Dervish Dust by Robyn L. Coburn

Author:Robyn L. Coburn [Coburn, Robyn L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO005000 Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts
Publisher: Potomac Books

10

The Only Reality

One of the great things about being an actor, especially in this business, is that you run across these strange characters, men and women who have extraordinary imbalances, and personalities that go along with that. Instead of going to jail or something, they become actors and exploit this aspect of their characters, of their personality.

—James Coburn, 2002

After Coburn’s busy year, his several trips abroad, and the emotional stress of losing his close friend Bruce Lee, it is hardly surprising that he felt exhausted. He spent three months resting, doing very little promotion for Harry in Your Pocket other than local interviews. He admitted to being very tired in one of those interviews at the Beverly Hills Brown Derby restaurant, and to feeling like a stranger. “I’ve been away so long I hardly recognized my neighbor, Jack Lemmon, running down the road walking his two standard poodles—or looking or whistling for them.”1

Jack Lemmon’s poodles did tend to get away from him, and they often made a beeline for the Tower Road house, even if it happened to be the middle of the night. Lemmon’s son, Chris, related the night he and his dad were looking for the dogs, Walter and Virgil, while somewhat inebriated. They were basically trespassing in Coburn’s courtyard and turned to see him, in his robe, glaring down at them from the picture window above. They fled.2

At the same time, Coburn continued to be outspoken in his opinions about the business, grumbling about “the current management” at MGM, “mutilating the results by unbelievably cutting and hacking the pictures,” and complaining that television lacks creativity because it is a selling medium, perhaps conveniently forgetting his own start in commercials.3

“Creative work simply does not exist on TV. How can it when the mood is constantly interrupted by someone telling you to shave closer or brush your teeth?” He reiterated his belief that “the motion picture medium is vitally important” and once again mentioned his eagerness to continue writing and “eventually to get into direction.” It had been awhile since he had publicly expressed that desire.

Despite all of this, by the time the interview was published, Coburn was two days away from leaving for another overseas location. He went to shoot the British film The Internecine Project in London, starting in mid-October. Internecine means “mutually destructive.” Coburn plays an entirely amoral character who manipulates four associates to kill one another in a highly choreographed sequence over one evening, in such a way as no suspicion would fall upon him. The character was the ultimate individualist, someone who had become so detached from other people that he used them as tools. He spent much of the film sitting at his desk in his home, speaking on the phone, as the ultimate puppet master. But rather than being dull, it was an intense and absorbing psychological thriller.

On October 28, 1973, Coburn participated in the photo shoot for the cover of Band on the Run, Paul McCartney and Wings’s album, by the coincidence of his simply being in London at the right time.

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