Harry Dean Stanton

Once I had a job with a boss who quoted Harry Dean Stanton. I knew tall tales of her storied past and earned tales taller in my time under the same employ. From the night I cautiously interviewed for the job over drinks in the desert until now, with plenty of time removed, I keep in mind an email or a tweet or a status or whatever other possible form of communication with the Harry Dean Stanton quote “I eat so i can smoke”.

A Harry quote that is intimidating to a young person but within a startlingly short amount of time becomes more credo than a cautionary tale.

I dove into an industry where abuse of all kinds rides your back like sweat on a long day. The coke dealer was a block away and the bottom of the hill was flanked on all sides by idealic bar bars. Places who’s darkest corners looked like they hadn’t been seen since opened. Shotgun alleys lined with as many goatees as rock stars and month stretches without personal absence. Spaces where anything but the world wasn’t let in. Only now with thousands of miles between a good job and a few failed stints of sobriety do I realize the extent of my appreciation for the history of both my previous boss and Harry Dean Stanton.

There is a stigma to addiction that removes it’s romance. There is a cottage industry built on defeating depression with exercise and diet while the most vulnerable of us beg in the streets for a prescription. Mediocrity is cherished while abandoning the status quo is pounced upon like a vulnerable victim to be gutted and guilted for it’s weakness once mounted on a wall. Make no mistake, the only romance you’ve ever known only existed in the people who made you uncomfortable.

Harry Dean Stanton confronted these vices in a way most physicians would flinch at. Head on he embraced the poisons he loved while neglecting the affection we’re bred to believe creates wholeness. What made his struggle against and alongside substances impressive (and appealing) was that he did it without shame and more importantly without expensing or abusing vulnerable parties nearby. There is an expected behavior that comes with addiction which includes multiple symptoms of emotional shortcomings. Mental and cerebral exploitation of emotional labor is par for the course in victims of depression or substance dependency but Harry Dean Stanton sent a crack soaring through the mold, personifying dependence without abuse.

Harry Dean Stanton was an anomaly of artistic expression in that he was more concerned with preserving his experiences for personal wealth than he was for benefiting anyone trying to define him. The documentary examining his life, “Partly Fiction”, is full of moments where Harry forfeits exposition in exchange for agency. Interviews with Wim Wenders, director of Paris, Texas reveals an actor who became an icon by showing up and being himself. It’s ok for the world to know him how we wants it to, it’s up to him to decide how much of it was real. He doesn’t want to talk about his mother, he doesn’t want to talk about his father. Harry Dean Stanton acted for a living. Harry drank and he smoked and he died alone. He died the way he wanted to.

The specifics aren’t as important when quantifying his professional achievements as is the fact that he made a living by collapsing a medium around his personality. Stanton existed so independently from his art that it rendered the subject matter useless to those of us who volunteered our time to his presence. His reality was inseparable from the work and it kept him alive for 91 years. In “Partly Fiction” he responded to the question “what advice would you give a young actor” with a sharp response. “Play yourself”.

When I think about myself and fixate on professional and personal shortcomings I am comforted by Stanton’s carefree existence. He took solace in loneliness and drink without becoming like so many before and after him insufferable or painful. He kept to himself, he worked hard and he created the world he needed around him.

Once in a bar, he sat nestled in the comfort of plastic cushions and proclaimed, “I eat so I can smoke”.