I couldn’t help it. There I was in the theatre by myself, watching Entrapment. (It was a hard day, and I had gift cards.) The movie wound its way to the close, and there was Ving Rhames. He’d been there off and on through the whole movie, and that was nice; I like Ving Rhames. But he reached the top of the stairs and yelled, “Be cool!” And I burst into laughter. I couldn’t help it. Pissed off the old couple behind me, I grant you, but all I could think about was Pulp Fiction. And, yeah, I’m pretty sure he never says that in Pulp Fiction, but several other people do, and I just lost it.

Ving Rhames. Named after newscaster Irving R. Levine. Given the nickname Ving by former roommate Stanley Tucci. Surprisingly small in person, apparently—under six feet tall, barely over two hundred pounds. A lot of things you wouldn’t really expect of him, all in all, and that’s even before getting into The Long Walk Home, where he plays Whoopi Goldberg’s husband and doesn’t shoot anybody. Well, that was before Pulp Fiction. But the tear-stricken moment when he gave his Golden Globe to Jack Lemmon, who he thought deserved it more than he did, was after, and seriously, seek it out and just try not to cry.

I’m pleased to discover that he actually prefers Rosewood to Pulp Fiction. As do I. It left me shaking. It’s also an important piece of history that we don’t talk about much; it’s the story of a town in Florida pretty well completely made up of black people that was wiped out in a horrific act of violence, leaving we-still-don’t-know-how-many dead. The movie’s history is iffy—for starters, Rhames plays a fictional character. But at least it’s helping to break the silence about that awful event.

I quite wish he’d do more movies like that. He’s the only person other than Tom Cruise who’s been in all the Mission: Impossible movies, but of course I don’t watch those. I also feel as though a lot of the roles he’s given don’t emphasize the quality of his acting. Which he can do; after all, the man’s a Julliard graduate who went directly from graduation to Shakespeare in the Park—Richard III with Kevin Kline, in fact. You don’t get that for just presence.

Though my Gods his presence has taken him far. He doesn’t consider Marcellus Wallace to be a breakout role, more just one more step, but honestly I’m not sure the movie would work as well as it does with anyone else in the role, even though he’s not in quite a lot of it. Entrapment is a silly movie that I remember very little about, but he manages to draw attention starring opposite Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones. Whatever else you want to call Ving Rhames, he’s always memorable.

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