Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

Yeah I'm reading he drowned in a jacuzzi (what an unfortunately typical hollywood way to go), but it seemed like he'd actually been sober for a few years? And you generally dont drown in hottubs when you're awake and straight. But yeesh he'd got really really bad for awhile there, I had no idea - burst colon from vicodin abuse and almost died.

RIp Bull

DAVID CRANE: We brought everybody in. We were so sure that Chandler would be the easiest part to cast. It’s got the most joke jokes. It’s sarcastic and kind of quippy, but no one could do it. No one.

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/05/friends-oral-history-top-of-the-rock

i remember thinking it might have been a little soon for him to do a huge victory lap book tour. that is sooooo much pressure. especially for someone who had been in such ill health so recently. in any case, its something people were kind of expecting. he was a very funny and charismatic actor! but drugs don't care how funny you are. they getcha poor or rich.

Ice Hockey player Adam Johnson. Fucking hell

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/ice-hockey/67253892

that's awful

Matthew Perry was one month older than me. I'm not going to defend Friends for its many offenses, but it had generational resonance for me — a big shift in pop/mass culture toward Gen X.

yeah otm

the one thing i liked about his memoirs, was how stark & factual he was about his addiction, ie the constant cost, the high & low of it, the uglier realities of it for him.
very few actors at his level would be so nakedly open about struggling. most would spin it into some mountain theyre climbing or dragon theyre slaying bc they don’t want to bum their fans out or whatever. whereas he was v real, like this shit is hard for me, and expensive. he was open that sometimes felt like he was failing & knew that it would probably happen again, but would keep trying to do the work.

which at the time i thought was good, because other people struggling w sobriety need to feel like they are not the only ones fucking up.

idk

the whole thing makes me v sad

He might have still have been sober, for whatever time segment, but maybe the physical effects caught up with him, the ones I've read about, but won't specify here. That sure happens to a lot of people.

I know what you mean about its many offenses, Tipsy - I haven't watched in some years but I'm sure Friends hasn't aged well. But it was definitely the polished apex of a certain era of sitcom, not least because of the writing, and it's hard to think of a member of that sharp cast who delivered their lines better or understood their character deeper than Perry.

Drummer Aaron Spears

https://www.moderndrummer.com/2023/10/renowned-drummer-aaron-spears-passes-away-leaving-a-legacy-of-rhythm-and-inspiration/

Renowned as a sought-after session and touring drummer, Spears graced the stage with music giants such as Usher, Alicia Keys, Ariana Grande, and even the legendary James Brown.

re Matthew Perry, a good VF piece that reiterates my post above but better & w more details

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/10/matthew-perry-wanted-to-be-remembered-for-helping-people-reading-his-book-helped-me

For a guy with a heavy substance abuse period he did seem to come out pretty beloved. That doesn't always happen.

his dickish (but you can see how he was just grasping for a quip and it devolved instantly into "oh shit now i cant go outside") dismissal of keanu reeves was his last public moment, right?

i feel it was a very matthew perry character incident itself

It was twice in his book iirc, and the problem with doing a really real book (which I hear is good at what it does) is that you can't really go "ah the ghostwriter stick that in"

i thought he could be really friggin' funny on Friends. the funniest out of all of them. a really good physical comedian who unfortunately - due to drugs - never made a good movie.

and he was most funny when he was expressing panic/fear/ott self-loathing! he brought his reality to it. i think.

(even without drugs though its possible he was just made for the small screen.)

Shelly Long to thread

I despised "Freinds," and my distaste has only grown in the years since it went off the air. That said, I found his death quite sad, especially when I realized he was younger than I am.

Jesus, "Friends."

he did a ton of t.v. before Friends.

i liked Friends when it was on. it had some good writing. good performances. it made me laugh. but i didn't hate those kind of people in real life and that can make people hate it. i didn't know any. they just seemed like they were out of a comic book to me.

Bobby Knight

https://www.tmz.com/2023/11/01/bob-knight-legendary-indiana-texas-tech-basketball-coach-dead-83/

https://media.tenor.com/9FgY4I7OFNsAAAAM/indiana-chair.gif

a legendary dickhead, but a legend nonetheless

knight was the kind of coach I most despise: an abusive screamer

Wonder if, when he realized the end was inevitable, he relaxed and enjoyed it.

His grandchildren are probably going to miss him.

the general, baby, robert montgomery knight!!!

folding chairs at half-mast

lol

Gene Hackman's character in Hoosiers was supposedly based entirely on Bobby Knight.

i think more accurate to say that the producers based gene hackman's character on what they thought of bobby knight

the real bobby knight would never have brought on board a weirdo like jimmy, or helped out dennis hopper, or made out with barbara hershey

otm on that

Ady Barkan, a well-known activist who campaigned for Medicare for all while struggling with the terminal neurodegenerative disease A.L.S., has died. He was 39.

Kind of annoyed by the fawning about Knight. I don't care how "Winning" of a coach he was, he was an abusive fucking asshole and encouraged all the other budding wannabe coaching tyrants to be the same. Fuck him.

(NB my opinion may be very strongly biased by the absolute psychopathic football coach/gym teacher I had in high school who had multiple photos of Bobby Knight in his office that stood by laughing when senior football players duct taped unclothed freshman to the wall in the locker room and spread IcyHot on their testicles)

^ sports build character create sociopaths

No matter the public persona, there is no successful high-level coach that is not also an absolute dickhead.

what about that woke guy in san antonio? He seems cool (spoken as somebody who knows nothing about sports or sports-figures)

Tempted to give him (Gregg Popovich) and Steve Kerr a pass. Then again, the extra "g", kind of a dickhead thing.

(Later, when it all hit the fan in Bloomington, a covertly taped tirade Knight had directed at this team emerged online. It is a fairly accurate clinical example of a sociopath that makes R. Lee Ermey at the beginning of Full Metal Jacket sound like the Singing Nun. Added historical note: The popularly accepted identity of the surreptitious taper is Lawrence Frank, then a manager at Indiana and later, the coach of the New Jersey Nets. Further added historical note: The tirade came after Indiana had beaten Northwestern by 40 points.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_2ifFbEYRc

Astronaut Ken Mattingly, bumped from Apollo 13, eventually flew to the moon on Apollo 16, stayed around for a couple of shuttle flights. (Gary Sinise played him in Apollo 13), 87.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/02/517140750/nasa-astronaut-ken-mattingly-apollo-16-13-died-moon-shuttle

we have a thread about him in the movie, but i dont think its the right time

A lot of NBA coaches seem cool, some baseball managers are alright, nearly every college coach seems to be an absolute tyrant

No matter the public persona, there is no successful high-level coach that is not also an absolute dickhead.
― henry s

I have A Season on the Brink on my shelf, plan to read it at some point. Have to disagree with this broad characterization, though, if you're referring to all sports. John Wooden was supposedly a great guy. And in baseball, Dusty Baker, Jim Leyland, Bruce Bochy, Gil Hodges, Walter Alston, Dave Roberts, Joe Torre, and countless others all have pretty great reputations as people, and they also won. (Kind of skipping all over the timeline there, I know.)

David Berglas, magician, 97.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12709781/Magician-David-Berglas-holy-grail-magic-tricks-dies-aged-97-secret.html

Hugely important death in terms of Canadian film history: Don Shebib, director of Goin' Down the Road.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/obit-shebib-canadian-film-1.7020573

R.I.P., love that film

Shebib talking with Pierre Berton, 1971
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwBEfhuZiBw

Will watch that for sure, thanks. Looked at a few seconds, and--amazingly from today's perspective--Shebib refers to It's a Wonderful Life as "almost totally unknown." Which, in 1971, it probably was--I guess its status as a Christmas standard on television hadn't yet been established.

I'm reading that obit and I'm all "Oh wait this guy was the father of 40?" as in Drake's regular producer/collaborator. Unexpected!