I found out he died in the “CT Insider,” which Apple News+ suggested to me probably because my sister Wendy sent me so many articles from the publication. And I wondered whether I was getting the full flavor of the Nutmeg State news when I noticed in the upper left-hand corner a button entitled “Sections,” which when clicked upon rendered a menu and one of the choices was “Entertainment.” Wondering what was going on in the old nabe, I clicked on it. I saw that Matteo Bocelli, the son of Andrea Bocelli, was booked to play in Westport. And there was a podcast about the Martha Moxley murder whose host said Michael Skakel wasn’t near the top of his suspects list. And then further down the page, I saw that Bud Cort died. In Norwalk. At an assisted living facility. I think of those places as being for the truly aged, in their late eighties and nineties. But Bud was 77, and recovering from pneumonia, and the grim reaper got him.

We don’t have cult movies anymore. Nothing that comes out to little effect but then spreads through the culture and becomes a phenomenon, like “Harold and Maude,” which I found out about from my mother, the culture vulture.

Now my mother grew up with the movies, all of our parents did. But when the renaissance happened in ’67, with “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate,” she became addicted, reading Pauline Kael in “The New Yorker” and going to Judith Crist weekends. It might be hard for younger generations to learn that up until this turning point, films were not seen as art. But then universities started offering film courses and right along with rock and roll, movies drove the culture.

And music was a big part of “Harold and Maude,” it was the first major exposure of Cat Stevens. It featured the song “Trouble,” from “Mona Bone Jakon,” which most people never heard, their fandom beginning with its successor, “Tea for the Tillerman.”

Everybody didn’t see “Harold and Maude” at the same time. Today there’s focus on an event, a meme, something, and everybody checks it out immediately and then it’s forgotten. But back then… There were revival houses, playing different flicks every night. You’d get the schedule at the record store, along with the rest of the throwaway press. And you went to the theatre to fill the holes in your viewing history. Stuff from the thirties and forties, but even more foreign flicks, and then those movies that had been overlooked and gained momentum over time, like “Harold and Maude.”

Bud Cort is really not famous for much else. He complained that he was typecast, but his obits also said he was difficult to work with. And for a while there he was out of sight, but then I went to some benefit at the Universal Amphitheatre and he came out as an old man, overweight with facial hair, it was cognitive dissonance, it didn’t compute, it was like running into an old girlfriend or classmate decades later, their image is frozen in your brain, but the truth is time has gone by, and just like you, they’ve aged.

I’m not saying Bud wasn’t talented, or that I’m unfamiliar with his filmography. I saw “Brewster McCloud,” it was a requirement if you were an Altman fan…at a revival house, it played for about a minute in theatres upon release. And yes, he was in “M*A*S*H” and so much more, but his performance in “Harold and Maude” was transcendent, a perfect encapsulation of the early seventies ethos, when the protests against the Vietnam War died down with disillusionment and we were looking inward.

So…

I’m reading the “CT Insider” article and there’s a hyperlink to the “Times” obit, from two days ago? How did I miss this?

Yes, I read the obits. My father was a fan. Getting older, I have become one too.

Shouldn’t a death of this proportion have risen up, superseded the dross of information they call news which is really anything but? Shouldn’t the public at large feel this cultural moment? Shouldn’t boomers be e-mailing and texting each other about it?

Well it seems like no. I had to stumble upon Bud Cort’s death in a vacuum.

And I knew about the car accident and the facial surgeries, that was the excuse for his absence from the screen… But I did not know that he was from Rye, nor that his parents were in show biz, his father on stage, his mother behind the curtain. Bud was not much older than me, but I didn’t grow up with anybody from this background.

Now in a world focused on the young, where oldsters imitate youngsters and lie about their age, consciousness of the march of time, towards the end, is a singular journey. No one wants to talk about it. But there are these markers…when friends become ill, when friends die, and when our heroes pass.

Yes, Bud as Harold was a hero, because he was a nonconformist. You were supposed to let your freak flag fly, question authority, stand up for your truth, being a quiet member of the group to get along was anathema. Those were our values, a lot of boomers jumped the ship in the dash for cash in the Reagan eighties, but underneath the trappings, they still remember bell bottoms and long hair and love each other and individualism…

I’ve never heard a young person reference “Harold and Maude.” Then again, you ask them about their favorite film comedy and they’ll say something like “Old School,” which was released in 2003. Not a bad picture, but not in the league of the Marx Brothers, who’ve been completely forgotten, turns out Bud lived in Groucho’s house for a while…

If it’s old, if it’s in black and white…

But that was no hindrance to us. We were filling in the gaps. When video shops came along in the eighties this process was on steroids…you picked up all the films you always wanted to see and then even more which starred certain actors or were done by certain directors and…

I was just really weirded-out when I learned Bud Cort died. Like I said, no one contacted me about it and I found out days later…

But maybe this is how it ends. Alone with your thoughts and experiences. No one else knows, never mind cares. But for my cadre, the boomers, “Harold and Maude” was bedrock, and as good as Ruth Gordon was, and she was phenomenal, it’s But Cort’s Harold that is the center of the picture, because he was so different. And we understood where he was coming from, and we could relate.