When Harry Dean Stanton died at the age of 91 on September 15, he left behind a legacy of incredible Hollywood stories and a career of indelible performances—and, as it turns out, there is still one more. At the age of 89, Stanton played his final starring role, and only his second since 1984’s Paris, Texas, in Lucky, which will premier later this month. The film, co-written by Drago Sumonja and Stanton’s longtime friend Logan Sparks, is a thinly veiled glimpse into what is essentially Stanton’s own life. Like the man who plays him, Lucky is a smoker, a yogi, a Bloody Maria enthusiast. (It’s like a Bloody Mary, but with tequila instead of vodka.) He’s also a loud and proud atheist. But when Lucky takes a serious fall in his kitchen—the possible result of a stroke, though the film isn’t clear on that point—he begins to ponder his mortality.
The film is mesmerizing—an existential examination of the tao of Harry Dean Stanton, who contracted pneumonia in early July of this year. While his close friends knew his condition, Stanton specifically said that he didn’t want the public to know he was ailing. Perhaps he waited for the very last minute so that his inner circle could have the final word.
For two nights in August, Stanton’s closest friends—including Sumonja; Sparks; Rebecca De Mornay; Ed Begley Jr.; John Carroll Lynch; a retired L.A.P.D. cop; and a barfly who goes by Mouse—gathered in Los Angeles to celebrate Harry with two late dinners, long conversation, and a heroic number of after-hours drinks at his favorite watering hole and restaurant, Dan Tana’s. I traveled from South Carolina—and brought along Bret Easton Ellis—to join in the reverie as the crew closed down Dan Tana’s both nights. It was the least we could do.
Rebecca De Mornay (actress and close friend; dated Stanton in the early 1980s):
I’ve known Harry Dean since 1982, where we met on the set of One from the Heart. He hit on me, and I was 33 years younger than him. He had a great pickup line: “Do you believe in magic?”
Ed Begley Jr. (actor, environmentalist): Harry and I really started hanging out in 1974, and I would close Dan Tana’s with him. We were working, but we were at Tana’s every night. We got a job in Macon, Georgia, with Warren Oates on the movie Cockfighter—we were shooting for about a week, and it occurred to me that we should probably call up Tana’s to let them know we were still alive.
I called them up—I still remember the number—and heard Guido say, “Good evening! Tana’s!” I said, “Guido! Ed Begley here. I’m with Harry Dean.” Guido cried out, “Oh Jesus Christ, thank God! We were gonna call the police! We thought you fell asleep and left the gas on and now you all dead!” With the two of us gone, they must have thought it was some kind of lovers’ suicide pact.
Mike Gotovac (bartender, Dan Tana’s): I got a job here in 1968. One of my first customers was Harry Dean, and we quickly became good friends. He knew his limits with the drink, and could always walk out on his feet.
Helena Kallianiotes (former belly dancer, Stanton’s oldest Hollywood friend): I met Harry Dean in 1961, so I’ve known him the longest. I’m the one who brought everyone together. I was dancing in a nightclub on Hollywood Boulevard, and Harry used to sit on the side of the stage with a guitar. He doesn’t let everyone into his world. We used to discuss religion, Jesus, and philosophies. We didn’t agree, but I love arguing with him. We’d argue until four in the morning at Dan Tana’s.
Dennis Fanning (retired L.A.P.D. detective): They stuck Sean Penn in the back of my police car for research on the movie Colors. Off-duty, myself and a few other cops would drink in this parking structure we called “The Penthouse.” One night, we were drinking and a limo pulled up with Penn and Harry Dean. That was the first time I met Harry.
In 1987, my wife and I went for a New Year’s Eve dinner with Penn and Madonna. Afterwards, we went to a place called On the Rocks, which was a private club above the Roxy, and Harry Dean was there. Over the years, we would meet and hang out, but I really got to know him after some shady businessmen ripped him off. We were friends, but after that, I started to hang around more to protect him, and make sure he wasn’t getting fucked with. We started hanging out at Ago’s all the time, with De Niro, Nicholson, and all the guys.
Foster Timms (singer/songwriter): We’d break the guitar out at Ago’s and everyone would gather. It made for a lot of beautiful moments. We’d start singing, and Joe Pesci would show up and pick up the guitar. One night, Paul Sorvino stood up and belted out an opera. Harry did the same, from across the room at our table. Harry’s got soul to burn, man.
Logan Sparks (co-writer, Lucky): I can’t explain how powerful a voice he had, and how delicate a vibrato. After he would sing a song, I would clap a little, and he would smile and nod his head in a quasi-bow. We would sit in silence for a bit, and it wasn’t awkward. Maybe he was testing me, but more likely he was just being still and it had nothing to do with me.
Rebecca De Mornay: He really is asking and really is listening to whoever he’s talking to. Most people ask questions but don’t really care about the response. That was the first thing I recognized about Harry Dean. We got to know each other for five months on the Francis Coppola shoot, but we were just platonic. When the movie was over, I fell in love with him.
Laila Nabulsi (producer, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas): Harry has always been my late-night call. The phone will ring around midnight, and I know it’s him. We usually discuss Buddhism, and its teaching in all its forms, Zen, Tibetan. And jokes, always jokes—but mainly metaphysics. Harry is a deep cat.
Craig Susser (owner, Craig’s): I started as a bartender at Dan Tana’s in 1986, and I saw Harry every night. He didn’t come in until 11:30 at night, and stayed until close. A lot of people ask where he gets the fortitude. I don’t understand the way he’s built to sustain such damage. The man runs on alcohol and cigarettes, and believes in nothing. That’s all he’ll tell you.
Mouse (Dan Tana’s regular): He’ll tell ya, “You’re nothing.” Everybody would get mad, because they didn’t understand why he’d always be saying that. It’s his way of expressing that we’re all just individuals on the planet Earth—that you’re no bigger or better than anyone else. Him and Marlon Brando were tight, and he used to get Marlon all the time. He’d say to Marlon, “You know, we’re all nothing.” Marlon would say, “What the hell do you mean?”
Ed Begley Jr.: Harry doesn’t believe in God, but he believes in the Big Bang. He’s always been quick to point out, whenever I’m waxing philosophical about something, “Begley, you’re forgetting the main point. You are nothing.”
Craig Susser: He treats everyone exactly the same, and I’ve literally never seen his behavior change, whether it’s a beautiful starlet, or some person he met on the street. One time he said to me, “Look at that coffee cup. It’s not trying to be anything but a coffee cup.” He firmly believes in nothing.
Mouse: He’s studied all kinds of philosophies, drank, snorted, and shot dope like a motherfucker. I get what Harry Dean is saying, but to me, it’s a negative outlook. But, it could be positive to him, and I gotta respect that.
Rebecca De Mornay: As Harry Dean famously says, I left him for Tom Cruise, which was the truth. [Laughs.] Harry got really angry and flew to Chicago, where we were filming Risky Business. He went to the hotel and pounded on Tom’s door. I asked, “Harry, what would you have done if Tom had answered?” Harry said, “You know? I don’t know.”
Harry Dean went on to become one of the greatest, strongest friends in my life. The friendship was great, but the relationship of a man trusting, loving, and really respecting a woman was something he had problems with. He suddenly realized his mistake, right when I left him. He had this awakening and realized I wasn’t a villain. He became my closest friend, coincidentally, right after I broke up with Tom two-and-a-half years later [Laughs.]
Bret Easton Ellis (author, American Psycho, Less Than Zero): Harry was often cast as a Harry Dean Stanton-type, and those of us who have seen most of his screen performances realize he has more range than was often allowed—but isn’t that true for most screen actors? I remember this most clearly in his one devastating scene in The Rose. He plays country singer Billy Ray, whom Bette Midler’s title character is a huge fan of. Midway through the scene, she meets him for the first time (she’s covering his songs on her tour) and he quickly humiliates her. Filmmakers rarely tapped into the kind of bravura cruelty that this master screen actor could achieve so effortlessly, and it suggested a much larger range than what American movies allowed him.
John Carroll Lynch (actor, Lucky director): In every movie I’ve seen him in, he’s always the one that’s most human, that has the most connective value emotionally. You empathize with his quiet sense of presence. It doesn’t matter if it’s Alien, The Avengers, or Big Love, where he played a really cruel, cold man. He’s so human in every role. He’s flesh and blood, man. He never does anything that isn’t flesh and blood. If you want to learn how to act, watch the last five minutes of The Straight Story over and over and over again. Richard Farnsworth lives the movie, and Harry Dean feels the movie in five minutes. The minute he recognizes what his brother did, and the melting of his vendetta towards his brother, I get goosebumps thinking about it. I aspire to that kind of ability.
Paul Herman (actor): I met Harry Dean in Morocco on [Martin] Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, with Willem Dafoe and Harvey Keitel. The first night Harry arrived, he walked into the hotel and saw about 12 of us with long beards. [He] took a look around and said, “Holy shit. Nobody told me to grow a beard!” Harvey Keitel said, “Harry? Did you ever research the time period?” Scorsese hadn’t bothered to tell him, because he assumed it was obvious.
Rebecca De Mornay: Harry Dean and I are best friends, and Tom and I don’t talk. He lets you completely in, when he loves you. He’s biologically unable to lie. To be an actor is to not act. He was born to be an actor. He doesn’t know how to not be honest, and that’s also the trouble.
Logan Sparks: His grandfather was witness to the Civil War. Powered flight was 23 years old when he was born. The man saw a lot. We just clicked. Harry once told me, “I have a bullshit meter that’s hair trigger, and I’ve seen it go off the scales, but you’re O.K.”
Paul Herman: After the shoot, we were all back in New York. Harry was visiting, and he and Harvey [Keitel] were going to meet me after lunch. Harry told Harvey that someone in L.A. had told him that I had died. Harvey said, “What the hell are you talking about? We’re going to meet Paulie now.” I said, “Harry, if that was true, why didn’t you try and go to my fuckin’ funeral?” Harry said, “I was busy.”
Drago Sumonja: We modeled the bar in Lucky after Dan Tana’s; we just took stuff from what we knew about Harry and his thoughts on life, and put it directly into the screenplay. Some of the stuff we lifted verbatim from Harry. We’d be rehearsing with Harry, and he’d say, “I can’t memorize all this.” We’d say, “You’ve told us this same fucking story 30 fucking times! Just tell it again!”
John Carroll Lynch: Directing Harry, with much of the script based on things he’s said 10,000 times in real life, it’s different to say it on camera. When you record it for posterity, I think it really made him think about all his sayings. What does it really mean? The minute you put a frame around that saying, it takes on a whole different meaning to the times you’ve said it in a bar with a tequila in hand at Dan Tana’s. He takes direction, but he needs to know why. On Lucky, the moments he most responded to were the ones when there was a difficult line.
Craig Susser: If you think about where he came from, what he’s achieved and how long he’s lived, who am I to say that he didn’t get it right? There’s no affect to him, and there’s plenty of times he’s told me to go fuck myself. But that’s him being real, and I’ll always love him for that.
