Chevy Chase
and Norm Macdonald: tall,
urbane, good-looking, oodles of charm.
Acquired tastes maybe, but undeniable
comedy thoroughbreds who won their place
in American hearts as the Weekend Update
anchors on SNL. Alas, the similarities
between the two do not extend to their film
careers. While Chase would never built on his
early big screen successes, he at least had a
decent go of it. Norm, however, screwed the
pooch first time out with 1998’s Dirty Work,
a film that can do no right for doing wrong.
The reasons why this droll, tasteful wordsmith
wrote himself into an impossibly vulgar gross-
out comedy can only be guessed at. Why the
studio later insisted it be spatchcocked into
PG-13 chob-fodder is even more puzzling.
The end result is neither use nor ornament.
Norm somehow secured a second starring
role in 2000’s Screwed, but the difference
between the two films is so negligible that
they barely register as separate entities.
Ongoing hairline/waistline issues settled
his Hollywood hash.
Where Are They Now?
Netflix to the rescue! Norm was back last
year with a mighty stand-up special and his
own chat show.The
Streaming Wars are
upon us and the first casualty will
be you. Disney+, CBS All Access, Frisbee Golf
Max, The Drunk Puppy Network – they’re all
after a piece of the pie. Indeed, HBO Max is
so desperate for surefire content that they
have paid Netflix some $500m to buy the
rights to hit ’90s sitcom Friends. A comfy
go-to for Gen-Xers and a surprise hit with
Millennials, HBO is banking on viewers
being so addicted to their nightly dose
of Monica and co. that they will have nochoice but to migrate to their new platform.
Or maybe people watch it because it’s already
in their house and ‘free’ to watch. Such is the
dilemma of a sitcom star like Roseanne Barr.
People love me in their homes, but do they
love me enough to leave their homes and go
to the multiplex? 1989’s She-Devil is good.
Barr is good in it. Everyone stayed at home.
Where Are They Now?
A career resurgence looked all but minted
thanks to the 2018 revival of her show
Roseanne. Then Rosie hit the prescription
meds hard and got busy with some
ill-tweets.Simple Minds were big
news at one point, but no matter
how many times they asked us not to, we
did eventually forget about them. Five years
ago Russell Brand was everywhere, bein’ all
Baudelairian and Byronic and stuff. Now he
has a podcast. Fashions change. Okay, so the
world never caught full-blown Sinbad fever,
but thanks to the heavy rotation of his HBO
stand-up specials – think a suburban dad who
knows what time it is – he was well liked and
considered a safe enough pair of hands to
be indulged with a movie or two. His star was
in moderate ascent with the Disney-backed
Houseguest (a black guy... in suburbia?) and
First Kid (a black guy... in the White House?).
But after 1997’s Jingle All the Way, in which
he stars opposite Arnie in a Christmas card
to consumerism, the world simply decided
it had had enough. Sinbad was parachute
pants, ’90s Cosby sweaters and MC Hammer
rolled into one. And he was done.
Where Are They Now?
After troubles with his heart, knees, spine
and the taxman, Sinbad now stars in Fox’s
Rel, a sitcom about “a Chicago man trying
to rebuild his life after his ex-wife slept with
his barber”.035