Get Whoa, or: That Robert Duvall Cloning Experiment Did Not Go As Planned

Stephen Masker

​Friday night's Robert Duvall speaking engagement at Hall of State went down swell: He and Elvis Mitchell bantered cheerily for an hour about stage and screen in front of an audience that included Mayor Tom, other city officials and various well-heeled arts patrons and Dallas Film Society supporters. After which he retired to the Mansion for further late-night doings before an early Saturday-morning rising for that free screening of Get Low at the Cinemark 17 on Webb Chapel Road.

Duvall intro'd the film, per our in-attendance Hanna Raskin, and promised to return for a post-screening Q&A, which he skipped in order to catch a plane. Nevertheless, our Stephen Masker got there before the lights went down and sent back this photo. But ... of what, exactly? Oh, Stephen ...

Three costumed students from the drama department at SMU were standing outside the Cinemark 17 when I arrived. As I was walking towards the theater, they went inside. I followed them and another photographer to a back room where they and Duvall (and maybe three or four other people) were standing around. I don't remember them entering Duvall's theater when he went to speak, so I'm not sure if what they were doing was related to his event.

Now I'm more confused. So too the Dallas Film Society: Artistic Director James Faust says there were actually three costumed gents -- another one in red -- and that, far as he could tell, they were there with friends of Duvall's from El Paso. Doing ... something? "We don't know what they were doing, though, or why they were dressed like that," Faust says. "Maybe they just wanted attention?" In which case, mission accomplished.