Category: The Unsung

Call me a romantic, but I’ve always retained a soft spot for parents who hate their children. Especially mothers who hate their sons

Doctor Ross – Doug Ross, in a more relaxed setting – is an eminent man. His office, standing room only. His reputation, so beyond impeccable, he’s flirting with legendary

There was a time – we’ll estimate about a half century ago – when a shirtless Charles Bronson was enough. Enough for what depends on the audience, so we’ll rest on the happy medium between anything and everything.

For a generation of Americans, Alan Alda was pretty much the standard bearer for the New Man. The sensitive soul, clad in a respectable sweater, offering not the usual toxicity and power plays, but understanding, warmth, and a gentle smile.

Mary Pickford saw the writing on the wall. Despite a legendary career as a silent film actress, the introduction of sound in the late Twenties brought about an unexpected end to life in the limelight.

Lenny (Ben Gazzara) has had enough. Faking it comes easy in a marriage, but even the strongest man has his limits. Only so many times you can hear the same tired stories, and shrug at the same lame jokes.

Rahad Jackson is a survivor. Of all the characters in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights – the doomed, the damned, the disturbingly well-endowed – he’s one of the few one can imagine emerging from the 1980’s intact.

Billy Curtis, God rest his soul, was a fucking legend. Not just a midget legend, mind you, but a legend in his own right, four-foot-two stature be damned.

In a movie that, like Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, accurately validates the idea that the best stories are not about the ascent, but rather the fall, the ultimate privilege is in the further realization that absent the broken, we’d have no real stories to tell.