Yakov Smirnoff and the infamous "Night of the Zombie Callers" episode

[Krokodil_Gena]

So I'm listening to the August 20th, 2013 episode and Tom's ranting about Yakov Smirnoff and the callers are drugged for the most part. Why bring up the "comic" from Odessa? Because Tom thinks Smirnoff didn't hack it because he wasn't given a comedy vehicle. That's not how it seemed to work in the `80s; if you were too "ethnic" you had to be teamed with a white guy in order to be a protagonist. Look at Gung Ho (1986); Gedde Watanabe had to be teamed with Michael Keaton, though Ron Howard was smart in how he got the characters to connect (Keaton stumbles across Watanabe in Tokyo.) Otherwise you were the walk-on, walk-off "exotic" like Bronson Pinchot's "Serge" from Beverly Hills Cop. Smirnoff was in that second crowd; he was the real-estate guy in The Money Pit (anybody remember that Tom Hanks-Shelly Long vehicle?) and a bit part in Buckaroo Banzai (thank you IMdB for that factoid.) He did some bit parts on TV before he vanished into Branson, but most of it was like his film work, i.e., "comedic Russian guy." Maybe if he had more of an acting range he wouldn't have gotten typecast so badly, but the guy didn't even appear in Russian-centric movies like 2010 or Moscow on the Hudson.

[buffcoat]

Maybe I'm missing the joke, but Yakov Smirnoff was in Moscow on the Hudson.

Also, Bronson Pinchot certainly ended up *playing* ethnic in his two best known roles ("Sometimes the world looks perfect, nothing to rearrange..."), but his actual background was as all-(NYC/LA)-American as it gets:

Pinchot was born in Manhattan, the son of Rosina (née Asta), a typist, and Henry (originally Poncharavsky), a bookbinder. His mother was Italian American, and his father, who was of Russian descent, was born in New York and raised in Paris. He was raised in Southern California, where he graduated from South Pasadena High School at the top of his class and was appointed valedictorian. He earned a full scholarship to Yale University, where he was placed in Morse College. He graduated magna cum laude. Pinchot began his Yale career in fine art, but after he was cast in a college play, a casting director discovered him, which resulted in his film debut, Risky Business.


I actually remember him pretty well as the jerk from Risky Business. Somehow I've also seen several interviews with him over the years - he talks about how his only interests were sex and cocaine - he's very detailed and graphic about this. He does not entirely connect this with the faltering of his career, but I do.

[Patrickin Chicago]

Yakov was also the guy remodeling the house in Heartburn.

[Krokodil_Gena]

Maybe I'm missing the joke, but Yakov Smirnoff was in Moscow on the Hudson.

Also, Bronson Pinchot certainly ended up *playing* ethnic in his two best known roles ("Sometimes the world looks perfect, nothing to rearrange..."), but his actual background was as all-(NYC/LA)-American as it gets:

Pinchot was born in Manhattan, the son of Rosina (née Asta), a typist, and Henry (originally Poncharavsky), a bookbinder. His mother was Italian American, and his father, who was of Russian descent, was born in New York and raised in Paris. He was raised in Southern California, where he graduated from South Pasadena High School at the top of his class and was appointed valedictorian. He earned a full scholarship to Yale University, where he was placed in Morse College. He graduated magna cum laude. Pinchot began his Yale career in fine art, but after he was cast in a college play, a casting director discovered him, which resulted in his film debut, Risky Business.


I actually remember him pretty well as the jerk from Risky Business. Somehow I've also seen several interviews with him over the years - he talks about how his only interests were sex and cocaine - he's very detailed and graphic about this. He does not entirely connect this with the faltering of his career, but I do.

You're right about Moscow on the Hudson; I'd only seen that movie once. On Bronson Pinchot, I should have put in that I knew that he was American.

There is no joke, though I should have made more comments about the callers, namely that people should listen to that episode if they want to kill the belief that the WFMU-era callers were all brilliant.

[buffcoat]

Krododil_Gena - you're absolutely right.

And it was hit-or-miss in waves - for every Spike and Laurie and even like a Farmer Eli or the guy from the Chateau, there were five people who wanted to be those people and had no idea how to be them other than to get immediately chesty with Tom and then get all stuttery and embarrassing.