Where the fuck is Lawrence Gilliard?

Where the fuck is Wallace?


A love letter to Lawrence Gilliard Jr.

I've just finished watching Season One of The Wire, and I'm distressed. Let me explain. When it comes to watching a TV series, I'm a perrenial late-comer.  Shows have already come and gone and won their awards and accolades before I ever get to them.  Sometimes this works great - it's an excellent screening device to someone with too few hours and too much to see. But the downside is that I'd miss out on all the excitement of a great new show.

And thus it was with The Wire, which I'm just now discovering as it is  currently being aired on HBO's On Demand Series.


As I was watching Season One I became more and more drawn to the character of Dee (D'Angelo Barksdale) until it reached the point where I found myself looking forward to scenes that featured him (The Wire constantly switches  back and forth between scenes involving the various groups of characters). By the end of Season One I admitted to myself that a curious thing had happened -- I had fallen in  love with a character on the screen! I told myself that this was silly -- it reminded me of the movie with Mia Farrow called The Purple Rose of Cairo, a story about a screen character who walks right off the screen and into real life! At the time I thought it was a supremely silly idea.  Now I found it happening to me! I hadn't felt this way about a star since I was maybe 12 or 13. It was a powerful testiment to Dee Barkville's screen presence.

**Spoiler**
When Dee received a 20 year sentence in the final episode of  Season One, I was devastated. It was as if this had happened to a beloved family member. I set out to find out more about this amazing actor who had been able to move me in that way, and whose real name I did not even know. I turned first to IMDB to find out who Dee was. I learned that his real name was Lawrence Gilliard,  I was delighted with the fact that we had something in common -- the name Lawrence, which is a family name for me.

But then I learned to my dismay  that Lawrence Gilliard appears in only eighteen episodes. I asked how this could be possible for the greatest actor in The Wire? 

**Spoiler**
I headed to the message boards where I learned that Dee would be killed off in Season Two. Now I was really depressed. And for days. I haven't even seen Season Two yet (and don't know if I can bring myself to watch  it, although I've read that Dee's final episode, All Prologue is a tour de force).  Of course I will  end up watching it when it arrives on my box in late February or March. I  do realize in my saner moments that it's a fictional story  about a screen character.  But Dee has become very real to me. And the truth is, the story about what goes on in Baltimore projects is all too real.

I'm now in the process of trying to decipher the whys of Dee's relatively short-lived presence on The Wire. I've thought about all the possible reasons for why this happened. I well know that in the history of American cinema, it's a fairly common cliche that the black actor gets offed, almost as common as seeing the bad guys getting killed!  And when you're both black and bad (Dee does deal drugs), what future do you have?

And I told myself, this was The Wire, which has been hailed as a ground-breaking show in terms of doing things differently, including letting good people die,  as they sometimes do in real life. Yeah I know, this is an accurate portrayal of  "reality", of the way the "prison industrial complex" swallows up young black men and ruins their lives. And the justification for this is called "the war on drugs", and all this is beautifully and ironically portrayed in The Wire.  But at the same time  I couldn't help wondering if something else was also  going on "behind the scenes", so to speak. Could it have been a case of subliminal male jealousy-- of a guy who was too much of a heart throb? Of someone who possessed the kind of good looks and magnetism that couldn't be allowed--  for long? I'm only half kidding here. I was also disappointed that  there was only one "skin shot" of Lawrence in Season One, that showed that in addition to all his other attributes, he also had a gorgeous physique hiding under all that loose-fitting clothing he wore. This takes place in a scene at his house with his then girlfriend Shardene (Wendy Grantham), who later turns on him and becomes a spy for the cops. Which brings me to one last point: was Shardene's betrayal realistic? I found it hard to believe that any woman would walk away from Lawrence Gilliard that easily!

At this point I'm feeling really lousy, so I go back to IMDB to console myself by finding out what other shows Lawrence Gilliard has been in that I have yet to watch. Netflix, here I come! Having not even seen Season Two yet, I'm already lookin for my next fix. So I click on his IMDB bio page, fully  expecting to find a blitz of movies. I guess I was expecting a career comparable to those of stars like Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio, who I think of as his contemporaries  (although Pitt's a little older). They  may be his peers in terms of acting ability and screen presence, but I think Lawrence even outshines them. Both of their careers skyrocketed to the top. It seemed to me that juicy parts were even created specifically for them. I'd  begrudge them not, if Lawrence had been up there with them.

But where the FUCK was Lawrence? What I saw was plenty of TV spots and shorts -- and not enough of those good, juicy parts, not enough big-name films.  How could the actor who I wouldn't hesitate to call the Marlon Brando of his generation not have been right up there with the best of them?  Lawrence Gilliard possesses the persona of a Brando, where a look, an expression can say it all. (I also noticed that he attended the Stella Adler acting school as did  Brando). So where's he at?

At this point I have to believe that Lawrence Gilliard was being typecast. His brilliant performance in The Wire, while a personal triumph, may have also been his achilles heel. He surely has it all - the looks, the intelligence, the acting ability.  He should be a much bigger star today.  Someone on the IMDB message boards suggested that the paucity of good roles is the fault of  his agent. In fact there is an entire thread about this. And Lawrence himself is quoted somewhere as saying  that there are not that many good parts for blacks.  How sad is that? That an actor of this quality has not been given enough opportunities to fully exercise his craft?

I still believe that Lawrence Gilliard has the ability to surmount the odds he obviously faces. Aside from acting, I envision him as a role model for young men, even as a political activist like Danny Glover. Maybe he should pal up with someone in a buddy movie, like Danny Glover did with Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. But now I'm doing the same thing I'm accusing others of doing - of trying to typecast him. It's far better to just allow him run free and watch what he's capable of.  I still have high hopes. Meanwhile I'm looking forward to his next movie, Would You Rather, which is in post-production now. And Season Two.