It'd be easy -- and perhaps forgivable -- to remember after the
passing of actor Charlton Heston only the crazy-eyed gun nut of the
1980's and '90's, or the many TV parodies that we've seen (and he
became), or the ridiculously outsize, generally square, occasionally ill-fitting roles that he inhabited on the big screen.
But
perhaps, in coming years, that will work in Heston's favor. Because if
there are truly so many bad ways to remember Heston, doesn't that make
the good ones stand out all the more? Here's something that's happened
to us more than a couple times: watching one of his movies, we are
suddenly and irrevocably struck -- and overcome -- by the raw, beefy
DRAMA! of the man: his command over that oaky baritone; the cunning,
often enraged intelligence that could flare from behind his eyes; and
above all, the magnetic, overwhelming physical being of the guy. At the height of his powers, he could be Lancaster without the
sorrow, Peck without the restraint, Eastwood at the edge of the world.
We
know: for some of you, it will forever be impossible to separate the
man from his scary, crotchety later years, no matter whether he marched with Dr. King, performed in one of the first interracial love scenes in Hollywood,
or happened to act in three of the most important socially-conscious
dystopias of cinematic sci-fi. That's cool; we get that. To you we say:
check out Kenneth Branagh's 4-hour version of Hamlet, where Heston plays -- nay, owns
-- the Player-King, and get back to us. And in the meantime, while
you're waiting for Netflix to load, how about digging on some of the
best beefcake we could find of the man that made at least one dude gay.
(No, not Scanner Bryan; this guy.)
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