We Should Be So Lucky: A Tribute to Harry Dean Stanton | Features
It's a small role for a giant of film, but as he always did, whether he was playing to the side in only one scene or fronting an indie, Stanton always made the movie he was in.
Harry Dean Stanton always had a recognizable face, but it was the kind of face that could be made to fit into any role; one of those actors who was his own kind of Everyman. He was the cop, the derelict, the leader, the space traveler, the con man, the loner, the cowboy, the poet, the barfly, the father, the estranged brother. You could tell by looking at him that he was both a searcher and man with all the answers. At least three films come to mind that find Stanton alone in a desert or some rural landscape, as much a wanderer as a man who had arrived. The final shot in "Lucky," which finds Stanton in what appears to be his natural habitat, is one of cinema's most perfect moments, a poetic send-off to one of our greatest actors and every man he became.
SCOUT TAFOYA
When I was a kid my dad always pointed out a few things to me when we were watching movies. He always took a second to tell me who the great character actors were. Warren Oates, Timothy Carey, Dwight Yoakam, Ernest Borgnine, Joe Spinell, Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, and especially Harry Dean Stanton. I knew the importance of Stanton's weathered, bedraggled charisma before I could do multiplication. I watched him very young in “Alien” and spotted him in everything from then on, honing in on his wind-worn features, knowing that honesty followed him. No matter how bad the film, he was always a bright spot. And if it was a masterpiece, he was calmly smoking off the side, used to the presence of greatness. He lived with it every damn day. We don't seem to be discovering people like Stanton anymore, people who lived hard, simple lives before they started appearing in movies. He carried himself like a man who'd lived twice. He's in more masterpieces than you could count on eight hands. Seeing him walk on screen was like seeing an old friend.
ANATH WHITE
Harry Dean Stanton’s passing leads me to some personal recollections … One is of his second loves—music—and the truly kick-ass band he had for years, which regularly played around Los Angeles. In 1999, they were performing in a small Hollywood club on New Year’s Eve, and what better way to celebrate? So my then-husband and I, with one of our best friends, packed in with the others, enjoying their rambunctious enthusiasm way into the wee hours, as they played set after set. Their leader Harry Dean, even then not so young a man, did not want to quit. Nobody else did either.
