Silly odes to Alan Rickman in ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and ‘Die Hard’

Alan Rickman ride a horse: Two of my children at play, and the curious value of ephemeral art

Read a verse, shoot the glass

Alan Rickman ride a horse
Alan Rickman ride real fast
Alan Rickman read a verse
Alan Rickman shoot the glass

We watch a lot of movies as a family at Huis Greydanus, or, as we’ve taken to calling our home, the Grey Havens. Recently we watched Ang Lee’s lovely 1995 Sense and Sensibility, with Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon, the underdog suitor for Kate Winslet’s Marianne. Afterward, my daughter Anna dashed off the above bit of doggerel in a family group message thread.

Rickman is a wonderful and versatile actor, and of course he isn’t Hans Gruber, and yet—much as Leonard Nimoy followed up his memoir I Am Not Spock with a second volume called I Am Spock—Rickman is Hans Gruber. Like Nimoy, Rickman is by no means limited by his most iconic role, and I love his versatile performances in movies as different as Truly, Madly, Deeply and Galaxy Quest. (And of course he’s brilliant as Severus Snape.) But, also like Nimoy, Rickman never entirely sheds that defining role—or else Gruber contains so much of Rickman that, no matter what role he plays, I’m never not aware of that defining big-screen debut … and that slight cognitive dissonance is, of course, the joke behind Anna’s silly verse.

Anyway, Anna’s composition inspired her brother James to do a series of verses in a similar vein. (As he wrote on a phone for family consumption only, I may have made tiny editorial adjustments.)

Rickman carry girl in rain
Rickman into bed he tuck her
Rickman say to John McClane
“Yippee ki-yay motherf****r”

Rickman offers parish free
Rickman Marianne he wed
Rickman also count to three
Rickman shoot Ellis in the head

Rickman reading verses lyrical
Rickman with Willoughby does vie
Rickman offers you a miracle
Rickman gives you the F.B.I.

Rickman lost sweetheart long ago
Rickman over sick girl never rests
Rickman: “Give me the code”
Rickman: “Who said we were terrorists”

So much ephemeral art of this sort passes through our lives and is quickly forgotten, leaving the world not much poorer for its passing. Not much, but not not at all! Knocking about in my head are bits and pieces of humorous compositions from people I knew decades ago who have probably long since forgotten them, but I haven’t. I don’t know why this matters to me, but it does, a little.

Perhaps you have bits of silliness like this knocking about in your head that you think should be preserved or shared in some way. Feel free to post them in the comments!

P.S. Aaand my first response comes via Facebook comments—and, as it relies on graphics and can’t be posted in the comments, here it is!