The eccentric geniality of Rip Torn

Rip Torn made his name as a dramatic actor. I didn’t know many, or possibly any, of those roles.

No, I knew Rip Torn as a genial and eccentric afterlife attorney in Albert Brooks’ 1991 comedy Defending Your Life, one of my top 30 films of all time.

Whether that was his typical role or not, it became my model for the charismatic actor who left us at age 88 on Tuesday.

There’s something so adorably odd in the way Torn first greets Brooks’ Daniel Miller, who’s fresh off the boat, as it were, in the afterlife after dying in a car accident. Because of the way Bob Diamond (Torn) has progressed past his earthly incarnation to use 52% of his brain (most humans use only three), he has no way to interact with Daniel that isn’t grinningly condescending. But he doesn’t mean it to be; he just thinks that life (or, afterlife) is a hoot.

Daniel has a series of incredulous questions, but Bob answers them through frustrating non-answers, sometimes looking at him too long, sometimes pausing. It would be unnerving if you were Daniel. If you’re the audience, it’s hilarious, and it’s inimitable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another actor pull off quite the sort of affect that Torn gives us in this terrific first interview, and then throughout the rest of the movie. He’s just a blissful glad-hander who can’t really relate to a regular human, but he doesn’t mean any offense by it.

Torn brought a similar set of traits to his other most iconic role, at least as far as I am concerned, in Men in Black. As Zed, he treats Will Smith’s J with the same kind of back-clapping, condescending, paternalistic enthusiasm, which Smith finds so exasperating. There’s a whole running bit where he’s always calling J “champ” or “sport” or something of that nature. He might have used the same terms of endearment toward Daniel Miller.

Scanning his filmography, I noticed I happen to have been in Torn’s presence on screen a fair bit recently. Two of my last ten rewatches were Hercules and Marie Antoinette, in which he plays supporting roles. They’re actually similar roles as he plays King Louis XV and Zeus. Both paternalistic, both given to a fair bit of grinning and infectious enthusiasm.

In 2010 Torn took a public turn for the crazier when he was arrested after breaking into a bank after hours while carrying a gun and while extremely intoxicated. This saddened me, because it’s not what Bob Diamond or Zed would have done. I could see both guys enjoying a good drink, but they’d make merry with it. They’d wrap their arm around your shoulder and drop some kind of odd duck comment that made you laugh out loud.

Because he had such a paternalistic nature to him, and because he was already 60 years old when I first met him in Defending Your Life, I never really knew Torn as a young man. Yet I was still surprised to learn he was 88 when he died. Of course that age would make sense for him, but I think it speaks more to the fact that I hadn’t mentally prepared myself to be done with Rip Torn. Even though it had been a decade since I’d made note of any new film appearances from him, I think there was always a part of me that expected one more Bob Diamond or one more Zed to come forth from him before he left us.

R.I.P. Rip.