Rip Torn is especially good at playing men who expect to be obeyed. We like him most in comedy, where his gruff producers and officials have other people's problems to deal with.
Fi1m perspective
Rip Torn looks at home in charge of the secret agency in Men in Black (1997). As Zed, he gives Barry Sonnenfeld's brisk alien comedy the gruff authority of a man who expects the business to get done. We like him in that supporting position, while Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith do the essential comic work. The story is thin, but the film has a good use for him and knows to keep moving.
That comic authority followed decades of character work in film, television and theatre. Sweet Bird of Youth took him from the 1959 Broadway production to the 1962 film adaptation, while Martin Ritt's Cross Creek (1983) gave him the rural character Marsh Turner. Officials, producers and mentors became recurring parts, with little patience for anyone else's nonsense.
The important turn came with Artie, the producer in The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1998), created by Garry Shandling. The programme brought wider recognition and made sustained use of his strength in an ensemble. Torn's account of the collaboration is instructive: “Garry Shandling always said to me, 'Don’t get mad, get funny.' It changed my life.” We prefer the anger when it has that discipline.
Wonder Boys (2000) makes a gentler use of the difference between men who are managing and men who are not. Torn's Q is a successful novelist, set against Michael Douglas's novelist who cannot get on with things. We felt real affection for Douglas's struggling novelist; his performance never seems to demand it. Curtis Hanson's comedy gives Torn a place in a sharply acted ensemble without asking him to become its centre. The leisurely pace sometimes becomes a liability, but this is a setting in which his supporting work makes sense.
For a single evening, we would start with Men in Black. Wonder Boys needs more patience with its novelist and its pace. For a longer acquaintance, turn to The Larry Sanders Show.
Biography
Rip Torn was an American actor whose career in film, television and theatre spanned more than six decades. Born Elmore Rual Torn Jr. in Temple, Texas, he studied drama at the University of Texas and trained at the Actors Studio in New York.
He was known for his role as Zed in the Men in Black films (1997 and 2002), Patches O'Houlihan in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) and the voice of Zeus in Hercules (1997). On television he played Artie the producer in The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1998), for which he received six Emmy nominations and won in 1996. Torn received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Cross Creek (1983).
