The critically acclaimed “The Handmaid’s Tale” won the prize for best drama television series at the 69th annual Emmy awards Sunday night in Hollywood. Its star, Elizabeth Moss, who portrayed one of the few fertile women left in a world ruled by a totalitarian regime, won the award for best lead actress in a drama series.

The best dramatic actor award went to Sterling K. Brown, one of the stars of the hit series “This is Us.”  Brown thanked his television family, saying they were the best white adopted family a black actor could have.

Last year, Brown won an Emmy for his portrayal of O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden in the FX series “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”

The best comedy series nod went to “Veep,” a show about a fictional U.S. politician.  It was the third win in a row for the HBO series. 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “Veep”‘s star,  won the best comedy actress Emmy, her sixth consecutive win.

Nicole Kidman won the best actress in a limited series Emmy for her role as an abused wife in HBO’s “Big Little Lies.”

Upon accepting her trophy, she said the series had shined a light on domestic violence, “a complicated insidious disease.”  

The best supporting actress for comedy award was given to Kate McKinnon, from “Saturday Night Live.” It was her second win for her role in the late-night weekly comedy institution.

The 42-year-old series also won for best variety show.

Colbert on Trump

Comic Stephen Colbert was this year’s Emmys host. He peppered his opening monologue with numerous jokes about President Donald Trump, and recalled the president’s angry comment in the past that he had never won for hosting his former TV series, “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Colbert teased the Emmy audience, telling them Trump never would have run for the White House if he had scored the top award in U.S. television. And in a reference to the vote turnout last November, when Trump won the presidency despite getting nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, Colbert said that, unlike the presidential race, Emmys go to the winners of the popular vote.

The president’s former spokesman, Sean Spicer, made a surprise appearance, rolling out on to the stage on a motorized version of the White House podium.

Spicer pronounced this year’s show the most-watched Emmy telecast in history, lampooning his own discredited assertion of a record audience for Trump’s inauguration in Washington eight months ago.

Familiar names and a surprise familiar face were some of the highlights of the awards show.  

Veteran actress Cecily Tyson, a star of the landmark mini-series “Roots,” resplendent in a red gown, had trouble reading the introduction to the limited series award, but like the trooper she is, she finally pulled it off to present the Emmy to “Big Little Lies.”

Veteran actor John Lithgow won his sixth Emmy Sunday, this time as best supporting actor for playing Winston Churchill in the Netflix series the “The Crown.”

Another veteran performer, Laura Dern, won her first Emmy as best supporting actress in a TV movie or limited series for “Big Little Lies.”
…

American television’s biggest stars are walking the red carpet Sunday in Los Angeles, posing for photos and interviews before the 69th annual Emmy awards presentation.

Late-night talk show personality Stephen Colbert will host the award show, which is sure to get political this year.  Colbert, who’s Late Show often pokes fun at President Donald Trump and his administration, said “the biggest television star of the last year was Donald Trump” during an interview last week.

Additionally, comedy show Saturday Night Live, which regained popularity during the past year by imitating various politicians, is up for a number of awards.  Melissa McCarthy, who portrayed former White House press secretary Sean Spicer on the show, was named the best guest actress in a comedy in last week’s Creative Arts Emmy ceremony.

The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian story that many have said is a reflection of modern times, has been nominated for best drama, along with Better Call Saul and House of Cards and newcomers This Is Us, The Crown, Stranger Things, and Westworld.

Nominated for best comedy are Veep, Master of None, Atlanta, black-ish, Silicon Valley, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Modern Family.

The Primetime Emmy awards have been held each year since 1949 to recognize members of the U.S. television industry.  This year’s ceremony has a record number of African-American nominees, with 12 black actors up for best and supporting actor awards.

This year also includes a record number of nominated shows exclusively shown on streaming platforms such as Netflix and Hulu.
…

Beginning this weekend, “Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA,” presents a wide variety of Latin American art exhibitions, music events and film screenings to Southern California audiences through January 2018. Arturo Martinez has the story from Los Angeles.
…

After leaving the majesty of the Grand Canyon in the American Southwest, national parks traveler Mikah Meyer headed north to the cooler climes of the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, he stopped by some of the region’s most picturesque and historic national parks.

“I kind of fit along the way these random parks that were out in the middle of nowhere that I could string together to make a route to Washington [State],” he said.

Natural highs … and lows

He was soon standing in the shadow of the tallest freestanding mountain in the state of Nevada — Wheeler Peak, in Great Basin National Park. The mountain stands 3,982 meters (13,065 feet) high and is named for George Wheeler, who led a survey of the Western U.S. in the 1870s.

“It’s really in the middle of nowhere and there’s no other National Park Service site anywhere near it, and so I asked one of the rangers ‘Why is this a National Park Service site?’ And she told me that Nevada has more complete mountain ranges than any other state in the United States, including Alaska,” he said.

That fact, along with the snow-capped peaks amid lush surroundings, surprised Mikah. “I feel like if you ask most people what Nevada looks like, this is not the answer they would give you!”

People usually associate Nevada with a desert landscape. But beyond the barren land and the lights and glitter of the state’s most famous city, Las Vegas, travelers like Mikah can find many natural wonders.

“I went to a place called Stella Lake, a mountain lake which gives you a gorgeous view of Wheeler Peak,” he said. To get there, he walked through a forest of aspen trees. “They were all just budding their spring light green colors. The wind was blowing so strong and these new-growth aspen trees were waving in the wind. It was a really ethereal experience.”

Great Basin National Park is also known for Lehman Cave, one of the best places in the world to see hundreds of limestone shield formations.

On its website, the National Park Service describes the cave as an excellent example of a limestone solution cavern.

“Its beginning can be traced back 550 to 600 million years ago when a warm shallow sea covered most of what is now Nevada and Utah. Over the next 400 million years, sea creatures lived and died, piling layers of calcium carbonate-rich sediment on the ocean floor. These sediments gradually solidified into limestone rock.”

“It was definitely pretty … very fascinating shapes of all sizes and forms,” Mikah said. “So all within this park you can go underground and see this amazing cave and you can hike to the highest point in Nevada,” he said.

Fascinating science and surreal scenery

As Mikah headed north to Oregon, he came across another surreal landscape — Painted Hills, one of three units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

“It’s these really cool, dried-out looking mountains that have red stripes that cut across the rocks horizontally,” he explained. “Rocks of orange and yellow and red, juxtaposed with super blue lakes, was completely another planet.”

Noted American paleobotanist Ralph W. Chaney once said, “No region in the world shows a more complete sequence of tertiary land populations, both plant and animal, than the John Day Basin.”

Historic duo

Also in Oregon, Mikah visited the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park. The site commemorates an expedition led by explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark from 1804 to 1806, to cross what is now the western part of the U.S.

President Thomas Jefferson directed the men and their “Corps of Discovery” to map the territory, find a practical route across it to the Pacific Ocean and establish an American presence before European powers tried to claim it. Lewis and Clark were also to study the geography, plant and animal life along the way, and establish trade with Native American tribes.

“It’s funny for me to look at this large historic expedition and realize these were men in their early 30 as they were doing this, and now here I am in my early 30 doing something similar,” Mikah said. “And so it’s a parallel, age-wise.”

Visitors to the park can step into the Fort Clatsop replica for a sense of what the Corps of Discovery experienced more than 200 years ago.

But it was the natural beauty that impressed Mikah the most … especially the Pacific coastline.

“It’s hard to describe the feeling of looking over one of these jagged cliffs and seeing the sun beating on these rocks, and the waves crashing up against the jagged rock cliffs, and boy, I was just blown away by the beauty.”

Journeying through the Pacific Northwest, Mikah had a chance to steep himself in history and some of the most stunning landscapes in the country — always a winning combination for a national parks traveler.

Mikah invites you to follow him on his epic journey by visiting him on his website TCBMikah.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
…

For more than 60 years, Harry Dean Stanton played crooks and codgers, eccentrics and losers.

He endowed them with pathos and compassion and animated them with his gaunt, unforgettable presence, making would-be fringe figures feel central to the films appeared in.

The late critic Roger Ebert once said no movie can be altogether bad if it includes Stanton in a supporting role, and the wide cult of fans that included directors and his fellow actors felt the same.

“I think all actors will agree, no one gives a more honest, natural, truer performance than Harry Dean Stanton,” director David Lynch said in presenting Stanton with the Inaugural “Harry Dean Stanton Award” in Los Angeles last year.

Stanton died Friday of natural causes at a Los Angeles hospital at age 91, his agent John S. Kelley said.

Lynch, a frequent collaborator with the actor in projects like “Wild at Heart” and the recent reboot of “Twin Peaks,” said in a statement after Stanton’s death that “Everyone loved him. And with good reason. He was a great actor (actually beyond great) — and a great human being.”

When given a rare turn as a leading man, Stanton more than made the most of it. In Wim Wenders’ 1984 rural drama “Paris, Texas,” Stanton’s near-wordless performance is laced with moments of humor and poignancy. His heartbreakingly stoic delivery of a monologue of repentance to his wife, played by Nastassja Kinski, through a one-way mirror has become the defining moment in his career, in a role he said was his favorite.

“‘Paris, Texas’ gave me a chance to play compassion,” Stanton told an interviewer, “and I’m spelling that with a capital C.”

The film won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival and provided the actor with his first star billing, at age 58.

“Repo Man,” released that same year, became another signature film: Stanton starred as the world-weary boss of an auto repossession firm who instructs Estevez in the tricks of the hazardous trade.

He was widely loved around Hollywood, a drinker and smoker and straight talker with a million stories who palled around with Jack Nicholson and Kris Kristofferson among others and was a hero to such younger stars and brothers-in-partying as Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez.

He appeared in more than 200 movies and TV shows in a career dating to the mid-1950s. A cult-favorite since the ’70s with roles in “Cockfighter,” ″Two-Lane Blacktop” and “Cisco Pike,” his more famous credits ranged from the Oscar-winning epic “The Godfather Part II” to the sci-fi classic “Alien” to the teen flick “Pretty in Pink,” in which he played Molly Ringwald’s father.

While fringe roles and films were a specialty, he also ended up in the work of many of the 20th century’s master auteurs, even Alfred Hitchcock in the director’s serial TV show.

“I worked with the best directors,” Stanton told the AP in a 2013 interview, given while chain-smoking in pajamas and a robe. “Martin Scorsese, John Huston, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock was great.”

He said he could have been a director himself but “it was too much work.”

By his mid-80s, the Lexington Film League in his native Kentucky had founded the Harry Dean Stanton Fest and filmmaker Sophie Huber had made the documentary “Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction,” which included commentary from Wenders, Sam Shepard and Kristofferson.

More recently he reunited with Lynch on Showtime’s “Twin Peaks: The Return” where he reprised his role as the cranky trailer park owner Carl from “Fire Walk With Me.” He also stars with Lynch in the upcoming film “Lucky,” the directorial debut of actor John Carroll Lynch, which has been described as a love letter to Stanton’s life and career.

Stanton, who early in his career used the name Dean Stanton to avoid confusion with another actor, grew up in West Irvine, Kentucky and said he began singing when he was a year old.

Later, he used music as an escape from his parents’ quarreling and the sometimes brutal treatment he was subjected to by his father. As an adult, he fronted his own band for years, playing western, Mexican, rock and pop standards in small venues around Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. He also sang and played guitar and harmonica in impromptu sessions with friends, performed a song in “Paris, Texas” and once recorded a duet with Bob Dylan.

Stanton, who never lost his Kentucky accent, said his interest in movies was piqued as a child when he would walk out of every theater “thinking I was Humphrey Bogart.”

After Navy service in the Pacific during World War II, he spent three years at the University of Kentucky and appeared in several plays. Determined to make it in Hollywood, he picked tobacco to earn his fare west.

Three years at the Pasadena Playhouse prepared him for television and movies.

For decades Stanton lived in a small, disheveled house overlooking the San Fernando Valley, and was a fixture at the West Hollywood landmark Dan Tana’s.

Stanton never married, although he had a long relationship with actress Rebecca De Mornay, 35 years his junior. “She left me for Tom Cruise,” Stanton said often.

In listing Stanton’s survivors, the statement announcing his death said only:

“Harry Dean is survived by family and friends who loved him.”
…

An American dentist’s killing of Cecil the lion, a collared 13-year-old lion monitored by the University of Oxford in Zimbabwe, sparked widespread outrage and condemnation of big-game hunting.  But Trophy, a new documentary by filmmakers Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau, offers a more complex perspective on trophy hunting as an industry that blurs the lines between big-game hunting and wildlife conservation.

Every year, Safari Club International holds the largest big-game hunt convention in the world in Las Vegas. Conservationist and adventurist Joe Hosmer describes the process: “You can just pick whatever animal you want from the menu that they offer, you see the price and book the kill.”

Watch: Killing to Conserve? ‘Trophy’ Raises Difficult Questions

Prices range from $8,000 for a buffalo to $45,000 for an elephant and $350,000 for a rhino. This big-money industry helps the local communities where the hunts take place and discourages poaching, says Chris Moore, an anti-poaching campaign manager from Zimbabwe.

Moore says while poachers destroy 30,000 African elephants a year just for their tusks, trophy hunters kills 1,100 elephants annually, providing local communities with their meat and revenue. “Half of that trophy fee goes back into building a clinic or school or whatever the community decides. They have committees and a trust, which organizes where that goes.”

An adventure for the rich

Filmmaker Christina Clusiau says big-game hunting caters to the rich, most of them Americans. “I couldn’t believe that it was so vast that you could buy hunts, and you can buy your insurance, and you can buy your clothing and gear, everything for the safari.”

Filmmaker Shaul Schwarz says he made Trophy because he wanted to understand the hunters and why they do what they do.

“The fact that you had to pay so much money is kind of more angering to some degree because you are saying, ‘Oh, look at these rich white people and they are going to go and take from Africa in an almost colonial way.’ You could just get angry about that and I see why, but the funny flipside is that this money hopefully will trickle down to what actually enables conservation. So,” he concludes, “to some degree, if there wasn’t a lot of money in the industry then it wouldn’t make sense.”

Trophy shows how this billion-dollar big-game industry is financing the breeding of endangered species by exploiting a small percentage of these animals for the thrill of the kill, while conserving the rest and restoring their numbers in ranches.

“That’s kind of the idea of utilizing animals in this ‘if it pays, it stays’ way.  Now, is that the answer?” Schwarz asks. “I don’t know. I’m here to raise questions, but I think what we should do in this subject is be less quick to judge and scream.” He knows that he is tackling a polarizing subject, and asks audiences to keep an open mind.

PETA doesn’t agree

But the animal rights organization PETA does not see both sides. The group’s Associate Director of Campaigns, Ashley Byrne, condemns the big-game industry.

“Selling an endangered animal’s life to raise money for conservation is like selling a child on the black market to raise money for an anti-trafficking organization. The logic is absurd! The best way to promote conservation is to protect animals’ natural habitat and to invest in eco-tourism, in non-invasive forms of tourism that do make these animals commodities but alive, not dead!” she insists.

Anti-poaching activist Chris Moore agrees that in an ideal world, the wealthy would pay just as much to go and see the animals, but he adds we don’t live in an ideal world, and the film shows that these hunters who want a trophy want their money’s worth.

Moore suggests that if trophy hunting were banned, the animals would no longer be seen as commodities to preserve, and poaching would increase.

“When you are struggling to feed your child, you look for alternative means. I think if society maintained certain levels of prosperity, I don’t think we would really see poaching.”

Tough to film

The film offers a vivid cinematic experience of wildlife in Africa, but filming was tough, says Clusiau.

“When you look at these majestic creatures from afar they are majestic. They are beautiful. You want to go up and touch them and pet them and what you don’t realize is how dangerous they actually are. So, when you are in that environment, you do feel very vulnerable. So, we were lucky to have guides and trackers to kind of act as a shield to these environments.”
…

Imagine having a butler to keep you home in perfect order. Well, you don’t have to be a blueblood anymore to get that kind of service. As VOA’s Olga Loginova shows us, a British butler with royal references is available for hire.
…

Fans of the American hip hop group the Insane Clown Posse will march on Washington Saturday in protest of their designation as a street gang by the federal government.

On Saturday, the Insane Clown Posse (ICP), along with thousands of their diehard fans — who refer to themselves as “Juggalos” — will gather near the Lincoln Memorial to make a “collective statement from the Juggalo family to the world about what we are and what we are not.”

“At this point, it’s time for everyone to put up or shut up. You say you’re a recording artist who supports the Juggalo Family’s fight against discrimination? Then be there. Live. In person,” the rap duo said in a message to fans promoting the event.

The march is just the latest step taken by ICP and its fans to fight their designation by U.S. authorities as a “loosely organized hybrid gang.” The issue stems from a 2011 report produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in which Juggalos are said to “exhibit ganglike behavior and engage in criminal activity and violence.”

​Horror rap

The ICP is known for its unique brand of horror rap that often includes lyrics referencing drug use and violence. It has attracted a fan base made up largely of poor, white people who’ve built an identity around the music produced by the rap duo and their trademark clown makeup.

“We represent people who weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth but instead with a rusty fork,” one member of the group, Violent J, said during an interview in 1995.

Some fans of the rap group say the gang designation has had a severe negative impact on their lives, with some reporting they’ve been fired from jobs, lost custody of their children or been denied housing because of their support of ICP.

“Being labeled a gang member can be a permanent stain on an individual’s life, since it will come up in a simple background check every single time,” the group said on their website promoting the event.

The FBI, in a statement provided to NBC News, said its report was based on information provided by states and the report specifically notes “the Juggalos had been recognized as a gang in only four states.”

“The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. We investigate activity which may constitute a federal crime or pose a threat to national security. The FBI cannot initiate an investigation based on an individual’s exercise of their First Amendment rights,” it said.

In 2012, The ICP, with the help of the Michigan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), sued the FBI claiming the designation unfairly profiles their fans and violates their First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit was initially dismissed by a judge in 2014, but the ICP won an appeal in 2015 ordering a Michigan court to take up the case. The case currently remains under appeal.

ICP members Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, whose real names are Joseph Bruce and Joseph Ulster, are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, along with four of their fans.

One of the plaintiffs, Scott Gandy, said he had to cover up an ICP tattoo in order to apply to join the military. Another plaintiff, Brandon Bradley, claims to have been repeatedly stopped, questioned and photographed by police in California for wearing Juggalo clothing and having a Juggalo tattoo.

Label argued

Government lawyers have argued that the FBI report did not label all ICP fans as gang members and did not force the actions taken by any independent police agency, and thus could not be held liable for the actions taken by those police officers.

Unsatisfied with the legal process, the Juggalos are set to march on Washington in the hope of gaining attention for their cause.

“I didn’t have a problem with this country. Then all of a sudden they technically made it illegal to be a Juggalo. It’s like they took that one thing away that made me not have a problem with the government,” Violent J said in a recent interview with Reason.

Jason Webber, a publicist for ICP and an organizer for the event, told NBC he expects about 3,000 people to attend the rally.

The Juggalos won’t be the only group marching Saturday on Washington. Another group, supporters of President Donald Trump, is planning the “Mother of All Rallies” (MOAR) to take place near the Washington Monument, and predicts a crowd of about 5,000 attendees.

The “Mother of All Rallies” moniker appears to be a reference to the Massive Ordinance Air Blast (more commonly known as the Mother of All Bombs), which was dropped earlier this year on an Islamic State cave complex in Afghanistan.

According to its website, the rally is meant to “send a message to the world that the voices of mainstream Americans must be heard.” Organizers say they’ll only allow American flags to be flown and the event is meant to be apolitical.

“No Confederate flags, communist flags, or foreign flags allowed. This is not a Democrat or Republican rally. It’s not a left or right rally,” the group’s website says. “We condemn racists of all colors and supremacy of all colors. Our patriots are of all colors and we are uniting under our constitutional rights.”
…

About 1,000 fans of the American hip-hop group Insane Clown Posse marched Saturday in Washington to protest their designation as a street gang by the federal government.

ICP and its die-hard fans, who refer to themselves as “Juggalos,”  gathered near the Lincoln Memorial, where they spoke about the troubles they’ve dealt with because of the designation and chanted anti-government slogans.

Marchers held signs that read “Music is not a crime” and “I’m a Juggalo, not a gang member.”

The march marked the latest step taken by ICP and its fans to fight their designation by U.S. authorities as a “loosely organized hybrid gang.”

The issue stems from a 2011 FBI report in which Juggalos are said to “exhibit ganglike behavior and engage in criminal activity and violence.”

​Horror rap

The ICP is known for its unique brand of horror rap that often includes lyrics referencing drug use and violence. It has attracted a fan base made up largely of poor white people who have built an identity around the music produced by the rap duo and their trademark clown makeup.

“We represent people who weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth but instead with a rusty fork,” one member of the group, Violent J, said during an interview in 1995.

Some fans of the rap group say the gang designation has had a severely negative impact on their lives, with some reporting they’ve been fired from jobs, lost custody of their children or been denied housing because of their support of ICP.

“Being labeled a gang member can be a permanent stain on an individual’s life, since it will come up in a simple background check every single time,” the group said on its website promoting the event.

The FBI, in a statement provided to NBC News, said its report was based on information provided by states. The report specifically notes “the Juggalos had been recognized as a gang in only four states.”

“The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. We investigate activity which may constitute a federal crime or pose a threat to national security. The FBI cannot initiate an investigation based on an individual’s exercise of their First Amendment rights,” it said.

In 2012, ICP, with the help of the Michigan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the FBI, claiming the designation unfairly profiles the group’s fans and violates their First Amendment rights.

A judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2014, but ICP won an appeal in 2015 ordering a Michigan court to take up the case. The case currently remains under appeal.

ICP members Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, whose real names are Joseph Bruce and Joseph Ulster, are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, along with four of their fans.

One of the plaintiffs, Scott Gandy, said he had to cover up an ICP tattoo in order to apply to join the military. Another plaintiff, Brandon Bradley, claims to have been repeatedly stopped, questioned and photographed by police in California for wearing Juggalo clothing and having a Juggalo tattoo.

Label argued

Government lawyers have argued that the FBI report did not label all ICP fans as gang members and did not force the actions taken by any independent police agency, and thus could not be held liable for the actions taken by those police officers.

Unsatisfied with the legal process, the Juggalos marched in Washington in the hope of gaining attention for their cause.

“I didn’t have a problem with this country. Then all of a sudden they technically made it illegal to be a Juggalo. It’s like they took that one thing away that made me not have a problem with the government,” Violent J said in a recent interview with Reason.
…

Harry Dean Stanton, the shambling, craggy-face character actor with the deadpan voice who became a cult favorite through his memorable turns in Paris, Texas and Repo Man, as well as many other films and TV shows, died Friday at age 91.

Stanton died of natural causes at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his agent, John S. Kelly, told The Associated Press. Kelly gave no further details on the cause. 

Never mistaken for a leading man, Stanton was an unforgettable presence to moviegoers, fellow actors and directors, who recognized that his quirky characterizations could lift even the most ordinary script. Roger Ebert once observed that “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.”

He was widely loved around Hollywood, a drinker and smoker and straight talker with a million stories who palled around with Jack Nicholson and Kris Kristofferson among others and was a hero to such younger stars and brothers-in-partying as Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez. “I don’t act like their father, I act like their friend,” he once told New York magazine.

Nicholson so liked Stanton’s name that he would find a way to work his initials, HDS, into a camera shot.

Almost always cast as a crook, a codger, an eccentric or a loser, he appeared in more than 200 movies and TV shows in a career dating to the mid-1950s. A cult-favorite since the ’70s with roles in Cockfighter, Two-Lane Blacktop and Cisco Pike, his more famous credits ranged from the Oscar-winning epic The Godfather Part II to the sci-fi classic Alien to the teen flick Pretty in Pink, in which he played Molly Ringwald’s father. He also guest starred on such TV shows as Laverne & Shirley, Adam-12 and Gunsmoke. He had a cameo on Two and a Half Men, which featured Pretty in Pink star Jon Cryer, and appeared in such movies as The Avengers and The Last Stand.

Fitting for a character actor, he only became famous in late middle age. In Wim Wenders’ 1984 rural drama Paris, Texas, he earned acclaim for his subtle and affecting portrayal of a man so deeply haunted by something in his past that he abandons his young son and society to wander silently in the desert.

Wiry and sad, Stanton’s near-wordless performance is laced with moments of humor and poignancy. His heartbreakingly stoic delivery of a monologue of repentance to his wife, played by Nastassja Kinski, through a one-way mirror has become the defining moment in his career.

“Paris, Texas gave me a chance to play compassion,” Stanton told an interviewer, “and I’m spelling that with a capital C.”

The film won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival and provided the actor with his first star billing, at age 58.

Repo Man, released that same year, became another signature film: Stanton starred as the world-weary boss of an auto repossession firm who instructs Estevez in the tricks of the hazardous trade.

His legend would only grow. By his mid-80s, the Lexington Film League in his native Kentucky had founded the Harry Dean Stanton Fest and filmmaker Sophie Huber had made the documentary Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, which included commentary from Wenders, Sam Shepard and Kristofferson.

More recently he reunited with director David Lynch on Showtime’s Twin Peaks: The Return where he reprised his role as the cranky trailer park owner Carl from Fire Walk With Me. He also stars with Lynch in the upcoming film Lucky, the directorial debut of actor John Carroll Lynch, which has been described as a love letter to Stanton’s life and career.

Last year, Lynch presented Stanton with the Harry Dean Stanton Award — the inaugural award from the Los Angeles video store Vidiots presented first to its namesake.

“As a person, Harry Dean is just so beautiful. He’s got this easygoing nature. It’s so great just to sit beside Harry Dean and observe,” Lynch said at the show.  “He’s got a great inner peace. As a musician, he can sing so beautifully tears just flow out of your eyes. And as an actor, I think all actors will agree, no one gives a more honest, natural, truer performance than Harry Dean Stanton.”

Lynch also directed Stanton in Wild at Heart and The Straight Story.

Stanton, who early in his career used the name Dean Stanton to avoid confusion with another actor, grew up in West Irvine, Kentucky and said he began singing when he was a year old.

Later, he used music as an escape from his parents’ quarreling and the sometimes brutal treatment he was subjected to by his father. As an adult, he fronted his own band for years, playing western, Mexican, rock and pop standards in small venues around Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. He also sang and played guitar and harmonica in impromptu sessions with friends, performed a song in Paris, Texas and once recorded a duet with Bob Dylan.

Stanton, who never lost his Kentucky accent, said his interest in movies was piqued as a child when he would walk out of every theater “thinking I was Humphrey Bogart.”

After Navy service in the Pacific during World War II, he spent three years at the University of Kentucky and appeared in several plays. Determined to make it in Hollywood, he picked tobacco to earn his fare west.

Three years at the Pasadena Playhouse prepared him for television and movies.

For decades Stanton lived in a small, disheveled house overlooking the San Fernando Valley, and was a fixture at the West Hollywood landmark Dan Tana’s. He was attacked in his home in 1996 by two robbers who forced their way in, tied him up at gunpoint, beat him, ransacked the house and fled in his Lexus. He was not seriously hurt, and the two, who were captured, were sentenced to prison.

Stanton never married, although he had a long relationship with actress Rebecca De Mornay, 35 years his junior. “She left me for Tom Cruise,” Stanton said often.

“I might have had two or three [kids] out of marriage,” he once recalled. “But that’s another story.”
…