It happens only a few times in your life when the really HUGE stars die. I remember James Stewart going, Robert Mitchum, Audrey Hepburn, Rod Steiger. I was standing opposite the CNN office on Sunset Boulevard the moment the news broke on their ticker that Paul Newman had died. I think Liz Taylor’s death was as important, but in a way less sad perhaps. The difference is obvious, Paul Newman died in dignity. Taylor did not.
But does it matter? I will in coming weeks indulge in my own Liz Taylor wake I imagine. I can’t do "top ten type" lists of films but Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and A Place In the Sun are all films I own, rate and treasure – mainly because of her performances. (Respectively, Paul Newman, Richard Burton and Montgomery Cliff do quite well too!)
But the other night I was watching Platoon. I got to thinking about Charlie Sheen’s legacy. (Let’s not forget the importance of Wall Street). In recent weeks obviously only the most hermitic would have missed the meltdown in Sheen’s dignity. I was in the US as it transpired and saw it in the most stark detail, including that bizarre Piers Morgan interview and those macabre U-Stream broadcasts. Quite startling, but – I thought – the 21st century equivalent of what Taylor went through in the 80s and 90s?
A colleague and I joked about the irony of the inevitable return of Charlie sheen. I said King Leah, he said Macbeth. He said 'funny how we both went to Shakespeare’- but isn’t *that* it – the more they *live* the more they can act? As long as Charlie Sheen survives, and that’s no certainty, what he has been through could make him a great actor.
Watching Platoon, I thought of his father. The opening of Apocalypse Now – the 1970s equivalent of Platoon – is the actual meltdown and subsequent heart attack of Charlie’s father, Martin Sheen. The man recovers and shoots one of the great performances of all time and between them the two Sheen men document the Vietnam War for posterity quite comprehensively. As I watched his son’s meltdown on prime time TV the other week, coincidentally I was watching his father’s complete performance in The West Wing.
Liz Taylor for many years was a joke. Be it the exhausting and alcoholic multiple-marriages with Richard Burton or the kooky friendship with Michael Jackson, her latter years were far from noble. But as I write now, I care not. Those three films I mentioned above are among the finest ever made, and her performances in them are genuinely legendary. The entrails of her existence are irrelevant in comparison, except that they are symptoms of a personality and character that could create that wonder and art I enjoy so much.Rest in Peace Liz Taylor, you deserve to. Do great things again Charlie Sheen, you probably deserve to.
[CAVEAT: Note I am not suggesting the talents of these two people are even in the same league. I am merely drawing comparisons.]