Thank Hollywood for Robert DuVall

Published 10:53 pm Wednesday, June 14, 2006

I’m glad to see that Robert DuVall is making a new television movie, “Broken Trail”. It airs later this month. It’s a four-hour flick, and I know it will be good because Robert DuVall doesn’t make bad movies.

Some of you may not know it, but DuVall made his movie acting debut in “To Kill A Mockingbird.” He played Boo Radly. He had no lines. It takes an incredible actor to play a good role and to have no lines.

Since then he’s been a Hollywood icon. He became an acting legend in “Lonesome Dove.” I really like him as a cowboy. Along with Tom Selleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Sam Elliott — these guys play cowboys today like Jimmy Stewart, Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda did before them. Aside from Selleck, the aforementioned are not “pretty boys.” They actually have to act for a living. They have to make the story come to life.

But DuVall has done well in non-cowboy roles as well. He was magnificent in “The Great Santini,” based on the novel by Pat Conroy.

DuVall looks like a guy you might see over in the pool hall, talking about his arthritis and a new diesel pickup he had just bought. Sometimes I wonder if DuVall is even acting or if they just have the cameras rolling when he’s being himself.

He’s played the good guy, the bad guy and the supporting actor.

He’s so convincing as a cowboy, I can see him eating with his compadres by a camp fire, and before I realize what I’m doing, I’m in the kitchen opening a can of pork’n beans and heating up a pot of coffee. I think he could play the pope and have people convert to Catholicism. And he has played an evangelist. Don’t know how many souls he saved.

DuVall is 75 years old. You might say he has strong shelf life in the acting business. By the time he’s through, they may have to use carbon dating to detail his career. When he started acting, he had hair. Now, he still has some, but he doesn’t have to decide on which side he will part it. Reminds me of a newspaperman I know.

Whenever I see actors like DuVall and Sam Elliott and remember those like Lee Marvin, William Holden and Steve McQueen and compare them to some of those much younger guys who are consideredf hits in Hollywood today, I think of that marvelous line from “The Dirty Dozen” — “they’re pretty, but can they fight?” Take away their six-pack abs and their dimples, could they deliver lines like “Boy this is hard country” and make you feel like there’s a rock in your boot and sand in your grits?

Now I’m not an official movie critic. I just know what I like. And I like scripts that are well-written, plausible and perhaps even historically parallel to actual or similar events. I disdain kung fu movies, magic sword movies and movies that are supposed to be artsy tartsy and all they amount to is some guy who has a fetish for eating chili dogs naked and contemplating his navel while listening to opera — all the while, trying to get in touch with his feminine side.

I’ve seen some movies where I think they paid millions of dollars to blow things up and then realized that they needed to fill the spaces with some dialogue, so they came up with a dozen variations of one expression dominated by a very crude expletive and called it a script.

I’m anxious for this new Robert DuVall western. I’ve got a can of pork’n beans in the pantry and a tin cup to drink coffee from. (Note: Be careful drinking coffee from a tin cup, you can burn your lip.)

(Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. E-mail: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)