Tom Skerritt died at 93 — if you have only seen Top Gun, where do you start with the rest of his work?
Tom Skerritt died at 93, and the obituaries keep listing the same landmarks: Top Gun, Alien, Picket Fences (where he won an Emmy), and Steel Magnolias. I know him almost entirely as Viper, and I want to fix that, but his filmography is huge and not all of it holds up the same way. If you had to pick one next watch for someone coming in cold — the one performance that shows what he could actually do — which is it, and why that one over the obvious Alien pick?
1 answer
- Start with Picket Fences, not Alien
Start with Picket Fences. Alien is the obvious pick and it is great, but Skerritt is one of an ensemble there and the movie belongs to the creature. Picket Fences is where he actually carries a show week after week as Sheriff Jimmy Brock, and it is the performance that won him the Emmy. Watch the first season and you get the warmth and the authority that made him the go-to steady hand in everything else. Then go back to Alien and you will notice how much calmer his Dallas feels by comparison.