Passages
We seem to have been on a run of celebrity deaths. Today had the news about the passing of Donald Moffat, a deft character actor who was especially good at arrogant, snobby types. He was the president in “Clear and Present Danger,” Ford Frick in “61*,” Lyndon Johnson in “The Right Stuff.” I especially liked his work in “Class Action,” where he went head to head against Gene Hackman in legal wrangling, Just before that we lost Penny Marshall, a funny actress in “Laverne & Shirley,” an able director for “A League of Their Own,” the delightful “Big,” “Renaissance Man” (worth seeing for the “Henry V” monologue, and the Christmas perennial “The Preacher’s Wife.” And it was a grin when she popped up at the end of “Get Shorty” as the director of its concluding movie. There was Ricky Jay, full of off-camera skills but a steady screen player who was a go-to for the formidable writer-directors David Mamet and Paul Thomas Anderson. There were people who guided my career, such as writer Will...