Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

xp

Now that people who seemed like mouldering old corpses still in existence when I was 15 years old are only just dying now, it possibly gives me false hope ... or maybe even real despair that still I've got decades left to live yet.. lol.

RIP Belz. Munch was the lynchpin between many televisual worlds: https://www.ranker.com/list/all-the-tv-universes-unified-by-detective-munch/jacob-shelton

Homicide is fantastic and highly recommended for those who only know him from Law and Order.

Also in that RS article was that he warmed up the crowd in the early SNL shows.

Never saw a single episode of L&O but I’m thrown by how hard the loss of Belzer hits. He was kind of the quintessential cool comedian.

He was better on Homicide than on L&O because Homicide was a much, much better-written show than SVU has ever been. That said, Belzer and Ice-T made a great comedy team.

I only recently saw Homicide for the first time, after some Wire bingeing, and loved Munch in it! He was much more blabby, cranky and tin-foil-hattish. I loved it.

I’m thrown by how hard the loss of Belzer hits. He was kind of the quintessential cool comedian.

Same, I first saw Belzer on 70s late night TV - Midnight Special and Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and he was kinda the first person I recognized as being a stand-up comic.

Composer Gerald Fried, 95. Worked with Kubrick and Roger Corman before moving to television and composing hours and hours of background music.

He's probably most famous now for composing this background theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCamCYip2t4

Munch only seemed similar to Landsman from the book in that they both had an acidic sense of humor. Belzer’s personality largely informed the character in the early seasons of Homicide to the point where you really had to suspend disbelief that this was a cop.

belzer was at least a decade older than i thought he was. rip

Richard Belzer was a fine onscreen presence, but not many people have remarked upon how he was the only American tv actor who could totally dominate a Ric Ocasek lookalike contest.

RIP Gerald Fried. Amok time is a cool as shit score but he did a bunch more great stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyQdzXCj1eo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ4mhaJIr7A

his twin brother died recently as well iirc

other than that nothing more to say about how good he was in homicide and svu (the best l&o imo)

legendary scifi manga artist Leiji Matsumoto at 85 worked on Space Battleship Yamato, Galaxy Express 999, Space Pirate Captain Harlock etc etc. oh and that Daft Punk anime film.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20230220/k10013985711000.html

fucking legend

Nooooo. Rest In Peace to the great Matsumoto.

R&B singer Chuck Jackson.

Tom Luddy, a week ago.

https://www.thewrap.com/martin-scorsese-remembers-telluride-co-founder-tom-luddy-as-a-pivotal-figure-in-the-world-of-cinema/

I recognized the name but didn't know much about him till I read Greil Marcus's remembrance today. He produced Mishima, appeared in Phil Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and seems to have been a central figure in the film universe of San Francisco.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/headhuntersholosuite/images/5/56/Ted_Hendley.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100110203057

Here's the link for the photo (from Body Snatchers):

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/headhuntersholosuite/images/5/56/Ted_Hendley.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100110203057

French Film Director Michel Deville

https://www.lefigaro.fr/cinema/mort-de-michel-deville-realisateur-du-paltoquet-et-de-peril-en-la-demeure-20230220

Barbara Bosson

https://www.indiewire.com/2023/02/barbara-bosson-dead-hill-street-blues-1234811769/

oh no! she was great in that show...

John Motson

RIP Motty

RIP big guy, sheepskin coat heaven just got that little bit more crowded

Guardian Other Lives article about Alastair Brotchie, as mentioned upthread: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/24/alastair-brotchie-obituary (some ilxors may remember him doing the announcing at the book launch of my Pessoa thing, five years ago next month)

By Peter Blegvad no less.

In 2000 he co-founded the London Institute of ’Pataphysics (LIP), which published a journal and hosted performances, including an exhibition and public event in 2002 that presented the “reconstructive archaeology” of the artworks seen in Tony Hancock’s film The Rebel, the story of an amateur artist’s struggle for recognition.

I was there and have the poster and postcards to prove it!

Did you study pataphysical science in the home?

Peter Blegvad studied it with his daughter iirc.

One less horrible cunt in the world...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64763545

He refused to retreat from his view that the 1989 Hillsborough disaster - which claimed the lives of 97 Liverpool supporters - had been caused by "tanked-up yobs".
And in a 1996 letter replying to fan Graham Skinner - whose friend had died in the disaster - Sir Bernard said Liverpool should "shut up about Hillsborough".

Younger generations might roll their eyes at old farts blaming Thatcher for everything but her, her friends and her inner circle really were the vilest scum imaginable

rest in piss. it's a travesty the cunt lived so long.

Addition by subtraction.

I'm worried that this is what Paul McCartney is going to look like in a few years time

https://i.imgur.com/fv15nt0.jpg

he looks like a Spitting Image puppet

thought he was dead already tbh. Well anyway, he's dead now, that's the important thing.

a bit of good news for a Friday evening

you must milk this cat, thufir

no tears for this fucker

Bernard Ingham has died, you say? pic.twitter.com/5mqaOLWxNS

— Nic Bullen (@nic_shout) February 24, 2023

Good interviews with Richard Belzer and Tim McCarver! And I'm not a big media star interview fan.
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158521975/remembering-richard-belzer-tim-mccarver

Gordon Pinsent, famous (here) Canadian actor:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/gorden-pinsent-1.6760868

His most well-known film, The Rowdyman (1972), is on YouTube for free--I don't think I've ever seen it, so I'll try to amend that.

Walter Mirisch, the last of three Mirisch brothers who produced or oversaw production of a string of highly regarded films in the 1950s and ’60s, including best picture Oscar winners “The Apartment,” “West Side Story” and “In the Heat of the Night,” has died.
He was 101.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-02-25/walter-mirisch-academy-oscars-in-the-heat-of-the-night-death

François Hadji-Lazaro (frontman of French bands Pigalle and Les Garçons Bouchers)

RIP my old friend Clive Sall, founding member of FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste), 60.

Lindsay Hoyle has announced the death of Betty Boothroyd aged 93 pic.twitter.com/s2OqOdW9Yu

— Henry Zeffman (@hzeffman) February 27, 2023

there is an interesting interview with her on the british archives page. iirc she's talking about how her dad was deeply ashamed about being unemployed and doing housework while her mother worked in 30's depression era Dewsbury.

misread that as “Depression era Doonesbury” which was a wild ride