“Hey Buddy, Did You Just See A Real Bright Light?”

All my life, I’ve admired winos and derelicts.

In the mid to late 1980′s, my Mum was a barmaid and we lived right behind the bar she worked in and as you can imagine, I knew a lot of degenerates, drunks and bums.
Hell, some of them are still alive.
- Barely.

I’d always see these guys cutting about on the waste ground beside my house when I was growing up. Big guys in dirty army jackets, swigging from green and brown bottles with long hair and beards.
I’d think to myself: “That’s what I want to be.”

Here I am years later and quite frankly, I sometimes feel disappointed with myself because I didn’t become a complete bum. I came close a couple of times but not close enough. Just because you’re a functioning wino, it doesn’t make you a real derelict.

- A rambling old yarn spinning crazy mad man!
That’s what I’m always aspiring to.

Stan Yale.
Does that name ring a bell?

Stan Yale played the degenerate wino at the beginning of “The Terminator” who says to Kyle Reese:
“Hey buddy, did you just see a real bright light?”.

Look at him. He stopped caring a long time ago.
Look at that expression on his face.
It says: “I’m a hopeless jaikey fuck-up and I fucked my entire life up but hey, I’m out of my tree on brown paper bag wine so…every cloud!”
Of course, the expression on his face also says: “Hey buddy, did you just see a real bright light?”

Stan Yale’s wino in “The Terminator” is probably my favourite cinematic portrayal of a drunken degenerate because that’s EXACTLY the kinds of guys I saw when I was growing up in the 1980′s.

Since he played the part so convincingly, I decided to look up Stan Yale on the IMDB and Jesus Christ, did I get a surprise!
How about this for a resume!

2006. Homeless Man. ” My Name Is Earl” (TV Series).
2002. Gus. “Judging Amy” (TV Series).
2002. Homeless Man. “Nikki”. (TV Series).
2001. Homeless Man/Squeegee Guy. “Black Scorpion” (TV Series).
1999. Homeless Guy. “The Pretender” (TV Series).
1999. Stinky’s Friend. “Sabrina The Teenage Witch” (TV Series).
1997. Bearded Man. “Living In Peril”.
1996. Bearded Man. “Persons Unknown”.
1994. Homeless Man. “The Force” (Video).
1994. Homeless Man. “Save Me”.
1993. Bum. “Monolith”.
1992. Alley Bum. “Trancers III”.
1991. Homeless Man. “Dragnet” (TV Series).
1990. Wino #1. “Watchers II”.
1989. Bum. “Matlock” (TV Series).
1987. Bum. “Moonlighting” (TV Series).
1987. White Wino. “Terminal Exposure”.
1987. Bum. “P.I. Private Investigations”.
1984. Derelict. “The Terminator”.

The guy is a professional tramp!

Almost nobody is talking about this man on the IMDB forums but I did find one post which stood out:

“This wonderful Gentleman is my Uncle and yes he played the “Bum” or “Homeless man” roles a lot. He also played a pirate in HOOK. I love to hear him talk about the differant movies, shows, and Soap Opera’s he’s been in and about the many actors he worked with.”

So there you go.

You May Also Be Interested In:
* Concept Art: James Cameron’s “Terminator”.
* Amazing Snippets From Les Paul’s Wikipedia.
* A Sinister Tennant.

DUNKACCINO :(

Despite the film breaking records at the Razzie Awards for worst everything and despite the fact that Adam Sandler plays TWO annoying characters in it, Anna and I sat through “Jack And Jill” yesterday.

…And we almost made it to the end but it was just too painful. I tried to tell myself that “Al Pacino is AL PACINO and who the hell am I to question his choice of movie roles?” but folks, after a while, watching this film began to hurt.

Like I say, we almost made it to the end of the film but there came a point where we HAD to switch it off.

When Anna got up and announced that she had decided to leave me for a man with decent taste in movies, I thought to myself “What the hell, I wonder how that film actually ended?”

“Jack And Jill” ends with this scene and I know it’s supposed to be funny but…

Goodnight Roberts Blossom.

Character actor Roberts Blossom has died in California.
He was 87.

I knew and loved him from his outstandingly creepy performance in John Carpenter’s “Christine” but you may also know him as the ‘shovel slayer’ Old Man Marley in the film “Home Alone”.

From The L.A. Times:

Roberts Blossom also won three Obie Awards for his off-Broadway work and performed on Broadway and TV and in many other films. He was a poet whose works were published in several books.

Roberts Blossom, a veteran character actor who played the old, white-bearded next-door neighbor who befriends young Macaulay Culkin in the hit movie “Home Alone,” has died. He was 87.

Blossom died Friday of natural causes at a nursing home in Santa Monica, said his daughter, Deborah.

The winner of three Obie Awards for his performances in off-Broadway productions during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, Blossom also appeared on Broadway a number of times, including playing roles in Edward Albee’s adaptation of Carson McCullers’ “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” and Sam Shepard’s “Operation Sidewinder.”

Blossom starred in the 1974 cult horror movie “Deranged,” in which he played a demented farmer who digs up his domineering mother’s corpse and takes it home — then digs up other bodies to keep her company before he begins hunting live victims.

But he’s best known in films as a character actor whose credits include “The Hospital,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “The Great Gatsby,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Escape From Alcatraz,” “Resurrection” and “Doc Hollywood.”

Then there was his role as “old man Marley” in the 1990 family comedy “Home Alone.”

“That’s certainly the one he gained the most recognition from, and people still remember him from that,” said Deborah Blossom. “He was very happy with the outcome of that movie and its popularity, and he was very happy to be recognized for it.”

With a laugh, she added: “I think he’d rather be recognized for that than ‘Deranged.’ “

Blossom also did a lot of television, with guest roles on series such as “Moonlighting,” “Northern Exposure” and “In the Heat of the Night.”

In the late ’70s, he won a Soapy Award as best villain for a recurring role in the soap opera “Another World.”

Blossom was also a poet, whose works were published in several books.

“He wrote every day for 60 years,” his daughter said. “I always say about him: He’s a poet who made a living as an actor. His poetry was all pretty much about his philosophy: How can humans come together and unite?”

That’s reflected in the 2000 documentary “Full Blossom: The Life of Poet/Actor Roberts Blossom,” directed by James Brih Abee.

Born March 25, 1924, in New Haven, Conn., Blossom grew up in Cleveland, where his family lost most of its fortune in the 1929 stock market crash. (Roberts is a family name on his mother’s side.)

A 1941 graduate of Asheville School in North Carolina, Blossom attended Harvard for a year before being drafted into the Army during World War II. After the war, he began acting in Cleveland.

In New York in the ’60s, he formed Filmstage, which has been described as a seminal multimedia avant-garde theater troupe. He retired from acting in the late ’90s.

Blossom’s marriage to his first wife, Beverly, ended in divorce. His second wife, Marylin, died in 1982.

Besides his daughter, he is survived by a son, Michael.