As someone who knows Brother Theodore through his voice acting in the Rankin Bass fantasy films I really want to hear him read Clark Ashton-Smith and HP Lovecraft.
How about this as a suggested alternative...Brother Theodore was THE ACTUAL DEAL. A self-consiouslessness antidote to the minions" butt plugs. How do you like them apples? Bro Theo provided the means by which 'Murica could just crap away unobsructed.
WAS Are you nuts? That was some of the funniest stuff ever. Both Theo and Harvey would come on with their cantankerous, obstinate, and hostile personas, and Dave knew exactly how to play off them.
Pekar wouldn't have been invited on anywhere else. If anything, he self sabotaged himself on one appearance by being flat out hostile. Late Night wasn't really a place to have a serious dialogue about how Harvey's life sucked. He was a miserable person by his own admission, and unfortunately treated people in a way that earned him the treatment he must've thought he deserved.
With all respect to Mr. Ellison, I found Brother Theodore far funnier when he played off Dave Letterman than when he played off Merv Griffin, so I must conclude that Letterman was the better straight man, better reactor, to Theodore.
I think so. What made it hilarious was Letterman's midwestern reaction to him. Letterman LOVED Brother Theodore, and would not have had him on the number of times unless he sincerely thought he was funny. Letterman knew his audience, the Coast crowd would appreciate Brother Theodore's humor while Letterman would provide the straight man/midwestern viewpoint. Also I notice he said he never met Brother Theodore, then goes into a story about Brother Theodore.. Harvey Pekar would be a better example of Letterman being a jerk. Or perhaps Pekar overstepping his bounds.
Being younger, I used to wait for Theodore to appear on Letterman. I didn't know at first whether he was genius, or some wacko off the streets. He could be a bit like Gilbert Gottfried the way he could turn off an entire audience. I'm thinking of the time he was on Letterman and referred to the audience as "300 pigs."
TheMighty Chabunga yes it is. i dk if his stage act was every filmed, i would hope so and assume so, but if it is try to watch it. it was fantastic to see live and his ranting is epic. harlan mimicked him so exactly correctly here i was actually shocked it was so amazing.
Brother Theodore was greatly diminished on Letterman and a 'straight man' is the exact opposite of what he needed. Find the old Merv Griffin show with Jerry Lewis and Theodore upping and upping the anger vibes, the ugliness till it is scary=funny beyond belief. Lewis, whom I never cared for that much, played it right.
So there wasn't a comedic element to Theodore's act according to this guy? We were all supposed to smoke a pipe and ponder the absurd, self contradictory things he said? "Both of my parents died years before I was born." "I published my first novel at age 6, and could change my own diapers by age 10!" Ir was largely comedy, and if you view a comedian interacting with comedic performance art as "disrespectful", it's no wonder Letterman offended your rarified air.
The two people who’ve given that a like might get a grin from this. As a fan of Ray Bradbury my favorite work by him is unpublished and consists of just two words. A private collector of sf, horror and fantasy gave me a tour which ended on a guestbook signed by countless of the field’s notables, including Forrest J Ackerman, Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. By the time he’d visited there was just a bit of free space left in which he could sign, right next to Ackerman, whom he’d infamously and unreasonably despised for many long years. He signed beneath some disparaging remark towards Ackerman written with Ellison’s customary charm and grace. Crossing over that the great Ray Bradbury has later used large letters to scrawl, “OH, YEAH?”
I think this guy got it totally wrong with Letterman, taking it way too seriously. I think Letterman loved BT, which was why he kept inviting him back, and that he was as entertained as the rest of us. Some of their dialogue was priceless! I think all meant for fun and enjoyment. I never got the sense that BT was TRULY disrespected, or that he felt that way. I don't think he would have appeared on Letterman so many times if he actually felt insulted. I don't believe there is much truth to that take at all.
Yeah, I feel like some of the people who claim a deep understanding of this act, clearly can't see it for what it is. Dave's quips were very soft, like asking what kind of shirt he was wearing as to lighten the mood. Then BTs character goes off on him, cleary the response of a person as they truly are instead of a curmudgeon of a character. If anything, Dave gave him a foil to expand the spirit of his act into an interview format. If Dave had been deferential, would it have been a typical interview? Of course not, he was there to showcase his act within the format of the show.
And then Harlan and Brother Theodore got in a fight and Theodore wanted to kill Harlan. (I don’t know that this specifically happened with Theodore, but it was pretty much fill-in-the-blank with Harlan.)
He gets Theodore's character performance, but not Letterman's. The interactions on Late Night were performances, by two entertainers playing their perspective characters, characters which may have negative traits. It was not the genuine interaction between the actual people.
Harlan was a truly brilliant writer & performer. unique talent. he does an absolutely awesome straight-on imitation of the amazing brother theodore., both of these men/performers belong in the category of genuine genius. no one was (or will be) ever quite like them. thanks for these great clips.
If he was, the it was a pretentiousness that another speaker said Theodore went against. I mean, Andy Kaufman was a regular up until he got sick, and his act was similar, especially if you didn't have any prior knowledge. This guy comes across as arrogant to me. On one hand Theodore is flat antagonistic with the audience, he decides them when they laugh, and decides the when their applause aren't energetic enough. To him, this is art, and it is. On the other hand, when a comedian isn't deferential to a character, this is disrespectful and deserving disdain. How ridiculous. It's hard enough to know what is real with his appearances without this added dimension. Once, Theodore tried to tell tye audience he had been forbidden from performing, Dave pushed back, it wasn't true. Then he adjusted and tried to say he was discouraged from performing, same pushback, wasn't true. My perception was, he was playing this angle for his act, calling Dave a prince, calling him an intellectual colossus. That feeling of disrespect may have come across, but it was in no small part because Theodore played it up as part of his act.
