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The energy he brought to The Larry Sanders Show was astonishing. I'm so sad.

The energy he brought to everything will be missed. One of the prime unheralded actors to come out of the method era, though not a name often associated with it. Like Jack Palance, Torn was at his best when called upon to deliver unnerving intensity, and seeing his definitive Big Daddy in the 80s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof makes me sad that I wasn't around in his Broadway heyday to see him on stage

I got caught up watching Summer Rental with John Candy the other day, and even in something as silly as that, Rip Torn doesn’t mail it in. Of course Larry Sanders is what I think of first, but also love his small turn in Wonder Boys. RIP

I suppose my first encounter with him was in Dodgeball when I was a teenager. His grumpy as hell character was quoted endlessly by our social group in Middle School. A real loss.

He's the one reason to watch the Norman Mailer Eclipse set, though you still shouldn't watch it

He hammed up the role of Maax in The Beastmaster, too. (Full disclosure: I love this movie.)

We surely should not forget his role in The Man Who Fell To Earth! His University professor bedding interchangeable students, to taking up a job with Thomas Newton and eventually betraying him in the most fundamental way (and being left with his partner as consolation in alcoholism!) is probably the character whose eyes we most see Thomas Newton's 'fall' through. Maybe the only human being who understands the alien visitor, even if that means little more than a kind of pitying sympathy for his state at the end of things.

His steadily ever more frustrated father in Freddy Got Fingered (the most in depth exploration of Father-Son relationships in cinema?) is surprisingly great too!

One of the DVD extras for Sweet Bird of Youth is a not-to-missed screen test of Rip Torn and Geraldine Page. They give a high-voltage performance of a scene featuring Tennessee Williams’ original scorching dialogue, unlike the Code-imposed obfuscating blather which marred most films of Williams plays (cf Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). A precious relic of what should have been.

And Rip Torn’s sublime Larry Sanders Show performances are a high point of American satire.

Vale.

Also here

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K0JP68_01pM

His chemistry with Nick Nolte in Walter Hill's Extreme Prejudice is basically the blue-print for what Timothy Olyphant and Nick Searcy had together on Justified and I can't be swayed on this. Also excelled in a somewhat similar role in Flashpoint.

If you haven't seen his performance in Ira Sach's best film Forty Shades of Blue, you're in for a treat. He was partnered with a relatively inexperienced Dina Korzun and they're sensational together / apart. He had a rather errant career, but I don't think I've ever seen him half-ass a role.

Funny enough I was just (as in, before he died) reading about Torn having (successfully!) sued Dennis Hopper over the latter's talk-show claim that Torn was replaced on Easy Rider with Jack Nicholson after pulling a knife on Hopper during a dinner party. Who knows if Hopper himself believed it, but he knew that given Torn's reputation the audience likely would.

Here's the talk-show appearance in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fan8awr2ZOM

Let’s Get a Rip Torn Type
Village Voice profile from 1969

Priddy wrote: Fri Jul 12, 2019 1:11 pm Brilliant actor, no question about it. And Rip Torn is one of the greatest names I've heard in my life.

"If you want to laugh at an actor named Rip Torn, that’s your problem. Born Elmore Torn 37 years ago in Temple, Texas, he was nicknamed Rip around the house as a kid. Grown up, he sees no reason to change it just because it reminds some people of Tab Hunter or Rock Hudson. He knows how good he is."

colinr0380 wrote: Wed Jul 10, 2019 5:16 am We surely should not forget his role in The Man Who Fell To Earth! His University professor bedding interchangeable students, to taking up a job with Thomas Newton and eventually betraying him in the most fundamental way (and being left with his partner as consolation in alcoholism!) is probably the character whose eyes we most see Thomas Newton's 'fall' through. Maybe the only human being who understands the alien visitor, even if that means little more than a kind of pitying sympathy for his state at the end of things.

His steadily ever more frustrated father in Freddy Got Fingered (the most in depth exploration of Father-Son relationships in cinema?) is surprisingly great too!

I've yet to see The Man Who Fell To Earth. That clip and your description are enticing. Freddy Got Fingered looks interesting, but probably ratcheted a few notches too far in its black humour, gross-out humour, and excruciatingly uncomfortable humour for it to be watchable for me.

I love, love, love Rip Torn in Payday (link is to Not Pauline Kael's review on Letterboxd)

Just a warning that you will get to see a lot of Rip Torn (and every other main actor) in The Man Who Fell To Earth!

I know what you mean, as I remembered seeing Freddy Got Fingered years before American Pie, the Farrelley Brother comedies and any of the Adam Sandler oeuvre that it feels like it is reacting to (though I had seen some of the frantic Jim Carrey comedies, which I remember being lukewarm to. And I kind of hated the crude treatment of Sean Young in that first Ace Ventura film!), and really did not like it, though even on the first viewing when I was frustrated by the lack of any particular plot structure I still remember the exact moment that the film felt as if its mania ramped up to become kind of brilliant, which was when we see Gordy's animation (NSFW), and it is just as disturbing and father fixated as in his actual life! (It had not struck me until recently that Gordy has even copied his dad's goatee!) Perhaps his problem is that his animations, rather than having no structure instead are too uncomfortably autobiographical, even when dealing with zebra-human hybrid immigrants!

Although now Freddy Got Fingered feels like the necessary Chris Morris-style antidote to all of those horrible trends, pushing everything obnoxious about those films to the ultimate extreme. It's still a kind of necessary film especially when there is a seeemingly never ending run of Sandler films still going on without anyone stepping in to stop it (and it also feels like it punctures Sascha Baron Cohen's gross out comedies years before he started making them too!)

And the father-son conflict is interesting, since Rip Torn's character is obviously frustrated to the point of distraction by his weird, insane son. But the other son, who has turned out 'normal', has an existence that goes almost entirely ignored by the parents (including Julie Hagerty from Airplane! as the mom) as they lavish attention on their problem child. And that moment of the normal brother getting put into a home for sexually abused children is very reminiscent of the aversion therapy scenes in Hairspray, as clueless authorities step in with blunt social conditioning tools! (I think I am getting close to saying that Freddy Got Fingered is the nearest thing to a John Waters film that was not made by him, though I need to watch it again to see if that statement might hold up!)

Rip Torn's penis gives a subtle performance, very understated

Understated but not flaccid.