{"id":271,"date":"2005-06-15T17:48:28","date_gmt":"2005-06-15T17:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=271"},"modified":"2005-06-15T17:48:28","modified_gmt":"2005-06-15T17:48:28","slug":"lane_smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2005\/06\/15\/lane_smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Lane Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, now, this sucks — I just learned that one of my favorite character actors, Lane Smith<\/a>, has died.<\/p>\n

He’s one of those guys whose name you probably don’t recognize, but you’d know his face instantly; he did a lot of movies in the ’70s and ’80s that qualify as minor classics, including Rooster Cogburn<\/i>, Network<\/i>, Prince of the City<\/i>, Frances<\/i>, Places in the Heart<\/i>, and one of the most incredibly jingoistic and far-fetched (yet entertaining) movies to emerge from the Reagan Era, Red Dawn<\/i>. More recently, he’s appeared in lighter fare such as My Cousin Vinny<\/i>, The Mighty Ducks<\/i>, and Son-in-Law<\/i>, which has the dubious distinction of being the only Pauly Shore movie that is remotely watchable.<\/p>\n

Fans of genre TV will remember Smith as Nathan Bates, the power-hungry industrialist who collaborated with the alien Visitors in V: The Series<\/i>, as well as the Elvis-obsessed editor Perry White in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman<\/i>. Also, all the obituaries I’ve scanned note that Smith played Nixon in a TV miniseries called The Final Days<\/i>, which I’m sorry to say I’ve never seen. (Personally, I tend to picture him in the opening credits of V<\/i>, parked behind a big desk with an oily smile, an ugly suit, and a cigar the size of a car muffler.)<\/p>\n

The best obituary<\/a> I’ve found indicates that he died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. I mention this little factoid only because I’ve had some personal experience with ALS<\/a>, and my ears tend to prick up when I hear of someone being afflicted with it. Trust me, it’s not a pretty way to go, and it breaks my heart that this talented man had to face such a miserable end.<\/p>\n

For the record, he was 69 years old, only a few years older than my parents and way too damn young for this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, now, this sucks — I just learned that one of my favorite character actors, Lane Smith, has died. He’s one of those guys whose name you probably don’t recognize, but you’d know his face instantly; he did a lot of movies in the ’70s and ’80s that qualify as minor classics, including Rooster Cogburn, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}