RIP Louis Gossett Jr.

Roots, An Officer and a Gentleman were amazing performances.

https://apnews.com/article/louis-gossett-jr-dies-1e86e1441ec8b614a282f3de22490a07

But a personal favorite.

 

Diggstown is an awesome movie.

 

Honey Roy Palmer

 

It's funny. Gossett played many memorable parts, but I was perhaps most impressed by his work in SF B movie called "Enemy Mine". He played an alien space fighter pilot opposite Dennis Quaid. They had fought and both fighters were so damaged that they both crashed on an alien planet. They wound up depending on each other to survive and eventually respected each other and became friends.

Gossett, under about fifteen pounds of latex rubber and makeup, brought the character to life. He studied birds and patterned the way his character moved on their movements. He did these weird vocalizations and trills as language. His character laid an egg and he brought a motherly feel to that development. Considering what he had to work with, both script and special effects, it was an amazing performance. It's an odd thing to remember him for after all these years, but my son loved the movie and I saw it repeatedly when he was young, and it stuck with me.

He was the first Black man to earn a Best Supporting Oscar. A fine actor to his rest.

 

I always love seeing working actors - supporting actors - not really "stars" - but people that do TV - character parts in movies - suddenly get a great role that really shows what they can do. He was doing it for a good 15 years before Roots came along - and had a great run after that.

 

CHAPPIE!

 

Maybe he's not really dead. Just dog paddling in the Med for a while until he gets picked up by an Egyptian trawler.

 

He deserves to be remember for more than Iron Eagle, but that’s what this USAF brat will always think of first. RIP.

 

Hate to say it, but he joins my "Thought He Was Already Dead" club.

 

He should have won for An Officer and a Gentleman, and he did. That was an amazing performance.

 

R. Lee Ermey was a consultant on "An Officer and a Gentleman," which is why I heard many of the same lines ("steers and queers" etc) in the opening scenes of "Full Metal Jacket."