A quickie before I disappear down that rabbit hole known as the 2019 Masters Tournament…
I won’t bore you with a full write-up of the life and times of the character actor Seymour Cassell, probably best known to cineastes as a regular in
many of writer/director/actor John Cassavetes’ films (of which I’ve seen—gulp!—none).
Yet, despite Mr. Cassell being active forever, the CFS didn’t stumble across his work until Barry Levinson’s 1987 comedy, Tin Men, a hidden gem that I implore to you seek out in the near future.
Cassell plays “Cheese,” a co-worker of Richard Dreyfuss’ Bill “BB” Babowsky, both of them aluminum siding salesmen.
In a film filled with plenty of laughs, many generated by supporting players such as Bruno Kirby, Jackie Gayle and Stanley Brock (the latter two “Borscht Belt” comics of note), some of the biggest guffaws come from the lips of Cassell’s Cheese.
Check out this gem, for instance, in which Cheese indelicately informs Dreyfuss’ BB (who’d just been involved in a crash with Danny Devito’s Ernest Tilley, a competing Tin Man), about the unseen long-term effects of a fender bender…
Or this one, which occurs just after BB gets his car back from the repair shop only to find it vandalized by Tilley, a masterclass in deadpan…
About a decade later, Wes Anderson tapped into Cassell’s regular-guy humanity by casting him in 1998’s, Rushmore, as Max Fischer’s father, Bert, a humble and contented barber. Cassell plays it straight to great effect…
Anderson turned to Cassell once again for The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), casting him as Dusty, an elevator operator and loyal friend to Royal (Gene Hackman), patriarch of the Tenebaum clan, who has recruited him (Dusty) into a hilarious (yes, hilarious) cancer scheme, which plays out in the following clip. (Apologies for the crappy quality.)
Only Anderson could write such hilariously absurdist dialogue (“I recommend that you push fluids and continue the stomach cancer medication.”)
And only Cassell could pull it off with such deadpan aplomb.
RIP Seymour!