Category: In Memoriam

R.I.P. Donald Sutherland

I really enjoyed The Hunger Games movies when they came out. Not only were they great examples of dystopian science fiction, but they served as a refresher course in the nature of fascism. The main baddie in the films was, of course, President Snow, played with great menace and understatement by the great Donald Sutherland. 

I am very grateful to the producers of The Hunger Games for introducing Sutherland to a new generation of film lovers, especially at a time when his career was in a bit of a lull. Sutherland was one of my favorite actors when I was growing up, best known for career-making roles like Hawkeye Pierce in M.A.S.H., Oddball in Kelly’s Heroes, and the titular role in Klute. One of the great ironies of film history is that Sutherland should now be so closely associated with the role of President Snow—literally a right-wing fascist dictator—when his early, defining performances were usually as lovable, left-of-center antiheroes (Hawkeye Pierce especially). 

Sutherland was one of the few movie stars from the 70s and 80s to have curly, hippie-hair, and his entire persona seemed to be that of a counter-cultural smart guy. The Alpha-Hippie that all Beta-Hippies aspired to be. I say he was a smart-guy, and it’s true—never did an actor so effortlessly exude intelligence, even without dialog, as Sutherland did. But while he was so obviously a smart-guy, he was never a smart-ass. Even the irreverent Hawkeye Pierce—perhaps the most famous prankster in cinema history—reserved his mocking for when he needed it to retain his sanity, and focused it on those who most deserved it.

One of the best ways to understand Sutherland as an artist is to imagine his stylistic opposite, Nicholas Cage. Like Sutherland, Cage is a brilliant actor, and a very smart guy, but while Cage is famous for his artistic daring, often taking his performances to frenetic heights that would seem ridiculous for other, lesser actors, Sutherland was known for his almost impenetrable reserve. He always seemed to be holding something back, in a good way. He kept the viewer guessing about what was really going on behind those crystalline blue eyes. 

Perhaps my favorite Sutherland role when I was growing up was as a world-weary health inspector in Philip Kaufman’s 1978 sci-fi horror masterpiece The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In this film, Sutherland almost drips existential cool, even when faced with an invasion of alien pod-people (read: communists, right-wing conformists, or your boogey-men of choice) who want to eliminate humanity.

Check it out.

R.I.P. Alan Arkin

The great actor and comic genius Alan Arkin has left us. I loved him ever since I saw 1979’s The In-Laws, which is surely one of the best comedies of the 20th Century. Arkin plays Sheldon Kornpett, a straight-laced Manhattan dentist who finds himself caught up in an adventure with his soon to be in-law, a rogue CIA agent. At one point when Sheldon faces imminent death, he laments that he has only ever made love to four women, “two of them my wife.” Classic.

Having loved his work in my youth, I was thrilled to see a new generation of film viewers introduced to Arkin through his movies like Little Miss Sunshine and Argo. The latter film, in particular, seems to encapsulate the essence of Arkin’s on-screen persona. Playing world-weary film producer Lester Siegel, he exudes an aura of what I think of as Sardonic Unflappability, a comical spirit of defiance that I emulated as a kid and which helped me keep my sanity. 

Like many of my heroes, Arkin’s life had a great second act. I hope his blessings continue into the next life, too.

R.I.P. Treat Williams

The fine character actor Treat Williams died in a motorcycle accident earlier this week. I say “character actor” because, despite his charm, intelligence, and vaguely Scottish good-looks, Williams never quite achieved leading-man status in Hollywood. His best movie, imho, was Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City, a wrenching drama about the corrupting influence of drug money on police officers. Everyone should check it out.

I don’t know why Williams didn’t get the lead in more films. Perhaps it had something to do with his physiognomy (he resembled Colin Farrell, another actor who never really clicked in Hollywood). Whatever the reason, Williams had a long, brilliant career in films, TV, and on-stage. 

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I saw him in a lot of stuff, and he was always great. His perseverance should inspire future generations of actors and artists who don’t quite fit the standard commercial mold but have talent out the yin-yang. Success is the best revenge.

Godspeed, Mr. Williams…

R.I.P. Martin Amis

Of all the novels I have read in my life, only two ever disturbed me on a deep, lasting level. One was The Constant Gardener by John le Carré. The other was Money by Martin Amis.

Money is, by any reasonable definition, a brilliant novel. Full of symbolism and thematic complexity, Money is a phantasmagoric mediation on the evils of modern capitalism, whose only purpose is to make every living human being into a customer. And the very best customers, Amis reminds us, are addicts. They simply can’t stop.

The novel’s protagonist, a low-budget film director named John Self (ahem), certainly can’t stop. Addicted to sex, booze, fast-food, and pornography, he spends his days and night rambling around 1980s London, ostensibly in preparing to shoot a low-budget film with an egomaniac has-been movie star and a young, nymphomaniac actress, amongst other tragic-comic types. The movie is being funded by a shady character named Fielding Goodney, who might just be the devil himself. 

Money is a triumph of style and imagery (although—be warned—much of that imagery is very, very gross). Self is a kind of stand-in for the entirety of modern Western civilization, and the novel might have been irredeemably bleak if not for Amis’s ferocious sense of humor, which he surely inherited from his equally brilliant father, the novelist Kingley Amis. 

Martin Amis was a very fine writer, and the world will be a lot less interesting without him.