Passages

[domino harvey]

Richard Riehle, of Office Space and Grounded for Life

[hearthesilence]

Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post’s longtime chief film critic. The cause was glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer. She was 66.

[Matt]

Riehle's IMDb page is insane: 440 acting credits!

[hearthesilence]

P.C. Vey, whose cheerfully pessimistic cartoons in The New Yorker depicted the inescapable absurdity of romantic relationships, corporate life, hoity-toity restaurants, cats, health care, technology, greed and death. He died back on September 17 at his home in Amherst, MA. The cause was pancreatic cancer. He was 70.

[beamish14]

Ron Koslow, best known for creating the Ron Perlman/Linda Hamilton starring Beauty and the Beast television series that ran between 1987 and 1990.

Had an extremely eclectic list of screenwriting credits, including Into the Night for John Landis and First Born for Michael Apted.

[Aunt Peg]

Riehle's IMDb page is insane: 440 acting credits!

His two most memorable film appearances for me were in Mysterious Skin & Palindromes both from 2004.

[Never Cursed]

Former criterionforum.org user Monterey Jack (he didn't die, he just got banned and is now complaining about it on Twitter)

[dwk]

Tom Skerritt

[Finch]

Oh man. RIP Captain Dallas.

[beamish14]

Tom Skerritt

Rewatched Steel Magnolias recently after Dolly Parton’s passing, and while I still don’t care for the movie much, he is very good in it.

One of a handful of actors to work with both Ridley and Tony Scott.

[Beloved Aunt]

Seems like an underrated actor, but I wouldn't really know, although he's quite good in MASH.

[hearthesilence]

Back in 2010, he took part in a Q&A with Elliott Gould and Kathryn Reed Altman following a screening of a brand-new 35mm print of M*A*S*H at Lincoln Center. These events had a much more relaxed atmosphere then because afterwards, Gould and Skerritt were comfortable enough to just hang out in the lobby, chatting both with each other and the occasional fan who approached them. (The one bit I remember overhearing was Gould asking Skerritt if he still went out to movies and then enthusiastically recommending Christopher Nolan's Inception to him.)

I approached Skerritt and said hello on behalf of a close relative who was a huge fan of Picket Fences - it may have been popular in its day with a boatload of Emmy Awards, but by that point, I don't think I ever heard anyone else mention the show, much less talk about it in-depth, since it went off the air. But I got the impression he was very proud of that work and seemed genuinely happy that it was still fondly remembered (at least by my family members). Couldn't have been nicer and more cordial, it was like talking to a friend of an uncle who was joining a family gathering.

EDIT: As it turns out, there are photos of the event, and apparently Sally Kellerman was supposed to appear but for whatever reason she couldn't make it.

[beamish14]

Back in 2010, he took part in a Q&A with Elliott Gould and Kathryn Reed Altman following a screening of a brand-new 35mm print of M*A*S*H at Lincoln Center. These events had a much more relaxed atmosphere then because afterwards, Gould and Skerritt were comfortable enough to just hang out in the lobby, chatting both with each other and the occasional fan who approached them. (The one bit I remember overhearing was Gould asking Skerritt if he still went out to movies and then enthusiastically recommending Christopher Nolan's Inception to him.)

I approached Skerritt and said hello on behalf of a close relative who was a huge fan of Picket Fences - it may have been popular in its day with a boatload of Emmy Awards, but by that point, I don't think I ever heard anyone else mention the show, much less talk about it in-depth, since it went off the air. But I got the impression he was very proud of that work and seemed genuinely happy that it was still fondly remembered (at least by my family members). Couldn't have been nicer and more cordial, it was like talking to a friend of an uncle who was joining a family gathering.

EDIT: As it turns out, there are photos of the event, and apparently Sally Kellerman was supposed to appear but for whatever reason she couldn't make it.

Picket Fences had an unforgettably cringey episode where his character fears that his teen daughter might be queer, so he loads up on Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson films to straighten her out

He also did a live Zoom Q&A for Top Gun at the American Cinematheque a few years ago

[hearthesilence]

Yeeesh. In all honesty, it sounds like the kind of ridiculousness David E. Kelley would write.

[beamish14]

Yeeesh. In all honesty, it sounds like the kind of ridiculousness David E. Kelley would write.

Well, the episode does feature two women kissing, which was a trick Kelly used to lure in horny men on L.A. Law and Ally McBeal as well

[colinr0380]

Alien of course is his indelible role but Skerritt is also really good in the notorious Poltergeist III in which he and Nancy Allen play the ever increasingly having second thoughts adoptive parents of Carol Anne! Nancy Allen gets the most focus, but Skerritt is around as a dependable husband figure for many of the most memorable sequences - the teen 'returning' from the iced over swimming pool; the scene in the meat locker; the scene of him and Allen being chased by the frozen car through the parking garage, and so on (A couple of years later both Skerritt and fellow Poltergeist III alumni Lara Flynn Boyle would also appear in Clint Eastwood's The Rookie)

He is also really good too in Contact, as Jodie Foster's sympathetic but eventual pushing her aside for status boss, who features in perhaps the most memorable section of the film, leaving Foster's character as the only option left to carry the mission forward.

From those particular roles I found Skerritt was really good as that kind of figure who immediately comes across as seeming like a dependable pillar of stability and security initially but then gets undermined or surprisingly dispatched to leave the main female character to have to man up herself and take charge of sorting out the situation instead! Alien again being a prime example!

[ChunkyLover]

Former criterionforum.org user Monterey Jack (he didn't die, he just got banned and is now complaining about it on Twitter)

Well, at least he can still goon in the "appreciation" threads on the other site.

[Orlac]

Former criterionforum.org user Monterey Jack (he didn't die, he just got banned and is now complaining about it on Twitter)

What did he get banned for?

[The Curious Sofa]

I bet it was for posting mostly decent and mediocre DVD covers in the "Worst DVD Covers...ever!" thread.

[domino harvey]

Tom Skerritt

A Reddit user shared pics of him at prom, as the user’s great grandmother was his date

[dwk]

Ryu Murakami

[beamish14]

Ryu Murakami

An extraordinary (although uneven) writer. Almost Transparent Blue is an amazingly odd book that exists in its own hermetically sealed world

A notable author turned auteur, much like Richard Brooks, Yukio Mishima, Neil Jordan, etc.

[Finch]

Monterey Jack was banned for repeatedly making "empty" posts that added little value and went against the rule of avoiding such posts, but more importantly, he ignored multiple mod warnings to cease this behavior. We might be more lenient in enforcing this rule for members that also make valuable contributions at times, but we did not feel that that applied in this case.

[colinr0380]

Ryu Murakami

An extraordinary (although uneven) writer. Almost Transparent Blue is an amazingly odd book that exists in its own hermetically sealed world

A notable author turned auteur, much like Richard Brooks, Yukio Mishima, Neil Jordan, etc.

Coin Locker Babies is a really interesting novel as well, capturing an air of flippant arbitrary brutality about the circumstances of the character's lives that sort of goes on to explain their specific approaches to the world. That is the only one that I have read, though I do have the novel of Audition that I need to get around to comparing to the Takashi Miike film. The other notable recent film (which probably exists due to the impact that Audition made in the West) is the 2018 Mia Wasikowska starring Piercing based on Murakami's 1994 novel.

Tokyo Decadence is the most famous of the Murakami directed films, and the only one that has been easily available on physical media, but I would love to see the other films he directed some time, up to 1996's Kyoko (or Because of You).

[yoshimori]

For me, Ryu is the by far the better Murakami novelist. Coin Locker Babies is one of my favorite 20th century works. Can't believe it's almost 50 years old.