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Keith David got his first proper screen credit in John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), his first television credit opposite no less than Mister Rodgers in 1983 and first appeared on Broadway in 1980 in “The Lady from Dubuque,” written by the Pulitzer-winning playwright Edward Albee. Still, the first time I remember seeing David was in Emilio Estevez’s second go as writer/director, 1990’s “Men at Work,” sort of comically riffing, I would realize a couple years later when I finally saw it, on his character in “Platoon.” Is that bad? Is explaining the sanctity of a man’s fries, as he does in “Men at Work,” more or less vital to the culture than explaining how the rich are always screwing over the poor, as he does in Oliver Stone’s Oscar winner for Best Picture? (The way David says, “What we got here is a cru-sader” remains a top-tier comic undercutting of idealism.) Who knows? Probably it doesn’t matter. “Men at Work” doesn’t come up in David’s Random Roles interview with Will Harris for The AV Club in 2014 nor in his 2019 interview with Jennifer Wood for Vulture. But I’m sure whatever my first Keith David movie had been, he would tell me he was proud to have it be that one.
Wood began their chat by asking after David’s chief goal as an actor to which he replied: “I wanted to work. My goal was to be working actor.” I don’t mean to bash David’s fellow New Yorker Timothée Chalamet, but the latter pronouncing his desire to be one of the greats in his recent SAG Award winning speech is still a useful counterpoint to David’s more modest yet nevertheless noble aim. Noble, and successful. David has racked up more IMDb entries than, say, Johnny Bench, or Gil Hodges, or Tony Pérez had home runs. Even when most of his turn in the cult classic “Road House” wound up on the cutting room floor, well, David admits some sadness to Wood in their interview about that fact while also noting that role paid for his new car and his new apartment. Which isn’t to suggest acting is just about making a living. David attended The High School of Performing Arts and graduated from Juilliard Drama, and in interview after interview, he describes acting as a calling, and as a craft. And it’s why, I realize, when I think of David, I don’t necessarily think of any one movie, or any one performance, but the kind of cumulative effect, of his deep voice, his unmistakable presence, and above all, his sturdy professionalism.
That cumulative effect, I suspect, is why Jordan Peele cast David in his sensational 2022 horror/sci fi film “Nope.” The role of Otis Haywood Sr. was small, just a few flashes really, but the character was immense, in Peele’s telling a descendant of the Black horse jockey in Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion, widely considered the first motion picture. That is to say Otis Haywood Sr. was meant to represent the full scope of Black history in Hollywood and no doubt Peele knew that David’s mere presence would embody it. And that’s what I thought upon learning that Denzel Washington had recently been bestowed an Honorary Palme d’Or at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival.
I have nothing against Denzel Washington. Who would have anything against Denzel Washington? Denzel is Denzel! In my imaginary recalibrated Hollywood Walk of Fame, I gave Denzel a star. But he has received awards: Oscars, a Tony, the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, the freaking Presidential Medal of Freedom. Keith David deserves an award too. And while Cinema Romantico has made a (not) annual tradition of awarding Burnt Palms, our answer to the Cannes Film Festival’s Golden Palm, we have never bestowed an Honorary Burnt Palm. And though the Paume Brûlée has tended to be flippant in nature, it has always gone to people this blog adores, like Nicole Kidman, and Marion Cotillard, just to name a couple. Cinema Romantico adores Keith David too and his Burnt Palm is straight from the heart.
