My favorite actor, Harry Dean Stanton, passed away today (well, actually, yesterday, if you're one of those "well, actually" people since it's past midnight but don't be one of those "well, actually" people because nobody likes those fucking guys) at the age of 91. This is a good, long, full, enviable, and beautiful life, but those of us still here on Dumb Earth are deprived of much delight by his transition to another place. We shared a birthday, July 14, which probably doesn't mean anything, but always gave me warm feelings. I share a birthday with my favorite actor, and I love movies so much (even though I find the industry predatory and horrible and a destroyer and/or Great Compromiser of insecure lives; even though these things are true, good movies are magick and spooky), so I always felt a connection, no matter how tenuous, to this guy who was always great, even when the movie wasn't. I've never been disappointed by a Harry Dean Stanton performance, but more than that, I have always been lifted out of my own bullshit and into a place where life is happening right now and is worth experiencing. Here are my favorites. Glaring omissions are because I haven't caught up to them yet. (PS: He was also a lovely musician and a singer who couldn't really sing but inhabited songs better than people who could because art belongs to anyone who knows how to make lightning from a match.)
The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock) (He's just an extra, but it's a great movie, so why not?)
Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman)
In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison)
Cool Hand Luke (Stuart Rosenberg)
The Rebel Rousers (Martin B. Cohen)
Kelly's Heroes (Brian G. Hutton)
Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman)
Cisco Pike (Bill L. Norton)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah)
Cockfighter (Monte Hellman)
The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
Rancho Deluxe (Frank Perry)
Farewell, My Lovely (Dick Richards)
92 in the Shade (Thomas McGuane)
Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard)
Alien (Ridley Scott)
Private Benjamin (Howard Zieff)
Escape from New York (John Carpenter)
Christine (John Carpenter)
Repo Man (Alex Cox)
Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)
Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch)
The Cowboy and the Frenchman (short film) (David Lynch)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese)
Wild at Heart (David Lynch)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch)
Hotel Room (TV mini-series) (David Lynch)
She's So Lovely (Nick Cassavetes)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam)
The Straight Story (David Lynch)
The Pledge (Sean Penn)
Inland Empire (David Lynch)
Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch)
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