“He’s the man standing up there beside Errol Flynn.” – Amanda McBroom

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Amanda McBroom

I said recently on Twitter (I know, so ridiculous, like that has any validity whatsoever – however, apparently it’s all going into the Library of Congress, so at least my name will live on forever in some capacity) that the best byproduct so far of Ridley Scott’s self-serious and “historically accurate” Robin Hood is that Errol Flynn is all over the place right now, and I’m in heaven about it. He’s always had the props, obviously, but it’s nice to see him get the props once again, in almost every single review, from folks who miss the jaunty careless air he brought to a role that is, honestly, just an excuse for some swashbuckling and some fun. Shouldn’t it all be a bit more fun? (Thanks, Mr. Ebert. I agree.)

I grew up on Errol Flynn movies, and when the Dean Stockwell obsession took over my life in 2007, I loved going back to re-watch Kim, a movie I had seen on a fuzzy black-and-white television in our family den when I was about 10 years old. Stockwell tells stories of how Flynn treated him and what that experience was like, and it’s pretty cool.

All of this is to say:

Cabaret singer Amanda McBroom is the daughter of David Bruce, an actor who worked with Errol Flynn multiple times, a man with a long career (there’s a wonderful tribute to him here). McBroom is also a songwriter (she wrote, you know, that little-known song called “The Rose”, made famous by another performer), and she wrote a song about her father called “Errol Flynn” that came up on my iPod shuffle today and, as always, I had to skip right over it, because it’s far too emotional for me to listen to when I’m out and about doing errands. I cannot listen to it with any distance. It dissolves me. Repeatedly.

I won’t even speak any further about it. Some things are beyond words, and it’s better to just point to the source, and say: “There. Look at that.” It is a song that has even more poignancy to me now than it did when I first heard it.

It’s a tribute to her father, yes, but it’s also a tribute to artists. To the loneliness of the pursuit, and to the inherent dignity in a job well done, even in B-movies, even with your name far far below the star’s name. David Bruce was just such an actor.

Below the jump is a clip of Amanda McBroom performing “Errol Flynn”. It’s controlled, elegant, with abysses of emotion below the surface. And listen to those lyrics.


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26 Responses to “He’s the man standing up there beside Errol Flynn.” – Amanda McBroom

  1. Dwigth says:

    A great tribute…thanks for posting it.

    Mentioning Kim, I watched the movie for the first time a couple of years ago after reading the book. Flynn’s character was given a lot more import (and obviously screen time) in the movie, but that was fine with me. At some point I realized the role had been tailored into having him play a typical Errol Flynn-like character regardless of what was in the book…obviously what he did best!

    • BarryBrockett says:

      Introduced to Amanda’s McBroom’s, “Errol Flynn” perhaps just a year ago, I hear it as if I’ve heard it forever; it cuts that deep. “He kissed me goodbye at the old Union Station. That’s the last time I saw him, the last time I cried…” Her father had left her, and I’m curious as to her age at that moment; I’m thinking about five-years old. Anyone know, or dare venture a guess? Powerful piece… pain, longing, and ultimately, forgiveness. A gem, that’s what it is.

      • nathan3591 says:

        I just found this song lately. What a song! Touching and simple. Even though it is an expression of her love for her father, mentioning Errol Flynn is really what draws it to me. Realizing how sad Flynn’s later life was, listening to it almost caused a heartbreaking effect in me.

  2. Dan says:

    I’ll prolly see the ‘new’Robin Hood because I really like Ridley Scott, even his bad moves (pace Kingdom of Heaven, but Flynn’s version is currently winging it’s way to me.

  3. red says:

    Dwigth- Yes, Amanda McBroom’s song is just killer. A great performance, an amazing tribute.

  4. red says:

    This post was really just an excuse to post the McBroom clip, which I adore. It was on my mind today – because of it coming up on the iPod shuffle, and Flynn has been on my mind too, because of all of the publicity recently.

  5. red says:

    It really is ridiculous – Errol Flynn in Kim – with that huge turban and all that balderdash – like – really??? but he really is so much fun in that movie. I love their rapport. He plays second banana to young Dean Stockwell, and he seems pretty much fine with it, which seems rather rare to me.

  6. Bruce Reid says:

    That is a lovely song–lovely enough to convey its sweet resignation without the strangled spoken word of “before it begins,” I’d say, but I’m probably not being fair to the theatricality every chanteuse must employ.

    I like that sense of conflicting scale throughout, how everything is small and insignificant placed next to Flynn, but also the largest happiness and pain the world could know. How the grandeur of “old Union Station” is merely backdrop for a fatherly kiss.

    Concerning Scott, it’s interesting given the current project that Thomson favorably compares him to Curtiz in Biographical Dictionary, but I’d say the increasing ponderousness of his films have changed them in my mind from must-sees to almost unpleasant obligations. Like Dan I’ll still catch this eventually, but not with great expectation.

  7. Dan says:

    ‘Not with great expectation’ sums it up perfectly. He hasn’t made a great movie since Black Hawk and a good one since American Gangster, but I live in hope.

  8. red says:

    Bruce – In the recording of this song, the only spoken word she uses is on the line “as my dad did” (which is part of the last line: “as close as my dad did to old Errol Flynn”) – and it is heart-wrenching, and I agree, best used sparingly. What I feel here in her performance is that she is getting moved, and trying to manage it – perhaps taking those beats to slow down the tidal wave a bit.

    To me, the line “now i’m older than him” is where forget it, put a fork in me, I’m done. Every time.

    It’s the simplicity of her love for her father, the fact she still misses him, and the oddity of having a father who was an actor – because he lives on, on the late-show, and there he is … caught in time … Cinema, one of the only art forms that truly catches that fleeting mysterious thing called TIME. In such a literal way.

    I listened to the radio interview that Crowe gave where he got annoyed at the interviewer for saying his accent in the film sounded Irish. Crowe comes off very badly in the interview, humorless and unbelievably rude. The bloom is definitely off the rose with this movie star. I was a huge fan, very early on, from Romper Stomper days, and I know he was always a bit of a brute, but this kind of thing is just tiresome now. But more disturbing to me was how boring he made the movie sound, how “serious” – babbling about the Crusades and economics and monarchs and Robin Hood’s father dying – and I’m like: Robin Hood? Serious? MY Robin Hood?

  9. red says:

    Definitely an unpleasant obligation. I have liked Ridley Scott as well, but this is a misfire – in conception, in execution – Yuk. Way to take all the fun out of what is essentially a silly story beloved by many. Gimme Errol Flynn in tights and a jaunty little cap laughing hysterically and bounding around on fake trees any day!

  10. Bruce Reid says:

    I remember throughout the early ’90s how every film lover I knew couldn’t figure out why this rousing, magnetic actor from Australia, who’d shown such range and ambition without sacrificing a dollop of charisma, hadn’t burst out to become the biggest Hollywood star since…hell, name your pick. As always, careful what you wish for.

  11. Bruce Reid says:

    And yes, that little miracle of time captured in the middle of a song all about how it races by is a marvelous moment.

  12. red says:

    Totally. Crowe was positively electric back then. He has not handled fame well. I know it can’t be easy, and I have sympathy for those who struggle with it and who lash out – but my main sadness is that all of that fame stuff has seemed to enter into his acting. He seems to downplay his natural surliness and now tries to be … cuddly? Understandable? Is that the word?

    A Beautiful Mind was a travesty on so many levels – it’s rare that a movie actually makes me angry – but that one did. It wasn’t his performance that made me mad – the entire THING sent me into a RAGE – but to speak specifically to Crowe: I feel he was distrusting the very thing that made him so good at the beginning. His ability to enter into other people’s shoes, with no selfconsciousness whatsoever. He just LEAPT without looking. In Romper Stomper, The Sum of Us, Proof, and then LA Confidential. The Insider. Amazing, the range, the power.

    Gladiator ruined him. Made him a huge star – but maybe that wasn’t the best route for him. I didn’t like that movie very much, and felt he was slogged down by his part – you know, it was all a bit too serious and there were too many special effects – I was used to his New Zealand stuff, I was used to him ALWAYS being center stage – and now – he just seemed … a cog in some giant wheel.

    I know actors (most of my friends are actors) who have pretty much “forgotten” how to act – and how did this occur? By overthinking. Overanalyzing, and second-guessing. By listening to bad reviews as well as good reviews – by taking them too much to heart – and by placing a value on yourself that is externally based, as opposed to internal.

    One of the reasons why his Oscar acceptance speech was so moving to me, so beautiful, was that he spoke to young hopeful actors out there – in such a sincere way – “keep at it” he said – and it was lovely, how he did it.

    I am still a fan, but I have to say – from Beautiful Mind on, I have NOT been pleased with his choices.

    I think he’s self-conscious now – that’s the main thing I get from him, and why he seems so annoyed and humorless in interviews (when before, he was just a HOOT – so refreshing). He is trying to “manage” his image, and he finds it awkward. It doesn’t suit him. He can no longer hide in his parts. I hope he can find his way back again – he’s quite good at it. He’s not as good at accents as he thinks he is – even LA Confidential was a bit dodgy at points – but when the acting is that good, you don’t care.

    Kind of a bummer.

  13. red says:

    I’d love to see him be in a small ensemble piece, where he plays a regular guy, not some macho tormented action figure. Like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, or the Coen brothers – directors who could channel his Russell Crowe-ness in another way, something smaller and subtler – where he’s part of a team, and not just a giant head on a movie poster. I’d like to see him get lost in an ensemble again. I don’t know if it’s possible now. Who knows. I live in hope.

  14. mitchell says:

    one of my favorite songs…kills me.

  15. red says:

    Mitchell – you’re the reason I even heard of this song. It kills me too. She’s wonderful.

  16. Lou says:

    Unfortunately, I wouldn’t hold my breath for our Rus to be in any small and/or ensemble parts. When “American Gangster” came out, Entertainment Weekly did a double interview with him and Denzel where he talked of Spike Lee wanting him for a bio pic of Joe Louis. He was to play Max Schmeling, and he turned down the role, simply because (I’m paraphrasing here) he wouldn’t be the lead (I think he even stated he wouldn’t take a part unless he was playing Louis).

    Granted, EW isn’t an unimpeachable source, but it was that moment I lost much of my respect for him as an actor. (Even Denzel seemed to be taken aback by that, if I remember correctly). I’m not going to use that hoary old cliche, because, frankly, there are a LOT of “small parts” out there, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try to do a lot with them.

  17. red says:

    Lou, I’m not “holding my breath”. I often do this type of career planning for actors I love. Free of charge. I have dream parts in my head for them. I have a dream production in my head of King Lear, with Dennis Hopper as King Lear and Dean Stockwell as The Fool, which clearly will never happen, but it is something I enjoy thinking about and imagining.

    • Donald F Smith says:

      Will Smith says quite openly that he didn’t take the role in “Django Unchained’ because it wasn’t the lead. Glad I found this, looking for a link to that Errol Flynn/Truman Capote story.

  18. alexandra says:

    My God. I’m a mess Sheila. That was absolutely stunning. She’s literally sitting in a Pause and speaking. That voice of hers is remarkable, but when someone can just sit there and tell a story of that magnitude and seem to keep it small….just Tell Us….I’m speechless.

    Thank you.

    (I miss my Dad)

  19. red says:

    Alex – I miss my dad, too.

    and yes – I love what you say about the Pause, and now that I’ve sat in on your Viewpoints rehearsals, I kind of know what you are talking about. The ability to NOT “go for it”, reach for it – but sit in it, breathe in it – is so rare.

    Her emotion at the end is EARNED rather than strived for.

    I seriously can’t listen to this song. At all. So I wanted to pass it on for OTHERS to enjoy or be a wreck about, since I clearly can’t deal with it!

  20. Bruce Reid says:

    Lou: “I think he even stated he wouldn’t take a part unless he was playing Louis”

    I didn’t see this interview but in fairness that’s a funnier line the more straight-faced you play it.

  21. red says:

    Also, acting just doesn’t seem fun anymore to Crowe. He’s kind of a drip. I watch the movie he made back in New Zealand – The Sum of Us – where he plays a sweet shy gay kid, living with his dad – and it’s unlike anything he’s ever really done – and shows a whole other side of him – that frankly I haven’t seen since. He’s terrific in it.

    He seems afraid that he won’t be “taken seriously”, so he comes off as serious and studied in interviews, and blah blah blah – it’s a big fat bore. He’s in movies that have “messages” and all that. Well, “Sum of Us” had a message. It’s not a great film or anything like that, but it made its points, it was about the love between a father and son, and all that – but it didn’t feel so TOP-heavy, like Crowe’s films feel now.

    Ooh, let’s burden Robin Hood with daddy-issues and post-traumatic stress disorder. Let’s be all SERIOUS about it, because then we can justify to ourselves the fact that what we are REALLY doing is running around in fake armor with fake bow and arrows, pretending to be at war with other actors. It’s a very very expensive version of “bang bang you’re dead”.

    Lighten up, peeps. I’m not against seriousness, but taking YOURSELF seriously is a huge bore. at least so openly.

    I don’t know Russell Crowe. I don’t care about who he is in real life – what matters to me is that this kind of thing has now impacted his ACTING, which was once so lively and fluid and exciting. And that’s the real shame.

  22. Lou says:

    Bruce: LOL. Maybe he said it completely tongue-in-cheek. Kind of hard to tell in just the printed word. But obviously it is a statement that stands out a bit. : D

  23. red says:

    Lou –

    So weird!!

    Hard to imagine Crowe being tongue-in-cheek, isn’t it? – wonder what Spike’s response was.

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