We’ll tell you a little about The Package, You Were Never Really Here, and Lowlife. Then we’ll play ourselves talking about people playing themselves in movies.
You Were Never Really Here belongs with The Accountant to me: movies with top tier (whether in ability or fame) talent putting in excellent performances in films that started out promising but ended up pretty pedestrian/forgettable. I guess Mandy belongs there, too, now, although I would classify that more as aggressively pedestrian.
Ben Sliney, United 93
Tom Jones, Mars Attacks!
Alice Cooper, Wayne’s World
Honorable mention to Babe Ruth in The Pride of the Yankees. Cause I haven’t seen it. But it’s pretty cool that he played himself.
I’ll skip Being John Malkovich because it’s such low-hanging fruit!
Man, my brain seriously wants to throw a preposition into that thread title. We’re going to have words, my brain and me.
Good idea for the next 3x3, though!
High five! And props for knowing dude’s name.
-Tom
I’ll follow Gordon’s example and try not to grab the low-hanging Malkovich fruit.
#1. In Back To School, Rodney Dangerfield plays a rich man who looks and sounds exactly like Rodney Dangerfield. He goes, titularly, back to school for various reasons, and uses his wealth to grease, fertilize, and make straight the way to his diploma. In one scene, he needs to write a paper about novelist and American treasure Kurt Vonnegut. So who better to write this paper than Vonnegut himself? Vonnegut is into getting some easy money, but Dangerfield’s teacher doesn’t agree with the quality of the finished paper. So it goes.
#2. In Don’t Think Twice, a troupe of improv comedians are soooo close to making it to fame and fortune. One of them has made it onto the cast of Pretty Much Saturday Night Live, and has to deal with his newfound success. Should he let his friends and troupe partners ride his coattails to stardom? Or are they dragging him down? Well, after his first show, the talented guy, who looks and sounds a lot like Keegan-Michael Key, introduces the guest host of Pretty Much Saturday Night Live to his friends at an afterparty. It’s Ben Stiller, star of print, TV, and the silver screen!
Imagine you were on the cusp of making it. Imagine you had imagined making it for years and years. Wouldn’t you imagine rubbing elbows with an international celebrity, perhaps someone who had made you laugh until you cried? Wouldn’t you imagine wanting to befriend him? Even if you hate his material, perhaps after he realized your wisdom, humor, and greatness, and he wanted to start hanging out with you, then you could ride his coattails to success! Even if you could make him laugh, that would be something to tell the grandkids about.
So these guys give Turning-Ben-Stiller-Into-A-Friend-And-Ally their best shot. It doesn’t go that well. But Ben Stiller isn’t a regular guy. I mean, he played Derek Zoolander. It takes a lot to impress him. With both fame and Ben Stiller’s friendship, they are found wanting.
#3. In Zoolander, rival male models keep building up beef until there is no resolution to their conflict except an underground winner-take-all catwalk walk-off. And who else could possibly judge a legendary walk-off besides a man of myth: the singular David Bowie.
Bowie was so weird and fascinating, he started to warp pop culture around himself. He shifted between so many personas, he began to assume a magical identity, as if he must have come from – not Mars, like Ziggy Stardust, but some other dimension of style and music. His film roles lead to increased splits in personality. He was a shapeshifting Goblin King. In The Prestige, he played that mad genius and possible fraud, Nikola Tesla. In Venture Bros., he led a worldwide crime league and could shapeshift into a bird (or so it seemed, for a few seasons). Here in real life, why wouldn’t he judge a goofy contest of the world’s most talented, beautiful, and vapid male models? And treat it with both seriousness and his own impeccable sense of style and style-making? Here, he’s treated like the king of the world that he created.
Christ, when Bowie passed away, they used this clip for the Oscars’ In Memoriam montage.
Here, he was playing the closest thing to himself that this world could contain.
Disqualified: I would have picked Lance Armstrong for his life-affirming, gumption-inducing cameo in Dodgeball, but he tested positive for performance-enhancing chemicals. :(
Now to listen to the podcast and see how many of these were already picked…
Oh heck, I forgot about Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall!
The FBI agent who convinced Henry and Karen Hill to turn on the mob and go into witness protection plays himself in Goodfellas and unsurprisingly, he’s just right for the part.
I believe there is something similar in Blow, but with several agents all at once.
Neil Patrick Harris is quite delightful as an exaggerated version of himself in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
Wow, I never knew that.
“Don’t give me the babe-in-the-woods routine.”
Los Angeles in Los Angeles plays itself.
: )
I’m honored that the picture accompanying this post is from one of my picks. Even if it is because it was your least favorite pick.
Also cool that Kelly approved of my description of Free Enterprise.
Taunts haven’t be done yet.
Thank you!
Oh…btw…I’m reading that in your taunting voice.
-xtien
I’m trying to figure out if my number 1 will be in your top 3 or one of your runner ups.
“Only if the Clippers guy does it, then it’s weird.”
I got that reference @Kelly_Wand, and it made me laugh.
Making sports jokes on the podcast with these two rubes is kind of like sending Voyager off into the void and just hoping.
Glad to hear that JCVD was mentioned a few times in the podcast. It was really surprisingly good. There are two standout scenes from the movie: an intense opening sequence and a truly heartfelt monologue. As hard as it is to take Van Damme seriously, this one shouldn’t be skipped. Apart from being about JCVD, it’s a great film about what it means to be a typecast action hero. I’d love to hear what Tom and the gang think about this one.
So many good choices. I was stuck with jokey appearances, and even then chose the wrong Howard Cosell.
Had I gone musical I’d have liked to choose Bruce Hornsby in World’s Greatest Dad and Jonathan Richman in There’s Something About Mary.