Mental Sorbet
No politics, just stuff. Like mental sherbet, but with special consideration for the lactose intolerant
When I first watched The Karate Kid (1984), one of the actors who resonated with me in a bit part was the bleach blond “Dutch” —the Cobra Kai member who famously tries to fight Daniel LaRusso in the locker room right before the All Valley Karate Tournament is set to start.
At the time, I had no idea who the actor playing him was; and yet there was something about him that made me pay attention, because — as great as Billy Zabka was a Johnny Lawrence — nobody in the Kai scared me as much as Dutch did. His bullying felt very real and very primal. It was almost like he thought he was in a Scorsese film, not an elevated high school drama.
I found out many years later that the actor who played Dutch is Chad McQueen, the only son of iconic movie star Steve McQueen. After which his performance — small though it was — made sense: his father had the ability to say very little and yet you were drawn to him. There was a presence Steve McQueen had that, in this brief scene in what became a surprise hit in the summer of 1984, it was evident his son shared.
Chad McQueen never really did much of real note in Hollywood. He appeared in a raft of mostly straight-to-video movies post-Karate Kid, and never achieved any sort of stardom or acclaim as an actor. Still, he seems to have lived a pretty good life in the shadow of a famous father. Born in 1960 to McQueen and Philippine actress Neille Adams, Chad followed up his acting career by founding McQueen Racing, a company specializing in performance vehicles. Like his father, the younger McQueen raced cars until a near-fatal crash left him in a coma for a month and resulted in his having screws and plates surgically installed to stabilize his spinal column.
Chad McQueen died two days ago, September 11, at the age of 63. Throughout his brief career in Hollywood, he held fast to his refusal to take roles based on connections to his famous father. And though he was an original cast member of The Karate Kid, he never reprised his role after Karate Kid 2, despite major interest from the writers and producers of the wildly popular Cobra Kai series.
I don’t really know why Chad McQueen resonates with me so much. Age? Nostalgia? Who can say.
But he does, largely on the strength of one brief scene in a movie 40 years old.
If that’s not staying power, I don’t know what is. Rest it peace, Dutch.
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While I’m on the subject of movies and small roles, I want to point out two notable — and really quite jarring! — small film roles from actors who went on to much greater success later in their careers, but who, when they show up in these films, just seem completely out of place. Not because of their acting, necessarily. But because of who they became.
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