Forest Whitaker’s 10 Best Movies

Forest Whitaker began his acting career at 21 in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and nearly four decades into his career has a filmography that stretches into triple digits.  The 6’2 actor has made a career out of gentle, and not so gentle giant roles, both starring and supporting.  Whitaker’s career got out to a fast start in the 1980s with roles in films like Platoon, Good Morning Vietnam, and The Color of Money, but stalled as Whitaker’s penchant for doing a tremendous amount of projects has littered his resume with some of the biggest bombs in recent memory (Battlefield Earth anyone?).  His career got back on track in the 2000s when he became the fourth African-American (after Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx) to win Best Actor for his role as the African dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.  He also became part of the Star Wars and MCU franchises, and continues to be one of the hardest working actors in the business.

“Make Your Life Spectacular” – Robin Williams In Memoriam: 3 Years Later

Hard as it is to believe, this month marks three years since Robin Williams’ left us.  Doing this blog, I write about a lot of celebrity deaths, but in the time that I’ve been doing it, and in my life really, the death of Robin Williams hit me like I’d lost a family member.  Good times and bad, the man had a boundless joy running through him in such volume that you weren’t sure if it was going to actually make it to his mouth or go bursting out his ears.  All that being said, his suicide didn’t surprise me, it just made me profoundly sad.  People look at funny people like Robin and think how happy they must be, but humor doesn’t come from happiness; humor is the best bad way to cope with deep pain.  The theory being that if you can’t escape your own demons and be happy yourself, maybe you can bring a smile to someone else’s face.  I think Williams was happy when he was making others happy, but the need to be ON all the time and to do that must have been tremendously exhausting.  I miss him, like I miss a friend gone on before, and this video from Goalcast which manages to take his graduation speech from Jack (NOT one of his better movies) and marry it to a beautiful montage of his career, is just beautiful.  I think it’s the way he’d want to be remembered.  Then if you find yourself tearing up after the first one, check out this interview with Craig Ferguson a few years before his death and you’ll remember the joy of just watching the man talk.  We miss you Robin, and thank you.

My Favorite Scene: Good Morning Vietnam (1987) “Adrian’s First Broadcast”

Good Morning Vietnam was the film that launched Robin Williams into the stratosphere, proving that his lightning-in-a-bottle humor could be effectively mixed into an affecting and moving motion picture.  Director Barry Levinson got a signature performance out of Williams, who earned his first Oscar nomination for the role.  It’s no surprise what my favorite scene is.  It’s iconic: one of the signature scenes of Williams filmography: Adrian’s first broadcast to the troops (minus the musical intervals).