The Advance Obit

There are many things I like. Let me count the ways? Not necessary, other than to say an obit written by Robert McFadden is one of them.

Today's Sunday, so I scan the obits online. I don't bother with the print paper on Sunday. They deliver half of it on Saturday for free, so I don't bother with the rest. I get the Book Review section as part of that. That's good enough.

Mr. McFadden is retired, but I think still appears at a desk. He's written a flock of advance obits, so when one of his subjects becomes ripe for the page, one of his obits transitions from advance to the page of the day. Thus, most of his subjects at this point are quite advanced in age, like today's "Donald Moffat, 87, a Top Actor Who Thrived in Second Billings."

Mr. Moffat is hardly a household name, but his face should seem familiar, particularly to theatre-goers, as he's played an incredible range of characters, but is most famous for a Falstaff portrayal. Aside from Macbeth and Hamlet and a little Othello, I'm not much up on Shakespeare. But in the course of going through Mr. Moffat's roles we learn a good deal about Shakespeare's characters. Like any good obit, there's always something to learn.

I've always heard of the character Falstaff but didn't know he was so multi-dimensional: "Shakespeare's bravest coward, wisest fool and most ignoble knight." Mr. Moffat apparently handled nearly any role from any playwright, Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Pinter Beckett or O'Neill.

Mr. Moffat, was a transplanted Brit who lost his British intonations at an early age when he came to America as a 26-year-old Old Vic-trained actor. He worked many odd jobs, bartender and lumberjack out of Oregon before getting that out of system and returning to acting full-time, this time on Broadway.

Mr. McFadden recounts Mr. Moffat's most famous role as that of the president in the 1994 movie 'Clear and Present Danger,' the thinly veiled story of a president who is caught in a world wind of scandal who just happens to keep a jar of very colorful jelly beans on his desk. (Think Ronald Reagan.)

Mr. McFadden repeats a sample of the dramatic Jack Ryan/President Bennett dialogue. I loved that movie. One, because it reminds me of when we saw it, on vacation on Cape Code, and because of some other pieces of dialogue in it.

There is one presidential staffer sitting on the coach who astutely tells Ryan that the President wants what every president wants: a second term.

Then there is Ryan's advice to the President to get out ahead of the scandal that's forming by telling the press that yes, he knows so-and-so, they went to school together. They've played racquetball together. Don't deny knowing the man.

The president takes the advice and ducks being painted with the same brush. Funny how a CIA officer's advice to the president about getting out in front of something in a 1994 screenplay goes unheeded by President Clinton in 1998 when it comes to Monica Wilensky. Didn't Bill see the movie?

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