Id been a Waits fan since I was about 13.
Tom came out first.
He had a Band-Aid on his forehead.
Tom growled back with Ah you should see the other guy.
I decided to celebrate by seeing the movie again.
Midnight showings are always the best.
When I got to the theater, the manager was pushing a chubby guy out to the street.
He kept insisting that he was in the movie.
The manager called him a junkie and yelled about him fixing in his place.
Redglare was a junkie before he was born.
His mom was a fifteen-year-old addict named Agnes Tarulli Morra and her son got hooked while still in utero.
Michael Morra was born in New York City in 1949.
They had to put methadone in his baby formula.
His old man was a gangster and his uncles were connected to the mob in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
After his mother died, Morra changed his name to Rockets Redglare.
A true American original.
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Rockets Redglare was a character who became a character actor in more than thirty movies.
He dropped dime on John Lurie inDown by Law.
He killed Eric Bogosians wise ass DJ character in Oliver StonesTalk Radio.
He rented the room to Tom Hanks man child inBig.
And to sell drugs.
According to Phil Strongman in the book Pretty Vacant: A History of Punk, Redglare killed Nancy Spungen.
Redglare supplied the Dilaudid Sid and Nancy were doing the night she was stabbed.
Redglare was also Jean Michel Basquiats connection.
His next bit came when he played poker in Jim Jarmuschs first post-film school movie,Stranger than Paradise.
The movie won the Camera dOr award for debut films at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.
The National Society of Film Critics gave it the best picture award in 1985.
In 2002 it won the award for National Film Registry at the National Film Preservation Board.
Made for around $100,000,Stranger than Paradisepulled in $2,436,000 at the box office.
Down by Law has a scene where a prison riot is incited by the chant I scream.
We all scream for ice cream.
A modern classic comedy bit.
Redglare is a rat backed into a corner and he looks like hes itching for a fix.
He gets to take care of two problems with one take-down.
His hustle is so natural he probably practiced it outside a neighborhood shooting gallery growing up.
In 1987 Redglare played Ollie inSalvation!
Candy Mountain is a cool ride in unfamiliar territory.
What happens in those rooms stays upstairs.
Talk Radiowas the story of Barry Champlain, a controversial Jewish talk radio shock jock in Texas.
Berg was shot twelve times in 1984 by a hate group that called itself The Order.
They killed Berg because he was Jewish.
The killers were convicted for violating Bergs civil rights.
Not for killing him.
The movie was based on the play of the same name by performance artist-turned actor Eric Bogosian.
Redglare harasses the on-air host as a redneck call-in antagonist until he heckles the guy to death.
Redglare sets his vitriol on simmer as he parries with Bogosian.
But its a full pot and it occasionally boils over.
Hes all voice here and Stone plays him like a sinister violin with taut strings.
The bright color of Memphis, home of Graceland and Sun Studios.
It was told in three segments.
Redglare always worked at that liquor store.
He always will and he doesnt give a shit.
He cares about every bottle in the place.
Hes watching and you better pay.
Hes the guy whos gonna make you use that gun.
But he looks genuinely surprised when someone takes him up on the offer.
Jarmusch doesnt pour a lot of Redglare, but hes good to the last drop.
In the movie, Strummer loses his girlfriend to an Elvis impersonator.
Everyone loses to Elvis somehow in Mystery Train.
Jarmusch is funny that way.
Jarmusch is funny in a lot of ways, none of them direct.
He approaches his humor from a corner and lets it blindside you.
Hes got something to show thatll freak you the fuck out.
Hes got a box where he keeps a miniature, sexy lady in a bikini bound to the cardboard.
Free only to writhe and wiggle.
Ah, maybe its not for everyone.
Redglare is comfortable on the street.
Hes been peddling this all his life.
Rockets played himself again inBasquiat, 1996 movie about Brooklyn graffiti artist turned expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The movie was directed by the painter Julian Schnabel.
Redglare reprised his real-life role in Basquiats life as bodyguard and dealer.
Rockets chattily cut heads in one episode ofOzin 1999.
Redglare packed on the pounds after he decided to substitute beer for drugs and this was his last shine.
He performed his shtick at bars back in the East Village.
Anything I ever liked.
I always did to excess, he admitted.
(De la Reguera was killed in a motorcycle crash in August 2006.
Another documentary that featured Redglare came out in 2009.
Theres speculation that it was videotaped as some kind of snuff film.
Movies are made in little bits and the bit players make it all fit.
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