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.