I am way late to the Frank Caliendo party, but damn this guy does amazing impressions. His John Madden is perfection, his Jim Rome is hysterical…and his George W Bush is incredibly good.
Here’s a bit with him on Mike and Mike rolling through his better impressions: Frank Caliendo on ESPN: Mike and Mike in the Morning - YouTube
Which also leads me to ask: what other impressionists do you recommend? Its seems that there aren’t a whole lot of them out there.
Post videos of your favorite impressions(ists) here. Or just post Frank Caliendo.
I am incredibly impressed by Caliendo’s talent at impressions.
I am also incredibly confused by why impressions are considered funny (I’m not saying people are wrong to find them funny but that they just are so unfunny to me that I can’t understand it).
My primary exposure to him was from the Fox NFL pre-game show (don’t know if he still does that) which perhaps wasn’t a prime gig for showing of his comedy chops.
I appreciate you ‘turning me on’ to this wonderful voice artist.
The switching the voices in the middle of the stream is very funny.
And his GWB was remarkable.
The crawler at the bottom was amusing in a ‘wow that was five years ago’ kind of way, with Michael Vick reporting to prison among other sports notes.
Well, in Caliendo’s case, many of his impressions are of people that for one reason or another, are already funny themselves. George W Bush for his stupidity and penchant for making up words, Madden and his man-crush on Brett Favre and his inexplicable ramblings, Bill Walton because of LSD, Barkley because he doesn’t give a fuck…
Yeah he’s freaking great. His Madden is so very, very good.
The impression (get it?) I always got of Frank Caliendo is that he’s one of the breed of impressionists who are excellent mimics, but short on talent beyond that-- i.e., good at delivering prewritten lines in character but not especially funny in their own right. Other examples being Darrell Hammond and Pablo Francisco.
Contrasted with someone like James Adomian, who not only delivers great vocal impressions but is extremely quick and hilarious at improvisation.
Fucking love Adomian. Met him several times and actually work with him a bit now professionally. Really cool guy and an amazing impressionist that brings his own angle to each character he does. His Gary Busey and Paul Giamatti’s are brilliant.
Can’t find the clip, but there’s a great interview he did where he talks about working on a Obama impression. He tells the interviewer that the key to Obama is that he starts a sentence slowly, but ends in a rush; a great way to read a phone number. Then he does three different voices in about twenty seconds:
[Obama] “Uh…Eight six seven…uh,fivethreeohnine” [George W. Bush] “That’s Jenny’s number!” [Bill Clinton] “You bet it is!”
That’s great! Would love to see it. I just re-watched my OP’s Letterman/Madden bit and its so freaking funny. “When you think about Brett Favre, things start to move around inside, and you feel like dancing, then you realize there’s no real reason to dance.” Brilliant.
I disagree with Vinyl Turnip’s assessment. Caliendo isn’t just funny for spot-on impressions, its the ridiculous things he makes his characters say that’s just as funny.
