by Stephen Vagg
In 2014, Duvall said “I’ve worked with three Australian directors, and, I don’t know, we didn’t always see eye to eye. I don’t know what the deal is. But, you know, sometimes when you have a little turmoil, it can turn out better than if everything is in total harmony.”
Who were these directors?
Fight #1 – vs Bruce Beresford on Tender Mercies (1983)
Robert Duvall was very keen to star in an adaptation of Horton Foote’s script about an alcoholic country and Western singer – but no one, it seemed, was keen to direct him in it (Duvall was never considered Mr Box Office). Then along came Toongabbie’s own Bruce Beresford, hot off Breaker Morant, who loved the script, helping get it a green light. (Finance for this very American project mostly came from Britain’s EMI Films). However, Beresford and Duvall clashed during the shoot, mostly because they both worked differently; apparently it got so heated, at one stage Beresford was even going to quit. The resulting film was much acclaimed, critically if not financially, and Duvall won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance. Duvall later said “Bruce did a very good job, yeah.”
It’s significant though that Beresford and Duvall never worked together again.
Fight #2 – vs Simon Wincer on Lonesome Dove (1989)
One of the most delightful surprises of the 1980s was when Robert Duvall became a new Western star, albeit on the small screen, with his amazing performance in one of the all-time great mini-series, directed by Australia’s Simon Wincer. Duvall had been in Westerns before (True Grit, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid), but this made him a genuine star in the saddle, a bonafide bankable name in that genre (Open Range, Geronimo, Broken Trail). Duvall clashed with Wincer during the shoot. Wincer admitted in an interview “It’s no secret that I had my share of conflicts with Robert Duvall. But I’ve since heard that he’s had a rough ride with most of the directors he’s worked with. I got along well with Tommy Lee and just about everybody else. But look, that’s just the way Duvall works. You’ve got to accept that and get on with it. He’s a wonderful actor — and, really, that’s all that counts.”
Still, Duvall never worked with Wincer again, which is a shame, especially as another Duvall-Wincer-Larry McMurtry collaboration would have been magical.
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Fight #3 (or was it?) – vs John Hillcoat on The Road (2009)
It’s a little less clear whether Duvall’s third “fight” with an Australian director actually happened. The Road was a 2009 feel-bad movie from the book by Cormac McCarthy. Duvall said in an interview that during the shoot, “I liked my character, but something seemed flat. So I said to [the star] Viggo Mortensen, who is maybe the best guy to work with, a wonderful young man, I said, ‘be ready Viggo, I’m going to do something.’ So with the camera rolling I made a decision; I didn’t ask permission because when you ask permission you get turned down a lot of the time, especially if the guy directing is from Australia.”
Hillcoat’s account is slightly different. In his diary on the making of the film, he wrote, “Robert Duvall’s presence on the set seems like a real link to McCarthy’s world and has inspired us all. But the dialogue for the campfire scene, great as it was, felt a little cerebral. I quietly talked to Robert about trying to bring something extra, to make it more painful and personal somehow. So, we opened up the last take to him and Viggo to run with. Robert came up with the most extraordinary and heartbreaking bit of improvisation in the middle of the scene, about having once had a son. After calling ‘cut’ we all broke into spontaneous cheers and applause. It was the magic you are always in search for when shooting.”
So, whose account was right? Was Hillcoat cramping Duvall’s style? Or was Duvall confusing Hillcoat with Wincer and Beresford because we all look alike?
Still, Duvall’s work with Australian directors resulted in three of his greatest performances – he should have done it more. As Duvall himself said about Australian directors, “They have maybe – maybe I do too – they have attitudes. They’re so far away from us. We got it done. We got it done… I’d rather have, you know, conflicts with people and have the end result be worthwhile than have it totally harmonious throughout and then the final result is not that good.”
And just for fun here are two other links between Duvall and Australia:
- The inspiration for Kilgore in Apocalypse Now (1979)
Few Duvall performances are more iconic (and that’s saying something) than that of napalm-smelling-loving Colonel Kilgore in Coppola’s 1979 classic from an all-time great script by John Milius. The character of Kilgore had a few inspirations, one of them being Colonel David Hackworth, who later settled in Australia, and whose son Ben is an Aussie and became a filmmaker. (Sidebar: in Milius’ original script, the Dennis Hopper character was an Australian.)
- Nickers launching her American career in Days of Thunder (1990)
In the 1990s, Duvall earned a lot of coin playing mentor figures in Hollywood blockbusters such as this one, where he’s Obi Wan Kenobi to cocky driver Tom Cruise. You can’t help feeling nostalgic affection for this film, but it is a mess (it clearly wants to remake Top Gun and just should have done so). The Australian link comes in the form of Neutral Bay’s own Nicole Kidman, cast as a brain doctor, who fell for Cruise off set during the shoot, ushering in the marriage of the 1990s. Presumably, she was too busy to clash with Duvall during filming.
Anyway, Robert Duvall. Not a huge fan of Australians, as it turns out. But he should have been!
