I Would Be

One of my favorite actors is James Woods.  Seriously.  He has an ability to breathe life into his roles as  if to squeeze tar from a turnip.  He definite is one actor who holds twenty pounds of talent in a ten pound sack.

My minor fascination with him today is the roles he continues to choose. The man James woods portrays is the man I aim to be.  Now I am not so naive as to elude that James Woods is the man he portrays. I am aware, he is an actor.  But his unerring choice of roles that so vividly gives voice to the person I aspire to be, must have an anchor and foothold on his true nature. As is well known, the more you become a behavior, the more that behavior becomes you.  I do not desire to be the man James Woods is, but the man James Woods portrays.

From the first time I was privileged to witness him in Diggstown, to the panache he demonstrated as the villain of The Specialist.  Most recently, his role in the new television show the Shark as a man evolving on the redemption road brings to mind my own meanderings.

In his characters I find myself drawn to a few key constructs.  He is unflinching and resolute regardless of circumstance.  He is adaptive and volatile but with rationale and intent intact and obvious in each endeavor.  Decisive and direct, but not malicious. He pursues with prejudice even the hard choices and continues amidst conflict with comportment. His words speak of the world as it really is, his actions speak of the world as he would have it be.

Resolving the paradoxes and conflicts we each face every day is a challenge for any man, whether  his words are scripted or not.  If in my own walk I were to respond as James Woods would, then I would be the man I would be.