Robert Duvall is apologizing to Canadians. Well, okay. Not really to Canadians. Just Albertans.
Duvall bent noses out of shape up here in 2003 when he said American actors were better than Canadian ones.
His exact words: "I prefer not to work in Canada. I prefer to work in my own country. There are better actors down here. That's why they have to import so many actors for their Canadian productions." (Which is BS, of course. They import American actors to sell tickets).
Duvall is still a touch cranky about the subject, even though he subsequently went back to Alberta to produce and star in Broken Trail, the mini-series that won four Emmys last month (including best mini-series and best actor and supporting actor for Duvall and Thomas Haden Church).
At an interview to promote his role in the cop drama We Own the Night, I congratulated him for his Emmys, but asked why he returned to Canada if he felt that way about Canadian actors.
"I retracted that. Did you read that too? Or do you only read what you want to read?" Duvall said. Being Canadian, I apologized for not reading his retraction, but subsequently found no mention of it in a Google search and have found not a single colleague who remembers it.
On the Emmys, he did thank the "Alberta" cast and crew. And as he talks to us, it becomes apparent it may only be Albertans he has softened on. In fact, he considers it part of the U.S.
"Alberta's different from the rest of Canada," he says. "They say if they secede, they want to go with us." And if his next Western project gets green-lit -- an episodic series about the Pony Express for Ted Turner's AMC channel -- he'll probably return.
Talking about his affinity for the cowboy genre, he says, "It belongs to us, including Alberta.
"I don't think the Western will ever die out. The English have Shakespeare, the French Moliere, the Russians have Chekhov, Argentineans have tango and Borges. But the Western is ours, and actually the cowboys and wranglers in Alberta were better than anyone we worked with in Hollywood."
The Pony Express project, he says, "should be nice. (The Express) only lasted 18 months and the telegraph forced it out. They used to have signs up saying, 'Riders wanted, under 21, orphans preferred.' One kid was 11. Buffalo Bill was 14. They were great stories, with great horses. They'd be grain-fed so they could outride the Indian horses.
"It'll be a continuing series, hopefully, like Deadwood. We might do it in Alberta again, where we get the best break. You go up there because you get a better break, and then everybody blames it on the Teamsters (when productions leave L.A.). I don't think it's the Teamsters' fault. But it's great working up there."
Yeah, it's one thing to rile Canadians. But for God's sake, don't tick off the Teamsters.
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