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Surprising credits thread


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Watching the ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE episode of MST3K and was surprised...stunned....to find that the kid who played the lead bad guy, the greasy kid with the Farrah Fawcett hair, ended up being the director of both NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM movies.

 

Hollywood is a bizarre and magical place where anyone can become anything.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was watching this trailer for a movie called Jamesy Boy

 

And one of the stars is Taissa Farmiga (who I guess is also on American Horror Story which I don't watch) - and since she looks so much like Vera I was like "Holy Shit - I didn't know Vera Farmiga had a daughter that old"

It turns out Taissa is her sister - they are 21 years apart.

That totally floored me

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So, I'm probably the last person to know this, but Peter Weller is getting a Ph.D. in Italian History and Art from UCLA and teaches at Syracuse.  Apparently he's already successfully defended his prospectus.

 

Here's his RatemyProfessor page:

 

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=688885

 

 

I only know this now because he just showed up on a History Channel thing about Roman Empire technology, billed simply as "Peter Weller, Syracuse University."

 

Fuck, even if he's a crappy scholar and terrible teacher, the level at which this is awesome means Fat Spanish Waiter wins.  I need to find his Master's thesis.

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This is going to be an obscure one, but I finally broke out the Steve Martin: The Television Years box set I bought last Black Friday and was shocked to discover that one of the "backstage crew members" that looked like Phillip Baker Hall really was Phillip Baker Hall.  And he looked about 50 back in 1978 too. 

 

Also was surprised to see that the Jack Handey of "Deep Thoughts" fame was one of Martin's writers too.

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Watching MST3K: SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS and I recognized the voice of the reporter at the beginning (who goes to the North Pole to interview Santa) as the same guy who played the doorman on THE JEFFERSONS!

 

ralph_the_doorman.jpg

 

Looked him up.  His name is Ned Wertimer and it turns out his last role was in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLDS END as one of the pirates that starts singing on the gallows at the beginning. 

 

Sadly he died this year.

 

And now it gets weird and kind of awesome, another great example of a bit-part actor who turns out to be a pretty interesting guy...Also, I experience a weird thrill of near connection by reading the "Rate My Professor" comments about his wife, who is a professor of African studies at Cal St. Long Beach and is African by birth:

 

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=315499

 

Is it somehow slightly awesome that 20 years before THE JEFFERSONS, back in the 60s, hell, before GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, the guy who would go on to play Ralph the doorman married an African woman who would teach Black studies to LA stoners.  I just imagine Ralph and his wife sitting around getting high with Sherman Hemsley, listening to Ewe tonal drumming, and talking about how to smuggle arms to the Rhodesian resistance.  I imagine at some point during the evening, after passing the hookah to George Jefferson, or maybe Helen Willis, Ralph pauses and says, "Hey...Hey...I was in a movie called Santa Claus vs. the Martians once..."  And everyone just busts up and George Jefferson is like "Bullshit...martians...you're a crazy man, Wertimer...hey...you guys think we're all alone out there or not?"  And over in the corner, bathed in bong smoke appears Mr. Bentley, wearing nothing but an open silk bathrobe and the beads from a curtain around his neck, looks up and says "Yeah, man.  We're all alone.  The last little warm lights in an endless ocean of dark.  And we're getting dimmer and colder every minute...Do we have anymore of those potato wedges?" 

 

Jesus, that must have been awesome.

 

The guy was also a fighter pilot during WWII, and got his business degree from the freaking Wharton School.

 

When I was a kid, the dude represented like the ultimate weasley little nerd.  Now my world is upside down and Ralph is a billion times cooler than I ever will be.

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Watching the ZOMBIE NIGHTMARE episode of MST3K and was surprised...stunned....to find that the kid who played the lead bad guy, the greasy kid with the Farrah Fawcett hair, ended up being the director of both NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM movies.

 

Hollywood is a bizarre and magical place where anyone can become anything.

Guy had a pretty big winning streak as a director (money-wise, I mean): Night at the Museum 1 and 2, Date Night, Real Steel...then The Internship...no surprise he's going back for another NATM sequel.

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This isn't exactly on topic but David Faustino has turned into an even tinier Martin Short.

 

I just wanted you to know in case you run into him, so you won't be all like, "Hey, I loved your dad on SCTV!  You're Martin Short's son, right?  David who???  Oh...I..need to go grab a cheese platter carrot dip thiiiiing..."

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  • 1 month later...

Lately I've started looking up journeymen directors on IMDB. The randomness of their careers always amuses me.

 

Take Martin Brest...

 

1984 Beverly Hills Cop

1988 Midnight Run

1992 Scent of a Woman

1998 Meet Joe Black

2003 Gigli

 

... and he hasn't worked since.

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Not a hugely "WTF" one, but Robin Greene and Mitchell Burgess going from working extensively on The Sopranos to creating the decent-but-formulaic Blue Bloods was always kind of a mystery to me.

 

Again, it's not that Blue Bloods is bad exactly, but after you've legitimately written some of the best TV ever, it seems odd to just go back to writing a generic procedural show. It'd be like finding out the guy who created NCIS wrote several episodes of The Wire, or something.

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