Depdendable

 You can stop wasting your time going to the cinema. There is nothing worth seeing anymore. That is if you believe Roger Ebert. “No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad." Harry Dean passed away back in 2017. M. Emmet Walsh followed him into forever this past week. 

No more movies. 

Which turns out to be okay. That is if you are currently scratching your noggin or stroking your chin about to whom I am referring, you can look forward to a list of more than two hundred television and film appearances from Mister Walsh, and another two hundred some from Mister Stanton. You would be fine starting with either man's oeuvre, but since M. Emmet passed so recently, let's begin with him. 

Any man who showed up with speaking roles in both Escape From The Planet of the Apes and Blade Runner must be onto something. Go ahead and toss Blood Simple and Raising Arizona on top of that. And he was the guy who tried to shoot Navin Johnson in The Jerk. There's only a couple hundred more to choose from, but this would be a career for just about anyone else. 

M. Emmet Walsh showed up in the late sixties. His first screen appearance was in Midnight Cowboy. He played a bus passenger. Very convincingly. He did a lot of television too. A rumpled couch of a man, he showed up looking world-weary and then just got more and more fed up. Whether he was a cop on the beat or a neighbor who had seen just a little too much, Walsh was the definition of a working actor. For nearly sixty years, he was "that guy" in movies and on TV that stayed just this side of exasperated. And then someone would push him just a little too far. Or not far enough. 

But Roger Ebert was right, as far as that dependability goes. Or maybe he was the coach, or the PE teacher who had stuck around a little too long. Not long on compassion, especially with that Jarrett kid. But I might remember him best for his portrayal of an addict in Clean And Sober, describing the anxious waiting for another fix. 

Still a couple hundred left to go. M. Emmet Walsh stomped on the Terra, and he will be missed. Tremendously.