This one hurts.
You can have Cliff Huxtable. I was already too old to see him as a father figure by the time The Cosby Show rolled around. Plus, he was already The Cos: the voice behind the cartoon, the patriarchal yin to Richard Pryor’s tumultuous yang, and after you saw Billy Cosby: Himself (which the subsequent series was based on) what more did you need to know?
For kids born a decade earlier, Ralph Waite was the man who played America’s dad on TV (beating Michael Landon to the punch by several crucial years). Plus, while I can’t imagine revisiting either The Cosby Show or Little House on the Prairie as an adult, I’d happily cue up The Waltons. That show is not just history, it’s my history.
And to think, Waite almost passed on the role of his life.
There is a nice piece in today’s New York Times, which contains this nugget:
Mr. Waite was a respected New York stage actor when he was offered a role on “The Waltons,” and at first he was not enthusiastic about it. But his agent, he recalled, advised him to take the part so that he could “pick up a couple of bucks” in Hollywood and go back to New York.
And so, Ralph Waite is John Walton.
So it was a revelation, to me, when I first saw him in what would become one of my all-time favorite movies, Five Easy Pieces. As the older, less complicated brother Carl to Jack Nicholson’s troubled, recalcitrant Bobby, Waite does a great deal with his limited time on screen. He manages to be the conformist, bumbling big bro, but he also brings a keen sensitivity and kindness to the part. Where he at first seems a bit of a buffoon; a stuck-up, provincial snob, he ultimately emerges as a man who genuinely can’t comprehend why his talented little brother is squandering his life.
Gratitude and Godspeed to the man who made us all say Goodnight, Daddy.
On principle, I’ll revisit my celebration of Five Easy Pieces, below.
You See This Sign?: Appreciating Five Easy Pieces
MacMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Jake Gittes in Chinatown; Jack “Here’s Johnny!” Torrence in The Shining—these aren’t characters from famous movies, they are permanent fixtures of American culture. Robert Dupea from Five Easy Pieces seldom registers on the short list of all-time great acting performances, at least in part because the character—like the movie—is not easy to admire or understand. The type of role tailor-made for an artist who insists upon working without a net, Bobby Dupea is at once emotional, withdrawn, silent, boisterous, ambitious and lethargic to the point of apathy. Five Easy Pieces is a study of the restless soul of a gifted individual (who could have been, and still could be, an artist) who is too smart for his own good, and has thus far squandered his youth, talent and energy in an ennui-ridden funk where he drifts from job to meaningless job, woman to faceless woman, sensation to numbing sensation.
All of us can discern something of ourselves in the unsatisfied, insatiable drifter; the citizen who is not content to live in a banal, preordained existence even as his every action (and lack of action) further ensnares him in a perpetuation of the life he abhors. In this regard, Five Easy Pieces is not only a commentary on the itinerant American rebel, it also examines the suffocating dynamics of a dysfunctional family, and the paralyzing dilemma of an individual blessed with extraordinary faculties he feels compelled to suppress. Dupea leads a life of not-so-quiet desperation, equally out of place amongst the working class and the class-conscious, condescending academics. And then there is the scene, which is one of the most amusing—and satisfying—in cinema history, when he clashes with the truck-stop waitress and the system she represents. In the disquieting climax, when he unsuccessfully attempts to persuade the first woman who seems perfect for him, she poses a rhetorical question that underscores the tragic paradox his muted antipathy: “How can a man who has no love of himself ask for love in return?” His inability to answer her, and his unwillingness to change himself, creates the taciturn resolution which leaves the viewer both saddened, and exasperated.
This DVD is an essential addition for any collection, and can be returned to over time: the nuances of the story and the subtle mastery of Rafelson’s direction are to be savored. All the performances are stellar, yet special kudos are warranted for Karen Black, the patient yet pathetic girlfriend and Helena Kallianiotes, the furious yet refreshing hitchhiker. The currently available DVD offers no extra material, but if any movie warrants the critical reissue with commentary, interviews and (if available) deleted scenes, Five Easy Pieces begs for the bonus treatment. This could be Nicholson’s penultimate performance and the reverberations from this urgent yet honest portrayal still linger on the lower frequencies of our collective consciousness.
