Whatever happened to . . .

Richard Grieco of 21 Jump Street fame blows his cover: He's a serious painternow, no joke

After painting for more than two decades, Richard Grieco started showing hiswork in 2009.
Courtesy Photo
Complexity of Twins, mixed media on canvas.
Void of Emotion, mixed media on canvas.
Oceans of Mars 2 , mixed media on canvas.
American Red, mixed media on canvas.

Three years ago, 21 Jump Street 1980s TV legend Richard Grieco decided to share a secret with the public. Like Tony Bennet, Jerry Garcia, and Jane Seymour before him . . . Grieco too was both a celebrity and a painter.

It all happened on the set of If Looks Could Kill, a 1991 action/comedy in which the actor plays a high school slacker who gets mistaken for a secret agent. (The movie didn't earn great reviews, but it does feature a surprise cameo from Roger Daltrey.)

"We were filming near Montreal and I was hanging out with a bunch of artists up there," Grieco, who is in Houston to meet with art collectors, tells CultureMap.

"When I started dripping the paint over the piece, it just seemed to come alive all of a sudden. I got this feeling like this is what I should be doing."

"I'd painted a little bit before, but never seriously. Anyway, I decided to get a canvas and started painting the mountains around the chateaux where we were staying. I worked on it for a few days but was really pissed off at the way it was going and threw it on the ground."

But there at his feet, the three-by-four foot canvas took on a new life.

"I decided to try something else and asked my assistant to pick up some gallons of black, red and white paint," Grieco says. "When I started dripping the paint over the piece, it just seemed to come alive all of a sudden . . . I got this feeling like this is what I should be doing. I felt such a strange feeling of relief in a way."

As he continued acting throughout the 1990s, painting remained at the forefront of Grieco's creative drive, often serving as an outlet for his frustrations with the entertainment industry.

"With both acting and painting, you derive from and manifest emotions you wouldn't normally tap into," he says. "The main difference is that when you finish a piece of art, there's final product that you can see. With acting, the end product is decided by directors and editors.

"You see the movie and say, 'What happened to that scene we filmed?' All of those months torturing yourself to get a character right can be for nothing sometimes."

In the last decade, the actor has moved away from film and television to concentrate on writing music and poetry. The introspective mindset needed to write has dovetailed nicely into creating art, Grieco says. Nevertheless, his paintings have largely remained out of the public eye until recently.

"About eight years ago, Dennis Hopper, who was a good friend of mine, told me to start showing my work . . . I really respected his opinion."

"About eight years ago, Dennis Hopper, who was a good friend of mine, told me to start showing my work," he says. "We talked about art all the time, just knocking different ideas around. I really respected his opinion but I only finally got around to sharing my work in 2009, when I sort of randomly posted a piece on my Facebook page."

Someone wanted to buy the piece right away, he laughs, saying that he scrambled to call an art dealer friend and quizzed him on how to price paintings. (For those wondering, this particular piece went for $10,000.)

"I've sold about 20 pieces worldwide since then," Grieco says. "Buying a piece is a very personal thing, so I always make sure I speak with each person interested in getting a painting. It's wonderful for me to hear from owners once they receive the pieces as well."

Stylistically, he has dubbed his work "abstract emotionalism," a moniker he said captures to the "unbridled emotion" that goes into each work.

"I paint because I have to paint, like I have to get these feelings out of my head," Grieco says. "There will be this vague idea I have when I begin and then the painting begins to take over itself. There are certain times when people ask me about why I did this or that.

"Honestly, though, I can't really answer them. I just let the paint move and give it room to breathe."

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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