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epd Film 4 / 1997 |
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Obituary
Jack Nance Slowly, as he used to, he bent over whispering into the kidnapped boy`s ear: "We may all be killed", and laughed with the other gangsters, hoarsely, like the sound of a saw. This is how I got introduced to Jack Nance in David Lynch`s Blue Velvet. We used to meet during the shooting and my admiration for this extraordinary actor grew. He seemed to have a different - invisible and more intimate - access to his roles than his fellow actors like Dennis Hopper or Kyle MacLachlan for instance. "When I was young, I was an engaged actor, permanently on stage in hundreds of performances and a friend of mine, an author, said to me: Jack, if you go to Hollywood, you`re done as an artist. I said: "No, they`re waiting for me!" So it`s for him, Paul Foster, that I made Eraserhead." This is how many got to know him: As Henry Spencer, whom Lynch in Eraserhead had sent onto a strangely unreal travel with human longings through the torment of the soul. Since that moment on, Jack Nance`s head with electrified hair has appeared on posters announcing horror-movie events or on the covers of books dealing with this genre. As it happens in many cases, it was difficult for Nance as well to get along after the underground-success of Eraserhead. His Hollywood was the Hollywood of minor role: as in Wim Wenders` Hamett, Barbet Schroeder`s Barfly, and in the Lynch-movies Dune, Wild at Heart, Fire Walk With Me and Blue Velvet: He was brilliant! But in most cases only as a little gangster. Good supporting actors are mostly more talented than they are able to show. After coping with his alcoholism, the possibly greatest success in his career came his way: He was cast as the only positive figure in Lynch TV-series Twin Peaks! For more than a year, one could enjoy his calm, hoarse, deep voice, amused by his philosophy on fishing and chess, his disability to cook some decent coffee and him coming to terms with a nasty wife. Nance had come to his feet again, moving between self-criticism and enthusiasm for his work; in 1985, I and Peter Braatz were witnessing his self-criticism during an interview when he stopped in mid-sentence, fell silent and just left. He said: "Cinema is a load of childish nonsense, childish business. I thought to myself and decided: I quit, - finished -done over. I` ll become a salesman -- no I couldn`t be a salesman in all my life. You know, you get into a certain group of people very quickly, an arrogant group of people. Television causes this. Cinema too ... I don`t know..." Maybe it`s because of this ability to put in question that he became a supporting actor, the ability to ignore the glamour of his profession. Jack Nance had his last role in Lost Highway (coming to the German cinemas in April 1997), directed by his friend David Lynch, with whom he had delivered newspapers to finance their first movie, Eraserhead. In Lost Highway he is cast as a mechanic - as a supporting actor. In 1986, I dedicated a short movie to Nance, dealing with him and his role as Henry in Eraserhead entitled 'The Neighbour'. That`s how he had been: a neighbour, a worker. Profession: actor. Ten years later, Marvin John Nance died due to the effects of a struggle in front of a doughnut shop.
Frank Behnke, filmmaker and musician, lives in Berlin. His film that dates back to his time at the dffb
(=comparable to the AFI, for gifted young film makers) will be shown at the Filmmuseum Munich April 14th or 21st.
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