The Hero

And How You Should Prepare For Jail

If you were looking for actors who seemed like the ideal representative of masculinity, Sam Elliot’s name would easily come up. The laconic cowboy of hundreds of bit character parts with a few lead roles in there, Elliot has impressed not only with that soulful depth, or those piercing eyes looking over that craggy face, but most notably that infamous voice. That low purr, that quiet rumble at the very bottom of your speakers, has been heard in movies both large and small for decades now. It points to exactly what is so attractive about male actors. Sam Elliot is comforting, he is relaxing. His masculinity provides an assurance that there is a center of the universe, and that with a center cannot be completely corrupted.

Elliot, thus, usually seems as if he has it all figured out. But in “The Hero”, playing a veteran actor in his twilight, it’s hardly as gratifying as you’d expect. He comes home to a large, expensive cabin, and it looks like the emptiest home in the world. Booze and pot are clearly meant to fill a void, if not in his soul, than at least in his schedule. Nick Offerman brings him his “accessories”, and as cool it would be for Offerman to be your weed guy, even he recognizes that Elliot’s semi-retired Lee Hayden isn’t necessarily going anywhere.

Hayden pays whatever bills require attention with voice work, rolling out of bed hung over and delivering mundane lines about beef jerky or whatever product needs to be shilled that day. Calls to his agent yield nothing, until one day he learns he’s about to win a Lifetime Achievement award. He also learns from his doctor that he’s got cancer. And, conveniently, his daughter (Krysten Ritter) is in town, just in time to remind him he is a human, and humans typically have some form of obligations.

“The Hero” doesn’t put a lot of stock in narrative momentum, which is just fine when you have the clear-eyed Elliot as your lead. As he’s starting to re-prioritize his life, he runs into a friend/client of Offerman, the beautiful Charlotte (Laura Prepon). I do think, this far in the 21st century, we should apply a little more scrutiny to May/December relationships, as Charlotte is several decades younger than Lee. But Charlotte is comfortably established as a woman, and not a girl, and it is she who aggressively pursues the older man. Though he is a respected actor, Charlotte has her own show-business career as a standup comedian.

Throughout “The Hero”, there’s a nagging disappointment that the movie doesn’t take enough surprising detours. At a certain point, it becomes yet another movie about a faded, out-of-his-element entertainer who has to navigate going “viral”. And ultimately, Hayden’s problems are internal. There’s no reason he can’t drink the rest of his life away until the cancer takes him over. Hayden has to make the choice to come back to the professional world, and therefore the occupied world. Amusingly, this takes the form of a mentor position in a big YA fantasy movie franchise – exactly the type of crap someone would offer Elliot in real life. Of course, Hayden has to audition. He has to be good enough, but he also has to want it. We’re not sure about that last part, about the role, about his career, even about Charlotte. What happens to the world when you’re done wanting?

Elliot was on a hot streak when he took on “The Hero” – a year later, he received his first Oscar nomination for “A Star Is Born”. He’s unsurprisingly excellent here, which isn’t a surprise given how Lee Hayden isn’t far removed from Elliot, a latter-day western star with a lot of authentic credibility. It’s hard to see Elliot in the many westerns he’s done and avoid the thought that he’s the real deal. A role like this is probably second nature. The first scene (which receives a callback later in the narrative) has Hayden in the booth recording voiceover. The look he gives when he’s asked for another take, annoyed, wary, clockwatching – that’s a look Elliot no doubt has given before. Of course, a movie like this, you have to go back and parse the title. That’s part of the conflict for Hayden – can he be a show-business fixture, and also a hero? Or does he have to surrender one of the two? And what exactly does it mean to be a hero when you’re getting high and sleeping with a woman decades younger than you? It’s the movie’s one intriguing question that hangs in the air.

There’s a harsh truth we will have to confront, very likely soon. I don’t want to always be talking about Donald Trump on this Substack, but he has taken a very active role as the real person in charge of this current Department of Justice. And it seems very clear that his brutish, simple answer to opposition will be to criminalize those who oppose his natural order. Which means that we need to understand that the line that separates a law-abiding citizen and a criminal is about to become even thinner than it already was.

If you are out there, and you have political opinions, you can always renounce them, show your belly and give up. When our power is taken from us, we are left only with our principles, and some of us may not even have those. But if you stay true to what you believe, you may very well be targeted. You have to be prepared to go to jail. Unfortunately, you may have to one day use force against an apparatus designed to overpower your force. But that’s how systems get clogged. Civil disobedience will require your body –you may not need to hit anyone, you may not need to be hostile, but you have to stand strong. This will be an act viewed as violence, and as criminal behavior. We have entered a time where it’s not enough to be well-intentioned. You will have to put yourself at risk, you will have to be prepared to wear handcuffs. It’s a tremendous request for the world to make just one of you. It’s a significantly lesser request if it’s five of you. And if it’s twenty of you, now you have strength in numbers. If you stand on principle today, prepare to accept handcuffs. That’s unfortunately what it might cost.