Italian of the Year

 

American actor James Caan passed away last month at the age of 82.  He was in The Godfather (1972) and many other movies.

First, Ray Liotta passed, at the end of May.  I read about his life, and read and re-printed a lot of Reader Comments under stories about him, because I thought they were interesting, & reflected a variety of perspectives on different life things that people could enjoy contemplating.

But then when James Caan died, I didn't do the same thing, for a couple of reasons.  One was I didn't want my blog to become the Death Blog.  Deaths of actors who portrayed mobsters.

        Mobster Death Blog.

        Then -- two days after Caan, Tony Sirico dies, reinforcing the Mobster Death Blog quandary.  (Sirico played Paulie on The Sopranos, and in his earlier life before he became an actor, he was a mobster.  So that's like -- a double.)

There was another reason I didn't discuss and feature James Caan when the news came out.  He was in a 1993 movie called Flesh and Bone, and his character was so repellent that I sort of couldn't stand James Caan after that!  (When I read that he had died my first involuntary mental reaction was, I didn't care that much.)

        Not very nice!

        And wrong.

In Flesh and Bone, he was the father of the Dennis Quaid character and he shows up unexpectedly, mysteriously, under cover of night and re-enters his son's life, undermining him, low-key bullying and blaming him for stuff that he, the dad, did.

          He's sneaky about it, in conversations -- he acts nice, then wham! -- surprises Dennis Quaid (or ambushes him) with a manipulative remark.  He just uses his son as a blame object, and as a reluctant helper to do whatever he needs.  The son is trying to lead a clean life within the law, and the dad is trying to use him, and drag him down.

        ("We're the same blood -- you're no better than me, blah blah blah"...)

I felt that, and after seeing the movie, I really had a distaste for James Caan's countenance.  

        Could I "lighten up" and -- "let it go" -- since it was 29 years ago when I saw the movie?

        No -- no, I can't -- LOL.

Must have been some cracker-jack acting, right?

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For years after The Godfather, people thought James Caan was Italian.  Some even thought he was an actual mobster.

        He was voted "Italian of the Year" in New York twice -- and he's not Italian, he's Jewish (not that those are mutually exclusive, but that's the way Mr. Caan stated it).

        Funny.

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