Sadly, that's about the sum total of what I got off Robert Duvall at a dinner event at New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's mansion Sept. 21. I should have been able to do better, given that I was actually seated at Duvall's table, but, as has been proven to me repeatedly, I'm not very adept at interviewing celebrities (and was probably not supposed to be interviewing anyone, for that matter).
Duvall was at the dinner, along with Jeff Bridges, in honor of the movie Crazy Heart , currently filming here in Santa Fe. It was obviously not a political event, given Richardson is a big Obama supporter and Duvall is a well-known Republican, but Hollywood can make strange bedfellows.
Duvall spent most of the dinner chatting with First Lady Barbara Richardson. My attempts at eavesdropping (they were only two seats away from me) did not go well due to the clatter (although I did gather that Mrs. Richardson is not super gung-ho at the prospect of moving back to Washington and certainly does not think it would be worth it if, for example, Richardson were asked to be DNC chairman, a current rumor floating around right now). Anyway, I snagged an empty chair next to Duvall over coffee and asked him what he thought would happen on Nov. 4.
He said it was a "toss-up," but he'd told a close friend of his with different political views that no matter what happens, "we'll still be friends." I wanted to ask Duvall a bit about Service, the documentary he narrated at the GOP convention. I personally think Duvall could read a grocery list and make it sound good, but I found the script of the documentary a little weird, particularly the line, "You can't really see your country, but you can love it." I don't get it; Why can't you see it? de Tocqueville could see it. At any rate, we didn't really get to that because Duvall seems to be under the impression that they never used his narration at the GOP and that it can only been on Youtube. My attempts to convince him otherwise were a. short-lived and b. ineffective.
That's about it. Except--I did not actually call Robert Duvall "Bobby," but that is how he introduced himself. You can see a photo of me bothering him here and read a little more about my very silly celebrity encounters.
Oh, one last thing. Apparently Duvall, like the rest of the world, does not think The Paper was a very good movie, and seemed a little amused when I told him it was one of my favorites.
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