HELL NO. I DID NOT LEAVE THE SOUTH SIDE FOR THIS: Tim Meadows speaks candidly about building a post-SNL career: "I had a period where I had to make a choice: Am I going to continue to do this, or am I going to get a job working at a J.Crew? And I really did just put my head down and said, I’m going to take whatever jobs I get offered. I’m not going to be judgmental or choosy. I’m just going to work and provide for my family and myself and get through this."
Also, he was up for the role of Desmond Pfeiffer.
Taking whatever job he's offerred doesn't explain this...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmUXmz1TXNI
My soul cries when I watch it.
There is nothing at all wrong with the Eugene Levy career model - be in everything, don't sweat the quality of the people or production around you, do everything that is asked of you, if possible, be entertainingly weird (which Meadows does exceedingly well when he combines it with deadpan or pleasantness). It's better than the Michael Caine model, which is exactly the same except for the entertainingly weird part, and no worse than the Samuel L. Jackson model, which is exactly the same except for replacing entertainingly weird with entertainingly put-out.
ReplyDeleteWhich reminds me of this, from a 1991 interview with Whoopi Goldberg that Ebert recently posted:
ReplyDelete<span>"Jessica Tandy told me, 'Listen to this. Take the work. People will tell you you're overexposed, but you only get better when you take the work.' Jimmy Stewart told me you have to be the big actor in little movies, and the little actor in big movies, that's how you get better. Burt Lancaster said, 'Listen, kid, this is a bitch of a business. You're gonna be okay. Tell the truth, hit your marks, do your job, and if it's you on the screen, then fight for it. They're going to say terrible things about you, but no one will ever be able to say that you didn't shoot for the very best you're capable of'."</span>
That's a hell of a dinner party where they're telling her that.
ReplyDeleteThe Samuel L. Jackson model gives us this (spoiler alert for 11-year-old movie!), so I'm cool with that.
ReplyDeleteIsaac, I wasn't going to post the whole interview, but Goldberg apparently had a habit of hitting up people at fundraisers and such she was invited to for career advice. Might as well ask the long-lasting people.
ReplyDeleteFunny that this topic should come up today. Just last night I was flipping channels and came across "Glory Daze" on TBS. Within about 30 seconds, Tim Meadows appeared on the screen, and I thought to myself, "Know how I know this show sucks?" and changed the channel.
ReplyDelete(The spelling of "Daze" in the title might have been another hint.)
By the way, he also gets points for remembering what show McLean Stevenson left M*A*S*H for.
ReplyDelete(And I keep flashing on Clerks: The Animated Series and their low-key skewering of Desmond Pfieffer, involving the White House of the Future. Classic Pfieffer.
I'm interested in how Meadows actually described Pfieffer that was paraphrased as [short-lived UPN sitcom about Abraham Lincoln’s butler].
ReplyDeleteAs long as it isn't a role in hasenpfeffer he's good...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDe8fTgVUZw
I never get how Hello Larry became a punch line. Folks, it shared a universe with Diff'rent Strokes, its lead-in! If you were a 9-year-old boy and you didn't have a crush on that daughter of his (the one, not the other one), you were flat-out prepubescent.
ReplyDelete