The Death of "Everyman"

Character actor Harry Dean Stanton dies at age 91: LOS ANGELES (AP) —

"Dead ... of Natural Causes".

An odd soliloquy for an actor who portrayed so many "un-natural" men for so many years.

 Never mistaken for a leading man, Stanton was an unforgettable presence to moviegoers, fellow actors and directors, who recognized that his quirky characterizations could lift even the most ordinary script. Roger Ebert once observed that no movie with Stanton in a supporting role "can be altogether bad."

Harry Dean Stanton, a man who refused the usual one- or two-name labels, was one of the most versatile and appealing character actors in Hollywood history.  He never turned in a bad performance.

Correction: he was almost always "bad", but in a 'good' way.

I don't know about you, but I refuse to believe that HDS died of "Natural Causes".

He never played a "natural" role in his life.  Every part he played, every scene he played, he stole from the lead actors.   He was so "natural" in his career, he added verisimilitude to the most bizarre scenes.

He was so eerie, he made you believe the most unlikely scripts; any movie which "co-starred" HDS had a certain something special that you knew you just had to watch it, just to see how he would transform the most mundane character to the one you had to pay attention.

Scenes, entire scripts, were transformed from the mundane to the sublime.  If the director hired Harry, we knew there was something "special" about the movie.  And we were never disappointed.

He was weird, he was bizarre ... his character never was a "minor part" no matter what the script and the casting said.

For those of us who consider ourselves 'average', he elevated the role of the 'average man' to our entire satisfaction.  He developed the role of "every man" beyond the vision of writers, directors, and co-workers.

"I worked with the best directors," Stanton told the AP in a 2013 interview, given while chain-smoking in pajamas and a robe. "Martin Scorsese, John Huston, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock was great."
He said he could have been a director himself but "it was too much work."

That's the image I'll always hold of Harry Dean Stanton.

He was a natural.  The rest of us don't know how that feels, except when we watched him work.

Arrogance Repaid

SOUR GRAPES: Hillary Clinton Trashes Trump as a 'Deplorable' 'Reality TV Star': “

Well, I thought Trump was behaving in a deplorable manner. I thought a lot of his appeals to voters were deplorable. I thought his behavior as we saw on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape was deplorable,” Clinton told CBS’s “Sunday Morning.” “And there were a large number of people who didn’t care. It did not matter to them. And he turned out to be a very effective reality TV star,” she added. Clinton referred to her previous statements trashing Trump and his supporters on the 2016 campaign trail, doubling down on her claims that Trump voters are a “basket of deplorables” who are “irredeemable.”

During the latest Presidential campaign, I blogged that I was truly torn about which candidate to vote against;   I was not impressed by either Trump or Clinton.

The bottom line for me was their contrasting views on the Second Amendment;  Trump vowed to honor the Constitution, while Clinton considered the Supreme Court's support of the RKBA to be "wrong".

What is it about Liberal Democrats, who are their own worst enemies?

The arrogance of Clinton was enough to make a lot of people choose Trump, who might never have been elected had he been opposed by any other American than Hillary Clinton.

(Well ... or Bill Clinton, who can't keep his zipper up.   Or Al Gore, an idiot who couldn't even carry his own home state.  Or George Clooney, who can at least look pretty in front of the camera.  Or Barbra Streisand, who at least can sing.   Or ... never mind.)

The Best Decision Hillary Ever Made

Hillary Says She’ll Never Run for Office Again  - Breitbart:

 Sunday on “CBS This Morning,” former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she would never run for office again. Clinton said, “I am done with being a candidate but I am not done with politics because I literally believe that our country’s future is at stake”

Hallelujah!    Our country's future is brighter for that decision.

(Is it too much to ask her to move to Tanzania?)