There has been a lot of tragedy this year in the entertainment community. So far we've lost great actors, directors, comedians, the list goes on. Some of them lived a full life and gave us priceless hours of entertainment on-screen. Others were taken from us much, much too soon. Today we are going to talk about the career of character actor Fred Ward and his contribution to the horror genre, namely the creation of his character, Earl Bassett in the "Tremors" franchise.
1990's "Tremors" was one of the first horror movies I remember ever loving. I would watch it whenever it was on T.V. and it was one of the movies I repeatedly would rent at the local video store. At this age, though I'd seen movies (sneaked movies is a more accurate phrase) that I would grow to love or appreciate more as an adult (Halloween II, Jaws, Christine, It, The Exorcist, The Omen, Silence of the Lambs, Wolfen, American Werewolf in London, Cronenberg's The Fly, Prophecy,) these were not movies I loved at a young age as much as survived. No the movies I adored at this young age included: Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (which I had totally memorized at the age of five and got in trouble with for swearing with the movie) Clash of the Titans, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (really anything by Ray Harryhausen), Krull, Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, Beast Master, The Rocketeer, Conan the Destroyer, Star Trek III the Search for Spock, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Critters and of course Tremors. These movies rode the edge between adventure and horror. There was excitement and suspense in these films yes, but at the age of between six and ten I was more interested in adventures with monsters, than horror movies that glorified the creature.
"Tremors" was something special. I'd first watched it on television where it had been edited for content, which really only meant that a few curse words were replaced, which is funny because that happened with the release of the movie as well. The original film was going to be rated R and when they brought it to the MPAA board they said, "Well yeah it should be R, but mainly just for language. You have about fifteen or twenty uses of the word fuck, namely calling the monster worms in the films motherfuckers. The violence here is mainly monster violence and just kind of ridiculous and comedic in nature. We could make this movie PG-13. Producers saw money signs and thus some dubbing and editing was done and there is now only one fuck in the movie, though they do enjoy calling the monsters motherhumpers, and you can clearly see the character Val played by Kevin Bacon saying something else to Burt Gummer played to iconic perfection by Michael Gross as he congratulates Burt on killing one of the worms over the CB radio. There's also an offscreen dub during the finale when Kevin Bacon shouts "Can you fly you sucker? Can you fly?" as the worm falls to it's death after they trick it into digging itself over a cliff. The original word there is not...sucker. No writer in his right mind would ever write the word sucker, unless of course you are writing some kind of very cheesy blaxploitation film from the 70s. Below is a clip from that part of the film. You'll get the idea.
Although I still love the "Tremors" movies as an adult (yes even the straight to video or streaming sequels) I will admit that as an adult I find the dubbing in the original film to be a weak point, but I look past this point because everything else in the movie is so damn good.
Whether or not this helped the revenue for the movie I don't know, because "Tremors" didn't do all that great at the box office. It was a moderate success making 16.7 million on a 10 million dollar budget, which meant with marketing and paying back investors it made a million or two back so it wasn't a loss, but certainly wasn't the money maker Universal Studios thought it would be. The movie would make considerable more money through video rental sales and it would eventually become a cult classic. It was a horror movie that kids could rent, without the help of a lenient parent or helpful big brother.
"Tremors" was a movie for about two years that I watched at least once a month, from 1992 to 1994. I was between 8 and 10 at this point. After watching it on a weekend movie special I had to see the whole thing. The movie was suspenseful; it was scary; it was funny, it had cool monsters, and yet wasn't afraid to take a hint from "Jaws" and take it's time with a big reveal. When you are eight years old and you realize that the eel-like monsters are just the tongues of the bigger creatures, you were left in shock during that whole following action sequence where Val McKee and Earl Bassett get bucked off their horses on their way to the nearest city to get help and then have to out run the monster by jumping over a man-made concrete flood run-off. My heart was pounding. My eyes were wide. This was cinema at it's finest for an eight year old boy.
So why didn't I watch it after 1994 you may ask? Well that was when "Tremors II: Aftershocks" was released straight to video. In our little video store growing up you were put on a month waiting list for that movie.
My favorite character in "Tremors" was always Earl Bassett. Most kids liked the cartoonish aspect of Burt Gummer with his arsenal of guns and homemade bombs spouting off conspiracy theories and antigovernmental propaganda better than a modern day MAGA hat wearer, but I liked Earl. Earl reminded me of my brother Mark.
My brother Mark was a half brother. I didn't fully understand the difference of this at the age of eight years old. I did understand that we didn't have the same mother and the definition of what a half brother was, but it wouldn't be until later when my father passed away that I would understand some of the messier details of a mixed family especially during an inheritance squabble that wouldn't be settled for twelve years after my father's passing.
At eight years old my brother, was my full brother. He was sixteen years older than me, and someone I looked up to, and rightly so. On my brother's best days he was Earl Bassett. His mannerisms were similar, as was his outlook on life, especially that of women, explaining to me as a young kid that if you like a girl she needed to be someone who was tough and looks wasn't everything. A women had to be as tough as the man she was with. Mark was a competent handyman, who knew how to build things, how to run the farm that we both grew up on. He could build a tractor from the ground up and could tell you within the half hour when a cow was going to give birth. He was a tough cowboy who could ride bulls and always had an off-color joke to tell as he put a piece of Copenhagen in his lip and lit a cigarette while he put a Chris Ledoux cassette in the tape deck. He was tough. He was athletic. He was everything I wasn't.
I had physical and learning difficulties at a young age. Now they didn't involve reading or writing or even math, though I would struggle with math some in high school. No, mine involved being born with sixty percent of normal hamstring muscles, which would cause me to go to physical therapy so that I could at least walk like a normal person. My legs don't stretch out far enough for me to be able to run, so running is actually physically impossible for me.
Beyond that I had severe issues regarding small motor skill functions that still plague me to this day. I couldn't write my own name legibly until the 4th grade, though I knew how to spell it, and was an avid reader, and writer, but reading my hand-writing at that age was damn near impossible. I couldn't hit a nail with a hammer, I was poor at helping with any kind of job holding a tool, as I couldn't figure out how to even hold a pair of pliers correctly. Sometimes I would try to hold two tools at once as my brain couldn't understand that I had to put one tool down in order to pick the other one up. To this day if I do any handy work at all I have to tell myself step by step how to put something together: hold the screw, put the bit in the head of the screw. push down with effort, pull trigger. For most people this is muscle memory, but for me it's like following a recipe in a book and I can't remember what's next.
As a kid it was difficult to help, to even hold things and hand it to my dad or my brother as they built corals at the farm or repaired damage done to one of our house rentals after an eviction. Standing there shaking and holding tools, nuts, bolts, and nails induced a deep dread and anxiety that I held tightly within my chubby body as I stood there praying that I wouldn't screw up.
I essentially was fairly useless on the farm, though as a teenager I would find solace and pride in jobs that didn't require a lot of skill but only strength, such as feeding animals, digging dikes in the field as we were a flood irrigation operation, and even removing the cockle burrs from around the pond and ditch bank. These were all jobs that were below my brother, who was as natural on a horse as he was in the shop fixing a motor.
As a teacher I realize that I probably am on the autistic spectrum though I've never been tested. I couldn't take notes as a child, so instead I would memorize a room, memorizing where books were, what order they were in, where each kid sat, what their actions were, often pretending that I knew what they were thinking by their facial expressions and body language. Indeed I've always been good at reading people. This was only exceeded by my gift of gab.
Communicating with adults was always easier for me than communicating with peers my own age. I was always wanting to talk about mature topics. Political topics, or topics about where society was heading, the meaning of life, how do we know God exists and so forth, and yet I barely spoke until the age of four years old, but when I did start speaking I spoke in full sentences and haven't stopped speaking since. I have an uncanny ability to remember small details and to read people whether it's through the practice in my youth of intense study skills that are now as natural for me as it was for my brother to change a tire, or if it's because of my deep sense of empathy that I've developed being a victim of severe bullying in my middle school years I do not know. In short I was everything my brother wasn't, and he was everything that I wasn't. This would cause contention when I became older but at the age of ten I merely looked up to him as a superhuman who could do things I couldn't even dream of doing, like jumping across a ditch or riding a bull in the rodeo.
At my brother's best he was Earl Bassett, athlete, handyman, someone who could think on his feet, who always had a sarcastic joke to share where each punchline would be punctuated with a smarmy smile and a cigarette loosely hanging from his chew filled lips. At his worst however my brother was someone completely different.
At his worst Mark was a melancholic drunk who thought lowly of himself. When I had written my first novel at twelve and wanted to share it with him, for the first time in my life I saw the same kind of anxiety in my brother that I had when I would have to hold tools, trembling in a vacated rental hoping I wouldn't drop something. My brother couldn't read what I had written, not because of my handwriting as now a computer was common place, but because my brother was nearly illiterate.
I did not know that years before hand, my brother had been given a high school diploma as a gift from a small town school who knew what Mark's career was going to be. He graduated with Ds and he knew he was going to be on the farm for the rest of his life and he knew how to do everything there so why bother with an education? I was later informed by both family and educators who also had Mark in their class that if he was frustrated in school he would just put his head on his desk and refuse to work.
Mental illness runs in my family, but until my generation it was something that was not acknowledged, unless you wanted your life ruined by being put into an asylum. Dad certainly had bi-polar disorder, working like no one I'd ever seen or have seen since in the summer months when the hay had to be put up, and then talking as if the world were going to end financially in the winter. We were never going to be in the poorhouse but with Dad's doom and gloom speeches on the porch in the colder months it sure seemed like we were.
Mark suffered from depression that a tough cowboy just couldn't possibly have, and he often medicated his illness with alcohol. I have inherited the bi-polar tendencies from my father, but I'm thankful I have a strong support system that accepts me for me, and I'm now living in a world where mental health awareness is commonplace, and if I am struggling I have tools and resources to get the help I need from time to time.
My brother does not have those resources. My father didn't either, though he had an understanding wife who convinced him that getting on some medication in the winter months was an okay thing to do and didn't emasculate him in any way. My brother had to be tough in his mind and in his world and could not even acknowledge the kink in his masculine armor. My brother was jealous that a 12 year old boy could accomplish something that he couldn't even fathom of doing.
With the common place use of the computer, specifically the word processor, I was now able to flourish in school, especially in fields that included the humanities. Math was still a struggle for me, but in elementary and middle school I was never above a B student and was really more like a C student because of my poor hand writing skills. Now I was an A student with the occasional B or C in math related subjects. I loved school and was receiving accolades in the form of opportunities and awards, especially in my English and Drama classes, however it was at this time that me and my brother drifted apart and he became more like the Earl Bassett in "Tremors II: Aftershocks" broke in Perfection Nevada trying to make a go of ostrich farming, where the two birds simply look at each other with bewildered expressions and don't mate.
Earl would ease his mind with a beer and gaze upon his playboy pin-up poster (October 1974) to remind him not to reach for things that he cannot acquire. At this point me and my brother got mean towards each other. He would use words like faggot. I would use words like retard. He would ask what it was like dancing with fairies on a stage. I would ask him if he finished the latest Dick and Jane book or if that was still above his abysmal reading level.
As we grew up and drifted apart my life got significantly better. I found success in college and later after some post college blues, I found my calling in education and it is a relief to have been able to find my purpose.
My brother on the other hand peaked at about thirty years old. Then when Dad got cancer and could not run the business side of the farm as much as he used to, Mark tried to take over these responsibilities. My mother tried to assist but there was tension there as well and in my opinion my brother wasn't so much selfish wanting to covet the farm for himself as a sense of entitlement, but instead he had some kind of irrational pride where he could not ask for help. My mother offered to assist him but he took the business checkbook with him after Dad died and that was that.
To further aggravate him there was resentment as my name was still on a portion of the farm, and I physically had little to do with it other than helping on the farm in the summer, but when Dad did finally pass I was really coming into my own in college with a leadership scholarship, new found popularity, and a lot of positive remarks from professors. And while I was doing something that Mark probably thought of as useless and a waste of time he still had to pay me an irritating rent regarding his lease on a patch of land I owned but didn't work. I can understand his resentment.
My two half sisters were filled with venom towards my mother after Dad had passed. Mark had the unfortunate position of mediator and peacekeeper between the two sides of the family. He continued to drink, as the stress of the tension between the two sides of the family, and stress in his own life involving his children and their youthful mistakes became too much for him. Mark began to neglect the farm and could not handle neither the business end that my father and mother managed nor the grunt work that was mostly my responsibility on the weekends and during the summer when I was in high school. It all became too much and he became the stereotypical small town drunk that people would give a wide birth to when they'd see him swaying on the road in the valley, a pint of vodka in him and a Budweiser beer hidden between his legs that he'd sip whenever he was driving around.
The farm would eventually be sold and Mark would move to Oklahoma to try to run another ranching outfit that he'd purchase with the money he got from selling the farm. My brother and I have not spoken to each other in 10 years, but last time I heard anything about him I was informed that he was driving truck. He has broken off all contact with nearly everyone from his past in the town he grew up in mainly due to embarrassment in my opinion.
Mark always was a vain man, grumpily complaining about the gray that started showing up in his hair and beard in his 40s and cared deeply what people thought of him, living up to his cowboy persona to the point that he developed a hick accent which I don't have despite having grown up in the same town, hell in the same house as he did. Mark did not want anyone to know that he had personal problems that caused him to sell land and real estate that his father worked so hard to build so that his kids did not have to work the way he did throughout his life. With this added advantage in life I chose to go to school and become who I wanted to be, an actor, director, writer and educator. Without Dad's wealth this would have been a much harder journey indeed. Mark instead of getting the help he needed to battle his demons succumbed to them and left town to try to rebuild himself. I don't think this has happened with the degree of success he would have liked.
So what "Tremors" does, or really what the character Earl Bassett does for me is remind me of the best that my brother was, a strong, tough cowboy, competent, adaptable and quick with a joke as a fat gummy lip held a dangling cigarette limply out of the side of his mouth. And there was no better actor that could have played the part of Bassett than reliable, gritty character actor Fred Ward.
Fred was born in San Diego on December 30, 1942. His tough home life in his youth prepared him for the type of natural gritty roles he would have as a professional actor. Earl Bassett has more grit than anyone in "Tremors." Burt Gummer is a cartoon, and Val is the good looking lead. The grit comes from Fred Ward's portrayal of Earl Bassett and it wouldn't surprise me if the backstory for that character was similar to Fred's as a youth.
I mention the word grit here a lot. I'll certainly mention it again. In regards to academic success studies have shown that its not race or income that will ensure success. It's something called grit. The ability to keep on going after failure. This is what I like so much about Fred Ward. He represents that idea of grit, of adaptability on the screen. He is someone you want to have on your team if trouble should arise.
Fred's life growing up was not easy, and yet he persevered. His father was an alcoholic and a criminal who was frequently in jail. His mother was unable to cope with motherhood and abandoned him when he was three years old. Fred was then raised by his grandmother until his mother's return later in life, when she had remarried a carnival worker.
After graduating from high school, Fred would join the United States Air Force where he would spend three years serving his nation. He would then get a variety of interesting jobs, all of which required athleticism, grit and a strong work ethic. These included working as a: boxer, lumberjack, janitor and short order cook. He would then study acting in New York at the Herbert Berghof Studio. His first work as an actor would be in Italy where he would dub Italian movies into English and work as a street mime in the evening. If working as a mime doesn't prove to you that Fred Ward had grit. I don't know what will.
Fred would return to the states in the early 70s, doing television work and some Avant Garde theater. His first film appearance would be as a cowboy in the B-Movie Western Spoof Comedy "Hearts of the West." His first major role however would be playing John Anglin, one of the criminals who escape in the Don Segal directed, Clint Eastwood vehicle "Escape from Alcatraz."
In the 80s Ward would continue as a reliable character actor in some of the decades best films which included: The Right Stuff, Swing Shift, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, and Uncommon Valor.
Then in 1990 we would see him play the iconic character of Earl Bassett in "Tremors" and in 1994 he would reprise his role in what is the best straight to video sequel ever "Tremors II: Aftershocks."
1990 was probably Fred's biggest year as in addition to "Tremors" he would also star in the first NC-17 rated movie, (replacing the X rating), "Henry and June" (it's a lame movie but important in terms of film history) as well as produce and star in the dark crime drama "Miami Blues" opposite Alec Baldwin and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Other movies in the 90s would include: The Player, Thunderheart, Short Cuts, Naked Gun 33+1/3: The Final Insult, and Chain Reaction to name just a few.
He would not slow down in the 2000s either with films like: The Crow: Salvation, Full Disclosure, Corky Romano, Joe Dirt, Sweet Home Alabama, Enough and television guest appearances in: Grey's Anatomy and ER.
Fred would start to ease out of his career in the 2010s. His last role would be in 2015 as a guest star in the HBO crime drama "True Detective."
Fred Ward would pass away on May 8, 2022 at the age of 79. Though his family has declined to state a cause of death some conjecture can be made here. Fred was a private person who thrived despite the challenges he faced in his youth. I see an aspect of my brother not just in Earl Bassett but also Fred Ward here.
Fred was having marital troubles in 2013 where his wife of 18 years Marie-France Boissele filed for divorce. They reconciled later that year. This coincides with the slow down of Fred's career as a whole. Though we don't know what he died of for certain, the family did ask that any memorial donations be given to the Boston University, regarding the study of encephalopathy, which is categorized as a group of disorders that lead to an altered mental state. This can include anything from what what the old timers called "liquid brain" for those who are in their last stages of alcoholism, to a tumor, diseases such as meningitis, seizure disorders, or complications from things such as diabetes and kidney failure. This to me suggests that Fred was struggling with such a disease and may have been the trigger of his struggles regarding his marital troubles as that is the only mention I can find of any domestic trouble and the issues were resolved later that year. It wouldn't be wrong to consider the idea that Fred's personality started to change which triggered his spouse to file for a divorce, but after a medical examination it ended up being something like a tumor or early onset of dementia or something of this nature. Of course due to his requests for privacy we will probably never know for certain how he died, and it's just a theory.
Whichever the case rather than mope about the death and possible suffering of a celebrated character actor, or remember the negative regarding the past elements of one's life this weekend we are going to celebrate the life of Fred Ward and focus on the good as opposed to the bad. We will be watching "Tremors" followed by "Tremors II: Aftershocks." We will be serving San Diego Cuisine, which I'm unsure what it will be as I will have to determine this through my bountiful basket tomorrow, but it could range from: California burritos, bacon burgers, or thai food. We will probably have acai bowls for dessert. Hope to see you there!
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