It was an outrageous joke. The guy is fond of eliciting shocked responses from people - and I can see why they might not take him seriously because of it. But he is still an extremely creative multi-disciplinary artist and even if the initial release of Brown Bunny wasn’t great, Buffalo 66 alone is a more impressive work of art than anything that Justin Timberlake has ever been involved with.
Regarding Steve Martin, I thought his movie Shopgirl, in which he directed, produced and played the main character *and *which was based on his novel and screenplay… was really bad. IMHO. Not saying that means Steve Martin is not multi-talented, but his stars did not align for that one.
There is this scene in particular, which miss cactus and I had to record because we didn’t really believe what we were seeing. And then while we recorded it we couldn’t hold the camera still because we kept cracking up:
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The photography! The strange voyeur shot with the window barrier between Steve and Claire. The reflection from the wine glass that looks like a bruise on Claire Dane’s arm. The woman in the background throwing her head back in a spastic laughter in what is supposed to be a tender moment.
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The incredicheesy dialogue! “Now I’m your watch”, indeed. What is that reaction on Claire’s face, anyway?
You’ve missed out that Hugh Laurie was also a pretty good athlete (rowed for Cambridge).
Sickening really.
Not for the TV show – most of the music was written by Neil Innes, the Seventh Python. This included “Eric the Half a Bee,” “The Philosopher’s Song,” “We Love the Yangtze,” “Brave Sir Robin” and most others. Innes also wrote the music for Idle’s All You Need Is Cash.
The Broadway musical, though, was credited to Idle (though Innes does not get credit for “Brave Sir Robin” even though he wrote it and sang it in the movie).
Some additional names:
Kenneth Branagh. Actor, director, scriptwriter (one of the best adapters of Shakespeare around).
Emma Thompson. Oscar-winning actor, Oscar-winning scriptwriter (the only person to hit that double). She’s also pretty good with sketch comedy (she worked with Hugh Laurie in college).
John Sayles. Screenwriter, novelist, director.
A lot of his movies aren’t very good. But he was great at standup, can seriously play the banjo, and is a very good playwright. Picasso at the Lapin Agile is the best, but WASP is amusing, too. He’s also written some very funny columns, which are collected in the Pure Drivel book.
I’m fairly sure Thompson, Laurie and Fry all knew eachother at the same time. That’s a pretty awesome crew of friends to hang out with.
They were all in the Footlights comedy/improv group at Cambridge at the same time. If you look back at the Bambi episode of The Young Ones they are in the posh kids group during University Challenge. The school they are from is called Footlights College, Oxbridge.
And she can sing and dance, too. (In addition to doing both in her sketch comedy show Thompson, she was in the original London cast of Me and My Girl, as Sally.)
Martin tends to take on roles in abysmal films to help finance his roles in good ones. He’s had plenty of good roles (Shopgirl, LA Story, Bowfinger) though they were mixed in a lot of terrible ones.
This. I don’t blame him for the awfulness of the Clouseau movies, for instance; those just pay the rent.
They also help pay for his extensive collection of art. I guess art collector isn’t really a talent, though.
It was the art I was thinking of.
What about Matthew Barney?
Current credits include:
- Yale graduate
- Former model
- World-famous contemporary artist (drawing, photography, sculpture)
- Filmmaker
- Script-writer
He’s also Bjork’s partner and father of her child, not that this particularly qualifies as a “talent”. 
A friend jokes that the very fact of Matthew Barney’s existence automatically makes every other man an inferior creature, but that killing him would be impossible because he’d probably forgive you with his last breath and then rise from the dead a few days later.
But he is known for being the real deal - a passionate collector who knows his stuff and is in it “for the right reasons” - a love of art and collecting; not to look cool…
Lots of good nominations - not much to add. I did enjoy reading Hugh Laurie’s book, The Gun Seller (it’s a sardonic James Bond-type of novel - more dry humor, but with real action and drama, too). He’s a decent guitar player…
Well yeah, but that theme song was really bad. Embarrassingly bad. Almost ruin-the-movie bad.
It was really jarring in its badness.
How about Zooey Deschanel? She’s done fine work as an actress (Elf, The Assassination of Jesse James, Weeds) and has a critically-acclaimed musical act (She & Him). She plays the piano, percussion, xylophone, banjo and ukulele.
My nominee was going to be Neil Patrick Harris. A good actor, singer and magician. But after reading this thread, I have to agree that is either Steve Martin or Hugh Laurie.
I was in fact listen to She & Him when I began this thread. But I refuse to type Miss Deschanel’s first name, as the spelling is silly.
I’m a big fan of Henry Rollins. He was the singer for the punk rock band Black Flag and has his own group the Rollins Band. He’s written many books and I think he won a Pulitzer for one? He has his own TV show on the Independent Film Channel and he was an actor in a bunch of movies. I’ve gone to his spoken word shows and he’s amazing. He’s so smart and handsome and BUILT.
Todd Rundgren.
In addition to his regular career as a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (many of his albums feature him playing everything):
When he was in his second band The Nazz, he learned to engineer, record and produce records because the studio engineer didn’t know how to use the multi-track machine. This led to a second career as a very successful producer (Meatloaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell”, Grand Funk’s “We’re An American Band”, XTC “Skylarking” and may others). In terms of record sales, he’s more successful in his second career than his first.
He’s had a deep interest in computer programming, so much that there are people in the computer graphics community that were unaware that he was a musician. He wrote a screen-saver called “FlowFazer” that was pretty ubiquitous on a generation of Macs. He demonstrated an object-oriented operating system called “Hypercode” with concepts that still have yet to be adopted. He was the first musician to distribute music digitally (via Compuserve) and wrote his own digital distribution system called “The Interocitor”.
He built a video production facility to make music videos for himself and others, including one of the first ones played on MTV. He was the first artist to create and animate his own music videos.
And through it all, he’s continued to produce new music rather than become an “oldies act” slogging through his back catalog (though that would undoubtedly pay better).
Actually, I heard him say once that he takes on crap roles in order to finance his Art collection, which is his true passion. I think he’s especially into Edward Hopper.
ETA: some day I’ll learn to read the whole list before responding . . . LOL!