![]() Ford has asserted himself as a cranky old man, and that’s all that matters. The actual punchline is dismal, but that’s beside the point. The audience titters politely, the band strikes up in triumph and Ford springs to his feet in outrage and starts chewing out the bandleader because he hadn’t finished telling the joke yet. He rambles on for about a minute and a half, with Letterman looking – as Ford did with Blaine – as if he doesn’t know whether to be amused or concerned, until he eventually stumbles into something that might be construed in some parts of the world as a punchline. During a David Letterman appearance in the early part of the last decade, Ford launched into a long, formless joke about a man who wants to buy half a cabbage. It deserves to be the clip for which he’s remembered. When Blaine’s trick ends with the usual flourish (the playing card was inside a piece of fruit all along), Ford looks him square in the eye and growls: “ Get the fuck outta my house.” It is perfect. He speaks just once or twice, confirming details and announcing the name of the card he chose. At no point can you tell whether Ford is amused, bored or amazed by Blaine’s trickery. Throughout their encounter, which appears to take place in Ford’s kitchen, Blaine’s whooshy mystic nonsense falls flat against a wall of silence. While Blaine’s shtick often results in leaping, wailing histrionics from his marks, his meeting with Ford in 2013 couldn’t have been quieter. Ford crossed the airport's only runway in his aircraft after he misheard a radio instruction from ATC. My favourite of these is his encounter with David Blaine. Harrison Ford shares 19-year-old Liam with wife Calista Flockhart. No, Ford’s real inner old man is more likely to come out to play in his television appearances. Because, in an industry where everyone aged 25 and over is possessed by a freakish desperation to cling to their youth for dear life, warping their faces with unnecessary surgeries to try to trick the world into thinking that they’ve somehow become frozen in time, Ford has embraced the role of grizzled elder statesman like no other. The other reason this birthday is weird, and I promise I mean this with affection, is that it seems as if he’s been 80 years old for decades. To call it an incredible career would be a gross understatement. ![]() ![]() He’s Richard Kimble, Jack Ryan, Rick Deckard. Audio of the phone call between Harrison Ford and ATC at John Wayne Airport after he landed his Husky on a taxiway rather than a runway as cleared. Often when movie stars hit a peak, all the characters they play have a habit of becoming extensions of their own persona. Pacino and De Niro dissolved into self-parody long ago. The first is that Ford is our sole remaining great movie star. It’s a strange occasion for a couple of reasons. Wednesday is Harrison Ford’s 80th birthday. ![]()
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