What is something you didn't know about her as an actor that you saw on this movie?

Nothing.

I know how great my wife is, and I always am just sort of standing off waiting for her Other people to to see it and to learn it is like you still don't know what she is capable of.

She's a she's a phenomenal actress and she has stores of influence.

emotional, emotional stores inside of her that she can access.

So nothing about what she does in the movie surprises me.

I, I think they asked me to do the movie because it was a low budget film and they were trying to get Carrie to travel and it's hard for her to leave the family.

What has you concerned about the future of Broadway, and what has you hopeful?

Let's make a note.

Yeah, because Hackman, as you mentioned, he was a Marine himself.

He'd spent four and a half years in the Marines, part of Operation Belegar, which is where they went into China.

There were so many Japanese forces in China, and so they had to go in to those occupied forces and They had to disarm them and repatriate them.

And there was some fighting, and he maybe saw some combat, some skirmishes as part of that.

And so he's playing a Marine here.

Chad Everett is the star.

Because it is

How do you approach that with somebody who doesn't shy away from sitting down and working through an idea to actually just be loose and on stage like that? How does your mind approach something like improvisation?

I first did that show about 25 years ago, and those guys are such gifted improvisers.

I can only screw up their show so bad.

What I've learned over the course of doing that show over many years is not to have anything in mind, not to go out with any kind of preconceived idea, just...

You're doomed if you do, oh, I'm going to try and do this tonight.

You're doomed if you try to do that.

You just go out and try to make yourself as blank as possible and just receive whatever is there coming your way.

Come with nothing and see if they bring something else.

How do you approach that with somebody who doesn't shy away from sitting down and working through an idea to actually just be loose and on stage like that? How does your mind approach something like improvisation?

I first did that show about 25 years ago, and those guys are such gifted improvisers.

I can only screw up their show so bad.

What I've learned over the course of doing that show over many years is not to have anything in mind, not to go out with any kind of preconceived idea, just...

You're doomed if you do, oh, I'm going to try and do this tonight.

You're doomed if you try to do that.

You just go out and try to make yourself as blank as possible and just receive whatever is there coming your way.

Come with nothing and see if they bring something else.

But the movie poses this really interesting idea, which is should all sequels, should all connective art just gratify the same impulses that the original gave us? How do, how do you think about that?

I, I don't know that there's a, a any hard and fast rule about it.

I, uh, we, we should be able to do whatever the hell we want to do.

Uh, I, I think there is something kind of artistically bankrupt about revisiting a thing.

Does the story really need continuation? The end of The Godfather kind of tells us what's going to happen to Michael.

Now, Godfather II gives us what, what does happen to Michael, but we understand at the end of Godfather, from a, from a character perspective, he, he's already lost at the end of The Godfather.

He's already lost to this, to the dark side.

Tell me what the director's job is.

Right

... uh, Dracula getup.

And he's introduced to Christopher Lee, and Christopher Lee says, "Oh, my God, this, this weather is just dreadful." Long pause.

"Oh, my God, these teeth just don't fit in my mouth.

I get so uncomfortable wearing these teeth.

Oh, my God, this cape, what this cape is made out of.

I can't breathe." And it just go-

[laughs]

In '76, though, like, the fact that the two things are going, hitting against each other, that, like, the s- kind of cynical or, or p- more paranoid kind of film could be really popular and also Rocky could be really popular, like, what does that mean that they can coexist?

Right.

Yeah, I, I don't...

I, I guess I don't have a good answer to that, though part of the answer to that is, has to do with accessibility.

I mean, you had to go to the movie theater and pay money to see these movies.

You couldn't watch them at home.

You could wait until it showed up on broadcast television.

Deleting it.

Mm-hmm.

And my first thought was, "Well, we've lost our greatest actor and our greatest documentarian, uh, at the same time." And then I thought, "Well, I'm given to the superlative.

Maybe that's not the case.

Maybe, uh, maybe I should say my favorite actor or one of my favorite actors." Because people value different things in their actors.

Some people love a movie star.

Most people love a movie star, and Duvall was a movie star, but he was also a character actor and a, and a that guy.

And, uh, he could be the lead in movies, but more often than not, a supporting player.

Mm-hmm.

I'll check it out.

Uh, I'll just describe the opening to the film.

Uh, there's a busy train station in Tokyo, and you just see people milling around, almost documentary style, a busy train station there, all t- different types.

And these schoolgirls arrive at the train station to take the train.

And, uh, 54...

And they're sort of sailor suits.

54 schoolgirls, uh, step forward on the train, and as the train is approaching, they hold hands and jump onto the train tracks, and are immediately massacred.

[laughs]

And what, what drove you to see it, or was it just seeing everything?

Well, at that time I saw everything.

Uh, I, uh, knew who Peter Weir was.

Uh, and you know, Mad Max, or I, I should say The Road Warrior, had announced-Uh, Mel Gibson as a movie star in the most profound way.

Just a theater full of people going, "That guy's a fucking movie star, and I'll follow him anywhere, and I want to see what he's got." And of course, Year of Living Dangerously was quite a calling card for him in that it's like, oh, he's not just a...

He's not an action star.

He's not Dolph Lundgren up there.

Yeah.

Certainly since, you know, Christian Bale's character is ripped straight from the current headlines to today.

I'll tell you the truth.

So I worked with Christian and I went back to my trailer and I Googled.

Is Christian Bale a jerk? Because he wasn't especially friendly.

But the character he was playing was not friendly to me.

I thought, well, maybe he's in character.

And then we worked together again on Ford v. Ferrari.

Can you walk me through that scene and what was on the page and what you did and what was happening? Well, it

Yeah.

I love him.

You know, we shot a lot of, uh, we shot a lot of The Lowdown on his property.

He's got, uh, a couple hundred acres, Keystone Lake in Oklahoma, and we shot some of it on his property.

It was great fun.

I, I, I loved the crew.

I loved, you know, I loved being in Oklahoma.

Mm-hmm.