Why I love John Heard’s per­for­mance in Cutter’s Way

Fol­low­ing the recent pass­ing of char­ac­ter actor John Heard, we’ve been reflect­ing on some of his most mem­o­rable per­for­mances. Of course there’s Peter McCal­lis­ter, the for­get­ful patri­arch of the Home Alone series, and we’ve always had a soft spot for the pho­tog­ra­ph­er in C.H.U.D., as well as the whiny exec­u­tive who com­petes with Tom Han­ks in Big (“I don’t get it!”).

Yet noth­ing quite match­es his elec­tri­fy­ing turn in 1981’s Cutter’s Way. Based on the nov­el ​‘Cut­ter and Bone’ by New­ton Thorn­burg, the film opens in true film noir fash­ion: wannabe gigo­lo Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) hazi­ly wit­ness­es a corpse being dumped in a back alley in San­ta Bar­bara. He remains uncer­tain on the mat­ter, but upon hear­ing the details, his crip­pled army bud­dy Alex Cut­ter (Heard) is con­vinced. So much so, in fact, that he prompt­ly takes charge and decides who the mur­der­er is – local tycoon JJ Cord (Stephen Elliott) – and that he should be the one to bring him down.

Heard is prac­ti­cal­ly unrecog­nis­able beneath an eye­patch and a scruffy beard. He walks with a cane, save for the nights where he’s too ham­mered to walk at all, and speaks with the sort of grave­ly inflec­tion you might asso­ciate with Tom Waits. His move­ments are clunky, exag­ger­at­ed and a lit­tle sil­ly, even for those famil­iar with Heard’s comedic work. The more we see of Cut­ter, how­ev­er, the more appar­ent it becomes that Heard is using these quirks to dis­guise a rich­er, more sor­row­ful characterisation.

One of Heard’s best scenes actu­al­ly has lit­tle to do with the plot, fol­low­ing Cut­ter as he dri­ves home in a drunk­en stu­por. See­ing the neigh­bours’ car block­ing his dri­ve­way, he prompt­ly smash­es it into a pile of scrap met­al on their front lawn. Things appear to sub­side as he stum­bles inside, but real­ly, he’s just get­ting start­ed. He rins­es the smell of booze from his mouth, changes into clean clothes, and puts on a sober, apolo­getic voice for the cops when they arrive. Giv­en his mil­i­tary ser­vice, and his appear­ance, they let him off with a minor violation.

The neigh­bours are out­raged, and Cut­ter, vis­i­bly pleased, proves that the one thing he loves more than booze is screw­ing peo­ple over. It doesn’t mat­ter that they’re blue col­lar folk like him­self; he’s played the vic­tim too long and too often. As he tells Bone lat­er in the film, every­one has a point at which they stop car­ing about oth­ers and start wor­ry­ing about their piece of the pie. For Cut­ter, that point is now: ​“I’m hun­gry, Rich. I’m fuck­ing starved.”

It’s tough to sym­pa­thise with a guy like that. Where Heard suc­ceeds is that he’s able to rec­on­cile Cutter’s prick­li­er traits; his big­otry, his booz­ing, his inabil­i­ty to go more than a few words with­out spew­ing an insult, with traces of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that inform these traits.

Direc­tor Ivan Pass­er builds his film around this unrav­el­ing per­for­mance. He ramps up the mys­tery and intrigue, only to pull back in piv­otal moments, and leave us won­der­ing if there’s real­ly a mys­tery at all, or if Cut­ter is sim­ply drown­ing in his own delu­sion. The catch is that Cut­ter doesn’t real­ly care if JJ Cord is guilty or not. To him, Cord (“and every moth­er­fuck­er like him”) is born guilty, born respon­si­ble for the country’s com­mu­nal suf­fer­ing and the swan­dive his own life has tak­en. It’s this bla­tant dis­re­gard for the truth that makes Heard’s per­for­mance so damned trag­ic. Cut­ter fan­cies him­self a hero who’s tak­ing on The Man, but real­ly, he’s just search­ing for some­thing – any­thing – to jus­ti­fy one last fight.

In a 2016 inter­view with Movie Geeks Unite!, Heard revealed that the role of Cut­ter wasn’t far off from his own per­son­al­i­ty at the time: ​“I was a real pain in the ass… I was impa­tient, impo­lite, I was drink­ing and very much caught up in the alco­holic lifestyle.” Per­haps it’s because of this (unin­ten­tion­al) method process that Cut­ter feels more true to Heard than any oth­er role in his career. While he con­tin­ued to act for decades, he was nev­er again giv­en a chance to explore the com­plex­i­ty and the fast-liv­ing men­tal­i­ty he was known for off­screen. (In his writ­ten trib­ute, close friend Daniel Stern added that Heard had ​“crazy, crazy drink and drug stamina.”)

“What’s this gonna prove?” Bone asks in the film’s dev­as­tat­ing cli­max, ​“It’s not like it’s gonna change any­thing.” Cut­ter sits in silence, per­haps real­is­ing his futil­i­ty for the first and only time. ​“I got­ta go, I go,” he mum­bles. It’s the apoth­e­o­sis of the entire film, and for Heard, a fit­ting cre­do for a career-defin­ing performance.