The Big Picture - The Robert Duvall Hall of Fame

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Sean is joined by Tracy Letts to honor the monumental work of legendary actor Robert Duvall. They celebrate the star’s illustrious career, share their personal relationships with his work, and build his Hall of Fame. Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Tracy Letts Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey and this is the big picture a conversation show about Robert Duval. 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 1 a.m. 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. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if, like what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old.

You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Okay, Tracy, hello. Hi. Are you excited about this endeavor?

You raised your hand for this, did you not? It did. Yeah, I'm excited about it. Sure. I love Robert Duvall. You know, when he died, uh, 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 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 a end of 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 in. That's what I, when you mention a great screen actor, he's one of the first people I think of. Well, what is that, though? And what does that mean? Well, it means emotional access, right, that you can easily access and 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 Duval, it means a certain transformational ability. You know, movie stars, from the most part, bring you some version of themselves, and they perform that version of themselves over and over. And Duval was certainly capable of doing that, 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 know, you might get some range. But with Duval, 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, nonverbal,

smart, dumb, rural and urban, especially with him. It was a big swing. And so 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, Duvald 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. No, there's not, there's, 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, 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? You know, like 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. Right. Well, I mean, if the movies are essentially, what, 120 years old, he's the last 60 years of it.

He really is. 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. 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 consistent. 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. Duval, 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 in canonites? But also, when we look back at the movies, half of them we're going to say, eh, you know, take it or leave it. Yeah. But maybe a third or a quarter of them to say, like, this is worth your time. And you should repel into the cave and check it out.

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 that don't quite make the grade in here. But for the most part, I mean, he worked so steadily. He put up such big numbers, right? 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? 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. Like you have to accept him. And so I don't know that I necessarily appreciate 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 a civil action for this. Which is, you know, 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 otherwise might not have had. It might have seemed a little shiny, a little Hollywood. 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 like a moment. He was getting recognized for Academy Awards over a 30-year period. You know, 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 of 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, you know, 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. Yeah.

It's a real 70s movie in 1997. Yeah. And so I think that that was a big entry point for me just beyond seeing him as Tom Hagan and, and Kilgore. So I'm very excited to do this with you. 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, Lawrence Olivier was a romantic lead for 20 plus years. He was married to Scarlett O'Hara. He was Heathcliff.

He was Maxim de Winter. DeVold did not, not to mention a lifetime on stage, which DeVal 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 workman-like than that, right? He's a grinder. He really is. The period between Godfather and Godfather Part 2 is two years, right? 72 and 74. It's two years. Al Pacino makes two movies between those two. I think James Conn makes three movies between those two. How many movies did Robert Duvall make between those two? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

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 be closer to Robert De Niro or Merrill 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's sensibility, but they're leading men and women. And Duval was rarely that.

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 not just the stage, but British filmmaking, especially those Shakespearean adaptations that he made, and the role that Duval 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, like, 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 didn't work a lot. Maybe what can be meant was simply

England's greatest actor, America's greatest actor. 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. Like, was that how he was under Because to me, Pacino, De Niro, maybe a couple of other people, Nicholson. I 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 Hagan, he's the great Santie. Right, they started to put all of the math of that together. He'll, well, he 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 Duval makes apocalypse now, he's older than Phil was when he died.

Wow. Right? And Duvall's got another 40 plus years of a career after that. Yeah. I mean, that's just heartbreaking to think about. But those two actors, at least in that in terms of that quiet and that exploits. of quality. They both shared that. They both, they could go all the way to 11 and then come all the way back down. They could be incredibly vulnerable and sad. And they could also be kind of rageful and

shielding themselves. Like, they did have similar qualities. And again, a kind of dawning awareness of the actor on the part of the audience, right? 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. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. I hadn't compared them, I have thought a lot about Phillips, 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. You know, 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, and he began acting at 21, 1952, his first gigs where 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. Is that playhouse still exist? I don't know the answer to that. Bellport 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 Rosalini lives there right now. So 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 of 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? I did. So 60 to 62, he's on the Robert Horridge Theater, two episodes of Armstrong Circle Theater, Playhouse 90, John Brown's Raid, which was a TV movie, Great Ghost Tales, The Defenders, Cains 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.

Was he? Oh, he sure. Yeah. And he was the lead in the show and a 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. What is, does that resonate with you as an actor? Sure. There's a lot of ice buckets in my house.

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.

You know, we'll talk about it more perhaps when we get to the Godfather, but all these people worshipped at the altar of Brando, right? I mean, Brando was the icon for all those younger, 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, they heard Mr. Duvall in his Howard Stern interview. When Howard Stern was trying to kind of knock Brando for this business of reading Q cards, There's the photograph you've probably seen of Duval with Brando's lines take to his chest. And Duval 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's, there are little ad libs here and there that, you know, which are making his own. But he definitely knew the lines.

But yeah, there is a, 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. Yeah, he could also, he could transform but not disappear. 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 of 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 Duval that you are the greatest American actor. That's the compliment that he paid to him and that that was the most impactful, like, kindest thing that it 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, you know, 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. I mean, I heard Duval tell a story about Gene Hackman running into Brando in Manhattan, just ran into him, didn't know who we, did, they didn't know each other. personally. And they, and ran into him. And Hackman almost burst into tears, he told Duval. So tremendous meaning in the way he approached the work, the way they all approach the work, the way they learn 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've got to schedule. You've got a director

who's not going to ask you for a lot of nuance. You're going to get two takes, and then you're going to move on to the next thing. learning how to work is part of the job. You have to learn how to work. 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? One, two, three, four, five films over the years. Yeah. 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. and 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 Foot Horton Foot so who is Hortonfoot as playwright that you are well he was a great great playwright and a great playwright and a great

screenwriter and he had a 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 Hortonfoot's first cousin. He's the father of Mary Stewart Masterson. And Peter Masterson was directed one of these Hortonfoot 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 Hortonfoot. He would have considered it a successful career. I think, is it five, five films written by Hortonfoot? I think. But they're pretty key. A couple of them will wind up in our Hall of Fame, I'm sure. 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 Duval was very comfortable playing historic figures in the same way that Olivier did. In his time, Duval 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 the 3rd. He has a critical Henry V. That kind of definitional for what those characters look like on movie screens. Seven Academy Award nominations over the years. 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? Didn't you guys put Nicole Kidman limited series in her Hall of Fame? Which limited series?

I candidly do not remember. It's possible. I feel like we've made some allowances. What's the one in... what's the one in the beach with the women with the mystery? What am I thinking of? Big Little Lies? Yes. Is that what it's called?

Did we put Big Little Lies in? I think you did. I don't recall. We did do that. Thumbs up from Sarah Lucas. Sure. Okay. So then the answer is yes.

You feel comfortable with that idea. I'm saying that I think precedent has been established. And are you up on the blue category that there can be one film that you can choose? I think we did this for the Redford Hall of Fame, but remind me. Well, so we have reds, greens, in yellow is 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. It's emotional importance to us. Is that different

than I think this should be in the Hall of Fame and you don't? Well, let's not drill down too hard. Do you want to start since we were talking about Horton Foot? 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. Okay.

In 1962, he is cast on the recommendation of Horton Foot, who wrote the screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird directed by Richard Mulligan, and he plays... Robert Mulligan. Sorry. Who did I say? Who did I say? Who's Richard Mulligan?

I have no idea. He's the star of Empty Nest. He's an actor. Yeah, he was on soap. That's right. Robert Mulligan. Yeah. And he was Boo Radley in the film.

Yeah. 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. Definitely green. I think it has to be, right? It has to be green.

Critical American movie. Terrific movie still holds up very well. Here's the thing. It's, 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. 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, like a 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 like shooting your load too soon, you know. Don't you can't just pick the first one. You got 89 more movies. I think Amanda would put to kill a mockingbird in Robert Duval. I don't want to misrepresent her point of view. Now, 1963, Captain Newman, MD, I haven't seen the film. 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, uh, the Twilight Zone, directed by Walter Grom and teleplayed by Charles Beaumont, who was a great sci-fi writer. Uh, and he's the lead in that Twilight Zone. I didn't get a chance to watch it. Yes, Captain Newman M.D. is the next movie. Did you watch this movie?

I did, did you? I did not. Directed by David Miller. It's David Miller's first movie after Lonely Are the Brave, which is an absolutely great movie. Yes. It's Gregory Peck's first movie after To Kill a Mockingbird, and it's Robert Duvall's first movie after To Kill a Mockingberg. Is that how he got the gig? Did Gregory Peck?

I don't know. I don't know. Nudge them on this one? 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 the 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 Darren, who were both good actors, are asked to perform a kind of mental illness that feels very theatrical and ham bone.

Duval escaped some of that because his character is suffering from PTSD or shell shock probably they called it at the time. And so he's nonverbal. So, again, it's kind of a similarity to Boo Radley. He's this nonverbal 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, 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. Let me throw in some more TV after this. 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 Camellion. well, he did three Outer Limits episodes, but he did one called The Chameleon,

notable because teleplay by Robert Town. Wow. Yeah. Wonderful. How was it? It's not very good. 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. 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 and the Sun as a motorcyclist. Not much to say about this, right?

Did you watch it? I watched some of it. I watched it. Directed by Mark Lawrence, who was a bastard who sang like a bird in front of the House on American Activities Committee. So, to hell with him. It's very much like that. What's the Oliver Stone movie with Sean Penn, where he, he, he. in the little desert town, little noir.

U-turn. U-turn. It's basically the plot of U-turn. John Derek is in the Sean Penn role. Ursula Andrus. Ursula Andres, 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. I'm not sure why, since she certainly was not shy about taking off her clothes and movies later on. Thanks to her for that. Duval and Richard Jakel will show up as, these motorcycle guys who are trying to capture John Derrick, but they're motorcycle guys who are both like balding, blonde-haired guys in cardigan sweaters? It's very strange.

Yeah. I don't know what accounts for that. And then there's a scene where Duval whips his motorcycle with a length of chain in a fit of impotent rage. It's not a good movie. That's a red as well for Nightmare in the Sun. 1966, a film we've already discussed. We discussed it on the Robert Redford. The Chase, which you were a fan of. I like it better than you guys. I was a little

less. Amanda and I both were a little less intrigued. Fascinating cast in that film. Duvall's got a relevant part. Written by Horton Foot. 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. Two more years go by. Oh, wait a minute. I got some more TV. And there's the Defenders. 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. Oh, sure. Yeah. And stars Tony Franciosa, Jill St. John, and Susan St. James. Maybe the only time the St. John and Susan St. James. Yes. It's like the Avengers. It was advertised on NBC as the first Mayer.

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. 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. It was kind of a backdoor pilot. Yeah. And Duval does not have a big part in it, but Stuart Rosenberg is somebody who would come back later in his career. Yes, for sure. We spoke about him quite a bit during our Paul Newman. episode actually. Oh, even before we get to the next movie, two episodes of the time tunnel,

two episodes of T. H.E. Cat, and an episode of Combat. Do you know what T.H.E. Cat was? I don't. Well, it was about a cat burglar whose initials spelled T.H.E. T.H.E. Cat. Anyway, played by Robert Lozier. I thought you'd appreciate that. I do love Loja. Now, it's notable that you mention combat because I do believe combat is where Robert Duval met Robert Altman. Yeah. And his next feature film, 1969, 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 space man movie, a movie about NASA, about aspiring astronauts and their countdown to their... It's Apollo 13. It's the early version of Apollo 13,

and Robert Duvall is playing the Gary Sinise part from Apollo 13. He certainly is. Have you revisited this recently? Did you watch it for this? I did. It wasn't a revisit for me. You'd never seen it? Oh, interesting.

James Con 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 kind of 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 stiffer with a different kind of filmmaker. Duval's pretty good in this movie, I think. Yes. He's quite good.

He's very rarely are we going to say he's not good in this. I think this is the first movie of his though where I see his, that lack of fear to be abrasive as a character, you know, to be confrontational, to be a little bit loud, a loses cool a little bit, seems to emerge here. I agree, but I think it's red. It's red. 1968, the detective. Oh, sorry, got us jump in here. Cimarone Strip, the Wild Wild West, Flesh and Blood, Run for your. your life. Judd for the defense. Yeah, okay, the detective. Directed by Gordon Douglas, written by

Abby Mann. Yes. Curious feature film stars Frank Sinatra as the titular detective. Duval 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 I thought it was being sensitive. It now seems been 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. He's just cast. You know, I'm just exhausted by Frank Sinatra.

Really? He just, I'm just, 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 you're, 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. Okay.

Did you have a chance to meet the man? No, God, no. I used to have a- Punched you right in the nose for saying that. Yeah, exactly. I did have a nightmare where he beat me up in an elevator. No kidding. Yeah, and nobody helped me.

They were all cheering Frank on. 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 has definitely read. it's an interesting artifact popped in my Twilight Time Blu-ray for this.

As did I. 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 in it? 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

functional. A small part, and it's such an interesting thing that he could be a 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 the ninth build speaking part in Bullet. So interesting,

the way that he just chose parts and picked projects or hoped to get hired for things while we're doing all of this television. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe help me understand this

as somebody, you know, you get offered a lot of things. You don't do everything. But sometimes there's something that you really want, like the psychology. And 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. You think that's what it was? You know, you've all married four times, no children. So as we get into some of the more workaholic ways, it's like kids will put a real crimping those plans. 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, said, 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 through in this 1970s, he's got multiple projects. It's amazing how frequently he worked. So Bullet, while it is a legendary film, I don't think his work in it is legendary for the purposes of this exercise.

No. Red. 69 True Grit. Hold on. I've got to jump in here with CBS Playhouse, the Mod Squad, and five episodes of the FBI. I pointed 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, it makes true regret in 69. So he plays Ned Pepper, a very memorable part. Not a big part. Not a big part.

Famously, infamously, hated Henry Hathaway. They hated each other in this movie. He 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. I think the novel is one of the absolute classics of the 20th century.

Well, in the screenplay by Marguerite Roberts, Hughes very closely to the Charles Portis book, as does the Cohen'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 Duval's line. It's just great stuff. 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 needed I did not see every single episode okay true grit's red But, 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 Kahn.

He plays a... Remind me, what is he... Is he a man who's picked up on the side of the road? The DeValle character? Yeah, he's the father. No, he's a cop. He's the highway patrolman. He's the highway patrolman.

That's what it is. He's the highway patrolman who picks them up and brings them back to his house. And by the way, there's a little more of the story than Rip Torn couldn't make it. Do you know this story? Sherrod. So Rip Torn, Shirley Knight, and James Kahn rehearse for weeks in New York with Francis Ford Coppola. And then Coppola takes Shirley Knight and James Kahn 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 they're going out on the road and Copla has done. decided we're going to shoot, and I'm going to remain somewhat improvisatory about this. If I see something interesting, we're going to go there. If we don't have a definitive calendar, but we'll see you in Oglala 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 them to learn how to ride the motorcycle.

Well, the motorcycle gets stolen from out in front of Riptoll and Rip Torn's house. And Riptorn says, it's in my deal. You have to provide me with a motorcycle to learn. And Copeland says, well, we can't, you know, it's a low-budget movie. We can 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 Torin's mad about it and he says that wasn't the deal. And then they reach out to him and they wanted him to get his shoe and calf measured for the boots that he had to wear.

And Torin 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 Kahn recommends Robert DuVall because they had to be. 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 Duval. And they changed the history of movies, really. I mean, that's the first time Coppola meets Duval is working on this film. 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 it a yellow for this performance because of it becoming the first union with Coppola. We can yellow it. We're going to yellow it. 1970, MASH. This is his second film with Altman, and he plays Frank Burns, who is the detainee.

testable 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. Right. Like the unlikable kind of squirrelly heel who also gets the girl weirdly in hot lips. Um, perfectly fine performance. I think we, Frank Burns wouldn't mean anything to us. We're not for the TV show. I think the TV show kind of solidifies. Frank Bernd, 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, have 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. It's weird because the film itself is so full of ridiculousness. And Duval 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.

I agree. 1970, the Revolutionary. Now, I had never seen this movie. Speaking of Long Island, this comes from Paul Williams, a filmmaker, only made a handful of films. And what an interesting movie this is. It really is. Not entirely successful, I would say. I agree. But quite an interesting portrait of a revolutionary, played by John 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 like roving journey movie where he moves from place to place. And he does eventually make a connection with Duval's character, who is this sort of zealate, you know, sort of like hard, seemingly far left figure attempting to, you know, insight true revolution. I found Duval's performance to be a little anonymous in this movie, because it's very much in the psychology of John Voight, who's somewhere between hyper-intellectualized and also wishy-washy at the same time. Right. Interesting comment on the vagueness of the movements in that time.

I'm glad I watched it. I am, too. I was surprised that I didn't know anything about it. It's like, how does a movie with John Voix 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. John Voitz's very good in it.

He is very good. And Duval playing this character of Desparred, 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, it's not a green, but I'm glad I watched it.

I am too. I want to see the rest of Williams's movies. Tarantino and 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

also features John Boyt, 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'm not seeing those films. I'd like to check them out. I've seen Dealing, though, long time. Try to search that out again. The Revolutionary probably red. Yeah. This is an interesting one.

THX-1138. Isn't Lawman first? Maybe I have the winner. I have THX here, but you want to talk to the Lawman? Sure, it's terrible. Michael Winner's a terrible director. Yes, from the visionary who brought you Death Wish comes a bad Western. He was terrible then.

He was always terrible and apparently a terrible person to... Yeah, people say he was not a nice man. written by Gerald Wilson, who wrote some pretty good thrillers from that period, as I recall, novels, with Bert Lancaster and Lee Jacob. I got to tell you, I'm out on Lee Jacob. No kidding. I'm kind of out on Lee Jacob. It's pretty handbone. Good Lord.

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. 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 autorism. You know, all these insane zooms like 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' first movie. This is a critical movie in the history of science fiction. You see THX up on the screen. I don't guess you see that anymore, but you're used to for a while.

See THX on the screen. Robert DuVall was THX. He literally was. And he had met George Lucas because George Lucas was making a documentary about the making of the rain people. Of course. So again, if Rip Torn... Wow. Doesn't show up.

It was Duval's introduction to Coppola and Lucas. Is this Robert Duvall's only science fiction film? I think so. No, the sixth day with Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's right, 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 that's right. But this is real sci-fif.

I mean, this is kind of hardcore sci-fi. Yes. I mean, a very interesting movie, a very important movie, I think, to the New Hollywood in a lot of ways. It's a bit dull now when I look back at it. I didn't rewatch it in full for this. I did. I did rewatch it for this, yeah. Very different performance from him, as I recall, too, you know, because he also is very internal, very quiet, very measured.

Well, it's his first lead. Yeah. 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 his thesis project when he was at USC. And so then somebody gave him some money to turn it 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, that's Lucas's best film. 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.

I love Star Wars. Leave me alone. Okay. Have you gotten feedback on that? Yeah. What's it been like? I got to say, you know, No, split.

Oh, really? Oh, there's a real split. You've got, you've got trench run haters who've joined your side. I've got a lot of support from my take on the trench run. A lot of support. 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? Let's say yes.

Let's say yes, they are. THX Screenplay by George Lucas and Walter Merch Indeed Who was a sound man And the soundscape in THX is Wild Yeah

You can just I need to rewatch this You should just listen to it And the soundscape is really something I'm waiting on the 4K for this to be honest with you Where is that? I don't know where the 4K is I actually had to replace my disc was

corrupted. I had to get a new disc. Something was wrong with it. That's THXian. 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 derattled rattlesnake in the mailbox of the district attorney and he actually got bit by the rattlesnake. I mean, the Synanon has an ugly history, but they're the extras in THX.

Yeah, there was a documentary about Synanon about a couple years ago on HBO 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. Essential. 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 you know, Vito and Sunny but Clemenza and Tesio

and, you know, obviously Michael, these like explosive performers, behem 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. 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 Godfather's 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, who, 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. I've never ascribed that level of malevolence to Tom. Who's making that call? 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. I think there's another way to read it, which is that Vito sends him out and says, take care of it. Could be. And Tom takes care of him. And John Marley says, oh! The best.

When Sonny dies, the choice, this is a screenwriter's choice, that Tom is the one to tell the Don. Right. 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.

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 this, 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, you know, he was a good friend of his and we brought him in because he was good at book learning. There would have been more. Right. There's not a lot there in the movie. I think there's more in the book. I've not read the book. I've not read the book. I've not read the

book. It's not good. 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 Hagan is going into the Hall of Fame in some former fashion. The question is once, twice, I don't know. He's absolutely going. Do you want to have a whole Godfather discussion now? There's a lot of work between two, so why don't we just talk to now? Okay. I'm a little loud on two. I just said this on a show. I just said this on the, on a recent Star Wars episode. I was like two has flaws. I'm a little out on two.

For one thing, so I watched both of these with Carrie. Can I tell you this story? This is a good place to do it, 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's 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. old country, then we moved to the Godfather film, then we moved to the Michael section. The first time you saw it. You saw it in my way. Oh, interesting. It was 1977, so I would have been 12 years old. Okay.

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 plays. like a mini-series 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? There's 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 God. 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 Duvaldraft. 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 don't remember nothing. Oh, man. So, you know, I need to get Carrie into it.

get some testing. 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. So we watched the Godfather, and the next night we watched the Godfather part two. And we were both a little lukewarm on Godfather Part 2. 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 it's 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. And I like the De Niro section more than the Michael's section in part two because I just don't find following Michael's joyless churning through his job.

Yeah. Any fun. Well, it's a true descent into evil, though. I mean, it is really. how much of a dissent it is. He seems kind of there when the movie starts. That's fair. That's well, I mean, what he does to Frato is the totalizing.

And here's something that'll piss off everybody I know. I don't think Lee Strasberg's that good. Oh, really? I don't think he's that good. Oh, that I can't agree with. I really like it in the film. Here's another thing. I got to 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. Well, that's a fact. 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 it's not wrong, but I would argue that that's a key theme of the movie. 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. you're not wrong. So you're saying we should delete the Godfather films no one should see them they're terrible? 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. There's a mastery of the film language there that's just undeniable.

Yep. John Cazal, for me, is MVP in that, in part two. and if you want to green Duvall for the godfathers can we do that we just we'll give him a green for tom hagen what does tom say i was always loyal to you michael you know when he it's the best thing he has in two for the most part he's just sitting there telling k to you know chill out yeah

but that moment is so very powerful it's great uh yeah i would i would choose one over two um if i had to choose both because i love the movie more and i think he has a little bit more to do has a little bit more complexity. You mentioned he gets that scene where he gets to talk to the Don. So I'll say we'll do two as the green. But if you want to count it as the saga, and then, you know, we can also talk about the fact that he's not in three. 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, it's 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 going to, I'm going to make

this is going to be great. It doesn't matter who it is. It's like actually it does matter. And you've killed off James. Right. 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 Duval on set. So famously, Duval felt that he was not getting the quote he should have gotten to appear in Godfather's three, 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... That's another part of my problem with two, by the way. The Richard Castellano not coming back. Clemenza is... No, Gazzo's great. I love Pentangeli, though. That's one of my favorite characters. 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. It's really... I mean, I understand maybe that wasn't Coppola's hubris. Maybe that was Richard Castellano's hubris. 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. Great. This episode is brought to you by Apple and AT&T. Scroll long enough, and you'll hear it all. miracle diets, fitness trends, you name it. But with iPhone and Apple Watch, you get meaningful insights from a very trusted source, your body. You can track sleep quality, cardio fitness, and more, then unpack all the information in the health app on iPhone to get a picture of your overall health.

These health insights are developed with clinical experts from start to finish. Find out more at apple.com slash health. Apple Watch is not a medical device and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice. The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, which is the feature film debut of Philip Kaufman. San Francisco filmmaker again. We're in with the San Francisco guys. Yes.

And this is an Old West Heist movie starring Duval as Jesse James. Now, I haven't seen this in a minute. I watched it. Was it your first time seeing it? It was. What did you think? One of those hippie westerns, you know. Just like, we don't need to cut these guys hair.

That's how they would have worn it in the Old West. He gets a lot of work in their revisionist Westerns in the 70s. Yeah. It's all right. It's all right. Yeah. His take on Jesse James is, well, he plays him like pretty ignorant, right? Pretty ignorant type, which is, you know, probably.

I feel like that's the accurate. I think that's probably true of the reality. Yeah. Even though he sometimes has portrayed as much slicker and more. more debonair in a way. Yeah, I think the movie is kind of interesting. It's fascinating that he, this run of movies that he makes in 1973.

I don't know how much time we can spend on all of them, but I will say Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid is read. 1973 Tomorrow, complete discovery for me. Had never heard of this movie. This is a Horton Foot, wrote it. Based on a William Faulkner story. I had not, which I had not read. And Duval plays a,

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 Fudd and Robert Duvall wanted it to seemingly. 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 Duval was part of it. He might have been. I watched this on Tubal. Tube? It might have been canopy. Canopy. Canopy. And I was, it felt like him channeling Boo Radley in some ways, even though he is, you know, 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. 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 They'd take something from Jackson Fentry, the character that Duval plays here. You know, this was Duval's favorite of all of the movies. This was his favorite. I think it's superb, and I think more people should know it. Now, do you think this is, I'd like to put a discovery in, you know. I think it's green.

I'm going to say yellow for the time being. Fair enough. I don't know how many truly legendary parts he has. Actually, 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 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. 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. I had seen it before, I think maybe fast. Bassett's 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 it on Canopy. It's a good quality transfer on canopy. It is. It looks good. If you guys haven't seen this, you should check it out. It's really good.

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 Sturgis. Duval plays... Written by Elmore Leonard. That's right, based on his novel, right? I don't know that it is. It may be an original screenplay, yeah.

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. Yeah. So that he can pause the reclamation movement that he's trying to organize. Clinis who 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 new ones. Everything about it is a little surprising

that it's not better than it is. Yeah. that you've got Eastwood as the hero and Duval as the bad guy and written by Elmore Leonard and directed by John Sturgis, who'd 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 Sturges was perhaps drunk on set a lot. Yeah, I watched some of the extras. It's only a few years after Magnificent 7, though. I know. I know. And, you know, I don't know.

It's funny that it just felt real flabby to me. Don Stroud, who's in the movie. I saw an interview with him talking about the film, and 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. And this is in the aftermath of play Misty for me. He had started making film.

And he makes breezy one year later. So he's got a bug. fire Philip Kaufman off of Outlawed Josie Wales a couple of years after this. That's right. Clearly Eastwood had gotten the point where he was particular about the way these things were being put together. 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? I think it's 4K. Is it 4K? I hope. From the director, John Flynn, written by Flynn, but with a polished by Walter Hill. who come up again here, and is based on a Richard Stark novel, it's a Parker movie,

and is it the best Parker movie? No, it's maybe not the best Parker movie. You're at Point Blank? I'm going to say point blank is. Well, look, there's not Parker. It's Earl Macklin, but it is Parker. 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. Yes. It's a fussy exploitation movie but is really good.

I was knocked out. I was knocked out by the outfit. I was really, really thrilled with the outfit. 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 it. Is it a heist? Isn't that what Parker's always doing? 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 I'll recommend this to anybody who likes this podcast

and just be like, this is a really good 70s crime movie. Yeah. Is it a Hall of Fame movie? I don't really know. In terms of the act that we're doing here? I watched it with the nanny. I mentioned the nanny to you. She was just totally transported.

She was thrilled by the movie. You're like, that's fantastic. Was this before or after in the realm of the census? It was before. Okay. Maybe that has curdled. It primed her for what was coming next. I'll yellow it just because I got affection for this movie.

You're thinking green? I'm thinking green, but let's make it. You went into this act thinking we're going to make the outfit green? I didn't, no, no, no, no. I try, you know, I try to stay supple. 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. And Eddie Egan's in both movies, too. He is indeed. Legendary slash infamous New York City cop,

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 Duval's good. I think it's a good performance, but the movie felt a bit uneven to me. Not to mention the racism. I mean, it had accusations of racism at the time. And then you watch it, you're like, oh, no, it's really racist.

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. Yeah, perhaps. 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. But it's also just not as, I mean, there's the set piece with Duval 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, 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.

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. This starts his collaboration with Tom Grice. 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 Duvold. 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 Duval in it or barely remember him in it. 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 fatal 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. Yeah. Very dull for the... I mean, this period of time, these films, this is my favorite thing.

Yeah. In the known universe, crime movies in the 1970s, that's it. Yeah. This movie stinks. Tom Greys, the father, by the way of John Grice, who we know from the White Lotus and other things as well. So he starts a collaboration with Duval that extends over a few movies. So clearly they were buddies.

And like I say, I just think they both did better work elsewhere. In 1974, he has a very small part, but a critical part in the conversation where he plays, quote, the director, person who receives some critical information near the end of the film. Yeah. Quite chilling. Yeah. You know, a perfect movie. I'm not sure it's like necessary to the canon of Duval. Oh, no.

It's a purely a came in favor. Yeah. Yeah. So we can read the conversation. The Godfather Part 2 has a green of sorts. An honorary green. 1970, you have Killer Elite. I haven't seen the Killer Elite in a minute.

This is a Sam Peckinpaw movie in which he is reunited with James Kahn. And as I recall, this is an extremely violent, cynical, mean movie. Written by Mark Norman and Sterling Sillifant, 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 Peck and Paul.

It's like he kind of falls off a... Well, he was really struggling at this time in his life. A lot of drinking drugs at this time. It's not a strong movie. No. It was remade in the 2010s similarly mean-spirited vehicle, which I think featured Jason Statham. Does that sound right? Clive Owen, Robert De Niro.

It's Robert DeNiro in the Killer Elite remake? I believe he is. Okay. That's read. 1975 breakout. This is the first time I ever saw Robert Duvall. Really? In a movie theater.

Okay. I was 10 years old. Interesting way to be introduced. 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. I did not know that. There was a big marketing campaign. We're going to put it in 1,500. We're just going to clobber them on the first weekend. And then we'll let him sort out the bodies after that.

And apparently, breakout was the first movie to ever do that. It seemed to do okay. made $16 million in 1975. Bronson was still a big star. He was a big star. He's of course opposite his wife, Jill Ireland, and... Does he always was? Yes. And Duval, I believe that was in every contract that he signed from henceforth.

Directed by Tom Grice. That's right. Reunion with Gris and Duval plays a wrongfully imprisoned man in Mexico and a CIA operation that attempts to extract him from this. And kind of a weird movie. Tonally, like Bronson is cracking a lot of jokes. Yeah, there's some weird, like,

comic aside. It's strange to try to put him in a little more comic. Yeah, that's not really his speed. But I have to say, as a 10-year-old, there's a moment where Duval 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. I've often wondered if Tarantino was citing this in the Kill Bill sequence where the bride is buried. Breakout is red. 1976, the Eagle has landed. Robert Duval plays Colonel Rattle, who is a leader for the Third Reich. And he plays a...

A Nazi doing a German accent. Yeah, German accent. I patch. I patch, that's right. I don't believe any other actors are attempting a German accent in the film. Yeah, it is a bit strange. Every other Hector in the film was British using their natural accent. Brits are allowed to be Brits, I guess, but we have to do a German accent.

I get a huge kick out of that. This one is a little disappointing. I hadn't seen this before, and I fired it up. I think maybe the night that he passed and won a little more from it. Appreciate it 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. 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? Screenplayed by Tom Mankowitz, who was part of the Mankowitz family based on the book by Jack Higgins. It's a fun watch in a sense. World War II programmer. Yeah. Great cast. Great cast. And yeah, Duvall's up for it.

You know, the German accent is, he's not embarrassing himself with the accent. It's, he's viable in the film. How do you feel about Donald Sutherland's Irish accent? Less sure of myself, but God bless him. Nice to see Jenny Agatha here. Sure. Always. Always.

see her. It's always nice. That's red. The Eagle has landed. The 7% solution. A movie I've always wanted to see. For years, one of those movies, it was like, one of these days, I'm going to pop this in and I'm going to love it. Now, I wish that I loved it and I didn't love it. No, 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 an airport book? Yeah, it was Nicholas Meyer's book. And it was a big, like one of the, one of the, one of the, the, one

the books you pick up in the airport and it was a really successful book and they rushed it in production and like we're going to capitalize off of the success of this book. The casting of Robert Duval as Dr. Watson is unexpected. It's Nicole Williamson's movie. I mean, as it should be. It should be Holmes's movie and Nicole Williamson is an interesting Holmes, I think. He has. I think Duval is fine in the film. I do too. To me it's really more of a pacing and story. story issue. 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. Yeah. It's an odd one. You know, Alan Arkin plays Sigmund Freud in the film. Vanessa Redgrave is in the movie. Olivier is

in the movie. Is Moriarty? 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. No, and he keeps protesting that he's not and he's not. Samantha Egger, my beloved, oh my God, has such a crush on her. She plays Duval's wife, Mary. This should have been my favorite movie.

It's, you know, sometimes it just doesn't fire up. Red for the 7% solution. 1976, the same year, Network. Duval plays Frank Hackett. Instant Green, of course. Of course. just one of my single favorite performances in movie history. That was the Hatchet Man for the network corporate division.

Have you read Dave Itzkov's book? Sure have. It's a really good read. It's funny how little DeValle 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 Duvold being in the movie Kind of like can you believe This is Robert Duvold? He loves him though He loves him He loves that performance The book that you're referring to

It's 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 you know Ruddy doesn't count anymore scene

you know the big sequence with William Holden and Fay Dunaway and Duval in Duval's office after we get the ratings for Howard Beale I just I could watch it a hundred times in a row 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. 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 you consider the character he plays in tomorrow it's just how is it the same guy

or opposites totally he's done some of the best paper acting I've ever seen where he's handed a piece of paper and he starts hating the piece of paper all these little choices that he makes in that scene I love so much

Network definitely agreed 1977 the greatest I've been aware of this for a while I only watched Robert De Niro or Robert Deval's scenes in this movie well you didn't watch much

he's not in it very much this is Muhammad Ali making his very own biopic about his own life. So bizarre. It's such a bizarre artifact. It's really weird. Would you ever do this for yourself? 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.

Yeah. And he's 35 and he's already a little punchy, right? Yeah. And you could, it's not like he's, it's almost like right before the, action, he says, I went something like this. It's not like he's really in it. It's like he's remembering a story that happened to him.

Yeah. It's a very odd movie. Is this Tom Gris as well? It is. Screenplay by Ringlardner Jr. Who wrote MASH. That's right. Duval plays Bill McDonald, who was a promoter,

and he promoted it was the first list in fight. Yeah. 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 Duval for one scene where he fights back against Ali.

And then in one scene later, he decides, ah, actually, it'll be all right. Just do it, do it, 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. 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. You big Whitney Houston guy? Sure. We didn't like Whitney Houston. Great. 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers

is a reunion with Philip Kaufman. He shows up for one scene. Should we... Where does we're not the jet set come in? Well, a good point. Let's talk about that. I haven't seen it. You can't see it.

Nobody can see it. So We're Not the Jet Set is the first film that Duval directs. It's a documentary about rodeo men? So when he and James Kahn were in Oglala 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 claimed that he was shooting him in the style of a Ken Lodont.

movie. So he was aware of Ken Loach. He has talked about Ken Loach over the years. I saw him cite him multiple times. Yeah. So that's and it took him years to do. He was doing it with his wife at the time. They eventually put this movie together. Uh, and then he and his wife got divorced and she took the movie and it hasn't been seen since. Wow. Yeah. Well, that's too bad. I would really like to see it. Apparently it's pretty good. Yeah, that's a shame. Hopefully they find a way to put that back out in the world. That's not going to go in though because 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 movie is to have shown up to see invasion of the body satras and Robert Duval shows up for 30 seconds and then vanishes. They had decided, Philip Kaufman had decided that he was the first. The character you're seeing is. The first snatched body. Yes. Something's 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. Right. That's red, though. 1978, the Betsy had never seen it before.

Bored to tears, Tracy. So terrible. Bored to tears. I was really kind of looking forward to it. I thought it was going to be like camp, like a like a like a, like a, like a, uh, uh, uh, Russ Meyer, Valley of the Dolls. I thought there was going to be kind of a camp element. It does kind of have some of those qualities.

You know, it's directed by Daniel Petrie, who made our beloved life cards 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. Early Tommy Lee Jones. Lawrence Olivier. A little miscast, I think, Tommy Lee Jones.

Yeah. Lawrence Olivier and Duval chopping it up. Yeah. Catherine Ross. So boring. So hard to watch. Anyway, it's red. 1979 apocalypse now.

Hold on. We've got to jump in with. Ike, the war years. He goes back to TV for the first time. Did you watch this? I did not watch. You can't. It's not available.

I couldn't find it either. I would like to see this. Yeah, directed by Boris Segal and Melville Shavellson, who also wrote the screenplay. And I guess it's about Eisenhower's relationship. to the secretary.

I'm talking out my ass. The character played by Lee Remick. Okay. But I don't know. I've seen it. A Remick reunion after the detective. Yeah, right. God loved Lee Arremick and the detective. 1979 Apocalypse now.

He plays Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore. It's a similarly electrifying scene. It's fantastic. I've never understood what... Duvall had a problem with it, right? the scene, he felt some stuff was cut out. Well, isn't that the story of apocalypse now? Yeah.

How much was cut out of that film? 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. I don't read it that way at all. He admired the movie, but he was always a little angry about the cut. 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. Yeah. I think he's 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 was, I'm blown away by it.

And I think what that character does, the kind of delusional rock and roll energy that he brings to it with the surfing and 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 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? two, three, four, 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've got to move a little quicker through this. 1979, the Great Santini. Directed and written by Louis John Carlino, based on the book by the great Pat Conroy. I re-watched 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 of the family, Blythe Danner, Michael O'Keefe, Lisa Jane Persky, are great. 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 the line is being crossed with Dad. The great performances. I mean, it's always been true, though. The Beast story kind of kills it as a movie a little bit. Utterly bizarre. Yeah. Where Michael O'Keefe's character

has a sort of, you know, a secondary experience of a friend played out. What's the actor's name? Stan Shaw. Stan Shaw. Who's a good actor, but that character is a little oddly written. Yeah.

And even the way that 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 Duval'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 Gross part? Does he the director of this? It is. It is. It's Robert Tenero.

John Gregory Dunn and Joan Didion based on Dunn's book. Is it their first screenplay together? 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.

That version probably would have spoken to me a little bit more. 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 Elroy. This is going to be the Black Dahlia.

And then you find out, oh, it's not really even about that. That's 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. doesn't go in, but at the time, there was a real feature in, like, I think De Niro and Duval were held up as like, these are our two best working these days. Yeah, I think it's a movie that I probably watch with a lot of anticipation and never revisited.

I'll say it's a red. Yeah. The pursuit of D.B. Cooper, loosely based on the true story of D.B. Cooper, the airplane hijacker, who vanished into the thin air. Treat Williams plays D.B. Cooper. Robert Duvall plays. Is he a police officer or an investment? Investigator, insurance investigator, seeking out D.B. Cooper. Catherine Harold. Whom I love.

And it's very good in this, actually. And she and Duval are quite good together. Did you revisit this? I did. So let me tell you quickly some tortured history about this movie. Robert Mulligan, the original director, who directed, of course, To Kill a Mockingburn. 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. Yes. The stunts are spectacular. Whatever Mulligan was doing, that rapid scene is fantastic. It's really good. I agree. It's funny, we didn't mention this when we spoke with a gambler on yesterday's

part of the Spottiswood also edited that movie. He edited Pat Garrett and Billy the kid. You know, he went on to be a, you know, 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 is some stuff going on there. Always like Tree Williams.

Always wanted a little bit more for Tree Williams. I think he's a very talented actor. I agree entirely. But this is read, unfortunately. 1983, Tender Mercies. This is the film for which Duval 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 Duval 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? Absolutely. Totally green. Absolutely. And great movie. In fact, you guys did that episode recently where you played your. Oscar Swapo game. Oh, yeah.

I'm going to play one here. Okay. I'm going to give the Academy Award for Best Picture to Tender Mercies over Terms of Endearment. 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, Duval insisted on singing all the songs himself, and good that he did.

It gives them a movie a lot more texture and authenticity. It's a very good film. We've 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. Here we go. 1984, the Stone Boy.

What's that? The Stone Boy is directed by Christopher Kane, who is Dean Kane's father. Dean Kane 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. done. And Duval and Glenn Close play the parents of these boys. And Duval's wife at the time, Gail Young's, who is John Savage's sister. And he, Duval had done American Buffalo on Broadway with John Savage. So there's a relationship there. Gail Yorgs is also in the movie. Stoneboy is close to something really good. I don't think it's.

gets there. It's got some thematic challenges, but it's close to something good. And really with tender, 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 Stoneboy, 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. I think so. I mean, I think Taylor Sheridan is operating in that space. Taylor Sheridan, very much operating in that space. I think it's a real shame. And I, I don't want to, as a good old, hearty, 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, yeah, the movies for sure. And you're in Oklahoma, so you know from what you speak. And Duval played Texans and men from Louisiana.

And he was very well known for that. And he kind of leaned in it a lot in the last 20 years of his career, to the point of maybe a little bit of parity, I think, at times. but um and yet this family is montana or Wyoming and so he's a rural guy he's wearing a gimmie 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 okay well maybe i should check it out uh i assume it's not going in here not going in he's in the natural in 1984 i think we've skipped angelo my love 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 the scripted. Yeah, yeah. I guess largely improvised.

Largely improvised. But narrative. And it's about the, is it the Romani people? Yeah. And I'm fascinated by why he wanted to make this movie. He apparently overheard a conversation. He was working in New York and he overheard a conversation. lover's quarrel and then he looks over and he finds that the guy engaged in lover's 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? I haven't. It's worth seeing. It's just such an, I mean, Every 10 years, he's like, I'm going to do something different. A really idiosyncratic choice. Yeah.

But it is a very watchable movie. I don't know how the Romani community feels about Robert Duvall being the one who's essentially telling their story. But, and there are some Romani directors of note who would probably like to have the kind of imprint that Robert Duval has. But it's not a bad movie. Where was it available? Where did you see it? It was a rewatch for me. Oh, wow.

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. Okay. I'll have to dig into that. I don't think it's going in. I agree with you.

1984 The Natural. He plays Max Mercy, the sports writer, who's darned curious about Hobbes's past. Good performance. Good movie. I think I mentioned when we did the Redford draft about Duval going on Letterman. and Letterman's suggesting this was a great movie and Devolve kind of shrugged and said, cute at best.

Yeah, I mean, we mentioned it then too. Never one of my personal favorites. Biggest box office hit he had since apocalypse now. Right. Notable, but a very supporting part. Yeah. I'll say red to the natural. What do you say? Yeah, I say red.

Let's get Harry sounded good, but I didn't see it. 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 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 hairy.

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 treasurer, their trip to get Harry, and then he decides he's a bit of a gun nut, and he decides he wants to go along. Okay. And then they advertise for a mercenary who's going to help them, and Duval 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. Yeah. 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 Bucie. has his accident and scrambles his

eggs, but he's still really good. And, of course, the drive-ins were done in 1986. Well, it seems to be trying to play in that kind of missing in action zone. Very much. Invasion USA. I think a big hit in the video stores. Okay, because it's box office is $140,000, which ain't very good.

But it's a Stewart Rosenberg movie? It's got to put, you know... He took his name off it. Rosenberg took his name off. It is directed by Alan Smithy. No kidding. Yeah. That's so interesting.

You know who wrote the story of this movie? Sam Fuller. Yeah, that's right. Sam Fuller wrote the story. Also notable that one of the guys going down to Get Harry is Glenn Fry. Oh, sure. Of Eagle's fame. Also, Thomas F. Wilson from Back to the Future, Biff and Rick Roscovic coming off of Top Gun.

I don't know. It's kind of an inch. Mark Harmon? Anyway, I haven't seen Let's Get Harry. It's not going in. Belizare the Cajun? Yeah, Belizier the Cajun. Belisare.

Belisair. 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 Young's at the time, his wife at the time, Gail Young's, the female lead in the movie. Belizera is pretty good. It's, uh, uh, you wish there was a bit more, uh, Cajun representation in front of the camera, Will Patton and, uh, uh, Armand De Santi, uh, doing, doing some accents. But it's nice that Belizzer isn't an ass kicker. It's not, not like Armand DeSanti is like this ass kicking action hero. He's more like a brayer rabbit character. Uh, he's the medicine man locally. It's, uh, not bad.

I wish it looked better. I wish they'd had a little more budget. The way it 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. Look at you. Yeah.

And you, what will you famously not watch? Anything. You'll watch Belizear the Cajun for a second time. We're going to get something I will not watch. Okay, interesting. 1986, the light ship. Also missed out on this one. Also a rewatch.

Sawed in the movie theaters in 1986. directed by Yerzi Skolomowski, the great Polish director. Oh, of course. Screenplayed by William May and David Taylor based on a German novella by Siegfried Lenz. The poster for this movie said, good versus evil, life versus death, Robert Duvall versus Klaus Maria Brandauer. That's how they advertise the movie. And as you mentioned, one of your favorites there. I mean, that's how esteemed he was, you know, as an actor that that that was going to,

to 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 production, so it made absolutely no money. Duval 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. It does not work. I like to you doing some voice work there. Thank you for that. early performances from William Forsyth and Arles 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, Duval and his two accomplices. And it turns out their criminals and their criminal things happen. It's not a good film. Can I tell you something? Yeah. 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 read. Hotel Colonial, I did dip my toes into this story. Oh, my God. What in God's name is this film? Okay, directed by Sinzia T.H. Torini. Screenplay by Enzo Montalioni, Sinzia T.H. Terini, Robert Katz, and Ira Barmac, is totally bad shit movie.

I'm actually going to quote from my own letterboxed comments. Please do. John Savage, wearing white khakis, explores the slums, rivers, and jungles of Columbia 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 Pino-Dinagio score.

It's a totally bat-shit movie. I do not know what anybody was thinking when they made this thing. As you mentioned, John Savage obviously related to Duval's wife at the time. Yeah. And giving a very bewildered performance, I'll say. He's got one emotion the entire film. Duval having the time of his life. Not sure I would have cast him as an Argentinian man again.

You maybe didn't see the twist at the end. Yeah. There's a twist. And when it happens, it's the only reason you didn't see it coming. It's because it's so stupid. You're like, they couldn't possibly expect me to swallow this. It's not good. Not going in.

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 Duval's performance is very good. This is a very famous scene in the movie, the Two Bulls story, that he's.

tells it 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 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 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. 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. I did. It's an excellent title for a film. 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 Donoflora 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.

Oh, nice. And they made this movie together, Andy Garcia, Lou Diamond Phillips, early fat, Kevin Spacey. Careful. It's thrilled. 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 not great. Duval is doing some pretty standard stuff here. Got it. Let's make that red. 1990 Days of Thunder. I think this will be the film that many people who listened to this podcast first saw Robert Duval in.

Have we skipped The Handmaid's Tale? I had that coming right after Days of Thunder. Have we skipped Lonesome Dove? We have. Let's talk about Loansome. Dove. It's in. It's green.

I agree that it's green. This is the rare... Is Lonesome Dove the greatest miniseries in the history of television? Yes. Is there more you want to say about Gus and what Duval does in that series? 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's 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 Duval is really something. Yeah, he and Tommy Lee together. Duval'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 one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. How much time do we have? How are we on time? Not very good. We have eight greens. We have like 50 movies. We're going to go more quickly. Days of Thunder, you know, not one of my Tony Scott movies. I'm a Tony Scott aficionado. I'm a huge fan of his work. Feels like a mascot movie for this channel.

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. Duval 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. I mean, right, I think it's maybe, when you look over his filmography, I think maybe it's his first big paycheck, big paycheck. 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.

I watched it for the first time for this. No kidding. It's not my... Didn't like it? It's fine. It's not my flavor. Yeah. Okay, 1990 the hand aids to.

F-1 sure owes a lot to Days of Thunder. Oh, no kidding. I mean, it knows, well, yeah, I mean, Jerry Bruckheimer. Same producer. 1990, The Handmaid's Tale. It's a turkey. Yeah. 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. It was like, go to Margaret Atwood and have her make the changes. Oh, interesting. Anyway, it just wound up in a whole kind of script hell. It's, it's a mess. It's just a mess. It's a shame. 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 just played Commander, a critical character in the... And he's good. film. Again, he's always good. It's a mess of a movie. 1991, Martha Coolidge's Rambling Rose. Really good. Have you seen it? I have seen it. It's Laura Dern's first true star part? I was trying to think about that. I think it's after smooth talk.

You're right. It is after smooth talk. But one of her best performances, Duval is also terrific in this movie. It's a kind of patriarch. I think his character's name is Daddy. 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 the Laura Dern Hall of Fame. I don't know if it would go in the Robert Durr, Robert Duval Hall of Fame. I agree. Written by Calder Willingham who wrote The Graduate. Oh. Yeah. I did not know that.

Yeah. Based on a novel of his. I recommend this movie, but not for the Duval Hall. 91 Convicts haven't seen it. Horton Foot. Horton Foot joint. Robert Duval, James Earl Jones, Lucas Haas. really good.

It doesn't, its origins are in the theater. It's directed by Peter Masterson. And it feels like a theater piece. But Duval, doing a cantankerous southern guy, finds some new colors. It's like he's not just trotting out

standard issue, cantankerous southern guy. You find some colors in there that he doesn't normally. James Earl Jones, always great. It's worth a watch. Won't be the last time they come together. Yeah. That's going to be a red.

1992 newsies. You've finally hit on one I haven't seen. No kidding. Never seen newsies. 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 that much loved by many millennials and... A bomb at the time, right? 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. Okay.

It's got energy. It's got zest. 1992 The Plague, I haven't seen this film. Another Argentinian production. Yeah, directed by Luis Puzzo, 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... You watched this.

I did. It's such a serious slog. There's a lot of, like, wailing on the soundtrack. It's hyper-serious. Self-serious. William Hurt, Ravel Julia reunited from Kiss the Spider-Wan

the Sondrine Bonner, who was William Hurt's wife at the time, Duval, and a lot of restatement of Camus philosophy doesn't work. Right.

1993 falling down. You're skipping Stalin, 1992. TV movie. I watched it. TV miniseries. 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. It's not nothing. 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 Zigmund. Oh.

And co-stars, Julia Ormond, Joan Plaright, Jerome Crabe. 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. Very important for America to tell Stalin's story. He was 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?

Duval's really extraordinary, and 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 Duval in it. And Duval got asked to play a lot of Russian characters after. After he did it. He's very good in it.

You wish the whole enterprise were better. It's worth watch. I don't know when I'm going to watch that, but I'm going to think about it. It's not going in. No. 1993 falling down. I watched this for the first time in preparation for this draft. Film I've seen at least a dozen times in my life.

Wow. It was on cable all the time when I was a kid. Wow. And to a young mind, very transgressive work of art. looking back, kind of a dumb movie. 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. Yeah, I mean,

in no small part because of Duval's character who plays, it's kind of the most ordinary thing about the movie. Yeah, he's great. He's very good.

And as like a, once again, playing a kind of weathered LAPD detective. The opening moments of the movie, I think are like 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 psychology or sociology about how communities operate. It's also like, why is this movie being seen through the eyes of like a middle-aged white guy? But I've seen it many times. Not to mention, you've got Lois Smith, Barbara Hershey, Amy Morton, Rachel T. Cotene, you've got these great actresses in this thing and they're given nothing to. Barbara

Hershey's given nothing to do. Yeah. Didn't even remember she was in it. Falling Downs Red. Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. Never seen it. I've seen it. Starts in association with Randa Haynes, which she produced a couple of other things he's in. It's the, again,

is an odd period of casting where he could play a Cuban man. That's right. It's Latino for sure. 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.

good work. He's got, Richard Harris has a couple of really heartbreaking scenes in wrestling or understanding. I didn't rewatch it for this. I remember from original, but not going in. That's read. Geronimo, an American legend. He plays Al-Seber, a kind of unfortunate figure in American history. I didn't re-watch this movie. I have seen it, Walter Hill's portrait of the Native American hero and resistor.

I don't, for Duval purposes, I'm not sure. It's an interesting movie. It's a... It's not terribly insensitive, as I recall, to the legend of Geronimo. But they sure make claims that it's somewhat the story of Geronimo,

seen from Geronimo's perspective. It's like, it's not really. A lot of white guys, yeah. There's a lot of Jason Patrick and Matt Damon talking about stuff. Yeah. And it was sold on that, too. I mean, despite the poster,

like, if you 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 Duval is very good in it, though. There are likable

things about this movie. Some likable performances. Screenplay by the Keps, David and Stephen. But there's also like a physical fight between Michael Keaton and Glenn Close. It's like, this is stupid. 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, you know, folks from 300 years ago, you pretty much buy him as somebody running the New York Post or running the New York Daily News. There is so much in the paper that is lifted from the front page. No credit is paid at the front page. Yeah.

That's a shame. 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, right, the, the, they wrote the movie after the song was a hit.

I saw it at the time. I made no impression on me whatsoever. Red. The stars fell on Henrietta. I haven't seen this one. 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 Duval worked together that becomes an important collaboration. It's not bad. Duval is doing something

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. 1995, The Scarlet Letter. I saw that you watched this for the first time. Just yesterday.

This movie is directed by Roland Jaffe. And stars at a very critical time in her career, Demi Moore. And it has the line, God, how I've wanted to poke you. Which is, I don't think, in the book. Look. We've got Hawthorne here. Let's bring him in. Nathaniel, was that in the original text?

I've seen that Gary Oldman has stepped out in some defense of this movie, saying, yeah, I mean, I know it was a big bomb, but there's some good work in there. I watched it. I watched it when it was released. It's incredibly dull and overdrawn. 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. That's right.

Just look at this episode. You know, we're doing our best. Exactly. The Scarletters read Slingblade. 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. Duval plays a critical part. He had a kind of, I seem like a godfather kind of relationship with Billy Bob. I didn't revisit for this episode, but I remember him having like a critical but modest part in the movie. That's my recollection. Carl's dad. I don't think it's going in the Hall of Fame.

I don't either. 1996, a family thing. I watched that just the other night for this. I saw this when it came out. 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. Richard Pierce. Irma P. Hall, yeah. And written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson. Yes. It gets a little impatient or something midway through. and plot-y 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 a Hall of Fame. Family Thing is Red. 1996 Phenomenon? Didn't see it, haven't seen it. We're going to start to hit a patch here pretty soon

where I haven't seen much. I mean, I didn't revisit this movie. I saw this movie in movie theaters when it was released. It was in the re-boom 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 was sort of like a father figure to him and kind of protects him and believes him through this big change of this happening in this small town, kind of trading on some of his folksy appeal, directed by John Turtle Tau, 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 one. Before we give to the Apostle, 1996, the man who captured Eichmann. Yes. I watched that.

HBO film? I think TNT. TNT. Okay. Directed by William Graham, written by Lionel, Chetwind. Where are you at on Eichmann? Pro, anti? I'm not submitting to the tyranny of your questions.

Duval plays Eichmann, and Arlis Howard plays the Mossade 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. Is he just, he, he, 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 Arles 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, is, does, 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 devolve great he's great at it where did you watch this apple tv paid for it on apple tv that's nice that you would patronize that fine company um Spotify will be getting my receipt 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 EF, the apostle EF.

Amazing movie. I just looked at it again yesterday. You know, 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. It's great for me. 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. So weird. Cannot remember Robert Duvall even being in it. It's so weird. It just doesn't even feel like an Altman movie.

I don't know. No. This is a paycheck movie. 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 Duval back since they had made match. But Duval was just always booked. He wanted him. to be in Nashville, but DeVal was just always

booked. Couldn't get him. Wow, who does he play in Nashville? That's interesting. I don't know. 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, plain, 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. There's a real lack of specificity about Travolta's character.

It's an odd thing, an odd choice. Especially what happens, given what happens him in the movie. Yeah, it's an odd choice that Zellian 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. Duvald 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 going to, we know that character is so. well, James Mason, Billy Bob Thornton in the judge coming out, right?

That's right. He's always George C. Scott in, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Inherit the wind? No, no, no, George C. Scott with Jimmy Stewart in, uh, uh, anatomy of murder. Anatomy of a murder, right? That, 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. 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 the case itself that feels kind of brave in its way, but also makes the movie feel very small. It's a huge Christmas movie produced by Scott Rudin. It was a big old fancy thing that kind of has slipped away completely from the culture. It was hard to find. I had to buy it on Apple TV again. I couldn't find it. Okay, it's red. Deep Impact.

Watch that for the first time. It's not my, it's not my flavor. 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.

It's well done. Yeah. It's well done. It's very sincere. 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 was, it wasn't bad. My favorite scene in the movie is Duval with our blind astronaut, the astronaut who's lost his sight. Oh, come on. See, we've gotten late enough, and I haven't had enough protein. I'm starting to lose my proper nouns. And Duval 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? Is it Ron Eldar? Ron Eldard. Thank you. Sorry, Ron.

Couldn't think of your name. Sorry, Ron. Deep Impact's not going in. I'll tell you what Gone in 60 Seconds is also not going in. Never seen it. I saw the original. I haven't seen the movie. Slick, stylish, kind of fun,

heist action movie from Dominic Sena, starring Nicholas Cage. Once again, Duval, 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. 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.

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? You know who made this movie? Roger Spottiswood. 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 is it possible?

Damn it, Tony. 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 of glory is. A shot at glory is a story about Scottish football. Oh. And it was apparently a

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 as sports movie as you'll ever find. Michael Keaton is also in the movie. He plays the owner of the team. and uh wow Brian Cox Cole Houser pretty good really good time

he looks good in that chapeau and you know on the letterbox some people were bitching about his accent and I gotta say go to hell okay

because let's hear some of your Scottish accent you're not only not going to 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 going to make a speech in their dialect, an emotional speech in their dialect, it's very challenging.

Don't take the part. Well, that's just it. Gene Hackman's not taking the part. There are a lot of actors of Duval's stature and time period who would not take on something like that. Or Stalin, or a lot of the other things

were talking about. He was pretty fearless in terms of the range that he was pursuing. Shot of Glory is not going in. 2002, another cop in another emotional drama John Q. Never seen it.

Denzel Washington movie. I think about a man who takes a hospital hostage because they can't get treatment for his son, as I recall. I haven't seen this in a while. Nick Cassavetes, John Cassavetes,

his 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. Do you watch this?

I did watch this last night. Curious film. Some interesting stuff. I didn't see this upon release Duval got married a fourth time to is an Argentinian woman

was Luciana Parato and Padrazo and he fell in love with the tango Yeah And so he wrote this movie About a hit man Who finds himself in Argentina

And kind of falls in love With the tango Very curiously He really followed his light 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. 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. I love that scene. where the guy makes a comment, the cop makes a comment about his face.

He goes back, cuts back to him. He goes back to him. He goes, he goes back. It's great stuff. Really good. 2003 gods and generals.

Now, I did watch this when it came out. This is one I won't watch. Because you feel this is Ted Turner polishing Confederate history. Yeah. Okay, understood. I don't have time for your revisionist trash. Mine? Not yours.

Ted Turner's are the people who made these movies. I don't want to watch these Confederate losers doing anything. This is kind of a sequel to Gettysburg. And he plays Robert E. Lee. Get the hell out of. Okay, it's red. 2003 secondhand lions. It was a movie about a 13-year-old boy who goes to stay with two great uncles,

played by Robert Duval and Michael Kane. And Haley Joel Osmond plays the 14-year-old boy coming off of an extradict. run of the Sixth Sense in AI. Yeah. And I remember this movie being perfectly charming. It is perfectly charming. There's a scene at the end with Josh Lucas, who I believe is the little boy grown up, right? He's the little boy grown up and he has an interaction with the sheriff played by Dennis Letts.

No kidding. My dad is in the movie Second Man Lines. There you go. Small part, day player. Wow. Did he ever meet Duval? He didn't. Okay.

He was sad about that. 2003 open range. Now we're talking. What an ass kicker. Yeah. Love this movie. It's just great. I was just great.

I know. If ever you doubted whether or not Kossner had some juice. And just I won't do it for you here, but just go look at the IMDB or the letterbox 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 of, I mean, it's just a gem. It's just great. 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. Right.

Really well staged. Good to devolved performance, playing a similar kind of mode of like 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. Yellow. Okay, yellow. Good idea. 2005 kicking and screaming, another movie. Haven't it?

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 Farrell a little bit, you know, a little too 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 forget, who does Duval play in this? I've certainly seen this movie. You've seen it. I've seen it, too. I don't remember Robert Duval in the movie.

Thank you for smoking. Does he play? a key leader in one of the tobacco companies. I feel like he might have... That sounds right. No, he plays the founder of the Academy for Tobacco Studies, a man named Captain. Not going in the Hall of Fame.

2007, Lucky You, on paper, should be one of the most important movies in my life. Haven't seen it. Set in the world of high-stakes poker. Eric Banna 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 and 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. It just doesn't work at all. It's a big disappointment. Don't know it.

It's out. 2007. I think we've skipped Broken Trail. You're right, we have. Made for TNT. Yes. Very good Western, directed by Walter Hill, Robert Duvall,

Thomas Hayden Church. Really good. Really good. Very, very good. Originally conceived as a movie. It's ultimately basically a three-hour movie. You can watch it in that way. I happen on Blu-ray.

I like it. It was the first movie ever made, actually, for AMC. The first, like, official project made. And it was quite a big deal made of it. And, you know, they all got Golden Globe nominations, and it was pretty celebrated. But if we're giving a Western from this period, it's open range before it's broken trail.

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 9th. I think it's my favorite James Gray movie 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? Yeah Well And he was a cop He's a cop And his son is a cop But one of the sons is not a cop Yes

It's the godfather In reverse In reverse You know Solid Duval performance Good work Really good I really like this movie

I don't think It's going in the Hall of Fames 2008, 4 Christmases? You seen it? Why didn't you see it? I don't even know what the fuck it is. 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. Four Christmases. I mean, the title is not a turn on for me. Are you in a war against Christmas? No, I just... Four Christmases. I think it means because they go to...

I tell you what? Get one Christmas. is right. Then you can make four. I've been trying all my life. I'm not a huge fan of the movie. It's a, it's a, it's a studio comedy starring Vince Fawn and Reese Witherspoon. Yeah, I don't need to see that.

Robert Duval plays a what, you got something against Reese Witherspoon? I don't have anything against anybody. I just don't need to see it. You know who likes this movie? Chris Ryan. Great. It's red. Did Chris Ryan watch 50-plus

Duval movies? I don't think so. I'm staking your claim once more for third charity. 2009 Crazy Heart. This is a movie that might... Just watch. Watched it as I was coming here. Just watched it.

In the car? Well, basically. Okay. I don't know if this movie exists without Robert Duval, according to Scott Cooper, who was a working actor who met Duval on the set of gods and generals, and they struck up a friendship. Duval brought him under his wing.

it sounds like a little bit, two Virginians. You've all read all of his scripts, just really mentored Scott Cooper. And Crazy Hard in a lot of ways is a soft remake of Tender Mercies. And so he comes on and apart and 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 performance.

performances out of his actors. And he gets him in this movie. Bridges and DeVall both terrific in this. Yeah. If it were Jeff Bridges' his Hall of Fame, it definitely would be going in, but it's not. 2009, the road. Didn't see it.

Really? Haven't seen it. Really? Adam Cormick McCarthy. You care? Yeah. He's not the top of my pyramid, but sure, I care. You want to do the top of your pyramid?

Three hours into this episode? I don't. Okay. The road, he plays the old man. So that's a, you know, I mean, the truth is, we're starting now to get into old man territory. And he just, there's less he can physically do. Yes.

He hurt himself on a horse while they were shooting open range. He fell off a horse and hurt himself. 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 is aging, right? It's like a 72-year-old man making open range. Yeah. It's a joke. But he really is with Crazy Art, you start to feel, right?

I mean, he's, what is he? 80 years old when he makes Crazy Heart? Just about 78, maybe 79. Get Low is an interesting movie, though. Have you seen that one? I saw it this morning. Okay, pretty good. I liked it.

Yeah, I liked it a lot. I think if you were going to make a case for a late period film, this might be the one you would pick. 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 Spaceek, I always make the case on these podcasts that she's an underrated actress. She's great in the film. Yeah, I like to get low quite a bit. Okay. We'll give you Get Low a yellow. Seven Days in Utopia I haven't seen. Didn't see it.

Well, we're going to skip right over that one. Jane Mansfield's car. Didn't see it. This is a Billy Bob Thornton film, less acclaimed than some of his previous work. But once again, Duval 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. Didn't see it. I haven't seen it. It's certainly not going into Robert Duval Hall of Fame. Kind of an entertaining movie, though.

I think we skip Hemingway and Gellhorn, which was made for HBO with Clive Owen. Who does he play? Apparently, it's a very small part. Like maybe a total... He's listed as Russian General. to your point about being asked by Russian characters. 2014, a night in old Mexico.

Haven't seen it. What is a night in old Mexico? Oh, yes. Okay. He has a knight in old Mexico. 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. I hate when that happens.

That's not going in. 2014, the judge, you watched this. 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. Oh, I really do. Okay. 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 Duval 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. Yeah, I wish the movie itself was a little bit better. 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. Yeah, it's very dopey. A little bit of a letdown too because this was the movie that Dut 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. He's good in the film. I love Vera Farminga.

Vincent Dinoffrio, very good. But oh my God. Jeremy Strong, playing the autistic character is such a mistake, such a misfire. These things keep happening. Narratively, it's a real misfire. Yeah. 2015, he wrote and directed a film called Wild Horses, which I've not seen.

I haven't seen it. Well, we can't speak to it. That's a shame. I haven't seen in dubious battle either. I haven't seen it. So that's not going to go in. 2018 Widows, you just saw it for the first time. I did.

My wife is in it. We watched it for the first time. What did you think of Duval? I thought he was good. Yeah, a couple of scenes. Powerful, power broker in Chicago, right? Powerful old guy. Not going on the Hall of Fame.

No. Twelve mighty orphans. Have you seen this film? I haven't. I can't watch this. Pretty sure I watch 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. Great. Not going in. 2022 hustle. Didn't see it. Another sports movie, an Adam Sandler drama that I kind of like about an NBA scout.

I would see it. I just ran out of time. I saw a lot. You did the work. His last feature performance is in the pale blue eye. Haven't seen it. Which is Scott Cooper's adaptation of, 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. Duval 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? I can't wait. Are people still listening? I'm listening to you. We have one, two, three, four, two, four, six, eight greens. Those greens are to kill a mockingbird, the Godfather one and two.

Network, Apocalypse Now, the Great Santini, Tender Mercy's Lonesome Dove, and the Apostle. Solid. Here are the yellows. The rain people. T.H.X. 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. Read it to me if that's the case. 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 in to get low or open range to get something from the 2000s in there,

we can do that. I'm very comfortable with that Hall of Fame, and I'm going to take open range as my blue. Wow. Well, let me just take a quick little. 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. Let me tell you, the traffic out there was really bad. You could do better than that. There was an accident on the 101. Fucks sake. Can't believe you'd do this to me. 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 a cantankerous side, I'm told.

I'll take THX 11338. If you had taken open range, I would have taken THX. I think that's a great. What a healthy set of decisions. So we'll, guys, we'll green tomorrow in the outfit,

and we've completed after two and a half hours. 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. We've done it, by God. By God, we've done it. That was a big one. That was a really large. That was a lot of work.

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 19th movies are better than the 21st century. What century is it? Let's go back to the 80s movies. 80s movies are better than the 90s movies.

Pretty much cross the board. Okay, well, on that we shall pardon. Tracy Lutz, thank you. John Fennessee. An incredible amount of work you put into this. 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. You think you'll write another play? Why would I do that? I'd like to read it.

That's hard. You know writing is hard. It is hard. Writing is really hard. Really hard. Yeah. Well, I'd like to say thanks to Jack Sanders for his work as producer on this show. Thanks to Lucas Cavanaugh and Sarah Ready for being in here today, helping us get this episode off the ground.

You know, I think what's going to happen is later this week, Chris Ryan and I are going to talk about Mortal Kombat 2, Obsession, Hokem, and the Future of Horror. Do you know what any of those things are? I know that Mortal Kombat 2 is a sequel to a movie based on a video game. Oh, sounds like you've been boning up. You want to join us? And you're going to talk about what was the second part of that? Obsession, not the Brian DePaulma film starring Cliff Robertson. Hocom.

Hocom is Adam Scott. That's right. I've seen it. Obsession is about the guy who makes the horror movie about the guy who, who makes the deal with the devil that the girl's going to fall in love with him. See, he's been practicing. He's been thinking hard.

All you've got to do is move to L.A. and quit all your other stuff and probably leave your family. What do you think? We'll talk. We'll talk. See you soon.