A Sunbeam in the Abyss

The House Next Door's Matt Zoller Seitz posted a great reactive piece about Owen Wilson yesterday. I too was saddened to hear the news and it's heartening to see a piece that echo's many of my own veiws on Wilson as a performer and that treats him with the dignity and respect all people deserve, famous or not and I join Matt in wishing Owen a speedy and successful recovery and peace for whatever it is he is dealing with at the moment:

His specialty is feather-light comedy spiked with unselfconscious yearning. He's at once knowing and sincere -- an almost impossible trick. To paraphrase Pauline Kael's review of E.T., he clears the bad thoughts out of your head. When I saw Meet the Parents in a lower Manhattan movie theater on opening weekend, I didn't know that Wilson had a small part in it, and I was surprised and glad to see him up there, unbalancing his soon-to-be inseparable screen partner, Ben Stiller, by casually referring to Jesus Christ as "J.C." I was even more gratified when the audience applauded his first appearance, then clapped again when he showed up presiding over the wedding ceremony. The character's hippie cleric robes seemed appropriate. Wilson's a good-time shaman; when he appears, you smile, because know you're about to have fun. He makes good films better and bad films tolerable. Onscreen, he's a human sunbeam.

It was also particularly inspring to see the wealth of comments added to the article and the goodwill poured out from fellow fans, and to see an intenet story with comments that hasn't descended into bickering or childish arguing. So I encourage you to read the article but also check out the whole site, it has a wealth of fascinating film and TV criticism and theory and is one of the best places for educated and thought provoking debate on the interweb. - A Sunbeam in the Abyss