Fred Willard, the comic actor best known for being a staple and scene-stealer in Christopher Guest mockumentaries, has died, reports Rolling Stone. The cause of death is reportedly natural causes. The news was first reported by Guest’s wife, Jamie Lee Curtis, over Twitter.
How lucky that we all got to enjoy Fred Willard’s gifts. He is with his missed Mary now. Thanks for the deep belly laughs Mr. Willard. Best in Show (7/11) Movie CLIP – Judging the Hounds (2000) HD https://t.co/wPrbk9VjWI via @YouTube
Born in 1933 in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Willard relocated to New York City at a young age, and he broke into the comedy scene with appearances, in the ’60s, on The Dean Martin Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Get Smart, The Carol Burnett Show, and more. By the ’70s he received wider acclaim on Norman Lear’s Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman spinoffs Fernwood 2 Night and America 2-Night, which parodied late night talk shows.
But it was Christopher Guest films that took him next level. Willard appeared, briefly, and very amusingly, in This is Spinal Tap, playing a cheerfully square Lieutenant who invites the faded metal band to play an army show. When Guest returned to the mockumentary form, starting with 1996’s Waiting for Guffman, he brought him back, enlisting him to team with Catherine O’Hara as a couple who moonlight as local musical theater hounds.
Willard would return for every subsequent Guest mockumentary, from Best in Show to A Mighty Wind to Mascots, as well as the non-mockumentary (but still ad-lib-heavy) For Your Consideration. On top of his Guest work, Willard also filed memorable turns in films like Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Anchorman, and WALL-E (as the lone non-CGI character). He was also a prolific TV staple, and some of his final work will be seen in the forthcoming Steve Carell comedy Space Force.
This is sad news, so please drown your sorrows by taking in some of his finest work, including this one, from Best in Show.
And here’s him in A Mighty Wind.
And, more recently, he nailed this sketch from I Think You Should Leave.
One thing that is evident throughout The Last Dance is that excellence takes a toll on people. On multiple occasions during the Chicago Bulls’ first three-peat, it’s mentioned that the pressure everyone in the organization was under got to be overwhelming, with Michael Jordan being so mentally exhausted that he left basketball altogether. Their second three-peat didn’t appear to be quite as draining, but everyone operated with the understanding that the 1997-98 campaign would be their last.
This isn’t something that is unique to those Bulls squads. In the years since, we’ve seen teams like the Shaq and Kobe Lakers and the Big Three in Miami show cracks in the foundation due to lofty expectations that led to their groups being broken up. More recently, the NBA’s dominant organization has been the Golden State Warriors, and for the member of the franchise who was also on that second Bulls squad, the doc has served as confirmation of what he’s tried to hammer home to his team over the last few years.
“To be honest, [the documentary] is just confirmation of what I was saying to our team all of last year and 2018,” Steve Kerr said, according to Nick Friedell of ESPN. “The whole messaging for the year was based on my experience with Chicago and feeling that level of fatigue [and] emotional toll that had been over the previous four years. …
“And so watching this now is just a reminder of how difficult it is to sustain that kind of run.”
General manager Bob Myers also spoke to how mentally taxing winning can be, saying that after the team won in 2018 — their third ring in four years and second in a row — there “wasn’t joy” because the team was merely doing what it was supposed to do.
“I’m sure a lot of people felt differently,” Myers said. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault. I think there’s just a weight to everything. And so I’m sure [the Bulls] felt that weight of everything, weight of relationships.”
Kerr is especially interesting to hear from on all things Last Dance, as he is the only person who can approach this from the perspective of someone who has played for and been the head coach of two separate dynasties. He’s already made it clear that we’ll never get this sort of all-access look into his Warriors teams, but it’s still fascinating to hear him draw the parallels between both of his squads.
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Here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Friday Night Smackdown for May 15, 2020.
Worst: Hour One
This week’s show was a tale of two hours. Hour two wasn’t completely terrible, and hour one was … the opposite of hour two.
Up first is Otis celebrating his Money in the Bank win on Miz TV with The Miz and John Morrison doing a sort of low budget, “Otis This Is Your Life.” They put up photos of him as a kid to make fun of him — thankfully not photoshopped — while he breaks the chair he tries to sit in (because he’s fat) and reveals he carries around a bratwurst (because he’s fat) and Gas-X (because he’s fat) in the briefcase. I’m still not sure why they keep treating 330 pound Otis like he’s the fattest man who ever lived. Dude can’t climb a ladder or use furniture, he’s just in a constant state of standing up and awkwardly pacing around. He’s 110 pounds lighter than Gorilla Monsoon, who used chairs on TV for like 20 years. I think the Otis character is always hip thrusting and jiggling his torso so he can get his blood circulating and keep his entire body from atrophying.
Anyway, Miz brings Otis on the show so he can make fun of him for having a learning disability and fill Smackdown’s weekly quota by challenging him to a tag team match. Tucky is unavailable, however, due to the fact that he, “got a case of the [dysentery] in the Oregon Trail.” Dysentery is in brackets because he pronounced it, “dissin-berry.” Also, did Tucker Knight miss Smackdown because one of his party is sick in an old game of Oregon Trail? Or is that just how Otis’ mom explained away Tucky having severe, bloody diarrhea? Next week they should say Tucky can’t make it because he broke his leg trying to ford the river and lost three wagon axles. I want him to never show up again, and then the next time they’re in Oregon Otis stumbles upon his tombstone.
The first match in the Jordan Devlin Sure Knows How You Feel Intercontinental Championship Tournament is King Corbin versus Elias, bringing back fond memories of the worst parts of WrestleMania 36 and the Smackdowns before it. It’s over 15 minutes long in an empty arena, because God is real and hates us. This is boring in the same way the Pacific Ocean is wet. If they kept Elias and Corbin in the ring together long enough I think time itself would begin grinding to a halt.
The big moment of the match is when King Corbin smashes Elias’ guitar, the one Elias is always smashing over people and breaking himself, into the ring post. Elias is so enraged by this that he hits Corbin with [checks notes] an inside cradle. I could’ve paused Daniel Bryan vs. Drew Gulak at any point and stared at the static image for 16 minutes and it would’ve been a better time.
The mysterious Smackdown hacker is still hacking. “I am everywhere, I see everyone, I hear everything, I am the truth, and no one is safe!” Pretty strong words for a guy whose only contribution to the show so far has been letting Mandy Rose know Dolph Ziggler wasn’t on the up and up. Join us next week when the hacker uses his 1990s Bat Cave computer and vast catalog of Smackdown footage to reveal that Otis is thinking about cashing in Money in the Bank.
I think this Forgotten Sons promo technically happened in hour two, but I’m going to go ahead and lump it in with hour one. My favorite part is that they’re now putting up a disclaimer so it’s clear that WWE doesn’t want you to punch people who don’t love the troops. Don’t worry, guys, the Forgotten Sons promo’s not what’s making us think that.
Better: Hour Two
Ratings magnet Charlotte Flair pops in to promote her Genetic Supremacy and further stir the pot between Sasha Banks and Bayley. If you’re wondering why Raw Superstar and NXT Women’s Champion Charlotte flair would show up on Friday Night Smackdown, it’s because of the “Brand to Brand Invitation,” which states that, as far as I can tell, anyone assigned to a brand can appear on a different brand four times per year. Charlotte can only make three more appearances on Smackdown between now and May 16, 2021! I’m sure that’ll come up again! Why does WWE keep putting weird arbitrary number limits on ideas? Only four superstars at a time for the wild card! Only four times a year for the brand to brand invitational! Just do what you want to do and stop over-complicating it, damn. There’s a pandemic on, and you guys are just giving yourself rules that in a couple of weeks you’ll decided to start ignoring.
I didn’t love this segment, but it at least felt like it had a point. And I’m a sucker for anything that makes me think old NXT stars have maintained some sort of character consistency on the main roster. I like that Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks both clearly still think Bayley’s a lame hanger-on and can casually disrespect her to her face. Even main roster bob Bayley with the title belt bandolier gets intimidated by anyone who used to shade her when she as a naive “hugger,” so Bayley challenges Flair to a champion versus champion on next week’s show with the stipulation that Sasha Banks is definitely going to turn on one of them.
Unsurprisingly Daniel Bryan vs. Drew Gulak in the night’s second Intercontinental Championship Tournament match is the best part of Smackdown by a mile, and probably the best thing to happen on Smackdown this year. That’s not to overstate the match, though, and isn’t a huge compliment considering even the pre-quarantine stuff from Smackdown this year mostly revolved around Lacey Evans and those endless King Corbin and friends vs. Roman Reigns and friends matches. Remember those days? They feel like they happened so long ago.
This was a nice counterpoint to the Bryan vs. Gulak match from Elimination Chamber as they’re now catch-as-catch-canning as friends instead of enemies. It’s the kind of match you can go through move for move, sequence for sequence, and find some reason in it. It’s also two and a half minutes shorter than Corbin vs. Elias, which is a real “glass half empty or half full” situation. My favorite moment is the Gulock getting countered into the Yes Lock, which Michael Cole describes as Daniel Bryan, “trying to make it back to a vertical brace.”
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To me, at least, two hyper-focused guys grappling their hearts out to win a wrestling competition plays a lot better in the empty arena than the slow kick-and-punch walk-around with audience participation most people in WWE do. More clever submission counters, fewer instances of Dana trying to get a slow clap going among the empty chairs.
Sonya Deville’s promo here is the “Daniel Bryan vs. Drew Gulak” of Smackdown mic work. Sonya’s been a low key MVP of the Smackdown quarantine era, and while her motivations, general plot arc, and choice of friends are all severely iffy, she still manages to sound like she means what she says, and says it with enthusiasm. Also, bonus points for her 7 out of 10 Otis impression.
As for Actual Otis, he spends most of the night backstage wandering around in his underpants looking for a replacement tag team partner. How can you ever hope to replace TUCKER, the man and his dream? Here he is trying to enlist help from Sheamus, not considering that Sheamus’ kayfabe relation to the Muppet Beaker might conflict with his own relation to Junior Gorg from Fraggle Rock.
Mandy Rose suggests asking Braun Strowman to be the tag team partner, tag team name HAM SLAM (not really), and Braun accepts. Looking at Braun and Otis standing next to each other is like seeing a Charmeleon side-by-side with a Charizard. In this simile, the Charmander is maybe Cameron Grimes?
Otis plays Thiccy Morton for the majority of the match before tagging in Braun, so Brauns Up and cleans house. John Morrison’s able to get in an exciting 30 seconds or so of action after Braun hits his signature move, “accidentally running shoulder-first into the ring post,” but that quickly turns into a powerslam for the loss. Plus, this happens:
WWE
Between this and the time he danced with New Day, we can confirm that Braun Strowman’s hips don’t lie. They also don’t move. At all. Ever.
After the match, Mandy Rose shows up to suspiciously celebrate Otis’ victory from the ramp, giving Otis a chance to tease a Money in the Bank cash-in. I like that it might’ve worked, but he was too drawn to the rhythm of ‘Golden Goddess’ to hustle. You know, I’d be interested to see how a Strowman vs. Otis match would play out, although I’m 75% certain they’d do a spot where the guy who routinely flips ambulances and tears down trusses with a grappling hook “buckles” under the weight of Otis.
Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week
Birdman
“The NXT champion is coming from Monday Night Raw here to Smackdown”
GIPHY
AddMayne
“Daniel Bryan & Drew Gulak are best friends…”
Baron Von Raschke
Morrison [waiting for that double caterpillar]: So…this is what it’s like to wait for me to do Starship Pain?
Harry Longabaugh
I’ll only accept the results of the IC tournament if the winner is a certain masked, generic luchador from Mexico who looks rather similar to an existing member of the roster. I’m speaking, of course, about Juan Cena.
mandrew
Otis should go find Riddle, I heard he needs a new tag partner. They could be called the Bro-Dozerweights.
Taylor Swish
They should bring Drake Maverick back just so he and Otis can do a Tommy Boy gimmick
Tom”thesnakeRoberts”Smoulders
I’m in a toxic relationship with WWE. They insult me and treat me like I’m stupid and I keep coming back even though I can do better
Dave M J
Jae-Su
Me watching Corbin yet again.
GIPHY
JayBone2
The numbers were crunched and Vince felt Flair would help improve ratings for all 3 brands.
RON HOWARD: She did not.
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one two three REDLIGHT
That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown. The show is still struggling for the most part, but this week’s episode was notably better. The “champion pins the challenger” streak ends at five in a row, there was at least one match containing good wrestling, there was some good promo work, and we saw new character interactions. Corbin vs. Elias brings it down considerably, but, you know, baby steps.
Anyway, thanks as always for reading. Your comments, shares, and readership are appreciated tremendously, and we hope you’ll be here again next week for a Mixed Match Challenge, the Smackdown Women’s Champion versus the NXT Champion from Raw, and two more first round matches in the Come To Work Classic. See you then.
After staying low for a few months after their August 2019 album Ginger, Brockhampton returned in March with a new take of their hit single “Sugar,” this time with an added verse from Dua Lipa. The self-proclaimed boy band returned once again last week with two new singles, “Things Can’t Stay The Same” and “N.S.T,” both of which added anticipation for their upcoming project, reportedly titled Technical Difficulties. A week after those first two singles, Brockhampton is back with another pair.
The group shared “M.O.B.” and “Twisted,” which suggested they have even more releases up their sleeve. Led by a sample of Bunny Sigler’s 1974 track “Shake you Booty,” which was also used on Pusha T’s 2013 track “Numbers On The Boards,” “M.O.B.” is as an upbeat number that finds Brockhampton speaking on the loyalty and unity present in the group. As for “Twisted,” the three-and-a-half-minute track features Ryan Beatty and Christian Alexander speaking to those who have manipulated their words to make them seem much different than they actually are.
It should be noted that Brockhampton has removed their previous two singles, “Things Can’t Stay The Same” and “N.S.T.,” from their Youtube page. Whether “M.O.B.” and “Twisted” will have a short online life as well remains to be seen.
You can listen to “M.O.B.” and “Twisted” in the video above.
“My client divorced her husband because he insisted on bringing his mother on their honeymoon. The reason? Because his mother was STILL breastfeeding him.”
After making a grand return to music and social media last week, Tekashi 69 was hoping to score the No. 1 spot on the Billboard singles charts thanks to his latest single, “Gooba.” However, a recent Billboard chart update has Tekashi upset, as it suggests he’s going to fall short of that goal.
On his Instagram page, Tekashi walked fans explained his new frustrations. “I want the whole world to see this, because what I’m about to show you is a forecast of what every label in the world gets: Atlantic, Interscope, Republic, Columbia, Sony, Universal Music, every label gets this,” he wrote.
Tekashi showed his fans a forecast for the singles charts that he received on Thursday, May 14, which predicted that Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj’s “Say So” sits at No. 1 with his song at No. 2. The rest of the top five is filled with The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” at No. 3, Megan Thee Savage and Beyonce’s “Savage (Remix)” at No. 4, and Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber’s “Stuck With U” at No. 5. Then Tekashi pointed out that at the last minute on Thursday night, Ariana and Justin’s “Stuck With U” gained 60,000 units, which he claimed was “completely illegal.” With those added units, the chart forecast now places “Stuck With U” at No. 1, “Gooba” at No. 2, and “Say So (Remix)” at No. 3.
What was the illegal act, as per Tekashii? He pointed out that Billboard promoted an autographed CD bundle for “Stuck With U.” Moreover, he claimed that “Gooba” earned “double the streams” of any other song on the chart after it was played “200 million times.” He also claimed that Doja Cat’s label, Sony Music, filed an audit with Billboard due to their own suspicions over “Stuck With U”‘s massive jump.
Check out the video above to hear Tekashi’s complaints and the full breakdown.
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and further stir the pot between Sasha Banks and Bayley. If you’re wondering why Raw Superstar and NXT Women’s Champion Charlotte flair would show up on Friday Night Smackdown, it’s because of the “Brand to Brand Invitation,” which states that, as far as I can tell, anyone assigned to a brand can appear on a different brand four times per year. Charlotte can only make three more appearances on Smackdown between now and May 16, 2021! I’m sure that’ll come up again! Why does WWE keep putting weird arbitrary number limits on ideas? Only four superstars at a time for the wild card! Only four times a year for the brand to brand invitational! Just do what you want to do and stop over-complicating it, damn. There’s a pandemic on, and you guys are just giving yourself rules that in a couple of weeks you’ll decided to start ignoring.
