I met Tom Noonan in 2008, on the two prepare in Brooklyn, heading again into Manhattan after chatting with a movie historical past class at Brooklyn Faculty. There have been possibly 40 folks on the prepare, standing and sitting. I used to be seated on a bench close to the center of the automobile. Perched on a bench on the far finish, on the alternative aspect of the aisle, writing in a pocket book, was Tom Noonan. Sure, that Tom Noonan. Francis Dolarhyde in “Manhunter.” The Reaper in “The Final Motion Hero.” The drug-dealing gangster Sutter Cain in “Robocop 2.”
Normally when you may have a celeb sighting, there’s a second the place you aren’t positive if it’s actually that particular person or any person who resembles them. I didn’t have that second as a result of no one else in all of recorded historical past seemed like Tom Noonan.
I hardly ever method well-known folks in public, however determined to make an exception this time as a result of he was considered one of my favourite character actors—and moreover, when was I going to randomly run into Tom freaking Noonan on the two prepare once more?
So I walked to the top of the automobile, stood close to his seat and stated “Pardon me, sir.”
He froze for a couple of seconds, then seemed up at me with anxious curiosity and stated, “Hello?”
“Mr. Noonan,” I stated, “my identify is Matt Seitz. I’m a movie critic. I don’t wish to take up an excessive amount of of your time, so I simply need you to know I’ve admired your work for a very long time, as each an actor and a filmmaker, and I want you continued success.”
He was relieved. And why wouldn’t he be? Tom was not a star. However he was in all probability approached on a regular basis as a result of he was immediately recognizable and had appeared in productions that had acquired cult followings.
“Thanks,” he advised me, in a noncommittal tone. Then he smiled briefly. I assumed, Matt, you dummy, you need to have stayed in your seat. “OK, thanks very a lot, for the whole lot you do,” I stated, then walked again to my seat.
A number of minutes handed. Then I felt a presence. Anyone was standing over me.
I seemed up, and up, and up, and up, till I noticed Tom’s face, trying down at me with a curious expression.
“What did you say your identify was?” he requested.
“Matt Seitz,” I stated quietly, worrying I’d by some means offended him.
“Matt Zoller Seitz?” he requested.
“Uh, yeah!”
Then the prepare pulled into one other station, the girl to my left stood up, and Tom took her seat, hunching a bit in order that our eyes could be on the similar degree.
“You saved us in New York,” he stated, grinning.
That’s how I realized that Tom had a filmmaker girlfriend (who later grew to become his spouse, 2011-2015) named Talia Lugacy, who had launched an unbiased film known as “Descent.” It’s a few faculty pupil (Rosario Dawson) who’s raped by male pupil and retaliates with an elaborate revenge plot that ends with a genuinely stunning punishment.. I had reviewed it the earlier 12 months for The New York Instances.
“Each overview was brutal,” Tom advised me, “besides yours. And it was for the Instances! I used to be anxious that we have been useless, however that one overview saved our asses.”
I requested what introduced him so deep into Brooklyn. He stated Talia’s father had a mechanic buddy in that space who was good with vehicles. His wanted fixing, so he’d pushed it out and left it. At the moment, I used to be residing with my youngsters, Hannah and James, in downtown Brooklyn, which was developing in about quarter-hour—not a lot time to speak. However we lined a variety of floor in that first dialog.
Tom stated he lived with Talia within the East Village, in a small condo close to 4th and Bowery that he’d had for a very long time. It was a really brief stroll from Paradise Manufacturing facility, the theater he based in 1982, which was then an deserted hat manufacturing unit. Lots of the cash Tom comprised of movie roles within the ‘80s went into renovating the constructing. All advised, the method took 5 years.
As my cease got here up, Tom and I exchanged e-mail addresses. That evening, I despatched him a notice saying how a lot I loved speaking with him and supplied to contact distributors who could be taken with releasing a deluxe Blu-ray version of What Occurred Was. Alas, those I talked to weren’t . Happily, Oscilloscope Laboratories in the end did launch the movie in 2021—a lovely set with a great deal of extras.
Tom emailed me again, “I used to be simply in the course of regaling Talia with our long-shot assembly on the subway. So nice to see you. In case you’d like, I might ship you a duplicate of ‘What Occurred Was…’ on DVD – ship me your handle. In case you’re ever in Manhattan, drop by. I’m on 4th close to Bowery. Perhaps convey your youngsters.”
I did. It was an important go to. James and Hannah (then 5 and 12, respectively) bonded with Tom and Talia, a pleasant girl I’m nonetheless good associates with. I feel they’d initially deliberate to prepare dinner dinner for us, however we drank a variety of wine and bought so misplaced sharing tales and arguing the deserves and faults of assorted motion pictures that we ended up ordering pizzas as an alternative. Then Tom advised my youngsters the story of how we met. On this model, we have been the one two folks on the prepare, sitting on reverse ends of the automobile.
Every time Tom retold this story in my presence, he’d add one other element that made it spookier and extra surreal. The third time I heard him inform it, there have been deafening monitor noises and decrepit public handle audio system that emitted a loud buzzing (sound results equipped by Tom Noonan). The ultimate time I heard him inform the story, he’d added a faulty electrical system that made the overhead lights flicker. After he completed telling that model, I stated, “I like the way you hate being typecast as a nasty man, however each time you inform this story, it turns into extra like a scene in a horror film.” He stated, “I’m a dramatist.”
There could be extra conversations like this one. They have been energizing and provoking. He was a mesmerizing speaker: six ft, six inches of pale, balding, spindly-limbed magnificence, arms transferring as if he have been plucking phrases from the air like his “Warmth” character did with knowledge. Typically he’d have a giant beard that sat on his chest like a brand new species of pet.
He did workshops on appearing that folks I do know attended. All of them stated he was an important trainer who spoke not simply to the craft components of appearing, however the complexities of existence. A number of in contrast his courses to a sort of remedy. Identical along with his motion pictures. In case you labored on considered one of his tasks in any capability, Tom wasn’t simply your boss; he was your mentor.
Tom was additionally a fierce champion of different artists, connecting writers with actors, actors with administrators, playwrights with composers, and recommending something a buddy had executed that he’d favored. He all the time felt that artists weren’t revered sufficient on this nation, particularly those who stubbornly obeyed their muses and appeared to have little interest in changing into a commodity.
In 2012, a constellation of those sorts gathered for Tom and Talia’s marriage ceremony in Hancock, New York, at a ramshackle farmhouse that served as Tom’s upstate retreat. Tom had affixed a geodesic dome to the primary home, giant sufficient to host a celebration. No person I requested concerning the dome appeared to know why Tom had it constructed, however there was settlement that it appeared just like the sort of factor Tom Noonan would do. The ceremony started with Tom main the visitors to a riverbank, the place he advised the story of assembly Talia on a movie set and sang her praises, blushing. Then we heard a faint drumming sound. It was coming from someplace upriver. A speck on the water slowly grew right into a canoe, gliding in the direction of us, bearing a drummer from Zozo Afrobeat and Talia, in a white costume, standing on the prow, in a pose paying homage to a figurehead on an historic warship.
Rosario Dawson and the unbiased filmmaker Caveh Zahedi have been in attendance. So was Sopranos writer-producer Todd Kessler, who forged Tom as Detective Victor Huntley on his collection Damages. Tom’s outdated buddy Rip Torn was imagined to be there, however he didn’t present up for the marriage, nor the reception, and because the evening wore on, there was discuss that he won’t seem in any respect. Torn lastly arrived close to midnight, in a automobile pushed by a buddy, when solely a handful of stragglers have been left. He was so drunk he might barely rise up. However along with his booming voice and satyr grin, Rip was nonetheless so charismatic that by the point phrase reached Tom within the dome that he had lastly arrived, a small crowd had gathered across the actor, listening as he made jokes and shared off-color anecdotes. When Tom walked outdoors and noticed Rip, he laughed and smiled and pulled him into an embrace and kissed the highest of Rip’s head, which was someplace beneath Tom’s Adam’s apple, and exclaimed, “I used to be anxious!”
I used to be lucky to bear witness to Tom’s protectiveness when his brother, the acclaimed playwright John Ford Noonan (A Couple of White Chicks Sitting Round Speaking, Some Males Want Assist), died in 2018, at an actors’ retirement house in New Jersey Tom despatched me an e-mail asking me if I might use my New York Instances connections to get the paper to write down an obituary for him.
“I do know it could imply loads to him and those that knew him and labored with him,” he wrote, including, “In case you want some background on John, I might be more than pleased to supply it, together with the historical past of a few of his extra well-known productions.” I wrote a few emails to folks I knew on the paper, and an obituary did finally run within the Instances, although I doubt I had something to do with it. What I took away from that trade was the fervour and sincerity with which Tom advocated for his brother to have his passing noticed by the paper of document. (He gave me a duplicate of considered one of his brother’s lesser-known performs, The Critic’s Spouse, saying, “I’m fairly positive you’ll like this.” He was proper.)
Tom was in his ‘50s and ‘60s once I knew him, however he talked concerning the arts with the passion and idealism of a younger pupil who’d simply graduated and couldn’t wait to make his mark on the world. I beloved that about him.
Tom’s theater was the largest instance of his dedication to doing no matter it took to provide his artwork, together with residing frugally and pouring cash he earned from appearing into making his personal stuff. Tom would undergo intervals the place he’d get annoyed at being supplied villain roles and switch them down. He stated he was in that mindset when the producers of 1993’s The Final Motion Hero requested him to play The Reaper, so he turned them down. Then he heard how a lot they have been ready to pay him and adjusted his thoughts. The quantity was sufficient to cowl postproduction on his first movie as a writer-director, 1994’s What Occurred Was…, a two-character drama starring Tom and his buddy Karen Sillas about an excruciatingly awkward first date, all set within the girl’s condo.
Tom staged What Occurred Was… as a play at Paradise Manufacturing facility, rehearsed it for six months earlier than beginning manufacturing on the film, then shot, on video, what he described to me as “a tough draft” on the theater. He timed each shot within the accomplished video so he’d know precisely how a lot 35mm movie he’d have to purchase for the film, which was shot on a redressed model of the stage set.
What Occurred Was…would go on to win each the Grand Jury Prize and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award on the 1994 Sundance Movie Pageant. Its success gave him sufficient juice to make one other film as writer-director, The Spouse, by which Tom and Julie Hagerty performed married therapists who did relationship counseling. The 2 distraught sufferers who present up at their house unannounced have been performed by Wallace Shawn and Karen Younger. (Tom was married to Younger from 1992 to 1999. Their union produced two youngsters, Felix and Wanda, who had grown up within the condo I’d quickly be visiting, and now sit on the board of the Paradise.) There could be another filmed play, Wang Dang (1998), that one other buddy of mine labored on as a video playback assistant, however it has by no means been launched. Tom and Talia produced The Form of One thing Squashed on the Paradise Manufacturing facility in 2013, which might change into Tom’s ultimate play-turned-film, and one other that has not been launched.
Chances are you’ll already know that Tom was additionally a musician, and a very good one. He did the scores for his performs and movies; his rating for What Occurred Was… is credited to the fictional Ludovico Sorret. A Connecticut native, his dad was a jazz pianist, John Ford Noonan, Sr. We bonded over having jazz musicians as mother and father and talked about how that have formed who we grew to become. Tom went to Yale on a basketball scholarship (unsurprising, contemplating his peak and construct) and studied medication solely to please his father. However he ended up dropping out, transferring to New York Metropolis, and taking part in piano and guitar in bands. He additionally wrote music for an off-Broadway play (which later grew to become a musical after the director fell in love along with his work). Whereas watching a efficiency of that play, Tom began excited about appearing, one thing he’d by no means executed. He figured since he’d been taking part in basketball since elementary college, and was already comfy performing in entrance of a whole bunch or hundreds of individuals, he’d don’t have any anxiousness about going onstage in a small theater, so he took the plunge.
At a sure level throughout an extended get-together on the condo, Tom may go away the dialog he was concerned in, stroll to an electrical piano positioned across the nook in one of many bedrooms, and start to play. I don’t suppose he was in search of an viewers. I feel he simply felt like taking part in at that second, and didn’t thoughts if folks came to visit to observe and hear.
My son James, who had already spent many hours listening to his grandfather play piano, stood subsequent to the keyboard and watched Tom play a few his personal jazz compositions. With out taking his fingers away from the keyboard, Tom requested my son, “You don’t acknowledge any of those, do you?”
“No,” he stated.
“OK, let’s strive one thing else,” Tom stated.
After which he began taking part in, of all issues, the theme tune to “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
He even sang the lyrics.
“It’s a lovely day within the neighborhood,
A phenomenal day for a neighbor,
Would you be mine?
Would you be mine?”
Watching the person who performed Francis Dolarhyde play and sing a tune made well-known by Fred Rogers, the closest factor to a saint that tv ever had, was probably the most chic and sudden moments I’ve ever skilled. I’m not an individual who shoots video compulsively. I’m selective about who and what I level a digital camera at, and I strive to not deal with actual life as uncooked content material for some platform. So I didn’t shoot Tom’s efficiency that evening. In some way, the impulse felt fallacious, like it could’ve damaged a spell.
However God, how I want I had that footage at the moment. That temporary efficiency for an viewers of 4 summed up the whole lot Tom was about. He was a delicate large, a beautiful musician, an actor’s actor, and a very good man. He was magic.