Some number of years ago Rich Little made a career out of impersonating other famous people. He was very popular and appeared on The Tonight Show, Laugh In, etc.
As a kid, I actually liked Rich Little. Now, I just don’t see the humour in it at all. In fact it makes me squirm because the impressions I see now are never really that great. Sure, it sounds like the person they’re imitating, but not exactly, and so what? Not funny. Kind of a cheap laugh type of comedy.
Kevin Spacey and Kevin Pollack are pretty good at them, and Jay Pharaoh does a stunningly good Denzel Washington, but… yeah, I guess it’s had its heyday.
I think it depends in the material. David Frye made a series of records in which he imitated Richard M. Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson and other notable public figures of the 70s, but his records sound dated today.
I also have a couple of Rich Little’s albums and think he is a rather gifted impressionist. His Johnny Carson is spot-on. He even played Carson in a TV movie, “The Late Shift.” I also liked his impersonation of Ronald Reagan.
Billy Crystal is also an excellent impressionist, mainly from his days on “Saturday Night Live” and his appearances on Dean Martin’s celebrity roasts. I once heard him do an impression of Muhammad Ali doing an impression of Howard Cosell.
I also like Frank Caliendo. His impression of John Madden cracks me up, although I understand Madden is not a fan.
Our culture is a lot more celebrity- and media-saturated than it was a couple of decades ago, that might make the idea of an impressionist act less interesting than it once was. And I think if the idea of an impressionist just turned into one of those awful comedy cliches. Try to picture a comedian going “Now here’s my impression of…” and you’ll probably picture someone standing in front of a brick wall in a comedy club, and next you’ll imagine the person doing a “now, white people drive like this…” routine.
Which isn’t to say impressions can’t be funny. Josh Robert Thompson (Geoff Peterson from The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson) does some great impressions. And a lot of the best voiceover actors can do tons of impressions. They’re just worked into cartoons instead of being the basis for a standup act.
Kevin Pollak was on the dais for one of those Comedy Central roasts (I forget which one). Another comedian commented: “Kevin Pollak has made a career out of his spot-on impressions of William Shatner, Christopher Walken, and Jack Nicholson. You know; all the hard ones.”
First, you need a pop culture where most people knew and heard of the person being impersonated… so not until the time of talkies could impressionists make a living.
Then you needed people to start doing impressions, which was done at first by stage shows, and then by the voraciousness of TV having to fill thousands of hours of entertainment a year.
So, at first, it was all about getting the impression spot on. And that was impressive (pardon the pun) enough. The original impressionists were not ‘funny’, but they didn’t need to be funny.
But as more and more people did impressions, the novelty wears off. And so, you actually needed comedic material… and the quality of that varies widely.
So, yes, impressionists are funny if they have good material. They’re not funny if they’re just impersonating.
Aries Spears does some good impressions. I like him because he does ‘regular guy’ impressions. I mean, it doesn’t have to be someone with over the top mannerisms for him to nail them. I love his LL Cool Jay.
That’s true. No matter how good someone is, just doing one impression after another can get pretty tiresome.
Anyway, I’ve brought this up on other occasions but I’ve noticed that some celebrities, no matter how famous they are, seem to be impression-proof. Case in point: Paul Newman. Even though he was a major star for 50 years and played a number of iconic roles in movies like The Hustler and Cool Hand Luke, I’ve never seen anyone try to do an impression of him.
I wonder if the increasing edginess of comedy in the past few decades had something to do with it. Impressions (especially political ones) are often the mildest form of satire, mocking mannerisms while avoiding the larger issues. We forget how much milder satire of political figures was in the past: I remember Vaughn Meader’s “First Family” album was rejected by numerous record companies because they thought it was in poor taste. Compared to what you see on the “Daily Show” or a Bill Maher special (to say nothing of our irreverant TMZ-esque celebrity culture), impressionists are just too damn tame.
Remember that clip the next time you watch A Few Good Men and Tom Cruise does an impression of Jack Nicholson to Kevin Pollak.
I don’t know about that. I have a compilation album from a '60s TV show called That Was the Week That Was and it’s vicious. They are tearing flesh from bone.
