Danny Aiello: Time (Clock of the heart)

Danny Aiello was from the first time I saw him on screen, a favorite of mines. He had preternatural presence, he was large, not just physically, but intrinsically. He had this sense of an undisturbed peace about him. A centeredness, a focus that seemed to attach him to the ground in a way uncommon to actors. Most impressively he seemed to have this uncanny sense of timing and of time. In terms of anger Aiello could just bend time so that he arrived as his destination with no herk and jerk start up, no stop watch with a gunshot. He was able to tap into shifting, fluid fits of rage with a grace uncommon to the profession. For most actors becoming enraged is as violent as being there, but Aiello slid into it with the ease one might slick ones hair back with - like when he breaks into the hospital to get Jacob (Tim Robbins) out of a gruesome hospital in Jacob's Ladder”…

or in Harlem Nights when his character Phil Cantone goes on a diatribe that reveals his own Jealousy and hatred for black people in Eddie Murphy's Harlem Nights...

Again the skill here is in the arriving at a point where you aren't as much working up to the anger as you are simply arriving there as if transported, and to do without showing the work. After all that is maybe the most sincere way that anger…well…works. Sure while in many cases we do tend to work ourselves into a lather with anger, that is not to say that the work always shows. There is always a foundation to our anger, but we are not always building up from it. Sometimes many times the feeling is sudden and without warning. You were going one way and in an instant you just find yourself there. Times where we are simply there, and then we are not, with not much clue how we got there so quickly - as indicated by the fact that most times we forget what we were angry about in the first place. Aiello let’s anger overtake him suddenly and then it's gone, and it’s as if it were never there at all. As supremely difficult as this is, it is still not his greatest skill or attribute. Both of those were in the heart he brought to characters, and through that the patience. He focused with it, he listened with it, he reacted with it, and it colored and informed the great bulk of his performances. It’s why despite the fact that he could and would play despicable, disreputable, or even as dullards, you never (or I at least never) disliked an Aiello character. Many times you loved him. In “The Professional” he loves Leon, and through that love expresses frustration, loyalty, and kindness. In “Moonstruck” he loves his mother, and through that comes his confusion, ignorance, sweetness, and again loyalty. In “Do The Right Thing” he loves the neighborhood, despite his own racist tendencies and attitudes, and through that comes his dedication, service, wisdom, and his condescension, and paternalism. So that even when expressing a subliminal level of racism and disgust for black people, it comes off as fatherly…

The brilliance of this is the exactness of Aiello's performance in that particular space of racist attitudes. The genial well meaning belief in the inferiority of another people. This is not as much about tapping into a dark side as some would like to believe. You need heart to pull this off. You need to tap into the humanity to make a vile trait apart of a likeable person. To find that ssd tragic juxtaposition, you cannot like most accept off hand that this person has no humanity despite the fact that the actions or act lacks any. In this comes a truth, that like Mooky (Spike Lee) we like Sal because he lives a life or service, (though he also has the privilege of being able to build and own the right to provide said service in our neighborhood) , we like Sal because he's stands up for some of us against his son’s wishes (though it is an extension of his paternalistic attitude toward black folk) and we like Sal because he is a straight shooter, he tells us whas’s on his mind or at least we know where he stands. Mookie likes Sal, we like Sal, and Sal is also a racist. It’s only so long before the latter incurs a debt the former can’t pay. You need exactly Aiello to pull this character off . Exactly his skillset, exactly his traits. The heart, the patience which conjure up the warmth of a tender father figure explaining to his son why Sal's will never leave the neighborhood, and the anger that conjures up the the most destitute and putrid pits of white supremacy in the destruction of a Radio and all the contemptible sentiments that spring forth simultaneously…

If you watched Aiello inevitably you had to watch him listen, and then take his time reacting. He had to be one of the easiest actors to procure an organic feeling from cutting off another actor mid-sentence in scene, because he’s an actor that was always going to take his time getting there. It was always such a natural progression since Aiello provided these wonderful spaces for the other actor where he seemed like he is in the middle of saying something while saying something, whether he was speaking or not. You can see this happen throughout '“Moonstruck”, like when his character Johnny Cammareri proposes to Cher, and maybe most accurately in The Professional when Oldman interrupts with “Wait, there’s more”. The interruption feels both punctual and off beat, just like a natural interruption would. In fact it’s maybe the closest to perfect I’ve seen an interruption because I pay attention to obnoxious things like this. If you watch, you also see how patient of a listener he was. I like to watch actors listen I’ ve said many times sometimes it’s the most difficult part of our job. In my comedy and improv class one of my most memorable teachers would always say “There was not enough shut up". It was in relation to temptation to fill space with unnecessary words. She would plead with us to shut up long enough to hear something real spring forth from the well of our soul. That's what Aiello did, he didn't always take an extra beat, (in Moonstruck he’s exceedingly fast with reactions) but he can be that fast and still ring incredibly, amazingly true with reaction because he listens so incredibly, amazingly well. Same is true in Hudson Hawk, Purple Rose of Cairo, Ruby, or 2 days in the Valley. Pick a movie with him in it, pick a scene, watch him, and what you'll see is listening and patience, and the guts of it is all in the heart. Boy George's Culture Club had a song I love called “Time (Clock of the heart). It reminds me of the main attributes at the core of what made Aiello special. There is a part of the refrain that goes “In time we could’ve had so much more" and its exactly what Aiello did, he gave us that more, and he accomplished that because he led with his heart and took his time. The song is a lament of lovers who the mistake of seeing one (time) as synonymous with the other, (love) and the irony that it takes time to understand the difference. But that difference is something (at least as an actor) Aiello seemed to understand right away. It always felt like Aiello loved what he did, and it transferred that energy into his characters who almost always seemed to love what they do, or love someone they knew. ’The patience comes from that, the listening was an extension of that..

Aiello's patented patience and cadence always helps his co stars and his own performance, because he could deploy it in so many interesting ways. He was an extremely intelligent actor who one could tell always had a very definitive bead on who his character was and it showed. Any person who might’ve been a co-star in the future will be a little less good because of his not being around and that is sad, but all the remaining co-stars have his kindness, his presence of heart, and his patience to pass on to the next even if they aren't aware, and that’s wonderful. RIP.