Screw
you, Death.
Seriously,
why you gotta have us starting EVERY year off like this? Last year it was Spock, the year before we
lost Uncle Phil and JewWario and The Hoff within about 6 weeks of
each other, and this year starts off with us losing David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Brian
Bedford, AND Glenn Frey over a span of just 8 freakin’ days. I think your quota of cultural heartbreak has
been officially filled for 2016, okay Death?
Just please leave Don Bluth alone long enough for him to finish making the
Dragon’s Lair movie. PLEASE.
At
any rate, here we are, and we once again find ourselves in the uncomfortable
position of having to reflect on our own mortality through the knowledge that
even the seemingly untouchable figures that, in their own right, are cultural
touchstones for generations of humanity, must eventually leave us for whatever
comes next.
I
will mostly be writing about Alan Rickman here, since this is a film blog, and
I was never really into work of either David Bowie or Brian Bedford enough to
justify calling myself an informed fan of either of them. For personal reasons, I must include a
personal farewell to Glenn Frey, since the Eagles were a big part of my high
school years, but even there his loss doesn’t hit quite so personally for me as
losing the face that has defined Slytherin House for me since I was 11.
I
had the immense pleasure of getting to briefly meet Alan Rickman in New York
City about 4 years ago, after attending a performance of his in Seminar, one of his last major stage
appearances (this was right before he was replaced in the cast with Jeff
Goldblum, and the show promptly tanked).
Although it was freezing cold in the City, and the rest of the cast was
waiting on him, he took the time to go around to those of us at the perimeter
to sign anything we had, take pictures with those who asked, and shake a few
hands. He signed my show program, and
when I asked if I could shake his hand, he graciously smiled and allowed me to
do so. I asked him if he had a
preference between either stage or film work, and he said he really didn’t, “he
just does one, then the other.”
These
are such odd moments, when I think about them.
For the celebrity, something like that happens a thousand times a day, and the regular parts of anyone’s day, no matter how extraordinary they seem
from the outside, always eventually become a bit repetitive , mundane, and often
forgettable. So I have no reason to
expect he ever recalled that brief exchange, or that he would have recognized
my face had we ever crossed paths again.
But for me, that will always be MY Alan Rickman moment, the time I spoke
with him, however briefly, and he said something to me. And thus, that will always have value to me,
even if nothing of substance passed between us.
Not
that Alan Rickman didn’t also have the capacity to make someone else’s day by
remembering them when they thought he wouldn’t.
A friend of mine, who had obsessively went to every performance of
Seminar she could while it was on Broadway, related to me once that Alan
Rickman commented to her when she shook his hand after her fourth viewing that he
thought he recognized her, and she told him she had already seen the show
several times. When she went back a
fifth time, and was again waiting out back to see him, he saw her again. When he did, she said, “Remember me? I’ve already seen the show 4 times!” To which he replied, “I know you have.”
And
so, moving forward, as with other deaths of recent years, we are going to have
a lot of moments over the next few years where this collective loss hits us all
over again. My memory of craning my head
from the far side of the front row at my first theater viewing of The Sorceror’s Stone will be shaded,
just a bit. Our annual Christmas
tradition of watching Love, Actually
will hurt, just a bit. And the crumpled,
signed program I have tucked away with my other memorabilia in my grandpa’s old
suitcase now has a new importance attached to it.
In
the words of a tiny, green Jedi Master, “That is the way of things.” The loss of so many great figures in such a
short span of time has been hard to process.
All deaths have an immediate impact on those closest to them, but there
are some, like these, that resonate across the world, because in their own
small ways they were able to touch on common features of humanity that we all
share. Alan Rickman was one of those
people, and he will be sorely missed.
Rest in peace, sir. We will make
sure you are always remembered.
Always.
-Noah Franc
Beautiful, simply beautiful.
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