Tom Waits makes grotesques feel entirely at home on screen. We value him still more in the weary, ordinary arguments of Short Cuts, where the distinctive voice belongs to someone worth listening to.
Fi1m perspective
In Short Cuts (1993), Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin make Earl and Doreen Piggot's irritation feel thoroughly practised. They seem to know exactly how the next argument will go, which does nothing to prevent it. We laughed, then felt unkind, because Tomlin keeps Doreen's hurt visible while Waits makes Earl's part in the friction so familiar. Robert Altman's sour view of relationships can become repetitive, but their scenes retain the hurt beneath the comedy. Waits does not need an outlandish character to justify our attention.
Small parts, including Paradise Alley (1978), preceded a more prominent role in Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law (1986). Waits remained primarily known as a musician, with a gravelly voice readily suited to the outsiders he often plays. The risk is that casting him can do all the thinking before the performance begins. A small part built around his familiar peculiarities need not ask him to discover much.
Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) makes good use of those peculiarities, casting him as R.M. Renfield. Waits understands the scale of the Gothic excess and commits to it without looking uncertain about what sort of film he has joined. Beside Keanu Reeves's stiff Jonathan Harker, that confidence is a considerable relief. We find the storytelling muddled and the acting uneven, but Waits supplies a useful example of how the performances might have been brought together. Coppola needed more of that assurance elsewhere in the cast.
The later work offers both substantial parts and brief appearances. The Coen brothers give him a near-solo stretch as a gold prospector in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), a part that draws on age and vulnerability. Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza (2021) gives him a small appearance as Rex Blau. Neither size of part guarantees anything, but the prospector is a useful reminder that he can hold attention without company to quarrel with. Start with Short Cuts if the cameos have left you wondering what a larger part might allow.
Biography
Tom Waits is an American actor and musician. He has appeared in numerous films, often in supporting character roles.
His film credits include R.M. Renfield in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Earl Piggot in Short Cuts (1993). He has worked with directors including Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman, and appeared in films such as Down by Law (1986), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), Seven Psychopaths (2012) and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018).
