Tag: Harry Dean Stanton

September 12, 2014 / / Main Slate Archive

 

In his unfinished final novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “there are no second acts in American lives.”  Tellingly, Fitzgerald died fifteen years before Harry Dean Stanton first stepped in front of a film camera.  While Stanton maintained a respectable profile as a journeyman actor, erstwhile balladeer, and wingman to every Hollywood bad boy of the Easy Riders Raging Bulls era, his career got a surprise boost in an array of films throughout the ‘80s.

January 12, 2009 / / Film Notes

Repo Man – 1983 – dir. Alex Cox

I don’t remember how I first heard of Repo Man, only that its reputation preceded it. As a teenager I actually picked up a used cassette of the film’s famous punk rock soundtrack at my local record store long before I was able to hunt down a copy of the movie itself, which for me only heightened its grungy cult flick allure. (For you youngsters, this was back when there were audiocassette tapes. And record stores. And suburban video stores with unpredictable inventories.) When I did finally see Repo Man, it lived up to my expectations simply by defying them. “…[T]he only real response to it is the perception of brilliance or the belief that it’s an utter piece of garbage,” writes Film Threat’s Brad Laidman. That’s pretty much the textbook definition of a cult classic.