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- [00:16]
Sean Fennessey
I'm Sean Fennesee and this is the Big Picture 8 conversation show about Robert Duvall. Today on the show, we are building a hall of fame for the quote, american Olivier, an actor whose body of work is so vast, I was still catching up with his movies at 1am last night. I'm here with playwright, actor, bon vivant, the king of physical media, Tracy Letts. We're going to honor Robert Duval in this episode. It's all coming up right after this. This episode is brought to you by the autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. The autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book your favorite hotel site, your go to airline and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel, and one point on other purchases with whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com autographjourney Terms apply.
- [01:11]
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- [01:43]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. Tracy. Hello.
- [01:44]
Tracy Letts
Hi.
- [01:46]
Sean Fennessey
Are you excited about this endeavor? You raised your hand for this, did you not? I did, yeah.
- [01:51]
Tracy Letts
I'm excited about it, sure. I love Robert Duvall. You know, when he died, he died right around the same time as Frederick Wiseman. They died the same day or maybe a day apart. And my first thought was, well, we've lost our greatest actor and our greatest documentarian at the same time. And then I thought, well, I'm given to the superlative. Maybe that's not the case. Maybe, maybe I should say my favorite actor or one of my favorite actors because people value different things in their actors. Some people love a movie star. Most people love a movie star. And Duvall was a movie star, but he was also a character actor and that guy. And he could be the lead in movies, but more often than not, a supporting player. And I realized that When I thought of him as our greatest actor, what I was thinking of, he's the kind of actor that I especially admire. He exemplified for me what great screen acting is. That's what I. When you mention a great screen actor, he's one of the first people I think of.
- [03:07]
Sean Fennessey
Well, what is that, though? What does that mean?
- [03:09]
Tracy Letts
Well, it means emotional access, right, that you can easily access, bring to the surface any number of emotions, which is one of the first jobs any actor does. It means a facility with language, which he had. And for me, perhaps most importantly, in terms of Duvall, it means a certain transformational ability. You know, movie stars, for the most part, bring you some. Some version of themselves and they perform that version of themselves over and over. And Duvall was certainly capable of doing that and did that a lot, but he was also capable of, you know, if you sit in a place that is, this is essentially me, and then you sort of fiddle with the dials, you might get some range, but with Duvall, you got a lot of range. You got a tremendous flexibility and very facile, transformational quality that he could play. Low status, high status, verbal, non verbal, smart, dumb, rural and urban. Especially with him, it was a big swing. And occasionally just uncork something way out of what you would think is his comfort zone. That, for me, is not only what great acting is, it's what makes acting fun. It's why I think anybody would want to be an actor, to be able to be different people in different circumstances. And for me, Duvall was the best example of that. Hard to find a comp. I'm sure we'll talk about that, but it's hard to find a comp.
- [05:03]
Sean Fennessey
No, between the vast body of work, the range that you're describing, the thing that I think of with him is, and this was underlined by going back to some of the films, could do volcanic as well as anyone and could also do quiet, like you mentioned, verbal and nonverbal. But he could be monosyllabic or have no dialogue whatsoever in his performance, as he does in one very notable one, and convey the same level of power in the performance, whether yelling or not speaking at all. I mean, who are even actors who have that skill, even beyond movie star looks and movie star charisma, just that sort of range in terms of the kind of characters that you can play is very rare. And I don't think that there's anyone who quite has his career, in part because he was born at the right time. Given his skill set and given the kinds of Movies he got a chance to be a part of.
- [06:01]
Tracy Letts
Right. Well, I mean, if the. The movies are essentially, what, 120 years old. He's the last 60 years of it.
- [06:10]
Sean Fennessey
He really is.
- [06:11]
Tracy Letts
He really encompasses a lot. His longevity goes a long way. Not just longevity, not just living a long time, but that he could stay vital and continue to explore for such a large part of his career.
- [06:25]
Sean Fennessey
He gave screen performances in his 90s. I mean, that's extremely rare for someone to do that, and especially someone who started so early and worked so consistently. He made so many movies. He also appeared in dozens of episodes of television. He appeared in some of the most legendary television miniseries of all time. He worked on the stage pretty consistently at the beginning of his career. He wrote films, produced films, directed films. He made a documentary. His body of work, I think it's a little underrated just in terms of its scope and how interested he was in all the different phases, because he did not have that kind of the last time you were here for a hall of fame, that Redfordian world building reputation, where he had a ski resort that he turned into a film festival and an ecological preservation site. And he was a very political figure. Duvall. He had his point of view on the world, but so much of his time is spent on the work. And it was honestly hard trying to. I feel like I've seen everything, and there were a lot of movies I'd never even heard of that he made, some of which I thought were terrific. So part of the fun of these exercises is to try to say, like, okay, what matters? Right. What are, like, the 10 signal movies that you have to see and you have to put and canonize? But also, when we look back at the movies, half of them are going to say, you know, take it or leave it.
- [07:44]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [07:45]
Sean Fennessey
But maybe a third or a quarter of them say, like, this is worth your time and you should. You should rappel into the cave and check it out.
- [07:52]
Tracy Letts
Well, in addition to being good, he also had taste, right. And he continually associated himself with good projects. Now, again, it's hard to make good movies. And so there are some. Some that don't quite make the grade in here, but for the most part, I mean, he might. He worked so steadily, put up such big numbers, Right. He could. He could put out a few movies that weren't great, only to then hit one out of the park. What about you? Why do you love Robert Duvall?
- [08:22]
Sean Fennessey
Well, I think he was kind of given to me because he is a part of so many legendary and historic Movies, the Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, MASH. There's a handful of critical 1970s movies that if you're educating yourself and you're born after those movies come out, you have to watch them. So when he's in somewhere between 5 and 10 of the 100 most historic American movies, he's part of the scenery. You have to accept him. And, and so I don't know that I necessarily appreciated him as much as I should have until I got a little bit older, into my teens and I started seeing him doing interesting and good work in mainstream movies in the 90s. Like not great films, like A Civil Action. I don't know if you watched the Civil Action for this, which is not a movie I really love, but I can see him doing something a little bit different in that film and bringing a different energy and gravitas to that movie that it otherwise might not have had. It might have seemed a little shiny, a little Hollywood. And if he's not there doing what he's doing. And also I obviously have a fetish for that guys and character actors and the idea that someone could transcend in such a way and become such a genuine star. He wasn't a guy who had a moment. He was getting recognized for Academy awards over a 30 year period. He was getting cast consistently by people for 50 plus years. He also had something that I just really like, which is when somebody has a public reputation as extremely successful, but they have passion projects that are really hard to get off the ground and they have decades long journey of trying to get those things made. It really humanizes the iconography to me. So there's a couple movies that he made in the later stages of his life that are these fascinating subjects. And one in particular, the Apostle came out right as I was kind of getting wise to independent cinema, the awards game, independent film studios entering the world of studio operations. And that movie, which he got a lot of recognition for, kind of confounded me in a good way. It's a real 70s movie in 1997. And so I think that that was a big entry point for me, just beyond seeing him as Tom Hagen and, and Kilgore. So I'm very excited to do this with you.
- [10:48]
Tracy Letts
I think American Olivier, I think Vincent Canby was the one who came up with that. I don't get it. I mean, or rather I do get it. I just think it's maybe not right in that. I think what Canby is referring to is that transformational quality. But the truth is Laurence Olivier was a romantic lead for 20 plus years. He was married to Scarlett O'. Hara, he was Heathcliff, he was Maxim de Winter. Duvall did not. Not to mention a lifetime on stage, which Duvall did not have. Right. Early stage work. And then he went back a couple of times, but not consistently so. I don't think of him as an Olivier type. He's more workmanlike than that, right?
- [11:31]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, yeah,
- [11:34]
Tracy Letts
he's a grinder. He really is. The period between Godfather And Godfather part two is two years, right? 72 and 74. It's two years. Al Pacino makes two movies between those two. I think James Caan makes three movies between those two. How many movies did Robert Duvall make between those two?
- [11:55]
Sean Fennessey
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
- [11:58]
Tracy Letts
Seven movies and a couple of leads in there as well. So again, the comp is hard to come by. In some ways, the comp would. Would be closer to Robert De Niro or Meryl Streep in the kind of variety of roles that they were asked to play, allowed to play, wanted to play. But again, they're leads. They were never character. They were leads with a kind of character actor sensibility, but they're leading men and women, and Duvall was rarely that.
- [12:31]
Sean Fennessey
I think that the American Olivier assignation is about a kind of commitment over a long period of time to the kind of work that he was doing. You know, where Olivier represents something about the British acting style and this kind of like representational force who could do Shakespeare, who could do some modern work, who would pop up in American thrillers and things like that. And I think because of the time, like what Olivier represents to not just the stage, but British filmmaking, especially those Shakespearean adaptations that he made and the role that Duvall plays in 70s American cinema and this big transformation that's happening there, him kind of being the glue, like, I think you can make the case that he is the binding that happens at that period of time because of all the directors that he works with and the huge Best Picture nominees that he's a part of. But I agree, they're obviously completely different kinds of actors. The other reason he's able to make seven movies in that time is though he is in some leads, there's other movies where he shows up for three or four scenes and he brings that intensity that he's famous for and then he leaves. But yeah, he worked a lot.
- [13:34]
Tracy Letts
Maybe what can be Meant was simply England's greatest actor, America's greatest actor.
- [13:39]
Sean Fennessey
Do you think that that's something like an idea that was held for a long period of time. Set aside your own personal interest and appreciation for him. Was that how he was understood? Because to me, Pacino, De Niro, maybe a couple of other people, Nicholson, I
- [13:53]
Tracy Letts
think people came to that. They came to it gradually. Just the way his career developed so gradually, I think people finally realized they started to do the math. They started to go, wait a minute, he's Ned Pepper, he's Frank Burns, he's Tom Hagen, he's the Great Santee. They started to put all of the math of that together and go, well, maybe he's the best. Maybe he's the best out of all of them. I mean, it's sad to say, Philip Seymour Hoffman might have been the comp. But the longevity issue is sadly, really the issue. I mean, by the time Duvall makes Apocalypse now, he's older than Phil was when he died.
- [14:36]
Sean Fennessey
Wow.
- [14:37]
Tracy Letts
Right. And Duvall's got another 40 plus years of a career after that.
- [14:41]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. I mean, that's just heartbreaking to think about. But those two actors, at least in terms of that quiet and that explosive quality they both shared, that they both. They could go all the way to 11, and then they could be incredibly vulnerable and sad and they could also be kind of rageful and shielding themselves. Like they did have similar qualities.
- [15:01]
Tracy Letts
And again, a kind of dawning awareness of the actor on the part of the audience.
- [15:05]
Sean Fennessey
Right.
- [15:06]
Tracy Letts
People. It's not like Philip Seymour Hoffman sort of exploded on the scene. It was a guy where you kind of looked back and you went, oh, wait a minute, he was this, he was that, he was this, he was that.
- [15:15]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I hadn't compared them. I have thought a lot about Philip Seymour Hoffman in my time. I've often said he's my favorite actor. So that makes maybe that's one more reason why we're here today talking about him. He just passed away earlier this year and he was 95 years old. He was born in 1931 in San Diego, California, though it seems as though he lived most of his life in Maryland and Virginia and identified himself a little bit more with the American South. His father was in the service and they moved around a little bit. He and he began acting at 21, 1952. His first gigs were in summer plays at the Gateway Playhouse in Belport, Long island, which is where I'll be this summer and is not far from where I grew up.
- [15:55]
Tracy Letts
Does that playhouse still exist?
- [15:57]
Sean Fennessey
I don't know the answer to that. Belport is a very artistic community, though, and there are many a theater dweller and Folks who have performed on the stage who live there to this day. I believe Isabella Rossellini lives there right now. So he very quickly kind of takes off in off Broadway productions and eventually makes his way to Broadway and across the 1950s, accumulates a body of work, eventually transitions to television in the late 50s and 1960s. Kind of a similar trajectory to a couple people we've talked about on this show who've passed away in the last few years. It's very similar to Robert Altman's trajectory over the years. Get some of these TV gigs on the Twilight Zone on Route 66, on a lot of these kind of serialized single story programs. Did you go back and look at any of that stuff?
- [16:47]
Tracy Letts
I did. So 60 to 62. He's on the Robert Horge Theater. Two episodes of Armstrong Circle Theater Playhouse 90. John Brown's Raid, which was a TV movie. Great ghost Tales. The Defenders, Kane's Hundred Shannon, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, four episodes of the Naked City. I watched his Alfred Hitchcock Presents called Ironically Bad Actor, written by Robert Block.
- [17:14]
Sean Fennessey
Was he sure, yeah.
- [17:16]
Tracy Letts
And he was the lead in that show and grisly little tale about an actor who cuts off a rival's head and hides it in an ice bucket. And it's pretty standard angry young man stuff for tv. There's not much to it.
- [17:33]
Sean Fennessey
Does that resonate with you as an actor? Sure. Rivals.
- [17:36]
Tracy Letts
There's a lot of ice buckets in my house.
- [17:41]
Sean Fennessey
I didn't look at much of the TV stuff, though. You could see that that's a place where he really made his bones. His acting style, when you go back and read about it and the way that he operated on sets, it seemed as though he was interested in the method, if not a full blown practitioner. And he worked with Meisner and he seemed to understand a lot of the kind of intellectual components, but he didn't really intellectualize the approach whenever he talked about it. I don't know if you spent much time researching any of that.
- [18:17]
Tracy Letts
We'll talk about it more perhaps when we get to the Godfather. But all these people worshiped at the altar of Brando. Right? I mean, Brando was the icon for all those young guys, all of his sons in the Godfather movies. Although Duvall's only seven years younger than Brando. So he's a little older, vintage than those other dudes. But the same trajectory of acting classes in New York, trying to book TV gigs, doing some theater. He knew Gene Hackman and Al Pacino. They all knew each other. They were all coming up together at the same Time. And, yeah, the approach. You know, I heard Mr. Duvall in his Howard Stern interview when Howard Stern was trying to kind of knock Brando for his. For this business of reading cue cards. There's the photograph you've probably seen of Duvall with Brando's lines taped to his chest. And Duvall was quick to say, yeah, partly lazy and partly not. I mean, there was, in fact, a method to that madness. There was an idea behind it. Brando didn't want to learn the lines too well because he wanted it to seem very fresh. And Howard Stern asked him, said, did you ever do that? He said, I tried it. It didn't work for me. I actually tried. He tried to do what Brando was doing, and he couldn't make it work. He had to learn the lines the good old traditional way. Though you'll see in a lot of Duval performances, there are little ad libs here and there which are making his own, but he definitely knew the lines. But, yeah, there's an immersive quality to the performances, but not so immersive that it seems that, you know, couldn't have a conversation with you.
- [20:04]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. Also, he could transform but not disappear.
- [20:07]
Tracy Letts
Right.
- [20:07]
Sean Fennessey
That's an odd thing that not everyone is capable of. Sometimes disappearing is helpful. Sometimes it's not in terms of your iconography or memorability. But I was reading a piece that Scott Cooper, the writer, director, who worked with Duval a couple times, wrote for the Guardian after Duval passed, and he told a story about visiting his library at his home in Virginia. And he had two letters framed in his home, and one of them was from Brando. And in the letter, he writes to Duvall that you are the greatest American actor. That's the compliment that he paid to him. And that that was the most impactful, kindest thing that had ever happened to him because of the way that he revered Brando, which I thought was really interesting, given that they had worked together and not exactly contemporaries, but more or less contemporaries. And Brando was a huge star when he was still trying to book television gigs. Despite that, they all felt that way about Brando.
- [20:58]
Tracy Letts
I mean, I heard Duvall tell a story about Gene Hackman running into Brando in Manhattan. Just ran into him, didn't know who. He didn't. They didn't know each other personally and ran into him, and Hackman almost burst into tears. He told Duvall so tremendous meaning in the way he approached the work, the way they all approach the work, the way they learned to approach the work. And so, yeah, putting all that stuff into place. But also you're making tv, he's making TV shows. You got a schedule, you've got a director who's not gonna ask you for a lot of nuance. You're gonna get two takes and then you're gonna move on to the next thing. Learning how to work is part of the job. You have to learn how to work.
- [21:40]
Sean Fennessey
I've been thinking a bit about the recurring creative partnerships that some of these historic figures have over the years. Duval has a couple. Yeah, he's got Coppola, of course, where, I think has he made six films with Coppola over the years. 1, 2, 3, 4. Five films over the years. Two with Altman, two with Philip Kaufman, sort of two with Walter Hill, two with Billy Bob Thornton, and he also appeared in another film that Billy Bob Thornton wrote, two with Cooper. But I would say that he is not the most important creative force that he's aligned with over the years. My theory is that it's Horton Foote.
- [22:14]
Tracy Letts
Horton Foote.
- [22:15]
Sean Fennessey
So who is Horton Foote as playwright that you are?
- [22:18]
Tracy Letts
Well, he was a great, great playwright and a great playwright and a great screenwriter. And he had a community of some family and some actors who had done his work both in New York and elsewhere. His daughters were both involved in the business and their husbands. Peter Masterson, who we'll talk about was Horton Foote's first cousin, he's the father of Mary Stuart Masterson. And Peter Masterson directed one of these Horton Foote pieces and directed Trip to bountiful, which Mr. Duvall is not in. But yeah, that association was great. And I remember hearing Mr. Duvall say that if his career was only comprised of his collaborations with Horton Foote, he would have considered it a successful career, I think. Is it five? Five films written by Horton Foote, I think. But they're pretty key. A couple of them will wind up in our hall of Fame, I'm sure.
- [23:20]
Sean Fennessey
I think so, too. One of them was very interesting to me and I had not seen it before. The other. One thing I'll say before we dig into this, one other thing about the American Olivier title is maybe it's because Duvall was very comfortable playing historic figures in the same way that Olivier did in his time. Duvall played Eisenhower, Jesse James, Stalin, Robert E. Lee, Eichmann and Joseph Pulitzer. There's probably a few more in there that I didn't remember. But he didn't mind taking on well known figures. And sometimes he could transform into them, and sometimes he sort of had a Duval doing them. Quality. Some of those were TV movies, some of them were feature films. But I think that that might also be a part of it where you could say, well, Olivier has a critical Richard iii. He has a critical Henry V. A kind of definitional for what those characters look like on movie screens. Seven Academy Award nominations over the years. He, the rare actor who had one in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s, 90 features. He also directed five films and produced a few, too. Yeah. What are your thoughts on slightly widening the parameters of the hall of Fame to include some things that are not strictly theatrically released films?
- [24:48]
Tracy Letts
Didn't you guys put Nicole Kidman, limited series in her hall of Fame?
- [24:55]
Sean Fennessey
Which limited series? I candidly do not remember. It's possible. I feel like we've made some allowances.
- [25:01]
Tracy Letts
What's the one in. What's the one in the beach with the women, with the mystery? What am I thinking of?
- [25:10]
Sean Fennessey
Big Little Lies.
- [25:11]
Tracy Letts
Yes. Is that what it's called?
- [25:12]
Sean Fennessey
Did we put Big Little Lies in?
- [25:13]
Tracy Letts
I think you did.
- [25:15]
Sean Fennessey
I don't recall. We did do that. Thumbs up from Sarah Lucas. Sure. Okay, so then the. The answer is yes. You feel comfortable with that idea?
- [25:21]
Tracy Letts
I'm saying that I think precedent has been established.
- [25:24]
Sean Fennessey
And are you up on the blue category that there can be one film that you can see?
- [25:27]
Tracy Letts
We did this for the Redford hall of Fame. But remind me.
- [25:31]
Sean Fennessey
Well, so we have reds, greens and yellows here on the hall of Fame. Red is a film that is not in. Yellow is a film that we will hold and we will revisit and see if we should go forward or go backward and put it in red. Green, of course, is going in. Blue indicates that it is outside of the 10 critical films that go into the hall of Fame. But it's something that we like. It's something that we have a personal connection to that we can make a case for its relevance, its emotional importance to us.
- [25:56]
Tracy Letts
Is that different than I think this should be in the hall of Fame? And you don't.
- [25:59]
Sean Fennessey
Well, let's not drill down too hard. Do you want to start since we were talking about Horton Foote?
- [26:06]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, sure. I'll throw in a couple of other TV things as we go that I've seen, but I think we can absolutely start.
- [26:13]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. In 1962, he is cast on the recommendation of Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, directed by Richard Mulligan, and he plays by Robert Mulligan. Sorry, who did I say?
- [26:25]
Tracy Letts
You said Richard.
- [26:25]
Sean Fennessey
Who's Richard Mulligan?
- [26:26]
Tracy Letts
I have no idea.
- [26:27]
Sean Fennessey
He's the star of Empty Nest. He's an actor.
- [26:29]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. He was on Soap.
- [26:30]
Sean Fennessey
That's right. Robert Mulligan.
- [26:33]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [26:34]
Sean Fennessey
And he was Boo Radley in the film.
- [26:36]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [26:37]
Sean Fennessey
And he has no lines of dialogue. Right. But he is a critical character and I'm fond of including the breakthrough in the hall of Fame.
- [26:48]
Tracy Letts
Definitely green.
- [26:49]
Sean Fennessey
I think it has to be green.
- [26:49]
Tracy Letts
It has to be green.
- [26:51]
Sean Fennessey
Critical American movie, terrific movie, still holds up very well.
- [26:54]
Tracy Letts
Here's the thing. If it's not the great American novel, it's certainly one of the great American novels. It's a beautiful sort of pitch perfect rendition of the great American novel. And if he were just one of the townspeople, maybe we wouldn't make a case for hall of Fame. But he plays a very crucial role and he's great. I've seen To Kill a Mockingbird on stage a couple of times. Boo Radley's hard, deceptively hard. He doesn't have any lines. He doesn't have to show up until the very end. But you got a lot of responsibility as Boo Radley. You have to convey a lot in a short amount of time with no lines. And he's great in it.
- [27:37]
Sean Fennessey
He's so haunted in this part. And I think he's never really looked that way in any other movie. He has almost like this white pallor and this shock of white hair almost. He never really looked like that again. He looks like a ghost. And I think it has to go into now. If Amanda were here, she'd be like, all right, you're shooting your load too soon. You can't just pick the first one. You got 89 more movies.
- [28:02]
Tracy Letts
I think Amanda would put To Kill a Mockingbird in Robert Duvall.
- [28:05]
Sean Fennessey
I don't want to misrepresent her point of view. Now 1963, Captain Newman M.D. i haven't seen the film.
- [28:10]
Tracy Letts
I'm going to jump in here with some TV. The Untouchables, three episodes of Route 66, the Twilight Zone, the Virginian, Stony Burke, Arrest and Trial, and he. The Twilight Zone, directed by Walter Grauman, teleplayed by Charles Beaumont, who was a great sci fi writer, and he's the lead in that Twilight Zone. I didn't get a chance to watch it. Yes. Captain Newman MD Is the next movie.
- [28:33]
Sean Fennessey
Did you watch this movie?
- [28:34]
Tracy Letts
I did. Did you?
- [28:35]
Sean Fennessey
I did not.
- [28:35]
Tracy Letts
Directed by David Miller. It's David Miller's first movie after Lonely Are the Brave, which is an absolutely great movie.
- [28:42]
Sean Fennessey
Yes.
- [28:42]
Tracy Letts
It's Gregory Peck's first movie after To Kill A Mockingbird. And it's Robert Duvall's first movie after To Kill a Mocking.
- [28:48]
Sean Fennessey
Is that how he got the gig? Did Gregory Peck, I don't know, nudge them on this one.
- [28:52]
Tracy Letts
He's also kind of being asked to do something very similar to Boo Radley. The movie is about an army mental hospital and Gregory Peck is a psychiatrist who's running this hospital. And so it follows a few case studies of some of these guys who come back from battle. It's pretty bad in that the attitude toward mental illness has really changed a lot since this movie was made. And so Eddie Albert and Bobby Darin, who were both good actors, are asked to perform a kind of mental illness that feels very theatrical. And Hambone Duvall escapes some of that because his character is suffering from PTSD or shell shock, probably they called it at the time. And so he's non verbal. So again, it's kind of a similarity to Boo Radley. He's this non verbal character who's come back from battle. He's good in the film. Gregory Peck is great in the film. The movie does not hold up well.
- [29:55]
Sean Fennessey
That sounds like a red to me. There's going to be a few spots where you're filling in my blank spots because I know you worked so avidly to prepare for this episode. Since this is your job.
- [30:04]
Tracy Letts
Let me throw in some more TV after this. Sure. The Lieutenant Craft Suspense Theater. Three episodes of the Outer Limits, three episodes of the Fugitive Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. I did watch his Outer Limits episode called the Chameleon. Well, he did three Outer Limits episodes, but he did one called the Chameleon. Notable because. Teleplay by Robert Towne.
- [30:30]
Sean Fennessey
Wow.
- [30:31]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [30:31]
Sean Fennessey
Wonderful. How was it?
- [30:33]
Tracy Letts
It's not very good.
- [30:34]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. That's the problem with doing what you've done is sometimes, you know, there's only so many 23 minute intervals in the day where you can check in on old television and then you're a bit heartbroken when you get to the end of an episode and you're like, well, it didn't work out. And I don't know why I did that. That wasn't a good use of my time. I appreciate all of your hard work. There's a two year gap where he films all that television and then he appears briefly in Nightmare in the sun as a motorcyclist. Not much to say about this.
- [31:01]
Tracy Letts
Did you watch it?
- [31:02]
Sean Fennessey
I watched some of it.
- [31:03]
Tracy Letts
I watched it directed by Mark Lawrence, who was a bastard who sang like a bird in front of the house. Un American Activities Committee. So to hell with him. It's very much like that. What's the Oliver Stone movie with. With Sean Penn where he. He's in the little desert town, little noir.
- [31:23]
Sean Fennessey
U Turn.
- [31:24]
Tracy Letts
U Turn. It's. It's basically the plot of U Turn. John Derek is in the Sean Penn role. Ursula Andres, Ursula Endrus, who was John Derek's wife at the time. Apparently there was a promise made that John Derek was going to get her naked for the movie, but that didn't wind up happening. Not sure why since she certainly was not shy about taking off her clothes. And she had some comfort later on.
- [31:45]
Sean Fennessey
But thanks to her for that.
- [31:48]
Tracy Letts
Duvall and Richard Jel show up as these motorcycle guys who are trying to capture John Derek. But they're motorcycle guys who are both like balding blonde haired guys in cardigan sweaters. It's very strange.
- [32:06]
Sean Fennessey
I don't know what accounts for that.
- [32:08]
Tracy Letts
And then there's a scene where Duvall whips his motorcycle with a length of chain in a fit of impotent rage. It's not a good movie.
- [32:17]
Sean Fennessey
That's a red as well for Nightmare in the Sun, 1966, a film we've already discussed.
- [32:22]
Tracy Letts
We discussed it on the Robert Redford article.
- [32:24]
Sean Fennessey
The Chase, which you were a fan of.
- [32:26]
Tracy Letts
I like it better than you guys.
- [32:27]
Sean Fennessey
I was a little less my man and I both were a little less intrigued. Fascinating cast in that film. Duvall's got a. It's got a relevant part.
- [32:35]
Tracy Letts
Written by Horton Foote. Indeed, it's a relevant part. But here he is, one of the townspeople. That really is the part he's playing here. No, it's not. Going in his hall of fame.
- [32:46]
Sean Fennessey
Two more years go by.
- [32:47]
Tracy Letts
Oh, wait a minute. I got some more tv.
- [32:49]
Sean Fennessey
The Defenders.
- [32:50]
Tracy Letts
Bob Hope presents the Chrysler Theater Hawk. The Felony Squad. Shane. And a TV movie called Fame is the Name of the Game. Did you watch this? No. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg.
- [33:04]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, sure.
- [33:04]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. And stars Tony Franciosa, Jill St. John and Susan St. James. Maybe the only time the two saints,
- [33:11]
Sean Fennessey
Jill St. John and Susan Saint James.
- [33:13]
Tracy Letts
Yes.
- [33:14]
Sean Fennessey
It's like the Avengers.
- [33:15]
Tracy Letts
It was advertised on NBC as the first made for television movie, which is just flatly not true. I don't know how they got away with advertising that Tony Franciosa is the lead and he is a features writer for a magazine called Fame in Los Angeles. You should see it. Just to see his office. Just to see the features writer's office. It's palatial, it has a magnificent view. It's got its own bathroom. And he has a personal secretary played by Susan St. James, working in the office. It was such popular TV movie, they turned it into a series with Tony Franciosa.
- [33:55]
Sean Fennessey
I guess there is a theme song that rings out in my mind. Fame is the name of the game. It must be from that series.
- [34:03]
Tracy Letts
It was kind of a backdoor pilot. And Duvall does not have a big part in it. But Stuart Rosenberg is somebody who would come back later in his career.
- [34:14]
Sean Fennessey
Yes, for sure. We spoke about him quite a bit during our Paul Newman episode, actually.
- [34:18]
Tracy Letts
Oh, even before we get to the next movie. Two episodes of the Time Tunnel, two episodes of the Cat and an episode of Combat. Do you know what the Cat was?
- [34:30]
Sean Fennessey
I don't.
- [34:30]
Tracy Letts
Well, it was about a cat burglar whose initials spelled T, H, E. T, H, E, Cat. Anyway. Played by Robert Loggia. I thought you'd appreciate that, my beloved.
- [34:42]
Sean Fennessey
I do love Loggia. Now, it's notable that you mentioned Combat, because I do believe Combat is where Robert Duvall met Robert Altman. And his next feature film, 1967, is Countdown, which is Robert Altman's debut feature, I guess, technically his second feature film, but his first in the studio system for Warner Brothers. And it's a spaceman movie, a movie about NASA, about aspiring astronauts and their Apollo 13.
- [35:09]
Tracy Letts
It's the early version of Apollo 13. And Robert Duvall is playing the Gary Sinise part from the Apollo.
- [35:14]
Sean Fennessey
He certainly is. Have you revisited this recently? Did you watch it for this? I did.
- [35:19]
Tracy Letts
It wasn't a revisit for me. I'd never seen it. You'd never seen it?
- [35:21]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, interesting. James Caan, also in this film. Fascinating movie, I think a bit stiff, but you can feel Altman trying to inject the movie with his style, his overlapping dialogue, his attempts to move the camera in a way that was unusual during that period of time and create a little bit of depth of character in a movie that otherwise would have been, I think, a little bit stiffer with a different kind of filmmaker. Duvall's pretty good in this movie. I think he is.
- [35:46]
Tracy Letts
He's quite good. He's very rarely. Are we gonna say he's not good in this.
- [35:51]
Sean Fennessey
I think this is the first movie of his, though, where I see his. That. That lack of fear. To be abrasive as a character, you know, to be confrontational, to be a little bit loud, to lose his cool. A little bit seems to emerge here,
- [36:07]
Tracy Letts
I agree, but I think it's red.
- [36:09]
Sean Fennessey
It's red. 1968, the detective.
- [36:11]
Tracy Letts
Oh, sorry, Got to jump in here. Cimarrone Strip. The Wild Wild West. Flesh and blood. Run for your life. Judd for the defense. Yeah. Okay. The Detective directed by Gordon Douglas. Written by Abby Mann.
- [36:23]
Sean Fennessey
Yes. Curious feature film stars Frank Sinatra as the titular detective. Duvall is one of his colleagues, is also a police detective. Yeah, I would say relatively modest supporting part. The milieu of the movie is quite something. It's around the murder of a gay man. And it tries to explore the gay lifestyle at this time through the eyes of police detectives who don't really understand it. And I think maybe for its time it thought it was being sensitive. It now seems bit outmoded and outdated. A bit of an odd Sinatra performance. If anyone has seemed less like a cop to me. I don't know if Frank Sinatra is one of them.
- [37:03]
Tracy Letts
He's just miscast, you know, I'm just exhausted by Frank Sinatra really. I don't know what to make of him. It's like, yeah, you're a great singer and you're a pretty good actor, but you're also this Vegas guy and are you mopped up. You're a bully, you're a Democrat, but you're a friend with Ronald Reagan. I don't know what's going on. It's just exhausting.
- [37:26]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. Did you have a chance to meet the man?
- [37:29]
Tracy Letts
No. God, no. I used to.
- [37:31]
Sean Fennessey
He would have punched you right in the nose for saying that.
- [37:32]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, exactly. I did have a nightmare where he beat me up in an elevator.
- [37:36]
Sean Fennessey
No kidding. Yeah.
- [37:36]
Tracy Letts
And nobody helped me. They were all cheering Frank on.
- [37:39]
Sean Fennessey
I think that was a common occurrence, honestly. He did have men who would beat you up, though. He wouldn't do it himself. The detective is definitely red. It's an interesting artifact. Popped in my Twilight time Blu ray for this.
- [37:50]
Tracy Letts
As did I.
- [37:51]
Sean Fennessey
1968 bullet. So I didn't revisit Bullet and I couldn't quite remember the context of Duval's character. So fill me in. Is he the cab driver?
- [38:01]
Tracy Letts
He is the cab driver. He takes the mobster around and then later Bullet finds him and asks him to retrace his steps. And he has a pretty good memory about where the mobster went and what the mobster did. It's really very functionary.
- [38:18]
Sean Fennessey
A small part. And it's such an interesting thing that he could be a Bullet, play a critical role in To Kill a Mockingbird. Five years later, he's got a leading role in a Warner Brothers astronaut drama. And then one year later, he's got a ninth billed speaking part in Bullet. So interesting the way that he just chose Parts and picked projects or hoped to get hired for things while doing all of this television. I don't know, maybe. Help me understand this as somebody. You get offered a lot of things. You don't do everything, but sometimes there's something that you really want. The psychologist.
- [38:51]
Tracy Letts
Sometimes you go, oh, I've got the time. And I like Peter Yates, and I'd like to be in a Steve McQueen movie. And I'll have scenes with McQueen and, oh, get me out to San Francisco for a week. Yeah, I've got the time. I can do that.
- [39:03]
Sean Fennessey
You think that's what it was?
- [39:04]
Tracy Letts
You know, Duval, married four times, no children. So as we get into some of the more workaholic ways, it's like, kids will put a real crimp in those plans.
- [39:16]
Sean Fennessey
Ain't that the truth? It's funny that you say that, too. He was pretty open about this in the later part of his life. I tried many times with women I was married to and women I was not married to. I guess I must be shooting blanks. But I think that that might contribute at least in part, to the fact that, look, I mean, every single year in this 1970s, he's got multiple projects. It's amazing how frequently he worked. And so Bullitt, while it is a legendary film, I don't think his work in it is legendary for the purposes of this exercise. No, Red 1969, True Grit.
- [39:44]
Tracy Letts
Hold on. Gotta jump in here with him. CBS Playhouse, the Mod Squad and five episodes of the FBI. I point it out because now it stops. With True Grit, it stops. So it's almost as if he is making a real career decision here. I've done enough of this TV. He had done 30 or some episodes of television, and he said, that's enough, and I want to make movies now. And his stock was starting to rise a bit in the movie world, and so he calls it quits and, yeah, makes true grid in 69.
- [40:17]
Sean Fennessey
So he plays Ned Pepper, a very memorable part.
- [40:21]
Tracy Letts
Not a big part.
- [40:21]
Sean Fennessey
Not a big part. Famously, infamously hated Henry Hathaway. They hated each other in this movie. But gets a good performance out of him. I think this movie is a little bit stiff. It's best known for being the film that got John Wayne his best Actor Oscar after so many years. Love the novel. Think the novel is one of the absolute classics of the 20th century.
- [40:43]
Tracy Letts
Well, and the screenplay by Marguerite Roberts hews very closely to the Charles Portis book, as does the Coen's adaptation. I mean, there are a lot of lines just, you know, why Would you go in and screw with that unbelievable dialogue? I call that bold talk for a one eyed fat man. Right. That's Duvall's line. It's just great stuff.
- [41:03]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. I don't know that it's necessarily worthy of the hall, but he keeps finding himself in these movies, in these parts. Like, you know, he's showing up in bullets, showing up in True Grit. This is how you start to amass this, like that quality of if I don't know his name, I know that face. And then you start to situate yourself with common moviegoers. And then every time you show up in something, you represent a standard of quality, I think in addition to these reams and reams of TV that you just listed. And you said you watched all of it. Right. You saw every single episode of television.
- [41:34]
Tracy Letts
You did. I did not see every single episode.
- [41:36]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, good. True Grit in. No, True Grit's red. 1969, the Rain People. This part was originally meant for Rip Torn and Rip Torn couldn't make it. He was cast in Francis Ford Coppola's film opposite James Caan. He plays a. Remind me. What is he? Is he a man who's picked up on the side of the road?
- [41:59]
Tracy Letts
The Duvall character?
- [42:00]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, he's the father.
- [42:01]
Tracy Letts
No, he's a cop.
- [42:02]
Sean Fennessey
He's the highway patrolman.
- [42:03]
Tracy Letts
He's the highway patrolman.
- [42:04]
Sean Fennessey
That's what it is. He's the highway patrolman who picks them up and brings them back to his house.
- [42:08]
Tracy Letts
And by the way, there's a little more to the story than Rip Torn couldn't make it. Do you know this story?
- [42:14]
Sean Fennessey
Share it.
- [42:15]
Tracy Letts
So Rip Torn, Shirley Knight and James Caan rehearse for weeks in New York with Francis Ford Coppola. And then Coppola takes Shirley Knight and James Caan out. They're going to go out on the road and they're going to shoot essentially sequentially. The cop doesn't show up until the last third of the movie. So he. They're going out on the road and Coppola has decided we're going to shoot and. And I'm going to remain somewhat improvisatory about this. If I see something interesting, we're going to go there. If we. We don't have a definitive calendar, but we'll see you in Ogallala down the road in a month. And they leave Rip Torn with the motorcycle because he's playing a motorcycle cop. So they leave the motorcycle with Rip Torn in New York and they tell him to learn how to ride the motorcycle. Well, the motorcycle gets stolen from out in front of Riptolan Ripton's house. And Rip Torn says, it's in my deal. You have to provide me with a motorcycle to learn. And Coppola says, well, we can't, you know, it's a low budget movie. We can't actually get you another. We can get you like a. We can get you a second, you know, a second hand motorcycle that you can learn on. And Torn's mad about it and he says that wasn't the deal. And then they reach out to him and they wanted him to. They wanted him to get his shoe and calf measured for the boots that he had to wear. And Torn said that's it and quit. So they're out on the road filming the movie and suddenly the guy they've been rehearsing with for weeks can't appear. James Caan recommends Robert Duvall because they had worked together on Countdown and Shirley Knight had done an episode of Naked City with Robert Duvall. So they both had associations with them. And they tell Coppola, you should hire Robert Duvall. And they changed the history of movies, really. I mean, that's the first time Coppola meets Duvall is working on this film.
- [44:26]
Sean Fennessey
We will get to their reunion. The Rain People is an interesting movie. His performances I remember. What I remember most about the performance is the bad dad quality that that character has, which is something he would return to in his time as a film actor. And he's very effective and very menacing in this movie. I don't think it's one of his best performances or one of the most critical performances of all time. Nor do I. I would consider a yellow for this performance because it becoming the first union with Coppola.
- [44:55]
Tracy Letts
We can yellow it.
- [44:56]
Sean Fennessey
We're going to yellow it. 1970 MASH. This is his second film with Altman and he plays Frank Burns, who is the detestable Frank Burns. I mean, immediately identified at the beginning of the film as the enemy to the two surgeons who come in in this movie. Interesting. He didn't play a lot of characters like this. Like the unlikable kind of squirrelly heel who also gets the girl weirdly in Hot Lips. Perfectly fine performance.
- [45:27]
Tracy Letts
I think Frank Burns wouldn't mean anything to us were it not for the TV show. I think the TV show kind of solidifies Frank Burns. Larry Linville, who was great as Frank Burns, overtly comic performance on the TV show. But I think he's what cements Frank Burns in the public mind in a way that had the TV show never happened. I don't think Frank Burns. The name would have any meaning for us. And the performance, let's face it, it's not a big part of the film. No, it's very much a part of an ensemble.
- [45:58]
Sean Fennessey
It's weird because the film itself is so full of ridiculousness and Duvall very rarely played that note as an actor. It was hard for him to not be dignified. And so to me, I say this is red.
- [46:12]
Tracy Letts
I agree.
- [46:13]
Sean Fennessey
1970, the revolutionary. Now, I had never seen this movie. Speaking of Long island, this comes from Paul Williams, a filmmaker who only made a handful of films. And what an interesting movie this is. It really is not entirely successful, I would say.
- [46:26]
Tracy Letts
I agree.
- [46:27]
Sean Fennessey
But quite an interesting portrait of a revolutionary played by Jon Voight at the end of the 1960s, who goes on a kind of journey of exploration in terms of what kind of revolutionary he wants to be, what kind of action he wants to take, what kind of community he wants to be a part of. And it's kind of this roving journey movie where he moves from place to place and he does eventually make a connection with Duvall's character, who is this sort of zealot, sort of like hard, seemingly far left figure attempting to incite true revolution. I found Duvall's performance to be a little anonymous in this movie because it's very much in the psychology of Jon Voight, who's somewhere between hyper intellectualized and also wishy washy at the same time. Movies like. Interesting comment on the vagueness of the movements in that time. I'm glad I watched it.
- [47:18]
Tracy Letts
I am too. I was surprised that I didn't know anything about it. It's like, how does a movie with Jon Voight and Robert Duvall that's not terrible. How does it just have no footprint at all? It's not a terrible movie. It's kind of interesting. Jon Voight's very good in it.
- [47:37]
Sean Fennessey
He is very good.
- [47:37]
Tracy Letts
And Duvall playing this character of Despard. Yeah, he's set up as a kind of. As a bit of a revolutionary guru, only to find that maybe he's also having to play the game to a certain extent. Yeah. It's not a green, but I'm glad I watched it.
- [47:58]
Sean Fennessey
I am too. I want to see the rest of Williams movies. Tarantino in Cinema Speculation wrote a bit about Paul Williams and how his filmography is a bit overlooked or not really preserved in the way that it should be, but his previous movie, out of it. It also features Jon Voight, one of his first Film performances, I guess the same year as Midnight Cowboy and Dealing or the Berkeley to Boston 40 brick. Lost bag Blues was this film that came out two years later. Stars Michael Douglas, based on a Michael Crichton novel. I've not seen those films like check them out.
- [48:28]
Tracy Letts
I've seen Dealing though, a long time ago. I should try to search that out again.
- [48:33]
Sean Fennessey
The revolutionary probably Red. Yeah. This is an Interesting one. Thx 1138.
- [48:39]
Tracy Letts
Isn't lawman first? Maybe I have the law.
- [48:43]
Sean Fennessey
I have THX here, but we can. Do you want to talk Lawman?
- [48:45]
Tracy Letts
Sure. It's terrible. Michael Winter's a terrible director.
- [48:48]
Sean Fennessey
Yes. From the visionary who brought you Death Wish comes a bad western.
- [48:53]
Tracy Letts
He was terrible then. He was always terrible. And apparently a terrible person too. Yeah.
- [48:57]
Sean Fennessey
People say he was not a nice man.
- [48:59]
Tracy Letts
Written by Gerald Wilson, who wrote so some pretty good thrillers from that period, as I recall. Novels with Burt Lancaster and Lee J. Cobb. I gotta tell you, I'm out on Lee J. Cobb.
- [49:09]
Sean Fennessey
No kidding.
- [49:10]
Tracy Letts
I'm kind of out on Lee J. Cobb. It's pretty, pretty hambone.
- [49:14]
Sean Fennessey
Good lord.
- [49:15]
Tracy Letts
It's a terrible movie. And it's just like Michael Winter didn't get the memo that something interesting was happening in Hollywood at the time. Because in a lot of ways it feels like a movie from 1950.
- [49:27]
Sean Fennessey
It is old fashioned, but you can see him trying to do things with the camera that you can feel him performing the act of tourism where all these insane zooms throughout the movie that feel very modern, but he doesn't know how to use them to psychologize the characters. He's just doing them because he thinks they look cool, which is the one kind of tactic in the film that makes it feel not like a Kirk Douglas movie from 1955. I agree. It's not very good. It's definitely not going in. So let's talk about thx. He's the titular thx. This is George Lucas's first movie. This is a critical movie in the history of fiction, science fiction.
- [50:05]
Tracy Letts
You see THX up on the screen. I don't guess you see that anymore, but you used to for a while see THX on the screen. Robert Duvall was thx.
- [50:13]
Sean Fennessey
He literally was.
- [50:15]
Tracy Letts
And he had met George Lucas because George Lucas was making a documentary about the making of the Rain People.
- [50:22]
Sean Fennessey
Of course.
- [50:22]
Tracy Letts
So again, if Rip Torn Wow doesn't show up, it was Duvall's introduction to Coppola and Lucas.
- [50:34]
Sean Fennessey
Is this Robert Duvall's only science fiction film?
- [50:38]
Tracy Letts
I think so. No. The Sixth Day with Arnold Schwarzenegger that's right.
- [50:43]
Sean Fennessey
Of course, I also did not revisit that, but good shout on that one. I mean, technically he's in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but.
- [50:50]
Tracy Letts
That's right, but this is real sci fi. I mean, this is hardcore sci fi.
- [50:55]
Sean Fennessey
Yes. I mean, a very interesting movie. A very important movie, I think, to the new Hollywood, in a lot of ways. A bit dull now when I look back at it. I didn't rewatch it in full for this.
- [51:05]
Tracy Letts
You did. I did rewatch it for this, yeah.
- [51:07]
Sean Fennessey
Very different performance from him, as I recall, too, because he also is very internal, very quiet, very.
- [51:12]
Tracy Letts
Well, it's his first lead, the first leading role he's played on film. And, yeah, it's. I mean, I just admire its experimental nature. It's an experimental movie. Right. He had made it originally. Lucas had made it as a. As his thesis project when he was at usc. And so then somebody gave him some money to turn it into a. Into a feature. But there are, I mean, obviously borrowing liberally from 2001, some of the elliptical things that are happening in this film. And I had only ever seen it in, like, Bad Tube, you know, late night TV or vhs. So to see it now on the blue, on the big screen, it's like, oh, that's. It's really something. Well, it's Lucas's best film.
- [52:03]
Sean Fennessey
You think it's Lucas's best film? You can take. So not American Graffiti. Not in the conversation either, despite. We know your stance on Star wars, and you can leave that.
- [52:14]
Tracy Letts
I love Star Wars. Leave me alone.
- [52:16]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. Have you gotten feedback on that?
- [52:19]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [52:19]
Sean Fennessey
What's it been like?
- [52:22]
Tracy Letts
I gotta say, you know, split.
- [52:25]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, really?
- [52:25]
Tracy Letts
Oh, there's a real split.
- [52:27]
Sean Fennessey
You've got trench run haters who've joined your side.
- [52:31]
Tracy Letts
I've got a lot of support for my take on the trench run. A lot of support.
- [52:36]
Sean Fennessey
So are these prominent figures in the industry who are calling you up and saying, tracy, sir, thank you for your fearlessness, your courage in the face of big trench run.
- [52:45]
Tracy Letts
Let's say yes. Let's say yes, they are thx, screenplay by George Lucas and Walter Murch, indeed. Who was a sound man. And the soundscape in THX is wild. Yeah, you can just.
- [53:03]
Sean Fennessey
I need to rewatch this.
- [53:03]
Tracy Letts
You should just listen to it. The soundscape is really something.
- [53:07]
Sean Fennessey
I'm waiting on the 4k for this, to be honest with you. Where is that?
- [53:12]
Tracy Letts
I don't know where the 4k is. I actually had to replace my. My disc was corrupted. I had to Get a new disc. Something was wrong with it.
- [53:19]
Sean Fennessey
That's thx, Ian.
- [53:20]
Tracy Letts
There you go. Extras in thx, played by members of the cult Synanon. Synanon was a very violent cult. Eventually got into a lot of trouble in San Francisco, and a lot of people went to prison. And they put a de rattled rattlesnake in the mailbox of the district attorney. And he actually got bit by the rattlesnake. I mean, Synanon has an ugly history, but they're the extras in thx.
- [53:51]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, there was a documentary about that Synanon a couple years ago on HBX called the Synanon Fix. Upsetting stuff. Good to know. George Lucas got them paid. Is this yellow? Sure. Okay. 1972, the Godfather. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's one of the most critical American works of art of the last 200 years. And he plays Tom Hagen, who was my emotional entry point as a slightly taciturn, emotionally inert Irish man. I'm German Irish. One of my favorite line readings in movie history. I love Tom Hagen. I think Tom Hagen is such a necessary part of this story.
- [54:35]
Tracy Letts
Essential.
- [54:36]
Sean Fennessey
And, you know, I think that for an actor who could be so explosive, the choice to play Tom in this way throughout both of these movies is very shrewd because he's up against so many powerhouses, and not just Vito and Sonny, but Clemenza and Tessio and obviously Michael. These explosive performers, charisma machines. And for him to just withdraw in the way that he does is so great. And he's really the metronome of the movie.
- [55:10]
Tracy Letts
But he's used so brilliantly by Coppola throughout the two films. The times that he steps forward, the times that suddenly the scene is about him. I mean, I was thinking of this. I rewatched both Godfathers for this draft. I rewatched them with Carrie, and I was thinking about the horse's head, and I actually paused the movie and I turned to Carrie and I said, whose idea was that? I mean, was it Tom's idea? Does Tom go to the Don and say, he's not going to budge, and the Don says, cut off the horse's head and put it in his bed? I don't think so. I think it's Tom.
- [55:54]
Sean Fennessey
I've never ascribed that level of malevolence
- [55:56]
Tracy Letts
to Tom, who's making that call.
- [55:59]
Sean Fennessey
This is the kind of thing that's a big move. My reading of that scene is always. That scene that we never see is that Vito says, what does he care about? What matters to Him. And Tom knows that he can tell him. Well, we had this encounter in the stables, and I saw the affection that he showed to Khartoum.
- [56:19]
Tracy Letts
I think there's another way to read it, which is that Vitto sends him out and says, take care of it.
- [56:24]
Sean Fennessey
Could be.
- [56:24]
Tracy Letts
And Tom could be.
- [56:26]
Sean Fennessey
Then John Marlowe says, oh, the best.
- [56:32]
Tracy Letts
When Sonny dies. The choice. This is a screenwriter's choice that Tom is the one to tell the Don.
- [56:39]
Sean Fennessey
Right.
- [56:40]
Tracy Letts
Brilliant. The choice that the Don comforts Tom and not the other way around. Now, I don't know if that's screenwriting or if that's directing or if that's the actor, but it's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant.
- [56:59]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, there's something. There's an unspoken vulnerability in Tom as a character who's brought into that world, who is adopted into it, and who is made to feel like he belongs to something and yet is still on the outside in some way. It's a very, very psychologically complicated character who never really gets to talk about that. And if that character were in a movie today, you'd get the origin story. You'd get. Well, we knew his mother, and she was a drug addict, or he was a good friend of his, and we brought him in because he was good at book learning. There would have been more. There's not a lot there in the movie. I think there was more in the book. I've not read the book.
- [57:39]
Tracy Letts
It's not good.
- [57:40]
Sean Fennessey
One of the reasons I haven't read it is I hear that over and over again, but I'm happy to not know about it. I think obviously, Tom Hagen is going into the hall of Fame in some form or fashion. The question is once, twice, I don't know.
- [57:54]
Tracy Letts
He's absolutely going, do you want to have a whole Godfather discussion now?
- [57:58]
Sean Fennessey
There's a lot of work between two, so why don't we just talk two now?
- [58:02]
Tracy Letts
Okay. I'm a little loud on two.
- [58:06]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, I just said this on a show. I just said this on a recent Star wars episode. I was like, two has flaws.
- [58:12]
Tracy Letts
I'm a little out on two for one thing. So I watched both of these with Carrie. Can I tell you the story?
- [58:19]
Sean Fennessey
This is a good place to do it.
- [58:20]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. I first saw the Godfather. The first time I saw it was when it was on TV as. What was it called? The Godfather Saga. The entire novel on screen or something. Francis Ford Coppola put the two movies together. He put them in chronological order. So we start with De Niro in the old country. Then we move to the Godfather film. Then we moved to the Michael section for the first time.
- [58:43]
Sean Fennessey
The first time you saw it, you saw it. Oh, interesting.
- [58:45]
Tracy Letts
Was 19, so I would have been 12 years old. He also added an hour's worth of footage. I mean, from the time the Godfather first appeared, they were like, how the hell are we going to put this on tv? It was the biggest movie in history, and it was rated R. How the hell are we going to get it on TV without just hacking it up? Coppola wasn't going to let them go in and just hack it up. So he puts this together and played like a miniseries over three nights. That's the first time I saw it. And I remember, even then, I really enjoyed the Italian section with De Niro and Bruno Kirby and Gaston. What's the name of the guy who plays Finucci? He was a great actor. He was also in the Conformist. Great Italian actor. I really love that section of the movie. I found that very compelling. And then the Godfather starts. Then we go to the wedding, and I believe in America, and we watch the guy. And when I believe in America starts. Even then you had a sense of, oh, now this is really special. It was good before, but now this is especially good. This is really special. And you get the Godfather, and then you go to Michael's story in the Godfather Part two. And then when I watched with Carrie. First of all, Carrie and I had watched earlier during the Pandemic, we watched the Godfather movies. So I put on the Godfather here recently, and she was like, we're watching the Godfather. And I said, well, I'm doing the Duval draft. I want to revisit it. We watched the Godfather, and we got about maybe about where Johnny Fontaine arrives at the wedding. And Carrie said, I've never seen the Godfather before. And I said, you watched it with me during the Pandemic. And she said, I remember absolutely nothing. I don't remember any of the characters. I don't remember the milieu. I don't remember the times. I remember nothing. Oh, man. So, you know, I need to get Carrie in to get some testing.
- [60:39]
Sean Fennessey
Well, but the Pandemic did do that to us. That's right. There are things that happened in that time that I don't remember either.
- [60:44]
Tracy Letts
So we watched the Godfather, and the next night we watched the Godfather Part 2, and we were both a little lukewarm on Godfather Part 2.
- [60:52]
Sean Fennessey
Can I. Well, let me just say something. I think it's actually not helpful to watch them in close succession. I think it's nice to watch them as their own separate artifacts and think about what it was like to see it in 72 and then to wait two years to see part two and to be brought back into that feeling. Because I think narratively, it just. It does not feel as strong as Part one does. It does not feel as essential to understanding that world. It feels like a lot of the magnitude of Michael's crisis is a somewhat iterative to his crisis in one. It's just an elevation of that crisis. And I just. I have never really had the strongest affinity for the De Niro sections of Part two. I acknowledge its total mastery from a filmmaking perspective and a performance perspective. I think it's a great film. I'm not saying that Godfather 2 is bad, but I definitely. If I had to choose, I would choose one over two any day of the week.
- [61:46]
Tracy Letts
And I. I'm. I like the De Niro section more than the Michael section in Part two because I just don't find following Michael's joyless churning through his job any fun.
- [62:00]
Sean Fennessey
Well, it's a true descent into evil, though. That's. I mean, it is really.
- [62:02]
Tracy Letts
You know how much of a dissent it is. He seems kind of there when the movie starts.
- [62:06]
Sean Fennessey
That's fair. That's. Well, I mean. But what he does to Fredo is. The Fredo is totalizing.
- [62:12]
Tracy Letts
And here's something that'll piss off everybody. I know. I don't think Lee Strasberg's that good.
- [62:17]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, really? I don't think he's that good. Oh, that I can't agree with. I really like his.
- [62:22]
Tracy Letts
Here's another thing I gotta say, I'm watching with my wife. I can't help but watch a little bit through her eyes. Man, there's not much for the ladies in these movies.
- [62:31]
Sean Fennessey
Well, that's a fact.
- [62:31]
Tracy Letts
You know, the truth is. Do you know how many scenes involve a guy telling the ladies, please leave the room, or you shut up or don't interrupt, or.
- [62:43]
Sean Fennessey
It's not wrong, but I would argue that that's a key theme of the movie.
- [62:47]
Tracy Letts
I don't deny it. I recognize that it's part of the film. But still, when Michael shuts the door in Kay's face, I felt like he was shutting the door in Carrie's face. It was just like, I'm sorry. You just don't get to be a part of this.
- [63:02]
Sean Fennessey
You're not wrong. So you're saying we should delete the Godfather films? No one should see them. They're terrible.
- [63:07]
Tracy Letts
I love. First of all, I'm not submitting to your tyranny of these questions, I know all about this. Second of all, I love the Godfather movies. I recognize how Great Godfather Part 2 is. I do recognize it's an absolute great movie. And there's a mastery of the film language there that's just undeniable. John Cazale, for me, is MVP in Part two. And if you want to green Duvall for the Godfathers, can we do that? We'll give him a green for Tom Hagen.
- [63:42]
Sean Fennessey
Well, what does Tom say? I was always loyal to you, Michael. You know, when he.
- [63:46]
Tracy Letts
It's the best scene he has in two. For the most part, he's just sitting there telling K to, you know, chill out.
- [63:50]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, but that moment is so very powerful.
- [63:53]
Tracy Letts
It's great.
- [63:54]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. I would choose one over two if I had to choose both because I love the movie more, and I think he has a little bit more to do. He has a little bit more complexity. You mentioned he gets that scene where he gets to talk to the dawn. So I will say we'll do two as the green, but if you want to count it as the saga, and then we can also talk about the fact that he's not in three.
- [64:14]
Tracy Letts
See, that's the thing. I think we should also put three in his hall of fame because his absence. His absence, I agree. I mean, is pure director hubris. I've seen it in Storefront theater in Chicago when a director suddenly gets to a point, they go, it doesn't matter. You know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna make. This is gonna be great. It doesn't matter who it is. It's like, actually, it does matter. And you've killed off James.
- [64:37]
Sean Fennessey
Right?
- [64:37]
Tracy Letts
You've killed off so many of the energetic characters from the first two movies. Pay the money. Pay him the goddamn money and get Duvall on set.
- [64:48]
Sean Fennessey
So famously, Duvall felt that he was not getting the quote he should have gotten to appear in Godfather 3, especially relative to his co star Al Pacino. So he didn't take the part, and the part was rewritten and recast with George Hamilton. And that is also one of the reasons why they're just two very different kinds of actors. Two different kinds of.
- [65:06]
Tracy Letts
That's another part of my problem with two, by the way, the Richard Castellano not coming back. Clemenza is so.
- [65:15]
Sean Fennessey
No God, I love Pentangeli, though. That's one of my favorite characters.
- [65:19]
Tracy Letts
But it's so clearly. When you see the writing of the De Niro section with Clemenza, he's so clearly meant to be an echo of that in the later scenes. I mean, I understand maybe that wasn't Coppola's hubris. Maybe that was Richard Castellano's hubris.
- [65:36]
Sean Fennessey
Based on what we know about him, it does seem like he asked for the moon and the stars. I think that that's one of those rare blessing in disguise. I really think what Frankie Five Angels does is really special in that movie. Anyhow, we'll put the Godfather in as an experience, but it counts as one.
- [65:54]
Tracy Letts
Great.
- [65:57]
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- [66:30]
Sean Fennessey
The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid, which is the feature film debut of Philip Kaufman, San Francisco filmmaker.
- [66:37]
Tracy Letts
Again, we're in with the San Francisco guys.
- [66:40]
Sean Fennessey
Yes. And this is an old west heist movie starring Duvall as Jesse James. Now, I haven't seen this in a minute.
- [66:50]
Tracy Letts
I watched it.
- [66:51]
Sean Fennessey
Was it your first time seeing it?
- [66:52]
Tracy Letts
It was.
- [66:53]
Sean Fennessey
What'd you think?
- [66:55]
Tracy Letts
One of those hippie westerns, just like, we don't need to cut these guys hair. That's how they would award it in the old West.
- [67:03]
Sean Fennessey
He gets a lot of work in the revisionist Westerns in the 70s. Yeah, it's all right.
- [67:08]
Tracy Letts
It's all right.
- [67:08]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah.
- [67:09]
Tracy Letts
His take on Jesse James is. Well, he plays him pretty ignorant, right? Pretty ignorant type, which is probably.
- [67:20]
Sean Fennessey
I feel like that's the accurate.
- [67:22]
Tracy Letts
I think that's probably true historical reading
- [67:24]
Sean Fennessey
of the character, even though he sometimes is portrayed as much slicker and more debonair in a way. Yeah, I think the movie's kind of interesting. It's fascinating that he this run of movies that he makes in 1973. I don't know how much time he can spend on all of them. But I will say great Northfield, Minnesota rate is red 1973 tomorrow. Complete discovery for me. Had never heard of this movie. This is Horton Foote wrote it based
- [67:51]
Tracy Letts
on a William Faulkner story which I had not read.
- [67:54]
Sean Fennessey
And Duvall plays a poor migrant farmer who comes to meet a pregnant woman and they form a bond. And this is like A very complex, quiet, independent film that clearly only exists because Horton Foote and Robert Duvall wanted it to. Seemingly.
- [68:16]
Tracy Letts
I think they had worked on a stage version of it in New York. I know that Horton Foote had it. I don't know that Duvall was part of it. He might have been.
- [68:25]
Sean Fennessey
I watched this on Tubi. Tubi was it. Tub might have been Canopy.
- [68:29]
Tracy Letts
Canopy.
- [68:29]
Sean Fennessey
Canopy. And it felt like him channeling Boo Radley in some ways, even though he is extremely uneducated in this movie, the character that he plays. But I thought a very special performance in a very special kind of movie. An unusual movie in terms of its pacing and what the story is, and very theatrical, like, not terribly cinematic, given its scope. But I liked it.
- [68:57]
Tracy Letts
I think it's a great movie. I think it's a great performance. We talk sometimes that sometimes he takes a big swing, and this is a big swing in terms of the accent work that he's doing. Clearly, it's a. Billy Bob Thornton likes to tell the story of the character of slingblade came to him while he was shaving in the mirror. Well, he was shaving in the mirror after watching the movie tomorrow because it's very clear that his character in slingblade takes something from Jackson Fentry, the character that Duvall plays here. You know, this was Duvall's favorite of all movies. This was his favorite. I think it's superb and I think more people should know it now.
- [69:37]
Sean Fennessey
Do you think this is. I'd like to put a discovery in.
- [69:41]
Tracy Letts
I think it's great.
- [69:43]
Sean Fennessey
I'm going to say yellow for the time being.
- [69:44]
Tracy Letts
Fair enough.
- [69:45]
Sean Fennessey
I don't know how many truly legendary parts he has, actually.
- [69:50]
Tracy Letts
And in my. I don't know why. Our timelines are a little different. What I had was godfather 72, followed by tomorrow 72. And if his first act after the hit of the Godfather. And by the way, they knew the. That they knew they had something with the Godfather. Right. While they were making it. He talked about that as well. For him to follow up the Godfather by going down south and playing this character in this black and white independent thing. By the way, Peter Masterson, Horton Foote's first cousin, is in the movie. He plays the lawyer in the framing device of the court case. Yeah, he's the attorney.
- [70:33]
Sean Fennessey
So this movie, it says, was released April 9, 1972, but it only played 32 dates. It was not open very long and did not play in very many movie theaters. So it's a little bit hard to know, but it says 72 here it was pretty obscure.
- [70:48]
Tracy Letts
I had seen it before. I think maybe Facets had a pretty hard to watch vhs, which is where I had seen it before or maybe I'd just seen it on regular tv, but I revisited on Canopy. It's a good quality transfer on Canopy and if you guys haven't seen this you should check it out. It's really good.
- [71:07]
Sean Fennessey
1973 Joe Kidd this is Clint Eastwood's first western after Dirty Harry and also a kind of sort of revisionist western directed by John Sturges. Duvall plays written by Elmore Leonard. That's right. Based on his novel. Right.
- [71:25]
Tracy Letts
I don't know that it is. It may be an original screenplay.
- [71:30]
Sean Fennessey
Harlan Frank Harlan, the character that Duval plays is a wealthy landowner who wants to get a native man off of his land and assassinated effectively so that he can pause the reclamation movement that he's trying to organize. Clint Eastwood plays a bounty hunter who's hired by Harlan. And that sounds like a complex and interesting material but I find the movie just turns into a little bit of a shoot em up and doesn't really have any.
- [71:58]
Tracy Letts
Everything about it is a little surprising that it's not better than it is that you've got Eastwood as the hero and Duvall as the bad guy. And written by Elmore Leonard and directed by John Sturges who had certainly made a lot of great movies. Now maybe he's at the end of his run here. I know that Sturges and Eastwood fought terribly and Sturgis was perhaps drunk on set a lot. Yeah, I watched some of the extras.
- [72:20]
Sean Fennessey
It's only a few years after Magnificent since seven though it's not that. And you know, I don't know, it's funny that it. It just felt real flabby to me.
- [72:28]
Tracy Letts
Don Stroud, who's in the movie, I saw an interview with him talking about the film and he. He said. He said Clint should have directed the film. We would have all been better off if Clint had directed the film. But it certainly doesn't take off in any way.
- [72:42]
Sean Fennessey
And this is in the aftermath of Play Misty for me. He had started making films and he makes Breezy one year later. So he's got.
- [72:48]
Tracy Letts
And he was gonna fire Philip Kaufman off of Outlaw Josie Wales a couple of years after this. So clearly Eastwood had gotten to the point where he was particular about the way these things were being put together.
- [72:59]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. So Joe Kidd is not going in. Let's talk about the outfit. A film that came up in a recent discussion we had on Physical Media episode because it's being reissued just on Blu Ray, right? Not on 4K, that outfit.
- [73:12]
Tracy Letts
I think it's ported 4K, I hope
- [73:14]
Sean Fennessey
from the director John Flynn. Written by Flynn, but with a polish by Walter Hill, who'll come up again here and is based on a Richard Stark novel. It's a Parker movie. And is it the best Parker movie?
- [73:27]
Tracy Letts
No, it's maybe not the best.
- [73:30]
Sean Fennessey
You say Point Blank.
- [73:31]
Tracy Letts
I'm gonna say point blank is.
- [73:32]
Sean Fennessey
Well, look, it's not Parker Carol Macklin, but it is Parker.
- [73:36]
Tracy Letts
Two sides of the same coin, right? Point Blank's after something very different in terms of its architecture and the way it's shot, the kind of prismatic nature of the way that movie is put together. It's very different than the outfit, which is just kind of down and dirty, almost like a drive in movie.
- [73:54]
Sean Fennessey
Yes, it's a fussy exploitation movie, but it's really good.
- [74:01]
Tracy Letts
I was knocked out. I was knocked out by the outfit. I was really, really thrilled with the outfit.
- [74:07]
Sean Fennessey
Very engaging. I think he's extremely well cast in this part, Duval. And you know, it's a movie star part. It's a tough guy part. And he's very convincing. He's basically on a kind of like a revenge tour to get back the money that he feels he's owed. In the aftermath of. Is it a heist?
- [74:21]
Tracy Letts
Isn't that what Parker's always doing?
- [74:22]
Sean Fennessey
That is what he's always doing. Karen Black, Joe Don Baker, Robert Ryan, Timothy Carey. Really great cast in the movie. This is an interesting one where, like, I'll recommend this to anybody who likes this podcast and just be like, this is a really good 70s crime movie. Is it a hall of fame movie? I don't really know in terms of the act that we're doing here.
- [74:39]
Tracy Letts
I watched it with the nanny. I mentioned the nanny to you. She was just totally transported. She was thrilled by the movie. She was like, that's fantastic.
- [74:48]
Sean Fennessey
Was this before or after? In the Realm of the Senses?
- [74:50]
Tracy Letts
It was before. So maybe, maybe that has curdled, primed
- [74:54]
Sean Fennessey
her for what was coming next. I'll yellow it just because I got affection for this movie. You thinking green?
- [75:00]
Tracy Letts
I'm thinking green. But let's.
- [75:02]
Sean Fennessey
You went into this act thinking, we're going to make the outfit green.
- [75:04]
Tracy Letts
I didn't. No, no, no, no, no. I try, you know, I try to stay supple.
- [75:09]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, you sure do. Once again, 1973 badge 373. This is another crime movie from the perspective of a retired cop who is very clearly based on Eddie Egan, the same character who Gene Hackman more or less portrays as Popeye Doyle in the French Connection. And this is a nasty bit of business, this movie.
- [75:32]
Tracy Letts
And Eddie Egan's in both movies, too.
- [75:34]
Sean Fennessey
He is indeed legendary slash, infamous New York City copy who had unkind words for everybody. I really wanted to like this more. I think it has all the pieces for things that I'm interested in. And I think Duvall's good. I think it's a good performance. But the movie felt a bit uneven to me.
- [75:54]
Tracy Letts
Not to mention the racism. I mean, it had accusations of racism at the time. And then you watch it and you're like, oh, no, that's really racist.
- [76:03]
Sean Fennessey
It sure is. You know, in terms of, like, authenticity, it seems like it's getting pretty close to what Eddie Egan represented in the world.
- [76:10]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, perhaps.
- [76:11]
Sean Fennessey
And maybe the way that he moved through it and the way that he saw it, I'm not sure that that does it any favors in the revisit.
- [76:17]
Tracy Letts
But it's also just not as. I mean, there's the set piece with Duvall in the bus trying to escape the gang members who are coming after him, and that's a pretty good action set piece in a movie like this, especially for its period. But the movie itself, I don't know. Give me the. The fact that it's also made so close to the outfit. I'm just like, give me the outfit 10 times out of 10.
- [76:41]
Sean Fennessey
Well, that's how I feel. This is red, by the way. This is how I feel about Lady Ice as well, which is another very odd film.
- [76:47]
Tracy Letts
This starts his collaboration with Tom Gries. He worked with Tom Grice several times. I would argue they both did better work elsewhere. It says something about Lady Ice that I watched this. Not for this draft, but I watched it for the first time maybe two years ago. I'd picked up the Blu Ray from Kino. I mean, here's Donald Sutherland and Robert o'. Neill.
- [77:10]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah.
- [77:10]
Tracy Letts
And it was like, oh, a couple of my favorite actors in this movie. It says something that two years later, I can't tell you anything about Lady Ice. I don't even really remember Duvall in it or barely remember him in it.
- [77:20]
Sean Fennessey
A very strange movie about, like, an insurance investigator slash detective figure who gets roped in some sort of jewel scam, and there's a femme fatale who finds her way into the story. I was watching the movie, trying to make sense of what the plot was, and, you know, sometimes that happens. A movie just doesn't really connect in any way very Dull for the. I mean, this period of time, these films. This is my favorite thing in the known universe. Crime movies in the 1970s. That's it.
- [77:53]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [77:54]
Sean Fennessey
This movie stinks.
- [77:56]
Tracy Letts
Tom Gries, the father, by the way, of John Grice, great actor who we know from the White Lotus and other things as well. So he starts a collaboration with Duvall that extends over a few movies. So clearly they were buddies. And like I say, I just think they both did better work elsewhere.
- [78:14]
Sean Fennessey
In 1974. He has a very small part, but a critical part in the Conversation where he plays, quote, the director, a person who receives some critical information near the end of the film. Quite chilling.
- [78:28]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [78:30]
Sean Fennessey
You know, a perfect movie. I'm not sure it's necessary to the canon of Duvall.
- [78:36]
Tracy Letts
Oh, no, it's purely a canon.
- [78:39]
Sean Fennessey
A favor.
- [78:40]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [78:40]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. So we can read the conversation. The Godfather Part II has a green of sorts. Yeah, an Honorary Green. 1975. Killer Elite. I haven't seen the Killer Elite in a minute. This is a Sam Peckinpah movie in which he is reunited with James Caan. And as I recall, this is an extremely violent, cynical, mean movie about.
- [79:01]
Tracy Letts
Written by Mark Norman and Sterling. Sterling Silliphant, who wrote in the Heat of the Night, as well as creating a couple of great TV series. It's terrible. It's really not a good film at all. And I think we've talked about this before that I think it's really the demarcation point for Pecking Paul. It's like he kind of falls off a. Well.
- [79:21]
Sean Fennessey
He was really struggling at this time in his life for a lot of drinking, drugs at this time.
- [79:26]
Tracy Letts
It's not a strong movie.
- [79:27]
Sean Fennessey
No. It was remade in the 2000 and tens in a similarly mean, spirited vehicle which I think featured Jason Statham. Does that sound right?
- [79:38]
Tracy Letts
Clive Owen. Robert De Niro.
- [79:41]
Sean Fennessey
It's Robert De Niro in the Killer Elite remake.
- [79:42]
Tracy Letts
I believe he is.
- [79:43]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, that's red. 1975. Breakout.
- [79:47]
Tracy Letts
This is the first time I ever saw Robert Duvall, really, in a movie theater.
- [79:52]
Sean Fennessey
Okay.
- [79:53]
Tracy Letts
I was 10 years old.
- [79:55]
Sean Fennessey
Interesting way to be introduced.
- [79:56]
Tracy Letts
I went to see Breakout. I went to see the Charles Bronson movie. I didn't know who Robert Duvall was again, in the sort of that guy way. Probably only did I know who he was a couple years later when the Godfather Saga played on television and I watched it. So this would have been the first time I saw it. Saw him. Kind of a notable movie in that it's the first film ever to use the saturation strategy of Release that would be used later the same year for Jaws. Hmm.
- [80:27]
Sean Fennessey
I did not know that.
- [80:28]
Tracy Letts
There was a big marketing campaign. We're gonna put it in 1500. We're just gonna clobber them on the first weekend and then we'll let them sort out the bodies after that. And apparently Breakout was the first movie to ever do that.
- [80:41]
Sean Fennessey
It seemed to do okay. It made $16 million in 1995.
- [80:45]
Tracy Letts
Big star.
- [80:45]
Sean Fennessey
He was a big star. He's of course, opposite his wife, Jill Ireland, as he always was. Yes. And Duvall, I believe that was in every contract that he signed. From.
- [80:56]
Tracy Letts
Directed by Tom Gries.
- [80:57]
Sean Fennessey
That's right. Reunion with Grise. And Duvall plays a wrongfully imprisoned man in Mexico and a CIA operation that attempts to extract him from this. Kind of a weird movie. Tonally. Bronson is cracking a lot of jokes.
- [81:11]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. There's some weird comic aside. It's strange to try to put him in a little more comic.
- [81:17]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. That's not really his speed.
- [81:19]
Tracy Letts
But I have to say, as a 10 year old, there's a moment where Duvall believes that he's being smuggled out of the prison in a coffin, only to then be put in a hole and have some dirt thrown on him. And as a 10 year old, it scared the hell out of me.
- [81:32]
Sean Fennessey
I've often wondered if Tarantino is citing this in the Kill Bill sequence where the bride is buried. Breakout is red. 1976. The eagle has landed. Robert Duvall plays Colonel Rattle, who is a leader for the Third Reich.
- [81:46]
Tracy Letts
And he plays Big swing. Here we go. Another big swing.
- [81:48]
Sean Fennessey
He's a Nazi doing a German accent.
- [81:50]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, German accent. Eyepatch.
- [81:52]
Sean Fennessey
Eyepatch, that's right. I don't believe any other actors are attempting a German accent in the film.
- [81:58]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, it is a bit strange.
- [81:59]
Sean Fennessey
Every other actor in this film is British using their natural accent.
- [82:02]
Tracy Letts
Brits are allowed to be Brits, I guess, but we have to do a German accent.
- [82:06]
Sean Fennessey
I get a huge kick out of that. This one's a little disappointing. I hadn't seen this before and I fired it up. I think maybe the night that he passed and want a little more from it. Appreciated what he was doing. I felt like this is a real going for the gusto kind of villainous part. And he's kind of an orchestrator of some of the actions in the movie.
- [82:25]
Tracy Letts
It's interesting too in that it's directed by John Sturges. And so if what Don Stroud had said was accurate, why does Duvall want to go back and work with John Sturges Again, screenplay by Tom Mankiewicz, who was part of the Mankiewicz family. Based on the book by Jack Higgins. It's a fun watch, in a sense.
- [82:46]
Sean Fennessey
World War II programmer.
- [82:47]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [82:49]
Sean Fennessey
Great cast.
- [82:49]
Tracy Letts
Great cast. And, yeah, Duvall's up for it. The German accent is. He's not embarrassing himself with the accent. He's viable in the film.
- [83:01]
Sean Fennessey
How do you feel about Donald Sutherland's Irish accent?
- [83:04]
Tracy Letts
Less sure of myself, but God bless him.
- [83:07]
Sean Fennessey
Nice to see Jenny Agater here. Always nice to see her.
- [83:10]
Tracy Letts
Always nice.
- [83:11]
Sean Fennessey
That's red. The eagle has landed. The 7% solution, a movie I've always wanted to see had been for years one of those movies. I was like, one of these days I'm going to pop this in and I'm going to love it. And I wish that I loved it and I didn't love it.
- [83:26]
Tracy Letts
No, it's not. It's not great. It was such a big hit. I mean, it was a real. I mean, the book was such a big bestseller. It was really. Airport.
- [83:35]
Sean Fennessey
Was it his book?
- [83:36]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, it was Nicholas Meyer's book. And it was like one of the books you pick up in the airport. And it was a really successful book and they rushed it into production. Like, we're gonna capitalize off of the success of this book. The casting of Robert Duvall as Dr. Watson is unexpected. It's Nicole Williamson's movie. I mean, as it should be. It should be Holmes movie. And Nicole Williamson is an interesting Holmes.
- [84:03]
Sean Fennessey
I think he is. I think Duvall is fine in the film.
- [84:07]
Tracy Letts
I do, too.
- [84:08]
Sean Fennessey
To me, it's really more of a pacing and story issue.
- [84:11]
Tracy Letts
It looks gorgeous. Ken Adam was a production designer, and the production design is all the stained glass and stuff in this movie. It's really great.
- [84:18]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, it's an odd one. Alan Arkin plays Sigmund Freud in the film. Vanessa Redgrave is in the movie. Olivier is in the movie as Moriarty.
- [84:29]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. And then Olivier's in there as Moriarty. And Holmes is obsessed with Moriarty, thinking he's up to something bad. And they're all like, no, it's the cocaine. And so you assume, no, Holmes is right. Something is up with Moriarty and it's going to turn out that he's the Big Bad and he's just not.
- [84:43]
Sean Fennessey
No. And he keeps protesting that he's not and he's not. Samantha Egger, my beloved. Oh, my God, I had such a crush on her. She plays Duvall's wife, Mary. This should have been my favorite movie.
- [84:57]
Tracy Letts
It's, you know, sometimes it Just doesn't fire up.
- [85:01]
Sean Fennessey
Read for the 7% solution. 1976, the same year Network Duvall plays Frank Hackett.
- [85:08]
Tracy Letts
Instant green, of course.
- [85:09]
Sean Fennessey
Of course. Just one of my single favorite performances in movie history as the hatchet man for the network corporate division.
- [85:19]
Tracy Letts
Have you read David Itskopf's book?
- [85:21]
Sean Fennessey
Sure have.
- [85:23]
Tracy Letts
It's a really good read. It's funny how little Duvall is in it. Which just goes to show you, I think something about. I mean, he could be famously grouchy, especially in later years, and there were some directors he really didn't like working with. But sometimes I think he showed up. He knew the lines, he did the job, he got the hell out. Nothing notable about it. When you watch the special features and you hear Lumet's commentary, he has a kind of chuckling thing about Duvall being in the movie. Kind of like, can you believe this is Robert?
- [85:57]
Sean Fennessey
He loves him, though. He loves him. At least he loves that performance. The book that you're referring to is called Mad as Hell. The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest man in Movies. It's a wonderful book. If you like Network. The ruddy doesn't count anymore scene, you know, the big sequence with William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Duvall in Duvall's office. After we get the ratings for Howard Beale, I just. I could watch it 100 times in a row. His. His performance, his glee and rage and energy and bewilderment. Everything that he is doing in that, it's big, you know, and it is showy and it is. It is performative of the Chayefsky dialogue. You kind of have to. If you're going to be in one of these movies, one of this writer's movies, you need to chew on the scenes. And he fucking eats that scene up. I love it so much.
- [86:49]
Tracy Letts
It's fantastic. It's fantastic. It's just great. It's just right in the pocket. And he's playing a corporate head, right? He's got a facility with language. He's got a facility with. He's got money. It's again, just. You consider the character he plays in tomorrow. It's just.
- [87:12]
Sean Fennessey
How is it the same guy?
- [87:14]
Tracy Letts
Opposites, totally.
- [87:15]
Sean Fennessey
He does some of the best paper acting I've ever seen, where he's handed a piece of paper and he starts hitting the piece of paper. All these little choices that he makes in that scene I love so much. Network. Definitely agreeing. 1977, the greatest. Been aware of this for a while. I only watched Robert Duvall's scenes in this movie.
- [87:31]
Tracy Letts
Well, then you didn't watch much. He's not in it.
- [87:33]
Sean Fennessey
He's not in it very much. This is Muhammad Ali making his very own biopic about his own life.
- [87:40]
Tracy Letts
So bizarre. It's such a bizarre artifact. It's really weird.
- [87:44]
Sean Fennessey
Would you ever do this for yourself?
- [87:47]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. Looking exactly like this. Because one of the weird things about it is that, I mean, Ali's playing himself as a 20 year old and he's 35 and he's already a little punchy.
- [87:57]
Sean Fennessey
Right.
- [87:58]
Tracy Letts
And you could. In his line, it's almost like right before the yell action, he says when something like this. It's not like he's really in it.
- [88:10]
Sean Fennessey
It's like he's remembering a story that happened to him. Yeah, it's a very odd movie. Is this Tom Gries as well?
- [88:16]
Tracy Letts
It is. So screenplay by Ring Lardner Jr. Who wrote MASH.
- [88:21]
Sean Fennessey
That's right. He, Duval plays Bill McDonald, who is a promoter and he promoted. It was the first list in Fight.
- [88:28]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [88:29]
Sean Fennessey
And there was some controversy around that because Ali in particular wanted to be able to speak publicly about his conversion to Islam and his faith and the Nation of Islam. And Bill McDonald did not want that. And they needed a man, I think an actor of some gravitas. And so they brought in Duvall for one scene where he fights back against Ali. And then in one scene later, he decides actually, it'll be all right, just do it this way. And there's something very untruthful to me about how all that part of the movie plays out. That's red.
- [88:58]
Tracy Letts
Also notable because the song the Greatest Love of All was written for this movie, sung a couple of times on the soundtrack by George Benson. And then it was only brought back by Whitney Houston for the Bodyguard. And where it, of course, became a massive hit.
- [89:17]
Sean Fennessey
You pick Whitney Houston guy?
- [89:18]
Tracy Letts
Sure. Who doesn't like Whitney Houston?
- [89:21]
Sean Fennessey
1978, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a reunion with Philip Kaufman. He shows up for one scene.
- [89:26]
Tracy Letts
Should we. Where does. We're not the Jet Set come in?
- [89:30]
Sean Fennessey
Well, good point. Let's talk about that. I haven't seen it.
- [89:33]
Tracy Letts
You can't see it.
- [89:35]
Sean Fennessey
So we're not. The Jet Set is the first film that Duvall directs. It's a documentary about rodeo men.
- [89:43]
Tracy Letts
So when he and James Caan were in Ogallala making the Rain People, they became friends with this family of rodeo folk. And he stayed friends with them. And he went back over some years continuing to shoot them. He said. He claimed that he was shooting him in the style of a Ken Loach movie. So he was aware of Ken Loach.
- [90:04]
Sean Fennessey
He has talked about Ken Loach over the years. I saw him cite him multiple times.
- [90:08]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. And it took him years to do. He was doing it with his wife at the time. They eventually put this movie together and then he and his wife got divorced and she took the movie and it hasn't been seen since. Wow. Yeah.
- [90:25]
Sean Fennessey
Well, that's too bad. I would really like to see it.
- [90:27]
Tracy Letts
Apparently it's pretty good. Yeah.
- [90:29]
Sean Fennessey
That's a shame. Hopefully they find a way to put that back out in the world. That's not gonna go in, though. Cause we haven't seen it in 78. He does make Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He's in one scene. He has no lines of dialogue. He plays a priest swinging on a swing set. And it is one of the eeriest moments in this very eerie movie. And what a cool little thing to have happened in the movies to have shown up to see Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And Robert Duvall shows up for 30 seconds and then vanishes.
- [90:53]
Tracy Letts
They had decided, Philip Kaufman had decided that he was the first. That the character you're seeing is the first snatched body.
- [91:03]
Sean Fennessey
Yes. Something so perfect, too, about an actor who's known for his intensity and his explosiveness, playing a priest who has been turned into a plant alien. That's red, though. 1978. The Betsy had never seen it before. Bore to tears, Tracy.
- [91:18]
Tracy Letts
So terrible.
- [91:19]
Sean Fennessey
Bore to tears.
- [91:20]
Tracy Letts
I was really kind of looking forward to it. I thought it was going to be like camp, like a Russ Meyer Valley of the Dolls. I think there was gonna. I thought there was gonna be kind of a camp.
- [91:35]
Sean Fennessey
What does kind of have some of those qualities, you know? It's directed by Daniel Petrie, who made our beloved Lifeguard just a few years earlier. And, yeah, it's based on Harold Robbins novel. You know, there's some beautiful dames in this movie. There's some sexiness to it. And yet it's like, really boring.
- [91:53]
Tracy Letts
Early. Tommy Lee Jones. Yeah. Lawrence Olivier.
- [91:56]
Sean Fennessey
A little miscast, I think. Tommy Lee Jones.
- [91:57]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. Laurence Olivier and Duvall chopping it up.
- [92:01]
Sean Fennessey
Jane Alexander, Katherine Ross.
- [92:04]
Tracy Letts
So boring. So hard to watch.
- [92:06]
Sean Fennessey
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- [93:52]
Sean Fennessey
trempharadio.com 1979 Apocalypse now just a Hold on.
- [93:59]
Tracy Letts
We got to jump in with Ike the war years. He goes back to TV for the first time.
- [94:03]
Sean Fennessey
Did you watch this?
- [94:04]
Tracy Letts
I did not watch. You can't. You can't.
- [94:06]
Sean Fennessey
It's not available. I couldn't find it either. I would like to see this.
- [94:10]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. Directed by Boris Seagal and Melville Shavelson, who also wrote the screenplay about Eisenhower's relationship to the secretary. I'm talking out my ass. The character played by Lee Remick.
- [94:29]
Sean Fennessey
Okay.
- [94:32]
Tracy Letts
But I don't know. I haven't seen it.
- [94:33]
Sean Fennessey
A Remick reunion after the Detective.
- [94:35]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, right.
- [94:36]
Sean Fennessey
God loved Lee Remick in the detective detective. 1979 Apocalypse now he plays Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore. It's a similarly electrifying scene.
- [94:48]
Tracy Letts
Fantastic. I've never understood what. Duvall had a problem with it. Right? The scene. He felt some stuff was cut out.
- [94:58]
Sean Fennessey
Well, isn't that the story of Apocalypse Now, I mean, how much was cut out of that scene?
- [95:01]
Tracy Letts
But he felt it was cut out for, quote, unquote, political reasons. That he had tried to give a performance a more nuanced character and that Coppola had cut it and just left in kind of the cartoon stuff.
- [95:15]
Sean Fennessey
I don't read it that way at all.
- [95:17]
Tracy Letts
He admired the movie, but he was always a little angry about the cut.
- [95:21]
Sean Fennessey
I think that character is fascinating about a person who has deluded himself into imagining that he is part of some mystical, conquering story. But that last line of dialogue that he has in the film, someday this war is going to end. And then he just walks off screen, I think is such a brilliant choice. I just saw it last. Chris and I saw it last year on 70 at the Egyptian, and we were. I was 14 all over again, man. I, I, I was. I'm blown away by it. And, and I, I think what that character does, the kind of delusional rock and roll energy that he brings to it with the surfing and the taking his jacket and shirt off and he pulls the neckerchief off. Very, very grand and theatrical acting style, too. And he doesn't usually do that. And the pauses that he takes between those lines of dialogue, I love it, man. To me, I, I think this goes in for one and a half scenes. Absolutely, totally green. Green. Let's just do a quick green check here. How many greens we got? 1, 2, 3, 4. Probably five. There's five now. Probably six actually, given some of the yellows that you seem fond of. We only have 50 more movies to go, so we got to move a little quicker through this.
- [96:30]
Tracy Letts
All right.
- [96:31]
Sean Fennessey
1979. The great Santini,
- [96:37]
Tracy Letts
directed and written by Louis John Carlino, based on book by the great Pat Conroy. I rewatched it for this. It's a great performance. Anybody who's ever had a father relates to this movie. The performances by the other members, the family, Blythe Danner, Michael o', Keefe, Lisa Jane Persky are great. They're really important because the way they play against him is really important. He's not just a monster. He's not just a tyrant. He's a loving dad. And they all seem to recognize that. And he has to do less to scare them. Right. The way they portray that moment that they realize a line is being crossed with dad. They're great performances. I mean, it's always been true, though. The beef story kind of kills it as a movie a little bit.
- [97:27]
Sean Fennessey
Utterly bizarre. Yeah. Where Michael o' Keefe's character has a sort of, you know, a secondary experience with a friend played. What's the actor's name? Who he is?
- [97:36]
Tracy Letts
Stan Shaw.
- [97:37]
Sean Fennessey
Stanshaw. Who's a good actor. But that character is a little oddly written. And even the way that part of the film is shot where it has this sort of like, Halo quality to it and everything else is so raw and intense with Duvall's character. Two sequences. The one on one game with Michael o' Keefe and the actual basketball game that o' Keefe plays in where his father instructs him to take out one of his competitors. As powerful today as the first time I saw it. Very real shit. If you had a domineering father. I had a very domineering father. I really understand this movie. I think it should go in. It's one of his legendary performances. The Great Santini is in the lexicon as like a. This is what tough dads do. 1981, true confessions. Yet another film I would love to love. Never totally found a place in my heart. Is it Ulu Grosspart? Is he the director of this?
- [98:27]
Tracy Letts
With Robert De Niro, John Gregory Dunn and Joan Didion. Based on Dunn's book, yes.
- [98:33]
Sean Fennessey
Is it. Is it their first screenplay together?
- [98:35]
Tracy Letts
I don't know. Schrader was going to take a pass at this at one point and direct and kicked out. I don't know why now.
- [98:41]
Sean Fennessey
That version probably would have spoken to me a little bit more.
- [98:45]
Tracy Letts
I've always had a little. I've always had some affection for it. I think Duvall's very good in the movie. I think Duvall's kind of the best thing about the movie. I always think an anti mystery is better. The next time you watch it, you go in with a kind of expectation that, oh, this is going to be James Ellroy. This is going to be the Black Dahlia. And then you find out, oh, it's not really even about that kind of the backdrop against which the drama is playing out. I watched it again with Carrie. Yeah, it's a little dull. It's a little slow. It doesn't go in. But at the time there was a real feature. And like, I think De Niro and Duvall were held up as, like, these are our two best working these days.
- [99:25]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, I think it's a movie that I probably watched with a lot of anticipation and never revisited. Let's say it's a red.
- [99:30]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [99:31]
Sean Fennessey
The pursuit of D.B. cooper. Loosely based on the true story of D.B. cooper, the airplane hijacker who vanished into thin Air. Treat Williams plays DB Cooper. Robert Duvall plays. Is he a police officer or an investigator? An insurance investigator seeking out D.B. cooper. Kathryn Herold, whom I love and is very good in this, actually, and she and Duvall are quite good together. Did you revisit this? I did.
- [99:57]
Tracy Letts
So let me tell you quickly some tortured history about this movie. Robert Mulligan, the original director, who directed,
- [100:03]
Sean Fennessey
of course, To Kill Mocking.
- [100:04]
Tracy Letts
To Kill a Mockingbird, not Richard Mulligan. It took him seven days to film a chase scene in the rapids, and he got fired off the set. John Frankenheimer was brought in. He shot one sequence, and then he was replaced by Buzz Kulik, who finished the film. They brought in Roger Spottiswood to edit the film and to shoot one stunt. And he said, this movie is doomed unless I can shoot new scenes written by Ron Shelton. And apparently the movie we're seeing is 70% Spottiswood and Shelton and 30% whatever that mishmash was. That goes before. So it's a real. It's. You can kind of feel the jumble as you're watching it.
- [100:49]
Sean Fennessey
Yes.
- [100:49]
Tracy Letts
The stunts are spectacular. Whatever Mulligan was doing, that rapid scene is fantastic. It's really good.
- [100:57]
Sean Fennessey
I agree. It's funny we didn't mention this when we spoke of the Gambler on yesterday's podcast, but Spottiswood also edited that movie. He edited Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. He went on to be a very successful film director. But Ron Shelton has a very conspicuous associate producer credit in the opening of this film. And when I saw that, I was like, what's that? There are no other producers credited in that fashion. It came, like, right before the director credit. And so that's not surprising to hear that there was some stuff going on there. I always liked Treat Williams. Always wanted a little bit more for Treat Williams. I think he's a very talented actor.
- [101:32]
Tracy Letts
I agree entirely.
- [101:33]
Sean Fennessey
But this is red, unfortunately. 1983, tender mercies. This is the film for which Duvall won his only Academy Award, Best actor, portraying the aging country singer Max Sledge, who's on kind of the downside of his life. One of the quietest and most sensitive films and performances that Duvall ever gave, and I think is one of two or three movies you probably show when you say, who was this person as an actor. Would you agree with that?
- [102:04]
Tracy Letts
Absolutely. Totally agree. Absolutely. And great movie. In fact, you guys did that episode recently where you played your Oscar swapo game.
- [102:12]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, yeah.
- [102:12]
Tracy Letts
I'm gonna play one here.
- [102:13]
Sean Fennessey
Okay.
- [102:14]
Tracy Letts
I'm gonna give the Academy Award for Best picture to Tender Mercies over Terms of Endearment.
- [102:22]
Sean Fennessey
I can't argue with it. I just looked at it again this week. It's a very beautiful movie, and I don't have a lot of time for Bruce Beresford's filmography, to be honest with you. But this movie I like quite a bit. And, you know, Duvall insisted on singing all the songs himself. And good that he did. It gives the movie a lot more texture and authenticity. It's a very good film. We got a lot of greens here. We got a lot of movies to go. Now. There's a couple here that I haven't seen. You're going to have to hold my hand through the 1980s. Okay, here we go. 1984. The Stone Boy. What's that?
- [102:52]
Tracy Letts
The Stone Boy is directed by Christopher Kane, who is Dean Cain's father. Dean Cain plays a teenager who is shot and killed accidentally by his younger brother, and the younger brother goes into shock and is unable to process what he's done. And Duvall and Glenn Close play the parents of these boys. And Duvall's wife at the time, Gail Youngs, who was John Savage, who is John Savage's sister. And Duvall had done American Buffalo on Broadway with John Savage. So there's a relationship with there. Gail Youngs is also in the movie. Stone Boy is close to something really good. I don't think it gets there. It's got some thematic challenges, but it's close to something good. And really, with Tender Mercy now, it starts earlier than that, of course, with Tomorrow or something along those lines. But with Tender Mercies, you start to enter a period where the rural Duvall starts to make really regular appearances. And movies like Tender Mercies and the Stone Boy, there was a kind of rural or country domestic drama that we used to make in this country a lot and that we stopped making. And I don't know where they went. Did they go to Hallmark? Did they go to Netflix? Did they go. They're playing.
- [104:25]
Sean Fennessey
I think so. I mean, I think Taylor Sheridan is operating in that space.
- [104:28]
Tracy Letts
Taylor Sheridan very much operating in that space. I think it's a real shame. And I don't want to, as a good old hardy lefty liberal, don't want to take the blame for the divide in this country. But I think that the fact that we stopped telling those stories hasn't been great, I think.
- [104:48]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, the movies, for sure. And you're an Oklahoman, so you know, from what you speak. And Duvall played Texans in and Men From Louisiana, and he was Very well known for that. He kind of leaned into that a lot in the last 20 years of his career, to the point of maybe a little bit of parody, I think, at times.
- [105:05]
Tracy Letts
And yet this family is Montana or Wyoming. And so he's a rural guy, he's wearing a gimme cap and he drives a tractor, but he's not doing that hardcore Texas accent. He's just a guy who lives and works in the country.
- [105:17]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, well, maybe I should check it out. I assume it's not going in here.
- [105:20]
Tracy Letts
Not going in.
- [105:21]
Sean Fennessey
He's in the Natural in 1984.
- [105:24]
Tracy Letts
I think we've skipped Angelo My Love.
- [105:26]
Sean Fennessey
We have. I'm only going through acting performances, but this is his first. Angelo, My Love is the first film that he directed that is a scripted feature. And it's about.
- [105:38]
Tracy Letts
Well, scripted.
- [105:40]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, Yeah, I guess. Largely improvised. Largely improvised, but narrative. And it's about the. Is it the Romani people?
- [105:52]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [105:54]
Sean Fennessey
And I'm fascinated by why he wanted to make this movie.
- [105:58]
Tracy Letts
He apparently overheard a conversation. He was working in New York and he overheard a conversation, a lovers quarrel. And then he looks over and he finds that the guy engaged in lovers quarrel is an eight year old boy. And he became interested in this boy. He was working. It was while he was rehearsing American Buffalo and he would see this boy regularly and he started engaging him in conversation. It's Angelo. He's the kid who's the lead in this movie. And Duval got to know him and got to know his family and got to know the community and put all these people to work on this movie. Have you seen it?
- [106:28]
Sean Fennessey
I haven't.
- [106:30]
Tracy Letts
It's worth seeing.
- [106:31]
Sean Fennessey
It's just such an. I mean, every 10 years he's like, I'm gonna do something different.
- [106:36]
Tracy Letts
A really idiosyncratic choice, but it is a very watchable movie. I don't know how the Romany community feels about Robert Duvall being the one who's essentially telling their story, but. And there are some Romany directors of note who would probably like to have the kind of imprint that Robert Duvall has. But it's. It's not a bad movie. Was it.
- [107:01]
Sean Fennessey
Where was it available? Where'd you see it?
- [107:03]
Tracy Letts
I. It was a rewatch for me.
- [107:05]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, wow.
- [107:06]
Tracy Letts
I had actually seen it when it first came out back then in 83. Where did I find it? Maybe YouTube. Maybe I found it on YouTube.
- [107:14]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, I'll have to dig into that.
- [107:16]
Tracy Letts
I don't think it's going in.
- [107:18]
Sean Fennessey
I agree with you. 1984, the Natural. He plays Max Mercy. The sports writer who's darn curious about Hobbs's past. Good performance, good movie.
- [107:29]
Tracy Letts
I think I mentioned when we did the Redford draft about Duvall going on Letterman and Letterman suggesting this was a great movie. And Duvall kind of shrugged and said cute at best.
- [107:39]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, I mean we mentioned it then too. Never. One of my personal favorites.
- [107:43]
Tracy Letts
Biggest box office hit he had had since Apocalypse Now.
- [107:47]
Sean Fennessey
Right. Notable, but a very supporting part. Yeah. I'll say red to the natural. What do you say?
- [107:52]
Tracy Letts
I say red.
- [107:53]
Sean Fennessey
Let's get Harry sounded good, but I didn't see it.
- [107:56]
Tracy Letts
Well, that's funny. It feels in some ways like a ringer, a movie the ringer might like when it starts with these guys and one of their. One of their people has been. One of their friends has been kidnapped in a South American country and the friends are all kind of bemoaning it and then they decide they're going to go get Harry. Those early scenes are so bad, you're like, what the hell is going on? And then Gary Busey shows up. He's a car dealer in the town who's going to finance their trip to get Harry. And then he decided he's a bit of a gun nut. He decides he wants to go along and then they. They advertise for a mercenary who's going to help them. And Duvall shows up as the mercenary and he's the real deal. He's a badass. And then you realize, oh, this is a total drive in movie.
- [108:48]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah.
- [108:49]
Tracy Letts
Made a little after the days of the drive in. But it's great fun. I mean Busey and Duvall are both great. This is about a year before Busey, you know, has this accident. Scrambles his, scrambles his eggs. But he's still really good. And of course the drive ins were done in 1986.
- [109:10]
Sean Fennessey
Well, it seems to be trying to play in that kind of missing in action zone. Very much Invasion usa.
- [109:16]
Tracy Letts
But it was a big hit in the video stores.
- [109:17]
Sean Fennessey
Okay.
- [109:18]
Tracy Letts
Because I think it was a big
- [109:18]
Sean Fennessey
box office is $140,000, which ain't very good. But it's a Stuart Rosenberg movie. It's got a.
- [109:23]
Tracy Letts
He took his name off it. Rosenberg did. Took his name off it. It's directed by Alan Smithee.
- [109:28]
Sean Fennessey
No kidding. Yeah. That's so interesting. You know who wrote the story of this movie? Sam Fuller.
- [109:35]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, that's right. Sam Fuller wrote the story. Also notable that one of the guys going down to get Harry is Glenn Frey.
- [109:42]
Sean Fennessey
Oh sure. Of Eagles fame. Also Thomas F. Wilson from Back to the Future Biff and Rick Rossovich coming off of Top Gun. I don't know. It's kind of an interesting Mark Harmon. Anyway, I haven't seen let's Get Harry. It's not going in. Belizzare the Cajun.
- [109:56]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. Belazar the Cajun.
- [109:58]
Sean Fennessey
Belazar Belizer.
- [109:59]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. Directed by a Cajun director, Glenn Petrie. It was developed at Sundance and in fact, the movie begins with a graphic saying, this movie before any credits roll. This movie would not be possible without the contributions of Robert Redford and Robert Duvall. They are both put up front and center. So Duvall helped develop this or helped get it to screen. He has one scene as a preacher. It's totally a cameo. His wife, Gail Youngs at the time. His wife at the time, Gail Youngs is the female lead in the movie. Belazarre is pretty good. You wish there was a bit more Cajun representation in front of the camera. Will Patton and Armand Assanti doing some accents. But it's nice that Belazar isn't an ass kicker. It's not like Armand Assanti is like this ass kicking action hero. He's more like a BR Rabbit character. He's the medicine man. Locally, it's not bad. I wish it looked better. I wish they had a little more budget. The way it's shot, it looks a little like an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, but it's not going in. It was a rewatch for me, too. I watched that back in the day.
- [111:12]
Sean Fennessey
Look at you.
- [111:13]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. And you.
- [111:16]
Sean Fennessey
What? Will you famously not watch anything? You'll watch Belazar the Cajun for a second.
- [111:20]
Tracy Letts
We're gonna get something I will not watch.
- [111:21]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. Interesting. 1986. The lightship. Also missed out on this one.
- [111:25]
Tracy Letts
Also a rewatch. Saw it in the movie theaters in 1986. Directed by Jerzy Skolomowski, the great Polish director, of course. Screenplay by William Maye and David Taylor. Based on a German novella by Sigfried Lenz. The poster for this movie said, good versus Evil, Life versus Death. Robert Duvall versus Klaus, Maria Brandauer. That's how they advertised the movie.
- [111:53]
Sean Fennessey
And as you mentioned, one of your favorites.
- [111:55]
Tracy Letts
I mean, that's how esteemed he was as an actor. That that was gonna be a feature. It was the last feature film made by CBS Theatrical Films. CBS had its own division of movie releases, so it was abandoned and picked up a year later by Castle Hill Productions. So it made absolutely no money. Duvall is taking a big swing here. He's playing this Southern character. He's got this kind of sonorous tone that he speaks when he's doing it does not work.
- [112:26]
Sean Fennessey
I see you doing some voice work there, though. Thank you for that.
- [112:30]
Tracy Letts
Early performances from William Forsythe and Arlis Howard playing Duvall's character shows up on this light ship, which is a ship that doesn't sail. It's a stationary ship for mining purposes, I think. And they show up on a boat. They've lost their ship. Duvall and his two accomplices. And it turns out they're criminals, and criminal things happen. It's not a good film.
- [112:59]
Sean Fennessey
Can I tell you something?
- [113:00]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [113:01]
Sean Fennessey
You're as sharp as ever. I don't know how the hell you remember all these details. And this is what I do for a living. The light ship is red. Hotel Colonial. I did dip my toes into this story.
- [113:11]
Tracy Letts
Oh, my God.
- [113:11]
Sean Fennessey
What in God's name is this for?
- [113:13]
Tracy Letts
Okay. Directed by Cynthia T. H. Torrini, Screenplay by Enzo Monteleone, Cinzia T. H. Torrini, Robert Katz and Ira Barmack. Is totally batshit movie. I'm actually gonna quote from my own letterboxd comments.
- [113:28]
Sean Fennessey
Please do.
- [113:29]
Tracy Letts
John Savage, wearing white khakis, explores the slums, rivers, and jungles of Colombia looking for his brother. Robert Duvall is a Colombian drug lord sporting a Gorgeous George hairpiece, an ascot, and a sleeveless shirt. He handles an alligator, two parrots, a falcon, and an anaconda. He massacres spider monkeys with a pump shotgun set to a Pinot di Naggio score. It's a totally batshit movie. I do not know what anybody was thinking when they made this thing.
- [114:01]
Sean Fennessey
Well, as you mentioned, John Savage obviously related to Duvall's wife at the time and giving a very bewildered performance. I'll say. He's got one emotion the entire film. Duval having the time of his life. Yeah. Not sure I would have cast him as an Argentinian man again.
- [114:20]
Tracy Letts
You maybe didn't see the twist at the end. Yeah, there's a twist and it. When it happens, it's. The only reason you didn't see it coming is because it's so stupid. You're like, they couldn't possibly expect me to swallow. This is not. Not good. Not going in.
- [114:35]
Sean Fennessey
That's red. 1988's colors. Interesting movie directed by Dennis Hopper about two police officers working in South Central Los Angeles. Duval is the veteran opposite rookie Sean Penn. A movie that I like, don't love. I think Duvall's performance is very good. There's a very famous scene in the movie, the Two Bulls story that he tells that is oft repeated. I wouldn't say it's among the most hallowed of the Duval performances, but it's good. I think Dennis Hopper directed several other
- [115:07]
Tracy Letts
better movies personally Shot by Haskell Wexler, which is notable. Yeah, no, I don't think it's going in. I don't know, man. There's not a lot of. There's not a lot of accountability for the LAPD in this movie. And we've seen in the years since that LAPD could have used a little more scrutiny, perhaps.
- [115:30]
Sean Fennessey
I mean, think about the timing when this was released. I mean, I think there's some intentionality there. You know, it's not like the film doesn't realize specifically what it's showing. But yeah, colors is a. No, I did not see A Show of Force.
- [115:44]
Tracy Letts
I did.
- [115:45]
Sean Fennessey
It's an excellent title for a film.
- [115:47]
Tracy Letts
It is. It's not a very good movie. It's directed by Bruno Barreto, who was a Brazilian filmmaker who made. I think he made Donna Flora and her Two Husbands. He was married to Amy Irving at the time, who lives in my little town where I live in New York.
- [116:00]
Sean Fennessey
How nice.
- [116:01]
Tracy Letts
And they made this movie together. Andy Garcia, Lou Diamond Phillips. Early Fat Kevin Spacey. Careful, it's thrill. What? Kevin. Matt. It's a thriller based on a real life case in which undercover American agents framed Puerto Rican political activists as terrorists, then murdered them. So it's based on a true story. She's a TV reporter and Duvall is her TV news editor. Almost all of his scenes take place in the news office. It's. It's not great. Duvall is doing some pretty standard stuff here.
- [116:39]
Sean Fennessey
Got it. Let's make that red. 1990, Days of Thunder. I think this will be the film that many people who listen to this podcast first saw Robert Duvall in.
- [116:49]
Tracy Letts
Have we skipped the Handmaid's Tale?
- [116:51]
Sean Fennessey
I had that coming right after Days of Thunder.
- [116:53]
Tracy Letts
Have we skipped Lonesome Dove?
- [116:55]
Sean Fennessey
We have. Let's talk about Lonesome Dove.
- [116:57]
Tracy Letts
It's in. It's green.
- [116:58]
Sean Fennessey
I agree that it's green. This is the rare. Is Lonesome Dove the greatest miniseries in the history of television?
- [117:05]
Tracy Letts
Yes.
- [117:07]
Sean Fennessey
Is there more you want to say about Gus and what Duvall does in that series?
- [117:11]
Tracy Letts
He's spectacular. He elevates the art form of television acting. It's a remarkable performance. Sometimes the miniseries itself does not transcend its TV bound production style. Production style. Certainly the casting of Frederick Forrest as Blue Duck is just an embarrassment. And I think maybe only five years later would not have happened that way. So that's too bad. But the performances. There are a lot of good performances in it. But Duvall is really something.
- [117:45]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, he and Tommy Lee together. Duvall's final scene is one of the great scenes in the history of television. And his performance is just tremendously real. And if you've ever been with someone near the end of their life, it is bizarrely real how sincere and great that is. Okay, Lonesome Dove is in. We're getting very low on greens here, my friend. We got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
- [118:09]
Tracy Letts
How much time do we have? How are we on time?
- [118:11]
Sean Fennessey
Not very good. Oh, good. We have eight greens. We have, like, 50 movies. We're gonna go more quickly. Days of Thunder. Not one of my Tony Scott movies. I'm a Tony Scott aficionado. I'm a huge fan of his work.
- [118:23]
Tracy Letts
Feels like a mascot movie for this very much.
- [118:26]
Sean Fennessey
The Ringer loves this film. I was not on the Rewatchables episode of this movie. Also a Tom Cruise aficionado. I think it's perfectly fine. Cole Trickle, wonderful name from Eagle Rock, California, not far from where I live right now. Duvall plays kind of the leader of the pit crew, the coach, the sage figure in Cole's life. He's good as Harry. You know, Paycheck, paycheck. Okay, Red.
- [118:53]
Tracy Letts
I mean, right? It's. I think it's maybe when you look over his filmography, I think maybe it's his first big paycheck. Big, big paycheck.
- [119:02]
Sean Fennessey
Interesting. I mean, that makes sense, right? It's Simpson, Bruckheimer. They're doing top dollar for everything they needed to confer a level of dignity.
- [119:10]
Tracy Letts
I watched it for the first time for this.
- [119:12]
Sean Fennessey
No kidding.
- [119:12]
Tracy Letts
It's not my.
- [119:13]
Sean Fennessey
Didn't like it.
- [119:14]
Tracy Letts
It's fine. It's not my flavor.
- [119:16]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, okay. 1990. The Handmaid's Tale.
- [119:18]
Tracy Letts
F1. Sure owes a lot to Days of Thunder.
- [119:20]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, no kidding. I mean, it knows. Well, yeah. I mean, Jerry Bruckheimer, same producer. 1990, The Handmaid's Tale.
- [119:28]
Tracy Letts
It's a turkey. Carol Reese Rice was developing the script with Harold Pinter. Then they wouldn't allow Carol Reese to shoot the big crowd scenes he wanted to shoot, so he quit. And so Volker Schlondorf came on as director and wanted Harold Pinter to make some changes. And Pinter by that point, had been working on it for a long time and got exhausted by. It was like, go to Margaret Atwood and have her make the changes.
- [119:58]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, interesting.
- [119:58]
Tracy Letts
Anyway, it just wound up in a whole kind of script hell. And it's a mess. It's just a mess. It's a shame.
- [120:06]
Sean Fennessey
It's fascinating because no one will ever watch it now because it has been adapted into an acclaimed and long running television show. But it's the same Handmaid's Tale that we know. But it's Red. He does play Commander Critical character in the film.
- [120:20]
Tracy Letts
And he's good. I mean, again, he's always good. It's a mess of a movie.
- [120:23]
Sean Fennessey
1991. Martha Coolidge's rambling Rose.
- [120:27]
Tracy Letts
Really good. Have you seen it?
- [120:28]
Sean Fennessey
I have seen it. Laura Dern's first true star part. I was trying to think about that.
- [120:35]
Tracy Letts
I think it's after Smooth Talk.
- [120:36]
Sean Fennessey
You're right. It is after Smooth Talk. But one of her best performances. Duvall is also terrific in this movie as a kind of patriarch. I think his character's name is Daddy
- [120:46]
Tracy Letts
and Diane Ladd, who was real life mother. Real life mother. And they were the first mother daughter nominated for Oscars in the same year. For this, it would probably go in
- [120:57]
Sean Fennessey
the Laura Dern hall of Fame. I don't know if it would go in the Robert Duvall hall of Fame.
- [121:01]
Tracy Letts
I agree. Written by Calder Willingham who wrote the Graduate. Oh, yeah.
- [121:05]
Sean Fennessey
I did not know that.
- [121:06]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. Based on a novel of his.
- [121:07]
Sean Fennessey
I recommend this movie, but not for the Duvall Hall. 91 convicts. Haven't seen it.
- [121:13]
Tracy Letts
Horton Foote. Horton Foote Joint. Robert Duvall, James Earl Jones, Lucas Haas. Really good. Its origins are in the theater. It's directed by Peter Masterson and it feels like a theater piece. But Duvall, doing a cantankerous Southern guy, finds some new colors. It's like he's not just trotting out standard issue. Cantankerous southern guy. He finds some colors in there that he doesn't normally. James Earl Jones, always great. It's worth a watch.
- [121:54]
Sean Fennessey
Won't be the last time they come together. Yeah, that's gonna be a red. 1992 Newsies.
- [122:00]
Tracy Letts
You finally hit on one I haven't seen.
- [122:02]
Sean Fennessey
No kidding.
- [122:02]
Tracy Letts
Never seen Newsies.
- [122:03]
Sean Fennessey
You know, I've been thinking about whether or not I should show this one to my kid. It's a Disney musical, Right? Perhaps best known for launching Christian Bale into the public more wider consciousness after Empire of the Sun. It's about newspaper boys and it's a very vivacious movie. A movie much loved by many millennials and a bomb at the time.
- [122:26]
Tracy Letts
Right.
- [122:26]
Sean Fennessey
Not a hit, but a movie that got a lot of burn on VHS and video stores and on the Disney Channel when I was a kid for sure. He plays Pulitzer the famed journalist. And it's not going in. Maybe your kids would like it.
- [122:45]
Tracy Letts
Okay.
- [122:46]
Sean Fennessey
It's got energy. It's got. It's got zest. 1992, the plague. I haven't seen this film. Another Argentinian production.
- [122:54]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. Directed by Luis Puinso, who just died yesterday, day before. Director of the Official Story, which is a great movie. It just doesn't work. It's such a.
- [123:09]
Sean Fennessey
Did you watch this?
- [123:09]
Tracy Letts
I did. Such a serious slogan. There's a lot of, like, wailing on the soundtrack. It's very hyper serious self serious. William Hurt, Raul Julia reunited from Kiss the Spider Woman. Sandrine Bonaire, who was William Hurt's wife at the time. Duvall. It's. And a lot of, like, restatement of Camus philosophy. Doesn't work.
- [123:37]
Sean Fennessey
Red, 1993. Falling Down.
- [123:41]
Tracy Letts
You're skipping Stalin, 1992.
- [123:44]
Sean Fennessey
TV movie.
- [123:45]
Tracy Letts
I watched it. TV miniseries.
- [123:47]
Sean Fennessey
This was watched in my home when I was a child, and it was on. I don't think I was paying direct attention to the entire thing, but I remember my parents watching this.
- [123:56]
Tracy Letts
It's not nothing.
- [123:57]
Sean Fennessey
Yep.
- [123:58]
Tracy Letts
It's directed by Ivan Passer. It is written by Paul Monash, who wrote Our Beloved Friends of Eddie Coyle. It's shot by Vilmos Zygmund and co stars Julia Ormand, Joan Plowright, Jerome Krabbe, if that's how you say his name. Made for hbo, first thing ever filmed in the Kremlin as part of Gorbachev's. He decided that that would be allowed. So they filmed in the Kremlin.
- [124:28]
Sean Fennessey
Very important for America to tell you.
- [124:30]
Tracy Letts
Very proud of this performance. Now, the movie itself is a bit of Stalin for dummies or Russia for dummies. And I don't know that it always focuses on the thing. It should be focused on some of the palace intrigue and shit. It's like, really, are we. We're really going to get bogged down in this stuff. Duvall's really extraordinary in it. Unfortunately, he's been fitted with a kind of a mask, a cowl, which hides the upper half of his face. And it's really too bad because the accent sounds good. He's working his ass off and he was proud of it. And the Russians apparently found the whole movie laughable, but they loved Duvall in it. And Duvall got asked to play a lot of Russian characters after he did it. He's very good in it. You wish the whole enterprise were better. It's worth watching.
- [125:25]
Sean Fennessey
I don't know when I'm gonna Watch that. But I'm gonna think about it. It's not going in.
- [125:30]
Tracy Letts
No.
- [125:30]
Sean Fennessey
1993 falling down.
- [125:32]
Tracy Letts
I watched this for the first time in preparation for this draft film I've
- [125:37]
Sean Fennessey
seen at least a dozen times in my life.
- [125:39]
Tracy Letts
Wow.
- [125:39]
Sean Fennessey
It was on cable all the time when I was a kid. And to a young mind, very transgressive work of art. Looking back, kind of a dumb movie.
- [125:49]
Tracy Letts
Kind of dumb, right. I mean, there's some interesting ideas, I think, in the early part of the movie, but it just kind of descends into, I don't know, just like a cop show by the end of it.
- [126:01]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. I mean, in no small part because of Duvall's character who plays kind of the most ordinary thing about the movie. He's great, he's very good. And as once again playing a kind of weathered LAPD detective. The opening moments of the movie, I think are fascinating and electrifying. Where a man who is a middle class, you know, pocket protector grunt gets fed up with traffic and just exits his car and leaves his car in the middle of the road and sets upon a journey across Los Angeles on one very hot and unpleasant day. And it kind of shows like a man at his breaking point. Michael Douglas doing something very off type for him. But a lot of the episodes that he experiences as he goes through the world just feel like very stupid 101 sociology about how communities operate. It's also like, why is this movie being seen through the eyes of a middle aged white guy? But I've seen it many times.
- [126:59]
Tracy Letts
Not to mention you've got Lois Smith, Frederick Forrest, Barbara Hershey, Amy Morton, Rachel Ticotine. You've got these great actors, actresses in this thing, and they're given nothing to Barbara, who she's given nothing to do.
- [127:14]
Sean Fennessey
I didn't even remember she was in it. Falling Down's Red Wrestling. Ernest Hemingway. Never seen it.
- [127:19]
Tracy Letts
I've seen it starts in association with Randa Haynes, which she produced. A couple of other things he's in. It's again odd period of casting where he could play a Cuban man.
- [127:32]
Sean Fennessey
He's Latino for sure.
- [127:36]
Tracy Letts
It's Richard Harris's movie. It's a shame too, because of the brown face. The movie won't be considered. And I understand that Richard Harris is doing some good work. He's got. Richard Harris has a couple of really heartbreaking scenes in Wrestling Ernest. And I didn't rewatch it for this. I remember it from original but not going in.
- [127:55]
Sean Fennessey
That's right. Geronimo, an American legend. He plays Al Sieber, a Kind of unfortunate figure in American history. I didn't rewatch this movie. I have seen it. Walter Hill's portrait of the Native American hero and resistor for Duval purposes. You know, I'm not sure it's an interesting movie. It's not terribly insensitive, as I recall, to the legendary.
- [128:25]
Tracy Letts
It's not intrinsic. But they sure make claims that it's somewhat the story of Geronimo. Seen from Geronimo's perspective, it's like it's
- [128:34]
Sean Fennessey
not really a lot of white guys.
- [128:35]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, there's a lot of Jason Patrick and Matt Damon talking about stuff.
- [128:39]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. And it was sold on that too. I mean, despite the poster, like, look at the trailer of the movie. You'll see. They want you to come see the white guys talk about the fighting. The Native American hero. That's red. 1994 is the paper. A lot of people are going to fight for this movie. A lot of people like this movie. I never got it. I never was interested in it. I always thought it was just absolute poppycock. But I know it's a comfort movie for a lot of people. Also a lot of people who work here who are very fond of it. I do think Duvall's very good in it though.
- [129:07]
Tracy Letts
There are likable things about this movie. Some likable performances. Screenplay by the kept David and Steven. But there's also like a physical fight between Michael Keaton and Glenn Close. It's like, this is stupid.
- [129:23]
Sean Fennessey
The ending of the movie I find very silly. But as the kind of worn down but very world weary newspaper editor Bernie White, he's like a very credible New York figure. For a guy who's playing these rural Southerners or folks from 300 years ago, you pretty much buy him as somebody running the New York Post or running the New York Daily News.
- [129:44]
Tracy Letts
There is so much in the paper that is lifted from the front page. No credit is paid to the front page. That's a shame.
- [129:51]
Sean Fennessey
It's too bad. Okay, that's Red 95. Something to talk about. Supporting part in this Julia Roberts dramedy about a woman experiencing significant change in her life. It's a fine movie. Great theme song based on.
- [130:08]
Tracy Letts
They wrote the movie after the song was a hit. I saw it at the time. It made no impression on me whatsoever.
- [130:17]
Sean Fennessey
Right. The stars fell on Henrietta. I haven't seen this one.
- [130:19]
Tracy Letts
I watched this one for the draft. It's a sweet movie. It's got a sweet disposition. Directed by James Keach, written by Philip Railsback. Maybe the first time that Billy Bob and Duvall work together, that becomes an important collaboration. It's not bad. Duvall is doing something a little. Again, he's finding a slightly different color. This character is a bit of a trickster. There's something a bit more whimsical going on with this guy. It's certainly red.
- [130:50]
Sean Fennessey
1995, the Scarlet Letter. I saw that you watched this for
- [130:53]
Tracy Letts
the first time just yesterday.
- [130:55]
Sean Fennessey
This movie is directed by Roland Joffe and stars at a very critical time in her career, Demi Moore.
- [131:02]
Tracy Letts
And it has the line, God, how I've wanted to poke you. Which is. I don't think in the book.
- [131:12]
Sean Fennessey
We've got Hawthorne here. Let's bring him in. Nathaniel. Was that in the original text?
- [131:19]
Tracy Letts
I've seen that Gary Oldman has stepped out in some defense of this movie, saying, yeah, I know, it was a big bomb, but there's some good work in there.
- [131:29]
Sean Fennessey
I watched it. I watched it when it was released. It's incredibly dull and overdrawn.
- [131:33]
Tracy Letts
You know, good people, good artists, great artists come together with the best of intentions and sometimes it doesn't happen. It's hard to make a great movie.
- [131:45]
Sean Fennessey
That's right. Just look at this episode. You know, we're doing our best.
- [131:49]
Tracy Letts
Exactly.
- [131:51]
Sean Fennessey
The Scarlet Letters. Read Sling Blade. Now, you mentioned the influence that Tomorrow had on this movie. This, like a few other films here, pretty influential in me getting interested in films outside of the standard summer blockbusters that were easy for kids to get interested in. And this movie was a huge story at the time. The emergence of a new voice, a writer, director, star, Academy Award nominated. Duvall plays a critical part. He had a kind of. It seemed like a Godfather kind of relationship with Billy Bob. I didn't revisit for this episode, but I remember him having a critical but modest part in the movie as part of Carl's dad. I don't think it's going in the hall of fame.
- [132:38]
Tracy Letts
I don't either.
- [132:39]
Sean Fennessey
1996, a family thing.
- [132:41]
Tracy Letts
I watched that just the other night for this.
- [132:43]
Sean Fennessey
I saw this when it came out.
- [132:45]
Tracy Letts
There's some intriguing ideas. It's fun to watch Duvall again. We talked about high status, low status. He's definitely the lower status character when he's with James Earl Jones. There's some good acting going on in here. James Earl Jones, Richard Pierce, Irma P. Hall. Yeah. And written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson.
- [133:04]
Sean Fennessey
Yes.
- [133:06]
Tracy Letts
It gets a little impatient or something midway through. And plotty things start happening and characters don't always behave in a way that seems true to them. It's Not a bad time. I enjoyed it. It's not hall of Fame.
- [133:20]
Sean Fennessey
Family thing is red. 1996 phenomenon.
- [133:23]
Tracy Letts
Didn't see it. Haven't seen it. We're gonna start to hit a patch here pretty soon. Where I haven't seen much.
- [133:28]
Sean Fennessey
I mean, I didn't revisit this movie. I saw this movie in movie theaters. When it was released, it was in the reboom of John Travolta, where he plays a man who is touched with extraordinary intelligence and telekinesis and all of these extraordinary powers. Duval in the movie plays Doc, who is sort of like a father figure to him and kind of protects him and believes him through this big change that is happening in this small town, kind of trading on some of his folksy appeal. Directed by John Turtletaub, probably best known for the National Treasure movies. It's definitely not going in 1997. The apostle. I think there's a case for this
- [134:04]
Tracy Letts
one before we get to the Apostle. 1996. The man who Captured Eichmann.
- [134:09]
Sean Fennessey
Yes, I watched that HBO film.
- [134:12]
Tracy Letts
I think tnt.
- [134:15]
Sean Fennessey
Tnt, okay.
- [134:18]
Tracy Letts
Directed by William Graham, written by Lionel Chetwynd.
- [134:22]
Sean Fennessey
Where are you at on Eichmann Pro Anti.
- [134:25]
Tracy Letts
I'm not submitting to the tyranny of your questions. Duvall plays Eichmann and Arlis Howard plays the Mossad agent who captures Eichmann. And most of the movie, 70% of the movie, is the two of them in a room after Eichmann's been captured, as the Israelis are waiting to find a way to get him out of the country. Most of it is a dialogue between the two of them. And it's very good. It's very good. It's very interesting dialogue. You know, when Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil, it's Eichmann that she's talking about. And so that idea is being explored. He was trying to position himself as not only just following orders, but he's trying to say, I was following the law. What I was doing was just following the laws of my country. And Arlis Howard, who has lost a relative in the Holocaust, is engaged. He's not even supposed to talk to him, but he winds up engaging him in this discussion. And the movie sort of plays with the line of, is he just a civil servant? Or in fact, was he a virulent racist? Anti. Semite Asks that question. It's a compelling watch. And Duval, great. He's great at it.
- [135:48]
Sean Fennessey
Where did you watch this?
- [135:50]
Tracy Letts
Apple tv. Paid for it on Apple tv.
- [135:53]
Sean Fennessey
That's nice that you would patronize that fine company Spotify, will be getting my receipts. 1997, the apostle. He was the writer, director and producer of this movie about a preacher who loses control, does something terrible, and then disappears and moves to a new community and effectively launches a new mission, a new church, where he is in the anonymous preacher. E.F. the apostle. E.F. amazing movie. I just looked at it again yesterday. Imperfect for sure. Longtime passion project of his. I think he wrote the screenplay first in 1983 and had been trying to get it off the ground for years and years. And he paid for it himself. He financed the movie. It sounds like he financed, at least in part, the other two previous films that he had worked on as well. And he really put his money where his mouth was on a lot of these things. But this one kind of rose to the surface a bit more and got a lot of attention. He was Oscar nominated for his performance in it. I think it's a really fascinating and clearly very personal story about good people doing bad things and then how do you live with yourself? And I think it's interesting.
- [137:04]
Tracy Letts
It's green for me.
- [137:05]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, well, that makes it pretty easy. 1998, the Gingerbread Man. I've seen this movie. Robert Altman directed it. It's an adaptation of a John Grisham novel. Cannot remember Robert Duvall even being in it.
- [137:16]
Tracy Letts
It's so weird. It just doesn't even feel like an Altman movie. I don't know.
- [137:20]
Sean Fennessey
This is a paycheck movie.
- [137:21]
Tracy Letts
It's very strange. And I did hear on the special features here when I watched it, Altman saying that he had been trying to get Duvall back since they had made mash, but Duvall was just always booked. He wanted him to be in Nashville, but Duvall was just always booked. Couldn't get him.
- [137:38]
Sean Fennessey
Wow. Who does he play in Nashville? That's interesting.
- [137:40]
Tracy Letts
I don't know.
- [137:41]
Sean Fennessey
That's a game I'll play with myself tonight. The Gingerbread man is not going in 1998, a civil action. Also Oscar nominated for this performance. He plays opposing counsel in a case, a civil suit from a group of families who have been affected by what seems like the drinking water due to a corporation that has been polluting in their community. And Duval is like a practical evil, you know, that's sort of like plaintive, like, plain spoken, here's how things are kind of character opposite John Travolta again. They just worked together two years earlier, and John Travolta is a little bit miscast in this movie where he's supposed to be Kind of like a slick personal injury lawyer. But there's a little bit too much, like, inherent decency in John Travolta that, like, you never buy the first half of the movie.
- [138:34]
Tracy Letts
There's a real lack of specificity about Travolta's character. It's an odd thing, an odd choice,
- [138:39]
Sean Fennessey
especially what happened, given what happens to him in the movie.
- [138:42]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, it's an odd choice that Zelian has made to not have more information about just who that guy is, because by the end of the movie, it was like, oh, we were supposed to be tracking the changes in him, but he doesn't seem like the thing. Duvall does something really interesting here. I mean, this character of the opposing counsel, right? Oh, he's the angel of Death. He's the one who's gonna. We know that character so well. James Mason, Billy Bob Thornton in the Judge coming up, right? This. He's always George C. Scott in
- [139:15]
Sean Fennessey
Inherit the Wind.
- [139:15]
Tracy Letts
No, no, no. George C. Scott with Jimmy Stewart in.
- [139:19]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, Anatomy of Murder.
- [139:21]
Tracy Letts
Anatomy of a Murder. Right. And yet Duvall plays against all those types, right? He's this idiosyncratic guy who, like, steals a croissant from the. From the breakfast table. Steals a pen.
- [139:33]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. That's why I say practical. There's, like, something small about what he's supposed to represent there. It's one of the few things about the movie that I think is unique. Although the whole structure, the movie's very strange because of what happens to the Travolta character and. And the case itself, that feels kind of brave in its way, but also makes the movie feel very small. This is a huge Christmas movie produced by Scott Rudin. You know, like, it was a big old fancy thing that kind of has slipped away completely from the culture.
- [139:58]
Tracy Letts
It was hard to find. I had to buy it on Apple TV again, and I couldn't find it.
- [140:03]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, it's red. Deep Impact.
- [140:05]
Tracy Letts
Watch that for the first time. It's not my. It's not my. It's not my flavor.
- [140:11]
Sean Fennessey
Deep Impact is best known as the other film that Wasn't Armageddon from 1998, the other apocalyptic world ending saga. I've always found Deep Impact to be pretty solid, honestly.
- [140:21]
Tracy Letts
It's well done. It's well done.
- [140:23]
Sean Fennessey
It's very sincere. It's like, it takes the material seriously, I think, in a way that a lot of these movies didn't. And I liked Armageddon as a teenager, and now I watched Deep impact maybe, like, 10 years ago with my wife, and we were like. Because we had skipped it when we were kids, and I don't know, I think we both felt like it wasn't bad.
- [140:40]
Tracy Letts
My favorite scene in the movie is Duvall with our blind astronaut. The astronaut who's lost his sight. Oh, come on. See, we've gotten late enough. I haven't had enough protein. I'm starting to lose my proper nouns. And Duvall sits with the blind astronaut and starts to read him Moby Dick. It's a very gentle scene between the two of them. It's my favorite scene in the movie. It's really good. Who's the lead? Who's the.
- [141:10]
Sean Fennessey
Is it Ron Eldart?
- [141:12]
Tracy Letts
Ron Eldart.
- [141:12]
Sean Fennessey
Thank you.
- [141:13]
Tracy Letts
Sorry, Ron. Couldn't think of your name.
- [141:15]
Sean Fennessey
Sorry, Ron. Deep Impact's not going in. I'll tell you what. Gone in 60 seconds is also not going in.
- [141:19]
Tracy Letts
Never seen it. Saw the original.
- [141:21]
Sean Fennessey
Haven't seen the slick, stylish, kind of fun heist action movie from Dominic Senna starring Nicolas Cage. Once again, Duvall playing kind of like the old guy who hangs out in the. You know, he's like the mechanic who's. You know, they're part of the team, but not actually on the cases. It's not going in the sixth day you watched it. I don't remember seeing this. I'm sure I saw it back in the day. As an Arnold fan, it's not good.
- [141:46]
Tracy Letts
You know, you take this high concept of. There's a great scene where it's about cloning, right? The concept has to do with cloning. And Arnold shows up at his house and it's his birthday, and he looks in the window and he sees himself celebrating his birthday with his family. And he realizes he's been cloned and this guy is the guy who's replaced him. It's an intriguing concept. And then the chase is on. It was just the concept kind of gets thrown out the window, and suddenly everybody's just chasing each other and shooting at each other. It's like, well, what did you even need the original concept for?
- [142:19]
Sean Fennessey
You know who made this movie? Roger Spottiswood.
- [142:22]
Tracy Letts
Roger Spottiswood, back in the saddle. Tony Goldwyn, by the way, playing the exact same character he plays in one battle after another, except it's 25 years earlier and he hasn't changed a bit. It's just like he walked from the set of the Sixth day on the set of one battle after another. How's it possible? Damn it, Tony.
- [142:42]
Sean Fennessey
That's part of what makes him great. He's never aging. Always sort of malevolent. In a way. Six days. Not going in. I don't know what A Shot at Glory is.
- [142:50]
Tracy Letts
A Shot at Glory is a story about Scottish football. And it was apparently a real pet project of Duvall's for a long time. And he plays a Scottish football manager. And now. I don't know anything about Scottish football. Apparently there are some football stars in this movie. I don't know who the hell they are. I kind of enjoyed it. Okay. It's kind of. It's a real. It's about as gentle a sports movie as you'll ever find. Michael is also in the movie. He plays the owner of the team. And Brian Cox, Cole Hauser. Really good time.
- [143:35]
Sean Fennessey
He looks good in that chapeau.
- [143:37]
Tracy Letts
And, you know, on the letterbox, some people were bitching about his accent. And I gotta say, go to hell.
- [143:43]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. Because let's hear some of your Scottish accent.
- [143:45]
Tracy Letts
You're not only not gonna hear it, I will tell you that. It's hard to do. And it's certainly hard to do when you have to do it in Scotland on a set with 200 Scottish people gathered around you. And you're gonna make a speech in their dialect. An emotional speech in their dialect.
- [144:02]
Sean Fennessey
Have you considered this? Don't take the part.
- [144:05]
Tracy Letts
Well, that's just it. Gene Ackman's not taken the part. There are a lot of actors of Duvall's stature and time period who would not take on something like that or Stalin or a lot of the other things.
- [144:19]
Sean Fennessey
That's a great point. He was pretty fearless in terms of the range that he was pursuing. Shot at Glory's not going in 2002. Another cop in another emotional drama. John Q.
- [144:30]
Tracy Letts
Never seen it.
- [144:31]
Sean Fennessey
Denzel Washington movie, I think. About a man who takes a hospital hostage because he can't get treatment for his son, as I recall. Haven't seen this in a while. Nick Cassavetes, John Cassavetes son directed the movie. Not a bad drama, but not going in the hall of fame. 2002, another film that he directed, wrote and produced. Assassination Tango.
- [144:52]
Tracy Letts
You watched this?
- [144:53]
Sean Fennessey
I did watch this last night. Curious film. Some interesting stuff. I didn't see this. Upon release, Duvall got married a fourth time to an Argentinian woman. Was Luciana Purrazzo Pedrazo. And he fell in love with the tango. Yeah. And so he wrote this movie about a hitman who finds himself in Argentina and kind of falls in love with the tango. Very curious. Really followed his light.
- [145:22]
Tracy Letts
He did. You wish. At some point, the two stories intersected. They just sort of travel down parallel channels. There's the tango story and there's the assassin story and they never cross over, which is I think maybe just mistake.
- [145:42]
Sean Fennessey
As opposed to the apostle, which is kind of expansive but not shaggy. This is a very shaggy movie. A lot of scenes where you're like, they're playing it very loose. Even the camera is a little shaky when you're watching it. But anyway, I'm glad I saw it. 2000.
- [145:55]
Tracy Letts
I love that scene where the guy makes a comment. The cop makes a comment about his face about the.
- [146:02]
Sean Fennessey
He goes back, cuts back to him. Who do you say I'm old?
- [146:05]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [146:05]
Sean Fennessey
You say I got wrinkles. It's great stuff.
- [146:07]
Tracy Letts
Really good.
- [146:09]
Sean Fennessey
2003 gods and generals. Now, I did watch this when it came out.
- [146:13]
Tracy Letts
This is one I won't watch.
- [146:16]
Sean Fennessey
Because you feel this is Ted Turner polishing Confederate history.
- [146:20]
Tracy Letts
Yeah.
- [146:20]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, understood.
- [146:21]
Tracy Letts
And I don't have time for your revisionist trash. Mine, not yours, Ted Turner's or the people who made these movies. I don't want to watch these Confederate losers doing anything.
- [146:34]
Sean Fennessey
This is kind of a sequel to Gettysburg. And he plays Robert E. Lee.
- [146:39]
Tracy Letts
Get the hell out of here.
- [146:40]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, it's red. 2003 Secondhand Lions. There's a movie about a 13 year old boy who goes to state with two great uncles played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine. And Haley Joel osment plays the 14 year old boy coming off of an extraordinary run of the Sixth Sense. And AI And I remember this movie being perfectly charming. Perfectly charming.
- [147:02]
Tracy Letts
It is perfectly charming. There's a scene at the end with Josh Lucas who I believe is the little boy grown up. Right. And then he's the little boy growing up and he has an interaction with a sheriff played by Dennis Letz.
- [147:17]
Sean Fennessey
No kidding.
- [147:18]
Tracy Letts
My dad is in the movie Secondhand. There you go. Small part Day player. Wow.
- [147:23]
Sean Fennessey
Did he ever meet Duval?
- [147:24]
Tracy Letts
He didn't.
- [147:25]
Sean Fennessey
Okay.
- [147:25]
Tracy Letts
He was Sad about that.
- [147:27]
Sean Fennessey
2003 open range. Now we're talking.
- [147:30]
Tracy Letts
What an ass kicker.
- [147:32]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. Love.
- [147:33]
Tracy Letts
Just great. I was just great.
- [147:36]
Sean Fennessey
I know. If ever you doubted whether or not Costner had some juice and just.
- [147:41]
Tracy Letts
I won't do it for you here, but just go look at the IMDb or the Letterboxd at the like two, three things he did before this or two or three things he did after this. And this sits in the middle. I mean it's just a gem. It's just great.
- [147:55]
Sean Fennessey
Terrific western, you know, late period for both of them in many ways. But the final 40 minutes of this movie is just riveting western. Action. Really well staged. Good Duval performance playing a similar kind of mode of the older hand who's helping the younger hand through whatever the showdown is going to be. I don't know if it's going in, but it's a darn good movie.
- [148:18]
Tracy Letts
Yellow.
- [148:19]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. Yellow. Good idea. 2005 kicking and screaming. Another movie, haven't you, that I think a lot of people who are listening are like, is kicking and screaming going in? This is a soccer comedy, not a Scottish film starring Will Ferrell. I think it's fine. To me this is when the bloom comes off the rose with Ferrell. A little bit, you know, a little too like childlike and slapsticky for me. But I know people like it. I'm going to say red. 2005 Jason Reitman's thank you for smoking. I forgot. Who does Duvall play in this? I've certainly seen this movie. You've seen it?
- [148:50]
Tracy Letts
I've seen it too. I don't remember Robert Duvall in the movie. Thank you for smoking.
- [148:55]
Sean Fennessey
Does he play a key leader in one of the tobacco companies? I feel like he might.
- [149:03]
Tracy Letts
That sounds right.
- [149:05]
Sean Fennessey
No. He plays the founder of the Academy for Tobacco Studies. A man named Captain not going in the hall of fame. 2007 Lucky youy on paper should be one of the most important movies in my life.
- [149:18]
Tracy Letts
Haven't seen it.
- [149:19]
Sean Fennessey
Set in the world of high stakes poker. Eric Bana plays a character named Huck, clearly somewhat modeled on Huck Seed, who is a. I think modeled on Huck Seed. I assume Huck Seed was playing poker at that time. Why else would you name this character Huck, whose father is also a big time poker player, a legendary poker player played by Robert Duvall. It's like one part romantic drama with Drew Barrymore, one part kind of father son poker drama. And it's directed by Curtis Hansen and it's loosely based on. What's the Warren Beatty Elizabeth Taylor film Is the Only Game in Town. Is that what it's called? George Stevens movie from 1970. And it's like a soft remake of that and it just doesn't work at all. It's a big disappointment.
- [150:06]
Tracy Letts
Don't know it.
- [150:07]
Sean Fennessey
It's out. 2007.
- [150:09]
Tracy Letts
I think we've skipped Broken Trail.
- [150:11]
Sean Fennessey
You're right.
- [150:11]
Tracy Letts
We have made for tnt. Very good western. Directed by Walter Hill, Robert Duvall, Thomas Hayden Church. Really good. Really good.
- [150:24]
Sean Fennessey
Very, very good. Originally conceived as a movie, it's ultimately basically a three hour movie. You can watch it in that way. I have it on Blu ray. I like it. It was the first movie ever made, actually for amc, the first official project made. And it was quite a big deal made of it. And they all got Golden Globe nominations and it was pretty celebrated.
- [150:44]
Tracy Letts
But if we're giving a western from this period, it's open range.
- [150:46]
Sean Fennessey
That's the first thing is it's Broken Train. And what criticism it got was this feels like a little bit of rehashing. Some of the same territory as Lonesome Dove 2007. My pal James Gray's We Own the Night.
- [150:56]
Tracy Letts
I think it's my favorite James Gray movie.
- [150:59]
Sean Fennessey
It's up there for me, too. It's once again playing a kind of patriarch of a family. Is it a couple of cops? And he was a cop.
- [151:11]
Tracy Letts
He's a cop. And his son is a cop. But one of the sons is not a cop.
- [151:14]
Sean Fennessey
It's the Godfather in reverse.
- [151:17]
Tracy Letts
In reverse.
- [151:20]
Sean Fennessey
You know, solid Duval performance. Good work.
- [151:22]
Tracy Letts
Really good.
- [151:23]
Sean Fennessey
I really like this movie. I don't think it's going in the hall of fame. 2008. Four Christmases. You see it? Why didn't you see it?
- [151:30]
Tracy Letts
I don't even know what the fuck it is.
- [151:33]
Sean Fennessey
The level of detail that you spoke about so many of these other movies that no one will ever see. You had such depth on show of Force.
- [151:44]
Tracy Letts
Four Christmases. I mean, the title is not a turn on for me.
- [151:48]
Sean Fennessey
Are you in a war against Christmas?
- [151:50]
Tracy Letts
No, I just.
- [151:51]
Sean Fennessey
Four Christmases, I think it means because they go to.
- [151:53]
Tracy Letts
I tell you what, get one Christmas right, then you can make four.
- [151:56]
Sean Fennessey
I've been trying all my life. I'm not a huge fan of the movie. It's a studio comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon.
- [152:06]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, I don't know.
- [152:07]
Sean Fennessey
Robert Duvall plays a. Well, you got something against Reese Witherspoon?
- [152:11]
Tracy Letts
I don't have anything against anybody. I just don't need to see it.
- [152:16]
Sean Fennessey
You know who likes this movie? Chris Ryan.
- [152:19]
Tracy Letts
Great.
- [152:20]
Sean Fennessey
It's red.
- [152:21]
Tracy Letts
Did Chris Ryan watch 50 plus Duvall movies? I don't think so.
- [152:27]
Sean Fennessey
Staking your claim once more for third chair 2009. Crazy Heart. This is a movie that might just watch.
- [152:34]
Tracy Letts
Watched it on the. As I was coming here. Just watched it in the car. Well, basically.
- [152:39]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. I don't know if this movie exists without Robert Duvall. According to Scott Cooper, who was a working actor who met Duvall on the set of Gods and Generals, and they struck up a friendship. Duvall brought him under his wing. It sounds like a little bit. Two Virginians. And Duval read all of his scripts.
- [152:59]
Tracy Letts
Just really mentored Scott Cooper and Crazy
- [153:02]
Sean Fennessey
Heart in a lot of ways is a soft remake of Tender Mercies. And so he comes on in a part to support him in this film. Jeff Bridges wins an Academy Award for his role as Bad Blake, which is, you know, Scott Cooper seems like a nice guy whose movies I never totally click with, to be honest with you. A couple of them here and there I enjoy, but I always feel like they're a little bit overwrought. But he always gets good performances out of his actors and he's registered both terrific in this. Yeah, if it were Jeff Bridges hall of Fame, it definitely would be going in, but it's not 2009. The road.
- [153:34]
Tracy Letts
Didn't see it. Really haven't seen it.
- [153:37]
Sean Fennessey
Read that on Cormac McCarthy. You care?
- [153:41]
Tracy Letts
Yeah, he's not the top of my pyramid, but sure I care.
- [153:46]
Sean Fennessey
You want to do the top of your pyramid three hours into this episode?
- [153:49]
Tracy Letts
I don't.
- [153:49]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. The Road, he plays the old man. So that's.
- [153:54]
Tracy Letts
I mean, the truth is we're starting now to get into old man territory and. And he just. There's less he can physically do.
- [154:03]
Sean Fennessey
Yes.
- [154:04]
Tracy Letts
He hurt himself on a horse while they were shooting open range. He fell off a horse.
- [154:10]
Sean Fennessey
I didn't know that.
- [154:11]
Tracy Letts
And he was mad and he was embarrassed and he didn't want to ride horses so much anymore. And just what you come up come across as aging. Right.
- [154:22]
Sean Fennessey
It's like a 72 year old man. You can open range.
- [154:24]
Tracy Letts
Yeah. But he really is. With Crazy Heart, you start to feel. Right. I mean, he's. What is he, 80 years old when he makes Crazy Heart?
- [154:32]
Sean Fennessey
Just about 78, maybe 79. Get Low is an interesting movie, though. Have you seen that one?
- [154:37]
Tracy Letts
I saw it this morning.
- [154:38]
Sean Fennessey
Okay. Pretty good.
- [154:39]
Tracy Letts
I liked it.
- [154:40]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, I like it.
- [154:40]
Tracy Letts
I liked it a lot.
- [154:41]
Sean Fennessey
I think if you were gonna make a case for a late period film, this might be the one you would pick.
- [154:45]
Tracy Letts
I think it's good. I wish it had stuck to the stoic tone it strikes at the beginning of the movie. Throughout the movie, it gets a little goofy. It gets a little. And a little saccharine toward the end, but God damn, he's great. Bill Murray's great. Sissy Spacek. I always make the case on these podcasts that she's an underrated actress. She's great in the film. Yeah, I liked Get Low quite a bit.
- [155:11]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, we'll give you Get Low a yellow Seven Days in Utopia. I haven't seen.
- [155:15]
Tracy Letts
Didn't see it.
- [155:15]
Sean Fennessey
Well, we're gonna skip right over that one. Jayne Mansfield's car.
- [155:18]
Tracy Letts
Didn't see it.
- [155:19]
Sean Fennessey
This is a Billy Bob Thornton film, less acclaimed than some of his previous work, but once again, Duvall plays patriarch Jim Caldwell. I saw this in 2012. I don't have a strong memory of it. I do have a strong memory of seeing Jack Reacher in theaters.
- [155:35]
Tracy Letts
Didn't see it. Haven't seen it.
- [155:37]
Sean Fennessey
It's certainly not going in the Robert Duvall hall of Fame. Kind of an entertaining movie, though.
- [155:40]
Tracy Letts
I think we skip Hemingway and Gellhorn, which was made for HBO with Clive Owen. And who does he play? Apparently, it's a very small part, like maybe total.
- [155:52]
Sean Fennessey
He's listed as Russian general to. Your point about being asked to play Russian characters? 2014. A Night in Old Mexico.
- [156:00]
Tracy Letts
Haven't seen it.
- [156:02]
Sean Fennessey
When is A Night in Old Mexico? Oh, yes, okay.
- [156:05]
Tracy Letts
He has a night in Old Mexico.
- [156:07]
Sean Fennessey
He sure does. A financially strapped but proud senior citizen and his estranged grandson find themselves targeted by drug dealers in search of a missing money bag. Hate when that happens. That's not going in 2014. The judge. You watched this?
- [156:19]
Tracy Letts
I did. I had not seen it. I watched it. There are good things about the Judge movies. Hollywood movies at some point entered into a period where I got skeptical of a lot of Hollywood filmmaking, a lot of tropes of Hollywood filmmaking. But there's good stuff inside the Judge. I think it's one of my favorite Robert Downey Jr. Performances. I really do. I think Mr. Duvall brings out the best in Robert Downey Jr. There are a couple of scenes they have in this movie when it gets really specific what's happened between these two characters, and they're able to. They're not just archetypes. They're able to access real information, specific information about who these people are, where they've come from, what they want, what they wanted, how they were disappointed. They're really effective scenes. I like that Duvall was nominated for this movie because it doesn't feel like just, oh, let's give the old man another nomination. I mean, I think he's really doing something. I think he's giving a real performance here.
- [157:34]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, I wish the movie itself was a little bit better.
- [157:37]
Tracy Letts
Well, the courtroom stuff is just. I was like, come on. Have you ever spent 30 minutes in a courtroom if you have. You know, this is all bullshit.
- [157:46]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah, it's very dopey. A little bit of a letdown, too, because this was the movie that Downey basically got made. That was like a passion project in the aftermath of so much Marvel success. And it was like this, you know, like he didn't. He hasn't really made a lot of good movies, real movies, non IP movies, in the last 20 years. This is one of the precious few. And it's okay.
- [158:08]
Tracy Letts
He's good in the film. I love Vera Farmiga, Vincent d', Onofrio, very good. But, oh, my God, Jeremy Strong playing the autistic character is such a mistake, such a misfire.
- [158:26]
Sean Fennessey
These things keep happening.
- [158:28]
Tracy Letts
Narratively, it's real misfire.
- [158:30]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. 2015, he wrote and directed a film called Wild Horses, which I've not seen.
- [158:35]
Tracy Letts
Haven't seen it.
- [158:36]
Sean Fennessey
Well, we can't speak to it.
- [158:37]
Tracy Letts
That's a shame.
- [158:38]
Sean Fennessey
I haven't seen In Dubious Battle either.
- [158:40]
Tracy Letts
I haven't seen it.
- [158:41]
Sean Fennessey
So that's not going to go in 2018 widows. You just saw it for the first time.
- [158:45]
Tracy Letts
I did. My wife is in it. We watched it for the first time.
- [158:48]
Sean Fennessey
What'd you think of Duvall?
- [158:50]
Tracy Letts
I thought he was good.
- [158:50]
Sean Fennessey
Yeah. Couple of scenes. Powerful power broker in Chicago, right?
- [158:54]
Tracy Letts
Powerful old guy.
- [158:56]
Sean Fennessey
Not going in the hall of fame.
- [158:57]
Tracy Letts
No.
- [158:58]
Sean Fennessey
12 mighty orphans. Have you seen this film?
- [159:00]
Tracy Letts
I haven't.
- [159:01]
Sean Fennessey
I watched this. Pretty sure I watched this during COVID It's about a football team. It is about a football team. Luke Wilson plays a football coach in Texas during the Great Depression who inspires and gets his team into shape and they win in exciting and inspiring fashion.
- [159:21]
Tracy Letts
Great.
- [159:22]
Sean Fennessey
Not going in 2022. Hustle.
- [159:26]
Tracy Letts
Didn't see it.
- [159:27]
Sean Fennessey
Another sports movie, An Adam Sandler drama that I kind of like, about an NBA scout.
- [159:33]
Tracy Letts
I would see it. I just ran out of time. I saw a lot.
- [159:36]
Sean Fennessey
You did the work. His last feature performance is in the Pale Blue Eye, which is Scott Cooper's adaptation of. Not an adapt. I don't know if it's an adaptation. It's a portrait of Edgar Allan Poe's life. I think it was based on a novel that is sort of a detective movie featuring Edgar Allan Poe. Christian Bale plays the part. Duvall plays Jean Pepe. It's fine. It's nice to see him on screen at this stage of his life. He's giving a very quiet, croaky performance. It's not going in the hall of Fame. Let's do some revisiting where we're at. Okay.
- [160:09]
Tracy Letts
I can't wait. Are people still listening?
- [160:12]
Sean Fennessey
I'm listening to you. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 2, 4, 6, 8 greens. Those greens are To Kill a Mockingbird, the Godfather 1 and 2 network. Apocalypse now, the Great Santini, Tender Mercies, Lonesome Dove, and the Apostle.
- [160:31]
Tracy Letts
Solid.
- [160:31]
Sean Fennessey
Here are the Yellows, The Rain People, THX 1138. Tomorrow, the outfit, Open Range and get Low. I feel this could be very easily done by simply putting the outfit and tomorrow into the hall of Fame.
- [160:49]
Tracy Letts
Read it to me if that's the case.
- [160:52]
Sean Fennessey
To Kill a Mockingbird, the Godfather, Tomorrow, the Outfit Network, Apocalypse now, the Great Santini, Tender Mercies, Lonesome Dove and the Apostle. Now if you want to lean into get Low or open range to get something from the 2000s in there, we can do that.
- [161:09]
Tracy Letts
I'm very comfortable with that. Hall of Fame. And I'm gonna take Open Range as my blue.
- [161:16]
Sean Fennessey
Wow. Well, let me just take a quick look at what I want to do. Blue wise. There might be something here that I enjoy. This is when I don't. When I'm not speaking. You have to vamp. This is something you have to learn as the third chair.
- [161:31]
Tracy Letts
Let me tell you, the traffic out there is really bad.
- [161:34]
Sean Fennessey
You could do better.
- [161:35]
Tracy Letts
There was an accident on the 101.
- [161:39]
Sean Fennessey
I can't believe you'd do this to me.
- [161:41]
Tracy Letts
No, I can vamp, absolutely. You kidding? Oh, Robert Duvall. He was awfully good. I loved him. I did love him. I wonder if I would have liked him personally. He did have. Did have a cantankerous side, I'm told.
- [161:56]
Sean Fennessey
I'll take THX 1138 as my vote.
- [161:59]
Tracy Letts
If you had taken open range, I would have taken thx. I think that's a great.
- [162:03]
Sean Fennessey
What a healthy set of decisions. So guys, we'll green tomorrow in the outfit. And we've completed after two and a half hours.
- [162:10]
Tracy Letts
One more time.
- [162:11]
Sean Fennessey
Let's hear it. The Greens. What's the Robert Duvall hall of fame from 1962. To Kill a Mockingbird from 72 and 74. The Godfather 1 and 2 and 3 from 1973. Tomorrow from 1973. The Outfit from 1976. Network from 1979. Apocalypse now from 1979. The Great Santini from 1983. Tender Mercies from 1989. Lonesome Dove. Even though it's TV from 1997. The Apostle, the blue for me is THX 1138. And for you, Open Range. We've done it.
- [162:50]
Tracy Letts
We've done it. By God. By God, we've done it.
- [162:54]
Sean Fennessey
That was a big one. That was a really large. That was a lot of work.
- [162:58]
Tracy Letts
I'm not going to be the guy that gets called whenever the old guy dies because there's a thing that does happen. The 70s movies are better than the 80s movies. And the 80s movies are better than the 90s movies. And the 90s movies are better than the 21st century. 22nd. What century is it?
- [163:17]
Sean Fennessey
Let's go back to the 80s movies are better than THE 90s movies pretty
- [163:20]
Tracy Letts
much across the board.
- [163:22]
Sean Fennessey
Okay, well, on that we shall part. Tracy Letts. Thank you, Sean.
- [163:28]
Tracy Letts
Finessy.
- [163:29]
Sean Fennessey
Incredible amount of work you put into this.
- [163:31]
Tracy Letts
You know, this is my job, man. This is my job. I take my responsibilities as professional podcaster and third chair of the Big Pick podcast very seriously. Uh huh.
- [163:44]
Sean Fennessey
You think you'll write another play?
- [163:47]
Tracy Letts
Why would I do that?
- [163:49]
Sean Fennessey
I'd like to read it. That's hard. You know, writing is hard. It is hard.
- [163:54]
Tracy Letts
Is really hard.
- [163:55]
Sean Fennessey
Really hard. Yeah. Well, I'd like to say thanks to Jack Sanders for his work as producer on this show. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh and Sarah Reddy for being in here today helping us get this episode off the ground. I think what's going to happen is later this week, Chris Ryan and I are going to talk about Mortal Kombat 2, Obsession, Hokum, and the future of horror. Do you know what any of those things are?
- [164:16]
Tracy Letts
I know that Mortal Kombat II is a sequel to a movie based on a video game.
- [164:23]
Sean Fennessey
Oh, sounds like you've been boning up. You want to join us?
- [164:28]
Tracy Letts
And you're going to talk about what
- [164:29]
Sean Fennessey
was the second part of that obsession? Not the Brian De Palma film starring Cliff Robertson. Hokum.
- [164:36]
Tracy Letts
Hokum is Adam Scott.
- [164:38]
Sean Fennessey
That's right. I've seen it.
- [164:39]
Tracy Letts
Obsession is. Oh. Obsession is about the guy who makes the horror movie, about the guy who makes the deal with the devil that the girl's gonna fall in love with him.
- [164:49]
Sean Fennessey
See, he's been practicing. He's been thinking hard. All you got to do is move to LA and quit all your other stuff and probably leave your family. What do you think? We'll talk.
- [164:59]
Tracy Letts
We'll talk.
- [165:01]
Sean Fennessey
See you soon,
- [165:15]
Tracy Letts
Sa.