I Must Say

by Martin Short

  At the American Comedy Awards, though, we had a little tent set up, and Goldie Hawn, one of my close friends, played it like Jiminy was a totally entrenched pillar of the Hollywood media. “Oh, Jiminy,” she said, “you’re so full of wisdom—you always have been.” Since the Jiminy bits were improvised, I’d use these little snippets of commentary from his interviewees as information, to supply him with a backstory. Tom Hanks told Jiminy, “During the actors’ strike in 1980, I watched that morning show of yours every day,” and I instantly replied, “Well, we did it from the Beverly Garland Motel in Studio City”—and just like that, I had another piece of Jiminy’s history: a teatime program from somewhere in his semi-distinguished past.

  Daytime talk’s loss was Comedy Central’s gain. The cable channel was gung-ho about letting me devote a full program to the Jiminy character. Furthermore, after a year of walking onstage every day as myself, in a talk show bearing my name, I was downright sick of performing as me.

  For the three wonderful seasons that we did Primetime Glick (2001–’3), my real face never once showed up on-screen. I’d do one-on-one Jiminy interviews with a celebrity, either before a studio audience or as a pretaped remote. I’d do sequences in which the celebrity joined Jiminy in a steam room. I did sketches showing Jiminy reading sordid Hollywood tales to schoolchildren (the story of how Sal Mineo was murdered, for example, or how Eddie Murphy was caught helping a transgender prostitute get home safely in a sketch entitled “The Damsel in Dis Dress”), and we’d have marionettes reenact the stories as Jiminy read. We would also see Jiminy at home with his beloved wife, Dixie (again enlisting the great Jan Hooks), as well as his four robust sons: Morgan, Mason, Matthew, and Modine. And we did some SCTV-type commercial parodies in which I played other characters and impersonated such figures as John Malkovich, who was promoting his new sitcom, Malkovich in the Middle. For the studio-audience sequences, Jiminy was joined by the brilliant Michael McKean as Adrian Van Voorhees, his harp-playing bandleader, who masked his chronic skin condition with a tragically orangey foundation.

  The interview segments were my favorite. Not since Second City Toronto had I been given a chance to improvise so anarchically. I was as surprised as anyone at some of the bizarre things that came out of my mouth. I’d use expressions that I never, ever used in my daily life, such as “I take great umbrage.” I made a knowing reference to a 1940s actor named John Hodiak and later had to look up who he was—where the hell had that come from? It was as if Jiminy was some sort of Altered States exercise in recovered memory and primordial regression.

  More to the point, Dave Foley, of Kids in the Hall fame, said, “Marty, you’ve finally created a character who is as mean as you really are.”

  I wouldn’t go that far, but Jiminy, a man of appetites, had an unfettered id that was both fun and scary to watch in playback. He cut off an answer from Edie Falco with an abrupt, cruelly sibilant “Shhhh!” that truly startled her, followed by his admonition, “Just because I ask you a question doesn’t mean that I need to know the answer. If you keep interrupting me when I have more questions, how can I possibly double-task!” (And when Edie said that she never watches her own work, Jiminy reasoned, “You can’t look at yourself, because you see the limited range.”) Jiminy scandalmongered without restraint, answering Conan O’Brien’s complaint that he wasn’t making eye contact by saying, “I’m looking right into your peepers—which is what Wally Cox used to say to Marlon at night.”

  Jiminy showed himself to be an improbably horny bastard, too—ever in need, he’d say, of his “nightly pop.” He unabashedly molested Ellen DeGeneres and Catherine O’Hara, forcing himself upon them in fits of lust. Ellen rolled with it, literally, as we carnally tumbled over the studio set—the host and guest chairs and the big platter of doughnuts on the table between them. One nice discovery I made about the fat suit, which is filled with foam, is that it was a real gift to a physical comedian—I could do flips, rolls, and pratfalls with abandon because I was fully padded.

  One of my favorite hallmarks of Jiminy was his utter lack of preparation. He always had a sheaf of research that his staff had compiled for him, but he clearly never read it, or merely cherry-picked it for a couple of factoids—which he still got wrong. To Steven Spielberg, he said, “I loved this film you did, Schindler’s Express, with Goldie Hawn,” and demonstrated his willingness to ask the tough questions by inquiring of the esteemed director, “You’ve made so many films—when are you gonna do the big one?”

  Steven was apprehensive about doing Primetime Glick because he hadn’t been on a talk show since Dinah Shore’s in the 1970s, and because he is not a performer. But he was a terrific straight man. The one cue I gave him in advance was that, when I asked him a question about his process and his craft, he should ramble on at length, and get so wrapped up in his answer that he looks away from Jiminy, his eyes focused on the middle distance. Steven handled this assignment expertly, earnestly enumerating his influences: Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges, and so on. Jiminy, bored to stultification by this answer and distracted by his ever-present hunger, slowly and stealthily slid out of his chair like a melting wheel of brie left out too long in the sun, commando-crawling over to the craft-services table to binge on food—and then slithering back just in time to pop back into place and offer a banal reply, his mouth full of pretzels and crudités: “Well, that sounds, like, really good!”

  Jiminy was, in essence, the polar opposite of a character I’d done on SCTV named Brock Linehan. Brock was a straight-up parody of a well-regarded Canadian television interviewer named Brian Linehan (really subtle name-change detail on my part), a thinking man’s host of the 1970s and ’80s akin to Dick Cavett or Charlie Rose. Brian Linehan was known for his meticulous preparation for interviews—all the more impressive in the pre-Internet age—and his cerebral manner and turtlenecks. I’d been on his show in 1977, when I was first attracting notice at Second City Toronto, and he was gracious and solicitous.

  But my SCTV homage to Linehan became so popular in Canada that Linehan reported back to me that he was increasingly having a hard time being taken seriously in public. A waiter, he told me, had broken up with laughter when he, Brian Linehan, was simply trying to place his order. So, he asked me, could I please stop doing my Brock Linehan character? I said of course, and did stop—though I withheld from him that we already had three more Brock segments in the can.

  Anyway, back to Jiminy: he was a wild, liberating character to do, and, when paired with an accommodating guest, was prone to embark upon dark, dangerous journeys deep into the comedic unknown. Alec Baldwin and Jiminy got to discussing Alec’s left-wing politics, and Jiminy went straight to the Communist place: “A lot of people speak ill of the Blacklist, and I don’t get it . . . Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. Personally, I’d like to see them isolated in Catalina!”

  Alec ran with it, indignantly: “A United States penal colony in Catalina?”

  Jiminy: “I would have Tim Robbins in a cell!”

  Alec: “But Susan on a boat!”

  Jiminy: “Yes!”

  Alec: “So would I.”

  We took a break, and Alec was excited, clearly getting into the Glick spirit. “Ask me about women,” he said. So we rolled tape, and every woman Jiminy mentioned, Alec acknowledged having had sex with. Meg Ryan? “She couldn’t get enough of it.” Sarah Jessica Parker? “What do you do, she comes to your apartment at three o’clock in the morning after she wraps the friggin’ TV show.” Dame Maggie Smith? “It was just a thing in the back of a car with an overcoat over my lap.” Dianne Feinstein? “She liked to watch. I was with Barbara Boxer. Feinstein came up to me, she’d had a few, and she said, ‘Would you, um . . . would you like to do Barbara? And would you mind if I watched?’ And I said ‘Whatever blows your dress up, let’s go.’”

  Over the course of the program’s run, Jiminy had his way with Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jon Stewart, Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, John McEnroe, Goldie Hawn, Ben Stiller, and Ice Cu
be (Jiminy: “I love Rex Harrison, he was one of the first rappers”), among many others. All of this with me now in my fifties. It was welcome reassurance that the well of comic invention had not run dry.

  Eugene Levy has said that Jiminy is my greatest creation, which, coming from my oldest and dearest friend, is an especially moving compliment. Not that Jiminy was particularly reverent toward Eugene. He pronounced his last name incorrectly on Primetime Glick (as “LEE-vy” rather than “LEH-vy”) and greeted him by declaring with an accusatory pointed finger, “You’re not exactly who I assumed you’d be.” The interview carried on for a couple more minutes, with Eugene holding forth on some subject, when Jiminy brusquely interjected, “Gabe Kaplan! From Welcome Back, Kotter! That’s who I was hoping you would be!”

  INTERLUDE: A MOMENT WITH JIMINY GLICK

  Jiminy is the most interactive of my characters. He is, by definition, an interviewer, and therefore needs an interview subject once he has finished puffing himself up in his introductory remarks. And speaking of puffing himself up: when I was doing Primetime Glick, I wore carefully applied latex makeup to appear Jiminy-obese, along with a very convincing and elaborately conceived fat suit. But in my live stage show, since I have to do a lot of quick costume changes, there isn’t time to re-create Jiminy’s look as thoroughly.

  Instead, I have a special Jiminy mask that is split at the back and quickly Velcros together, and a wonderful, custom-built, easy-in, easy-out fat suit that I simply step into and zip up the back, as if it were a store-bought child’s Halloween costume. The fat-suit costume is filled with foam and includes a blazer, striped shirt, necktie, and matching trousers. When it’s drooping unused on a hanger, it looks like a carefully deboned Halliburton executive.

  I first started doing live Jiminy interviews during the 2006 run of Fame Becomes Me on Broadway. Originally, we had famous ringers in the audience that I pulled onstage—Jerry Seinfeld, Nathan Lane, and so on—but we soon realized that it was just as funny with a civilian. A dentist, say. Because Jiminy is the egotist and the anarchist who sucks up all the oxygen, all the interviewee has to do is play it straight.

  That said, I do try to have my office book a local luminary to join Jiminy, simply because it’s good promotion; if the popular deejay or weatherman in your city knows he’s going to be onstage with Jiminy, he’ll plug the upcoming Martin Short concert all week. I also like having mayors on, because they’re good straight men and women, inherently self-conscious about their images. Occasionally Jiminy will get aroused by a lady mayor and will jump her and start pumping her. But all in good fun; she merely feels the soft impact of foam padding for two or three seconds, whereupon Jiminy collapses back into his seat and lights up a cigarette.

  Before I let Jiminy speak for himself, permit me to provide you with an abridged version of the bio I wrote for him back when Primetime Glick was heading to air.

  Jiminy Glick was born in 1948, in Akron, Ohio, the youngest of eleven children born to Omar and Isabella Glickman. After graduating from Gale Gordon High School, he enrolled at the prestigious DeVry Institute of Technology, but left after the first semester when he won the role of Onlooker #2 in a bus and truck theater production of Forty Carats, starring Miss Lana Turner.

  By the time he was thirty, Jiminy had grown confident enough to move out of his parents’ house and pursue a career in acting. Sure enough, he landed a job as a busboy at Chasen’s, where he stayed for the next eight years. He worked only occasionally as an actor, most notably as Buddy Ebsen’s kleptomaniac nephew in a Barnaby Jones two-parter.

  Jiminy found acting jobs few and far between and was ultimately forced to take a position as a personal assistant to the legendary Charles (Death Wish) Bronson. He remained in that lofty capacity for five turbulent years. Then, in 1991, while moonlighting as a bartender’s assistant at Roddy McDowall’s People’s Choice Awards after-party, he befriended former Laugh-In producer George Schlatter. As luck would have it, Schlatter was looking for a host for his new syndicated celebrity interview show, LaLaWood. Glick got the nod, and after two short years, LaLaWood rocketed to the top 100.

  Jiminy now lives in Tarzana with his wife of twenty-two years, Dixie, and their four sons. When he’s not hosting his current show, Primetime Glick, you’ll most likely find Jiminy coaching his sons’ Little League team, rebuilding the engine of one of his classic steam-engine cars, or browsing for antiques.

  “Thank God he’s a man and he’s so fat, or I’d be worried about my job. He’s that good!”

  —Diane Sawyer

  * * *

  JIMINY GLICK

  I believe celebrities are the most persecuted minority in America. A celebrity walks into a room, and people have already made up their minds as to whether or not they like him. We, and by “we” I mean me, are victimized by prejudice. And I think there is no room for prejudice, unless you’re talking about Samoans. Because we all know what they’re like.

  I recently interviewed the wonderful Pope Francis. He’s a celibate who loves the tango. So apparently it only takes one to tango.

  Also, unlike his predecessor, he’s a humble man. He’s not wearing the fur-lined cape. Except, of course, when he has Lady Gaga tickets.

  I also recently interviewed the wonderful Elton John. I’ll let you all in on a little showbiz secret. (Whispering.) Gay.

  I also interviewed the late James Brown—well, I didn’t interview him as much as we carpooled together to the women’s shelter to pick up our wives.

  Let’s be honest, celebrities are our touchstones to “Where was I and when.” I think we all remember where we were when the Queen had Diana killed. I certainly know where I was. I was getting some polyps removed from my duodenum. And the doctor had just berated me because I’d forgotten to fast. Suddenly the head nurse came running in and announced that the princess was gone. It felt like somebody had taken a knife and plunged it deep into my gut. Then I realized that the doctor was still in mid-procedure.

  Aren’t you in wonderful shape, for someone who’s let himself go? And whatever cosmetic surgery you’ve had, I’d say twenty percent more and then I’d stop! You know, I used to be quite heavy myself, but now I’m doing Atkins. Not the diet, his widow. I’ve been on Jenny Craig more times than Mister Craig.

  But enough about me. I want to know about your journey. But not too much detail, ’cause I don’t really care. Let me ask you this . . .

  If Lincoln were alive today, would he be pleased with his tunnel?

  Am I crazy, or is Italy shaped like a young man filling out a police report after a rugby team has had its way with him?

  Why did God give men nipples if we’re not supposed to breast-feed our pets?

  Do you feel badly for the g in benign?

  Why did they put an s in the word lisp? It seems cruel, no?

  Those toilets that flush automatically—do they see when you’re finished, or are they guessing?

  * * *

  LOVE, LOSS, AND BUMPKISS

  Tom Hanks had this habit with Nancy. We’d all be gathered somewhere, being loud and boisterous—at a dinner party, say, or on vacation—and he would ask her, “Don’t you ever get tired of laughing at Marty’s jokes?”

  And Nancy would always say, “No, I actually don’t.” And it was true. Nancy was the opposite of the stereotypically obeisant show-business wife, but she loved to laugh, and she never wearied of hearing the same jokes (and I mean the same jokes) time after time. Laughter was central to our relationship. And here’s the other really important point: Nan was hysterically funny herself. Way back in 1974, when we first hung out together at the jazz club with Paul Shaffer and Mary Ann McDonald, we were amazed to discover how similar our senses of humor were. By the time we were parents and longtime marrieds, we’d become comfortably complementary.

  Nan and I could tell a million stories of our adventures together, some of them pretty embarrassing, but nearly all of them uplifting in some way, or at least worth a chuckle. The first time we ever took a g
etaway trip on our own, without the children, we went to Hawaii for five days. We were, like all exhausted parents of young kids, psyched to grab a literal moment in the sun. I called Carlos, the driver we always used, to take us to the airport. He told me that unfortunately he would not be available when we needed to leave, but he would send someone else from his car service.

  I looked out the window and saw a big limo pull into our driveway. And out of it stepped a six-foot-four African American man, beautifully dressed in chauffeur’s livery—much more proper than Carlos, and very elegant and poised, like a character in a Wes Anderson movie. Right as he was pulling up, Nancy called out to me from the bedroom, asking if Carlos was picking us up. I shouted back to her, “No, he’s sending someone else.” That is all I said.

  I ran upstairs to bring our bags down, and by the time I did, Nancy was outside with the driver, introducing him to the children and the nanny, and kissing the kids good-bye. We got in the car and hit the road. As we were moving along, Nancy leaned forward and said to the driver, “Oh, Bumpkiss, you know we’re going to American Airlines, right?” And he said, “Yes, I know.”

  Nancy wasn’t done. “Bumpkiss,” she said, “are you gonna take the Marina or the 405? What do you think is the best route?”