I heard the sad news of your father’s all-too-early passing from Mike, left a voice-mail for you, but obviously, didn’t expect a response, given all that was going on with you and yours at the time.
But, even belatedly, I want to express not only my condolences, but also my thoughts with regard to Dennis, and you:

I talked with your dad only a couple of times, when he came out to find us talking and smoking (shame on both of us, after we each successfully quit that lovely, horrid temptsress) outside the theatre after his fabulous performance (it’s not every actor who can steal scenes from Deanna Dugan, or even match her, beat for beat) in August: Osage County…It’s not every son who can tailor a role (even one based, at least in part, on his father) a role for his dad that takes him to Steppenwolf, Broadway and theatrical immotality (none of us who saw it will ever forget his pitch-perfect portrayal, his gentle, self-deprecating humor, or his soft Oklahoma dwarl). You did each other proud!

I wish that I could have been there (for your sake and my own) through what must have been a terrible, bittersweet time. I remember well your tear- and laughter-filled (often simultaneously)
“good-bye” to Holly with us at A Red Orchid, where she gave her last, amazing, undying –(mesmerizing all who saw her in the very sexy death-thoes of the sexy, villainous, poisoned
Countessa)–performance in Chicago, and how we remembered and mourned that she had not lived to reprise her role in Killer Joe off-Broadway (Amanda Plummer couldn’t hold a candle), as Mike, Guy, and I stood (again, smoking) both immensely proud and terribly heart-broken, on the NYC streets after opening. After all, she loved the Kentucky-fried Chicken scene, wouldn’t let you cut it, thus demonstrating forever and for always, that she was the girl for you (as is Nicole, now; I still think, and told you and them, self-admitted –cp. your interview with Martin McDougal in the Steppenwolf Forum–cruel sadistic bastard that you can be to your women/actors, you don’t deserve them…so I hope that, as promised, you’re still working on that!). Would that she had lived to see her Tracy now! Of course, she’s probably wowing the Gods, as we speak!

I am glad, as you write in memorial to Dennis, that he (and you) were able to redeem, at least in small part, that painful loss, for you, for us, who love you, and for the world, which misses not only their characters, but their character and joy in the grotesque naturalism of the dramatic black comedy that we call love and life.

love,

Carl