Recently in Memoriam Category
"'The world is a tough place,' he said with a chuckle. 'You're never going to get out of it alive.'" A damn dirty ape no longer, Charlton Heston, 1923-2008. (Between this and Buckley, it's been a bad year so far for the patriarchs of conservatism.)
Update: Hmmm. After reading up on him further, it seems Heston (nee John Carter!) was a late-comer to the conservative movement, and even to the NRA philosophy: "In his earlier years, Heston was a liberal Democrat, campaigning for Presidential candidates Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. A civil rights activist, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights march held in Washington, D.C. in 1963...In 1968, following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Heston...called for public support for President Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968...He was also an opponent of McCarthyism and racial segregation, which he saw as only helping the cause of Communism worldwide. He opposed the Vietnam War and considered Richard Nixon a disaster for America. He turned down John Wayne's offer of a role in The Alamo, because the film was a right-wing allegory for the Cold War."
"I know I've made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence. I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns." Richard Widmark, 1914-2008.
"Sir John Gielgud admired Mr. Scofield’s stillness and sense of mystery, describing him as 'a sphinx with a secret.' Peter Hall, who directed Mr. Scofield’s acclaimed Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s 'Amadeus' in London in 1979, said that as a young man Mr. Scofield brought 'a sulfurous passion, an entirely new note' to the stage, and that there was always a tremendous tension beneath the surface, 'like a volcano erupting.'" Paul Scofield, 1922-2008.
"He was a really beautiful man, a lot of fun to be with. He was a storyteller in a classic British David Lean tradition." Anthony Minghella, 1954-2008. I can't say I was a huge fan of his work, although I'll stand by the first half of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Still, he aimed high, and had a keen eye for the haunting shot. Condolences to his friends and family.
"If National Review is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." A farewell to one of the left's most formidable and forthright adversaries, who began his career as a nonconformist and, from the war on drugs to Dubya and the neocons, relished bucking the trend until his final days. I hardly ever agreed with the man, and, indeed, found many of his strongly-held views repellent. But, particularly as far as arch-conservatives go, I did have a good bit of respect for him. William F. Buckley, 1925-2008.
"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country." Rep. Tom Lantos, 1928-2008.
Heath Ledger, 1979-2008. What the hell? My brother called to tell me the news right after I stepped out to walk Berk, and I couldn't believe it.
It is a sad day.
Update: There're now conflicting rumors on whether the cause of death was an accidental sleeping pill overdose or -- as with Jim Henson -- pneumonia, so we'll probably have to wait a few days at least to know exactly what happened here. In the meantime, some reviews from the archives: The Brothers Grimm, Brokeback Mountain, and my favorite film of 2007, I'm Not There.
As for unfinished work by Ledger, his work on The Dark Knight was apparently complete, while Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus was still in the middle of shooting.
I don't know what else to say. I usually have some perspective about untimely celebrity deaths, but, for whatever reason, Ledger's surprising passing has been more depressing than most.
"Sir Ed described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities. In reality, he was a colossus. He was an heroic figure who not only 'knocked off' Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity." Sir Edmund Hillary, 1919-2008.
Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007. It seems all too many christmases of late has been marked by grim news on the global front, from the devastating tsunami to the botched Saddam execution. This year, obviously, it was the assassination of the former prime minister who, while no angel, nevertheless embodied for many hopes for a stable, democratic Pakistan. Her murder -- in the military stronghold of Rawalpindi, no less -- further destabilizes a nuclear-armed nation already teetering on the brink, and roils significantly the Dubya administration's fatally flawed approach to the country. Let's just hope Bhutto isn't remembered as the next Franz Ferdinand.
"'They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives,' Knievel said. 'People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner." Robert "Evel" Knievel, 1938-2007.
"Later the young soldier, by now out of uniform, approached me on the street and introduced himself as a writer. His name, he said, was Mailer. He had just seen my play ['All My Sons']. 'I could write a play like that,' he said. It was so obtusely flat an assertion that I began to laugh, but he was completely serious and indeed would make intermittent attempts to write plays in the many years that lay ahead." Norman Mailer, 1923-2007. To be honest, Mailer's writing never much appealed to me, and his public persona less so. But, if nothing else, he proved how far sheer, undiluted ambition can take you in this world. (Remembrances.)
Charles Francis Murphy, 1923-2007. Yesterday (which was also my mom and dad's 40th wedding anniversary, and the eighth anniversary of my own, briefer nuptials), my grandfather passed away at the age of 84. A former miner and longtime veteran of the US Geological Survey, for whom he worked as a cartographer for the bulk of his career, Grandpa spent his life making maps and friends all over this great big nation, before settling down in Lovettsville, VA, and later, New Bern, NC. Father of six children and grandfather to eighteen, he and my grandmother enjoyed their 63rd wedding anniversary this past February. He will be missed.
"I shall remember this hour of peace: the strawberries, the bowl of milk, your faces in the dusk. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lute. I shall remember our words, and shall bear this memory between my hands as carefully as a bowl of fresh milk. And this will be a sign, and a great content." Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007.
"Ugliness is so grim. A little beauty, something that is lovely, I think, can help create harmony which will lessen tensions." Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007. (Reminiscences.)
"Solidarity is not discovered by reflection, but created. It is created by increasing our senstivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people. Such increased sensitivity makes it more difficult to marginialize people different from ourselves by thinking, 'They do not feel as WE would,' or 'There must always be suffering, so why not let THEM suffer?'" Richard Rorty, 1931-2007.
Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007. My thoughts on this are basically the same as on Strom's passing in 2003, and once again I'd refer everyone to Hunter S. Thompson's Nixon obit. Of course, it's bad form to speak ill of the dead...still, I'm sure countless people and pets around the world passed yesterday who are more deserving of eulogy than this contemptible, hypocritical bigot. Let's just hope, for Falwell's sake, that God is more compassionate and forgiving than he ever was.
"If you get information that is going to jar the Government of the United States and jar the people of the United States, that's what you get paid for. Don't expect to be popular. The better you do the job, the more likely you are to go against conventional wisdom, and people don't like to hear bad news. So you are not going to be popular." David Halberstam, 1934-2007.
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007.
A fond farewell to Calvert DeForest, a.k.a. Larry "Bud" Melman, 1921-2007.
Schlesinger isn't the only noted historian we've lost of late. A belated farewell to Winthrop Jordan, 1931-2007. (Via Cliopatria.)
"History is a doomed enterprise that we happily pursue because of the thrill of the hunt, because exploring the past is such fun, because of the intellectual challenges involved, because a nation needs to know its own history. Or so we historians insist. Because in the end, a nation's history must be both the guide and the domain not so much of its historians as its citizens." Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 1917-2007. After Galbraith passed on last year, this seemed like it would soon be in the cards. Still, it's a sad day. Update: Via Ted, David Greenberg weighs in on Schlesinger's passing.
Anna Nicole Smith died after what looks to be a casino bender, and, just in time for Valentine's Day, Houston has a problem with crazy-jilted astronauts. I have very little to say about either of these stories, but since they feverishly consumed most of this week's news cycles, here they are.
"She believed in democratic politics and hated it when people didn't exercise their rights to vote and protest. She believed in government and hated it when people ran it down." Molly Ivins, 1944-2007. "Her columns and essays -- and for that matter her wonderful, low, smoky voice, if you were lucky enough to hear her talk -- used her regional sensibility and experience to illuminate the wider world. She talked Texas but her subject was the universe."
"As President, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the United States whose servant I am. As a man, my first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience. My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed. My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book." Gerald Ford, 1913-2006.
"I checked up on the late great J.B., His death is said on national TV..." Alas, James Brown is dead, 1933-2006.
"As George Shultz liked to say: 'Everybody loves to argue with Milton, particularly when he isn't there.'" Milton Friedman, 1912-2006.
"He was this gentle giant," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent and a close friend..."He was a great role model." Ed Bradley, 1941-2006.
With Larry sated and Rose wilted, I suppose the Knicks are as ready as they can be for the 2006-2007 NBA season, which starts tonight on TNT (although the Knicks don't play until Wednesday.) Hopefully, it won't get too ugly for New York too early. (Also, before embarking on basketball's future, a moment to honor its past: R.I.P. Red Auerbach 1917-2006.)
Alas, today would've been Jim Henson's 70th birthday. In honor of the occasion, my sis-in-law sent along a scan of this sad (and arguably deeply disturbing) comic, which originally appeared in Cerebus back in the day (and which I used to have on a T-shirt, before it disintegrated.) Happy birthday, JH.
"We've been told that the interests of the South and the Southwest are not the same interests as the North and the Northeast. They pit one group against the other. They've divided this country and in our isolation we think government isn't gonna help us, and we're alone in our feelings. We feel forgotten. Well, the fact is that we are not an isolated piece of their puzzle. We are one nation. We are the United States of America." Governor Ann Richards, 1933-2006.
Barnard Hughes, 1915-2006. A veteran stage actor, Hughes is probably best known in my generation as Grandpa in The Lost Boys ("One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damn vampires"), although I remember having a certain fondness for the goofy Mr. Merlin as a little kid, a short-lived show that somehow made it to Belgian TV.
And if you survive till two thousand and five, I hope you're exceedingly thin. For if you are stout you will have to breathe out while the people around you breathe in...Shine on, Syd Barrett, 1946-2006.
In a surprising coda to the Enron trial, company founder, presidential confidant, and recently convicted felon Ken Lay died this morning of a heart attack. His dubious legacy: "Enron's bankruptcy filing cost thousands of workers their jobs, spooked investors into doubting the integrity of the stock market and spurred lawmakers to enact the most significant changes to corporate practices in more than 70 years."
No Jack Kennedy, but a statesman all the same. R.I.P. Lloyd Bentsen 1921-2006.
"In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong." R.I.P. John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), a giant of 20th century economics and politics, and the wry conscience of an affluent society.
"In the weeks to come, much will be written about her central role in shaping our ideas -- and our ideals -- of urbanism. The praise will be deserved. During the 1960s, a time when the reigning orthodoxy was urban renewal, which generally took the form of urban demolition, she championed a more evolutionary, humanist, and small-scale approach to city planning." Slate's Witold Rybczynski ruminates on the legacy of Jane Jacobs, who passed away yesterday (1916-2006.)
"So, what do you do when you find out your effervescent childhood hero is a violent, potentially evil man? You can repudiate him, forgive him, or try to compartmentalize and love the ballplayer while deploring his actions." Friend, colleague, and baseball fanatic Jeremy Derfner remembers Kirby Puckett for Slate.
On the day after the untimely death of Kirby Puckett, Sports Illustrated publishes a devastating case against Barry Bonds, chronic steroid user. Not a huge surprise, of course, but sad nonetheless.
Don Knotts, 1924-2006 and Darren McGavin, 1922-2006. Update: Substantiating the old adage, Dennis Weaver, 1925-2006.
R.I.P. Phil Brown 1916-2006, who withstood the blacklist and is best remembered as Uncle Owen. (He joins Aunt Beru, who passed in 2000 (9/14).) And, also in unhappy news, farewell to the Bluths, who've gone the way of all good and tragically misunderstood television families...for now.
"If I am right, the problem that has no name stirring in the minds of so many American women today is not a matter of loss of femininity or too much education, or the demands of domesticity. It is far more
important than anyone recognizes...It may well be the key to our future as a nation and a culture." Betty Friedan, 1921-2006.
"Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated." Coretta Scott King, 1927-2006. Said Rep. John Lewis today, ""She was the glue that held the civil rights movement together."
In related news, a site is chosen for the National Museum of African American History and Culture (at 14th and Constitution NW, near the Washington Monument.) As I argued before, some museum along such lines on our nation's Mall is long overdue.
In remembrance of STS-51L, a.k.a. the Challenger accident, twenty years ago today.
Nothing if not textbook and by-the-numbers (Coach Haskell would be proud), Disney's Glory Road -- the story of the 1966 NCAA Champion Texas Western Miners, the first basketball team in tournament history to feature five black starters -- still makes for a decent genre matinee. It's not a movie that'll light the world on fire by any means, but it hits its beats decently, and benefits from amiable performances from Josh Lucas and Emily Deschanel right on down the bench. I wish the movie had stayed more with the historical game plan it marked out in the opening credits -- and that the basketball scenes were more engrossing -- but, all in all, Glory Road is a journeyman sports pic.
A synopsis here is probably overkill, suffice to say that a well-meaning disciplinarian coach (Josh Lucas) rides into El Paso, circa 1965, to try to mold a championship basketball team out of a triracial group of college athletes. Do these youngsters overcome their cultural differences, learn there's a method to Coach's madness, and become a Team? Do they play well enough to get to the Big Dance? Well, I'll leave that for you to discover. The main -- ok, the only -- thing that differentiates Glory Road from its many predecessors is its period flavor. These players don't just have to worry about the usual assortment of college problems: They're also caught up in the middle of the civil rights revolution -- and the white backlash -- across the South, and have to contend with brutal acts of racism off the court as well as the usual opposing teams. George Will recently questioned whether this team was as history-making as it's made out to be here. Well, ok, but, in a way, that's beside the point. By bringing race and the civil rights struggle to the fore here, Glory Road acts as a corrective to the main flaw in what's otherwise a better basketball film, Hoosiers. As Spike Lee points out in Best Seat in the House, it's hard to watch that film, particularly its final game, and not feel at times that its an uncomfortably white basketball flick.
Speaking of Spike Lee's book, it also kinda ruined some of Glory Road for me. Therein, Lee (pre-He Got Game) spends a chapter calling out ridiculous basketball scenes in movies -- watching unathletic actors dunk on 6-foot rims, etc. And, while the rims look the right height in Glory Road, I have to admit, none of the basketball scenes are all that engaging. They're cut too close, there's barely a sense of plays developing, and very few shots seem to leave the actors' hands to go into the basket. (For that matter, you don't really get a sense of what various players' strengths or weaknesses are here, other than that Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke) has a nice handle and Nevil Shed (Al Shearer) has a tendency to disappear in the paint. What's more, Coach's advice throughout basically can be summed up as "You can do it!" -- Not a lot of play-calling going on.) Still, for what it is -- an uplifting vignette of sports history -- Glory Road is solid enough. Formulaic, sure, but no harm, no foul.
"So, Mr. Orange, you're tellin' me this very good friend of mine, who did four years for my father, who in four years never made a deal, no matter what they dangled in front of him, you're telling me that now, that now this man is free, and we're making good on our commitment to him, he's just gonna decide, out of the f**king blue, to rip us off? Why don't you tell me what really happened?" R.I.P. Chris Penn 1965-2006. (Salon reposted an appreciation of Penn by Cintra Wilson here.)
"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
- Dr. Martin Luther King (1929-1968)
R.I.P. John Spencer 1946-2005, a quality character actor best known as Leo McGarry of The West Wing.
"My opponent doesn't know what it is to lose. I do. And I'll welcome the support of voters who do, too. I'll take the losers. I'll take the debtors. I'll take those who've lost in love, or baseball, or in business. I'll take the Milwaukee Braves." R.I.P. Sen. William Proxmire 1915-2005.