Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

His essay about refusing an OBE in 2003:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/27/poetry.monarchy

Seeing as it's December...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4AgPSjzXkw

OTM on OBEs and the wankers who accept them.

super sad to hear about Banjamin Zephaniah

Benjamin!!

<3

Some great clips being shared rn

Benjamin Zephaniah on his refusal to accept an OBE.

'No way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire.'

Rest in power. pic.twitter.com/FgSsth8TaQ

— Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) December 7, 2023

Infamous bank robber, publisher, and anarchist theorist Alfredo Bonanno has died. Armed Joy ans Let’s Destroy Work, Let’s Destroy the Economy are foundational texts for a certain segment of radical thinking.

'Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought'

RIP Benjamin, a proper comrade.

ryan o’neal

queueing up Barry Lyndon in tribute

I'll be watching The Driver.

I would not have minded being Ryan O'Neal through the '70s.

So Fine over here

God I adored Paper Moon as a kid

"It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now."

Tough Guys Don’t Dance will get a rewatch imminently.

He and Bogdanovich were a match made in heaven.

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/ca7/5e2/4df9a5d39018f068136ae71274e3ec1a91-01-bogdanovich-4.2x.h467.w700.jpg

Knowing what we now know about their irl relationship, this scene really cuts.

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

Doctor, my eyes! (xpost)

I don't know about their real life relationship, but that was a great moment in Paper Moon

highly recommend a cursory google/wikipedia trip, their irl relationship adds a whole other layer to their performance

This one for starters: https://nypost.com/2009/08/03/ryan-tried-to-get-tatum-to-date-im/

Ryan O’Neal wishes he’d never had children and is so estranged from his own kids that he didn’t recognize his actress-daughter Tatum — and shamelessly flirted with her — at Farrah Fawcett’s funeral, the actor admits in an explosive new interview.

“I had just put the casket in the hearse and was watching it drive away,” O’Neal, 68, said, “when a beautiful blond woman comes up and embraces me. I said to her, ‘You have a drink on you? You have a car?’ She said, ‘Daddy, it’s me — Tatum!’

whence the name 'tatum'?

(xpost) Yikes-very Benjamin Horne.

their whole relationship is so ._.

Here's the "Beautiful People, Ugly Choices" article from Vanity Fair that gets into the details:
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2009/9/beautiful-people-ugly-choices

tl;dr - O'Neal is a p.o.s.

"I consider him a vulture presiding over a carcass"

and that is a quote from one of his sons .. lol

So Fine over here

― underwater as a compliment (Eazy)

The cardboard box used to scare me at Blockbuster years and years ago.

Remember that Twitter sleuthing about what film Trump went and saw instead of being by his brother's side in his hospital deathbed, and the most likely candidate was the "Ryan O'Neal Assless Pants Movie"?

One of more surprising revelations of the Polly Platt season of You Must Remember This was that O'Neal was pretty staunch advocate for Platt and her work, helping her get her first non-Bogdanovich production design gig on The Thief Who Came To Dinner*, and he later put Bogdanovich on blast when he spoke at her funeral by saying the work she put in was the real reason those early films were so excellent.

*Presumably still locked up in rights hell, it and Brewster McCloud are two of the best shot in Houston films of the '70s.

But, 'stopped clocks' and so on...

https://louderthanwar.com/john-hyatt-the-three-johns-rip/ Rock On

(briefly confused him with John Hiatt who's still alive)

oh shit, three johns were an important band to me and my friends in my teens. god bless you john. my mate jim was the first one of us to get a car, an ancient vauxhall cavalier that he painted matt black. always remember my first ride in it, as we pulled away from the kerb and hit the dual carriageways of basingstoke, this was the tune that was blasting out of his tape machine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNTl5JeG4RI

Martin Davidson, who ran the Emanem record label devoted to (mainly) European free improv. Lots of bangers in the back catalogue. RIP.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanem_Records

RIP, a well kent face @ loads of gigs.

the first thing that came to mind with the mention of the Emanem record label is The Spontaneous Music Ensemble, one of the greatest UK bands of that era.

Apparently (because not 100% confirmed but good sources saying so) 2000ad artist Ian Gibson.

Now I've read the family's messages, if not yet then imminent.

Among the stars with Halo now.

RIP to Tony Smith, creator of Gus Honeybun the South West television rabbit presenter from 1961 onwards - famous enough for Victoria Wood to have pastiched him.

Apparently SF author David Drake has passed, per a Wikipedia update. Charlie Jane Anders on Bluesky with warm thoughts:

https://bsky.app/profile/charliejane.bsky.social/post/3kgaaji2qmy2f

Shirley Anne Field.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/11/actor-shirley-anne-field-dies

Was just coming to post that. In several of my favourite films, with The Damned probably due a rewatch.

2000ad Twitter account has confirmed Ian Gibson has died

Andre Braugher

https://deadline.com/2023/12/andre-braugher-dead-homicide-life-on-the-street-brooklyn-nine-nine-actor-1235665513/amp/

Now that's a shock, so young. He was great on Brooklyn Nine Nine. RIP

Damn...he was so good for so long. First remember him from Glory, then obv he was legendary for Homicide.

he was incredible in Homicide where he had an intense character arc. RIP