Blog: BaronDixon on LiveVideo.com

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Age: 48
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Thanks For The Movies, Chuck.

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2008 (6:54 AM)

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Thanks For The Movies, Chuck.

(I'm feeling nostalgic)

"GUNS don't kill people...APES with guns kill people!"

Actor Charlton Heston dead at 84.

Yeah, I knew he was on his way out for a few years now. Once someone famous announces he's got Alzheimer's (A disease which makes your brain literally shrivel up in your skull) and retreats into privacy, you know it's just a matter of very short time. Most younger audiences here may only remember him as a famous mouthpiece for the Nazi-esque Neo-Conservative political agenda (thus rolling back his more progressive social activism in the 1960's) and his final film appearance in Michael Moore's "Bowling For Columbine" where he is cornered in his own home about his politics regarding gun control (He was President of the NRA for a time). But I remember him as my favorite movie actor of all time.

While movies were undergoing a lot of aesthetic changes in the 1960's, when I was a kid, you could get a steady diet of classic films on broadcast television. There were weekly and weekday afternoon movies, the CBS late movie, CBS's Monday Night At The Movies, Local broadcasts of movies at many odd hours, sci-fi/horror movie shows hosted by colorful characters, "Night Owl Theater" type broadcasts of old movies in the wee small hours of the morning...plus movies were constantly being re-released theatrically. I was always being dropped off at kiddie matinees (Probably to be out of my parents' hair for four or five hours--they were always double features) to watch whatever they were unspooling that weekend, whether it be a new movie or some musty old classic. Didn't matter. I was (and still am) catching up on dcades of classic Hollywood movie culture that I missed out on from making the mistake of not being born earlier.

The stars were bigger-than-life. And one of the biggest bigger-than-lifers was Charlton Heston.

I had probably seen him in many movies before 1967, but he first got my attention in "Planet Of The Apes" which is hands-down my favorite movie of all time. Heston, usually the victorious moral hero in his epic movies, is the misanthropic victim in "Apes". Even at the tender age of 6 years old, I could RELATE to this guy. He didn't do anything to the talking apes to really deserve their contempt, but they constantly abused him nonetheless, all because he possessed a talent that SHOULD have made him a celebrity in their world (he could speak). But more frightened religious conservative elements would prevail and he would get beaten down. That's how I always felt at school. Kids would pick on me just for having a weird name like "Baron", and then throw in being a creative artistic type in there and you have the makings of a schoolyard victim.   So I'm watching Chuck being bullied by these talking apes (Cornelius, Zira and Lucius excepted of course--and even THEY were pretty iffy about him!) and I'm thinking "Yeah....THAT's my life right there." And at 6 years old, I wasn't even getting all the socio-political satire undertones of the story! I didn't even get the Statue of Liberty bit back then. But I understood the character of George Taylor on a very viscreal level.     ...and the apes were cool, too.

I spent my ninth year as a fourth grader at a non-denominational Protestant Christian elementary school....and it was "Planet Of The Apes" all over again! And ti wasn't just the other kids as the apes this time, but a whole bunch of "Dr. Zaiuses" in the form of the Fundamentalist Faculty! I grew to understand "Planet of the Apes" on a deeper level, and the motivations for the apes' McCarthyist tactics.

I would soon discover Charlton Heston's Biblical Epics and historical epics. Even when Chuck had a smaller role in a movie like "Big River" or "Greatest Story Ever Told" you REMEMBERED him! It's no mistake that this guy was cast to play one of the "God-Squad". You NEEDED someone like Chuck to fill those shoes. Chuck had BIG MOVIES coarsing through his veins! To put him in a, say, a domestic melodrama, wou'd cause the theater to explode because Heston is just too BIG for tiny movies. He needed that wide screen to properly contain him. He needed that cast of thousands to play to. I'm not a religious man. Even when I WAS religious, I wasn't very religious. But for the four hours (There is no such thing as a "short" Biblical epic) I spend with Chuck in "Ben Hur" or "Ten Commandments", I BELIEVE!   The same way Willam Shatner makes you BELIEVE in those plywood and styrofoam sets in "Star Trek".

My mom would kinda sneer and say "I don't really like Charlton Heston. He's so OVERBEARING." and I'm like, well...."YEAH! That's his JOB!" Whether conquering hero, lecherous villain, or downtrodden victim, Heston COMMANDS that big screen. It's no wonder that Charlton Heston was one my biggest influences as a young actor on stage. You might even see a litttle of him peering through my performances as the Tyranovision Tyrant.. I even want to do with Heston someday what Christian Slater did with Jack Nicholson in "Heathers", which is play the entire role on a movie AS Charlton Heston (Since I do a damn good impression of him). I at least "hommaged" Chuck's "Planet of the Apes" performance in the "7/11" episode of "Tyrannovision"--the ONE episode where I didn't lip-synch to a pre-recorded dialog track (I was in a hurry).

Like many powerhouse actors of his stature, it was hard to cast him in his later years. What the hell do you put Charlton Heston IN?? What is there left for him to DO that could possibly eclipse his already incredible body of work? He got trotted out for cameos in later movies, which always reminded the viewer how great this guy was on screen. His politics might have sucked, but you hafta separate the art from the artist a lot of the time. Look at him in his bit-part cameos in "True Lies" as Arnold Schwarzenegger's boss, in the Tim Burton "Apes" redux as a bitter old ape (Yes, as a Repulican, he joined the ranks of the Apes, "Damning" all the humans to hell), and most notably and poignantly in "Wayne's World 2" as the "better" actor who is literally shoved into the frame to deliver one line of expository dialogue better than the unknown actor who previously delivers the same speech. Charlton Heston BELONGED on the Big Screen. It was his natural habitat.

I've missed him in new movies for a while now. Yeah, he WAS overbearing. he wasn't some inwardly-directed "method" actor. Charlton Heston was a fuckin' MOVIE STAR. I would happily shove him into the frame of any movie I made.   Maybe we can stuff him and do a remake of "Weekend at Bernie's"! He has the proper cinematic training: "El Cid"!

I do keep Chuck alive in my own little way though...

Whenever I'm downtown and a bum tries to panhandle me, I scream at the top of my lungs "SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE OUTTA PEOPLE! IT'S PEEEEEEEEEEE-POOOOOOLE!" That clears them out pretty quickly.

Thanks for that one, Chuck.

Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

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Posted Sep 23, 08 by BaronDixon (

)
Yeah, Poor Roddy, too. At least shortly before we lost Roddy McDowall he hosted that really nice documentary "Behind The Planet Of The Apes"....kind of a nice final parting gift to us Apes fans.

Posted Sep 7, 08 by GUMP (

)
Yep, Charleton Heston! "Ben Hur"! I'm your age, and I remember "Planet of The Apes" (and all the sequels, including the cartoon) well. "Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!!" And another cast member, of whom I was very fond, also gone now, was Roddy McDowell. I miss him!

Rest well, Charleton and Roddy!

~Fox~

Posted Aug 18, 08 by KrisInteract (

)
What a guy... It's now the 19th and only now from your blog am I finding out he's Dead!!!
I'm off to have a good cry and then I'm going to watch the Original Planet of the apes again, If I get as far as beneath the planet then you may not hear from me again.