He’s back in front of the cameras at last: Jiminy Glick, the obese, obtuse and fluff-centric celebrity interviewer who once asked Tom Hanks if he thought Suzanne Pleshette should work more. But this time Glick’s the movie star, anchoring his first film Jiminy Glick in La La Wood.
Glick’s alter ego Martin Short, who created the character first for his TV chat show and then carried him over to Comedy Central’s Primetime Glick, sat down with Hollywood.com to talk about playing the TV heavyweight with the lightweight questions. And not once did we smack him on the knee with our rolled up press notes.
First, the most important question: Is that real sweat pouring out of Jiminy Glick when the cameras are on?
Martin Short: “Real sweat. It became part of the Jiminy vibe, because that was real sweat. The first time I did Jiminy was in 1999 during the Emmys for The Martin Short Show, and he was a correspondent. And it was like 100 degrees out, it was September, and it was so hot. And the makeup–I remember it was almost ripping off. You know what I mean, when I’m interviewing Jack Lemmon or something. And then, it made me laugh that this guy was asking moronic questions, and sweat was pouring down. It just added to the preposterousness of him, so I never minded it. But it’s not like we had built in little machines to create sweat, no.”
Where did you get the idea for the character? Is he based on what you’ve seen–and celebrity interviewers you’ve encountered–in your own career?
Short: “No, it’s not actually based on journalists at all. Jiminy is more of a moron with power, but he became a journalist because I was doing The Martin Short Show and I thought, ‘Oh, this will be good. I’ll create a guy who can go to junkets and I’ll get more celebrities in the show.’ But if I were creating that character with any kind of framework, I probably would’ve put him as a principal at the school, or working in Washington for the President. And whenever you have that kind of person, you think, ‘How in the name of God could they be doing that job?’ That’s who Jiminy Glick is.”
When you first started the character, did people realize that Glick was really you?
Short: “They know. There’s always a publicist telling a celebrity [lowers his voice] ‘Martin Short’s doing a new character that he thinks is funny. You don’t have to stop. It does no good for us, but if you’d like to, you can.’ And then these stars go up to talk to you, but they know it’s you. Jack Lemmon didn’t know it was me, but that was the first time I had done it, so no one had seen this character. He was a little [in Glick’s voice] ‘So what’s it like to be a Jack Lemmon?’ You know, ‘What are doing?'”
After doing press junkets as Jiminy, did you begin to have any sympathy for the journalists who do them day in and day out?
Short: “Everyone looks at Jiminy and says ‘Oh, I know that guy.’ They never think it’s themselves. But again, Jiminy is not the junket guys. I have not had a rough time, truthfully, with the press in my life. I have not had a rough time with critics in my life. I have no axes to grind in that. To me, I just kind of think of these characters and say, ‘What would be funny that that person might do for a living?’ And again, if I was starting from scratch, he probably would’ve worked in Washington, because you look at some of those guys and think, ‘Wait a second–Talk about morons in power!'”
Have you had people come up to you and insist that you based Jiminy on them, or someone they know?
Short: “Unbelievable! There was a guy just here who said now, ‘Confirm or deny, is it based on one of two people?’ And I was just in New York, and I got, ‘Confirm or deny, it’s based on this guy in New York.’ You get that a lot when you do characters. People are convinced that it’s based on that person. The reality is it’s based on about four people, all of them from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. And a little bit of Merv [Griffin].”
Was there more than just a general outline to the movie?
Short: “It’s a detailed outline that Michael Short and Paul Flaherty and I wrote, but no dialogue is planned. You just say, ‘Okay, this will be a breakfast scene, and Jan Hooks and Marty and the kids talk about what it was like at the party the night before, and we must set up this idea that Jiminy’s excited about all the interviews he’s gonna have, so that when his assistant comes in and says, “you don’t have any interviews,” he can be crestfallen. And action!’ And that’s what you do, and you just roll the cameras. And you don’t know whether Jan’s gonna end up talking about The Facts of Life. Or there’s one moment she pulls out gloves and says, ‘It’s time to have the Thursday bath,’ I had no idea she had gloves–that was her little idea. And you just try to not laugh, because if you laugh, you’ll kill it. You see me quickly cutting some sausage and putting it in my mouth and chewing it, or drink something, so you try to cover, or looking down, and suddenly [in Glick’s voice] pretending to be suddenly angry, you know, and get out of it. Generally, Jan also is very good at not laughing.”
What are the dangers and benefits of doing improv in every scene?
Short: “The benefit is that you can create performances that seem like they’re almost being made up on the spot, because they are. And the danger is often it’s tough to film it. Sometimes, [the camera operators] end up getting in the shot, or you don’t have the coverage when you’re editing the movie, like you’d hoped you would. If you’re gonna shoot a normal film, you’d shoot it there, shoot it there, shoot it there, shoot it there–That can all cut together because you’re saying the same lines. If you’re not saying the same lines or doing the same movements. That’s why often, it’s an easier form in improv to do a documentary–or a mockumentary–because that kind of sudden camera move can imitate the way a documentary is done.”
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When did the idea of David Lynch being a character come into play?
Short: “I liked the idea that Glick would go to the Toronto Film Festival. I always thought that the film should definitely be about film, and that he’d go to a film festival and meet someone who was, in his head, creating his next movie, so that suddenly, the movie would become a David Lynch movie. I had never done David Lynch, but you [in Lynch’s voice] kinda study tapes, and try to get his voice down. Not many people are doing David Lynch out there, so it’s not like you can borrow from other David Lynch-ites.”
What’s it like when you meet someone and you’ve done an impression of them?
Short: “I don’t think ever have done anyone to just ‘get ’em,’ you know what I mean? Usually, the reason you’re doing it is because you love them so much. You’ve bothered to pay attention to the way they speak or behave, and you’ve studied them inadvertently through fanhood, so that the piece you’re doing might be slightly like a Hirschfeld sketch, it might show a few warts. But to do it just to attack, I’ve never done that. So usually, the subject is aware of that. I’ve never run into a place where someone was angry or someone was mad at me.”
Didn’t you do Bette Davis in front of Bette Davis on The Tonight Show in front of Johnny Carson ?
Short: “I had never done The Tonight Show, but I was already in the movies and known enough so that I would be the first guest out on that talk show. And I guess her schedule had to change. They booked me on a Thursday, and they said, ‘we’ve made a mistake. Bette Davis is the first guest out, so can you do it Friday?’ And I said, ‘no, I’m happy to leave it on Thursday.’ To me, the premise of walking out for the first time on The Tonight Show and to meet Johnny Carson, and Bette Davis in between, seemed like a premise. And Rob Reiner, who’s a friend of mine, said ‘I will bet you $100 that you wouldn’t have the guts to do Bette Davis to Bette Davis.’ So I walked out and turned to her, and said [in Davis‘ voice] ‘And what a pleasure to meet you!’ And she said [in Davis‘ voice] ‘Thank you,’ because she had no idea who I was and she thought that was the way I spoke. So it was kinda surreal, and I won my $100.”
Your film is set entirely at the Toronto Film Festival. Haven’t you Canadians stolen enough work from Hollywood?
Short: “Never enough, never enough! We’ll steal as much as we can, as long as you protect us with your military.”
How did you get to film there?
Short: “I’m Canadian and so I know some people that would be kind to me. But there was some concern from the studios that I was going to shoot, in the sense that they said, ‘He will draw focus away from us,’ and I said, ‘No, no, it won’t happen.’ And then we’d shoot and then wake up and the next day, the Toronto Star or the Globe & Mail would have a big picture of Jiminy and a picture this big of the movie star arriving, and I’d go, ‘Oh, please, you’re not helping anyone.’ But they were very accommodating, very nice, and the film closed the Toronto Film Festival.”
What stars did you get at the festival that you weren’t expecting to be in the movie?
Short: “Anyone in the film–Susan Sarandon, Forest Whitaker, Sharon Stone. Kurt [Russell] and Steve [Martin] are old friends of mine, so that was not at the festival. Steve we did in LA, and Kurt we did in Vancouver.”
Had you worked with John Michael Higgins before? How brilliant is he?
Short: “Just hilarious, and, you know, again, it’s so interesting about characters. That is based on a landlord he had, a Russian landlord, who, according to John’s wife, sounds exactly like that. So sometimes, you see character in life, or you go to the cleaners or something, and you say ‘Look at that guy.’ As a character, he’s too broad for Saturday Night Live, but there he is, he exists. He works behind that cleaning counter, or a rug company, wherever you’re buying something. Done sincerely, it can be effective, so he was playing the bad guy in the film, but his take on things was always that skewered, and, of course, filthy. He was the one that pushed us into the R rating. You couldn’t resist it, because it was so originally filthy.”
You recently played Glick for Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live? What was it like going back?
Short: “I’ve hosted a couple times through the years, and I was on it for a year, and on their anniversary show, so I’ve gone back many times. I know from Lorne Michaels and from the people there that sometimes if you’re in town and you’ve finished dinner, you pop over and see a show and you kind of stand in that cubby. I guess my analogy is that it feels like how you feel when you go back to your high school. It’s the same hallways, the same building. It’s the same, ‘Live!…’ The same announcer. You can sit in that makeup chair and close your eyes, and you can be swept back. It’s the same kind of energy and urgency, and making cuts at the last second, and trying to make sure that it all times out.”
Who from the current crop of comedians makes you laugh the hardest?
Short: “I think Will Ferrell is the hardest. He’s probably one of my top favorites, I’d say. I’ve worked with him on Saturday Night Live, when I went back to host, and then I was involved in the 75th anniversary of NBC, a big special. We did it from 8H, and we did a scene together.”
What is it about Hollywood that, like in the film, can make someone like Jiminy a star after one interview?
Short: “Well, it started with Paris Hilton. I mean, that’s how this business works. It’s more so now than ever. You know, you can literally become the talk on everyone’s lips based on a look, a style. And I have to hand it to Paris Hilton. There’s no other Paris Hilton but Paris Hilton. It’s a little more about that now than ever before, where once upon a time it was you had to be Ingrid Bergman. So I think that it’s a perfect time to satirize this idea that out of one fluke moment becomes everyone’s focus, because there are so many shows. I mean, remember there was a time when there were 11 TV stations on. Now, there’s 900 stations and 4,000 entertainment outlets. If someone had said to me 25 years ago that there will be four different shows just based on Variety magazine and there will be an entire network called E!, I would never have predicted that. I would say there would not be enough interest to fuel such shows, but there is. And so the idea that Jiminy. The thing that’s also in Hollywood is that you can be hot for an hour. It used to be 15 minutes. Now, it’s down to about four.”
Jiminy Glick in La La Wood opens in theaters May 6.
