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| By Elizabeth Weitz |
Taylor Negron always presented himself as “That Guy”, the one who delivered pizza to Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High, the mailman in Better Off Dead, the mailman in How I Got Into College…so many small parts in so many big pictures. Then again he managed to score bigger roles as well: Julio in Easy Money, Dr. Phil Burns in Young Doctors In Love, Albert Emperato in Punchline and Milo in The Last Boy Scout.
For some this is all they will know about him.
But losing Taylor (who passed away this week after a long battle with liver cancer) is much more complicated than simply being reminded that “Oh yeah, he was that guy in that thing…how sad”, losing him means we lost a layered and complex and brilliant and funny man who really never got his due, never really caught on with the mainstream audience, never truly became what those of us who loved him wanted him to be… and that is known.
As a fan, I always enjoyed his work in television and movies (And who didn’t? His performances were always slightly off-putting, far more intriguing than being just a mere character who appeared for a minute and then walked off-screen forever) but it was his talents, far removed from the celluloid that appealed to me even more.
As a comic his style was more storytelling than joke-oriented, he reminded me of a less depressed, slightly more manic Spaulding Grey, weaving tales of an insane California upbringing, popular culture and the political to create a monologue tapestry as colorful as those by Daisy Tougelchee (a Navajo weaver who…oh never mind, Taylor would have enjoyed the comparison).
As a painter (yes, he was a painter trained at Academy of Fine Arts in San Francisco) he was sublime, reminiscent of Matisse, gloriously shown at galleries ( Los Angeles’ Laemmle Royal Theater and the Hotel de Ville Lifestyle) and to look at them made you feel alive and connected to the moment:
As a writer he was funny, not haha, not the kind of funny that passes as comedy today, but the kind that squeezes into the crevices of your brain and sits there waiting for you, the conscious you, to catch up to it. Then you laugh, a full bellied laugh that jiggles the stomach rolls, the kind of laugh that is embarrassing, especially if you are doing it in public in a place that isn’t conducive to glee (the DMV, or a doctors office, the kind where people, including you, are waiting to see if the test came back positive for breast cancer).
He wrote essays for XO Jane and Fresh Yarn and in the anthologies: Love, West Hollywood and Dirty Laundry: Real Life. Real Stories. Real Funny. And wrote the short story collection, Remade As Fiction.
He wrote plays: Gangster Planet (re-experience the joys of the L.A. Riots!) and Downward Facing Bitch.
And conversed with legendary comics who have taken it upon themselves to highlight their peers:
But what should be known most about Taylor, what should have lifted him higher than being known as just “That Guy” was his soul and his connection to the world around him and how all that magical thinking of his leaked out onto, not only those who knew and loved him best, but those of us who were fans (although that word seems too little, too ill-defined for how we saw ourselves) and how now, now that he is gone, the world is just a little darker…less rich…sadder.
I will miss him…and so will you.
