Fresh Air - Film Icons: Michael Caine / Robert Duvall

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

From now through Labor Day we're featuring interviews from our archive with great actors and directors. Robert Duvall talks about his role in the Godfather films as Tom Hagen, the Corleone family lawyer — and about speaking the most famous line in Apocalypse Now. And we'll get some insights into acting from Michael Caine, including why you don't need to raise your voice to be intimidating, and why he hates doing love scenes.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today, classic films and movie icons. From now through Labor Day, we're featuring a series of interviews from our archive with Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Samuel L. Jackson, Dennis Hopper, Clint Eastwood, Jodie Foster, Molly Ringwald, and more. Later on today's show, we'll hear my interview with Robert Duvall, who played the Corleone family lawyer Tom Hagen in the Godfather movies, and the macho, surfing-obsessed Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. We'll start with a British actor who is one of the most distinctive voices in movies, Michael Caine.

But before we hear his voice, we'll hear from two people imitating his voice. Here's Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in their 2010 movie The Trip, competing over who could do the best Michael Caine impression. Well, broadsheet journalists have described my impressions as stunningly accurate. Well, they're wrong. I've not heard your Michael Caine, but I assume it would be something along the lines of, my name's Michael Caine. That is where you are so wrong. And you can look at my live video for proof, because that's the very thing I don't do.

I say that he used to talk like that. Do your Michael Caine. OK. I say, Michael Caine used to talk like this in the 1960s, right? But that has changed. And I say that over the years, Michael's voice has come down. Several octaves, let me finish. And all of the cigars and the brandy, don't let me finish, can now

be heard. I've not finished in the back of the voice and the voice now. I've still not finished the voice. Because you're panicking. Because you look like you're about to bloody talk. Let me finish. Right, so, Michael Caine's voice now in the Batman movies and in Harry Brown. I can't go fast, Michael Caine's voice now in the Batman movies and in Harry Brown. I can't go fast because Michael Caine talks very, very slowly. Right, this is how Michael Caine speaks. Michael Caine speaks to his nose like that.

He gets very, very specific. It's very like that. When he gets loudly, it gets very loud indeed. It gets very specific. It's not quite nasal enough the way you're doing it. All right? You're not doing it the way he speaks. You're not doing it with the kind of... And you don't do the broken voice when it gets very emotional. When it gets very emotional indeed. She was only 16 years old.

She was only 16. You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off. That's Michael Caine. According to IMDb, Michael Caine has been in over 170 films. He became famous in the 60s in movies like Alfie, playing a playboy, and The Ipcris File as a crook-turned-secret agent. He won Oscars for his performances in Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Roles and starred in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Mona Lisa, Educating Rita, Dressed to Kill, and was Batman's butler in the Dark Knight films. Kane retired from acting last year at the age of 90. I spoke with him in 1992 after the publication of his autobiography, What's It All About? He wrote

about his birth in the charity ward of a hospital, coming of age in a working-class neighborhood, and his rise as a movie star. Kane has said that an actor's eyes are his most important asset. An actor's voice is the second most important asset. I asked Kane how he realized his own voice was an asset. Well, I realized that when I first went into the theater, um, my natural voice, having a Cockney accent for a start was, uh, um, difficult, but also it's where the voice was placed. Um, and, uh, um, Cockney's naturally talk... I'll try and get up there. It's right up in the throat here.

It's rather like John Major, our prime minister. He talks like that. And the trick was to bring my voice down to the diaphragm. If you could imagine, if it's right up here in the throat and then they bring it down a little bit further like another one of our politicians who talks like that and it's rather strangulated. But if you're going to boom out in the theatre

without deafening the people at the front, you've got to be able to project your voice. And my first wife taught me how to do that in about 20 minutes. And that was the most important thing that ever happened to me with my voice, which was it was placed. And the second thing was that over a period of years, I never went to the normal diction lessons that you had. British actors always spoke terribly like that,

and they all spoke exactly the same because they all learned how to speak at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And what happened to me is I worked on my own, because I was never a trained actor, and I worked on my own voice. So what happened was, as I came out of it with a voice that was correctly placed by accident, and a very, very individual accent. My accent is so individual that people who don't recognize me by sight, the minute I open my mouth,

they know who I am. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, when you decided to work on your accent, what did you do to work on it? Well, I didn't do anything really, because I went into repertory, and which means that I used to do a play a week for 50 weeks a year. So I was always playing someone different. And in England, we have a lot of regional accents, lots of class accents. And so I could do almost any accent. So what I actually did was I kept my own voice. What actually altered my voice tremendously

was becoming a movie actor in the United States. When Alfie was released here, the first inkling I got that it was going to be released in America at all, because I'd never been to America when Alfie was made, and I didn't expect the film to come over here. But the first inkling I got was they said, you've got to do 125 loops,

which means lines of dialogue, which are on a sort of tape loop to make it more understandable to the American ear. And so I did 125 American loops. And if you actually listen to the American version of Alfie, it sounds as though I can't do a Cockney accent because I keep getting it wrong. But, I mean, it was deliberate. But also I very quickly realised that it wasn't the rhythm of the voice that worried the Americans, it was the speed.

The British speak very, very quickly and in a very clipped way. As a matter of fact, I lived in America for a long time. I lived for nine years in Los Angeles. And I remember on one occasion, I had been in America without leaving for about 10 months. I hadn't been back to England. And I was watching a British film on television

with everybody talking terribly like that. And I suddenly realized I couldn't understand what anybody was talking about. And I realized the American problem is it's because we cut off the end of words and we talk terribly, terribly quickly. Did your Cockney accent stand in your way at all when you were first starting to make movies?

Also because England has a much more rigid class system in a way than America does, although we certainly have a class system here. Yeah, well, you have a class system here, but you can't tell it by people's accents. In England, I can listen to a person and I'll tell you how much his house costs, how much he earns, what sort of car he drives

after listening to him for three minutes. That's how defined by accent you are. The only drawback with a Cockney accent was nobody, of course, would put you into Shakespeare because, you know, you have to learn how to speak in verse and iambic pentameters and everything but even that i did i i did horatio i played horatio to christopher plumbers hamlet on television uh and got away with it but normally in england in the theater when i came into it there were no leading parts written for anybody in my natural accent i always had to put on another accent. So in actual fact, from that point of view, it did hold me back a bit for a while. Now, in the movie Dirty Rut and Scoundrels,

which was made just a few years ago in the States, you and Steve Martin starred and you were this really kind of upper class, elegant womanizer who came on to wealthy women and scammed them and took their money. Whereas Steve Martin was a real kind of nickel and dime scam artist out for the same thing, wealthy women. And you taught him how to really do the more aristocratic version of it. What kind of accent did you use for that? Well, that would be the British upper middle class accent. It was always the people, the upper middle class usually have the pretensions of the aristocrat without the class

and also the pretensions of the rich without the money. And so what you get is someone with absolutely no substance who is all front. And so you get a voice which is terribly like that, and it's very smooth and very, very slow. Now, another great role that I have to ask you about your voice in was in Mona Lisa, in which you played a crime boss, a gangster. Yes. And Bob Hoskins played somebody who is kind of under you in there. And you were really intimidating him in your scenes in the film. It's a fantastic performance by you.

Can you talk about how you used your voice in that? Because you needed to use it in a way that showed real authority and the willingness to intimidate and, if necessary, hurt somebody. Yeah. Authority is shown not only by voice but by movement. And what it is, is first thing in authority is you never move. Only people who are trying to attract your attention with no power move their hands. If you look at aristocracy and really powerful people, they move very little because everybody is awaiting their every word, wish or command. And their voice is very, very slow because everybody will wait while they have their thought and wait no matter how long it takes for them to say what they're going to say.

What you have to add in this case where I played a gangster which which would be menace and and menace would come if if you uh i mean i in that i had a gangster accent which is again a working class cockney accent but there is a sort of uh cheerful chirpy working class sort of hello lads let's all go down the pub and all this you, that sort of accent for the chirpy cockney lad, cheerful little soul. But then there's another one, which is, it's kind of very drawn out and it's very flat. And so they will actually say things to you. I mean, I grew up with gangsters like this and And they will say, I like you. And there's absolutely no emotion in the voice whatsoever. It's like an icicle. You know, they say, I think you're one of the nicest fellas I've ever met. Really do. I really think you're

very nice. So, and then they say silly little things. When you know you're in trouble with a Cockney gangster, he'll say something like, well, who's been naughty then? Now, that question means you're probably going to get kneecapped to the floor. But it's one of those things of just flattening the voice out. The voice just flattens right out, no matter what you say. It just flattens, flattens.

Now, when you say you're in a position of power and authority, you don't move a lot. No. That means you don't blink a lot, too. No. Oh, that's a trick for actors on film that I used, and it was told, I think the first place I heard and was told, I think the first place I heard it was Marlena Dietrich said it first,

is that you don't blink. If you blink on camera, it signifies weakness. It's very difficult to do this trick on radio. About blinking. But if you look in the mirror yourself, look in the mirror yourself and just stare and start saying things to yourself, you'll see how powerful it is. And if you just blink once in the middle of it,

you'll see how it all dissipates. It just dissipates the whole thing. And of course, if you're on a movie screen, you have to remember when you blink, each eyelid is somewhere between two to seven feet wide if you're in a close-up. That's a good point. Yeah.

Well, how do you learn to not blink? It's hard to not blink. Your eyes start to hurt. You can do it for a little bit, but after a while, it's a real strain. You just walk around. I walked around all my life. When I was a young lad, I wrote about this in a book. When I was a young lad, I found a book in the public library,

How to Teach Yourself Film Acting. And the first thing it said in it was you must not blink. And so I walked around. I walked around this sort of working class district of London, which was used to some very rough people, you know, without blinking.

And I looked like a sort of early serial killer. I'm sure I frighten the life out of people because I used to have long conversations with people and never blink. And I would watch people getting hypnotized. And they would walk away from a quite simple conversation with me, quite flummoxed as to what actually what went on. Well, here's what I'm wondering, you know you learned obviously by making movies how did you pick up everything that you know now about how to look into a camera or how like where to look when the camera's looking at you did you pick that up over years after watching yourself and watching yourself no i never watched myself

i i don't i never see rushes and i'd only see the finished film once just to see how it turned out and who goofed, including me. And, no, it's... Film is listening, reaction and behaviour. That's what film acting is. It shouldn't be called film acting at all because it's not acting. It's something entirely... Acting is what you do on stage, as far as I'm concerned. is shouldn't be called film acting at all because it's not acting it's something entirely acting is what you do on stage as far as i'm concerned and people behave they the only time real people act

is if they're showing off or trying to make an impression like a guy with a girl or something then they act and then they're artificial and we can all see they're artificial because they're acting but normally what you do is you listen and you react and then you behave and that and that's all it is and i when people said to me what actors did you watch to learn how to act in movies i said i didn't what i watch was documentaries or people on the subway to see how they react to things because you'll see actors like, for instance, making gestures on the phone with no one there. You don't make gestures on the phone with no one there.

You think you do, but you don't. And so you get sort of strange things happening like that when you see actors acting. So I never took any notice. The only actors that I ever watched for acting lessons were minimalist actors like Jean Gabin, the French actor, and someone who was remarkably similar to him, which was Spencer Tracy. I always think that Jean Gabin and Spencer Tracy, if you speak French, you'll find they're absolutely indivisible.

Now, what about where to look when the camera's looking at you? I mean, you really learned how to work in front of a camera. And if you didn't spend a lot of time watching yourself, how did you learn that? No, I learned by watching where the camera was. I mean, for instance, you're always, if you're going to... The thing is, if you're going to play a part, you're playing a part with another actor and you look in their eyes. And what you do, if you're acting,

you suddenly go, well, how do I look into this person's eyes? Now, during your lifetime, you've looked into hundreds of people's eyes every time you speak to someone, but you can't remember how you did it. And what you do is you only look into one eye, because if you look into two eyes, you go cross-eyed.

And the one eye you look into is the one that is nearest the camera, because that throws the one eye that you're not looking, not using, straight into the lens. Huh. That's how you do that. And how did you learn that? I figured it out.

I figured it out, how to do it. I figured it out. I figured it out how to do it. I figured it out myself, actually. I figured out a lot of stuff myself because you get a feeling in movies when you play someone, the actor should disappear and people should only see the person. I mean, it's a self-defeating thing in a funny way

because half the time people see me and they say, well, he's only playing himself. It's because I've made the actor disappear. And that's where you come down to this thing where you've got behavior and where you've got the camera. You can come down to the absolute minimum thing to do for the camera to pick up. And that's what's fascinating about film acting because camera

always finds it early in your career um alfred hitchcock offered you a role as a sadistic killer in frenzy that's right but you you turned that down because because he was based up i knew who he was based on he was based on neville heath who was an extraordinarily early, extraordinarily sadistic British woman killer. And I wouldn't play it. I didn't. I mean, all those years ago. Hitchcock never spoke to me again. Because you turned him down?

Yeah. I knew him quite well. Because he comes from the same part of London as I do. And I knew him quite well. I mean, I wasn't a close friend or anything. I'd never been to his home, but I always sort of saw him around Universal and restaurants. But I remember I had lunch with him for that film,

and I said to him, I said, I said, there's something I've got to bring up with you. I said, I said, you said that actors were cattle. And you know the way he talked to you. No, I didn't. He said, you said that actors were cattle. And you know the way he talks.

No, I didn't, he said. I said actors should be treated like cattle. There's another voice. And that's a sort of halfway trying to be terribly middle class and that's a cockney trying to get it right. And speaking very slowly, too. Well, Hitchcock was a terribly powerful person, so everybody listened and waited for him to say anything he liked,

except for me. I said, I don't want to do the part, and he never spoke to me again. We're listening to my 1992 interview with Michael Caine. After a break, we'll hear more of that interview and feature my 1996 interview with Robert Duvall as we continue our classic films and movie icon series. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. boy. The Best Idea Yet is a new podcast about the untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the people who made them go viral. Listen to The Best Idea Yet wherever you

get your podcasts. Need to stay up to date on all the news but just can't find the time? Try NPR's new Up First newsletter. You'll get important stories, critical developments on breaking news, and perspectives on hot topics that you're totally free to pass off as your own. Sign up at NPR.org slash Up First Newsletter. Truth, independence, fairness, transparency, respect, excellence. This is NPR. I first started to act when I was around 10 in school plays. But because I was the first generation, I imagine, at my age, I'm 59,

I was about the first generation of actors who the first actors they saw were movie actors, not theater actors. And so that left you with a different kind of role model. With a different, entirely different role model of how to act and why I wanted to act and what I wanted to act in. I never went, I've been an amateur actor in theatrical plays, in little youth clubs and all that, for years before I ever went to see a play in a theatre. I'd never seen...

I'd done 20 plays in a theatre before I'd ever seen a play in a theatre. So your ultimate ambition wasn't necessarily to do Hamlet. It might have been to do crime films or something. No, it was... I mean, my heroes were James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy, not John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier,

who were the big sort of theatre stars when I grew up in England. I guess that helped, too, in terms of your class, because it would have been hard for you to aspire to be somebody who had this kind of upper-class accent and, you know, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts kind of thing. Absolutely. And there was always a history, in any case, in American movies, you had working class heroes.

You rarely had working class heroes in British movies. It was always about the aristocracy. If it was about the war, it was about officers. If it was American about war, it was about enlisted men. And so I always identified more with the United States, with American movies and American actors than I ever did with British ones. Because I thought that the American actors, and in many cases, I was right, were of the same class as me. Whereas I absolutely knew from their accents and their demeanor, that the British actors I was watching were not of the same class

as me at all. And therefore it negated any ideas that I had of becoming an actor because people like me did not become actors in England. Now you made 73 films in 30 years. And as you say, some people have criticized you for not being discriminating enough in the movies that you chose to make. What has your criteria been for deciding what to make? Well, first of all, my criteria was is nobody asked me to make anything for 30 years. So my first criteria was that they asked me at all. Yeah. You know, and then there came, I then had to learn how to make, act in films. So I made as many films as possible, as fast as possible,

in order to learn how to do it, because I'd never done any. I didn't have any gradual workup. I was suddenly a leading man, and I was fighting for my life, you know, along with all the other movie stars in the world, and I had to give a performance. So I did a lot of stuff.

And then also my other criteria were, and this is one of the great failings, of what had the people done before um i remember after anatomy of a murder otto premiger asked me to do a picture and i thought here's this great hollywood director asking me to do a picture which was a dreadful picture called harry sundown but i mean i was was so complimented that Otto Preminger had even asked me to do a picture that, I mean, I would have almost done it without reading the script.

I mean, I did read the script. I didn't understand it, but, I mean, I knew that Otto... I didn't even understand Otto Preminger because he had a thick German accent. But I was just so complimented that this great Hollywood director had asked me to do this film.

I went and did it. You know, people always talk as though... First of all, I was never an American star. So I was never this person sitting like Paul Newman or someone in a room where every new great script that came out came to me first. I was a foreign actor and I was never offered the great American parts

because I wasn't a great American actor. I was a British actor. And so what eventually I had to make a career out of what all the American stars didn't want, which was usually flawed people. There is another thing with that. If you think in terms of... It still happens, like with British actors,

we always get flawed people to play. The last three Academy Awards have been British actors. Daniel Day-Lewis, My Left Foot, a flawed person. Jeremy Irons, he played a class of on Bulo, a man accused of murdering his wife, a flawed person. Jeremy Irons, he played Declasse von Bulow, a man accused of murdering his wife, a flawed person. Anthony Hopkins, a cannibal, God knows, a terribly flawed person. And these are all parts that great American stars, I'm sure, turned down and said, my audience will not allow me to do this well

it's like a time they quite rightfully did so and so we are the actors that I mentioned we are stars by default in America in a funny way since you've given so much thought to the placement of the camera and the difference between theater and film and so on I want to ask you about doing love scenes in front of the camera. You don't like doing love scenes very much. That's certainly the impression I get from your book. No, because, you see, for a start,

if you're a very good actor, you see, and you play a scene, I will play a murderer, you know, and my wife will see the picture. She'll say, I thought that was brilliant. You know, I mean, you were so convincing as a murderer, right? So I'm a very good actor and I played a very good part as a murderer and my wife thinks it's very convincing and it's fabulous and she's very pleased with me and I'm a very good actor.

If I put the same amount of sincerity and skill and dexterity into a love scene, she says to me, was there anything going on between you two? Right. You see, so you can't win. You can't win. Because if you do it for real, if you're really a good actor, you really look as though you love the woman, you know? And it's very difficult for someone else who loves you to watch that.

So I don't like doing them. And also, love scenes often obviously involve a lot of kissing and cuddling and sometimes nudity and all that. And I hate it all. It sort of gets in the way of everything. And all the big stars on the old days, they never did any of these scruffy love scenes and rolling about. And if the girl has to take their clothes off, then there's nervous breakdowns and things going on.

And it's not worth it. I couldn't do a nude scene. I've never been able to do it. I mean, I've looked as though I was nude, but I never take my shorts off. I always keep my shorts on. You know, it strikes me you are a off. I always keep my shorts on. You know, it strikes me you are a very close observer of other people's behavior, but doing a love scene, you'd be at something of a disadvantage because it's not like you've sat around watching a lot of couples make love. Do you know what I mean? You can say, well,

this kind of person makes love this way and that kind of man makes love that way. So you must have to use your imagination more to imagine your character in a romantic situation as to imagine them on the telephone which you've been able to witness or imagine them at dinner which you've been able to witness yeah i yes with the love scenes but i've been imagining love scenes since i was 10 all sorts of different ones so i mean i've got one for every occasion whatever i mean i was i i was always i was very sort of uh oversexed when I was a little boy and I saw love scenes on the screen, you know, which were kissing, but very soon found out what happened when they cut to the seagull

or the train going through the tunnel. I figured out the significance of that very quickly. And, of course, right through my teens, I had all these imaginary love scenes worked out, and I managed to get them all out of my system on and off screen over the years. You've described yourself as a very un-neurotic person. Do you think that that's affected your approach to acting?

Yeah, I have a very un-neurotic approach to acting um basically it's um my style of acting is like most actors would hold up a picture and say look at me i get rid of all that baggage by holding up a mirror and saying look at you so what i'm doing is i'm playing you not me and so therefore i can watch from afar and i watch for the neuroses or the behavior in people that i can reflect off my mirror you still do that now yeah all the time all the time my time. If I've been a success and you see a performance, even if you're a woman, you should say, how does he know that about me?

How does he know I would have done that there? How does he know that's the way I would have reacted? It's got nothing to do with the sexes or anything. It just has, its human behavior is remarkably similar. One more thing, and this gets back to eyes you know how the eyes you've said the eyes are the most important part of an actor yeah um you were born with um an eye problem called a blepharer yes which um puffs the eyelids yes so uh did that make you self-conscious about your eyes did it make it any more difficult for you yeah it it's good they used to call me Snake Eyes

because I sort of have eyes like a cobra. But when I grew up, sometimes if you're very sleepy, you look like a cod. They used to call me Cod's Eyes as well until I sort of grew to six feet tall and then nobody called me Cod's Eyes. But when I got into the movies, it came out as kind of dreamy and sexy you know

sleepy looking because they could use they could use makeup on them and sort of make them look slightly different they put a bit of shade which puts the eyes back further into your head and you get a sort of dreamy quality so it was there was a producer once, an old theatre producer, said, use the disadvantage. Always use the disadvantage. And so I used that. A lot of things worked for me like that in my life. What else? Well, I was just thinking, when he said use the disadvantage,

what that means is I was rehearsing. Use the difficulty, I mean. Use the difficulty, he used to say. I was rehearsing use the difficulty I mean use the difficulty he used to say I was rehearsing a play and there was a scene went on before me and then I had to come in the door and they rehearsed the scene and one of the actors had thrown a chair

at the other one and it had gone right in front of the door where I came in so I opened the door and then rather lamely I said to the producer who was sitting out in the stalls I said well look I can't get producer who was sitting out in the stalls, I said, well, look, I can't get in, there's a chair in my way. So he said, well, use the difficulty. So I said, what do you mean, use the difficulty?

He said, well, if it's a drama, pick it up and smash it. If it's a comedy, fall over it. Which was a line for me for life, you know, always try and use the difficulty. Oh, that's great. Yeah. On that note, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you.

Michael Caine, recorded in 1992. He retired from acting last year at the age of 90. We'll continue our classic films and movie icon series with a 1996 interview with Robert Duvall. He talked about his roles in the Godfather films and in Apocalypse Now. That's after a break. This is Fresh Air. NPR brings you the updates you need on the day's biggest headlines. The Senate narrowly passed the debt ceiling bill that will prevent the country from defaulting on

its loans. Stories from across the world. Knowing how to forage and to live with the land is integral to Amis culture. And down your block. From CPR News, this is Colorado Matters. And you can find all of that and more in your pocket. Download the NPR app today. Next up on our classic films and movie icon series is an interview from our archive with Robert Duvall, recorded in 1996. Duvall made his mark starring in epic movies and intimate dramas. In the Godfather films, he played the Corleone family lawyer, Tom Hagen. In Apocalypse Now, he played the macho Colonel Kilgore. In The Great Santini, he was a rigid marine pilot who imposed a strict discipline on

his family. In his Oscar-winning performance in Tender Mercies, he was a country music singer on the skids, living a quiet life with a widow and her son. He also starred in the Western miniseries Lonesome Dove. Here's Duvall in a famous scene from The Godfather. He's traveled to Hollywood to persuade a movie producer to give a starring role to Don Corleone's godson. I was sent by a friend of Johnny Fontaine. This friend is my client. I would give his undying friendship to Mr. Walsh. Mr. Walsh would grant us a small favor. Walsh keeps listening.

Give Johnny the part in a new war film you're starting next week. And, uh, what favor would your friend grant, Mr. Wolfe? You're gonna have some union problems. My client could make them disappear. Also, one of your top stars has just moved from marijuana to heroin. Are you trying to muscle me? Absolutely not. Now listen to me, you smooth-talking son of a bitch. Let me lay it on the line for you and your boss, whoever he is. Johnny Fontaine will never get that movie. I don't care how many Dago, Guinea, Watt, Greaseball, Goombas come out of the woodwork. I'm German-Irish. Well, let me tell you something, my kraut-mick friend. I'm gonna make so much

trouble for you, you won't know what it is. The walls come a lawyer I have not threatened. I know almost every big lawyer in New York. Who the hell are you? I have a special practice. I handle one client. Now, you have my number. I'll wait for your call. By the way, I admire your pictures very much. It's interesting, you know, the Godfather films are such like operatic movies with, you know, people playing gangsters who are given to grand displays of emotion and violence. And you're the one in the movie, the legal advisor.

His job is to advise, to be discreet, to tone everything down. So in a way, you're playing a very opposite type of personality than all the other personalities in the film. Yeah, well, it was a pretty interesting character in that he was an adopted son plus this legal advisor. So therefore, as an actor and as the character, you really can't cross the line.

You're kind of an outsider, but yet you're not an outsider. I really enjoyed the part. I mean, those first two godfathers, that's about as good as you can get filmmaking-wise, I think. I agree. Francis was at top form. Although, as you say, maybe a touch they romanticized the organized crime to a point. But it was such good filmmaking.

You can excuse that. Do you have any favorite scenes in the Godfather films? Well, there were a lot of my likes. You know, I mean, the one with Michael Gazzo in Godfather 2 where I have to tell him he has to slit his wrists, I enjoyed that a lot, that scene. And the scene where I had to tell Brando that Sonny died in Godfather 1,

that was nice. And the other scenes I liked a lot too, but those kind of come to mind very quickly. My wife is crying upstairs. I hear cars coming to the house. I think the area minor... I think he should tell your dad what everyone seems to know. I didn't tell mama anything.

I was about to come up and wake you just now and tell you. But you needed a drink first. Yeah. Now you've had your drink. They shot Sonny on the causeway. He's dead. You worked with Francis Ford Coppola again on Apocalypse Now. Right, right.

And in Apocalypse Now, you were Colonel Kilgore, famous for the line... I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Is that the one? That's the one. Smells like victory, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was a wonderful line. People come up to me and quote it to me and say it like it's such an in thing between just me and them. And like they're the only ones that ever thought of it.

But that happens with everybody the same way. Did you get the script and say, well, first of all, was that line in the script? Or is that something that you have to write? Yeah, no, that was in there. And I think the part was offered to somebody else and they turned it down. And I said to Francis, I know that the part's written for a bigger guy, real tall, big guy. But, you know, I'll just say once, I think maybe I could do the part, and I'll put in my plea. And he gave it to me.

So it was enjoyable. It was a lovely part, and I enjoyed playing it very much. Why did you want to play it a lot? This is another part that I'm sure your father was thinking, hope nobody thinks this is based on me. Right, no, he knows. I think he always kind of just shook his head, I think, most of the time. It's like my uncle in Montana was a rancher.

I wish he had lived to see Lonesome Dove because that's my favorite of all. And when he saw The Godfather, he was hard of hearing, my uncle. He said, I'd rather see a good Western. He piped out in the theater in the middle of Montana there. But my said, I'd rather see a good Western. You know, he piped out in the theater, you know, middle of Montana there. But my, you know, my dad, he was, I think he was proud. You know, he never said a lot. My mother too. You smell that? You smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else of the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smell! You know that gasoline smell? The whole hill.

It smells like... victory. So when you saw the line in the film, I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning, did you say to yourself, a classic line? People will be repeating this back to me. No, I didn't. I didn't think of that. I didn't think of it that way.

I wasn't sure. Sometimes you're not so aware of that. Although you like lines like that. Did you do a lot of different line readings on that? The one that was most predominant, there was Jimmy Keen, a friend of mine who played a small part in that from Buffalo. I made him call me Mr. Duvall for a year

because that was a relationship in the movie. But we're all on a first-name basis. But he said, now, how do you do this? He was watching me. And he did great imitation. We were always doing imitation. So the final dress rehearsal before we filmed, we were always doing Brando imitations.

So I said, I love the smell of Nate Palmer in the morning. I paused and I said, smells like victory. I did my Brando, and he couldn't believe I would do that. So then he began doing Brando imitations. So then when Brando wanted $100,000 to do six lines of the censored stuff for the censored version, the TV version of The Godfather, and they wouldn't pay him. They got Jimmy Keen from Buffalo for $200 to do Brando. Oh, really?

Yeah. So those imitations started in the Philippines, and Jimmy got, because of those imitations, blossomed into the guy that would do the censored version for Brando. Hey, they could have saved a lot of trouble with Brando in Apocalypse Now, I guess. I suppose, yeah. Well, Jimmy was the guy that was there that told me all these wild stories after I left. See, I did the second half of my part first,

and then six months later came back into the first half. It was strange the way I had to go do another job because they got so bogged down with weather and with different actors and approaches and so forth. It took a long time to complete that film. We're listening to my 1996 interview with actor Robert Duvall. We'll hear more of the interview after a break.

This is Fresh Air. Hey, this is Elsa Chang from NPR, where we practice active listening. You know, when we're interviewing someone, we're not just throwing out questions at them. We are listening to the answers, following up, trying to make sense of things so that you have an opportunity to be an active listener too. Keep listening with NPR.

These days, it can feel like the news is fighting for your attention wherever you turn, but staying informed shouldn't be a battle. Everything you need to navigate the stories that matter to you is at your fingertips. The NPR app cuts through the noise, bringing you local, national, and global coverage. No paywalls, no profits, no nonsense. Download the NPR app in your app store today, or you can go to npr.org slash app. It must have been really different working with Coppola on the Godfather movies than working with him on Apocalypse Now. Yeah, well, you see, I had worked with Francis in The Rain

people, as I had said. And that was in the late 60s. Kind of a moody guy, and I didn't quite get a handle on Francis, but then I gained a tremendous amount of respect for him, because on Godfather 1, we started out, okay, this is Francis again. He's not saying much. A little moody, you know, the way he is. He's a real, he never comes, I want to write a book someday called The Rushes Are Great because everybody protects everybody by saying the rushes are great. Francis is one of the only guys that comes out of the cutting room with a long face and maybe that's why he's

so good in that he doesn't, he's always thrilled, you know. But I gained a lot of respect for him because in Godfather 1, physically, they had an understudied director following him around in case he failed to fire him and take over. And I think the first AD was the best friend of that would-be hopeful director. That was, that's quite a lousy thing to do to a director. And I gained a lot of respect for Francis for working under that pressure. When you were young, Brando was one of your heroes, right? Yeah, I think so. I mean, he was quite a phenom. There were others too.

And then you grow away from somebody's influence and find your own way. So what was it like to work with him when he was much older? He'd physically changed. It wasn't, I think, a particularly good period for him. Well, no, in The Godfather, he was very, he was rather trim.

Right, right, right. And when I first worked with him, well, Apocalypse, yeah, I didn't really, I wasn't really there when he worked. Right. I worked with him first in The Chase way back. And, you know, the first day he called me into his dressing room and we talked about the part. I said, oh, to my wife, this is going to be great. We're going to be like brothers. We had a great rapport.

Then he never spoke to me again for eight weeks. I wasn't quite used to that lifestyle of somebody not speaking to you at the beginning of a day. But that's the way he is, I guess. But, no, I was respectful and admired him and enjoyed working with him. And as I say, in the apocalypse now, he came into the jungle with his baby blue Mercedes driving down the jungle, you know, after I had left. And then when I came back, he'd finished, you know. So I didn't get to work with him during his heavy period. I guess, well, who was it? Picasso had his blue period, his this period, his that period. Brando had his thin period, now his heavy period.

So tell me, when you were young and getting started in acting, what were your expectations? What did you think would come of your career? Well, you know, maybe I was innocent, and maybe innocence is not the same as naive. Maybe it is. I always felt that somehow I would fit in. I went to New York feeling I would be a stage actor. I didn't think a lot about movies.

I thought about them, but I wasn't sure. I just figured I was going to work. I didn't know how, but I figured it would happen. And when I got one of the worst reviews anybody could ever get, I went back to Virginia for a while, and then I came back again. My friend Udo Grossbard, then we had done A View from the Bridge, and we did it again off-Broadway. And it was a wonderful production with John Voight. Dusty Hoffman was assistant stage manager, Susan Ansbach, Ray Biary, you know, Richie Castellano. It was a wonderful production. That helped launch my getting more into film and TV, you know.

So if you don't mind my asking, what did that terrible review say about you? I'm going to tell you exactly what it said. You still remember. It said, Shaw has invented some impossible young men in his plays, but never one so revolting as the romantic young interest in this one. And the character is made even less palatable by Robert Duvall, whose spine tends toward a figure S, whose diction is flannel-coated, and whose simpering expressions are moronic. Now, that's a pretty bad review. Yeah.

And the other paper likened me to Liberace, so I had to get off the bus. Liberace? Yeah, I had to get off the bus. I was physically ill. What was the connection to Liberace? I don't know. Maybe I played him a little of feeder. I don't know what it was. It was a guy from the active studio. I don't know. He had us lying down doing Sense Memory before we were doing George Bernard Shaw. I said, we should be telling jokes, not lying on the floor for Sense Memory. floor. The whole approach was wrong. It was a disaster, but, you know, at least it was an experience at least. Well, Robert Duvall, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Well, thank you. I enjoyed it. My interview with Robert Duvall was recorded in 1996. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we continue our classic films and movie icon series. We'll feature interviews from our archive with two actors who started as child stars, Jodie Foster and Molly Ringwald. Foster became famous for her 1976 films Freaky Friday and Taxi Driver. Recently, she starred in the latest season of True Detective and was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Nyad. Ringwald was in the sitcoms Different Strokes and The Facts of Life, and became famous for her roles in the teen films Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink.

Most recently, she was in Feud, Capote vs. the Swans. I hope you'll join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Bodonato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Special thanks to NPR Plus producer Nick Anderson. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Seawork. Roberta Shorrock directs the show.

Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. Who's claiming power this election? What's happening in battleground states? And why do we still have the Electoral College? All this month, the ThruLine podcast is asking big questions about our democracy and going back in time to answer them. Listen now to the ThruLine podcast from NPR.