DC Film Society: Adam's Rib May 2025

Dear Bill

Note: My good friend and esteemed local film critic Bill Henry passed away on May 10, 2015. I wrote about him shortly after his death and again a year later. Consider this the trilogy I wish I did not need to write.

Dear Bill,

Me, Earl and the Dying Girl was a solid, but unexceptional comedy-drama with some promising young actors. I would likely not remember much about this film had it not been the last you and I saw together. We attended what seemed like a typical preview screening at the Landmark E Street Theater on April 27, 2015. That was ten years ago and that was yesterday. I wish I had some appreciation for what the evening would mean. I wish I had thanked you for your friendship and all you had given me, but I didn’t. We talked about the film outside for a few minutes. There may have been others around. We said our goodbyes and then I left to take the Metro home. It was so ordinary, something we had done hundreds of times. How was I supposed to know that I would never see you again? This past month the theater closed, rubbing a little extra salt in the wound.

A decade has passed but the pain has not. When Adam Sandler returned to “Saturday Night Live” a few years ago, he ended the show with a song about his friend, and fellow castmate Chris Farley. He had trouble making it through to the end, but he did. Supposedly in the rehearsals Sandler could not finish the song. Farley died in 1997, but the years did not temper the loss of his friend. I know how he feels. Val Kilmer passed away a few weeks ago. My favorite scene of his, or of anyone’s, is a small moment in Tombstone. Kilmer’s Doc Holliday prepares for a gun fight when his tuberculosis gives him a coughing attack. Another gunfighter asks Holliday why he is out there despite his ravaging illness. “Wyatt Earp is my friend” Holliday responds, referring to the leader of their posse. The other man doesn’t think much of Holliday’s answer, dismissing it with “Hell, I’ve got lots of friends.” Holliday looks into the distance and simply says “I don’t.”

Bill, I’ve never had many friends, and I did not have any like you. I could count on you like nobody else. When a snowstorm fell the day before my Super Bowl party, everyone cancelled. Everyone but you. When Sarit and I moved we thought we could use you for a couple of hours, but you stayed well into the night because you saw that we needed it. Luckily, I never had to make a 3 a.m. emergency call, but if I had it would have been you. For the fifteen years we were friends, you were part of every key milestone in my life except my wedding, and only because that was in Israel.

Life has gone on since you left, but sometimes it feels like eating food when you have the flu. You can taste the food, but it has a little less flavor now. Film was a passion we both shared, and while I still love it the joy now comes tempered with some sadness. A couple of weeks ago, I saw Sinners, an exhilarating, daring film blending the blues, the Jim Crow south and vampires into a story I had not seen before, one that seemed both fresh and like it was a tale that had been around for years, waiting to be told. As the credits rolled my exultation turned into sorrow when I realized that the person I most wanted to talk to about it was gone. Even if you also loved Sinners, and I believe you would have, you would have had a thought or an analysis that would not have occurred to me. If for some reason you disliked the film, I would have loved the argument. Even the Moonlight-La La Land and the Will Smith Slap-gate Oscar fiascos felt incomplete without your comments.

What would you think about going to the movies in 2025? No one championed the theatrical movie experience like you did. How would you respond to the threats that were just coming to the surface when you left? Maybe you would have signed up for a streaming service or two, but maybe not, as you worked for Cox Communications and were nothing if not loyal. If you did have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime or some of the others, you still would have made every effort to see a film in a theater, even if you could see it in your home a couple of weeks later. COVID would have been so tough. Going for months without walking into a theater would have been agony for you. I can see you first in line for the reopening, while taking whatever safety precautions were needed. And today you would be fighting the good fight, advocating for local theaters and seeing as many movies there as you could.

Beyond film, would you even recognize the world anymore? Besides your beloved Jets of course. They are still the same dysfunctional mess they were when you were here. What would you think of the rest, of a discourse that so often lacks the values you cherished? You always believed in kindness and fairness, in helping each other out. You never liked bullies and never believed that people’s wealth was what they were worth. More than most, you understood that cruelty is not strength, and that compassion is not weakness. So often I can see you disgusted, if not enraged, by what you would be seeing and hearing. But still, your insights and your humor would have made this world a little more bearable.

I wish I could tell you about the little boy that has come into Sarit’s and my life, and that you could be his “Uncle Bill.” You would say something inappropriate, Sarit would glare at you, we would see your mischievous grin and we would all laugh. Pretty soon there would not be anything you would not do for our little one. I am so sorry that he will never know you. I hope that one day I can tell him about you and that he will understand who you were and what you meant to me.

You, being a devout Catholic, always believed in an afterlife. I was not sure and still am not, but I hope you are right and that we will meet again. Now, as I move on to my second decade without you, I wish I could write that the fun times, and the good memories will overcome the sadness, but the pain is sharper and cuts deeper. Then again, what’s the alternative, that I will wake up one day and it really won’t matter that you left this world much too soon? That will never happen, and quite frankly, I wouldn’t want it to. The pain, however much it hurts, is the next best thing to having you here. Thank you, Bill, for more than I could ever put into these words.

Your friend always,
Adam

Adam Spector
May 1, 2025