Wit & Attitude Quote by Lee Tergesen

“Loose cannon” is Hollywood shorthand for a character who refuses to behave on schedule, and Lee Tergesen uses it like a match: quick, bright, and just controlled enough to suggest the chaos is the point. He’s sketching Eddie Drake as a guy whose danger is inseparable from his charm. “Funny, edgy” isn’t just a vibe list; it’s a balancing act. Funny makes the audience lean in. Edgy keeps them slightly unsure whether they should.

Then he drops the detail that gives the whole portrait teeth: “this really foolish, foolish mustache.” The doubled “foolish” reads like an actor delighting in an unglamorous specificity, the kind that tells you more than a backstory ever could. A mustache can be a costume department afterthought, but here it’s the character’s thesis statement: Eddie performs masculinity a little too hard, clings to an outdated signal of swagger, and ends up advertising his own self-mythology. He wants to look like trouble; the mustache reveals he might be trying.

The subtext is affectionate ridicule. Tergesen isn’t dismissing Eddie; he’s locating the comedy inside the bravado. Calling out the mustache also cues us to the actor’s craft: he’s explaining how a small, ridiculous visual choice can anchor tone, turning “loose cannon” from generic menace into a specific kind of guy you’ve met - the one who mistakes a persona for a personality, and becomes entertaining precisely because he can’t see the difference.