Robert Duvall, a Chameleon of an Actor Onscreen and Onstage, Dies at 95

 

An Oscar winner, he was known for disappearing into wide-ranging roles in movies like “Apocalypse Now” and “The Godfather” and in the television series “Lonesome Dove.” 

 

 

By Clyde Haberman

 Robert Duvall, who drew from a seemingly bottomless reservoir of acting craftsmanship to transform himself into a business-focused Mafia lawyer, a faded country singer, a cynical police detective, a bullying Marine pilot, a surfing-obsessed Vietnam commander, a mysterious Southern recluse and scores of other film, stage and television characters, died on Sunday. He was 95.

His death was announced in a statement by his wife, Luciana Duvall, who said he had died at home. She gave no other details. He had long lived on a sprawling horse farm in The Plains, in Fauquier County, Va., west of Washington.

Mr. Duvall’s singular trait was to immerse himself in roles so deeply that he seemed to almost disappear into them — an ability that was “uncanny, even creepy the first time” it was witnessed, said Bruce Beresford, the Australian who directed him in the 1983 film “Tender Mercies.”

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Robert Duvall, an Academy Award-winning actor known for playing a wide range of characters in films such as “Apocalypse Now” and “The Godfather,” died on Sunday.CreditCredit...Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images

In that film, Mr. Duvall played Mac Sledge, a boozy, washed-up country star who comes to terms with life through marriage to a widow with a young son. The performance earned him an Academy Award for best actor, his sole Oscar in a career that brought him six other nominations in both leading and supporting roles.

“He is the character,” Mr. Beresford said of Sledge. “He’s not Duvall at all.”

Mr. Duvall, though, wasn’t buying it. “What do you mean?” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1989. “I don’t become the character! It’s still me — doing myself, altered.”

Audiences and reviewers remained unconvinced. For them, Mr. Duvall, with a voice far from silky and features falling more than a few degrees short of movie-star handsome, effectively became someone entirely new, time and again.

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Mr. Duvall, center, won his Oscar for his portrayal of a country singer in Bruce Beresford’s 1983 drama “Tender Mercies.”Credit...Universal Pictures

Across a film career that took flight in the early 1960s, he stood out for an intense studiousness that shaped his every role. Even as a boy, in a Navy family that moved around the country, he had an ear for people’s speech patterns and an eye for their mannerisms. “I hang around a guy’s memories,” he once said. Insights that he gleaned were routinely tucked away in his head for potential future use.

To prepare for the role of Mac Sledge, he sang with a country band and drove around East Texas with a friend, who finally had to ask what they were up to. “We’re looking for accents,” Mr. Duvall said.

On similar hunts, he hung out with assorted, and sordid, types. He befriended hoodlums in East Harlem while preparing for a role that would help make him a star: that of Tom Hagen, the sensible consigliere to the Corleone crime family in Francis Ford Coppola’s first two “Godfather” movies in the early 1970s.

He palled with police detectives before playing a hard-bitten investigator in “True Confessions” (1981). To prepare for one of his signature stage roles — as the hustler Teach in the original 1977 Broadway production of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” — he spent time with an ex-convict, taking from him the idea of carrying his gun over his genitals.

He did similar immersions for other notable roles, whether as Lt. Col. Bull Meechum, the frustrated warrior without a war (except within his own family) in “The Great Santini” (1979); or Frank Hackett, the aptly named hatchet-man executive in “Network” (1976), Paddy Chayefsky’s scalding take on television news; or Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, who loved “the smell of napalm in the morning” in Mr. Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (1979). For years, Mr. Duvall told interviewers, people would routinely come up to him and recite that line, as if it were some little secret known only to him and them.

‘The American Olivier’

His chameleonlike skill invited comparisons to the incomparable Laurence Olivier; indeed, in 1980, Vincent Canby of The Times flat-out called him “the American Olivier.” A similar sentiment was expressed earlier by Herbert Ross, who directed “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” (1976), in which Mr. Duvall, barely recognizable yet again, played Dr. John Watson to Nicol Williamson’s Sherlock Holmes. (Olivier himself played Holmes’s archnemesis Prof. James Moriarty in the movie.)

Only Mr. Duvall and George C. Scott, Mr. Ross said at the time, “have the range and variety of Laurence Olivier.”

That Mr. Duvall could become practically whomever he chose was foreshadowed in his first film, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a 1962 classic based on Harper Lee’s novel about racial prejudice in a Southern town. He played Boo Radley, the reclusive, hollow-eyed neighbor who fascinates and ultimately rescues the two small children of the defense lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck).

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In his first film role, Mr. Duvall played Boo Radley, the reclusive neighbor in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a 1962 classic based on Harper Lee’s novel.” Credit...Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images

As Mr. Duvall’s career flourished in the 1970s and ’80s, it surprised many of his fans, on looking back, to discover him in that film. One person apparently not surprised was Harper Lee. When Mr. Duvall landed the part, she sent him a congratulatory telegram. “Hey, Boo,” she wrote. It was, he said later, his only contact with her.

Mr. Duvall had his own favorite role, and it was none of his major big-screen characters. He repeatedly told interviewers that his heart was fully with Augustus McCrae, an old Texas Ranger on a cattle drive in “Lonesome Dove,” a 1989 CBS television mini-series based on a Larry McMurtry novel.

“Let the English play Hamlet and King Lear,” Mr. Duvall said, “and I will play Augustus McCrae, a great character in literature.”

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Mr. Duvall in his Manhattan apartment in 1983. He tried his hand at film directing a few times, usually putting up the money for projects that intrigued him.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

He was nominated for an Emmy Award for that performance. But he waited nearly two decades for an Emmy win, for a role with echoes of Gus McCrae: the worn-out cowboy Prentice Ritter in “Broken Trail” (2006), a two-part AMC movie. (As an executive producer on the show, he also won an Emmy for outstanding mini-series.)

Mr. Duvall tried his hand at film directing a few times, usually putting up the money for projects that intrigued him. There was “We’re Not the Jet Set” (1977), a documentary about a Nebraska rodeo family. A chance encounter with a boy on the street led to “Angelo My Love” (1983), a film about Gypsy life in New York City.

No project under his direction contained more of his soul than “The Apostle” (1997), which he also wrote, financed and starred in. He played Sonny Dewey, a wayward Pentecostal preacher in search of redemption, and received another Oscar nomination.

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Mr. Duvall, center, in the Vietnam War movie “Apocalypse Now” as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, who loved “the smell of napalm in the morning.”Credit...Zoetrope/United Artists/Kobal, via Shutterstock

Mr. Duvall was generally wary of directors, and some of them found him difficult to work with. He fought bitterly on the set with Henry Hathaway, who directed him, alongside John Wayne, in the original “True Grit” (1969).

“I don’t try to be a hard guy to work with,” Mr. Duvall said in a 1981 interview with American Film magazine. “But I decide what I’m going to do with a character. I will take direction, but only if it kind of supplements what I want to do. If I have instincts that I feel are right, I don’t want anybody to tamper with them. I don’t like tamperers, and I don’t like hoverers.”

Not all directors irritated him. He liked working with Ulu Grosbard, who guided him in “True Confessions,” as well as onstage in an early Duvall triumph, as the tormented longshoreman Eddie Carbone in a 1965 Off Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge,” and later in Mr. Mamet’s “American Buffalo.” (Once his film career kicked into high gear, Mr. Duvall did not return often to the theater, but he described his occasional stage work as “an investment in the long run — it makes you a better actor.”)

And then there was Mr. Coppola, who as much as anyone put Mr. Duvall on the Hollywood map. “Coppola made them so beautifully,” the actor said of the first two “Godfather” films. His admiration did not stretch far enough, however, to impel him to recreate the role of Tom Hagen for “The Godfather: Part III” (1990) — a pale sequel, most reviewers agreed.

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Mr. Duvall as Tom Hagen, the sensible consigliere to the Corleone crime family boss played by Al Pacino, right, in “The Godfather, Part II” (1974).Credit...FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives, via Getty Images

“It boiled down to money,” he told Esquire magazine in 2010. “If you’re gonna pay Pacino twice what you pay me, fine. But five times? Come on, guys.”

Early TV Roles

Robert Selden Duvall was born on Jan. 5, 1931, in San Diego, the second of three sons of William Duvall, a rear admiral, and Mildred (Hart) Duvall, an amateur actress said to have been a relative of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

The father’s naval career meant that the family moved around a lot. Robert found his way into acting while at Principia College, a small liberal arts school in southwestern Illinois — a career choice shaped in large measure, he once said, by a realization that he was “terrible” at everything else.

After two years in the Army, serving principally at what is now Fort Gordon in Georgia, he went to New York in 1955, where he studied under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Two of his closest friends, Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman, were fellow acting students. To support himself, Mr. Duvall worked for a while in a post office branch. But soon enough, television roles fell his way, on shows like “Playhouse 90,” “Naked City” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” Then came the invitation to play Boo Radley.

Throughout his career, Mr. Duvall tried to keep Hollywood at arm’s length. He preferred living elsewhere — for many years on the Northern Virginia ranch with his fourth wife, the former Luciana Pedraza, an Argentine woman 41 years his junior. They met in the 1990s in Buenos Aires, which he visited often after developing a passion for the tango.

Complete information about his survivors was not immediately available.

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Mr. Duvall in 2010. One of his last major roles, in 2014, was in “The Judge,” in which he played an aging jurist in a small town who is accused of murder.Credit...Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

He was a Hollywood outlier on another front: politics. He was an ardent conservative, strongly supporting Republican presidential candidates, in a film world dominated by political liberals. In 2005, President George W. Bush awarded him a National Medal of Arts. Mr. Duvall, however, was not conspicuously a supporter of President Trump.

As the years passed, major roles fell Mr. Duvall’s way less frequently. Or perhaps he sought them less. All the same, he still commanded meaty parts, which he imbued with characteristic intelligence, whether as an engagingly irascible editor in “The Paper” (1994), or a sensitive small-town doctor in “Phenomenon” (1996), or a retired astronaut brought back to duty to rescue a world threatened by a giant comet in “Deep Impact” (1998), or a diligent lawyer in “A Civil Action” (1998), or an understanding bartender ministering to a boozing country singer in “Crazy Heart” (2009). One of his last major roles, in 2014, was in “The Judge,” in which he played an aging jurist in a small town who is accused of murder.

From early on, Mr. Duvall enjoyed the life of a supporting actor. “Somebody once said that the best life in the world is the life of a second leading man,” Mr. Duvall told The Times. “You travel, you get a per diem, and you’ve probably got a better part anyway. And you don’t have the weight of the entire movie on your shoulders.”

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES 

Did Hunter S. Thompson really kill himself?

 

 

 TIM ARANGO

 

Anita Thompson, Hunter’s widow, paid little mind for two decades to the particulars of the sheriff’s office report, she told people. But last year she looked back. Reading the report closely for the first time, questions emerged that hadn’t occurred to her in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death.

Around the same time last year, she also heard from someone close to Hunter’s son, Juan, who was at Owl Farm with his then-wife, Jennifer Winkel, the evening Hunter died. In a text message reviewed by The New York Times, Anita told the former sheriff that the ex-wife of Juan and Jennifer’s son was claiming that Jennifer had over the years said that Hunter’s death had to be made to “look like a suicide,” suggesting there’d been a cover-up.

Over the summer, Anita, who still lives at Owl Farm, brought her suspicions to the current sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo., Michael Buglione.

After several conversations, Mr. Buglione had heard enough to take the unusual step of asking the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to re-examine the case, and in late September he issued a statement: “By bringing in an outside agency for a fresh look, we hope to provide a definitive and transparent review that may offer peace of mind to his family and the public.”

Even in Aspen, where gossip about the famous flows easily on the ski resort gondolas and at the bars, the rumor set off by Anita’s suspicions was startling. Newly uneasy about the facts of the case, she came to doubt the official story that her husband, on his own, took his own life.

Was there a dark secret behind the death of Hunter S. Thompson? Was it something more than suicide?

Almost from the moment Hunter was laid to rest, his widow and his son began to feud, over everything from the future of Owl Farm to Juan’s belief that his father had been mistreated by Anita in his last days.

The estrangement deepened with time, and now, Anita’s suspicions have taken the feud to a more pointed place, revealing a long, bitter fight over the legacy of the man who pioneered the personal, participatory style of reporting known as gonzo journalism.

But they were all together the weekend Hunter died.

Juan wrote in his memoir that he was in another room and heard a thump that sounded like a book hitting the floor. Anita was at a health club in Aspen waiting for a yoga class to start. She later told the news media she was on speakerphone with her husband before he shot himself, and heard the “clicking” of the gun.

Looking back, there were signs from that last weekend that Hunter had planned to take his own life, Juan and Jennifer said in interviews.

He insisted on watching one of his favorite movies, “The Maltese Falcon,” with his 6-year-old grandson, Will. He gave away gifts — an old clock that had belonged to his mother and a signed copy of “Fire in the Nuts,” a short book with his frequent collaborator, the artist Ralph Steadman.

He's killed himself.

Yeah. With a handgun.

Yeah. Did that surprise you?

No

because he told me he would do it one day.

If life became so unbearable for him.

A trap, which he was in,

Physical trap.

He couldn't walk.

He had two hip replacements.

He'd broken his ankle,

and he was walking about like an old man on a stick.

Is that the image of Hunter S Thompson

You want to remember?

It was a trap he was in

He had to get out of it.

He tried.

He married again and got a lovely young wife.

And, he just felt

I can't live in this.

That beat him, actually.

And I think he sat there and thought.

This is it.

Now's the moment

and he blew his brains out.

Ralph Steadman spoke about Hunter’s suicidal ideations in an interview after his death in 2005. I

“So there is nothing new to know about Hunter’s actual death,” said Juan, 61. “So I do not know why she raised this. And I can’t imagine that the C.B.I. would find anything to act on.”

He and Jennifer said they did not have any role in Hunter’s death. “This is really shocking,” Jennifer said. “It’s been disruptive to our family. It’s obviously been very traumatic to be revisiting this.” She said she believed Anita knew that her husband took his own life, and added, “we hope this brings her closure.”

Anita had been an assistant to Hunter, and was 35 years younger than him. At the time of his death, they had been married for less than two years — it was Hunter’s second marriage — and that last weekend they fought constantly. In his memoir, Juan wrote that Hunter shot a pellet gun at a gong in the living room the night before he killed himself, just missing Anita, prompting her to threaten to call the police and have him put in a nursing home.

Hunter was also in poor health. He had difficulty moving and suffered occasional seizures, the result of decades of heavy drinking.

“Hunter’s body was giving out,” said Debra Fuller, who worked as an assistant to Hunter and helped manage Owl Farm for almost 20 years before Hunter married Anita. “He was having more difficulty writing as well.”

Hunter had often talked of suicide. Like many of Hunter’s friends, Joe DiSalvo, who was undersheriff of Pitkin County at the time of his death, had conversations with him about how his life would end. He recalled that Hunter would demonstrate his intentions by pointing a loaded gun at his head.

“Hunter talked about suicide,” Mr. DiSalvo said. “He talked about the way he was going to kill himself.”

Michael Ochs Archives/GettyImages

More than two decades after his death, Hunter maintains a cult following among writers and journalists.

The political landscape has made Hunter seem fresh, prescient even, with the rise of strongman politics in the United States under Donald J. Trump and the decline of independent news media. Early in his career, he saw the seeds of American fascism in the violence of the Hell’s Angels; in the conservatism of Barry Goldwater and his followers; in the darkness of Richard Nixon; and in the police brutality on the streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention, which Hunter covered and which radicalized him.

“When Trump was first elected and looking back on Hunter’s writings about Nixon, it was so relevant,” Juan said. “His idealism in what he wanted the country to be and his disillusionment and disappointment in what it was becoming was so, so applicable then, and even more so now.”

His books remain brisk sellers and his writing is still taught in journalism schools. A musical based on his life was staged last year, and there is a 2023 movie, “Gonzo Girl,” which stars Willem Dafoe and is adapted from a novel based on Hunter’s life.

As Hunter’s heirs fight over the circumstances of his death, they have also been at odds over how best to secure his legacy. Anita has announced plans to sell “authentic Gonzo strains” of marijuana, cloned from Hunter’s stash. She has put Owl Farm on Airbnb for $550 a night.

Many who were close to Hunter cringe at what they see as crass schemes by Anita to cash in on his name that they believe have the effect of elevating Hunter’s madcap, drug-fueled personality and lifestyle over his political and literary legacy.

Shaping that legacy is complicated by the fact that many of Hunter’s important papers are unavailable to scholars. Joe Yasinski, a New York-based collector, has begun donating materials to the Lilly Library at Indiana University. The actor Johnny Depp, who played Hunter’s alter-ego in the movie “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” purchased much of his archive to help pay off estate taxes, and the materials remain locked in a warehouse in Los Angeles.

Will, Hunter’s grandson, said the two aspects of his grandfather’s legacy — the lifestyle and the literature — are inseparable.

“I think that’s the weird tension, where part of what makes Hunter important is not that he was just writing about bikers doing Benzedrine,” he said. “He was doing Benzedrine with bikers. You can’t take that apart, right? You can’t look at him purely as an observer or journalist right? He writes a lot about doing drugs and a lot about crazy stuff. But also he’s writing about Nixon in the ’70s.”

Michael Ochs Archives/GettyImages

Aspen has had many lives: its silver mining days in the late 19th century; its transformation into a ski town beginning in the 1930s; the era Hunter personified when refugees of the counterculture flocked from Haight-Ashbury; and its status today as a glittering alpine cultural capital for the ultrawealthy.

“Now you have something like 80 billionaires who either live here or own property here,” said Mick Ireland, who is a lawyer, journalist and former mayor of Aspen.

Aspen is a two-newspaper town, and Mr. Ireland is a columnist for The Aspen Daily News, where he recently wrote sympathetically of Anita, saying grief takes time. He has also advised Anita on legal matters related to Owl Farm.

“The question of whether there was assisted suicide is a legitimate question,” he said in an interview. “I don’t have an opinion on it.”

Hunter’s memory still figures prominently in the shape-shifting culture of Aspen.

The Fat City Gallery, owned by D.J. Watkins, features examples of Hunter’s so-called shotgun art — like a “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” movie poster, shot through with birdshot — hanging from the walls of Mr. Watkins’s office, where he has recreated Hunter’s kitchen.

Mick Ireland

Hunter is also remembered for his activism against development and gentrification. His successful opposition to an expansion of the runway at the local airport in 1995, to allow for bigger jets, lasted until 2024, when voters allowed the county to move forward.

Mr. DiSalvo reflected on his friend’s legacy in Aspen, saying that while Hunter lost his campaign for sheriff, the ideas he had to change policing — by wearing jeans, rather than uniforms, and ending heavy-handed crackdowns on drug possession — eventually took hold in Aspen and influenced him while he was sheriff.

And Hunter is recalled — fondly and not — for the hard partying and rampant cocaine use that defined Aspen in the 1970s and ’80s.

For some, like the local columnist Lorenzo Semple, unwelcome memories of that “trail of smoldering wreckage,” as he put it, have been resurrected by the new chatter about how Hunter died.

The speculation, Mr. Semple wrote in The Aspen Times in October, is all just “gossip mongering.”

It took Anita almost three years to remove her husband’s toothbrush from their bathroom after his death. Otherwise, Owl Farm has been mostly untouched.

“Living in a shrine psychologically is probably not great,” she said in an interview in 2024 with a local television station. (Anita declined to be interviewed for this article.)

When Sheriff Buglione announced in late September that the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was re-examining the case, officials suggested that the inquiry could be wrapped up quickly, perhaps in a matter of a few weeks.

It has been more than three months.

State investigators have been interviewing people in Hunter’s orbit and law enforcement officials who conducted the original investigation. They’ve also been trying to recover evidence, like photos of the scene, that the sheriff’s department had purged, in accordance with state law, all while fielding calls from the public about conspiracy theories, like C.I.A. involvement.

Investigators returned to Owl Farm to conduct an analysis of the bullet trajectory in the kitchen, which was not done 20 years ago.

Mr. DiSalvo, who later moved from undersheriff to sheriff, was among the first to arrive at Owl Farm after his friend’s death.

Joe DiSalvo

“I get there, he’s dead at the typewriter,” Mr. DiSalvo said. He continued, “never once did I consider this a homicide. It never crossed my mind.”

He noted that investigators never thought to swab anyone’s hands for gunshot residue.

Juan, though, had fired a gun, a fact that has come under fresh scrutiny.

The first sheriff’s deputy to arrive at Owl Farm heard three gunshots as he drove onto the driveway. “Juan told me that he had shot a shotgun into the air to mark the passing of his father,” the deputy wrote in his report.

As the work of Colorado’s investigators has stretched on, the diaspora of associates and friends and lawyers who knew Hunter has been aflame with speculation.

“The whole Hunter world is buzzing, with different characters and different points of view,” said George Tobia, a lawyer for the estate who oversees Hunter’s copyrights.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

 

 

 

 

Dilbert sempre foi MAGA

 

 

Joel Stein

 The New York Times

Como judeu de uma cidade liberal da Costa Leste, fui privado de ter um tio "Maga" —acrônimo de "Make America Great Again", lema usado por republicanos e apoiadores do presidente americano Donald Trump— com quem discutir.

Para consertar isso, fui atrás de Scott Adams, o cartunista de "Dilbert", amplamente bem-sucedido e sindicalizado que, por volta de 2017, havia declarado apoio a Donald Trump e reunido uma comunidade online que destilava fúria contra as elites progressistas presunçosas.

Isso pareceu uma traição vinda de alguém do nosso próprio grupo. Afinal, ele era um agnóstico pescetariano que fez pós-graduação em Berkeley, morava numa cidade da Bay Area esmagadoramente democrata, instalou painéis solares no telhado e vivia de fazer arte. Por que, de repente, ele se voltaria contra a própria classe?

Adams, morto na última terça-feira, concordou em ser entrevistado para meu livro "In Defense of Elitism: Why I’m Better Than You and You Are Better Than Someone Who Didn’t Buy This Book" —algo como em defesa do elitismo, por que sou melhor que você e você é melhor que alguém que não comprou esse livro. Eu planejava ter um debate político acalorado, de alto nível —do tipo que só um cartunista e um colunista de humor poderiam ter.

Quando entrei na garagem da casa dele em Pleasanton, na Califórnia, no entanto, encontrei um homem sorridente e de fala mansa. Ele me mostrou a casa, o que levou um bom tempo, já que ela tinha cerca de 780 metros quadrados. A esposa havia deixado ele pouco antes de terminarem a construção, e quase todos os amigos tinham se afastado desde que ele virou "Maga", então ele andava sozinho pela casa.

Apesar de enorme, era uma casa do povo —suas características haviam sido definidas por meio da colaboração coletiva de mais de 3.000 fãs que enviaram ideias para o projeto "Dilbert’s Ultimate House" (DUH), resultando em inovações como um banheiro para gatos, um armário para árvore de Natal e uma torre em forma de cabeça do Dilbert, cujas janelas-olhos davam para a piscina. Havia também uma sala de embrulho de presentes que, aparentemente por causa da perda dos amigos, tinha sido convertida em um estúdio de música onde Adams estava aprendendo a tocar bateria.

Quando finalmente perguntei a Adams como ele havia se voltado contra seus colegas altamente escolarizados e bem-sucedidos, ele explicou pacientemente que eu o tinha entendido mal. O pai dele era carteiro e a mãe trabalhou por um tempo numa linha de montagem. Ele cursou uma faculdade rural no interior do estado de Nova York, trabalhou como caixa de banco —onde, segundo disse, foi assaltado à mão armada duas vezes—, depois fez um curso de negócios à noite e conseguiu um emprego na Pacific Bell. Quando nos conhecemos, ele não tinha terno e só recentemente havia viajado para fora do país pela primeira vez.

"Dilbert" era um grito de guerra contra a classe gerencial —o sistema de idiotas iludidos para quem você trabalha e que acham que sabem mais. Trabalhadores colavam a tira em seus cubículos como combatentes da resistência pichando "V" nas paredes da Paris ocupada. Mas os chefes também colocavam "Dilbert" em seus escritórios, já que eles próprios também tinham um chefe idiota.

No universo de Dilbert, "é tartaruga em cima de tartaruga até lá em cima", explicou-me Adams quando nos encontramos. Os degraus mais baixos estão cheios de trabalhadores competentes e explorados, oprimidos por uma burocracia infinita de pessoas que sustentam um sistema que não se baseia, de fato, em conhecimento real.

Talvez Adams tenha sido um apoiador precoce de Trump porque o próprio "Dilbert" já era proto-"Maga". As frustrações cotidianas e o cinismo da tira se somavam a uma visão de mundo hoje familiar. "Não existe expertise. Simplesmente não existe", disse o cartunista.

Adams achava que isso se estendia até a questões como o comércio internacional. "Nessas situações grandes e complicadas, ninguém realmente sabe se temos um bom acordo. É melhor negociar a partir da ignorância e torcer para que o outro lado ceda", ele me disse. "No mundo real existe uma névoa. Num mundo em que ninguém sabe, a pessoa mais barulhenta vai conseguir mais."

Do ponto de vista dele, eu havia vivido por tanto tempo entre pessoas cheias de credenciais, perdidas em pensamentos abstratos, que fui enganado a achar que problemas complexos exigem soluções de especialistas. "No seu filme", como ele chamava a minha percepção da realidade, "há um grandalhão incompetente que não conhece os detalhes", ele me disse. "Estou te dizendo que isso é a melhor coisa possível. Quando o presidente Trump age sem todas as informações e seus fatos não estão corretos, ele está operando em um nível mais alto, não mais baixo. Ele está operando no mundo real."

Adams me levou ao cômodo onde, todos os dias, às 7h da manhã, ele fazia a transmissão ao vivo de "Real Coffee With Scott Adams", e seus fãs sintonizavam para o "gole simultâneo". Ali, ele me explicou pessoalmente os tipos de coisas sobre as quais falava online —o perigo das vacinas e a manipulação das eleições.

Em outras ocasiões, eu o ouvi argumentar que os republicanos eram superiores porque ignoravam o impulso democrático feminino, inalcançável, em direção à justiça, e se concentravam na única coisa útil: o poder. Em um post de blog, ele questionou a contagem de judeus mortos no Holocausto. Em 2023, anos depois da nossa visita, ele disse em seu podcast: "Com base na forma como as coisas estão indo atualmente, o melhor conselho que eu daria às pessoas brancas é que se afastem o mais rápido possível das pessoas negras". Seus distribuidores de jornais e editoras de livros o abandonaram.

Comendo uma massa vegetariana num restaurante no centro de Pleasanton, notei seu físico definido. E que ele estava namorando uma modelo do Instagram com metade da sua idade. E as aulas de bateria. Perguntei se ele estava passando por uma crise de meia-idade. Provavelmente, ele disse. Mas sua política, garantiu, não fazia parte disso.

Adams disse que não havia mudado. Em vez disso, os partidos políticos é que tinham mudado. Os liberais costumavam ser os rebeldes, os "outsiders", os que zombavam do establishment sisudo. Ele me lembrou que, 17 anos antes, eu tinha feito uma sessão de perguntas e respostas no qual lhe disse "se quisesse, você poderia desenhar melhor do que isso, certo?"

"Você e eu temos uma marca parecida. Nós zombamos da elite. Isso faz parte do nosso trabalho", disse Adams. "A quantidade de diversão que os apoiadores de Trump têm é enorme. Você acha que está tendo uma conversa, mas um lado está rindo e o outro está chorando. Os memes são ótimos. Eu tenho um cara de memes. Alguns são maldosos demais, então não coloco meu nome neles."

Depois que Adams morreu de câncer de próstata, Donald Trump, nosso comandante e principal criador de memes maldosos, divulgou uma declaração que transformou tudo em algo sobre ele mesmo: "Infelizmente, o Grande Influenciador, Scott Adams, faleceu. Ele era um cara fantástico, que gostava e me respeitava quando isso não era algo da moda."

Fico feliz por ter conhecido Scott Adams. Mas não sei como vocês, que têm tios "Maga", lidam com isso.

 

Sidney Gusman escreve álbum autobiográfico em que lembra fins de semana com o pai: 'Foi libertador'

 

Depois de muitos anos assinando artigos sobre quadrinhos e editando livros do gênero, jornalista lança 'Domingos', sua primeira HQ autoral de fôlego

  

 PorTélio Navega

 Muita gente gostaria de ver a vida acontecer como um dia de domingo. Sidney Gusman que o diga. Conhecido como jornalista especializado em quadrinhos e, depois, como editor de títulos do gênero — como os da série Graphic MSP, da Mauricio de Sousa Produções —, ele acaba de lançar pela editora Pipoca & Nanquim sua primeira HQ autoral de fôlego: “Domingos”. Com roteiro do próprio Sidão — como é carinhosamente conhecido — e arte de Jefferson Costa, o trabalho é extremamente pessoal e presta homenagem ao pai do autor, que dá nome ao álbum.

— A ideia surgiu em 2018 — explica Sidão, desligado recentemente da MSP, depois de 20 anos de trabalho na empresa como editor de livros. — Eu andava sonhando bastante com meu pai e, num dia, a caminho do trabalho, lembrei que ele, já falecido havia oito anos, tinha nascido e morrido num domingo.

.No embalo das lembranças, Sidão percebeu que muitos dos grandes momentos que viveu com Seu Domingos aconteceram em um domingo, dia em que a família costumava se reunir para longos almoços ou simplesmente para assistir aos jogos de futebol na TV. Ele apresenta no livro 18 dessas memórias, em histórias tocantes e de fácil identificação para o leitor. Coube a Jefferson Costa — premiado com o Jabuti por “Jeremias: Pele”, com roteiro de Rafael Calça — transformar as recordações do amigo em imagens, como se também as tivesse vivido naquela casa do bairro da Mooca, em São Paulo, praticamente um personagem do álbum.

A ideia de colocar suas recordações afetivas no papel, porém, ainda demorou a sair do papel: Sidão não queria terminar o livro com a morte do pai. Até que, no ano seguinte, em 2019, o jornalista — que tem Domingos como nome do meio — recebeu uma boa notícia que lhe permitiu fechar o álbum com chave de ouro, de forma positiva, mas sem spoiler, claro.

— Agora eu só precisava arrumar tempo e vergonha na cara para tirar esse projeto da gaveta — admite, rindo. — Até que, três anos depois, quando já estávamos saindo da pandemia, tive um apagamento de memória. Foi quando decidi que precisava fazer algo para mim.

O susto vivido por Sidão e sua família, com o episódio de amnésia diagnosticado posteriormente como consequência do excesso de trabalho, foi o estopim para reduzir a marcha e pensar mais em si mesmo:

— Eu tinha acabado de voltar da Bienal do Livro de São Paulo, em 2022, e, em casa, ao escovar os dentes, vi uma tatuagem provisória no meu punho direito e não lembrava de tê-la feito.

Sidão perguntou então à mulher que brincadeira era aquela. Ao que ela respondeu, de pronto: você fez uma tatuagem.

— Ela me perguntou onde estavam nossas filhas, e eu não soube responder, embora tivesse saído para levá-las ao aeroporto, para uma viagem. Daí pensei: fodeu, tive um derrame — lembra, aflito. — Corri para o hospital e fiquei oito horas acordado, de tanta adrenalina, mesmo com as tentativas de me fazer dormir. Eu não lembrava de nada, via meus vídeos nas redes sociais e dizia para meu filho que não tinha vivido aquilo. Até que, do nada, eu voltei, felizmente.

O autor diz que escrever algo como “Domingos”, com momentos ternos — como assistir, ainda adolescente, ao pai ganhar uma pelada — ou tensos, como a birra de Seu Domingos diante da paixão do filho por quadrinhos, foi libertador.

— Eu já havia feito quadrinhos corporativos, uma história para o fanzine “Manicomics” e outra para o álbum “Ouro da casa” — explica. — Mas eram coisas curtas. Escrever algo tão pessoal, para alguém como eu, um cara tão reservado nas redes sociais, foi catártico. Abri muito meu coração. No entanto, precisava colocar isso para fora. E, por ser autobiográfico, tinha de transmitir a verdade a quem lesse.

Sidão chega a se emocionar ao relatar algumas das reações dos leitores ao livro:

— Tem pessoas que encontram coincidências com a história. Outras dizem que tiveram um pai de merda, mas adoraram o quadrinho e querem ser para os filhos o pai que eu sou para os meus, e aquele que Seu Domingos foi para mim. 

O GLOBO 

 

 

Morre Scott Adams, criador da tirinha 'Dilbert', aos 68 anos

 

 

Série que satirizou o mundo corporativo virou fenômeno global antes de ser retirada de centenas de jornais após declarações racistas do autor

  

  

Richard Sandomir 

Scott Adams, cuja experiência como gerente intermediário em um banco e em uma empresa de telefonia lhe forneceu o material para criar a tira em quadrinhos “Dilbert”, uma sátira diária da vida corporativa que se tornou um fenômeno, mas que foi retirada de mais de mil jornais depois que ele fez comentários racistas em seu podcast em 2023, morreu nesta terça-feira (13) em sua casa em Pleasanton, na Califórnia, na região da baía de São Francisco. Ele tinha 68 anos.

Sua ex-mulher, Shelly Adams, confirmou a morte e disse que ele estava sob cuidados paliativos. Adams havia anunciado em maio que tinha um câncer de próstata agressivo e que provavelmente teria apenas alguns meses de vida.

Em novembro, ele escreveu na plataforma de mídia social X que sua saúde estava “piorando rapidamente” e que seu plano de saúde ainda não havia marcado a aplicação de um medicamento que já havia sido aprovado. Ele pediu ajuda ao presidente Donald Trump, a quem apoiava publicamente. “Já estou cuidando disso”, respondeu o presidente em sua rede social, a Truth Social.

Por mais de 30 anos, “Dilbert” retratou os absurdos do ambiente de trabalho no setor de tecnologia e satirizou a gestão corporativa. O personagem-título era um engenheiro frustrado que trabalhava em uma baia de escritório em uma empresa de alta tecnologia, enquanto seu animal de estimação antropomórfico e inteligente, Dogbert, sonhava em dominar o mundo. Outros personagens incluíam os colegas de Dilbert, Alice, Asok e Wally; o atrapalhado chefe de cabelo pontudo; e Catbert, o gato de pelagem vermelha e chefe maligno de recursos humanos.

No auge, “Dilbert” era distribuído para cerca de 2 mil jornais em todo o mundo, colocando-se no mesmo patamar de outras tiras populares, como “Peanuts”, “Doonesbury” e “Garfield”. Adams também publicou numerosas coletâneas de “Dilbert” e escreveu livros de negócios, incluindo “The Dilbert Principle”, que sustenta que “os trabalhadores mais ineficazes são sistematicamente promovidos para o lugar onde podem causar menos danos, a gerência”.

A tira também levou à produção de uma série animada de televisão de curta duração, a bonecos de pelúcia de Dilbert, a jogos de computador e ao Dilberito, um burrito vegetariano congelado que fracassou nas vendas em supermercados após alguns anos. O próprio Dilbert foi a estrela de uma campanha publicitária de US$ 30 milhões para a rede Office Depot em 1997.

Um dos fatores do sucesso, segundo Alan Gardner, editor do site The Daily Cartoonist, foi o fato de Adams ter sido o primeiro a criar uma tira ambientada em escritórios com personagens recorrentes com os quais o público podia se identificar. Ele citou Alice como exemplo de uma mulher extremamente inteligente que nunca recebia atenção ou reconhecimento.

Adams dizia que Dilbert deu voz a trabalhadores isolados em seus cubículos. Em entrevista ao “The New York Times” em 1995, afirmou que havia descoberto algo surpreendente quando começou a usar a internet. “Ouvi todas essas pessoas que achavam que eram as únicas, que viviam uma situação única e absurda, e que não podiam falar sobre isso porque ninguém acreditaria nelas”, disse.

Ao longo dos anos, Adams fez comentários sobre mulheres e judeus que lhe trouxeram repercussão negativa fora do universo do cartunista popular. Ele usou seu podcast, “Real Coffee With Scott Adams”, para comentar livremente as notícias, uma plataforma que acabou levando à queda de “Dilbert”. Em fevereiro de 2023, ao comentar uma pesquisa do instituto Rasmussen Reports que mostrava que apenas 53% dos americanos negros concordavam com a frase “não há problema em ser branco”, expressão promovida por supremacistas brancos segundo a Liga Antidifamação, Adams disse que, se quase metade dos negros não concordava com isso, então eles formariam um “grupo de ódio”. Em seguida, afirmou que o melhor conselho para pessoas brancas seria “ficar longe de pessoas negras”.

A reação foi imediata. Muitos grandes jornais, incluindo The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times e The New York Times em sua edição impressa internacional, deixaram de publicar “Dilbert”. O mesmo fez a rede USA Today, que na época reunia mais de 200 jornais.

Logo depois, a Andrews McMeel Universal, que então distribuía “Dilbert” para cerca de 1.400 jornais, rompeu com Adams. O selo de negócios da Penguin Random House, uma das maiores editoras do mundo, também cancelou os planos de publicar seu livro de conselhos semihumorístico “Reframe Your Brain”. Adams o lançou por conta própria ainda naquele ano.

Em um podcast posterior, ele se defendeu, dizendo que não era racista e que havia usado hipérbole ao chamar negros de “grupo de ódio”. Reconheceu que os comentários haviam destruído sua carreira. “A maior parte da minha renda vai desaparecer na semana que vem”, disse. “Minha reputação para o resto da vida acabou. Não dá para se recuperar disso.”

Ele rapidamente relançou a tira como “Dilbert Reborn”, disponível por assinatura na plataforma Locals.

Desejo de ser cartunista desde os 5 anos

Scott Raymond Adams nasceu em 8 de junho de 1957 em Windham, no estado de Nova York, na região das montanhas Catskill. Seu pai, Paul, era funcionário dos correios. Sua mãe, Virginia Adams, era corretora de imóveis e operária de linha de montagem. Em uma casa tranquila, onde Scott era o filho do meio, destacou-se como piadista.

Em entrevista ao “San Francisco Chronicle” em 1998, Adams disse que a parte cínica de sua personalidade vinha do pai, a quem descreveu como alguém que raramente dizia algo sério.

Desde os 5 anos, queria ser cartunista. Mas, como contou ao “The New York Times” em 2003, ao entender probabilidades e estatísticas, perdeu a inocência de acreditar que tudo era possível. Seguiu então um caminho empresarial. Formou-se em economia em 1979 no Hartwick College, em Oneonta, Nova York.

Naquele ano, começou a trabalhar como caixa no Crocker National Bank, em San Francisco, mas, por causa da dislexia, tinha dificuldade para fechar os balanços. Também foi assaltado à mão armada duas vezes. Depois de enviar ao chefe um memorando sobre como melhorar a gestão do banco, foi encaminhado para um programa de treinamento gerencial, subiu de cargo e concluiu um MBA na Universidade da Califórnia, em Berkeley, em 1986.

“Dilbert” surgiu durante reuniões entediantes no Crocker, quando Adams desenhava caricaturas de colegas e chefes, que depois eram enviadas por fax dentro do banco.

O visual simples, mas marcante, do personagem foi inspirado em um colega de trabalho “com um corpo em forma de batata, divertido de desenhar”, disse Adams à revista Publishers Weekly em 2008. Segundo ele, a falta de habilidades sociais de Dilbert era baseada em sua própria personalidade, enquanto suas competências profissionais eram uma mistura de engenheiros que conheceu.

Em 1986, Adams foi para a Pacific Bell e, dois anos depois, enviou amostras da tira a sindicatos de cartunistas. A United Feature Syndicate concordou em distribuí-la em 1989, inicialmente para 35 jornais. Ele permaneceu na Pacific Bell até 1995, quando passou a se dedicar integralmente a “Dilbert”.

O sucesso da tira deu a Adams uma plataforma para comentar uma ampla gama de temas em seu blog e podcast, o que também lhe trouxe críticas intensas. Em 2006, questionou em seu blog se o número de seis milhões de judeus mortos no Holocausto era preciso. Em 2011, escreveu que as mulheres eram tratadas de forma diferente pela sociedade “pela mesma razão que crianças e pessoas com deficiência mental”.

Em 2015, atribuiu ao então empresário imobiliário e estrela de reality show Donald Trump 98% de chance de vencer a eleição presidencial do ano seguinte, com base em seu poder de persuasão. Em 2016, disse no programa “Real Time With Bill Maher” que o desprezo de Trump pelos fatos fazia parte de sua estratégia, ao evitar detalhes e reduzir os alvos de crítica.

Adams escreveu “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter”, lançado em 2017, um livro sobre a capacidade de Trump de persuadir. A capa traz Dogbert com um penteado inspirado no do presidente. A obra lhe rendeu um convite para visitar a Casa Branca.

Em 2025, Adams afirmou em seu podcast que apoiar Trump lhe custou a vida social, a carreira, a reputação e possivelmente a saúde, mas que acreditava que o sacrifício havia valido a pena.

Seus casamentos com Shelly Miles e Kristina Basham terminaram em divórcio. Ele deixa os enteados Hazel, Marin e Savannah, além dos irmãos Cindy e Dave. Outro enteado, Justin Miles, morreu de overdose de fentanil em 2018.

Em uma tira de “Dilbert Reborn” publicada em 2025, Dilbert é confrontado por um personagem chamado Covid Carl, obcecado por sua recusa em tomar vacinas contra a Covid-19, que diz que vai julgar a credibilidade do que Dilbert afirma com base em seu histórico de vacinação. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES