I also realized, as I was doing it, what I’m really doing is not an Ayn Rand impersonation but a Brother Theodore impersonation. I don’t know what your age is, but when I grew up in the 1890s, David Letterman was on NBC, doing a show called Late Night with David Letterman. When he went to CBS, he could be still a comic genius, really funny and really subversive in his own way, but he adopted a lighter touch than when he was at Late Show and he and Merrill Markoe were really pushing the boundaries of what a talk show could be. When you turned in, it really felt like someone had left a camera on in a studio and some crazy people had taken over. One of his regular guests in the ‘80s was a performance artist who performed as Brother Theodore. And it was an old, crotchety, Eastern European philosopher who would yell at David Letterman and would tell these incredibly depressing stories and just stare down the audience until they laughed. He also was the voice of Gollum in the original Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit. That’s another story. therumpus.net/2013/10/the-rumpus-interview-with-john-hodgman/
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 14:42:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015