There's always a place for the genuine bad ass in Hollywood. And I'm not talking about some wuss actor who can pretend to be a tough guy. I'm talking about the guys who really are tough, who were tough. The guys who weren't completely pretending to beat the shit out their opponents when they were outnumbered.The following are my list of the toughest of the tough. The real bad asses. Ernest Hemingway would have respected these guys:
Steve McQueen, the #1 tough guy in all of Hollywood history, as far as I'm concerned. Certified cool.
Yeah, Robert Mitchum was a close second. He beat the shit out of Marines in real life.
You had to like Lee Marvin. He really was a Marine and got shot in the ass by machine gun fire in Saipan. Most of his platoon was killt, but not Marvin. Yeah, that's tough.
Hell. Anthony Quinn. He was siring babies when he was in his seventies. And playing the great god Zeus around that time. It fit. As a young man he boxed professionally to earn extra money and was friends with Frank Lloyd Wright. Well, shit! It just cain't get much cooler than that!
Jack Palance. Yeah, one tough bastard. He was once 15-0 as a heavyweight pro boxer with 12 knockouts. He finally lost a close decision to a ranked contender and called it quits and was drafted. Burned in a training accident as a paratrooper, he had reconstructive surgery on his face which left him with the gaunt look we came to know on screen. The funniest thing I ever saw in a movie was a fight between him (as Toriance) and Charlton Heston (as Ed Bannon)--we were supposed to believe that Cheston could beat Palance. Right. For Palance, that was some real acting.
Well, I have to include a couple of modern actors. I don't think I need to elaborate too much here with Nick Nolte. Shit. Yeah, we've all had a laugh at his arrest mug shot. OK, OK--it's funny. But nobody as honest as this guy can be anything other than a total badass. He's got my vote for that. Damned good actor, too.
Sean Penn is not only one of our great modern actors, he's also got a toughness that's not just projected. It's real. Has to be. It takes guts to go against the grain of the status quo, which he does frequently. Viva Chavez, baby!
I mentioned the film SORCERER yesterday here on my blog. It's an intensely sad and depressing film,but no less worthwhile for all that. Sometimes the impact of sadness is what's needed.
Along with SORCERER I include a couple of other movies as my favorite "sad" films. These are movies which, through plot, and story, and performance, leave the viewer with a feeling of overwhelming sadness and depression, but which are so powerful and so well wrought that it's impossible to forget them or dismiss them.
First in this realm of sad movies is the Lee Marvin film, MONTE WALSH. I've been told that this was remade for television, but I have no desire to see a secondary attempt at what was already a work of art. This is something that has always been a mystery to me. Why would you want to remake a film that's already been done; and perfectly, at that.
In MONTE WALSH, Lee Marvin plays a character that was pretty much the perfect foil for him. There is something about Marvin's personality and voice and movements that made this role a priceless one in his career. We meet and know this old-time cowboy and his fellows as the world grows far too small for them. In addition to Marvin as the title character, the movie was additionally well cast with all of the other roles, and with tremendously evocative performances from Jeanne Moreau, Jack Palance, Mitch Ryan, Bo Hopkins, and others. While the film involves itself in the extinction of a way of life and in the dissolution of one man, it remains so powerful an experience that it's worth the time. This would be the #1 film on my all-time list of sad movies.
Second on this list is a more recent film and one which remains largely unknown when I mention it to other film fans. HOMEBOY was written by the star of the movie, Mickey Rourke. In this movie, he plays a club fighter, Johnny Walker, who's at the end of a brutal career moving from bout to bout. He's punch drunk and adrift, but in this later part of his life he's given a chance at actual training and physical conditioning for the first time, and has found friendship and a love along the way. Rourke's performance as the aging boxer is probably the best of his own career. I reckon he knew enough of these brain damaged athletes to write about them convincingly and to portray one of them so perfectly.
Once again, if you're feeling depressed or can't handle a major downer, I would avoid this movie. But if you want to watch a supremely human experience on film, then HOMEBOY is definitely a must-see priority.
Unfortunately, I don't think that either of these films is currently available on DVD here in the USA. We'll just have to wait.
Speaking of sad, Alex Ness recently requested that I take part in an interview of former comic book retailers. He asked me some pertinent questions which I was quite happy to answer. If you're so inclined, you can read them here.
Steve McQueen, the #1 tough guy in all of Hollywood history, as far as I'm concerned. Certified cool.
You had to like Lee Marvin. He really was a Marine and got shot in the ass by machine gun fire in Saipan. Most of his platoon was killt, but not Marvin. Yeah, that's tough.
Hell. Anthony Quinn. He was siring babies when he was in his seventies. And playing the great god Zeus around that time. It fit. As a young man he boxed professionally to earn extra money and was friends with Frank Lloyd Wright. Well, shit! It just cain't get much cooler than that!
Jack Palance. Yeah, one tough bastard. He was once 15-0 as a heavyweight pro boxer with 12 knockouts. He finally lost a close decision to a ranked contender and called it quits and was drafted. Burned in a training accident as a paratrooper, he had reconstructive surgery on his face which left him with the gaunt look we came to know on screen. The funniest thing I ever saw in a movie was a fight between him (as Toriance) and Charlton Heston (as Ed Bannon)--we were supposed to believe that Cheston could beat Palance. Right. For Palance, that was some real acting.
Well, I have to include a couple of modern actors. I don't think I need to elaborate too much here with Nick Nolte. Shit. Yeah, we've all had a laugh at his arrest mug shot. OK, OK--it's funny. But nobody as honest as this guy can be anything other than a total badass. He's got my vote for that. Damned good actor, too.
Sean Penn is not only one of our great modern actors, he's also got a toughness that's not just projected. It's real. Has to be. It takes guts to go against the grain of the status quo, which he does frequently. Viva Chavez, baby!
