In Memoriam - Roland Adcox

Roland Adcox was a man I’d heard about before I ever knew, but when I met him I didn’t know it was him.

Back at Parish Episcopal School his father teaches English. In fact, I had his father for a home room advisor my freshman year. Plenty of fellow students discounted him for his calm, quiet manner. He often used jokes that were severely dated. He had that way of starting a story and if no one was interested maybe he wouldn’t finish. Sometimes he brought us donuts. I was still new to this whole High School thing but Mr. Adcox was a curiosity. It wasn’t until I asked him for help with my Huckleberry Finn report did I realize the depths of his knowledge. He’d talk about his son every now and then. I didn’t realize that, when I graduated high school and attended SMU for Film that his son was doing the very same thing, at the exact same time.

Roland had this way of speaking: a soft-whisper laced with overtones as if at any second he could raise his voice (he never did). He spoke slowly, with a stuttered pace when he was upset and often his hands trembled. He considered every word before he said it, and often reconsidered words after he’d said them. He took strong positions often about music or movies.

Shawshank Redemption was his favorite drama, Wayne’s World his favorite comedy. He was the single greatest Simpsons enthusiast/apologist I’ve ever known. He could do incredibly accurate impressions of Christopher Walken or Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone. He could give definitive opinions on every season of SNL (John Belushi was a God, Eddie Murphy was society’s most necessary critic.) He always wore this cardigan sweater over a band tee shirt and some jeans when he came to work. He never seemed to sleep much, but those restless dreams fueled his creativity.

Roland wanted to act. I don’t think it mattered too much to him whether it was theater or film. He seemed to love the camaraderie of rehearsing a play, and the inventiveness of a young filmmaker. He always worked in the cage. That’s the place where Students borrow film equipment from the school to make their shorts. Trevino, Russell, Nicky, all different managers of the Cage but Roland was a constant. It was his anchor so to speak. Thus by always working in the cage (near all the film classes) he was savvy to help out if teachers needed a test subject or a short monologue or a scene partner. It kind of became a running joke: Roland was in everyone’s films whether he was center stage or on the wings. That’s how a lot of new students got to know him. The guy who was in everything. He was often backup, and he always came when he was much needed. Maybe you had an actor blow you off or you needed extras. Call Roland. I once had to step in on an ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ scene where Parker (my friend, the director) called Roland around sometime like 9 o’clock at night asking him if he could come lead this fake meeting and be an extra in his film. There was never any money in it for him (we never had money in our budgets to pay our actors) but we could offer food. He’d show up, fifteen to twenty minutes later with wardrobe he’d brought and Red Bull to keep him awake. He was as constant as the sun.

My senior year of college I took a job working in the Film Cage the last semester of my senior year (I wish I’d taken it first semester my freshman year to be honest.) That was the year Roland served as our interim Cage manager. It’s appeared that SMU’s Film Department couldn’t keep the position occupied for more than one school year for a surprisingly wide variety of reasons. This year it was Roland’s term to take the job he’d spent four years observing. He was a good fit as an interim cage manager since he knew the people. He didn’t have to know the equipment, he knew the policies inside and out. Maybe he couldn’t tell you how many watts each light in the Arri Kit carried but he knew that if a light bulb was broken you better explain yourself. He knew enough carpentry, basic mechanical engineering to repair small things and knew when to request somebody else do it. He was a natural stand-in. 

You could always tell though, that the job unnerved him. It wasn’t the responsibility so much as the pressure created around him. He could be good at his job or he could be everyone’s favorite. He struggled daily to balance those two and suffered for it. Too often he seemed wild-eyed after a meeting with the faculty probably for being gently reprimanded for doing something wrong. I sympathized. One semester in that place and you realize: freshmen are idiots who can’t plan ahead, true film people shine bright early on, and not everyone can be your friend.

He had damn good taste in music. He grew up in a flurry of rock music’s growth. He always played a lot of classic rock (Led Zeppelin specifically) but he enjoyed grunge intensely. Did you know he’d been to Bonnaroo twice before? I think he mentioned Lollapalooza but I could be wrong. He always talked about Pearljam and his devotion to Nirvana was the closest thing to a religious stance I ever saw him give. I think he sympathized with Kurt Cobain in that he suffered for his art, and not everyone understood him.

If music was his muse then movies were his passion. Here was a man who’d seen some of the cinematic greats and never failed to wax poetic about them. For those of us who grew up not knowing the Godfather, well, it was almost required watching if you wanted to work in the Cage. Roland always called himself the ‘Godfather of the Cage’ since he’d been around long after the department changed managers and always joked he’d be around much longer.

To that effect Roland didn’t always seem the most stable. I don’t want to insult his memory but approaching his character, who he was, you could see quickly that he had dark moments. Roland had this beautiful talent for simplifying everything. It was a gift and a curse really. On the one hand he could take your problem and make it easy to solve. On the other hand he would talk as if the world conspired against him when something didn’t work out.

His world vision was so simple sometimes that he could take things personally when they weren’t intended. He was prone to sweeping declarations. He’d once previously declared a photograph he’d taken “the single greatest piece of art [he] has ever made and will ever make.” (That’s verbatim I promise.) The kind of declarations that made you wonder. After he left the Cage at SMU… Those were more of his dark moments. And he never filtered his speech. He was beautiful, painfully honest about his thoughts. He often shared them on Facebook and sometimes they were hard to read. He said a lot of things we know he didn’t fully mean, but that he wanted to share and share it he did.

Paula Goldberg, one of our mutual professors (and his inspiration) described him perfectly in one sentence: “He was always more kind to others than he was to himself.” I don’t think you could say it any better than that. Roland was the person people trusted to talk to. He listened when you spoke. Often he’d go out of his way to greet you, see if you were okay. Stories pop up here and there about how he noticed someone suffering and addressed them, despite the fact that it’s counterintuitive to some of us. If you looked like you were in distress he’d check on you, even if it made him look perhaps too involved or too caring. He’d be the bad guy and be happy he was wrong, as long as he could help others. People I don’t know often say he showed them a minute kindness that changed either their day or the entire course of their lives. Unfortunately he never quite offered himself the same solace.

Roland Clayton Adcox (His stage/film name was Roland Clayton) was many things. He was a music lover, a cinephile in the truest sense. He was honest and troubled. He was staunchly proud of his Irish heritage, but too well-versed in self-deprecating humor. He was an aspiring actor often laid low by competition, but he never let that prevent him from enjoying the work he did.

I hope, with his passing, he gets the opportunities he always dreamed of: playing guitar with Kurt Cobain, getting to know Marlon Brando, sharing quite a few drinks with Ernest Hemingway, and having a smoke with Tennessee Williams.

 He was our rock, more than we ever realized or gave credit for. Roland was a person we loved having in our lives, even if he didn’t know it, and with his passing our world is just that much darker. 

Roland, man, we never did get that drink but tonight I’m toasting you. Thank you for blessing my life. I’ll never forget you.