Happiness is the Birthday of Dean Stockwell!

In honor of Dean Stockwell's birthday, some musings on my two favorite Dean performances (so far):

1. Dave in PSYCH-OUT (1968)For me, PSYCH-OUT is the best film ever about what it means to be a drugged up hippie in a band in the Haight-Ashbury in 1968. Now, I wasn't in the Haight in '68, but I was born March 2 in 1967, three days before Dean's birthday) and became a hippie temporarily in Syracuse in '86, so dyslexics and the very very high will appreciate the similarities, which don't end there. The "Syd Vicious/Barrett"-acid casualty bassist of my band (The Mexican Mud), I played the calm voice of artistic "integrity" to my quick to sell-out lead guitarist Dave. So imagine my delight in finding my on screen representation in PSYCH-OUT is a) named Dave; b) played by a young Dean Stockwell and c) wearing a gaudy Native American headband and hippie wig probably lifted from the Indian section of a b-western costume department. and b, again) playing the psychedelically enlightened shaman (beyond money and fame) to Jack Nicholson's fame-crazed lead guitarist, Stoney.

Stockwell is amazing here in a small role. We find him living inside a shed on a roof , where he sits in contemplation, free of desire and fear and money --- and yet immediately, suavely, he starts coming onto pretty newbie Susan Strasberg, whose come into town from the Styx to find her brother Bruce Dern, an early prophet of the sugar cube, lost in the candy colored throngs of the Haight. Stony lays all this bullshit on Dave, but Dave just keeps his eyes trained on the girl. She's what's important, and we dig the sublime way Stockwell manages to be sincere and moving while hip and disaffected at the same time. Nicholson never could handle that sort of duality, even back then. Nicholson's hip disaffection hangs heavy on him, you can feel his revulsion towards it-- that's actorly "conflict" - but Stockwell is resolved; believably beyond pairs of opposites.

Later, after their band's first gig at the Filmore--which has Stoney all stressed out so that he's rude to Strasberg, Dave shares his drink, liberally spiked with the chemical drug known as STP, with the broken-hearted lass. Little does he know that she's not "experienced" and doesn't realize what she's in for! STP is the advanced master class to LSD's kindergarten and Strasberg's never even taken aspirin!

Lost on the streets in hallucinatory insanity, she's rescued by Dave, who gives up his life to save her and later casually notes, "I hope this trip is a good one," right before croaking. What a way to go!

For Dean Stockwell, at any rate, yes, it's been a hell of a good trip. This man's been in pictures since he was a baby (he played the baby of Nick and Nora Charles, for x-sakes. What kind of other pedigree for acidemic excellence do you need?)

2. Edmund in LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962)
Here Stockwell was a mere 26 but he more than holds his own against Kate Hepburn, Jason Robards and Sir Ralph Richardson as his uber-dysfunctional family of Irish drunks, junkies and theater folk.

Luminous and gorgeous throughout, Dean's the vulnerable core of the film, holding back in group scenes but emerging in his tet-a-tets with the other family members to portray a boy whose own recently diagnosed tuberculosis prevents him from being able to look the other way at his mom's slide back into morphine abuse or his dad's miserliness. Stockwell shows a beautifully nuanced gift for capturing the mixture of tenderness and impatience, love and disgust, that comes from growing up around chronic dysfunction. It's a good movie for rehabs!

You can see Stockwell was profoundly influenced by James Dean, in only the best of ways, by which I mean he captures Dean's softness, his playful, gentle spirit, but adds it to his own lexicon. Stockwell's not the sort of actor to imitate via the superficial trappings (jacket, hair, knife), or to fall into the sway of even the acting titans he shares the JOURNEY stage with. Here he's like Dean in that you sense the coolness and the inner sweet child the coolness protects, alternating in doses that show behind the character is the actor and behind the actor... genius.

I could of course go into detail why his role here reminds me of my own life too, but it's less glamorous than with PSYCH-OUT, and hell, well, there you have it. My salute to Dean! Happy birthday, Mr. Stockwell, you magical survivor of the Hollywood grist mill, you perennial bloom on the tempest-toss'd rose bush of the stars!