{"id":271,"date":"2005-02-05T17:11:28","date_gmt":"2005-02-05T22:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=271"},"modified":"2005-02-05T17:11:28","modified_gmt":"2005-02-05T22:11:28","slug":"ossie-ill-remember-him-as-jfk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/ossie-ill-remember-him-as-jfk\/","title":{"rendered":"Ossie: I&#8217;ll remember him as JFK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/name\/nm0001115\/\">Ossie Davis <\/a>died at age 87 still acting and still an activist. He&#8217;ll be remembered for his part in bringing new black movie making to us in <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0065579\/\">&#8220;Cotton Comes to Harlem,&#8221;<\/a> for advising Spike Lee on <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0104797\/\">&#8220;Malcolm X,&#8221;<\/a> for his parts in &#8220;Malcom X&#8221; and other Lee films, for his long marriage to <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/name\/nm0002039\/\">Ruby Dee (1948 &#8211; present)<\/a> and more. He was a tireless worker in his art and in politics and social change. He gave eulogies at the funerals of both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.<\/p>\n<p>For me, oddly enough, his turn as John F Kennedy in the wonderfully touching story of aging, dignity, and Egyptian Soul-sucking mummies, <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0281686\/\">&#8220;Bubba Ho-Tep&#8221;<\/a> is the most memorable. The story could not have been carried off without Ossie&#8217;s ability to bring something deep out of something potentially so shallow, something surprising out of something so potentially predictable. He has great help from the main lead, <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/name\/nm0132257\/\">Bruce Campbell<\/a> as a man who might be Elvis, writer Joe R. Lansdale, and <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/name\/nm0181741\/\">director Don Coscarelli<\/a>. But for me Ossie is the presence that keeps Bruce\/Elvis on his toes, that keeps you believing when it&#8217;s obvious you shouldn&#8217;t be believing, that takes the movie where Lansdale&#8217;s story wants to go. Ossie like his character in Bubba Ho-Tep was active to the end, never stopping to be involved, Unlike his character, Ossie was never confused about who he was. He never accomodated and never wavered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ossie Davis died at age 87 still acting and still an activist. He&#8217;ll be remembered for his part in bringing new black movie making to us in &#8220;Cotton Comes to Harlem,&#8221; for advising Spike Lee on &#8220;Malcolm X,&#8221; for his parts in &#8220;Malcom X&#8221; and other Lee films, for his long marriage to Ruby Dee [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amusements","category-general","category-news-of-news","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}