Remembering actor and producer Shelley Duvall

Transcript

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Today we're remembering Shelley Duvall, the actress and TV producer who died last Thursday at age 75. We'll listen back to a conversation between her and Terry Gross from 1992, and we'll begin with this appreciation.

Shelley Duvall was a student at a junior college in Houston when Robert Altman came to town scouting locations and casting extras for his 1970 movie "Brewster McCloud." The film starred Bud Cort - later of "Harold And Maude" - as a young loner who lives secretly in a small room in the bowels of the Houston Astrodome. When Altman met Shelley Duvall, he gave her a small supporting role in the movie as an Astrodome tour guide who tries to seduce the innocent Brewster.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BREWSTER MCCLOUD")

SHELLEY DUVALL: (As Suzanne Davis) Why don't you come sit over here with me?

BUD CORT: (As Brewster McCloud) No, I got to be going now, I think.

DUVALL: (As Suzanne Davis) Brewster, here I am sitting over here on the couch and inviting you to do, well, who knows what? And you just sit there and say, oh, no, I've got to go home. Oh.

BIANCULLI: From that small beginning, Shelley Duvall quickly became one of the director's favorites, appearing in six more of his movies in increasingly larger and more complex roles. In the 1970s alone, she was in Altman's "McCabe And Mrs. Miller," "Thieves Like Us," "Nashville," "Buffalo Bill And The Indians" and "3 Women." For that drama, which also co-starred Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule, Shelley Duvall won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Her most famous role of all, though, came when she worked for a different director, Stanley Kubrick, for his 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's "The Shining." Jack Nicholson starred as Jack Torrance, a writer who accepted the job as winter caretaker for a secluded hotel, living there alone with his wife, Wendy, and their young son, Danny. The story has supernatural overtones, but at the core, "The Shining" is a horror story about child and spousal abuse.

Wendy, played by Shelley Duvall, discovers that their son has been injured and suspects her husband of hurting Danny. Carrying a baseball bat, she goes down to the room where Jack has been working on his novel. She learns - to her horror - that every page of paper in his manuscript is filled with the same phrase - all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And he enters. She's holding the bat, but he's the one who's menacing and scaring her almost to death.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE SHINING")

JACK NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) I think you have some very definite ideas about what should be done with Danny, and I'd like to know what they are.

DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Well, I think maybe he should be taken to a doctor.

NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) You think maybe he should be taken to a doctor?

DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Yes.

NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) When do you think maybe he should be taken to a doctor?

DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) As soon as possible.

NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) As soon as possible.

DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Jack, please.

NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) You believe his health might be at stake.

DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Yes.

NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) You are concerned about him.

DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Yes.

NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) And are you concerned about me?

DUVALL: (As Wendy Torrance, crying) Of course I am.

NICHOLSON: (As Jack Torrance) Of course you are.

BIANCULLI: That same year, in 1980, Shelley Duvall costarred in a movie that couldn't have been more different - a comedy musical based on cartoon characters. Back with director Robert Altman again, she starred opposite Robin Williams in "Popeye." He played Popeye, and she played his squeaky-voiced girlfriend, Olive Oyl. The music and lyrics were by Harry Nilsson, and both the songs and her singing were as playfully strange as the movie itself.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "POPEYE")

DUVALL: (As Olive Oyl, singing) And all at once, I knew - I knew at once - I knew he needed me. Until the day I die, I wonder why I knew he needed me.

BIANCULLI: Shelley Duvall also appeared in such movies as "Annie Hall" and "Time Bandits." But to me, her most impressive achievement of all was as a TV producer. After creating her own company, Think Entertainment, she produced and hosted a series of anthology shows for children - "Tall Tales And Fables" (ph), "Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories" and her first and finest series, which ran on Showtime cable from 1982 to 1987. "Faerie Tale Theatre" showcased lots of her actor and filmmaker friends. She appeared in a few, but hosted them all, starting with this one.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FAERIE TALE THEATRE")

DUVALL: Hello. I'm Shelley Duvall. Welcome to "Faerie Tale Theatre." For centuries, storytellers have spun their tales of magic and enchantment for the young at heart. Some of your favorite actors, writers and directors have come together to bring these classic tales to your home. Some are funny. Some are scary and some romantic. So sit back, relax and enjoy tonight's tale about a princess who finds happiness by keeping her promise to a frog, "The Frog Prince."

BIANCULLI: For that very first "Faerie Tale Theatre," she got her "Popeye" co-star, Robin Williams, to play the Frog Prince, with Teri Garr as the princess. Shelley Duvall would star in such stories as "Rapunzel" and "Rumpelstiltskin." But most of the time, she gave the juicy roles to others and got everyone to play in her sandbox, from Vincent Price and Mick Jagger to Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Beals. Paul Reubens played Pinocchio. Liza Minnelli starred in "The Princess And The Pea." And in the best of them all, "The Three Little Pigs," the pig with the brick house was played by Billy Crystal. And the wolf who tried to blow his house down was Jeff Goldblum.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FAERIE TALE THEATRE")

JEFF GOLDBLUM: (As Buck Wolf) OK, pigs. Look, no more Mr. Nice guy. You either open up now - and I mean now - or I'll huff, and I'll puff - maybe I'll huff again, but I'm going to blow this house in.

BILLY CRYSTAL: (As Larry) Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.

GOLDBLUM: (Buck Wolf) You keep saying that. What do you mean - chinny chin chin? What does it mean?

CRYSTAL: (As Larry) It means no.

GOLDBLUM: (As Buck Wolf) You asked for it, pal.

BIANCULLI: Great stuff. And the costume, set design and direction were as clever as the performances. Shelley Duvall was a pioneer as a TV producer. And she spoke to Terry Gross in 1992, when Duvall was introducing her then-new animated series, "Bedtime Stories" for Showtime. Terry asked Shelley Duvall how she convinced cable executives to give her a series when she had no experience as a producer.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

DUVALL: Luckily, I - you know, I was kind of well-known already as an actress. And I had done "The Shining." And I was filming "Popeye," and I had brought along a book of antique illustrated fairy tales with me - "Grimms' Fairy Tales" - to the location, which was on the island of Malta. And I figured I would definitely have time to read a book. I didn't have time to read the whole book of fairy tales, but I was reading "The Frog Prince" one day and thought that Robin Williams would just make a great frog. He was playing Popeye to my Olive Oyl. And I talked to Robin about it, and he said, oh, I'd love that. That'd be great. I'd love to play the frog. And so I introduced him to my friend Eric Idle, who's one of the Monty Pythons. And, boy, that was a match made in heaven.

So I made out a list of - you know, my wish list of different fairy tales and the cast of actors that I would like to have in them. And I put lots of my antique illustrated books into two big cloth bags. And I went walking in the door of Showtime and said, here's what I want to do. And they said yes (laughter). It was amazing to me, too. I mean, boy, they're trusting Olive Oyl as a producer?

TERRY GROSS: (Laughter).

DUVALL: I thought, boy, that's risky. And I'd never produced anything before, but I did have contacts with a lot of celebrities, luckily. And that was as a result of my acting career.

GROSS: You haven't been making movies lately. Do you think that most casting directors assume that you're not available? And would that assumption be accurate?

DUVALL: Well, I think so, too. But you can put the word out right here and right now, I tell you, because I would love to. I mean, gosh, I go to the movie theater all the time, and I see all these good roles. And every time I see one, I think, ooh, I would have loved to have played that role.

GROSS: (Laughter).

DUVALL: But, you know, no matter how good somebody was in the role. But being a producer, I guess you get a view of the bigger picture. And I love the fact that I can produce and still sleep in my own bed in my own home at night, you know, that I don't - "The Shining," for instance, was a year and one month of filming in London. So - and then "Popeye" six months later was six months of filming on the island of Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean. So after those two movies back-to-back, I felt like, gosh, if I could only have a house.

GROSS: (Laughter).

DUVALL: Because I grew up in Texas, and I have this great desire to have - put down roots, you know?

GROSS: Could you tell us...

DUVALL: And I have a lot of animals. I have 70 birds and 11 dogs and two cats and several lizards. And I feel...

GROSS: 70 birds?

DUVALL: Yep, 70 - 7, 0 - and many of them are parrots. But listen, everything in my life - I draw from everything in my life. So I've, for instance, written a feature story about some of my birds, some of my parrots, which I have in development now.

GROSS: I have to stop you here. Do your parrots all say things? Do they all say different things?

DUVALL: Oh, yes, absolutely. My parrots talk all the time. It's very noisy at my house.

GROSS: What do they say?

DUVALL: Particularly in the morning and in the evening. All right. I have a parrot named Humpty, who's an Amazon - yellow-naped Amazon. And he is hilarious. He's like the Robin Williams of parrots. I mean, he'll hang upside down from one leg. You know, you think he's going to fall, and you run over there to catch him, and he goes - you know, he'll be calling out, help, help, you know?

GROSS: (Laughter).

DUVALL: And you get there and he goes, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, and, you know, being the acrobat that he is, flips himself back upright and, you know, no problem at all. It was no emergency, but he just wanted your attention. They all love songs. And they're all memorizing songs like "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" - that's a very popular tune at my house...

GROSS: (Laughter).

DUVALL: ...And whistling things like the beginning of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow." So they can whistle that one very good. They don't know the lyrics yet. But some songs they sing the lyrics, and some they don't. But I've - I'm on the telephone at home so much. I work a lot out of home on the computer, the fax and the phone. And they hear me on the phone all the time. So Humpty also says - I taught him this routine, too, 'cause it was just too funny to pass up. He goes, telephone, telephone. Hello? Oh, hi. How are you? Uh-huh, uh-huh. Oh, fantastic. OK, bye-bye. He does that whole routine. It's hilarious. And I also taught him - two or three of the birds know this one. They know, how does a big dog go? Then he'll go, woof. That's how a big dog goes. And then, how does a kitty go? And he goes, meow.

GROSS: What a house you must have.

DUVALL: I've go to write some articles for Bird Talk Magazine one of these days.

GROSS: Yeah. Let me change the subject and get into how you first started to act, which wasn't by design (laughter). Would you tell the story of how you were first cast in your first movie, "Brewster McCloud," directed by Robert Altman.

DUVALL: Sure. Well, it all started with art, I guess. And my boyfriend at the time - I was 20 years old. I had just dropped out of junior college. I decided to take a six-month rest from my science endeavors because I didn't like vivisection. And I was taking a break, and I gave a party for my boyfriend, who's an artist. And I was showing his paintings to just some friends of ours. And there were only about 20 people there. I mean, quite often, we would give larger parties. And his parents' friends would come to our parties, and we and our friends would go to their parties. So it wasn't unusual one night when three men walked in whom I didn't know.

And one of them said - after they saw the paintings and heard my spiel, they said, we have some patrons of the arts for friends. How would you like to bring the paintings up, say, Wednesday at 1 o'clock? I said, well, Bernard has to go back to art college outside of Dallas, so he won't be able to come, but, OK, I'll do it. And I brought the paintings up Wednesday at 1 o'clock. My mom dropped me off. And I went through the whole speech about, you know, what the artist was thinking. And there were a lot of patronly looking gentlemen sitting in a semicircle. And I figured, well, they must be legitimate art collectors. And instead of saying - at the end of my speech, instead of saying we want this one and this one and this one, they said, quote-unquote, how would you like to be in a movie? And I thought, uh-oh (ph) - oh, no, porno.

GROSS: (Laughter).

DUVALL: So I started packing up. I was scared to death. I thought, oh, my gosh, my mother's going to kill me. My father is going to kill me. I'm really scared. So I started packing up and I was rushing toward the door with the paintings. And I had one hand on the doorknob and the other one with the portfolio under my arm. And they said, well, wait a minute. This is for real. This is for MGM, you know, the lion that roars. And this is Robert Altman, who just did the movie called "M*A*S*H," which opens today. Would you like 10 free tickets? And they said - I took the tickets, by the way. And they said, well, wait a minute, just give us a telephone number where we can reach you and let us take a polaroid picture. So the polaroid is, of course, with me with one hand on the doorknob ready to leave. And I wish I still had that picture. And the telephone number I decided to give them just in case was my father's office phone number. Now, my dad's a criminal lawyer.

GROSS: (Laughter).

DUVALL: I figure if they can get past my dad, they must be legitimate.

GROSS: So when you started acting, was this something that you secretly always wanted to do but never thought that you could? Or was it something that you couldn't care less about?

DUVALL: No, I looked at movies...

GROSS: Yeah.

DUVALL: I looked at movies as paintings, you know? They were beautiful, and I didn't think I was an artist. I mean, I didn't know. Actually, I didn't think this was a career until after I had finished my third film, which was also for Robert Altman. Altogether, I've done seven films with Robert Altman, and the last of which being "Popeye," which was an unlikely choice for him. But...

GROSS: The third film that you mentioned was "Thieves Like Us," right?

DUVALL: "Thieves Like Us."

BIANCULLI: Shelley Duvall speaking to Terry Gross in 1992 - more after a break. This is FRESH AIR. *****

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1992 interview with actress and producer Shelley Duvall. She died last Thursday of complications from diabetes at age 75.

GROSS: One of your best-known movies, "The Shining," was directed by Stanley Kubrick who, I think, in some ways, is probably opposite in style to Robert Altman in the sense that every shot is really well planned in advance and...

DUVALL: Oh, yes.

GROSS: ...You know, carefully storyboarded. Everything's, like, very meticulously planned. With Altman, I know there's a lot of spontaneity and improvisation.

DUVALL: Oh, he - Robert Altman's famous for his wonderful first takes. You know, many, many, many shots in his films are first takes and one-and-only takes.

GROSS: And with Kubrick?

DUVALL: And with Kubrick, I don't think anything's printed before the 35th take.

GROSS: (Laughter).

DUVALL: And that's after about 50 videotaped rehearsals with playback. So it was a very, very difficult experience for me to change over to that style.

Plus the nature of the role was that I had to be very upset the - for most of the film. For - so for nine months out of that one year and one month of shooting, I had to be crying and hysterical and hyperventilating, and that's physically almost impossible to do. I did do it. I don't think that I could ever do it again.

I had to cry. He expected full tears on first rehearsal. And I kept trying to explain to him, Stanley, you don't understand. I'm losing all my water weight here. I mean, more water weight than I have to give - and, you know, you just - it really wouldn't be that way in real life.

GROSS: What did you do to get the tears flowing? I mean, it's one thing to once a night onstage...

DUVALL: Well, I had...

GROSS: ...Have to cry or - yeah.

DUVALL: Oh, I'm sorry. I have a favorite classical piece of music that I listen to to cry, and it's a beautiful, beautiful piece by Sir Thomas Tallis. It's called "The Lark Ascending." And he's an English composer. And it's performed by St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner. And if you have that in your collection, you could play it. It's absolutely gorgeous.

And I listened to that. And when that violin would hit that - those higher notes, it worked every time, except for a few times when I just literally dried up. I was so exhausted.

But I - that was a very difficult film for me. I mean, Jack and I both got kind of ill when - from the smoke that they were using. They were using church incense to smoke up the room, you know, the big - the grand room where Jack chases me around with the...

GROSS: The knife?

DUVALL: ...Bat. Well, with a base - well, I hit him - it culminates in me hitting him with a baseball bat. It's the grand room with a grand piano in it and - where all Jack - all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy - that scene...

GROSS: Oh, yeah. I love that scene.

DUVALL: ...Which was on the call sheet for three weeks. We shot that for three weeks. It was all done with a steady cam, all in one shot. And that was a very, very difficult time. But we both got bronchitis from that.

GROSS: Now, I believe that you turned down Robert Altman once for a wedding that - you turned down a role in the film.

DUVALL: Yes, I did. I had plans, and I had rented a house, and it would have meant losing - you know, losing my summer and losing the plans that I had made and losing the money that I'd put up on the house. So I figured - better not. You know, you can't lose your perspective on life there, you know, that - I won't do anything for a job.

BIANCULLI: Shelley Duvall speaking to Terry Gross in 1992 - the actress and producer, who starred in many Robert Altman films and "The Shining" and produced "Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theater" died last Thursday at age 75.

After a break, we'll remember Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive grandmotherly German Jewish sex therapist who became a media star. She died last week at age 96. Also, critic-at-large John Powers reviews the new movie "Twisters," and I review the new Apple TV+ nonfiction food series "Omnivore." I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.