This chapter begins with Harry Dean and his half-brother Stanley McKnight Jr. going to their mother Ersel's funeral, both stoned on marijuana. Ersel's drinking, gambling and periodic disappearances had left both with bitter memories even though she and Harry Dean had reconciled before her death. Back in Los Angeles Harry Dean was living with actress Maggie Blye and rode through the New Hollywood wave with roles in key films such as Wise Blood (1979), Alien (1979), and The Rose (1979). As bogus preacher Asa Hawks in John Huston's Wise Blood he tapped into the hard-shell fundamentalism of his rural Kentucky roots. John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) and Christine (1983) introduced him to a new generation of fans as did The Rose (1979) and later Pretty in Pink (1986). On the set of Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart (1981) he met possibly the love of his life, Rebecca De Mornay, but she would later drop him for heartthrob Tom Cruise. It was his work with European directors Ulu Grosbard in Straight Time (1978) and Bertrand Tavernier in Death Watch (1980), however, that set the stage for the greatest roles of his career.
In Their Own Words: Neil deGrasse Tyson