When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.
James Earl Jones
Noting the passing of the great James Earl Jones.
What is the quintessential James Earl Jones role? Was it the bombardier on Major Kong’s ill-fated B-52 in Dr. Strangelove.” Was it as the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars? Perhaps as Admiral James Greer in the movies made based on Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels. For me, it has always been Field of Dreams.
Everyone remembers, “People will come, Ray.” Great moment. They remember the “Dog and a beer” scene that begins with a statement of exasperation and ends with that entirely baseball menu. Kinsella (Kevin Costner) attempts to kidnap Terrence man (Jones) by pretending his finger, tucked in his coat pocket, is a gun.
Mine is the end of the movie, where Mann is invited into the cornfield by the players, and Kinsella is not. “You’re gonna write about it,” says Kinsella. “That’s what I do,” responds Mann.
There have to be a thousand ways Jones could have delivered the line. It isn’t the most important one in the movie, nor the most memorable. But, he embeds in the line an authority that any writer will recognize. Anyone who has sat down and written words that describe a person or place, or event, who has tried to convey in writing for others what they have seen, and what it means to them. It’s is not just a simple line in a movie. It’s a writer’s line.
“It’s what I do.”
The movie makers set up that scene by observing Mann listen as people describe Doctor Graham - Moonlight Graham during his playing days. Mann is the writer, by which he is an observer, a listener. People open up to him, gifting small recollections of a good man who was once a promising ball player and became a country doctor in all of that term’s finest senses.
It is Jones’s soft and compassionate side he accesses in those moments, the man with whom you might share a ball game, or beers. Jones grew up with a deep sense of extended family, never knowing his father until he was an adult. Raised by his grandparents on a farm, he later served with distinction in the US Army.
He appeared in dozens of movies, his voice instantly recognizable. At a time when CNN was the ultimate in cable news his voice, announcing “This…is CNN” was heard the world over. Memes announcing his passing suggested that he’d been called home so his voice could be lent to God.
I should remember him because he played a fictional character who shares my name. I remember him for playing a fictional character who shares my love of the written word. I am grateful for how he animated that love with four simple words.
Write about it? It’s what I do.