1
COLLECTIBLESDEPT.
PERSONALAPPEARANCES
N
ew York Comic Con can be gru-
elling. The other day, one of its
participants, Laraine Newman, took a
break to fortify herself at the restau-
rant in her hotel, near the Javits Cen-
ter. “I know I’m going to Hell, but can
I get the duck-liver toast?” she asked a
waiter. An original “Saturday Night
Live” cast member, Newman is now a
voice actor and has a role in the ani-
mated series “Summer Camp Island.”
She was waiting for one of her Comic
Con comrades, Paul Reubens. In the
seventies, both were in the Ground-called a snap election, a concert had
to be cancelled, because the choir was
necessarily dissolved along with Par-
liament. (Its administrative status
within Parliament was recently changed
to prevent that from happening again,
an example of the kind of foresight
that eluded the architects of the ref-
erendum.) “People say to me, ‘Do the
politicians take instruction?’ And they
absolutely do,” Over said. “I think they
rather relish it, because they are con-
stantly having to think on their feet.
The great thing about belonging to a
choir is simply that they have to do as
they’re asked.”
In mid-November, about a month
before Election Day, the Parliament
Choir will be performing Edward El-
gar’s “The Dream of Gerontius,” at
Westminster Cathedral. The work is a
setting of a poem by John Henry New-
man, the Victorian divine recently can-
onized by Pope Francis, and portrays
a faithful soul’s entry into Purgatory
before ascending to Heaven. A few
days before Parliament opted to break
the Brexit stalemate, Jacob Rees-Mogg,
the theatrically anachronistic Leader
of the House, suggested that Brexit it-
self was “suffering the pains of those
in Purgatory.” The theme of the work
is remarkably apt, Over agreed. “There’s
an absolutely marvellous moment, when
lings improv workshop, in L.A., where
Reubens created his character Pee-wee
Herman. Newman was wrapped in a
soft sweater and fighting a cold, her
bangs hugging her forehead. “Paul needs
to decompress,” she reported, looking
up from a text.
Reubens, dressed in a newsboy cap,
a black T-shirt, and a denim jacket,
showed up a few minutes later. At
Comic Con, a four-day convocation of
cosplayers set against the fight for global
hegemony between Marvel and DC
Comics, Newman and Reubens were
part of the personal-appearance caval-
cade. “If they want an autograph, photo,
and a selfie, it’s, like, sixty bucks,” New-
man said.
“I’ve been doing a whole bunch of
these over the last year or two,” Reu-
bens said. “I’m old hat now.” (His au-
tograph or a selfie cost eighty dollars;
a glossy cost a hundred.)
“Paul’s in the rarefied world of car-
peting,” Newman said, referring to
Exhibit Hall 1E, where the lines for
Paul Rudd (“Ant-Man,” $200, auto-
graph; $225, photo op), Tom Hid-
dleston (“The Avengers,” $250, auto-
graph or photo op), and Billy Dee
Williams (“Star Wars,” $100, auto-
graph; $110, photo op) were organized
into zones, in the manner of airline
boarding gates.
“I’m next to the voice of the Little
Mermaid,” Reubens said. He admit-
ted to feeling line envy. “It’s not like
she’s in a tank and she’s the Little Mer-
maid,” he said. “I would get that.”
Newman and Reubens first met in
1972, as theatre students at the Califor-
nia Institute of the Arts, in Santa Clar-
ita. Newman dropped out after a few
months to join her sister in a workshop
that was forming around Gary Austin,
of the San Francisco improv group the
Committee. That workshop became
the Groundlings, where, a few years
later, Newman developed a character
who spoke with an airy, vacuous
drawl—a proto-Valley Girl. The char-
acter led to her being cast in a Lily
Tomlin TV special, and then on “S.N.L.”
In 1980, as the Not Ready for Prime
Time Players were dissolving, Newman
moved back to L.A. and bought a 1929
house in Westwood, where she’d lived
as a child. (Her father manufactured
quilting fabric, and her mother designed“Well, if it’s any consolation, your social media makes
it look like you’re absolutely thriving.”the soul sees God and there is a cata-
clysmic chord, after which the soul
screams, ‘Take me away,’ ” Over said.
“Effectively, what he is saying is ‘Get
me through what I need to get through,
and I will get to where I need to be.’
And I think there really is a sense of:
We’ve got to get through it, and we’ve
got to get to somewhere where things
will be better.”
—Rebecca Mead