Harry Dean Stanton: Hollywood's Zen Rebel

TVC 702.5: Ed welcomes Joseph Atkins, author of Harry Dean Stanton: Hollywood’s Zen Rebel, a deep dive into the life and times of the angular-faced character actor who not only became a leading man in the 1980s (most notably, with Paris, Texas and Repo Man), but was also an accomplished singer and musician. Joe’s book includes interviews with such Harry Dean Stanton contemporaries as Nehemiah Persoff, L.Q. Jones, Dabney Coleman, Dennis Quaid, directors Alex Cox and Wim Wenders, as well as many members of Stanton’s family. Harry Dean Stanton: Hollywood’s Zen Rebel is available through University Press of Kentucky as well as Amazon.com. Topics this segment include how Stanton was arguably more authentic in his expression of The Method than any other actor; how he came to Hollywood in the 1960s hoping to leave his mark as a movie actor, but was pragmatic enough to recognize that television offered a lot of opportunities to find work; and how Stanton became frustrated near the end of the 1960s when contemporaries like Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates began finding leading roles, while he did not.