1.16.2006
Christmas Special: Who Shanked K.R.?
Kurt Reynolds was dead, to begin with. Shanked in his prison cell with the unfriendly end of half a toothbrush. Apparently he'd been locked up with a Burt Reynolds-hating maniac. He lasted a couple weeks, probably focusing all his energy on looking like Kurt Russell, but then the mask must've slipped and the Oral-B made it's unwelcome appearance. Gary Busey had broken the news to me:It's a rough deal Matt, but at least he went peacefully.
Peacefully? He was stabbed in the gut with a toothbrush!
Yeah... well, live by the sword and all that. Talk to ya later Matty.
Gary didn't seem too upset by the whole thing. Had he forgotten the only reason Kurt was in prison was because of the multitude of crimes we'd pinned on him?... Quite possibly. Had I? No. It was cutting me up inside, just like the flexy-grip handle had inside Kurt. My spirits were low, and I was in no mood to celebrate Christmas.
Christmas Eve. I'm alone in my apartment. Sinking into a chair in front of the TV, drifting off to sleep. Suddenly a breathy voice comes from behind me:
Matt. Don't turn around.
A burglar! A burglar who knows my name! I reach for the only weapon on hand - the TV remote - and thinking of my namesake's use of a pen in the Bourne Identity, prepare to spin out of the chair and stab the man with it. Remembering my high school physics lessons, I quickly calculate that to stab someone with a remote would require at least three times the force used for a knife. This would be a two-handed job.
I make my move. I spin up and out of the chair, but when I see who's standing behind me I stumble with shock and fall to the floor.
No! It's not possible. You're dead!
It's Kurt Reynolds.
It is possible Matt. Think about it. I'm a Kurt Russell impersonator. Put the pieces together.
he replies. My lightning fast thought process goes into action: To be a good Kurt Russell impersonator he would have to have studied Kurt, watched his films over and over. Films like...
Oh my God!
You see it now?
It's so obvious! No prison could hold you.
That's right. Kurt Russell escaped from New York, L.A. and let's not forget what happened in Tango and Cash.
It made perfect sense, except for one thing:
But what about the corpse in your cell? And your Burt Reynolds-hating cellmate?
Kurt smiles,
The corpse was nothing. Something I threw together in wood shop. They'll realise it's not really me when they complete the autopsy. As for Crazy Mike, he's actually a huge fan of Burt Reynolds. I convinced him that I was the love child of Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn. He was very eager to help Burt's son out of his predicament.
I think about this for a moment. I wasn't sure how being Goldie Hawn's son would make him look like Kurt Russell or even if that was a plausible story, since I've never been able to tell how old he is. Regardless, it convinced Crazy Mike and now Kurt was standing in front of me. But what did he want? I had to ask.
What do you want?
I asked.
I want my freedom back Matt. I want my name cleared. You know the truth of what happened in Ecuador. I want you to tell the police.
Kurt. I can't do that. The uneasy peace between the Caan and Busey families was only brought about through your sacrifice. There's talk of Jimmy and Gary collaborating on a remake of Lawnmower Man. Is that really something you want to jeopardise?
I thought you might say that Matt. So I've arranged a little lesson for you. Tonight you'll be visited by three celebrity impersonators. After listening to what they have to say you're sure to help me.
I'm puzzled, and think my options over.
Wait a minute Kurt. What's to stop me from just calling the police and turning you in?
In a flash of movement Kurt's arm swings up and he knocks me with something across the head. I fall to the floor unconscious. When I come to Kurt's gone. I get up to find the phone, but soon realise that the blunt object that knocked me out was the phone. It's in pieces on the ground. I turn on a light and only then see that I'm not alone.
Hello Matt.
The figure says, stepping forward from the shadows. His face comes into the light.
My God! You look just like Airwolf-star Jan-Michael Vincent!... except for that scar on your forehead.
He touches the scar and looks troubled. Clearly there were some bad memories floating to the surface. He begins to talk, in a barely-audible whisper:
Except for that scar... Yes Matt, I was a Jan-Michael Vincent impersonator. Kurt Reynolds asked me to be here tonight as an impersonator of celebrities past. I will tell you what can happen to celebrity impersonators when their-
Have you ever been inside Airwolf?
No.
Ok. Sorry, go ahead.
I listened quietly as he told his story. His name was Paul, but from 1984 onwards he was known as Stringfellow Hawke to most. Airwolf was a big hit and he revelled in it's success. He made a good living travelling around the country impersonating the character that opitimised the late-early-to-mid 80's.
One of the best gigs was rich folks' parties. They'd pay me to come out and tell the guests stories about my adventures in that helicopter. If they had an extra $500 to blow, and if they lived by a lake with a little wooden pier, I'd go out onto the end of it and play the cello while looking thoughtfully at a passing bird. That always blew them away!
Things were going good, then he teamed up with an Ernest Borgnine impersonator and they really started to make big bucks. But not long after, disaster struck:
We were payed to open a new fast food restaurant. When we show up the manager says he wants us to make a big entrance - to land in front of the place in a helicopter and he wants us to be flying the thing. Neither of us could fly a helicopter, but this was the 80's. Back then everyone was so rich, confident and coked-up that we didn't think anything of it. I took off ok, but then lost control. The copter went into a crazy spiral - I had Dominic Santini (the Ernest Borgnine impersonator stayed in character the whole time) shouting at me to straighten her up, the crowd below were screaming, everything was nuts.
Did you land her ok?
Ok, but not great. That's where I got this.
He touched his scar gently before going on.
Dominic wasn't so lucky... neither were the people we landed on. I went on the run. Travelling from town to town making a couple bucks doing kid's parties, weddings, Airwolf-themed Bar Mitzvahs. The show got cancelled and work dried up. Jan-Michael didn't do much else for awhile and I was left out in the cold.
That's a sad story.
It's a common story Matt. As impersonators this is the life we're born into. Our livelihoods depend on the celebrities we look like. If they drop under radar we're left with nothing. We have no other skills to fall back on. Most of us can't even read.
That's terrible.
That's life. The life of an impersonator anyway. If I had a car I'd drive you down to Saint Larry's Refuge on 71st street.
I hadn't heard of the place.
Saint Larry's?
Saint Larry is the patron saint of celebrity impersonators and freshwater pirates. The refuge is a place where old celebrity impersonators can go to get a hot meal, a bed for the night, and to remember the better times.
...Freshwater pirates?
Yeah. Rivers, lakes, estuaries at low tide. Larry was a freshwater pirate himself before he found God... and realised how much he looked like then-President John Adams.
I was deeply touched by the story, and was beginning to see things from Kurt's point of view. The life he was born into as a Kurt Russell/Burt Reynolds lookalike-baby wasn't an easy one. We talked a little while longer before he left, and I sat back in my chair to wait for the next impersonator. It wasn't long before I'd fallen asleep.
Wake up!
I open my eyes... and start screaming! The man in front of me jumps a little but then calms. He motions for me to calm down and I'm quiet again, but my heart is beating like crazy.
Hi Matt. The name's Patrick Roberts, I'm a Robert Patrick impersonator.
Oh... for a minute there I thought you were actually Robert Patrick. Sorry for screaming.
It's ok. I'm used to it.
Patrick Roberts was the impersonator of celebrities present. He had come to tell me about the difficulties people in his profession had to deal with during their careers.
I get a rough time Matt. A real rough time. Sure, I've got the good looks of Robert Patrick as compensation, but sometimes I wonder if it's really worth it.
What do you mean?
Take today. I was out finishing up my Christmas shopping and I was spat on four times. Once at the counter by a girl wrapping up one of my gifts, and she just went on wrapping!
Why do they do it?
He looks away. He's clearly upset by the whole thing.
Sometimes they don't say anything. They'll just spit or push me or try to run me down in their cars. Other times they call out "This is for John Connor. You took away the closest thing he had to a father!"
You didn't kill the the Terminator! You just drove him to assisted self-termination.
I didn't do either! I just look like a guy who played a character who did that!
Oh right... sorry.
Sometimes it's "This is for the men you ambushed on the annex skywalk you callous f***!" or "This is for being in the X-files!" I thought it couldn't get any worse, then James Cameron released the special edition DVD of Terminator 2 with-
Oh yeah! That deleted scene where you feel up John Connor's bedroom in a real freaky kind of way. People must hate you for that.
I wasn't in the goddamn movie!
Oh... Sorry.
This went on for some time. People hated him for being the T-1000 in Terminator 2, for not being the T-1000 in Terminator 3, for belittling the role of the T-1000 in Wayne's World 2, for giving Major Shephard a hard time in the first episode of Stargate Atlantis and even for being the only person to be killed on screen by all three founders of Planet Hollywood. The worst thing about it was that he didn't even do any of these things. It was all Robert Patrick.
Did you ever meet Bobby Patrick? Maybe tell him to try to upset less people.
Once. I told him that the celebrity/impersonator relationship is a symbiotic one that he should respect more. Without the celebrity the impersonator would have no source of income. The impersonator shares in the successes and failures of his celebrity.
What did he say?
He said that's not a symbiotic relationship, it's a parasitic one.
Here's a sharp guy.
Patrick didn't take my response too well. But he'd gotten through to me. His was a hard life. By the time he left I'd really started to see things from Kurt's point of view. Maybe we had given Kurt a raw deal, but what could I do about it?
Before I finish the thought there's a loud banging on the door. I get up and walk over. Slowly opening it I don't know what to expect. The door creaks open. In the hallway there's a tall figure dressed in a dark robe. A hood keeps his face in darkness. He's completely silent.
Are you the impersonator of celebrities future?
I ask. Patrick had told me that he would be my next visitor (not that I understood what that meant at the time).
I am.
he said. A pause.
Behold!
he throws back his hood on speaking the word and I'm left in shock! He looks like... no one in particular. Maybe a little like Steve Guttenberg, but that's hardly something to brag about. Puzzled, I invite him in. He asks for a coffee so we go into the kitchen.
I'm sorry but I just don't see it. Who are you supposed to look like?
He smiles.
Before I tell you, I think an explanation is in order.
He takes a sip of the coffee.
Before I discovered... my gift... I worked as a computer programmer in a software company. We developed a program which could extrapolate peoples' appearances decades into the future. We could take a picture of anyone and tell you what they would look like in their old age.
Did it work?
It was uncanny. We tested it by taking old pictures of famous people and generating images of what they look like now. It worked on the likes of Gary Coleman, Michael J. Fox, Cher... the list goes on... Then we started using newer photographs. It was like looking into the future. We took all the young celebrities: Franky Muniz, Hillary Duff, the Olsen twins-
I interrupt,
Hey, what do the Olsen twins look like in the future?
Kind of a cross between Courtney Love and Joan Rivers... We got cocky. We felt like gods seeing into the future like that. Then one day...
He pauses for the longest time.
...The Sixth Sense had been on TV the night before. I came in to work and decided to check out what Haley Joel Osment would look like in twenty years time.
...and?
It was like looking in a mirror.
F***.
That's what I said.
We take our time with this. It's heavy. I didn't know what to say. Seemingly, neither did he. How could anyone come to terms with being a future Haley Joel Osment lookalike? It would be years before Haley Joel would look like the man before me, and by then he'd be further into Haley Joel future. This was confusing.
Of course I had to quit my job. How could I go on working as a programmer knowing I look like future Haley Joel Osment?
You couldn't - no one could.
Another pause. I'm starting to think this guy isn't as well prepared as the others were. I feel like I have to prompt him.
So, are you going to tell me how hard it is for celebrity-future impersonators?
Why would I do that?
Didn't Kurt ask you to come here and convince me to help him?
Yeah. But my plan's a little different from the others.
I squint at him. What did he mean? Before he says anything else he glances quickly over my shoulder. I turn to see what caught his eye but there's nothing there. Before I know it he has me in a headlock and he starts ramming my head against the refrigerator door!
Do what Kurt tells you to!
He starts shouting over and over. The door (and my head) is taking a real pounding. My complete set of Kevin Bacon fridge magnets falls to floor, shaken loose by the reverberations. Footloose falls away first, A Few Good Men, Murder in the First, The Woodsman, Tremors... The floor is littered with classic Bacon by the time the demented future Haley Joel Osment lookalike let's me go. My head is throbbing.
What the hell was that?
He doesn't seem too disturbed by the whole thing. Behind me the fridge door swings open. I turn and examine it.
Aw, will you look at this? It's all bent outta shape! It doesn't even close anymore.
He takes a quick look. Pushes it back and forth a little, then looks up at me.
Yeah, well maybe you'll think twice next time.
What the hell does that mean? Get the hell outta here!
He leaves without another word. A more suspicious man would think that he wasn't a future Haley Joel Osment impersonator at all - he might just've been some guy that Kurt asked to slam my head against the refrigerator door!... I wouldn't know for sure for at least another ten years.
My head aching, I finally went to bed.
Next morning I woke up thinking the whole thing had been a dream. Was it at all plausible that Kurt Reynolds and three other celebrity impersonators had visited me in the night? Not really. Yeah, it must've been some crazy dream, or so I thought until I walked into the kitchen and saw the refrigerator door still bent out of shape, the Kevin Bacon fridge magnets still scattered on the floor, and Paul - the ex-Jan-Michael Vincent impersonator - passed out under the sink next to half a jar of nickels and dimes. I kick him,
Hey. Hey! Have you been drinking my change?
He didn't even stir. A night on the small change'll do that to you. Learned that the hard way when Susan Sarandon challenged me to a peso drinking competition in Tijuana. Never met a woman who could down so much copper and stay standing - Tim Robbins' got himself a keeper there.
So it was real. Slowly the message they'd been trying to get through to me last night resurfaced. Kurt was an innocent man! Not just a man - a special breed of man - a celebrity impersonator! I had to do something to help him. I run to the window looking out onto the street - I hadn't been this enthusiastic about something since last summer when I eagerly waited to see what happens when stealth meets A.I. - opening the window I look out, looking for someone - anyone - who I can proclaim Kurt's innocence to. The only person I see is the Mexican kid from across the street. Out walking his new dog, still without a leash (his last dog had an unfortunate encounter with the back of the Die Hard ambulance. Dragged him four blocks before I noticed the ride was a little bumpier than usual).
What's today!
I call down.
¿Qué?
What's today, my fine fellow?
¡Vaya al infierno, y estancia lejos de mi perro!
What the hell was he talking about?... It didn't matter! It suddenly hit me what day it was - Christmas Day - what better day to help Kurt out?
Kurt Reynolds is an innocent man!
I shout at the top of my lungs!
I'm glad you think so.
I turn to see Kurt standing there. How the hell do people get into my apartment so easily? I welcome him, and explain I'm willing to help him. He lends me his phone (he broke mine the night before) so that I can call the only man who can clear his name with the authorities - hell, this man is the authorities: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Do you think he'll really do it Matt? He's one of the people who got me into this mess.
That was a misunderstanding. I'll straighten things out between you two.
I call Arnie.
Hallo! Happee crissmuss, unless yuwar jooish in which case happee hannukah!... Uh... I dohn't know vat da udda peeple have.
Arnold! It's me, explosive writer/director/actor Matt Evans.
Matt. How da hell are yoo? Ha!
Arnold. I need you over here quick. Kurt Reynolds is here. We have to help him.
A pause. Maybe he was just lighting a cigar. A long pause. Maybe a woman had walked by. Still nothing. This was something else.
Yah Matt. Say hi to Kewrt fohr mee. Ime on my vay ova.
He sounds a little serious, so I try to lighten the mood - it is Christmas after all.
Would you say you might even jingle all the way over?
No. I voodn't.
Oh... Sorry.
The call ends. Kurt and I wait. I ask him about prison - was it just like in the movies? Did he have to get busy living or get busy dying? - He said he really wasn't there long enough to decide. He didn't seem too interested in talking to me, so I got him to help me wake up the sorry excuse for a Stringfellow Hawke on my kitchen floor. He'd just woken up when the door swings open.
Go! go! go!
A group of men dressed in black storm into the room, grab hold of Kurt, and are gone before I can say a word. A moment later Arnold walks in, stogie already lit.
Howdee Matt.
I'm speechless.
Hoo's diss guy?
He nods towards the man beside me.
His name's Paul. He's an ex-Jan-Michael Vincent impersonator. Drank half a jar of my change last night... Arnold, who are these people? Are they cops?
Arnold smiles, turns his head outside the door and whistles. Two men rush back in, and after a nod from Arnold, start taking Paul out of the room.
No Matt. Sumtimes da poleese arnt da best peeple to call.
He turns to the pair carrying Paul.
Dair are sum items in dis mans stummack. Have dem FedExed to Matt.
What? I don't want stomach contents FedExed to me!
Don't vorree Matt, iss no drubbull!
A moment later Arnold and I are alone. He seems pretty pleased with himself, but I'm still not sure what just happened.
So. I guess Kurt's headed back to prison now?
Yah, maybee.
Maybe? What? What does that mean?
Matty. Alodda peeple alreddy think Kewrt is dedd.
What? So? We can fix that though.
He smiles.
Yah. Wee can fix dat.
He's still smiling. He heads towards the door. Just before leaving he turns and gives me an encouraging thumbs up,
Godd bless us. Evreewun.