Hal Holbrook may be the most American actor whose career I was lucky enough to live during. Good man, bad men, cowards and heroes, but everything from that sculpture of a face to his cracking voice suggested a fading, fallen America.

Hearing him tempt men to commit murder and defraud the American public in Peter Hyams movies, hearing him try to explain to his son that he’s not the man he presented himself as in THAT CERTAIN SUMMER, hearing him grouse at Abe Lincoln or try to convince Chris McCandless to live

Hearing him tell ghost stories for John Carpenter or cover up Murder for George Romero, hearing him whisper from the darkness in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN he was some bizarre father figure therapist, the man who wanted the best for us and yet knew we’d get the worst

He kept the fullness of the treacherous American experience in his tightly wound and hunched figure, in that 100 proof voice, in his fearless willingness to be complex hero and smiling villain, he was the guy whose presence made the movie what it was, who cast it in bronze.