Don’t miss this fine piece by the Chronicle’s Andrew Dansby on the late Trey Wilson, the fine character actor from Houston who died tragically of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 40, just as he was hitting his stride in Hollywood.
The 20th anniversary of the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece comedy Raising Arizona prompted the look-back at Wilson, and Dansby begins his piece with one of Wilson’s most memorable scenes from that movie — playing unpainted furniture dealer Nathan Arizona Huffheins, Sr. facing the questions of investigating authorities after the kidnapping of one of the baby quintuplets he had fathered:

Raising Arizona, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, is the kind of cult comedy that blossoms with repeated viewings. Its most memorable scene doesn’t involve leads Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter. Instead, it follows an unpainted-furniture salesman named Nathan Arizona; one of his quintuplets has been abducted.
And Nathan Arizona. Well, shoot. Y’all know who he is. Or maybe not. Years after his death, Houston-born character actor Trey Wilson, who brought proud, frenzied and compassionate life to that character, is a vaguely familiar face and an unknown name.
But on DVD, that marvelous scene remains vivid. “Was the child wearing anything when he was abducted?” asks a police officer, gathering information for an APB.
“Nobody sleeps naked in this house!” says Nathan. He’s unshaven and clad in a bathrobe, simultaneously tragic and comic. As Wilson played him, he’s both believably frantic and wildly funny.
An FBI agent joins the fray: “What was the child wearing?” “A dinner jacket,” snaps Nathan. “What do you think? He was wearing his damn jammies.” “What did the jammies look like?”
“Aw, I dunno,” says Nathan. His head rolls back in frustration, also reflected in his gruff voice. “They were jammies. They had Yodas and (expletive) on ’em.”

Heck, Dansby’s fine piece on Wilson doesn’t even include my favorite exchanges from the scene:

Policeman: “Do you have any disgruntled employees?”

Nathan Arizona Sr.: “Hell, they’re all disgruntled. I aint running no damn daisy farm. My motto is ‘Do it my way or watch your butt!'”

Policeman: “Well, do you think any of them could’ve done it?”

Nathan Arizona Sr.: “Oh, don’t make me laugh. Without my say-so they wouldn’t piss with their pants on fire.”

Or this one:

FBI Agent: “Sir, we discovered you were born ‘Nathan Huffheins.'”

Nathan Arizona Sr.: “Yeah, I changed my name. What of it?”

FBI Agent: “Can you give us an indication why?”

Nathan Arizona Sr.: “Would you shop at a store called ‘Unpainted Huffheins?'”

That scene was one of three remarkable scenes involving Wilson in that movie, the two others being Wilson’s negotiation scene with the frightful bounty hunter played by the former heavyweight boxer Randall “Tex” Cobb and the penultimate scene of the movie in which Wilson exhibited extraordinary depth in counseling the estranged kidnappers (played by Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter). Dansby sums up Wilson’s talent well:

In Raising Arizona, Wilson was on screen no more than 12 minutes, and he lit up every one of them. “It’s an inspired piece, to play the comedy of it so vividly and at the same time to be this realistically harried father,” said Thomas Schlamme, a writer/producer (West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) who was friends with Wilson. [. . .]
Robert Wuhl, who starred with Wilson in Bull Durham, said that had the actor lived another 10 years, “there’s no question he becomes a John C. Reilly or a Jerry Orbach. He was a funny man and a great actor. He made you feel like he was on the way to his best role.” “He was just turning a corner in his career,” said Blye Wilson, “Each project he got closer and closer to a very big character spot.”
Today Wilson’s great, small roles are easy to find and enjoy. He made an impression as he put it, something people could identify with sometimes in a matter of minutes.

Zero Mostel seemed larger than life in defining the role of Max Bialystock, the lovable Ponzi-schemer in the original film version of The Producers.
And Nathan Lane was a worthy successor to Zero when The Producers was revived as a musical on Broadway.
But Tony Danza as Max?

Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly has some strange ideas about energy prices, but he remains a popular — and quite wealthy — television demagogue. This Cathy Young/Reason article sums up O’Reilly’s demagogy well:

OíReilly has not lost the independent streak that sets him apart from GOP apparatchiks like Sean Hannity. But shrill, intolerant rhetoric has almost entirely eclipsed intelligent discussion on his show, and his pugnacious but likable populism has given way to a paranoid and venomous self-aggrandizement.
OíReilly cultivates an image of a giant almost single-handedly fighting for ìthe folksî against slimy politicians, elitist journalists, nutty professors, namby-pamby judges, and greedy corporations. Sometimes he champions unquestionably good causes, such as the rights of abused children. But even then, he undercuts his own stance with grandstanding and selective presentation of facts.

Meanwhile, this Jacob Heilbrunn/NY Times Book Review article reviews Marvin Kitman’s The Man Who Would Not Shut Up (St. Martin’s Press 2007), which tracks O’Reilly’s career as a local television news reporter into wealthy demagogue. Heilbrunn notes:

“[T]here is something more than a little nonsensical than a little nonsensical in OíReillyís lachrymose nostalgia about his humble origins, as well as in his self-important declarations about his heroic battle to save America from the cultural elites.” [. . .]
. . . OíReillyís struggle isnít about conservative ideas. Itís about parading his seething personal resentments in order to become the very thing he purports to despise: a celebrity.

During this holiday season, I find myself thinking often of my friend and mentor, the late Ross M. Lence, who was the happiest and most fulfilled man who I have known in my life. A couple of weeks ago, as I was preparing my tribute to Ross, I listened to a remarkable sermon at my church in The Woodlands in which a visiting speaker, Craig Hill, a New Testament scholar at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., talked about his lifelong “project” to find fulfillment in his life:

Beyond mere survival, to what goal are we most directed? With what do we most concern ourselves during the course of our waking hours? Certainly, a variety of things require our attention: what we’ll eat, what we’ll wear, how we’ll accomplish the tasks before us. These all concern us, but none of them dominates our lives in quite the way that something else does. That thing is so central that it has been called “The Project.”
I started working on my project when I was quite small, smaller than I can consciously remember. That time that I bought my mother a present for no special occasion with my allowance, the times I mowed the lawn or did other jobs without being askedñlittle did I know that I was hard at work on my project. The criticisms and childhood taunts that stung, the disappointment at not being chosen a part of the group, little did I understand that the hurt I felt was that of a project threatening to fail.
People have variously described the project. It is called the quest for meaning, the desire for competence. the need for self-esteem and purpose. Behind it all is the question “Who am I?”–or, more particularly, “Do I matter?” [. . .]
It’s the pervasiveness of the project that is so interesting. It lurks around every corner; it’s in the very prejudices, intentions, and dreams that guide our lives. What impression will I give by my dress, my speech, my possessions, my job? Will the others in the office think that I’m a good employee; am I a good mother or father; was I “being myself” when I behaved that way last night? How am I doing?

Dr. Hill went on to describe how each one of us shares the struggle of “the project” and how an essential element of Christian theology is based upon Christ’s teaching and example of how to conquer it. His sermon was so insightful that I came away from church that day wishing I had a copy of it.
Well, Asbury Theological Institute scholar Ben Witherington happened to be at my church that day, too, and he had the same thought as I did. Except that he counts Dr. Hill as a friend and was able to get a copy of the sermon, which he has posted here. Regardless of your religious persuasion or whether you believe in a religion at all, take a moment during this holiday season to read it. You will not be disappointed.

I have to admit that it’s not every day that an old buddy of mine is profiled in Time:

There are two paths to music immortality: the Prince route and the Patty and Mildred Hill route. In the Prince model, you write a piece of music that people love so much, they seek it out, download it and turn up the radio whenever it comes on. The Hill sisters model is trickier; they composed the melody for Happy Birthday to You. They achieved their fame by writing a tune that people don’t listen to so much as sing.
Chris Tomlin belongs in the second camp. People sing his songs a lot, often repeatedly. Specifically, they sing them in church. According to Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI), an organization that licenses music to churches, Tomlin, 34, is the most often sung contemporary artist in U.S. congregations every week. Since glee clubs have fallen out of popularity, that might make Tomlin the most often sung artist anywhere.

Chris started his ministry at my family’s church in The Woodlands when he was freshly graduated from Texas A&M University, and we hit it off immediately. He has sinced moved on to base his ministry in a church comprised of mostly students and young couples in Austin, but we stay in touch as his career continues to flourish. The success that Chris is experiencing could not happen to a nicer fellow and is a testament to his grace and humility. But he still does lose control on the golf course at times. I’m helping him work on that. ;^)