Baseball season is nearing an end, which means that so, too, is my chance to watch TV commercials. I’m not much of a television watcher (well, I watch a lot of TV, but mostly on DVD), and about the only time I get a chance to see mainstream commercials is before a feature at a movie theatre, or during baseball season. That’s just fine with me; the things rarely live up to the standards of either high art or low camp, so I don’t feel like I’m missing much. Imagine, then, my surprise when a commercial for Traveler’s Insurance cropped up during a Red Sox-Cleveland playoff game featuring one of my all-time favorite character actors: this week’s That Guy!, Richard Edson. It’s actually a pretty good bit of casting, for a commercial – who better to embody Risk, the very personification of bad luck, than the laconic, hangdog Edson? His long, weary face (almost always sporting a mustache of one kind or another) and perpetual look of a wheedling cajoler has made me a longtime fan of his infrequent movie roles; he’s not the most prolific actor out there, but he tends to steal the show whenever he shows up. Give him one line, and he’ll capture the audience’s attention. A multi-talented and multi-faceted individual, Edson is a gifted photographer, but before making his first film, he was best-known as a musician; in fact, he was the great Steve Shelley’s predecessor as the drummer for Sonic Youth. Moving on to the art-rock ensemble Konk, he was discovered by Jim Jarmusch, who found he shared interests with Edson, and like most people, was captivated by his unique appearance and demeanor. He’s appeared in big movies (taking part in a mini-Vietnam revival with consecutive roles in both Platoon and Good Morning Vietnam) and small movies (like almost every other interesting actor in Hollywood, he had a bit part in Mike Figgis’ bizarre 2000 film Timecode), and tends to get the parts that are a little too brainy or subtle to go to Flea. (Astonishingly, though, Edson – a Coen Brothers company player if there ever was one – has never appeared in a Coen Brothers film.) For over twenty years, he’s been a reliably solid actor with a hugely memorable face and a forgettable name; but for those who do remember it, seeing it in the credits of a film or TV show (such as a memorable turn as Lowell Stokes in the underrated cult TV drama American Gothic) is nothing less than a promise of good things to come. And as Norman Mailer once asked in very different circumstances, isn’t culture worth a little risk?
Where to see Richard Edson at his best:
STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1984)
Edson was playing percussion for Konk when he met Jim Jarmusch. So taken was the director with the musician’s attitude and expression that he cast him in a lead role in his soon-to-be classic Stranger Than Paradise. Playing Eddie, the hapless friend of lead John Lurie (also a New York musician, from the Lounge Lizards), Edson puts in what would be his first film appearance – and his first in a long series of scene-stealing performances. A terrific performance in a must-see film.
FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (1986)
Edson's best-known character is the joyriding, ingratiating garage attendant in whose care Alan Ruck’s Cameron leaves his father’s vintage Ferrari 250 GT. Edson sets off the movie’s central dramatic conflict, but screw that: he also gets a couple of the most classic lines in '80s cinema as a nervous Cameron puts him in charge of the car. Edson even manages to get off a zinger on the unflappable Ferris himself: asked if he speaks English, Edson replies, "Uh, what country do you think this is?"
EIGHT MEN OUT (1988)
It’s easy to miss Richard Edson in one of his finest roles: he gets enough screen time, but he’s nearly unrecognizable without his mustache, and duded up in a ten-dollar pinstripe suit.In John Sayles' excellent adaptation of the Eliot Asinof book on the notorious Black Sox scandal of 1919, Edson plays the gambler (and crooked ex-prizefighter) Billy Maharg, a pug who’s turned into such a needling chiseler that you wonder how he ever won a fight in the first place, unless it was by making his opponent feel sorry for him.
— Leonard Pierce