Way back when in Boston there was this tallish, slender brunette of 19 or 20 whom I knew and liked a lot, and vice versa. Her name escaped years ago, but we had this moment on a second-floor landing of a staircase inside a Boston apartment building. I had to leave and we were talking a bit before saying goodbye, and then we held our arms out and just sank into this hungry embrace.
She had these long sinewy arms and strong grippy hands and so did I, and we just got wrapped up in the envelopment of it, holding each other closer and tighter than we probably expected to do at first but holding, holding…as close together as our bodies could have been from a standing-up position, and neither easing up.
I don’t know how long we held the position hut it had to have been a good couple of minutes, maybe three. We hadn’t been on intimate terms before this moment and we somehow never went there in the aftermath, and, as noted, I don’t even recall her name. Lotsa love, passion and perspiration over the decades, but after that Beantown staircase hug I never experienced anything like it ever again. Which is why it’s still in my head.
The other day I described it to a friend as a “lesbian hug.” She called it a “mommy goodbye hug.”
Who isn’t jarred and saddened by the idea of suicide (I am anyway), and doubly so by the idea of a possible joint suicide between an older husband and younger wife, and even more so when you throw the couple’s dog into the equation?
So let’s do that — Gene Hackman was absolutely among the greatest actors of the 20th Century, and this is what needs focusing upon and will be focused upon today, tomorrow and for a long time to come.
And yet this is the apparent truth of it: Sometime yesterday the 95 year-old Hackman, presumably dealing with diminished terms of life and apparently as an act of decisive agency and dignity, decided to go to sleep of his own volition, and his 63 year-old pianist wife, Betsy Arakawa, decided to take the journey with him.
And somehow or in some way their dog also died, the thinking presumably being that love and devotion are more important than the mere fact of aliveness. The dog would have been devastated to have been left alone so Gene and Betsy took him/her along.
N.Y. Times: “Before entering the [Hackman] home, the sheriff’s department received confirmation from the fire department and the gas company that it was safe to enter. ‘We’re not going to guess this was an accident or natural causes,” a spokesperson said. ‘It wasn’t typical.’ A previous statement sent out early Thursday by the sheriff’s office said that foul play was not suspected.”
AP: “Hackman, 95, Betsy Arakawa, 63, and their dog were all dead when deputies entered their home to check on their welfare around 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Denise Avila said.”
There will be no end to the negativity if the Academy Award telecast producers fail to insert Hackman into the death reel, and I mean at the very end of it.
“Stoplight with Hackman,” posted on 1.28.21: Sometime in the summer or early fall of ’94 (can’t remember which) I visited the Culver Studios set of Crimson Tide. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer had invited me. I hung around in a low-key way for two or three hours. No chit-chats with “talent” or anyone except Jerry — basically an opportunity to see the nuclear submarine set, which was built to tilt and lean and shake around. I watched Tony Scott guide Gene Hackman through a confrontation scene over and over. I was maybe 100 feet away.
When you first arrive on a big movie set there’s nothing more exciting. And then you hang around for a while, doing nothing but watching and maybe shooting the shit with whomever and taking notes and sipping soft drinks and nibbling bagels, and you’re eventually bored stiff.
Eventually it was time to leave. I took a last look at the set, thanked Jerry, shook hands and briskly walked off the sound stage and back to my black 240SX Nissan. I eased out of the parking lot and drove north on Ince Blvd. I stopped at a red light at the corner of Ince and Culver Blvd.
Just to my left was a large black limo, idling like me. I looked over and damned if it wasn’t Hackman in the back seat, just sitting there, three or four feet away.
“And so what?” you might ask. I’d just been watching him play the tough submarine captain, saying the same lines over and over. But I was nonetheless fascinated by my close-up view of the guy, and immediately I was telling myself “Jesus, don’t look…don’t be an asshole! They can feel it when fans are staring at them, even if it’s through glass.”
So I snuck a quick peek and turned away. And then another quickie. And then another. Not once did Hackman look in my direction. Maybe he knew I was sneaking peeks but decided not to confront me because I had the decency not to stare. I know that if I’d quickly turned and found him staring right at me it would have been mortifying. Thank God he didn’t.
Several months later I schmoozed with the whole Crimson Tide crew (Hackman, Denzel, Scott, Don and Jerry) at a Marina del Rey junket. A lot of fun, lots of food…a splendid time was had by all.
I remember asking Denzel about the Silver Surfer scene and asking if he had a preference for the Jack Kirby or Moebius version, or whether it had been discussed between takes or whatever. He looked at me, smirked, shook his head and opened his hands, palms up. He was basically saying “I didn’t ask, and I didn’t care.”
