“It's one of the great
tragedies of our contemporary life in America, that families fall apart. Almost
everybody has that in common.”
This is a quote from Sam
Shepard—the late playwright, actor, and all-around cultural icon—who died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka Lou
Gehrig’s disease) in 2017, at the age of 73. I respond to this particular
quotation because I’ve just seen a strong stage production of Buried Child,
for which Shepard was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979. Like many
of Shepard’s writings for the stage, Buried Child is a raw, tough-minded
look at a family in crisis, set in a run-down house somewhere in rural America.
It has its darkly comic moments, but its basic mood is grimly ironic. It’s not
the kind of play one easily forgets.
I suspect most people who
know the Hollywood side of Sam Shepard (including his 26-year relationship with
actress Jessica Lange) don’t realize he was the author of 44 plays, many of
them award-winners. The grotesque but largely realistic family dramas that mark
the highpoint of his career include (along with Buried Child) Curse
of the Starving Class, True West, Fool for Love, and A Lie
of the Mind. Some of Broadway’s and London’s best actors have taken on
roles he has written. He always resisted performing in his own work, but was
persuaded by Robert Altman to play a leading part in a 1985 film production of Fool
for Love, one that also featured Kim Basinger, Harry Dean Stanton, and
Randy Quaid.
Though Shepard thought of
himself primarily as a playwright, Hollywood loved his acting chops as well as
his craggy Middle-America look. The son of a former military man who took up
farming in his later years, Shepard seemed right at home in dramas set amidst
cornfields or battlefields. His first big movie role came in 1978, when he
played the key role of a lovelorn farmer in Terrence Malick’s Days of
Heaven. Five years later, his portrayal of legendary test pilot Chuck
Yeager in The Right Stuff nabbed him an Oscar nomination. His later
roles ranged from Steel Magnolias to Black Hawk Down, from Hamlet
(he played the ghostly father of Ethan Hawke’s title character) to The
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. One
of his last big roles was as the family patriarch in the all-star film
production of Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County (2013).
My first brush with a Sam
Shepard work came back in the Seventies, when I saw a local production of
Shepard’s 1972 play, The Tooth of the Crime. A musical drama set in a
vaguely sci-fi future, it involves a lethal battle of weapons and words between
an ageing rocker and a dangerous young upstart who seeks to dethrone him. I was
never entirely sure what the play was about, but remained mesmerized by its
manic energy. What I’m just now learning is that the highly versatile Shepard
was also a rock drummer back in the day, a musician who toured sporadically
with a psychedelic folk band, The Holy Modal Rounders. He also
accompanied Bob Dylan on his Rolling Thunder Revue, charged with coming
up with a screenplay for Dylan’s 1978 attempt at filmmaking, Renaldo and
Clara. With Dylan he later co-wrote
the song “Brownsville Girl,” and he also collaborated both
professionally and personally with Patti Smith.
Truly, Shepard’s was a life
well lived. I hope that, despite the bleak vision conveyed in his dramas, he
had some fun, and smelled a lot of roses.
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