Thursday, December 14, 2006

Joe is Dead


This Joe is also known as Peter Boyle.

Anna and I say “Joe” when we speak of Peter Boyle. He was Joe in the movie “Joe”, that is where we first noticed him.

The movie Joe is about a middle class man who lived near Manhattan, maybe on Long Island or Queens. I forgot. It was about the ‘60s. Joe’s teenage daughter runs away and Joe goes looking for her among the hippies of the Big Apple. He gets in the middle of anti-war marches, psychedelic art, he hung around with young people hearing them tell him that someplace along the way, the U.S. of A. took a wrong turn. Its been a long time ago, I forgot the details of the movie.

From time to time we would see Peter Boyle in a movie, some well known like “Young Frankenstein”, some not so well know, and the first one to recognize him would punch the other one and say, “That’s Joe!”

We thought Peter Boyle was a great actor. It seemed he would take any part, big or small, big movie, or even independent film makers’ kind of movie and do his role so good.

He wasn’t above working in TV sitcoms, which I think some of his fellow actors and actresses have.

I think he and John Lithgow rate at the top of the pile of dedicated actors and actresses – they both played good guys, funny guys, bad guys, dumb guys, and have avoided been typed-cast… but we almost did that for Peter when we labeled him as “Joe.”

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

And he was friends with Martha Stewart. I saw him on a talk show when she was being sent to jail, telling everyone to just leave her alone, that she was a hard working girl. Hope she goes to his funeral. I think they lived on Martha's Vineyard near one another. Goodbye, Joe.

Eddie said...

Hey Stranger!
er- Honey!

Suzanne said...

I was very sad to hear that he died.

Eddie said...

Yes, it was.

Button Gwinnett said...

Yes, the headline scared me for a moment.

Eddie said...

Button,
I was afraid that some would automatically think of Joe across the street, but I knew they would want to read the details and see it wasn't him after all.
But remember, only the good die young.