{"id":4664,"date":"2014-03-26T00:00:34","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T04:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=4664"},"modified":"2014-04-14T15:55:47","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T19:55:47","slug":"rip-james-rebhorn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/rip-james-rebhorn\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. James Rebhorn: Greg & Cody’s Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nGreg DeLiso:\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/b>Why are all of these cool people dying?\u00a0 Harold Ramis right after Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bob Casale from Devo, and now, a guy I\u2019m ashamed to say I did not know the name of.\u00a0 But, his face, his voice, and his performances were a huge part of my childhood.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Independence Day<\/a> was a huge theater going experience for me as a kid.\u00a0 My mom took me one Summer afternoon when I was ten years old, and it was like my The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/a> or The Blob<\/a>\u2014a fun excursion into the bigness of movies, the kind of stuff Spielberg and Scorsese talk about from their youth.
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\nThe aliens were the \u2018bad guys\u2019\u2014that\u2019s the spectacle that wowed my ten year old brain.\u00a0 But of course, what kept me interested was the antagonist, played by James Rebhorn.\u00a0 It\u2019s a small role.\u00a0 He\u2019s the asshole who works for the president, there to deliver exposition, mostly.\u00a0 He\u2019s the type of character that big Hollywood gets parodied or even criticized for\u2014a guy who says just the right thing at just the right time to rile the audience, like the lawyer in Jurassic Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n

James Rebhorn played that guy a lot throughout his career.\u00a0 And we always believed him.\u00a0 And\u2014and this is just a hunch\u2014but I bet he wasn\u2019t at all like that in real life.<\/p>\n

Rebhorn\u2019s most famous characters are integral to the plot.\u00a0 They are the pressure against our hero to make the right decision. Whether it be as the prosecutor in the totally underrated and genius Seinfeld<\/a> finale, or the steely administrator in Scent of a Woman<\/a>, Rebhorn always made you feel that pressure with his gaunt jawline and his squint.<\/p>\n

He was typecast as a plot device, and he flourished.\u00a0 He\u2019s been in some amazing stuff\u2014aside the aforementioned Scent of a Woman, Seinfeld, and Independence Day, he was also in\u00a0Carlito\u2019s Way<\/a>, Sleepwalk With Me<\/a>, Meet the Parents<\/a>, 30 Rock<\/a>, The Game<\/a>, My Fellow Americans<\/a>, Blank Check<\/a>, Shadows and Fog<\/a>, Cat\u2019s Eye<\/a>, and Silkwood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an interesting fact from IMDb:\u00a0 In 1992, he appeared in the climactic scenes of both My Cousin Vinny<\/a> (1992) and Scent of a Woman<\/a> (1992), meaning that he worked opposite both Marisa Tomei<\/a> and Al Pacino<\/a> in their Oscar-winning roles that year.<\/p>\n

Rebhorn played against<\/i>\u2014a concept completely essential to acting, and something totally underrated in art.\u00a0 Without Rebhorn and actors like him, the greatest lines in movie history would not be said.\u00a0 He creates the build up\u2014with anger and subtlety, nuance and craft, he makes us contemplate our morality, time after time.<\/p>\n

I took you for granted James Rebhorn, and I\u2019m sorry.\u00a0 I should\u2019ve known your name just as much as I know the names of other greats like David Paymer, Austin Pendleton, and Bradley Whitford.\u00a0 Rest in peace.<\/p>\n

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\nCody Clarke: <\/b>My favorite Rebhorn performance is Dr. Larry Banks in Meet the Parents<\/a>. What an underrated movie. People lump it in with its sequels Meet the Fockers<\/a> and Little Fockers<\/a> as a trilogy of lame Hollywood shit, which is hypocritical, because nobody does that with The Matrix<\/a>. They separate the first from the awful followups, and praise it separately. The same should be done with Meet the Parents\u2014it\u2019s got a great tone, setting, and vibe, and the script and performances are really funny. Plus, it\u2019s chockfull of funny things that aren\u2019t even jokes per se, like that part where Tom McCarthy is all \u201cI thought Deb told you. Dr. Andy threw out his back. He can’t make the wedding.\u201d There\u2019s not a single joke in that line, but his delivery\u2014and the way he says the word \u2018back\u2019, in particular\u2014is just fucking hilarious. It brings a smile to my face just thinking about it. So does thinking about Dr. Larry.<\/p>\n

Rebhorn really got to flex his comedic muscle with this one, getting the opportunity to play both drunk and stone sober, and nailing the humor of both. Every goddamn thing he says in this movie is hilarious. Part of it is that his lines are funny, but mostly it\u2019s just the fact that he\u2019s a dramatic actor, and as such, delivers them with no wink whatsoever. To be able to say a line like \u201cThe animal doesn\u2019t even have thumbs, Focker\u201d, with perfect timing and no acknowledgment of the humor, is quite a talent.<\/p>\n

I will miss this fiercely talented actor, who I am ashamed to say, like Greg, I did not know the name of. But I knew his face, his performances, his work<\/em>\u2014and I get the sense that that\u2019s how he wanted it. To me,\u00a0Rebhorn was the ultimate movie actor, in that he was someone you only<\/em> knew from the movies, and only seemed to exist within the universe of film. And because of that, he is, for me, immortal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\nGreg DeLiso:\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/b>Why are all of these cool people dying?\u00a0 Harold Ramis right after Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bob Casale from Devo, and now, a guy I\u2019m ashamed to say I did not know the name of.\u00a0 But, his face, his voice, and his performances were a huge part of my childhood.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Independence Day<\/a> was a huge theater going experience for me as a kid.\u00a0 My mom took me one Summer afternoon when I was ten years old, and it was like my The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/a> or The Blob<\/a>\u2014a fun excursion into the bigness of movies, the kind of stuff Spielberg and Scorsese talk about from their youth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,18,17],"tags":[3828,948,3838,3825,3836,998,3833,32,3837,3826,37,3577,1174,3649,3648,3651,3650,66,3840,3835,564,3839,1037,3309,3830,473,3653,3652,3831,949,864,3832,3834,176,104,185,67,3827,3545,3829,387,3841],"class_list":["post-4664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysessays","category-gregsessays","tag-30-rock","tag-al-pacino","tag-austin-pendleton","tag-bob-casale","tag-bradley-whitford","tag-carlitos-way","tag-cats-eye","tag-cody-clarke","tag-david-paymer","tag-devo","tag-greg-deliso","tag-harold-ramis","tag-independence-day","tag-james-rebhorn-dead","tag-james-rebhorn-death","tag-james-rebhorn-eulogy","tag-james-rebhorn-tribute","tag-jurassic-park","tag-little-fockers","tag-marisa-tomei","tag-martin-scorsese","tag-meet-the-fockers","tag-meet-the-parents","tag-my-cousin-vinny","tag-my-fellow-american","tag-philip-seymour-hoffman","tag-r-i-p-james-rebhorn","tag-rip-james-rebhorn","tag-s-blank-check","tag-scent-of-a-woman","tag-seinfeld","tag-shadows-and-fog","tag-silkwood","tag-sleepwalk-with-me","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-steven-spielberg","tag-the-blob","tag-the-day-the-earth-stood-still","tag-the-game","tag-the-matrix","tag-tom-mccarthy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4664"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4670,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4664\/revisions\/4670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}