Ah, man, it just keeps getting worse. I was following some links related to Phil Brown’s death and stumbled across a little blurb that mentioned that William Hootkins — a.k.a. Red Six, a.k.a. Porkins, a.k.a., “the fat X-wing pilot” in the original Star Wars — died way back in October of last year. Another cancer victim, he was 58. At this point, I’m wondering how many cast members from the original trilogy are gone. I know Shelagh Fraser (Aunt Beru) passed on awhile ago, and of course Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin) and Sir Alec Guiness (the original Obi-Wan, a.k.a. “Old Ben,” Kenobi) have both been gone for several years. I may have to do some research on this subject…

Getting back to Hootkins, though, I was surprised while reviewing his filmography to see that he appeared in a number of films besides Star Wars that have mattered to me in one way or another over the years. I knew he played Major Eaton in Raiders of the Lost Ark (the guy who tells Indy the government has its “top men” studying the Ark of the Covenant), but it seems he was also in the 1980 version of Flash Gordon, the early Harrison Ford vehicle Hanover Street, the mid-80s Soviet defector movie White Nights, Tim Burton’s first Batman (he was the slimily corrupt police Lt. Eckhardt, shot by Jack Nicholson), Robert Redford’s beautiful elegy A River Runs Through It, and one of the more entertaining segments of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series (“Barcelona, May 1917”). In all of these cases, I failed to realize that Hootkins was the same guy who played Porkins, one of the most recognizable of the dozen or so X-wing pilots we see on screen (probably because he was one of the few pilots who was given an actual name, and because it was such an improbably apt name). That either speaks to Hootkins’ skill at creating distinct characters, or my lack of observational powers. In the interest of paying tribute to the actor, I’m going to say it’s the former.

TheForce.net published a short but nice piece about him when he died. I didn’t find any other obits for him…