The Best Sort of Bad Guy

A little tribute to Harris Yulin

This week reminded me of 2016, the year we had to deal with all sorts of BS, and we also lost David Bowie, Prince, and Leonard Cohen. The only bright spot I can think of is at least losing that holy trinity was at least spread out over the months, and we had time to dry our eyes and catch our breath. Not this year—Sly Stone and Brian Wilson going so close to each other is a real gut punch that it’ll take time to catch our breath from. Literally two of the best to ever do it went within a few days of each other, so I can understand if the passing of somebody less famous might fly under the radar. That’s why I got home last night after going to a reading hosted by Lyz Lenz, put on Scarface, and just watched the parts featuring Harris Yulin as Detective Mel Bernstein. The America Tony Montana tries to get rich in is full of scumbags, but Yulin as the crooked cop is probably my favorite. He’s such a piece of garbage who lacks a conscience right up until he’s about to die. Then, all of a sudden, we see what a frightened little man he is. Gone is the cool and collected operator who has no reservation telling drug dealers how much of a cut he wants in order to make sure the cocaine can keep flowing. He goes from sitting with his arms crossed, acting like he knows Tony is going to continue to play along, to trying to talk his way out of his one-way ticket to the resurrection.

I’m like a rapper from the ‘90s in that Scarface is one of my all-time favorite movies. I’ve seen it a thousand times and consider it a masterpiece that should be considered among the greatest works of American cinema from the 1980s or any other decade, for that matter. Seeing old Miami, hearing the Giorgio Moroder score, Michelle Pfeiffer looking and acting like the definition of a stone-cold fox, and Al Pacino in one of his best performances is all I need, but the rest of the cast helps kick the movie up that extra notch. And if I had to pick one character out of the bunch, Yulin as the guy with actual authority—who has a job where he’s supposed to protect the rule of law, but breaks it to fill his pockets with money—is low-key the best one. He’s a perfect piece of shit; a schlubby, balding, white guy crooked cop. And Yulin plays it so perfectly. It’s the sort of role he seemed to have a knack for.

Yulin, who passed away at 87 on June 10th, was hardly an unknown. He earned an Emmy nod for his role on Frasier, and had a part in the 1975 classic Night Moves. But it was a small role in the 1989 Ghostbusters sequel that has always stood out to me, and in a lot of ways reminds me of his role in Scarface. Unlike Scarface, I actually saw Ghostbusters 2 in a movie theater when it came out. I was 8 or 9 and I can recall the exact feeling I felt when Yulin showed up as Judge Stephen “The Hammer” Wexler, who ends up flipping out so hard as he renders a guilty verdict that he causes the ghosts of a couple of guys he sent to the electric chair to come back and cause all sorts of chaos. I remember seeing a face Yulin made, and I thought to myself, “This guy looks like a human fart.” And then, in almost the blink of an eye, he goes from being this man who loves to abuse his power to a sniveling little baby, begging the Ghostbusters to save him.

Yulin was in more than a few films I loved, but as a fan of the Rule of Three Perfect Movies, which states that anybody in three or more films that I considered perfect gets a very sweet spot in heaven, it’s his small, but memorable role in another all-timer, Training Day. In the 2001 masterpiece he plays one of the “Three Wise Men,” Det. Doug Rosselli, who Denzel’s Detective Alonzo Harris introduces as “a good man.” He’s smoking a cigar in a fancy restaurant, drinking wine, telling gross, but funny stories, all while probably on the clock. He’s crooked as hell, and along with his two other cop buddies, sits higher up on the ladder than Alonzo. It’s not iconic like Denzel’s “King Kong” scene, but it’s vital to moving the film along. It shows that there’s a system, and even Alonzo, for all his bluster, has a place in it that’s not as high up as he’d have people believe.

Yulin was one of those actors who would show up in something, and I’d automatically know things were moving along. It’s interesting to me that in the three films that come to mind when I think of him, he usually showed up in a sweet spot that wasn’t the start of the film and not exactly the middle, but more the end of the start, the beginning of business picking up. I like to think directors had him in mind as sort of a set up man, and a guy who wasn’t supposed to steal the show (pretty tough to do when you’re acting with Bill Murray or Denzel). He was the grease that got the motor working. As important as any big name, but sort of overlooked and not appreciated as much. He wasn’t a leading man, and I don’t know how well he would have worked as one. Instead, by portraying the most craven and crooked men with just enough power, he helped make the soul and depth of some of the greatest movies shine even brighter.