Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Absence of Wilford Brimley
The great character actor Wilford Brimley passed at the age of 85. He had many memorable film roles, a very funny and active-until-the-end Twitter account, and was a former rodeo rider, blacksmith, Marine, security guard for Howard Hughes, and stuntman before his acting career began.
Though I can quickly remember many of his roles, the one that stays in my mind is as a senior Department of Justice attorney in the outstanding 1981 movie, Absence of Malice (and that film’s observations about the media, the leak games played by bureaucrats, and the havoc they create for the innocents caught in their web, are even more timely today). It’s too bad that during the last few years the real DOJ didn’t have people like the character Brimley played, at least until Bill Barr showed up.
He’s only in one scene in Absence of Malice but he dominated it. Can’t find the full scene on YouTube so here are portions:
.
Published in General
My favorite movie that he was in was Remo Williams: The Adventure Continues.
I liked his “bad guy” role in The Firm. He actually made the lawyers look less evil.
“I get paid to be suspicious when I’ve got nothing to be suspicious about.”
Good memories. Thanks!
I first remember him in the China Syndrome with pinko Jane Hanoi Fonda.
Always amazing how old he seemed – in Cocoon he was only 55 years old. I agree with @gumbymark about how good he was in the very under appreciated Absence of Malice. Great performances also by Melinda Dillon and Bob Balaban (another under appreciated character actor).
He was great in Absence of Malice. I think that’s the movie where I first noticed him. I loved that line, “I’m pretty smart myself.”
And in Cocoon he said something like, “It’s like blue steel – a cat couldn’t scratch it!” That always made me laugh.
He absolutely killed me as the grandpa saying goodbye to his grandson in the ending of Cocoon.
I’d seen that movie before, but that was years before I had a grandson of my own. As such, I could not begin to imagine the pain of such a leave taking and goodbye. He was perfect. And I blubbered.
RIP Wilford.
Most of those jobs he had before starting acting will make you old before your time.
50. September 1934 to 1985 when the movie came out.
I love the scenes of Brimley and Richard Farnsworth in the dugout as the manager and coach in The Natural. Two old pros whose acting is so natural that it’s like looking at real life. Too bad most young people only know Brimley for his “dia-beetus” commercials.
Just watched that a few nights ago. I was introduced to him by the TV series “Our House” with Deidre Hall, who had this to say:
He was the grandpa with all the right answers; a little too easy, I thought at the time. His character in The Firm was so against my personal typecast that I was amazed how well he did it. You never noticed him acting, seemed the most natural thing in the world (a point made above). Thank you for sharing your talent, RIP.
That first clip, about the ass in the briefcase, is one of my favorite speeches in any movie ever.
I think about it a lot when I watch how the current DOJ conducts its business.
My favorite film with WB? Tender Mercies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d40BjDgpdwU
Postmaster General in an episode of Seinfeld:
I met Wilford Brimley briefly in the mid-1980s. I wrote and produced the advertising music for Braniff Airlines* and Brimley was their spokesperson. Very nice man. A what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of fellow.
The head of the ad agency believed that the label “character actor” was a misnomer for Brimley. In his opinion, Brinley was actually a leading man – for regardless the name or occupation of the screen character, Brimley was always being himself, which is what leading men do – play themselves in different settings and costumes.
It drove me nuts that the TMZ obit, which seems to most popular, does not mention “Absence of Malice” and is mostly about the diabetes PSAs and the Quaker Oats commercials.
He shut a mean door.
My favorite role was of the “General” in High Road to China, fighting the warlord. There are so many, though.
One of my favorite movies , I stay with it whenever I come across it and always mention to people that he was only 47 at the time while Newman was 56! And luscious Sally Field was 34.
Whatever happened to Bess Armstrong?
That scene was a real Wilford ex machina.
Because of this movie I ended up reading about 30 of the Destroyer novels, which starred the same characters.