The Rise And Fall of The Guy Who Played Barry Lyndon

Ryan O'Neal's has got to be one of the more tragic stories floating around Hollywood these days. I only think of it because Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon is one of my favorite films and I was just talking about it with a friend yesterday. I mean, O'Neal was once one of the elite, A-list actors who could do anything, anytime and who has since let his career go entirely and who has , apparently, in the past few years, taken to snorting crystal meth with his son.

I think you know where I'm going with this.

O'Neal's rise and fall mirrors Lyndon's own rise and fall. Do you think Ryan O'Neal ever sits down, alone, on some random weekday morning and throws on Barry Lyndon for a quick viewing? Or maybe the better question is: How many times has Ryan O'Neal watched Barry Lyndon in the last 34 years? The answer's either somewhere around 1,500 or zero. It's got to be one or the other. But maybe an even better question is: Did Kubrick cast Ryan O'Neal in the first place because he recognized in O'Neal that very same hubris that took Barry Lyndon to such high heights and, finally, to such low lows? (Actually, I think we know the answer to that.) OR...did playing the role of Barry Lyndon send Ryan O'Neal further down the path of tragedy that he may have not gone down had he instead taken a different role?

Tangent: Casting is entirely underrated. There should be an Oscar for Best Casting even though I know this would never happen because there are too many people and too many factors that go into deciding who gets to play what role. But, actually...who cares? There should totally be an Oscar for Best Casting. It's the single most underrated task when putting a film together. It's easily just as important as having a good writer, good director, etc. Think about all the mediocre scripts or mediocre films that were saved by an awesome cast and vice versa.