Forget about your Dillons and your Rourkes, today's entertainment news reminds me once again that this is the bloke who should have played Bukowski/Chinaski on the big screen.
Though he was quite dapper looking as a young man, a decade or three of hell raising and high alcohol consumption ensured that his face fell into that lived in cragginess look that Bukowski was lumbered with for most of his life. Torn didn't just look the part, he lived the part.
It's official: poetry panini football strickers Vblogging Rip Torn was the new rock and roll.
6 comments:
Didn't he tend to play Richard Milhouse Nixon in the late 70s dramatisations of the Gate scandal? (And if you want to know why I call it the gate scandal, get on Youtube and put in Mitchell and Webb Watergate)
Nixon; brings back memories. They don't make rightist politicians like that any more. These days they actually seem to believe it.
Looks like it was Washinton Behind Closed Doors. He was Tricky Dick.
And he hit Norman Mailer with a hammer on a film set.
And he was in a 1979 film that I'd never heard of called "The Wobblies". Anyone heard of it/got any comments. One for your 365?
If you click on the 'lived the part' link in the post it will take you to that infamous incident with Mailer. Not pleasant viewing.
Where did you read that he was involved in the Wobblies film? I didn't see it listed on either wiki or imdb. I've seen part of that film. It's an interesting documentary recounting the history of the IWW through the contributions of members involved in the thick of it back in the day when the wobs were a mass movement.
Btw, I replied to you on the Shampoo post. (In case you missed my very late reply.)
Do a bit of googling and you'll discover that Rip Torn.(apparently "Rip" was what all men in his family get called when they reach a certain age - before that they are Skip Torn. Bit like Bolton's newbie Vladimir Weiss. His Dad was a professional footballer called Vladimir Weiss. Who Dad was a professional - you get the drift) did "voice" work on The Wobblies. As I haven't seen any of the film I don't know what that might mean. Any ideas on how to get hold of the film?
You can watch it online over at Christie Books.
I don't have a direct link to the film itself but if you scroll down the exhaustive list of radical and anarchist films on Stuart Christie's site you'll see a cluster of IWW films and it's in there amongst them.
I've only watched bits of the documentary, so it's definitely on my to watch list.
Thanks. I will check it out. I've just ordered the DVDs -Chinese with English s/ts- of the films of Louis Cha's The Book and the Sword. If they are half as good as the book, they'll be a real treat. But they will take a while to arrive so I'll watch the Wobblies while waiting for the tales of Helmsman Chen and the Red Flower Society's heroes and heoines. (Might be me, but I read the book as a rather subtle allegory of Chinese political history in the 20th Century. As well as the gongfu, of course.)I'll let you know if you need to add them to your 365.
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