Actor Bill, RIP

Thu Jun 3 09:29:05 2004

Jeff,
I saw that puppet contraption once on Sixth St., didn't know the creator. It was inspired! I'd never seen anything like it. 
Another actor named Bill something, also rehearsed his suicide on camera. The setting for the actual event was the Omni hotel in downtown Austin, in a room above where he had just auditioned and had been turned down for a part in "Lonesome Dove." He must have rented the room with that in mind. Premeditated.
Years earlier I had videotaped him in a play, "Downtown," by Lin Sutherland, a lunch-hour-long live theatrical daytime soap opera style theatre series that played with new episodes for weeks on the State Theatre's and other stages. The scene of him holding and playing with the gun on camera, then putting the business end of it in his mouth, rapping a monologue about taking his own life. It was eerie seen afterwards. The tape is housed at the American History Center.
He was something of a maverick, a thousand pardons Fontaine, and once went up to a bank officer's desk with a gun demanding the $150,000 the institution apparently owed him. He left with that amount, in cash, and the gun. No one dared stop him, file a terrorist complaint, or declare it a bank robbery.
Frances

 --- On Wed 06/02, Jeffrey Byrd < brazilnightbyrd2003@yahoo.com > wrote:
From: Jeffrey Byrd [mailto: brazilnightbyrd2003@yahoo.com]
To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 10:27:12 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Robert Burns RIP

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It's surprising to realize someone is heroic when you think they are just cranky, skinny and weird. I saw Robert a lot in the last few years.  He was his usual quirky, optomistic self bringing in obscure, counter-culture horror magazines with pictures and interviews that featured his horror designs. He was always full of ideas and loved parties.
Our relationship didn't start so well. Bob was publishing Free and Easy and I was doing the Austin Sun. He thought we were competitors in the ad market. I would tell him on the phone that it was a big world and that if we both did a good job we would both be fine. "But your guys are lying about your circulation. You are telling advertisers you are distributing 18,000 papers and you are only printing 12,000!"
"Bob, small papers always exaggerate their circulation. Besides we distributed 18,000 once."
Anyway we fought and feuded for awhile.  Never with much enthusiasm.
Many years later when I started the talent agency several go-betweens said I should sign Robert as an actor. I thought working together would create a nice historical symmetry. Besides Bob was a cool character, one of those hard to find actors if you needed the maniacal killer who had taught his demented son all his tricks. So one day to my pleasure he came in with all his horror memorabilia, not to mention the wacked, country singing, female-male puppet duo he created. I really appareciated his mind. And Bob, like all of us, liked to be appreciated.
We would throw Acclaim Talent mixers in our back yard and Bob would show up with a hand cranked ice cream machine or other fun devices. He never let on about the cancer. He looked skinny. But hell,  when we age everyone either gets skinny or fat. Bob never let on that anything was wrong. Not the slightest hint. Never an appeal for sympathy. No wistful comments like - I hope people appreciate me one day. 
Like Camus, I believe it's heroic to choose your end.  Bob didn't burden his friends and family with a long lingering ugly death in a money grubbing hospital. In the end - the last couple years - he wasn't sad or pathetic. He was heroic.
Nightbyrd
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