On the eve of Prince’s July 4th Essence Fest show (which I didn’t have tickets for), I rewatched Purple Rain with some friends and was thunderstruck anew by the sexy, magnetic, eyeliner-wearing star of the movie.

I’m referring to Joseph A. Ferraro, the guy who plays the MC of First Avenue. In a movie stuffed with wooden acting, Joseph A. Ferraro is the only actor whose woodenness is absolutely electric. I can say with confidence that I’ve never heard anyone say seven consecutive words the way he says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen… please welcome… The Time.’ He says maybe 14 more words the rest of the movie, all of them spellbinding.

Yet I can’t find any information about Joseph A. Ferraro at all. His IMDB listing (which also has him as Joseph E. Ferraro) tells me nothing. Based on the first two Google pages I searched through, nobody else in the world seems to be much interested in him, except for one absurdly reductive human on a Prince message board who refers to him as a ‘vampire.’

Joseph A. Ferraro seems to speak with a slight accent but says so little I can’t place it (his name suggests Italian or Spanish descent, but his lack of affect reads more German or maybe Hungarian). He is not into heating up the crowd, nor does he seem bored. He has the faintest glimmer of a smile when he introduces the bands, and that smile might be a tiny bit sinister.

In a parallel universe he could’ve been a great Bond villain. In a parallel universe, he could’ve been a major motion picture star. In a parallel universe, he could’ve been my MC boyfriend and said hardly anything, and I would’ve been OK with that for a week or two but eventually demanded that we have a conversation, thus ruining everything.

But back to that second parallel universe. Why didn’t he become a star? Part of me is glad he didn’t, in the same way a movie idolater might be ‘glad’ James Dean died young so he couldn’t go on to destroy his own magic by getting old and self-parodic, the way Robert De Niro did, or Al Pacino, or Marlon Brando. Joseph A. Ferraro made his impression in 21 words and split — and in doing so will always represent for me the infinite potential of cool.