Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Andrew Patner has a moving and thoughtful take on Evanston native Charlton Heston. I don’t know enough of his work to comment thoughtfully on it, but I recommend Richard Dreyfuss’s essay on Heston as a contrast to Neil Steinberg’s piece and Michael Miner’s reaction. In particular, I thought this was significant:
Steinberg and Miner argue that Heston simply didn’t have that much talent. That may or may not be true; I don’t know that much about his movies or movies in general to argue otherwise. But broadly speaking, talent doesn’t always matter in art, and that’s not necessarily bad. The gift of speaking to certain things at certain times in history is not simply a matter of virtuosity, training, or skill; sometimes it’s merely a confluence of events with aesthetics. Heston had a voice, look, and charisma that directors and producers found useful for certain roles, and how much that had to do with any particular effort or decisions Heston made, or whether it was just one of those things, I have no idea. Quality is different than popularity, and it may be that the legend of Heston is something people should look back and be confused about, but as an aesthetic question his legacy is more complicated than his talent or lack thereof.
