A fond farewell to the soulful Harry Dean Stanton
With last week's death of Harry Dean Stanton – whose film career stretched from the 1950s to new feature Lucky – cinema lost one of its most iconic character actors. Lucky's director, John Carroll Lynch, tells us about giving Stanton his final role
You might not know John Carroll Lynch’s name but you’ll recognise him for sure. He’s a big guy, with a friendly grin and a bald head. You probably first saw him in Fargo as Marge Gunderson’s duck painting hubby. Or perhaps you’d recognise him as the chilling prime suspect in David Fincher’s Zodiac. It’s the character actor’s lot, to be instantly recognisable but rarely a household name. And so it seems fitting that Lynch’s debut as a film director is to give one of the most recognisable character actors in the business, Harry Dean Stanton, a lead role in what would turn out to be his final film, Lucky.
“It’s incredible to think it’s been 37 years since Paris, Texas and Harry Dean hasn’t had a lead role since then,” Lynch says as we sit down to talk. That 1984 Wim Wenders film cemented Stanton’s reputation when he played the role of Travis, a tragic figure who wanders out of the desert. From TV work in shows such as The Untouchables and Rawhide to eye-catching character pieces in major films like Missouri Breaks, Alien and Repo Man, Stanton was frequently the best thing in whatever he was in.
Summing up what made him so special, Lynch identifies the actor’s “willingness to be silent in a frame. His willingness to be.” Stanton’s performance alongside Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke is a prime example: “Harry Dean sings in that film. It doesn’t advance the plot, it isn’t about the main character. But that is in there because it’s about spirit, it’s about the longing of every prisoner in that place. It’s absolutely vital to the movie and nothing happens. And that’s what he has always brought.”
It could be said “nothing happens” in Lucky – leaving aside a subplot about a runaway tortoise. The eponymous octogenarian wanders through his daily routine of coffee and cigarettes in a dusty New Mexico town and along the way muses on his life, death and the meaning of it all. Writers Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja took inspiration directly from their lead actor, often converting his conversation into dialogue and reproducing his morning yoga routine. Lynch recalls: “We’d meet down at Dantanna's, which is what you do with Harry Dean – you smoke a lot of pot, drink a lot of tequila, hear him sing and tell stories.”
Stanton’s longevity was partly due to a vanished studio system. Lynch describes it as “old school, contract work: putting on a costume, doing two scenes, riding a bike over to paramount, putting on another costume and doing two more.” For Lynch, actors like Stanton are the proletariat of the film acting world: “Character actors are actors who can tie their own tie without a mirror, because the chances are you’re wearing three that day and you don’t want to walk back to your trailer. Your trailer is a truck with no heat.”
In Lucky, Stanton meets up with some old pals, many fellow character actors: Tom Skerritt, Beth Grant, Ed Begley Jr, Barry Shabaka Henley. There’s also a superb performance from friend and collaborator David Lynch. Stanton was like a musician everyone wants to jam with, suggest Lucky’s director: “There weren’t a lot of nos. Everyone came to play with him.”
Incidentally, Stanton’s musical talents are on display in the film, just as they were during his appearance in the third season of Twin Peaks. (Anyone wanting to hear some more, we’d recommend the 2014 album Partly Fiction.)
Character actors are the way the audience are grounded in a film, says Lynch. “I’m a big Marvel and DC fan. I’m a popcorn guy. I’d love to do one of them. But we are dealing with gods now. They’re all gods. Where are the rest of us? That’s what I love about this movie: this is the rest of us.”
Ironically, Stanton did turn up in The Avengers, although sadly not wearing a cape. Even in the MCU Stanton brings the movie down to earth, the way his Brett in Alien made us forget about spaceships and worry about pay packets and cats, but Lucky resists the dour trap of social realism. As the character himself says repeatedly: “Is realism a thing?” In Alex Cox’s Repo Man, Stanton’s character Bud is even more blunt: “Ordinary fucking people. I hate them.”
In the end, the main theme of Lucky is the end. Making a film on that theme is difficult at the best of times but at 89 when he shot the movie, there was a particular immediacy to Stanton’s performance. Lynch insists that Stanton had come to terms with his own mortality: “The conducting and cajoling I had to do in directing him was to remind him that he wasn’t there yet as the character.” As for any misty-eyed hope for the hereafter, that's certainly not how Stanton saw the world. “Harry Dean’s 100% clear there’s no one there.”
For Lynch, Stanton’s atheism made the film so vital and original. “That was one of the things that attracted me to the piece. The script asked, How do you come to terms with death when there is no next place? Dramatically, that’s a lot more risky; that’s a lot more uncomfortable, because there is no sequel. There’s no Lucky 2! This is it.”
And now, indeed, it is.
Harry Dean Stanton died 15 Sep 2017
Lucky had its world premiere at SxSW 2017, will screening at BFI London Film Festival in Oct 2017 and is released in the UK 14 Sep 2018 by Eureka!