Why is it so hard to make myself write an appreciation of Christopher Penn? Because I know that on my best day, I can't convey one hundreth of his roiling, unstable excitement.
Chris Penn was a human hand grenade who lived to pull his own pin. He scared the shit out of me. He was on a short list of great contemporary character actors (Keitel, Walken, Laurence Fishburne, Jennifer Jason Leigh) who truly seemed capable of anything. It's always easier to write an appreciation of someone who makes you feel good. Chris Penn was a great actor -- a vital and important actor -- but I suspect he'd have been the first to admit that generating warm and fuzzy feelings didn't rank very high on his "To Do" list.
Granted, now and again you'd catch Penn in a role that was essentially light and funny: unlikely dancin' fool Willard in "Footloose," smiling id creature Tom Drake in the "Fast Times" sequel "The Wild Life" (admirably attempting the impossible: playing an alternative to/replacement for his brother's "Fast Times" icon Jeff Spicoli).
But the light roles weren't the ones that released his greatness; Penn's greatness originated in darkness. He was like his more famous brother in that respect -- Sean Penn courted darkness like no leading man since De Niro -- with a crucial difference: where Sean Penn hid things from us, shrouded himself in contradiction and mystery, Chris Penn kept no secrets. There truly was no wall between him and you. You stared right into his heart, and it was terrifying.
Think of Chris Penn, and you might as well be picturing an astronaut, a test pilot or one of those guys who traps gigantic rats in the subway. He was a nasty daredevil, fearless and playful and game for anything. He was willing to go places and do things other people didn't have the guts to contemplate.
Think of Chris Penn and you picture him sweating, or stewing, or trying to hide his almost unbearable hurt. Jesus Christ, he hurt like nobody else. He hurt so bad sometimes you could barely stand to look at him. His very existence was an embarassment to every male's secret macho self-image. He was every man's true self, needy and neurotic, childish and jealous, paranoid and depressed. Manhood without the mask.
Think of Chris Penn, and you think of him imploding with sexual insecurity and envious hate in "Short Cuts" as his wife (J.J. Leigh, his onscreen soulmate!) verbally services phone sex customers with fantasies her poor hubby didn't even dare consider; and then you picture that same brute schmuck standing in the woods with Robert Downey, Jr., holding a rock in his hand, eyes glazed, as if he knew what he'd done and also knew, deep down, why he'd done it, but could not quite bring himself to grasp the reality that his life was now over.
Think of Chris Penn and you picture him as a thug detective in "Mulholland Falls," or spitting out jocular wisecracks to fellow cops in "True Romance," or fat and drunk and sweaty, roaring out a Tin Pan Alley tune in "The Funeral" (pictured above) in a period-accurate, white-guy-approximating-a-black-guy voice. Think of Chris Penn and you picture his fearful face in "At Close Range" -- a rare project with his brother -- as he stands in freaky blue moonlight and realizes that his father, his beloved father, the father he always idolized even when he didn't know where to find him, is about to shoot him dead, and worse, that after his beloved father shoots him dead, he will probably go right home, kill a six pack, jerk off and enjoy a peaceful night's sleep. Think of Chris Penn, and you think of him during the climax of "Reservoir Dogs," bringing Quentin Tarantino's cartoon Mexican standoff back to emotional reality by shrieking, hoarsely, "Don't you point that gun at my dad!"
I can't think about you for very long, Chris. It takes too much out of me.
You made me hate myself and see through myself and fear my own potential for weakness and evil. You made me fear embarassment and pain and death during films that were supposed to be stupid fun. You make me fear I've learned nothing about women. You showed me what a hypocrite I am, and how immature I am, and how little I know about life. You reminded me of how small I am and how little my life means.
I hate you. I wish I'd never seen your face. You affected me that much.
When David Mamet wrote, in "True and False," that acting used to be a terrifying and mysterious profession, that regular people used to fear actors because they thought they made a career of letting themselves be possessed by demons, and that after actors died, they were buried at crossroads with stakes through their hearts, he was writing about you.
I will miss you terribly.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
It hurts to look: Christopher Penn, 1965-2006
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12 comments:
Holy shit, man. Really well done. And now you made me hurt, too, thanks.
I think you may need to go see THE NEW WORLD again.
This is a wonderful eulogy for an actor who was sometimes the only bright spot in the movies in which he appeared. He was too big and too talented to be obscured by his brother's shadow. I am glad you mentioned At Close Range because it is one of the two movies for which I remember him most. That is a stunning piece of work by Mr. Penn.
The other movie I remember him most for isn't Reservoir Dogs. It's the otherwise unwatchable Footloose, wherein Penn has the only truly memorable scene in it. Penn showed me what not to do on the dance floor, but in his short time blessing us with his acting prowess, he showed me how everything else was done onscreen.
Damn,
That's some gorgeous writing, brother.
So has anybody ever verified the rumor that Chris Penn was cut out of AMERICAN PIE 2 (as Stifler's dad!) because he was "too scary" and made test audiences "uncomfortable"?
The guy always got under my skin, that's for sure. He'll be missed.
Keep up the good work, man.
Watch out, Sean. A lot of Spielberg lovers lurk on this blog. Calling out WAR OF THE WORLDS as a disappointment is a recipe for rancor. Not that you're the type to shy from conflict or anything.
And incidentally: Odie, you need to read Sean's review of "Match Point". I think he might be the only critic besides Armond White who hated it as much as you did.
Thanks for the suggestion, MZS!
Sean Burns, where have you been all my life? We are on the same page with Match Point, and with Deconstructing Harry, which I think has perhaps Woody's best screenplay (but some of his worst directing). I think I hated Match Point a lot more than you did, but your comments are on point.
Thanks Odie!
DECONSTRUCTING HARRY has my all time favorite Woody one-liner, the one about "the dyslexic girl who used to put her Tampax in her nose."
I still crack up every time I think about that one.
That was beautiful, and truly what an actor like Chris Penn would have wanted to hear and never did. That people got what he was trying to bring out in those characters.
I loved him in everything he was ever in, and it hurt me and made me ache in my heart to see he was gone.
He will be missed. Thank you for putting what I felt into words.
Thanks for the kind words, Jessica. Penn was a fearsome talent with his own remarkable aura. It killed me that when he died, the first AOL news bulletin said, "Sean Penn's brother died." As if Sean Penn had only one brother, and as if being Sean Penn's brother was the only reason to care about Chris Penn.
The Chris Penn performance that has stayed with me the most, an the one I haven't read anyone praising, is from a first-season episoe of Chicago Hope, where Penn plays the grieving, panicky brother to a man who needs a heart transplant to live. When the man is unexpectedly bumped on the list, hours before surgery, Penn's character snaps an takes the OR hostage at gunpoint, demanding that the docs give his brother the heart. A great performance.
A terrific tribute; passionate and much appreciated.
One of my favorite recent Penn performances was in an episode of LAW AND ORDER: SVU. He played a New York Chef who was sexually abusing his daughter, and as is customary, the performance was no-holds-barred.
Some actors convey a coiled intensity that lashes out at others when the inevitable blowup occurs onscreen. Some actors navigate onscreen conflict as though they're about to blow up themselves. But some, like Chris Penn, blow up with an intensity that takes them--and you--out, simultaneously and completely.
Again,kudos. And I join you in hurling a pox on all of the 'Brother-of-Famous-Guy' obits...
Tosy, Cosh and Tony: My affection for Mr. Penn surprises me in at least one respect: I've never been a fan of many actors who habitually seek out (or end up cast in) degraded and/or explosive roles. It's an actor cliche to think that the most extreme material is the most honest. Yet somehow Penn did manage to make extreme, degraded, explosive material feel honest.
I am not sure how he did it, but he did it. There was never a moment during his entire career when I felt he was faking it, or that he was getting off on it, as, say, Gary Oldman and Mickey Rourke and even Sean Penn sometimes seemed to be getting off on it. He seemed real to me in a way that few actors ever have.
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