Longtime character actor Lou Perryman, a familiar face whose film credits include The Blues Brothers, Boys Don't Cry, Poltergeist, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was found dead Thursday in Austin, the victim of an apparent homicide. The suspect in custody, a 26-year-old man with no immediate connection to Perryman, turned himself in at an Austin courthouse and told officers to investigate Perryman's address. There the actor was discovered, reportedly the victim of multiple stab wounds. Perryman was 67.
If I may be allowed to comment on a personal note: Regular readers of The A.V. Club may remember an interview I conducted with Perryman and his friend Sonny Carl Davis about their work with filmmaker Eagle Pennell, a creative partnership that spawned the cult films The Whole Shootin' Match and Last Night At The Alamo. That interview remains a career highlight for me: Perryman especially was hilariously candid about his experience with being fed through the gears of the moviemaking machine (you might recall that he had no qualms about calling Chuck Norris a "pussy motherfucker") and he was cautiously optimistic about what the future held for both he and Davis, including a possible sequel for Shootin' Match that he was scripting and a long-in-the-planning adaptation of The Hawkline Monster. Since our interview, Perryman had remained a somewhat avuncular presence in my life, dropping the occasional e-mail or phone call to check in and chat with me about the state of this or that, or to compliment or chide me about something I'd written, and it goes without saying that I'm really, really going to miss him. I consider myself lucky to have met Lou, even in the august of his career, and to have discovered his work in the first place. Here's hoping that everyone else will do the same.