The great M. Emmet Walsh, whom I worked for in late ’85 and early ’86 and got to know moderately well during that brief period, has passed at age 88….just shy of 89.

Walsh’s three finest performances were given in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Blood Simple (sleazy private detective), Ulu Grosbard‘s Straight Time (Dustin Hoffman‘s sleazy parole officer) and a flinty high school swim coach in Robert Redford‘s Ordinary People (’80).

I first became acquainted with Walsh while working as a unit publicist on New Line’s Critters (’85). I told him that his Blood Simple performance as oily shamus Loren Visser was the stuff of film noir legend and that it warranted a Best Supporting Actor campaign.

Walsh agreed and subsequently hired me to run the show, so to speak — creating press releases, creating trade ads and generating press attention that might push his candidacy along.

Walsh had a snappy, feisty mind, and he didn’t hesitate to tell me when my press kit prose was slightly off-kilter or over-baked.

We ultimately couldn’t persuade the Academy, but Walsh won the 1985 Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. I’d like to think I had something to do with that. Plus I got to join Walsh for a lunch with Joel and Ethan somewhere in downtown Manhattan in early ’86.

The Walsh campaign was the highlight of my publicity work during the mid to late ’80s (staff writer at Samuel Goldwyn, unit/in-house publicity for New Line Cinema, press kit writer for Cannon Films).

I ran into Emmet three or four years ago inside a Spirit Awards tent. Good to see him again.

“Same Old Song,” posted on 1.23.14: “The thing I dearly love about this ending is the fact that the mortally wounded Lorren Visser is, at the end of his life, suddenly very concerned about a tiny droplet of water on a water pipe that’s about to land on his face.

“It’s not the slug in his stomach, which he can do nothing about. He knows he’s about to go and is even cackling about it, weird guy that he is. What Visser can’t accept is that damn little glob of H20. Taking shape, getting heavier, larger. The water looks down at Visser and he looks up at it. Waiting, waiting…and then it drops.”