Mighty Mullet Ascends

I don't know a terrible amount about Patrick Swayze. Aside from his cult following from ROADHOUSE and DIRTY DANCING and GHOST, and that's before you even get to POINT BREAK. I don't get that he was in anybody's pantheon of action actors, nor was he a nominee or a comfortable Merv Griffin standard in the American household. He was offered a kindly kind of dismissal by the public, his work part of "Generation X"'s youth. He was popular once, a product of the 1980s, a mullet, just enough looks to appeal to the 1980s female crowd, just enough muscles to carry off manly punching contests. He wasn't a great actor. He wasn't a bad actor. He made all of us crush hard on Demi Moore. I daresay she was never more wholesome, more real, than with Swayze onscreen. He brought her beauty down to Earth, where craggy dudes like us could begin to think about Demi Moore as attainable. This was important at a certain time. Swayze walked the rice paper and left no trace of his passing. He vanished for a long time. The next I heard of him, he was cameoing in DONNIE DARKO and getting a lot of attention for it. He also had cancer.

I'm not the biggest fan, so I only followed Swayze's experience with cancer peripherally. We all empathize with cancer victims. It's whistling by the graveyard: at least it wasn't us or our loved one with cancer. You probably said the same thing when Natasha Richardson, Liam Neeson's wife, shattered her brain-pan while skiing and died. It wasn't the love of your life, the mother of your children. Most of us can't imagine it, and we really can't imagine it being broadcast all over the world. Swayze's life changed inexorably toward an end he knew was coming. I didn't watch interviews or listen to him, but I got the impression he was brave, and good. He was a hero, somehow, in the face of cancerous rebellion, his own tissues deciding to pull a ZULU DAWN on him.

For some reason, I realize Swayze did a hell of job in his work. He was one of those guys you deride and yet enjoy everything he was in. You couldn't help it. He was alive onscreen. He entertained and he had good humor about it.

When I meet my inevitable end, I can only wish for some fortitude, some decency, and to be viewed as strong enough to meet it walking forward.