Everybody loves a weirdo. Well, at least on film.Who is your favorite film weirdo (like Milton from Office Space)?
Panelist: Tennessee Jed
Milton was the only one I liked. I would have picked him, and maybe the fact he was incorporated into the question says more about the validity of the topic itself? ;)
Panelist: ScottDS
I thought about this one for a while and it's a toss-up between Carl the groundskeeper in Caddyshack (Bill Murray in one of his signature roles) and ANY character played by Jemaine Clement in anything. The one role that comes to mind is pretentious fantasy author Dr. Ronald Chevalier in the film Gentleman Broncos, whose writing advice consists of adding the suffix "-anus" to character names in order to make them sound "magical." Just watch.
Panelist: T-Rav
Maybe he doesn’t properly count as a “weirdo,” but I’m very partial to Daniel Stern’s character “Marv” in the Home Alone movies. He’s a criminal and yet such a comic foil that you can’t help liking him just a little.
Panelist: BevfromNYC
I still like Bill Murray in Caddyshack. He plays the classic weirdo and the gophers were kind of cute too.
Panelist: AndrewPrice
It's hard not to pick Milton. But I'm going old school... Real Genius: Lazlo. He won the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes and most of its prizes with the proper application of science!
Comments? Thoughts?
38 comments:
Any of Rick Moranis's roles, but especially those in Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Huh? This wasn't supposed to post until tomorrow.
All right, since Carl Spackler is taken, I will go with Charles De Mar (Curtis Armstrong) in Better of Dead.
One of his better quotes- [giving skiing instructions] "Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn."
Booger (also Curtis Armstrong) in "Revenge of the Nerds".
Bobcat Goldthwait as Egg Stork in "One Crazy Summer"
"Better Off Dead" is an under appreciated classic full of weird characters. Charles De Mar as mentioned by Shawn. Ricky the kid who lived across the street, his mom, The newspaper kid who wanted his two dollars...the list goes on and on.
Derick Lutz - as played by a young Robert Downey Jr in "Back to School".
The somewhat more pyschotic version of Pee Wee in "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie"
Shawn, Charles De Mar is fantastic! "Do you know what the street value of this mountain is?" LOL!
And I love that quote about skiing, especially as the French girl repeats it later.
Outlaw, Ricky... "A car is not a toy." LOL! Yeah, that film is packed with awesome characters. "Two dollars!"
I liked Goldthwait in Police Academy too. He always did the same thing, but it worked.
K, Derick Lutz. Yep, good call!
In hindsight everyone should have known something was wrong with Pee Wee from the get go. He was always wound too tightly.
This may have posted early, but I still got here too late.
My choices were Lazlo and Booger.
Okay, just for something a bit different:
How about Kevin Costner's character in Silverado?
"All I did was kiss a girl!"
In the non-funny weirdo category, I like "Romero" from "Escape from New York."
Also liked the "Gyro Captain" from "The Road Warrior." His scenes with the dog are pretty funny.
Mycroft, Interesting choice with Costner. That's another movie with an interesting mix of strange characters.
Kenn, Feeling a bit apocalyptical? LOL! I'm glad you didn't say the guy with the assless chaps. What the heck was that about?
I cast my vote for the obnoxious-but-hilarious "Doug", who makes a brief appearance in GHOST WORLD (2001).
It's probably too late now, but I would've liked to have seen a movie following Doug through a typical (for him) day.
I don't know if this counts, but the creepy, boring, monotone guy who narrated "An Inconvenient Truth" really weirded me out. Can't remember his name though.
Peter Lorre in both The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca... creepy weird. (For that matter his tour de force as Hans Beckart in Fritz Lang's "M".
Pee Wee Herman in Pee Wee's Big Adventure
From So I Married an Axe Murderer...
Mike Myers as his Scottish Dad AND Phil Hartman as the Alcatraz tour guide "Vicky"
Jeff Bridges as the Dude in The Big Lebowski...
Andrew tell me what chaps aren't assless? If they are then aren't they called pants. :)
Mose Harper in The Searchers is another good weird character.
Yeah, I'd say most of the characters in Better Off Dead are weirdos.
And I agree re: Bobcat Goldthwait in the Police Academy movies. :-)
Let's see, who else...
-Does Dr. Strangelove count?
-The Geek and Long Duk Dong [cue gong sound] in Sixteen Candles - still possibly the best teen movie ever made
-The unchanged 1985 version of George McFly as seen in the first ten minutes of Back to the Future
Speaking of John Hughes movies, how about Brian and Allison from The Breakfast Club? The "Wierdos" who turned out to be the most normal of the bunch of people who were all normal.
Outlaw, Good point. Still, it's the apocalypse... wear some underwear. What would your mother think if you died like that?
Backthrow, I haven't actually seen that one.
PikeBishop, LOL! You mean the bad animatronic robot?
Floyd, All good choices! It's funny to think that The Dude can lead the movie and still be "the weird guy", but he really is.
Let me add Dr. Emmett Brown in Back to the Future along those lines.
Dave, True. That is a surprisingly interesting movie as teen movies go.
Scott, It's interesting to me how many of these there are. It didn't seem that way when we wrote the question, but it seems that weird is very common in Hollywood?
Milton, Carl, and Booger are all good choices all right, though as far as weird characters go Randy Quaid's character Russell in Independence Day has always stuck with me as a good weird character as well. "On a personal note I was abducted by aliens 10 years ago and I've been itchin' for some payback since!"
- Daniel
Daniel, That's a good one too!
And who could forget our favorite wierdo, Cousin Eddie from the Vacation franchise?
"Has anyone ever tell you you're bad luck?"
"Ah, those were my mother's dying words. But I guess if your body's covered in third degree burns, and your foot's caught in a bear trap, you tend to start talkin' crazy."
Frankly, you could just say every character played by Randy Quaid, ever, belongs on the list. Although as I remarked the other night while watching Christmas Vacation, "I did not know that Randy Quaid was not really acting in these scenes."
You could say Randy Quaid in real life for that matter. :-)
I can't think of any more weirdos at the moment but I'm sure they'll come to me.
In the "Never Gonna Happen Today File," I'm going with Fisher Stevens as Ben in the original "Short Circuit." (And "Short Circuit 2.") Ah, for the times we could just laugh at things without being so freakin' sensitive all the time!
In the "Weirdos Can Lead Movies, Too File," why has nobody mentioned Jim Varney as Ernest P. Worrel? Note to Hollywood self-haters: (lookin' at you, Seth Rogen!), this is how you present lovable losers and get the audience to cheer for them all the way to the end.
And from the "Adult Audience Only File," I don't know how many people remember Adult Swim's glory days of a decade ago, but Colonel Hunter Gathers of "The Venture Bros." (a Johnny Quest spoof) has to be mentioned here.
Yeah, Randy Quaid... wow. I thought he was hilarious on film. He played crazy so well. Then life imitated art. Sad.
Rustbelt, I have to admit that I enjoyed Jim Varney's "Ernest" a good deal. I didn't want to like it, but it was just hard not to.
I do recall Adult Swim from back then and a lot of it was really hilarious. Some was awful, but some was really, really funny. I think they even put Futurama under Adult Swim back then.
Rustbelt- I love Colonel Hunter Gathers. There' s a man whose tits aren' t mournful.
Rustbelt -
I was just thinking about Ben in Short Circuit... especially this exchange:
Crosby (Guttenberg): "Where are you from?"
Ben: "Bakersfield."
Crosby: "No, I mean your ancestors."
Ben: "Oh, them... Pittsburgh."
And yeah, how could we forget Ernest? The thing with him was, unlike Rogen's characters who are usually content to do nothing, Ernest always had a plan or a scheme or something going on. In other words, a GOAL.
Most of the ones I'd think of off the top of my head have been said.
Steve Buscemi's Rockhound from Armageddon was well played weirdo. Jay and Silent Bob did the job in quite a few Kevin Smith movies, they did it that well they got their own movie.
The talented Rob Schneider also played quite a few weirdos in Adam Sandler movies.
Hong Kong Martial Arts movies always had good werido's for comic relief. Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao played their fair share in a few Jackie Chan movies.
Scott.
ScottDS, Yeah, the world is a little too touchy to tell jokes like that anymore, though they are funny.
Scott, For years, I didn't like Rob Schneider. I'm not sure why, he just rubbed me wrong. But I gave his films a second chance and I've really come to like him and his films.
Jay and Silent Bob... LOL! Yep.
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