That’s Torn it

26Oct07

 

Ah, Rip Torn. I love a journeyman actor who’s something different to every generation, with a sack full of sensational stories to boot, including one disputed tale involving Rip, and superprick Dennis Hopper, involving the line “Why don’t we go outside, and you bring all the knives and then we’ll see who the punk is?” When Hopper recounted the tale on the Tonight Show in 1994, Torn sued and won $475,000. Hopper appealed and lost another $475,000. There’s something about that I like.

I imagine to the nippers he’s just Z from the Men in Black movies, while to me he’ll always be scenery-chomping Artie from The Larry Sanders Show. The fact is ol’ Rip’s been knocking around Tinseltown for far far longer than that and, if you’ll excuse my French, is one hard-ass crazy motherfucker. How hard, I hear you ask? Was the Hopper story not enough? How does attacking Norman Mailer with a hammer grab you? Don’t believe me? Have a wee skwizz at this then, made slightly more arty by the inclusion of French subtitles. I’d love to see Dennis Norden introduce this clip. “Don’t you just hate it when the director bites the leading man’s ear off?” Cock-up indeed.

And he’s got one of the more eclectic CVs out there, including Judas, Nixon and Louis XV. And he was in The Man Who Fell to Earth*. That’s range. Damn, that’s Bruce Hornsby and the Range. He’s currently well-cast playing Alec Baldwin’s enigmatic boss Don Geiss in 30 Rock. Two crazy dudes getting the network to pay them for having fun, nice one.

Tangentially, and especially for Ray, I came across this. Freaky deaky.

Filed under: David Bowie, Dennis Hopper, Norman Mailer, Rip Torn   |  1 Comment
Tags: David Bowie, Dennis Hopper, Norman Mailer, Rip Torn