My first knowledge of Sam
Shepard came while watching Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s “The
Right Stuff” (1983), in which he portrayed Chuck Yeager, the first man to break
the sound barrier and then some. Yeager was a hero of my father’s, who was a
Marine Corps. fighter pilot during the Vietnam War. Despite the fact that the
film was about much more than Yeager’s accomplishments and another American
hero and fellow Marine, John Glenn, was also depicted, the movie was all Yeager
for my father and I. As such, he became a hero of mine and in many ways so did
the actor who portrayed him, who did so in such a cool, matter-of-fact manner
that he may well have also informed the actor I would eventually come to be.
I really knew little else of
Shepard upon entering my acting training at Hofstra University in Hempstead,
NY. Within days of meeting people who would become my peers for the next four
years of my life, the name Sam Shepard kept coming up around me. Apparently, I
looked like and even exhibited mannerisms of a playwright and actor named Sam
Shepard. I’m not even sure if I realized it was the same actor who portrayed
Yeager at that point, although since my obsession with films was already
underway, I probably did. But I had to pretend that I already knew that he was
also a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. As such, he probably also influenced
me to become a writer as well.
Words like “stoic” were
being used about him in reference to me. An accomplished upperclassman looked
at me and said, “You’re so fucking aloof.” But there was no derision in his
words. It was a compliment of uniqueness, which most certainly could’ve been
said about Shepard in his professional life. His early career was ensconced in
the New York music and theater scene, quietly hanging in the background and
co-writing songs with the likes of Bob Dylan and John Cale, even playing drums
for the group Holy Modal Rounders, who once opened for the progressive rock
group Pink Floyd.
I heard the comparisons, but
I couldn’t really see Shepard in myself, looks or otherwise, until mere weeks
into my student tenure when I found myself in one of the top floors of the Hofstra
library high-rise immersed in Shepard’s pen. I read them all in a way I had
never consumed plays before. “Buried Child”, “A Lie of the Mind,” and “True
West” became not just potential productions, but something that connected with
me on a more visceral level. The way Shepard lived and spoke in his
matter-of-fact, almost classical western way, but explored the extremes of drug
culture and somewhat psychedelic themes in his plays and his life was very much
where I found myself at that time. That Christmas I asked for every Shepard
collection and tome I knew of. His memoir “Motel Chronicles” could’ve been an alternate
life of mine, at least in an oddly messed up romantic sense.
I still didn’t see the look
that everyone else was seeing though, until I found a picture of him at 16
wearing a trench coat that looked eerily similar to a Canadian Air Force trench
I wore during my last couple of years of high school. It was like seeing
yourself in a picture that was taken years before your birth. We were
definitely doppelgängers as young adults. I’m not sure I’ve aged as gracefully
as he did. I certainly don’t have his hair.
I was lucky enough to weasel
my way into the lead of a student production of “Fool For Love” at too young an
age due to some unfortunate back problems of an upperclassman. Sorry, Jason,
but in so many ways it seemed meant to be. I think I was able to channel
Shepard pretty well if not fully understanding the maturity of his themes. I
was never threatening enough in the role, but damn, I did look like him. I also
played Doc in two different productions of “Crimes of the Heart”, the same part
played by Shepard in the 1986 film.
Later, another actor I knew from
Hofstra was lucky enough to meet Shepard at a NYC coffee shop. Shepard forgave
him the rights to a production of “True West” he had directed when my colleague
confessed that he had yet to pay for them. He informed me of the location of
the coffee shop where Shepard was a regular. I took the cue to meet the man
myself in what might’ve been the ultimate meeting of stoics. I told him it was
an honor to meet him and he said, “Likewise,” which I don’t imagine it really
was for him, and that was about all that was said. I like that it went down
like that, though.
After college, the
comparisons disappeared, but my connection to his work remained. I sought out
the films of his I’d missed, like Terrence Malik’s “Days of Heaven” (1978) and
“Paris, Texas” (1984), for which he wrote the screenplay. I even revisited
film’s I hadn’t really thought of as his work, like “Baby Boom” (1987). Any
time he showed up in a new movie, I was eager to see it—great films like “Black
Hawk Down” (2001) and “Mud” (2012), and even terrible ones, like “Stealth”
(2005). I ate up his own directorial efforts, “Far North” (1988) and “Silent
Tongue” (1993), and more recent screenplays, such as Wim Wenders’ “Don’t Come
Knocking” (2005). I loved seeing him in the first season of Netflix’s
“Bloodline” (2015-2017). Probably more so than his performances, I enjoyed
seeing him be himself in the documentaries “Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction”
and his nastier side in “Shepard & Dark”, both from 2012.
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It seems we’re losing those psychedelic cowboys that refashioned the
American western mythology into something much more complicated than a John
Wayne film. First Dennis Hopper, now Shepard. Clint Eastwood, Kris Kristofferson, Stanton and Dylan are still with
us, but when they go, there will be a huge hole left in the folklore of
American entertainment. I feel like a part of me has died with this celebrity
death, and it isn’t just because I looked like him a long time ago.
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