We lost an American treasure yesterday, one of the great actors of his generation. Hell, of any generation. Robert Duvall was one of my all time favorites. He was hard to pin down – he shared that with the late great Gene Hackman – because he could pretty much do anything. Bit parts, charismatic leading men, villains you loved to hate, you name it. Heavy, light, intense, affable – he could do it all. I am just going to meander around his body of work a bit.
Let’s start with the iconic. The poise and gravitas of Tom Hagen in the first two Godfathers is beyond compare and his emergence as a legit Hollywood heavyweight. You’d better be with that cast! He has a big scene with damn near everybody and not only stands up but more than once runs the risk of stealing it. He goes at it with James Caan here. The wildly but somehow perfectly over the top Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now” might be his most recognizable character despite that being a really tiny part. He is so huge it is easy to forget that it is only 11(!) minutes all put together. And for the record, “napalm in morning” is great, but for me the winner is “charlie don’t surf”. And while it might not necessarily be iconic, you don’t get a best actor Oscar for a tiny barely seen indie if you don’t kill it. And boy did he. There is a decent chance you haven’t seen this delightful movie, and you should. There are many more standouts but they will come up later.
Like any great actor, he could elevate even bad material and more than once was the best part of a bad movie – like “Days of Thunder”. This is a bad movie. Okay, it had a fun montage of racing mishaps set to “Gimme Some Lovin”, and John C. Reilly also sneaks in a lovely performance (like always) but yikes. His Harry Hogge was in many ways very wheelhouse for him – gruff but wise curmudgeon – but still just so good. A great little monologue talking to the car he’s building, a touching description of why drivers are the way they are and a couple of just wonderful prankster bits all add up to something you can tolerate the rest of the film to enjoy. See also “Gone in 60 Seconds” and “Colors”.
He was underrated as a villain. One of his early major roles was as Frank Burns in “M*A*S*H*”. Larry Linville made Frank memorable in the TV series (a wildly underappreciated role and performance) but as a foolish jerk. As was true across the board, the film version was much darker, more like the book (which by the way is also utterly hysterical) and the Burns character is truly despicable. Duvall was somehow horrid and pitiable all at once, dangerous and deluded and he kept on a knife edge balance. Even further back his Lucky Ned Pepper in the original “True Grit”. A distractingly sanitized western – it was 1969 after all – it is still a fabulous film and it took a big, bold, brave performance to balance the larger than life Rooster Cogburn thrown down by the Duke at his swaggering peak. It also produced back to back classic lines:
Ned: “I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.”
Rooster: “Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!”
And a great horseback gun fight. From the more subtle end is another small part that he sneaks into somebody just awful: Max Mercy in “The Natural”. Broad gusto and swagger almost obscures a really shitty character, but not in Duvall’s hands.
Speaking of westerns, he did more than a couple just great ones: opposite a young Clint in “Joe Kidd”; in the amazing and under-viewed “Geronimo: An American Legend” (how this didn’t get more love is beyond me – Walter Hill directs Hackman, Duvall, Matt Damon and an amazing Wes Studi – come on); the surprising “Open Range”, the rare Costner directed film I don’t hate, it is filled with wonderful actors you see and love but don’t know: Abraham Benrubi, Kim Coates, James Russo and Michael Jeter; as Jesse James in “The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid” (but if you want the definitive version of this event see “The Long Riders” – Walter Hill strikes again, holy shit); and the critically admired but unseen TV movie “Broken Trail” with Thomas Haden Church that has tragically fallen into distribution hell. And, no, I’m not leaving out his greatest western. Be patient.
Let’s talk about some great ones that unless you are a junkie like me you probably haven’t seen.
“THX 1138”. No less than George Lucas’ feature directorial debut, this intensely weird sci-fi flick was way ahead of anything even remotely like it. It defies understanding how Lucas went from this to “American Graffiti”, but Duvall one hundred per cent carries the film,and at times it is a heavy lift.
“The Apostle”. Yeah, I know. Oscar nom for Duvall, adored by the critics, grossed waaaaaay past its budget, why do I mention it here? Well, have you seen it? Also written and directed by Duvall, this move hits hard in a lot of soft spots and will wear you out. But wow. It is also notable for a fine performance from the chronically underestimated Farrah Fawcett and sneaks in pre A-list Walton Goggins and Bill Bob Thornton.
“The Killer Elite”. Vintage Sam Peckinpah, reunites Duvall with Caan to great effect. A taut, nuanced and very 70’s thriller, it really deserves to be seen. Another of those gatherings of great character actors, don’t miss Burt Young (pre-Paulie) and Bo Hopkins.
“The Great Santini”. An absolute tour de force from Duvall based on the brilliant Pat Conroy novel, for me it is one of his greatest roles. An outrageously complex character, it would have been easy to either fall into caricature or become indecipherable. The contradictions and moral ambiguity of Santini are vast and deep and Duvall taps into it all. If not for the last entry into this list I would list it as my favorite of his performances.
It is not lost on me that the last two movies I’m bringing up are both based on two of my all-time favorite books, but I think that is a legitimate criteria. There is nothing worse than when a literary character you love is lost or distorted when brought to screen. And as well as Duvall brought Santini to life for me in a way that felt true to how I had already created him in my head, what he did with Gus McCrae in “Lonesome Dove” was nothing less than magical.
Larry McMurtry’s characters sometimes feel like simple portraits of worn tropes, even stereotypical, until he somehow finds a way to tweak or bend them into something different. This makes them hard to get right on screen, and not all of the performances in “Lonesome Dove” avoid the trope trap, but Duvall just was Gus, to the point where it felt like he created him and then McMurtry wrote it down. Gus uses the phrase “‘I God” constantly in the book and I struggled to get a handle on what it might sound like. It’s weird. As in “”I god, it’s hot”. I don’t know why there is an apostrophe before the I, or why it wouldn’t just be “my god”. It just didn’t read in my head (damn you anyway Larry) but when Duvall said it the first time on screen it finally clicked. It is so odd that when you look it up, searching for quotes or clips it always comes up “my god”. It is just one, albeit startling, way in which Duvall made Gus so perfectly real. I am hard pressed to pick a scene to showcase this performance (it is six hours long!) but this one will do. Sweeping, quotable, admirable and fun, Gus is a character that would be a gift to play, but I’ll be damned at this point if I can think of anyone else who could have gotten it right. And if it hadn’t been gotten right it would have been a tragedy. Thank you, Mr. Duvall.
(BTW, you absolutely need to see “Lonesome Dove” if you haven’t. Besides Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones does almost as great a job with Woodrow Call and the rest of the cast is just stacked. It has a little bit of everything, you will probably both laugh and cry, and you will absolutely get roped into this epic ensemble piece. Fair warning, it is damn near Shakespearean tragedy, so heads up. Love it, love it. Love it.)
While the universe dims at the loss of so bright a star, we are blessed to have shared the earth with this magnificent actor, and so fortunate that he lived so long and worked so much. I think I’m gonna go put on “Lonesome Dove”. Thanks for reading.