Posts Tagged: a star is born
Kris Kristofferson died, and I’ve been writing.
An idol has fallen
I try not to acknowledge how long I’ve continued with serious crushes on famous people, but with the passing of Kris Kristofferson, I have to own up. I found his face, twang, rangy movements and blue eyes irresistible. I am so sorry to see him gone.
I saw him in concert only once, in 1979 in Missoula at the university. You can read about it right here: https://www.concertarchives.org/concerts/willie-nelson-kris-kristofferson-don-bowman
The clip on that page is terrible and has nothing to do with the show I watched while standing next to a friend named Dan Fuquay, beaming with embarrassed adoration when Kris took the stage.
I’ll leave discussion of his music to my betters. This is a great article about his influence on music and movies.
A Star is Born
This movie isn’t perfect, but he is. I don’t suppose it was much of a stretch for him to play a self-destructive rock star. I watched it again after watching the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga version a few years ago, and was shocked at how well his part of it holds up.
Is Bradley Cooper a better actor? Of course he is.
Is his the better performance? Debatable.
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea
Yesterday I tracked down another movie I remembered from the seventies, rentable on Prime for 3.99. Or you can watch it for free on YouTube, but I have no idea if it includes the explicit parts.
It’s a disturbing movie full of adolescent anger, voyeurism, and animal abuse. The boy is part of a gang headed by a budding psychopath, and the ending is terrible. The reviews were bewildering and bad.
Still, Kris Kristofferson was in it, and according to the scandalized reviews, he was naked.
I saw it in the theater with Brother Steve. BAD IDEA. We were both uncomfortable to be sitting beside a sibling during the racy parts, but we handled it with dignity. The wildly sexy parts seem almost tame in comparison to today’s offerings. I can’t handle this kind of movie score anymore. It’s as ham-fisted as Sarah Miles’ faked orgasms.
Kris delivers such a natural, unaffected, effortless performance. He’s doing so in a movie full of British actors who are Acting With A Capital A. So it’s jarring. But I watched it anyway, transfixed by those blue eyes, fast-forwarding through the parts I couldn’t tolerate.
Things I didn’t know
When news of his death broke, I read a few articles, but this one is the best:
I knew Kris Kristofferson was a Rhodes scholar. Of course I knew that, I always track down the facts of my celebrity crushes. What I didn’t know was how deeply the works of William Blake and other poets affected his songwriting.
Go on, read the Poetry Foundation article. It is so much more interesting than my personal blatherings about a gifted man with haunted blue eyes.
Great photos here: