RD He's kind of a narcissistic guy, into surfing, full of himself, so I tried to get in shape. That whole strutting thing came out of costume and thinking about the war.
- Was the shooting as chaotic as they say, and how did that affect your creative process?
RD It was chaotic. To get up in those helicopters and look down at those scenes that approximated this war was really vivid, like it was real. Coppola said it was like being in a war, but it wasn't nobody died, although it was dangerous being in those helicopters. The first two weeks in those helicopters I was an amateur, it was ridiculous, I was scared [laughs]. I don't like heights. When they changed lead actors, we reshot stuff and I'd gotten pretty much okay about it, but I had to get used to it, and then a certain freedom came out.
- What about working with Peckinpah in The Killer Elite?
RD I did that part because Jimmy Caan asked me to; I like working with Jimmy. One time we were shooting and Peckinpah just started talking right out loud during the scene [booming voice], "HE'S NIXON. YOU HATE HIM." "How'd you know how I vote?" I said [laughs]. He was okay. A little out of it.
- How did you see your role in The Godfather? What sort of emotional life did he have?
RD Well, he was an adopted son and he couldn't overstep the line, and I as an actor kind of felt that way. I was in the background. So that was one thing. I always felt he was like a Secret Service man, always watching. Emotional life pretty repressed.
- How did you come to acting?
RD My dad and my mother pushed me into it. For a military family, that was kind of unusual. We put on skits for guests; my brother was a singer, my mother had been an amateur actress, and there was music and singing on my father's side of the family. They maybe wanted me to go to the Naval Academy, but they could see that wouldn't work. They said "Well, rather than being drafted and go fight in Korea, let's see if we can't find him something to do." I was kind of foundering around in school, and they recommended acting as an expedient thing to get through. I'm glad they did. It was a small college in Illinois with a good drama coach. We did all kinds of plays, and I got into summer theater and one thing led to another. When I got out of the Army I went to the Neighborhood Playhouse and all that. They began to see I was real serious and they accepted that.
- Had you moved around a lot growing up in a military family ?
RD Yeah, that sense of a transient lifestyle definitely was in evidence in my early years.
- Do you feel you have roots anywhere?
RD Not so much. The two cities I lived in were San Diego, California, and Annapolis, Maryland - two Navy towns. My father was from a farm in Northern Virginia and my mother was born in Missouri but grew up in Seattle. The bulk of her family was from eastern Texas.
- So your connection with the South begins with that.
RD Yeah, roots, and mentality-wise as well.
- Was the Neighborhood Playhouse important to you?
RD Yeah. I had done plays, but I wanted to go get some kind of training under the firing squad of a guy like [Sanford] Meisner, who's not an easy guy to relax around. He did tell me once he was easier to please than Strasberg. The thing that Sandy was so good at was teaching improvisation, and "simple reality" is the beginning and the end of anything. I didn't agree with everything. I remember saying in front of some of his underlings that I thought were not so talented teachers, that anything goes; it doesn't have to be the imagination, it can be personal, on the day it can be anything you take on to a stage. They looked at me like I was.... And when you really look at some of the work at Meisner's place or at the Actors Studio, it's not that great, so they shouldn't be too smug.
- Was Meisner teaching the repetition exercise when you were there?
RD No, but I thought it was terrific and I used it when I directed Angelo. I haven't done it under anybody's special auspices, but the way I see it, repeating what the other person says back and forth, until it takes a turn and you go in another direction, I guess it's a form of script, and there's a certain behavior underneath that. And it's such a minimum thing that it keeps you within a certain frame of truth and prohibits certain results. I did it with Angelo before we filmed; it gets you off yourself and helps you go with your impulses in an improvisational way. Sandy said, "You do all that preparation and then you go in and forget about it and go with the moment and take from the other person." What you get from the other person - if you've need to be emotional, that may happen, but don't try to choreograph it.
- So what happens if you're working with someone who's not a good actor?
RD Well, you just take what you can get. You have to take what they give you and that's it.
- What were the hardest lessons for you starting out?
RD To relax. Nervousness ... don't worry about being judged. I always felt that there was somebody out there judging me. My brother once said, "Caruso always felt there was somebody out there in the audience trying to destroy him." I always felt that too much, rather than being arrogant. You're your own worst enemy then.
- Were you conscious in the Sixties and Seventies of being part of a movement of actors trying to raise the level of realism that the so-called Method once promised?
RD I always wanted to be as truthful as possible, and I felt that so many of the old actors were not very truthful except for a guy like Spencer Tracy, who was just marvelous, and Walter Huston, too. I think we helped the actors that came after us.
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