John Ritter, 1948 - 2003.

Could the deaths of two more different celebrities be announced on the same day than Johnny Cash and John Ritter? Oddly enough, Ritter was the son of a country singer called Tex, but that's about it. Other than maybe - and this is the sort of thing only a random stroke of destiny could get you thinking about - the idea of what it is to be a man and how that idea has evolved over the last few decades.

You think of the way Bogart haunted Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam or Springsteen visited John Cusack in High Fidelity and that would be the only sort of scene imaginable that these two could share. "Buck up, kid." In all three cases, though, it'd be the one with the insecurities who's our protagonist, the one we're meant to identify with. And of the three, Ritter would be the most "normal," the statistical compromise settled on in some Central Casting office in Omaha.

Which is evidently precisely the image he was trying to break free of when, in the last few years, he took roles in indies such as Sling Blade, Tadpole and, yes, Manhood.

There's no getting around the running motif in Ritter's career, whether it's Skin Deep (the one with the then-infamous duelling glow-in-the-dark condoms) or Real Men. But if I were going to throw a tape in in his memory (since it's not out on DVD), it'd be Peter Bogdanovich's underrated Noises Off.... There's the evidence that his true calling wasn't delivering sitcom one-liners but outright farce.

Posted by dwhudson at September 12, 2003 8:00 AM