The face a story, the story behind the face

His face, loveably weathered, can be found in so many examples of a very particular kind of American film from the 1970s onward. I’m talking about Harry Dean Stanton, the great character actor who, like a few other great character actors, is a revelation whenever he’s given the opportunity to take a lead. One of those rare opportunities—a film called Paris, Texas, released in 1984—yielded what in my estimation is one of the most luminous performances in cinema history. David Lynch, who has directed him in six films, adores his innocence and praises his craft, but also concedes that Stanton’s face itself is a story. It should be carved into the side of a mountain, alongside those of Warren Oates, Seymour Cassell and Steve Buscemi: a Rushmore of adorably wounded late 20^th century American movie maleness. In the meantime we have Stanton’s films—over 200 of them—to watch and re-watch, as well as this lovely little documentary from German filmmaker Sophie Huber.

The title of Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction is derived from a beloved Kris Kristofferson song—the one Cybil Shepherd quotes to Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, a film Stanton could easily have been in, playing one of the older, wiser graveyard hacks. Over the course of Huber’s portrait we begin to surmise that the fictive part is Stanton’s claim of just being himself on-screen, of not doing homework or thinking too much, an attitude that fuses bravado with modesty. It is a fiction to think that the emotional textures and behavioural detail Stanton conveys comes without hard work. Indeed, a quick survey of Stanton’s body of work reveals not only hard work but also considerable diversity, i.e.: the taciturnity of his drifting stranger in Paris, Texas and the volubility of his addled agent of repossession in Repo Man. Late in the film Stanton’s assistant testifies to the absurdity of Stanton doing nothing. “If he did nothing he’d still be in a rocking chair in Kentucky,” he says. So Huber’s film, besides being a gift to anyone who loves Stanton—or Lynch, or Kristofferson, or Sam Shepard, or Debbie Harry, or Wim Wenders, all of whom show up to pay homage—is also a proposition: the magic of this thing we call screen presence may be inherently mysterious, but it isn’t merely stumbled upon; it’s a labour of love which requires to put all of one’s life experience into one’s roles. Without getting too precious about it, the film might teach you a few things about acting.

But if you follow Stanton’s work and know anything of his famously inebriated life—he lived with Jack Nicholson for a while in the late 1960s—you’ll also want stories, and Huber supplies a few good ones. Among the most hilarious: Stanton and Bob Dylan spoiling a perfect shot during production on Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid by, I kid you not, jogging into frame! Huber also allows Stanton, now 87, to sing for the camera: ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,’ ‘Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me,’ ‘Blue Bayou.’ He’s surprisingly good, if wobbly. Charming is the word, not just for the singing but for everything he does, including speak of a life in which lasting love has always been elusive. There is something about Stanton that seems to resist conventional companionship. “I’ve just been a loner all my life,” he says. Partly Fiction falls short of explaining how he wound up this way, but such analysis is far from the point of the film. Like the songs Stanton loves to sing, the film is really a ballad. It’s old man blues: sweet, pretty, sad, personal, and finally enigmatic. 

                

Radiation addiction

Ever wondered what happened to that radioactive Pandora’s box that suddenly transformed Kiss Me Deadly (1955) from a terse, sordid, ultra-stylized little noir into batshit sci-fi apocalypse in the film’s final, unforgettable moments? Turns out it wound up in the trunk of a 1964 Chevy Malibu, driven by a rather peculiar scientist (Fox Harris) with only half a pair of sunglasses, some three decades later. Only now the hell-fiery whatsit has turned into a cache of alien corpses—or do I have it wrong? We first spot its/their emerald glow when said scientist is stopped by a ill-fated highway patrolman somewhere in Southern California, perhaps not too far from Kiss Me Deadly’s exploded beach, in the opening scenes of Repo Man (1984), British writer/director Alex Cox’s truly inspired, tonally singular, frequently hilarious, genre-gobbling feature debut.

What the hell is wrong with me that I hadn’t seen Repo Man before now? I was a little kid when it came out, but its cult status burgeoned rapidly in the months and years following its initial theatrical release. I remember it so often being showcased in the suburban Calgary video stores I would frequent. I somehow missed the appeal. Go figure. It’s now available on DVD and Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.

A film riddled with elaborate conspiracies, boggling cosmologies, rarely seen Los Angeles geographies, old cars and a trove of So-Cal hardcore soon-to-be classics, it follows one Otto (Emilio Estevez), a blank slate of a punk rocker from Huntington Beach who can’t get laid and can’t hold a stupid job long enough to save up any money, while his baby boomer burnout parents give all the family savings to some caffeinated televangelist who insists that God wants their money. Otto impulsively quits his gig stocking generic food items at the local grocery, making a show of shoving a fellow clerk into a pyramid of cans with the same oddball air of faux-aggression he applies to dumping a can of beer all over the floor of the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, the small automobile repossession agency where he will soon find gainful employment legally stealing people’s cars, and getting chased and attacked by angry drivers who neglect to make their payments. Otto likes the money and he likes the thrills. He even seems to like his mentor, Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), the senior agent who manages to recruit Otto without Otto’s knowing. The job lives up to Bud’s promise, which happens to be one of this imminently quotable film’s many quotable—if often misquoted—lines: “Repo Man’s always intense.”

But is Repo Man intense? More like audacious, spastically inventive and wildly entertaining, an underground comic come to life, with an absurdly economical final act in which our hero is captured and escapes, is captured and escapes and is captured and escapes in short shrift. The film’s parade of memorable supporting characters help streamline what might otherwise seem a narrative derailed by detours: Sy Richardson’s Lite, Dick Rude’s Duke, Del Zamora and Eddie Velez’s Rodrqiguez brothers, and most especially Tracey Walter’s Miller, who outrages the other repo men with claims of John Wayne’s homosexuality and blows Otto’s mind with a philosophy centered around the universe’s “lattice of coincidence.” But Stanton is the film’s enigmatic and weary center and key emblem, a figure of bizarre resilience in Regan-era America. It remains one of this great character actor’s small handful of larger roles. It’s also probably still the most interesting use of Estevez, who is often seen in his bright white underpants. And it remains the best and most successful thing Cox has yet managed in an industry that’s never given him as big a break.