Robert Duvall: delightful, de-lovely, de-VALL

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Did you hear him say on NPR that he has been approached to play Don Quixote in a film? I did, and I thought: I have to post about him. There is some information on the Net about Terry Gilliam's rekindled film project The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which will also star Ewan McGregor, apparently, as Sancho Panza. According to that embedded site, Duvall wanted someone like Danny DeVito in that role - hello! But they need big names to sell movies these days. Danny DeVito would get me to watch. Well I would already watch because of Duvall. I like McGregor (OK, love), but Sancho Panza?

I have only seen Robert Duvall in a handful of roles: Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Hagen in Godfather I & II, Major Frank Burns in M*A*S*H, Boss Spearman in Open Range, Pastor Sonny Dewey in The Apostle, and no doubt a few other lesser screen faces. I never saw Lonesome Dove, which he says is his favorite role. Crazy Heart is next on my Netflix queue, and I can't wait. I am no expert on Robert Duvall, but I can claim to have listened to him through a telephone.

I also have cushions dedicated to him in the salon of my heart. The first cushion is sunflower yellow - Duvall as Pastor Sonny Dewey in The Apostle with Farrah Fawcett. He directed the movie too, deftly. There are lovely old hymns I grew up with, such as "Softly and Tenderly" and "I Love to Tell the Story," which is sung by Emmylou Harris and Duvall himself. When Duvall-as-Pastor-Sonny preached, he was my dad (except for the Pentecostal part; my dad was not a "holy roller"). They even look alike with their balding heads and heart-melting smiles. I want to tell him how his acting affected me and rang like the truest church bell. To me, he is like my dad's ideal self, although Pastor Sonny has some serious flaws. Maybe being flawed and forgiving is ideal, somehow. Another strange connection is that his mother's maiden name was Hart, my maiden name, and she was from Virginia, like my dad.

Which leads me to the other (pin-) cushion hidden under the chaise lounge in my heart, the cushion with pokey down feathers sticking out the wrong way. I came this close to humiliating myself forever, with Robert Duvall. Oh the pain! I would have needed to be cleansed of my sin in the river of forgiveness.

One of our film students in the English department knew someone working on the set of Open Range in British Columbia Alberta. This 2003 film is maybe my favorite movie ever. It's a toss-up between it and Lost in Translation. Oh, and Rebecca. Oh, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. OK, I'm juggling now. 

I remember being blown away by the sound of bullets exploding from multiple Dolby speakers surrounding our theater seats the first time we saw Open Range. Never had gunfire been so real and close.  Never had a Western movie set been so authentically muddy, with timbers laid across the dirt road between the General Store and the Tavern while rain just kept sweeping through town. The two main characters, played by Kevin Costner and Duvall have a relationship that inspires me every time I watch. I'm not a huge Costner fan (I don't think I can forgive him for those endless monotone voice-overs in Dances with Wolves), but he really got it right in Open Range - directing, and also playing shy, quiet and driven Charley Waite. Duvall is Duvall at his best as Boss Spearman: cowboy, listener, straight talker, beautiful human being and best friend to Charley. Annette Bening might seem too 20th century woman as Sue Barlow, but she is radiant and leaves no questions about why someone would fall in love with her. Michael Gambon plays the opposite of Dumbledore in bad and powerful Denton Baxter so disgustingly well that you almost believe it is right to destroy evil with a gun.

So our film student arranged a telephone interview with Duvall on the set. There was some great new technology at the time that allowed a satellite call from high up in the Canadian Rockies. I set everything up for the call in the hall outside my office with a landline phone, and chairs for the three students. Andrew dialed the number.

Some darkly magical force was in that tele-kinexion from the Canadian Rockies, because from the time his voice came on speaker phone, I got teleported into a Twilight Area Code. (Well, Duvall did play in a Twilight Zone episode in 1963.) I got my Roberts mixed up, and in the foggy zone of my head, Duvall transformed into De Niro. The call had been arranged for a couple of days, and I knew very well who this Robert Du- was. I've always liked him, he's tops, the best! But the entire phone call, through which I was mercifully silent, I was picturing him in Raging Bull, and between student questions and comments, I kept almost blurting something out about his performance. I never got the chance, or courage, thank God. After the call ended, and the students floated in starstruck bliss out of the dark old English department hallway, I began to realize my mistake, with horror. If I had been rational, I could have told him how I felt about Pastor Sonny Dewey, him as my dad! It would have been a seminal moment in his career, right up there with his Oscar and Emmys, to hear from a preacher's kid that he had got Pastor Sonny absolutely right!

But all I could do was thank my cowboy guardian angel for lassoing my mouth shut and not letting these words out of my beak: "You really epitomized method acting when you gained an extra 30 pounds as Jake La Motta . . . "

Autographed photo of Duvall found here. 
Photo of Duvall as Boo Radley found here. 
Photo of Duvall in the water as The Apostle found here. 
Image of Duvall and Costner found here.
Photos of Annette Bening as Sue Barlow and Dean McDermott as Doc Barlow, and Costner behind camera found here. 
Michael Gambon photo found here. 
Photo of Robert De Niro as Raging Bull found here.
Disney poster found here.

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