Just caught him again in an excellent guest spot on Ted Danson’s Help Me Help You. Watching that lame Laverne & Shirley all those years ago, who’d guess [this guy](Michael McKean) would evolve into what he has, some people give Peter Scolari the business ala Tom Hanks, but he’s a distant second to that sucka Squigy.
Discounting the whole MS thing, of course, Lander’s ok with me.
He didn’t evolve (well some, like aging cheese). He and Landers were always hilarious. But like too many comics, they got sucked into the dark pit of sitcom TV.
You mean David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap? Married to Annette O’Toole?
Brilliant. Next?
AND very very good in his guest spot on Smallville as Perry White. Shoulda got him for the movie, not Frank Langella.
Didja catch that Law & Order episode in which they played a married couple? Yikes.
No, I didn’t - can you summarize the “yikes”?
When Micheal McKean came through my town to do a gig, his equipment sisn’t show up. He borrowed my personal guitar (Gibson SG) and amp (Blackface Fender) to do his Spinal Tap songs. I still have the photos to prove it to my friends.
That must have been totally cool. Did he play in character, was he with the/a group?
McKean and O’Toole are the heads of some kinda mini-cult for rich people, in which their “clients” tithe 10% of their earnings to the couple in exchange for their creepy pseudo-psychological advice (summary: they tell rich people it’s okay to be rich and not feel guilty about it). The crime was a bomb planted aboard a commuter helicopter that killed six people including the cult member O’Toole was having an affair with. It turns out the affair is a complete fabrication, with O’Toole dropping hints here and there to enrage McKean into committing murder, using the dead guy’s wife (who also believed an affair was happening) as his stooge. O’Toole can’t be legally prosecuted and she has a downright chilling moment late in the episode when she talks about how her husband, a control freak who’d smacked her around on occasion and had real affairs of his own, is going to spend the rest of his life in a very tiny room, in control of absolutely nothing.
At the time, I didn’t know the two were married. When I found out later, that made me go “yikes”.
Wow. Thanks.
[Mr. Green]
I told you I didn’t do it.
[/MG]
He was great on the X-Files episodes Dreamland and Dreamland II. He and Nora Dunn played a not so happily married couple. They were awesome.
McKean was also good playing Edna in the Hairspray musical. He and Annette wrote a song called “Hello Christmas,” which appeared on volume 5 of the Carols for a Cure CDS. It is one of my favorite holiday songs.
Michael McKean is awesome. Spinal Tap goes without saying, and he also had a very funny turn in the (IMHO) underappreciated Short Circuit 2.
They were also nominated for an Oscar together for “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” from A Mighty Wind, losing to that tedious LOTR song.