September 16, 2017

"Singing and acting are actually very similar things. Anyone can sing and anyone can be a film actor. All you have to do is learn."

"I learned to sing when I was a child I had a babysitter named Thelma. She was 18, I was six, and I was in love with her. I used to sing her an old Jimmie Rodgers song, 'T for Thelma.' [He sings:] 'T for Texas, T for Tennessee, T for Thelma, that girl made a wreck out of me.' [He smiles:] I was singing the blues when I was six. Kind of sad, eh?"

Blogged here in 2013. He was Harry Dean Stanton, who died yesterday at the age of 91. Here's the NYT obit. Excerpt:
[H]e remained largely unknown to the general public until 1984, when the seemingly impossible, or at least the unexpected, happened: Mr. Stanton, the quintessential supporting player, became a leading man.

That year he starred as a wandering amnesiac reunited with his family in Wim Wenders’s “Paris, Texas,” which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and as a fast-talking automobile thief training Emilio Estevez in the ways of his world in Alex Cox’s cult comedy “Repo Man.”...

Mr. Stanton was never anonymous again, although he continued to make his contributions almost entirely in supporting roles. He played Molly Ringwald’s underemployed father in the teenage romance “Pretty in Pink” (1986), the apostle Paul in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), a private eye in David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” (1990), a judge in Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998), the hero’s ailing brother in Mr. Lynch’s “The Straight Story” (1999), a veteran inmate cheerfully testing the electrocution equipment in “The Green Mile” (1999) and Charlie Sheen’s father in “The Big Bounce” (2004)... [and] Roman Grant, a self-proclaimed prophet with 14 wives, on [HBO's] “Big Love”...

36 comments:

Mattman26 said...

He was the bestest, and will be missed. He even shows up in Cool Hand Luke.

BTW, I've seen Repo Man an embarrassingly large number of times (though it's been a while), and I'm pretty sure he was not an auto thief. He was a . . . repo man. (Layers and layers of fact-checkers, right?)

rcocean said...

Best Role was Repo man.

Bud: Credit is a sacred trust, it's what our free society is founded on. Do you think they give a damn about their bills in Russia? I said, do you think they give a damn about their bills in Russia?

Otto: They don't pay bills in Russia, it's all free.

Bud: All free? Free my ass. What are you, a fuckin' commie? Huh?

Otto: No, I ain't no commie.

Bud: Well, you better not be. I don't want no commies in my car. No Christians either.

William said...

He'd be the ideal guy to read Laslo's lines.

MacMacConnell said...

Somewhere I read today that when Jack Nicholson was his room mate Stanton asked him what the secret to acting was, Nicholson replied, that your costume determines how to act.

Stanton was a great actor, RIP.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

I didn't see “The Big Bounce” (2004). Was it about boobs?

I agree that his best role (of the movies I have seen) was Repo Man.

Fernandinande said...

He played a trailer court manager in Twin Peaks (2017).

Bay Area Guy said...

@rcocean,

Excellent find! I was gonna post Stanton's libertarian rant in Repo Man. He didn't like Christiana either!

Kate said...

He played a cowboy angel in a very strange, depressing Christmas movie. And, of course, he and Yaphet Kotto steal "Alien" out from under everyone else's feet. RIP.

n.n said...

Singing, dancing boobs having a gay old time.

JPS said...

No mention of Red Dawn, either here or in the NYT?

AVENGE ME!

http://tinyurl.com/ydbak3tp

Quaestor said...

"And you have to do is learn..."

Yeah.

This made me think of a funny line in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (maybe the only funny line): I can learn to be real.

Amexpat said...

Great face. He was good in every film he was in. Played an obsessive Dylan bootlegger in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Hvny7pX8g

Ann Althouse said...

"He even shows up in Cool Hand Luke."

I was going to use this clip in the post.

tcrosse said...

IN Doctors in Love (1982) he plays a surgeon. Another doctor compliments him on a successful operation. "Shithouse luck", he replies.

Michael K said...

"No mention of Red Dawn, either here or in the NYT?"

Yes, I was wondering about that.

"Red Dawn" is one of those things the left cannot abide.

Has anyone seen the DVD ? The ending is completely different from that of the theatrical version. Much better.

Roughcoat said...

As Homer van Meter in "Dillinger."

Darrell said...

The people behind "Comrade Detective" think that Red Dawn was official government propaganda from Ronald Reagan. Lefties say the darndest things! Yes, I know that darnedest is preferred, but I always defer to Art Linkletter.

TWW said...

"Anyone can sing and anyone can be a film actor."

Obviously said by someone who never saw Glen Campbell in 'True Grit' or Pierce Bronson in 'Mama Mia'.

donald said...

Harry Dean Stanton lived one helluva life. I mean, one HELLUVA life.

dreams said...

Here is Harry Dean Stanton's final role.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=131&v=2KLLkj84GAo

Quaestor said...

Has anyone seen the [Red Dawn] DVD ? The ending is completely different from that of the theatrical version. Much better.

Intrigued I had to stream it (the version I watched was BluRay) and it was just as I remembered. Could that have been a "director's cut"?

I did notice that there was a character in Red Dawn called "Mrs. Teasdale", which was a famous role for Margaret Dumont playing opposite Groucho Marx in Duck Soup, which we discussed earlier today regarding the CNN boobs imbroglio. More Althouse synchronicity. Creepy.

The Godfather said...

I don't know about film acting, but I've done some amateur stage acting, and I can attest that there are some people who just can NOT act. Having tried out for a men's chorus not long ago, I can attest that there are some people who can NOT sing, except solo in the shower.

Yancey Ward said...

Also worthy of mention was his role in Alien. He had a role in the recent Twin Peaks sequel series, too.

One of the most recognizable faces in all of Hollywood whose name might not be known most of them who recognized it.

Like a couple of commenters above, Repo Man is the movie for which I remember him most. It played regularly at an independent theater in Lexington, KY when I was a freshman in college during the Fall, Winter, and Spring of 1984/5, and my friends and I probably went to see it 10 times at least that year; and despite the NYTimes blurb, he was a repo man, not technically a car thief.

Michael K said...

"Could that have been a "director's cut"?"

I dunno. The movie in theaters ended with the two kids dying and the narrator saying "The war ended as wars always do"

The DVD, which I haven't watched in months had more that sounded like winning. And more about "Partisan Rock" where the kids carved their names.

I remembered the theatrical ending as far more downbeat. I had a VHS video tape that was the same and the DVD I have now is different.

Heywood Rice said...

He was in Renaldo and Clara.

Alex said...

He was amazingballs in "Big Love" playing Roman Grant. Holy hell, he half convinced me he was a Fundamentalist Mormon.

Paul said...

No, I feel good singers make poor actors. Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Bing Crosby, Madonna, Dolly Parton, Barbara Streisand, Michael Jackson, Shad Moss, David Bowie, Snoop Dogg, Björk, Mick Jagger, Chris Isaak, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Mandy Moore, Tupac Shakur, ...

THEY ALL STUNK!!!!

Why? Singers sing from the heart... Actors fake it.

Simple as that.

Alex said...

Paul... With one exception. David Bowie as Pontius Pilate in "The Last Temptation of Christ". He was great in that scene with Willem Dafoe.

Alex said...

Oh and of course Harry Dean Stanton played Paul of Tarsus in "Last Temptation of Christ" in a great scene with Willem Dafoe as well.

richard mcenroe said...

NYT LEFT OUT Red Dawn for some,reason...

Paul Snively said...

Walter Becker. Jerry Pournelle. Harry Dean Stanton. And that's just this week.

It has been a rough one.

Bad Lieutenant said...

David Bowie was good in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and also there was a movie I believe it was called The Man Who Fell To Earth.

Chris Arabia said...

I liked him as Pentangeli's FBI minder in The Godfather Part II and the detective in Christine. The night before John Belushi died, according to Bob Woodward, Stanton suggested to Cathy Smith that she and Stanton get together for dinner some time.

ndspinelli said...

the consummate character actor. They are my favorites.

ndspinelli said...

One of his last roles was in a recent, funny, albeit short lived HBO series, Getting On. The series takes place in an LA hospital old folks ward. A longtime patient, played by the actress, Ann Morgan Guilbert[you know her as Millie Helper from the Dick Van Dyke Show] has a boyfriend played by Harry Dean Stanton. He likes to make booty calls much to the chagrin of the staff.

Unknown said...

Singing and acting ... this is the expression of emotion through music or scene. A talented person is talented in everything.