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Get Low.
Robert Duvall’s newest movie Get Low opens July 30 in NY at The Lincoln Plaza and The Regal Union Square Theater, as well as LA. “It’s a lot like a Horton Foote movie,” in Duvall’s view, though the screenplay is by Chris Provenzano and Scott Seeke. In addition to Duvall (above right) as Felix Bush, a Tennessee recluse who decides, after 40 years of isolation, that he wants to know what his Tennessee neighbors would say about him when he was gone — so he throws himself a funeral. Bill Murray is funeral parlor owner Frank Quinn (above left) and Lucas Black is Buddy Robinson (center), Quinn’s assistant . Sissy Spacek rounds out a talented cast. Would you like to witness your eulogies? I asked Duvall. “I don’t care. But they should be humorous. It cost only $7 million to make this movie which is the first movie by the producer Dean Zanuck. If a guy with the name of Zanuck can’t raise $ 7 million, who can.? “ “Robert is a unique cat, mused Bill Murray. There’s only one drum marching in that head. So when you watch him work, he’s just a Magnet.” Photo: Sony Pictures Classics
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We are grateful to Ruth Allan, Co-founder of the Gateway Playhouse in Bellport Long Island for these archival photos of its most famous alumnus.
Time Out for Ginger (1955)
Bus Stop (1956)
Dark of the Moon (1953)
Other than talent and politics, Robert Duvall and I have two important things in common. We share the same birth year, 1931, which put me in the enviable position of reminiscing with him about things beyond the ken of post-adolescent web bloggers and Entertainment Tonight hosts. Plus we like good restaurants.
Duvall’s mission was to plug his newest film, Get Low, which I viewed in New York’s prestigious Tribeca Film Festival. The interview took place in his private suite in the lavish Four Seasons Hotel on 57th Street.
“I was born in San Diego,” he said. “You’d never guess it today, but my first public appearance took place in the sixth grade, when I had to get up and tap dance and I was very self-conscious. Where were you born?”
In Queens.
“I went to a very good Italian restaurant in Queens run by ‘The Teflon Don’ (aka John Gotti). It’s like Rao’s on 114th Street in East Harlem where everybody goes. I like to go to Carmine’s here at 44th Street. They have a Jewish chef. Also the best tiramisu dessert.”
Maybe it’s because you’re Robert Duvall and I’m just a schlep. But I’m not a fan of Carmine’s. You want good, you want cheap? Go to Delizia’s on First Avenue off 73rd St.
“Delizia? Write it down for me. Where we live in Middleburg, Virginia, there’s an excellent Italian restaurant where they do things to order. There was a top Szechuan chef from China down there. New York magazine, called it the best Chinese food in America. Period. And in two weeks he disappears. I called up the restaurant. ‘We don’t know where he went.’ I’ve gotta track this guy down. I love Chinese food.”
Could it be he’s a prisoner in a fortune cookie factory?
“No, no, he was kidnapped by himself. We have a guy down in Virginia who really knows how to cure meat. You have as good a steak there as anywhere.”
Better than Peter Luger?
“Equal. My wife’s not crazy about Peter Luger because they cook with butter.
We have better steak here than Argentina. My wife agrees. [Duvall’s fourth wife Luciana Pedraza, whom he married in 2004, is in her late thirties.] The only food I don’t like is Indian food. All that curry.”
I agree. To me Indian cuisine is an oxymoron.
“You know all the places, man. I have a bunch of guys meeting me for supper tonight. Where should we go?”
I suggested Le Colonial, a convivial French-Vietnamese restaurant, a short walk from the Four Seasons.
“Have you seen the Horton Foote’s plays The Orphans’ Home Cycle Trilogy down here?,” speaking of the dramatist who recently died in his ‘90s and wrote the screenplays for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies. “Brilliant. I’m a big Horton Foote guy.”
Though I rank the two movies he wrote among the best in the Duvall oeuvre, I told him I’m not a big admirer of Foote’s theater works.
“C’mon. He’s the greatest writer ever. Over Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller or any of them.”
I advised that To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee’s book) was going to be read aloud by celebrities at Symphony Space uptown on Broadway.
“Oh yeah? That’s not Horton’s best movie,” he said about his debut film bow as Boo Radley. “Dated, dated movie. Some of the acting is very dated.”
Even Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch?
“No, no, no, not him. That was his best part.”
Any plans to take on a stage role? I’d love to see you on the stage.
“Nahh. The theater doesn’t interest me. David Mamet’s American Buffalo is the last thing I did. Do you know Ulu Grossbard? The production that Ulu directed - I don’t know if you saw it - was wonderful.”
I told him I missed seeing him as “Teach” in a 1977 revival , but did see Al Pacino in the role at Circle in the Square. And John Leguizamo in 2008.“
“I’m not big on New York anymore.”
What? It’s still the greatest city in the world.
“I told Rudy Guiliani it’s not the greatest city. Buenos Aires is. I love to tango. But there is better meat here.”
Don’t Cry to Me; Go to Buenos Aires. What ‘s not to love about New York?
“My wife thinks it’s got a bunch of nerds and it’s not pretty. The worst she’s been treated is in New York, much worse than Paris, or any place. The cab drivers, the grocery stores on the west side. They are rude.”
Let me give you a typical my-wife-and-I travel-assistance duo. When we see somebody with a map, often Asian, we’ll offer our help and suggest what museums to see. On a bus, if an out of towner doesn’t have the correct fare, my wife turns over a non-senior fare card, without any notion of recompense.
“Horton Foote said, ‘a New Yorker doesn’t know anything that’s going on beyond the South Jersey shore.’ I liked it when I was young. Bloomberg took me around. We went to the worst sushi place ever. My liberal friends refused to support Rudy Giuliani for president but he cleaned the city. One time I asked Pete Hamill this: Why in the beginning did so many liberals support Giuliani? Even Koch voted for him … and Koch voted for Bush twice. That I don’t get. What do you think of Obama.?”
I love him. He’s gotten more accomplished in his first year than any president since LBJ and FDR. Do you remember as a kid, when Roosevelt gave his fireside chats, the whole family looked at the radio?
“You’re right. My father, who was 38, was on a destroyer on the Atlantic on Pearl Harbor Day. We moved back and forth between San Diego and Annapolis. My mother was very nervous as FDR made the pronouncement of war on December 8.”
Your favorite radio shows as a kid?
“The Lone Ranger and The Great Gildersleeve, Throckmorton P Gildersleeve was played by Harold Peary which I began listening to in 1941.
“Our family rotated a lot. My dad went to a one-room country school in the woods in Virginia. His sister was a teacher. He was 11 when he started high school. He had to wait a year, and then at 16 got an appointment to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. The guy he beat out for the appointment became one of the greatest criminal lawyers on the whole east coast. If you wanted to get off from committing a murder you’d get T. Brooke Howard.”
I later Googled and phoned Mr. Howard’s son, Blair Howard – himself a criminal lawyer -who acknowledged the story, saying that his Dad was known as THE MAN. And that Admiral William Howard Duvall did his father a great service by beating him out for the appointment. Duvall has a home in Middleburg, VA. “I met him one or two times when we went Fox Chasing. (To animal rights readers: Fox Chasing is distinguished from Fox Hunting, in that the fox is always released from the jaws of the dog).
You majored in drama at college?
“Yeah. My parents shoved me into it. At Principia College for Christian Scientists in Illinois. The first play I did was by William Snyder, a full-length mime play. The guy who choreographed it had been a dancer with Pavlova. I played a Harlequin clown who did a play within a play of Gone With the Wind to the music of Ravel and Stravinsky.
The first movie you ever saw?
“We went to movies on the base of San Diego for a dime. The first movie I saw was in 1940, The Biscuit Eater. One of those boy-and-his-dog yarns. It’s about a bird dog trainer whose son adopts a dog who turns out to be a ‘biscuit eater’--a pooch that refuses to hunt for anything but its own food. You can guess the rest. It’s the kind of movie you’d expect to see Mickey Rooney in. I love Mickey Rooney. He’s 94. Whenever he sees people, he helps them out, He’s a wonderful guy.”
“Well,” (I said to crack publicist Jessica Uzzan who set up the interview) “Mr. Duvall and I have solved the problems of the world” in the past 50 minutes,
With that, Robert Duvall arms spread wide, reached up and said,
“You’re a good man, I like you. That’s because we’re the same age.” And with unscripted ingenuousness, said, “Give us a hug.”
Not as memorable as “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” but I’ll take it. |
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