RIP Robert Duvall

He told me to call him Bobby. Too diminishing for an acting titan? Bobby didn’t think so. He wore his legend lightly and liked the modest familiarity of it, unless a stiffer formality was called for. Example: Mr. Duvall once sent me a letter, handwritten with a stamp on the envelope, about a magazine profile I did with him that wasn’t the cover story he thought the occasion warranted. You could feel the thunderclaps between the words, lightning between the syllables. I still do.