My phone beeped. 9:39pm. I had a voicemail."Mike, Chris Penn's dead. Call me back."
It was my brother, doing his best Frank Costanza. He knows I've always been a Chris Penn fan.
Penn's body was found at 4:00pm this afternoon at a residence in Santa Barbara. No cause of death was as yet determined. No foul play was suspected.
Immediately, I pictured him in black and white in "Rumble Fish." The shop class dream sequence. A young Diane Lane, leggy and elevated, while Matt Dillon drifted through his troubled subconscious. Chris twists a pair of tongs in the air, raising his eyebrows lasciviously. That moment, for me, is Chris Penn in concrete. "Rumble Fish" was his feature film debut, and remains one of my Top Five favorite movies.
And then in "At Close Range" acting beside his brother Sean, playing his brother. Even his mother, Eileen Ryan, was in the film, as his grandmother. And his former sister-in-law sang the theme song. I had the 45.
In my pantheon of Hollywood icons, Chris Penn was one of the princes of 80s cinema.
He exploded in the 90s with "Reservoir Dogs", "True Romance" and my favorite, Altman's "Short Cuts." Culled together from several Raymond Carver short stories, the film is full of images that have stuck with me since I first watched it. I'm pretty sure it was at Loew's on Hempstead Turnpike. 1993. Most memorably Penn's uncontrollable outburst where he bashes that girl's head in with a beer can. Holy crap!
He was a great character actor. And although he usually played the same sort of character (the small time gangster, the mook), it was in line with the classic character actors of Hollywood's past.
I feel bad for his brothers, Sean and Michael.
Who will take his place in cinema? I imagine there will be lots of casting directors mulling this over as they kvetch to agents and managers, "We need a Chris Penn type..."
To paraphrase his quote from "Rumble Fish":
"To Christopher Penn, a very cool dude."
5 comments:
it's a sad day. a brilliant actor, every bit as good as his brother.
and didja see "footloose". motherfucker could dance!
i'm gonna beat someones brains in with a can today in honor of him.
I liked him in "Back to the Future." Oh wait, that was Chris Penn Glover.
Yeah, he was brilliant in Short Cuts. Not seeing a lot of online news obits mentioning that. And of course Reservoir Dogs.
Hell, I loved him as Manetti in Starsky and Hutch! He was a big, funny guy who could tell a story like no one else (see his recollections of Lawrence Tierney on the Res Dogs DVD extras).
That's two gone from Reservoir Dogs. What's happening? Are we getting older?
Yeah, who's next? Bret Easton Ellis?
Yes, nobody has mentioned Short Cuts. I actually forgot about it until reminded here. Very creepy.
Lots of good new posts. I haven't made the rounds in awhile since I'm trying not to read them at work (yes, the government is watching, as a matter of fact). Had never heard of the Palmer Raids before either...
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