Brett Goldin, the guy who played (the O.T.T.) Terry Schachter in CJ, was murdered yesterday. It’s sad, he was a talented actor and a decent guy.I only met Brett a couple of times in the production office for CJ, but he was definitely one of South Africa's most gifted comic actors. He took a one or two scene part in CJ and parked it. So much so that we made him up different and brought him back to play a different character a few episodes later. (as an alternate-universe, very unlikely club bouncer.)
While we were in Cape Town, he had a run of a very successful play, Bad Apple, that satirized a lot of different South African school types. I didn't go because of work, but everybody who saw it said it was a tour de force.
Brett was one of a group of actors who created a series of shorts -- "Crazy Monkey" -- that satirized the extreme/Jackass phenomenon. The spots caught on and played not just in South Africa, but on other MTV stations worldwide. They even spun them out into a movie.
It's a shocking thing when someone, anyone is murdered. And for a country still so haunted by a violent past, it's an even more bitter pill. I'm enough of a Locke guy to think that anyone we lose diminishes us all -- but when we lose someone who makes us laugh, I think the world is even poorer for it. We all need to laugh more.
You can see a memorial page to Brett Goldin by his friends in Crazy Monkey here.
2 comments:
Oh, My Lord, that's awful! Denis, I am so sorry for your loss. My condolences to you and everyone who knew and loved him. :(
Terrible news - but also news that highlights the shrinking world we live in. Here I am in Oxfordshire, and this story made the fromt page of one of my local papers, the Stratford Herald, as Mr Goldin was due to play Guildenstern at the RSC, starting next week.
Deepest sympathies to all of you affected by this.
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