Gary Busey: The Consistency of Chaos
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I love Gary Busey, I love him because he's volatile, because he's unpredictable as an actor, I love him because hes well…hes at least a little insane. Busey is raw combustible energy, chaos, connected to nerve endings, connected to tissue, connected to bone. He's a natural storyteller, and a natural performer and over time I feel that’s what has gotten lost in the drug abuse, the reality TV rants, and the antics. Busey's got a type of performing which is at the heart of why I love movies, the ever present possibilitiy to be wowed, especially by a performance, (maybe partially because I am an actor) this lingering possibility is always the juiciest part of turning on or sitting in a dark theater for me. In my world actors are the most accessible part of a movie. Even when direction fails, or writing is incomplete, or plot holes abound, a great performance or two will keep me interested, it's just the way I'm wired. It’s actually not even necessary for the performance to be great as much as it is interesting for the formula to work its magic in me. This is where Gary Busey over his entire career has never ever failed me. Busey is amongst my absolute favorites ever because he is almost always - if not flat out always - supremely, impossibly interesting to watch. The crackling purity of “WTF" energy in a Gary Busey performance is one of the most reliable forces on earth right up there with sunrises, gravity, and dog videos on the internet. I’ve watched him for over 30 years now and he is a model of consistency, as well as a complete original. My introduction to Busey like maybe many people my age was as “Mr. Joshua” in Richard Donner's "Lethal Weapon." I can recall with exceptional ease the way he shot up from beyond the screen to me, hell, he might as well have come from a pop-up book. Not only was there the look - the rabbit white hair, ( I always found it interesting that Gibson also found him to resemble a Rabbit "Jack Rabbit son of a bitch" ) the preppy look that alluded to his particular brand of covert sociopathy - but there was the focused electricity in his eyes and delivery. It's exemplified in his opening scene where he combines a laser-focused stillness exists in his eyes, with a body brimming with the energy of a shaken bottle of soda. Watching him it feels like a presentation of computerized animation of the inside his body might look like a cavalcade of exploding and firing neurons.
Character actor Ed O Ross ( an underrated actor unfortunately following the unfortunate trend of playing an ethnicity not of his own) screams fervently that these guys are crazy, and its pretty safe to assume much of that is directed at Joshua, whose hand it is being burnt by General McCallister. What I find fun to think about is that if the character of Mendez had known what kind of characters Busey would go onto play, Mr Joshua would seem rather tame by comparison, but this is Busey's range. In that way hes a bit like the great James Cagney, who was mostly remembered as one thing, ( his gangster roles) but lived far beyond that scope. Now Busey of course didn’t have Cagney's level of range, but he had more than he was and has ever been given credit for, and he also has Cagney's propensity for electricity with maybe a bit of Jerry Lewis for good measure. Busey's live wire nature and propensity for high energy is well documented in roles like Point Break, Predator 2, and Under Siege , but they're not the limit, there are multiple sides to that energy used in movies like Silver Bullet, Buddy Holly, and especially my favorite - his role as “Willy” in Dustin Hoffman's underrrated directorial debut "Straight Time". Busey plays a long time friend to Dustin Hoffman that ultimately ends up betraying him and while he still has those moments of spontaneous combustion, it's like there's a silencer on the gun, and the effect is profound, and beautiful, and tragic especially in his final moments..
A couple of things I really deeply admired about Gary Busey's career is A: that no matter the prestige or level of the film you were always going to get Busey giving you full 100 percent Busey. If there was a phoning-it-in performance it was very hard for me to tell, and I appreciate that kind of reliability. That particular quality is not local or present only and/or to Busey but it's important to state as it connects to B: That you could always count on at least one very "Busey" thing to happen in a movie he's in. You never knew when it was going to come, you never know or knew what time, it was always surprising (and in my opinion it was always pleasant ) never boring, but it was going to happen. Now even when other actors committed to their own style in a similar such way, such as John Wayne or in the latter half of his career Al Pacino, it's served either to remind you of their brand or that they were an actor's actor, but with Busey that “Busey-ness” was a direct part of what grounded the characters in something very real. The steeple to a church, lights on a Christmas tree, the things that inform you as to exactly the thing or what this thing is beyond just being a tree, or a building, or an actor. It was some action that would become inextricable aspect of that character, to their psychosis, their attention to detail, their spite. Whether it was a snapped finger as he "promises" Mel Gibson's Martin Riggs a quick death in Lethal Weapon, or an extra "Two!" as he leans out his car confirming his order for meatball sandwiches in Point Break ..
I call that grounding element of Busey's work follow through, and Busey had a wonderful follow through. In both basketball, (as it pertains to shooting) and baseball, (as it pertains to pitching) follow through is extremely important to technique. What it does is set the direction as well as the motion, and landing, of the pitch or shot. In acting follow through accomplishes much of the same save maybe change motion into emotion. The better your follow-through, the better the emotion of your action or feeling lands. Busey has a follow through so good it for better or worse lends power to the idea he's off his rocker, (and to be sure his rampant cocaine usage through a great portion if the 80s added to that) but its also about the intensity, velocity, and ferocity of his intention. Speaking on himself Busey once said "I was blessed with boundless energy, and reckless momentum" - I've rarely heard anything so damned spot-on in my life. It shows the kind of self awareness I find is actually rare save amongst the best of actors. It's Busey's superpower, and he could deploy it to a wide variety of uses. He could use it in a way that made him soft and endearing like in Silver Bullet where he played one of my favorite movie uncles ever because he let it live so intensely in the moment it added leverage to the characterization of his growth as stunted and child-like..
He could use it so that it made him appear committed to destiny as in John Milius's "The Big Wednesday" or again in "The Buddy Holly Story", and he could use it to appear as a fiery but charismatic sociopath in an underrated B-movie version of The Most Dangerous Game called "Surviving the Game" where he delivers a chillingly memorable monologue about a frightening "rite of passage" into manhood
You watch that monologue and theres almost no action, no point he makes that he doesn't emphasize by accompanying it with a gesture. If the firecracker pops, so does Busey, the dog bites so does Busey, and when he says he wiped his Blood, Busey wipes the "blood" off his face. Busey has you in his grip, and much like that dog hes not letting go. It's not only good for selling us on character, but it's good storytelling. Something Busey was clearly into. Busey felt he had- a for lack of a better word- kindred spirit in writer journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and it’s not remotely hard to see his inspiration and effect on Busey. When once explaining his love of Thompson Busey said about Thompson's work and storytelling in general…
“That’s why it’s fun because it’s always leading you on to something new, something you haven’t seen before, something you haven’t discovered, something you haven’t thought about”