ThomasJayRyan Tagged Articles at Cinematical

One of the most overlooked actors in the world of cinema is Thomas Jay Ryan, also known as Henry Fool. In Hal Hartley's world, he was a Fool by name, but only in the most dynamic and classic sense. Ryan served us one of the most dynamic and irresistible characters that quirky cinema has seen. He's an actor that oozes presence, and it's one of Hollywood's biggest oversights that this man can't get a big, and dramatically engaging break.

Writing about Henry Fool, I want to call it a masterpiece, and I don't use that phrase lightly. The film is wonderful, but it is more about the world that was created, and how Fool's adventures can morph from serious poetry and child rearing to spies, intrigue, and explosions (in Fay Grim). In Fool, Ryan even makes the simplicity and awkwardness of grammar seem intriguing, and below, you can watch him teach Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) the differences between there, their, and they're.

Yes, the scene taps into my writerly inclinations, but it's also a wonderful example of Ryan's skill -- taking such a simple notion and thought, and expressing it Just. So., punctuating thoughts with a simple tapping of the piano key, and deliberate pauses.

All next week, I'll be bringing you reviews from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, going on in Manhattan from June 14 to the 28th. One of the first films I've seen is Strange Culture, a weird and unique documentary from Lynn Hershman-Leeson that tells the story of Steve Kurtz, a professor at the University of Buffalo whose life was turned upside one morning in 2004 when he awoke to find his wife Hope lying dead of a heart attack in bed beside him. The police and medical responders who came to the scene were more than a little alarmed to find that Kurtz's home was a sort of armamentarium of biochemical and DNA-extraction equipment, specimens of things as exotic as E. coli and other stuff you wouldn't expect to find in the home of an art professor. Before Kurtz could convince the authorities that he was involved in a unique art movement known as Bio-art, that exhibits real equipment for presentations on topics ranging from terrorism to genetically modified food, his entire block was being sealed off and invaded by men in hazmat suits.

There's a fictional thread to Strange Culture, in which Kurtz and his wife are played by Thomas Jay Ryan (Henry Fool) and Tilda Swinton, but to say that the wall between drama and documentary is broken would be an understatement. As much as we see them acting, we see the actors speaking as themselves about Kurtz's situation. Sometimes we even see the real Kurtz commenting on their performances, as the movie is going on. We're told that the main reason for a fictional component is that Kurtz, who is embroiled in the legal system to this day because of his ordeal, is constrained from talking about certain topics on camera. The feds were never able to make any terrorism-related charge stick to Kurtz, since he's not a terrorist, but they were able to catch him on mail fraud since he and a colleague at another university allegedly broke some laws by mailing biochemical samples back and forth without following proper notification procedures. Kurtz and the colleague are currently awaiting trial sometime in 2007 on those charges.