John Cazale

Played Fredo Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather Part Two.

He also acted in Dog Day Afternoon, The Conversation, and The Deerhunter.

Five blockbuster films in seven years. All five were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture - Godfather, Godfather Two, and The Deerhunter won the award.

That impressive run began for Cazale in 1972 with The Godfather and ended in 1978 with The Deerhunter.

That is amazing stuff. The sad part comes in a diagnosis of lung cancer in 1977 while Cazale was working on The Deer Hunter. The diagnosis was terminal - Cazale chose to keep working on the film. He died on March 13, 1978 at the age of 42. The Deer Hunter was released on February 23, 1979.

I am not 100% sure what fascinates me about John Cazale's life but it blows me away on an emotional level. He was revered in the acting community - close friend to Al Pacino, romantic partner of Meryl Streep, lauded on Broadway where he got his start.

I could go where I always go - "Look at this man's extraordinary life; amazingly successful and tragically short. Compare it to mine and yours - tragically long, marginally successful, as long as you consider survival a success."

Can't do that though. John Cazale's life was extraordinary. One in a million. He was talented and loved. And his life was disappointingly short, which puts an exclamation point on "you never know."

Comparison's are disingenuous.

The rest of us should get comfortable with Jim Valvano's guidelines for a good life:

 "To me, there are three things we all should do every day.......................Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think, you should spend some time in thought. And number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears. Could be happiness or joy, but think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special."

When you're young, shoot for the moon.

If the moon proves to be beyond your reach, and, especially as you get older, you are wise to take comfort in laughing, thinking, and crying.