In Contention

Tag: Lonseome Dove

  • INTERVIEW: Robert Duvall

    Robert DuvallToronto Film Festival

    Sitting down with Robert Duvall is more than a little intimidating. The man does not suffer fools, nor does he have a lot of time for small talk or stupid questions. He likes to talk, but he also likes an informed conversation.  As he nears 80, he is still a force of nature, with a powerful presence and voice that goes up and down depending on his excitement.

    Duvall and I first met in 1997 when “The Apostle” exploded out of Toronto, landing the veteran actor a much-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Actor.  The performance was a volcanic, furious portrait of a man trying to atone for his sins by building a church in the backwoods of Louisiana after killing a man in a fit of rage. For 13 years Duvall shopped the project around Hollywood, being turned down by the major and minor studios until his accountant suggested he finance the film himself.  In a position to do so, he did just that, eventually selling the film at TIFF after a famed bidding war.

    I got to know him when he invited me to spend some time with him on the set of “John Q” while it was shooting here in Toronto, the invitation coming during the 2000 Film Festival when I interviewed him a few times for his soccer picture, “A Shot at Glory,” in which he co-starred with soccer star Ally McCoist.  In the years since, Duvall has kept himself busy with great roles and performances in films such as “Broken Trail,” for which he won the Emmy Award for Best Actor, and “Kicking and Screaming,” a soccer comedy with Will Farrell that seemed like an odd choice for the actor.

    Recognized as one of America’s greatest thespians, Duvall has given an array of brilliant performances over the years, from his breakthrough, shy Boo, in “To Kill a Mockingbird” through to his mafia lawyer Tom Hagen in “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” and perhaps most memorable of all, Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now.” He came into his own in the 1970s, at a time when other major talents such as Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Gene Hackman were also turning in brilliant performances, changing the face of American acting.

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  • 1976: the last hurrah of the American western

    Jack Nicholson in The Missouri BreaksThe western was not yet dead in 1976 when  four high-profile installments were released to varying degrees of success. Four years later, of course, Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate” would kill the genre for several years (and United Artists for longer), and though it has seen ups and downs in the years since, for the most part, the western remains one of the least popular genres with studios.

    In my opinion, Cimino’s film was never as bad as the critics said it was at the time.  Many of them were lying in wait for a Cimino failure, hoping to ambush him for the lies told during the press interviews for ‘The Deer Hunter,” which won the man an Oscar and was the Academy’s choice for Best Picture. He was not a Vietnam veteran, he had never seen Russian Roulette used as torture, in fact he had never been out of America until he made the “The Deer Hunter.”  This all but ruined Cimino’s reputation, which is somewhat sad because the man had a hell of an eye for detail.

    That of course was the issue with “Heaven’s Gate”; though stunning in its detail, the film is insufferably slow and ponderous, with perhaps two truly stunning sequences, the best among them the community roller skating sequence, which pulsates with energy driven by a young man, the film’s composer David Mansfield and his fiddle, as they skate around the rink, veering in and out of surrounding bodies.

    There was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when 20% of the films coming out of Hollywood were westerns. There were 26 prime time western programs on television, all popular, and John Wayne ruled as the top box office star. By the 1970s, westerns were made less frequently, and Wayne’s box office throne had been usurped by another star of the genre: Clint Eastwood.

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