Well, it is the end of May 2007 and Mr. Charles Nelson Reilly has recently died. I just learned of it today and, while I know it's silly, I've been sitting here at work getting teary-eyed. Sure, as a kid I knew him only from The Match Game, but when I saw "Life of Reilly (Save It for the Stage)" last fall I understood at last what a fascinating person and enormous heart lay behind the outrageous public persona. And, finally, it seems that even the game-show Charles Nelson Reilly was not really ever a mere persona, that he was never anyone but who he was, histrionic and unapologetic and, if you took the trouble to look, enormously dignified. The movie shows both the man and the artist, a veteran stage actor whose craft at storytelling never ebbed, even as his final years slowed him down physically.
As it happens, I ran across the "Jose Chung" episode of the X-Files, with Mr. Reilly in the title role, last week, just before he passed. That long, serialized interview scene with Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully is just a delight; I think you can see the fun Ms. Anderson is having playing off him. And it surely contains some of the series' best comic writing.
*Sigh.* Mr. Reilly, I shall miss you greatly.
As it happens, I ran across the "Jose Chung" episode of the X-Files, with Mr. Reilly in the title role, last week, just before he passed. That long, serialized interview scene with Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully is just a delight; I think you can see the fun Ms. Anderson is having playing off him. And it surely contains some of the series' best comic writing.
*Sigh.* Mr. Reilly, I shall miss you greatly.