In 'Bullitt', as a cabbie, "How do you know the phone call was long distance ?"" Duvall answers, " 'Cause he put in alot of change." Never forgot that.
Robert Duvall was most certainly a gifted artist in his profession. He played many characters and all of them well. Brought amazing skill to his craft.
I don't think that Mattin Sheen gets the credit he deserves. He's the main protagonist, the conscience of the film. He's brilliant, as are the others. Fredrick Forrest was impressive, as well. Sheen was great in Badlands, too.
This is what is so great about RU-vid as you find interviews like this one that was probably never shown outside the USA that we in the UK can now watch and enjoy. I have always been a fan of Robert Duvall. He is an everyman but can play anything. He exudes talent from every pore. His presence on screen is palpable. My favorite's are 'The Killer Elite (1975)' 'Falling Down' 'The Natural' 'Open Range' and of course his performance in 'Apocalypse Now'.
Look, I served 23 years starting with Vietnam and ending shortly after Desert Storm. Duvall was the perfect size to play this role! In my time of service, it was always little officers strutting around like Kilgore like little bantam roosters.
If Robert Duvall has millions of fans, I am one of them. If Robert Duvall has ten fans, I am one of them. If Robert Duvall has only one fan, that's me. If Robert Duvall has no fans, that means I'm no longer alive. If the world against Robert Duvall, I am against the world.
charlie don't surf, the Philippine teens at the time collected the strange new boards left there and slowly learnt to surf, then one of them opened a surf shop near that beach called 'Charlie Does'
He is so dedicated to that character. One, if not the greatest actor ever. They certainly don't make them like that anymore. 91 years and still kicking. God bless you Robert. *Charlie Don't Surf!!!* This interview should have lasted at least 6 hours.
"We're going about forty clicks past the Do Long Bridge...." "That's Cambodia, sir" "We're not supposed to be IN Cambodia but that's where I'm going...."
The first time I saw this movie it was the extended version. That scene was amazing. It's a shame it was cut from the original. It really rounded out the character.
Kilgore was one of the great characters in film history, and Bobby Duvall played him to a tee. One of the greatest actors of our time. Just watch “Tender Mercies.” Five star acting. 🎬❤️🎬
What a privilege and a pleasure to hear the thoughts of a master artist on one of his finest works. Glad the scene was included in later edit releases.
Robert Duvall as Lt Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now has always been my HERO. Because I want to be just like him when I grow up. LOL 😆. Gotta love that character.
Interesting interview. It doesn't matter what kind of character Robert Duvall plays, he's always really believable and convincing. Whether it's a cowboy, consigliere, cop, soldier, car mechanic, whatever. He can pull it off.
Yeah this big division thing amongst people is a brand new thing, it's like people have regressed to like the 1800's. So I guess it's not totally brand new. I was brought up in the 70's and 80's and it was drilled into us to consider other people's outlooks, ideas, beliefs, that people are different in many different ways etc etc.
@@williamsherman1089 Well said...I reached adulthood during that time. Like another world when I look back on it....I long for those days...who would have thought.
@Keith No it was not perfect for sure....But some how we rose above it..maybe with some sense of humor...which is needed in tuff times..and which seems to be all but gone nowadays...
@Keith wow..you don't have to come down so hard..the 70s did have great shows. We did all sorts of things.we weren't so damed caught up in all the depressing garbage all time..so cool it.
When I came home to the east coast in 1969 I came thru LaGuardia airport, nobody spit on me or called me baby killer, nobody was there, I was alone, unimportant, nothing I did seemed real or important, I had my uniform on but it didn't matter to anyone!
OMG the old VHS tracking problem, how I remember that. Duvalll was perfect for that role. Glad I saw the directors cut, it includes that scene that was cut.
Duvall is such a great actor, you see him in a movie and then in another: He's not the same. He's completely different, shame I didn't get to know him till this point of my life
I love this interview. Duvall, Hopper, Dunaway, Brando, Finch..the list could go on. These weren't celebrities, they were actors, artists. Duvall's understanding of the random and "no black and white" is brilliant. I studied Dostoevsky in college and my professor, who I admire so much, taught me that no one is one thing all the time. Love this vid. Thanks, fivealex2010.
Lol during this film brando was a fucking diva refused to learn his lines or prepare showed up fat on set and refused to work with Dennis hopper . Hopper was a full fledged drug addict and said to Coppola that hes missing some motivation and "something" could help him act (cocaine) . Martin sheen was struggling very much with alcohol addiction and the first scene with him in his room was actually him having a breakdown ..so dont talk like that every generation has its share of responsible and careless actor . Duvall was probably the only sane actor on set
If i'm not mistaken he also had a great line that he delivered perfectly when at one point he looked up like he was thinking something very deep, and sadly said, "Some day, this war is going to end." This guy if in the military would be destine for greatness.
To me that line shows he is delusional, especially given that the war ended with a defeat. Kilgore is the antithesis of Kurtz, whereas Kurtz realizes that the military were trying to make Vietnam seem like home it only emphasized that it wasn't. The enemy had only two ways home, victory or death, whereas the Americans could simply go home (as they did in the end). This disparity is meant as the undercurrent of the movie, that the war was being fought in a way that couldn't be won because the two forces had very different motivations. One was pure, fight or die, do whatever needed to be done to continue the fight and never stop. The other was less pure and almost murky, they were trying to make themselves comfortable in enemy territory by making enemy territory look or feel like home and it only served to make them more homesick. This is shown in Kilgore, his campfire cookouts and guitar playing, the surfing and later in the USO show with the playboy bunnies. That scene in particular is meant to show how the military were trying to bolster troop moral but it ends with the soldiers trying to climb onto the helicopter as the women flee, the harder they tried to make Vietnam home the more the troops wanted to just go home. Kurtz is meant to strike the viewer as a monster, insane and almost evil but he has abandoned the trappings of America and made enemy territory his home, literally and figuratively even reading the philosophy books of the enemy. The message was that the war was always doomed, because people like Kilgore thought all you had to do was use your advanced weaponry and keep killing the enemy until the war was won. Kurtz saw through this lie and realized the enemy embraced horror and was willing to do anything and everything it took to continue fighting the invaders. That the only way to win that war was to become like them and abandon the rules of war, become monsters committing atrocities. He recites the story which made this clear. When he had been working as a member of special forces he had helped vaccinate a village for polio, they left with the village happy they had come. When they returned they found the enemy had returned after they left and cut off the arms of everyone who had been vaccinated as a message, if you welcome the enemy (us troops) you are traitors and will be punished in a way that warns everyone else what the consequences will be. While the American forces did commit war crimes they were never going to go to the same lengths as the enemy, and in the end the war was lost. Kurtz knew this, Kilgore didn't. Kilgore believed that victory would eventually be achieved, in some ways the two men were written as very similar, emotionless and brutal, yet the difference is that Kurtz was willing to become a monster to win a war that was being lost while Kilgore believed himself a hero who was already winning the war, both were wrong just about different things. Kilgore was wrong to think the war could be won that way, Kurtz was wrong to think the ends justified the means. The entire movie plays this out in explicit detail, and if your takeaway is that Kilgore was destined for greatness you missed all the signs that he was just as evil as Kurtz, but worst also completely blind to the reality the war was being lost while they dreamed about returning home to surf and hold beach parties.
What a line! Honestly, what a line. Chaos all around, stood there, talking about surfing. Just marvelous. Who does not know this line? Up there with an offer you cannot refuse, frankly I don’t give a damn and my favorite, because we are here lad! Zulu! What’s film!
Watching the FULL movie was much better than the original. I agree it would have been too long for theaters but you really have to see the full length (redux) version. One of the greatest War Movies ever made in my 56 years...
@dhsung91 I agree. So many people didn't like the redux, mostly because they claimed it was too long, too many stops on the river, etc. But for me the redux scenes added so much development to the characters that I can't watch the original anymore without being disappointed. In the redux, the central theme of the duality of man is truly brought to light, and I think that's why Duvall was so disappointed that this scene was removed and his character became one-dimensional.
I find it interesting that I've never heard him discuss his own actual military service in an interview. He served in the Army for a couple years, not during any wars and he saw no combat, but he was an active duty Sailor. And his dad was an Admiral in the Navy. Just weird how that never comes up when he talks about this character in particular.
Because he didn't see any combat and knows it doesn't translate at all into such experience. Here's what he said about his experience in military: > "That's led to some confusion in the press," he explained in 1984, "Some stories have me shooting it out with the Commies from a foxhole over in Frozen Chosin. Pork Chop Hill stuff. Hell, I barely qualified with the M-1 rifle in basic training" Seems like answer of an honest man. There are too many cases of people who use their scarce military experience as a point in discussion, or making up dumb stories on how much they know about military, guns and war as if they were a general or a special forces guy, and then you find out that this dude was some clerk or a cook or a truck driver lol. I always call this "Andy Anderson syndrome"
Daniel Sutfin I believe you. I was an Eagle Dustoff medic based at Camp Eagle, just slightly north of Phu Bai. A night hoist in triple canopy had us with 8 to 10 inches clearance around the main rotor (we flew H models) and 10 to 12 inches clearance around the tail rotor. You can't do that stuff stoned.
@@iceberg4479 no one in the film flew and smoked...he was referring to Duvalls comment about talking to men who were there and the crazy things he was told abouy them he says "they were on dope etc"
...Superb, S U P E R B interpretation > NOBODY could’ve done the LtCol role better than he did - but just NOBODY on the entire PLANET! Simply how it is...And the surfing scene is NOT madness, its as bizarre and as real as you can get - given the particular circumstance and things men and soldiers did, do, to keep going and EVERYTHING tugs on one’s sanity...but just craziness coming at you from each and every direction, and the ONLY sanity at hand is what you YOU right there can make of it, YOU, and the Guyz with you in combat or action, no-one else. Not a big thing, just simple, real, vivid and NOT to be explained rationally.
A man's movie hip hip hooray I'm waiting for somebody to interview Mr Duvall about a scene he did with the late great Steve McQueen in the movie bullet he played the cab driver
2:47 thats the classic "creative differences" between a actor and a director. They both have a vision for how they want a scene to play out, the character or even for the movie itself. One looking back, seeing the scope of everything from the lense, the other standing, living, breathing it by acting that movie.
The reason the scene is not there is that it would have a repeated concept. We see Kilgore letting a Vietnamese man drink from his water because he holding his guts in with the top of a pot. So his empathy is already shown. To show it twice is repetitive..
Jedediah Laub-Klein i think he ultimately cut the scene so slow ppl with lesser intelligence wouldnt get confused about the dehumanization of Kilgore's character which was the main objective that Coppola was trying to capture in the film!!!!!!!
THUGSologist Why would Coppola pander to less intelligent audience members? Why would an artist change his work to appeal to as many people as possible and in the process dumb it down?
Not much empathy becuase just before he drinks Kilgore lets the water dribble just out of reach - his attention distracted by a famous surfer on his battlefield
