Zack’s Newsletter: Special Recently-Passed Celebrities Edition
“Hey Freakazoid. Wanna Go Out for a Mint?”
Celebrities tend to die in threes. Or of old age. I had some tributes to a few written up that quickly got too long for a regular newsletter. Then someone else would die and I’d start another one. Eventually, I just gave up and put them all in one newsletter. I got stuff to do.
BLESS YOUR BEAUTIFUL HIDE:
So, one person who I added was Jane Powell, an actress notable for several films including SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, which I had just watched! The story is…well, quite sexist…actually, I just googled and it was based on a story based on a Roman legend called “The Rape of the Sabine Women” about the mass abduction of women by the Romans, Good lord…but the barn dance sequence remains a masterpiece of choreography. I remember seeing Martin Scorsese give it as an example of why letterboxing was important for showing movies on TV, because the “pan-and-scan” method of cropping cut off the edges of the frames.
Ironically, now that TV screens are proportioned more like movie screens, sometimes there’s the OPPOSITE problem, like when Disney+ reformatted earlier seasons of THE SIMPSONS designed for square TV screens and cut off many jokes at the top and bottom of the frame.
…oh right, an actual human being passed away. Rest in Peace, Mrs. Powell.
THE CHEESE STANDS ALONE:
I was almost done with my Ed Asner tribute (see below) when I saw we’d lost Michael K. Williams of THE WIRE, LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, BOARDWALK EMPIRE, and many more great shows while still not nearly enough.
Williams will best be remembered as Omar in THE WIRE, bringing wit and menace to the role of a stickup man reckless enough to make his living robbing drug dealers, smart enough to stay one step ahead of them, and hardcore enough to take down anyone that came after him. (If you haven’t watched THE WIRE yet, he doesn’t show up for a few episodes, and I echo critic Alan Sepinwall’s advice that you need to watch the first four episodes, preferably in a mini-binge, to really feel like you understand the characters and what’s going on. I also recommend turning on the closed captions, as there’s a LOT of police/drug game/Baltimore slang, but it’s worth the effort).
But while Williams made Omar an icon who even Barack Obama admitted was his favorite character on TV (even as he added he didn’t want to be LIKE him), he was a lot more, as both a performer and a man. I’m going to avoid going on too long, but I want to point out a couple of quick bits.
First, Williams was just as good with comedy as drama, and he wasn’t afraid to make fun of himself, such as in this Funny or Die parody of THE WIRE: THE MUSICAL:
And as a man, he brought his own history and demons to his roles and didn’t forget where he came from. Here’s a beautiful piece by THE WIRE creator David Simon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/opinion/michael-k-williams-david-simon-the-wire.html
And finally: The man became an icon in Baltimore, up there with Edgar Allen Poe and John Waters.
I never met Williams, but I’ll be watching his performances for many years to come, and I won’t forget them. I think he’ll live on for a lot of people that way. Rest In Peace.
MIXED FEELINGS:
I had a very hagiographic look at the underrated genius of Norm Macdonald planned. He was a brilliant comedian whose best work was often underrated, such as when he threw off a Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget by telling corny, CLEAN jokes (Saget clearly gets what’s going on and is doubled over with laughter):
Or his hysterical talk show appearances, where he’d tell long jokes with deliberately anticlimactic punchlines with impeccable timing:
Or how he got fired off SNL because the head of NBC was friends with OJ Simpson, and Macdonald would NOT stop calling him a murderer:
Plus, I’d see wonderful stories like oh hell I deleted the Twitter screenshot I saved and can't undo the delete because I'm typing on my phone EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH will just google something else ah here goes:
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/norm-macdonald-tribute-appreciation-1226839/
(Finishing entry weeks later on laptop)
But then I read a few pieces about nasty, misogynistic things he did, was reminded of multiple transphobic remarks, and that kind of tainted things:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-complicated-legacy-of-norm-macdonald
I came away reminded that people are complicated, and the art they create is complicated because of that. Even as we embrace what we relate to in art, we have to say, “I can appreciate that, but I don’t have to relate to every single thing this person did or said.” I can still enjoy some of John Wayne’s Westerns and be utterly repulsed by his racism and sexism because I DON’T look at him as the true symbol of American Heroism or the like. But it’s also humbling to know that those with ugly thoughts and actions can create moments of beauty. People can be many things, and you have to figure out which parts of them have the greatest influence on you.
It’s freaking HARD to figure out what makes a good person, isn’t it?
THIS ONE TURNED OUT TO BE ALMOST SUPERHUMANLY DECENT THO:
Ed Asner’s passing bummed me out because I had JUST recently learned that he was into comics and corresponded with a few comics pros, and he was also into autism advocacy, and I wasn’t writing many interviews or anything but I was trying to think of some circumstances where we could talk and possibly become bros.
When I was in middle school/high school, Asner was EVERYWHERE, because he was still doing TV shows, his older shows were in reruns on cable, and he had started doing tons of voice-over work on cartoons I watched. Of course, I knew him from the role that made him a star:
But I also knew the LOU GRANT drama series (one of my professors in grad school wrote a book on it!), and would see him in classic miniseries like ROOTS and RICH MAN, POOR MAN when they were rerun. And he was never just one thing! He could do the grouch well, but he could be scary, he could be funny, he could be lovable.
And in animation, he got a whole new fan base. Below is a little meme I made — the roles are Hudson, the elder gargoyle on, well, GARGOYLES; Carl, the main character in Pixar’s UP and the role that introduced him to a whole new generation; a Lou Grant riff as Spider-Man’s newspaper nemesis J. Jonah Jameson on the 1990s SPIDER-MAN cartoon; and my favorite, Sgt. Mike Cosgrove on FREAKAZOID.
Cosgrove was a terrific, absurd joke that made little sense if you described it to anyone else. Basically, FREAKAZOID was a riff on superheroes, and Cosgrove was Freakazoid’s cop friend, but the joke was every time Freakazoid encountered him on the way to battle some villain, Cosgrove would distract him with an invitation to some bizarre event. And it’s STILL funny, dangit.
The character’s role gradually expanded, but the great fun was Asner’s deadpan deliveries of some of the most ridiculous dialogue known to man, as the character remained utterly stoic in the most absurd situations. It was a great riff on Asner’s own persona and history.
And he reprised the role when TEEN TITANS GO! brought back Freakazoid for a tribute last year:
As it happened, Freakazoid’s voice/one of the main writers, Paul Rugg, just started on Cameo! So, I asked if he could do a tribute to Cosgrove as Freakazoid. And he delivered 10 times over! I can’t tell if this is embedding, so using a couple links. If it doesn’t show up, email me and I’ll share with you.
https://v.cameo.com/96cgINbDMkb
https://www.cameo.com/recipient/615668e0afe2fd001ef8bdec
And for a very deep cut, here’s a role Asner ALMOST played — in the 1980s, author Harlan Ellison wrote an adaptation of a Donald Westlake horror story called “Nackles,” about an evil anti-Santa made up to scare children…whose creator finds out he’s very real. Various odd factors, including that depictions of the homeless weren’t “hot” on TV, resulted in the episode never happening and Ellison walking from the show (he did stuff like that). The script’s been published in a few of his collections, and Asner would have probably done an amazing job as the bigot who gets a nasty comeuppance:
https://www.dreadcentral.com/editorials/281255/a-deep-dive-into-nackles-the-creepiest-twilight-zone-episode-youve-never-seen/
Annoyingly, my having work and putting this off meant I missed a chance to link to a charity auction for comic art Asner’s foundation was doing, but you can still donate to the in general:
https://edasnerfamilycenter.org/
So those are all my tributes, and now you see why it will be a while before I try doing something like this again. There’s too much great material out there, and by the time you get one thing done, another amazing person has passed. I suppose the only solution is to pay tribute to people while they’re ALIVE, or something. Prevent that backlog.
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