dennis farina

I was going to watch Midnight Run again, maybe say a few words about it, but I’ve got a full schedule today (by my standards), so I’ll be more general in my comments.

First, in case the people who read this have different items on their Must Read plates, a link or two. TV critic Alan Sepinwall’s favorite movie is Midnight Run, so you might imagine he’d have something to say about Farina, and indeed, his piece was one of the best: “Remembering Dennis Farina, the great cop-turned-character-actor”.

Matt Zoller Seitz reminded us of a video essay he’d created a few years ago about the TV series Crime Story. It was part of a series on Michael Mann, but Farina gets a lot of attention, as well. Seitz also had a fine piece yesterday: “Late to Acting, He Made Up for Lost Time”.

As is usual nowadays, celebrities turned up on Twitter to express their condolences. What I noticed was the breadth of the types of people who posted (Ashton Kutcher, Rosie O’Donnell, Shawn Ryan, Zooey Deschanel, Mario Lopez, Robin Williams, Seth Green, Donald Faison). Farina was noticed by more than one generation.

Midnight Run is what will become the go-to item when people talk about Dennis Farina in the future, and with good reason. It’s got Robert DeNiro when he was still good, playing hate-buddy with Charles Grodin, who is perfect. But what people remember is Farina’s Jimmy Serrano:

But there is so much more. He was so fine in Luck, kicking back with Dustin Hoffman, talking about nothing. There was a brief TV series in the late-90s called Buddy Faro … it bombed, they only showed 8 episodes and let 5 others sit on the shelf, but the part of Faro fit Farina like the proverbial glove. For me, it all goes back to Crime Story. It premiered in 1986, when I was just two years out of the factory. That matters, because for ten years I’d worked swing shift, missing most of the good shows of the time. I’d quit that job just in time for Miami Vice, and when I started watching Crime Story, I was interested because of the Michael Mann pedigree. But the series won me over. And there was some fine acting going on, but Dennis Farina, about whom I knew nothing, was the top of the list. That show … talk about big ambitions, Mann wanted to make an American Berlin Alexanderplatz … talk about influential, Scorsese noted it as part of his inspiration for Casino. I loved Miami Vice, at least during its first seasons, but I get the feeling it wouldn’t hold up well. I bet Crime Story would still look good.

And Dennis Farina would be a big reason for that.

Comments

[Cynthia]

Crime Story! of course that's where I know him from. It's been nagging at me for the last 24 hours or so.

[Tomás]

He was great in "Get Shorty" too. Even when he played less wise guy types. I thought he did great as JLo's dad in "Out of Sight." Great talent, and great to watch...

[Steve Hammond]

A friend told me he liked "Crime Story" because it was set in an era when cops could still beat a confession out of a perp!!

[Steven Rubio]

There were definitely some prime interrogations on that show.