Tribute: Phyllis Diller

Posted on August 20, 2012 at 10:37 pm

Pioneering comedian Phyllis Diller died today at age 95.  My friend Jim Cheng wrote in USA Today about how Diller, who did not begin to perform until she was 37, paved the way for performers like Roseanne Barr and Joan Rivers.  Diller became a headliner in an era when almost all comics were male, and her raucous humor and wild wigs made her an immediate hit.

Diller’s comedy career was timed almost as perfectly as one of her jokes. In the heyday of comedy and variety shows, Diller was a guest with all the big names, from Jack Bennyand Dean Martin to Red Skelton and Ed Sullivan. But her 1966 ABC situation comedy,The Pruitts of Southhampton, later renamed The Phyllis Diller Show, lasted only one season.

In addition to blazing a trail as a woman in the male-dominated field of comedy, Diller spouted seemingly autobiographical one-liners and anecdotes that paved the way for Rivers’ and Barr’s riffs on similar themes; Diller told of domestic and marital strife with her long-suffering husband, “Fang,” and, of course, self-deprecating jokes about her often-outlandish appearance, which was part of her act.

Diller made three movies with her idol, Bob Hope and provided voice talent for animated films like “A Bug’s Life” and television’s “Family Guy.”  She made a lot of people laugh for more than five decades.  May her memory be a blessing.

 

 

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Actors Tribute

ParaNorman: Anna Kendrick

Posted on August 14, 2012 at 9:00 am

Anna Kendrick (“Camp,” “Up in the Air”) plays Norman’s teenage sister in “ParaNorman.” She ends up going along with him on a wild zombie-hunting adventure. At Comic-Con, she talked about making the film, and when asked about her favorite prop, she pulled out her cell phone to show us a picture of it.  Norman’s friend Neil is mourning the loss of his dog, and in his locker there is a memorial note with a paw print.  It says, “Bub is great, understands me, barks at bullies.”  She says it still makes her tear up to look at it.

She visited the set after the movie was completed and was amazed by “All the details you don’t really see in the movie,” how meticulous and careful every part of every scene was designed to be.   She loved playing the exasperated teenager.  “I can tap into my inner obnoxious person and it is so fun to play somebody so annoying and do that voice.  I liked all the vocalization and exasperated sighs.”  Like Kodi, she enjoyed the chance to be very exaggeratedly physical in the voice recording sessions without worrying about how she looked.  “It was really freeing to not be worried about how idiotic you look.”  She and Casey Affleck were together on what was the first voice acting experience for both of them.  She appreciated the chance to learn with him, “and by the end of the day we were in a competition to see who could make a greater fool of themselves.”  But she joked that working with Kodi “made me feel worse about being Courtney” because it was harder to be mean to him.

 

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Justin Theroux: Who Is Jennifer Aniston’s Fiance?

Posted on August 13, 2012 at 6:22 pm

Jennifer Aniston is engaged!  I am a big fan of her fiancé, Justin Theroux.  Theroux is a talented actor who has appeared in the mystifying art-house melodrama, Mulholland Drive (as an arrogant director), in the underrated indie romantic comedy The Baxter (as the too-good-to-be-true-but-he-is romantic rival for the affections of the lead character’s girlfriend), and in serious historical drama (as John Hancock in the HBO series, John Adams), and an animated movie for kids (he provided the voice of Megamind‘s father).

He comes from a family of writers (his uncle is the distinguished travel writer, Paul Theroux), and he co-wrote the outrageous Ben Stiller film, Tropic Thunder and he wrote the screenplay for Iron Man 2.  I didn’t like the film he and Aniston made together, Wanderlust, but I liked both of their performances.  Here’s hoping for a happy ever after for them both, on and off the screen.

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ParaNorman: Kodi Smit-McPhee

Posted on August 13, 2012 at 3:36 pm

Kodi Smit-McPhee (“The Road,” “Let Me In”) provides the voice for Norman, the kid who can see ghosts, in the new stop-motion animated film “ParaNorman.” At Comic-Con, he sat behind a figure of his character from the movie.  One of the biggest challenges for the film-makers was puberty — Kodi’s voice changed while they were making the movie.  “We just had to record as much as we could, all the grunts and stuff, and by the last session, the Norman voice was gone.  It’s stuck with that character forever.”

I asked him which of the props from the movie he would like to have in real life.  “The car,” he said.  “They are so cool because everything they made in that world, the Norman world, there are no straight lines.  It’s all off.  Even when he takes off the mask, the eyes, there’s one big and one small.  It’s all very weird and different.”  He visited the set and said it was “mind-blowing,” a warehouse with people working on 50 scenes being shot, with almost imperceptibly tiny movements between each shot, while he was “chilling in the studio.”  “You have to get your emotions out through your voice,” he said.  “So you do crazier things while recording than you would on set.  You don’t worry about what your face looks like.  And they have a camera on you all the time so they can take your facial expression back to the character.”  He especially appreciated the chance to do recording sessions with the other actors, which does not happen on many animated films.

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