Even fewer words about Patrick Swayze...

This being a movie-themed blog, I suppose I should say something about the recent death of actor Patrick Swayze. Swayze was never really a big star in my Hollywood galaxy, and I only saw Dirty Dancing at most twice. This is probably a gender thing. Still, the guy managed to be in a few films of near-classic (Ghost and the aforementioned Dancing) or cult-classic (Roadhouse) status. Swayze tended to make the sort of films that, as NPR blogger Linda Holmes notes, you count yourself lucky if you find on TV on a sleepless night. This means he found his way into projects that managed to be both popular and entertaining--two traits that, strangely enough, don't always keep much company these days.

More to the point, however, is the fact that the media coverage of Swayze's death has largely focused on his character: his work ethic, his strong marriage, his devotion to various kinds of activism. Partly this is a backhanded way of pointing out his not-quite-A-lister status, which is fair: Swayze wasn't exactly Marlon Brando or Johnny Depp. But patterns are hard to fake, and if his colleagues all recall him as a stand-up guy, there's probably something to it. And that's refreshing. Swayze's death came at the tail of a week wherein we saw tennis champs and hip-hop stars behaving in some of the worst ways possible. The way Swayze is being remembered lets us also remember that, even in these times, fame need not come at the price of one's dignity or soul. And that, if nothing else, is worth a mention here.