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Cameos: Movies' Parsley
 Weeks ago my niece was telling me that she was cooking with a friend who got upset that they had no parsley. Her friend claimed that parsley was an essential ingredient for the dish they were cooking. My niece and I agreed that parsley is not an essential ingredient for anything. It’s nice to have, either as a garnish or to add flair to certain foods. But you hardly need it. Film cameos work like that. None of them are needed for a movie, but they do add some fun. The “cameoees” don’t create a character, in contrast to the one-scene wonders I wrote about a few months ago, but relies on your prior knowledge of their work and their image to give you a smile. So it’s no surprise that you see these primarily, although not exclusively, in comedies. Alfred Hitchcock famously made cameo appearances in virtually all his films, and eventually fans started looking for them. In his later films Hitch would put his appearances near the beginning, so the audience could get back to the story. Years later, we all know Stan Lee will show up at some point in every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. As I put my favorites together, I did not include Hitchcock or Lee, as no singular cameo stood out more than the others. I also limited it to films I have seen, so it does not include some famous ones including Dustin Hoffman in The Holiday or Matt Damon in Eurotrip. First, I’ll put group cameos in my Honorable Mention list. Many of them work due to the sheer number of familiar faces, so you can’t really compare them to smaller ones: The Naked Gun and The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. No offense to Weird Al Yankovic, who cameos in both these films, but the real weird part is how the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team uses the cameos as a group to skewer their target, whether it's baseball in the first film, or the Oscars in the third one. Grouping Curt Gowdy, Jim Palmer, Tim McCarver, Dick Vitale, Mel Allen, Dick Enburg and throwing in Dr. Joyce Brothers was a perfect sendup of how overstuffed sportscasting had become even 30 years ago. They went even further in 33 1/3, throwing in James Earl Jones, and Olympia Dukakis, whom you could likely see at the Oscars, with Raquel Welch, whom you may have expected at the Oscars in the 70s, with Florence Henderson, Pia Zadora and Mary Lou Retton, whom you never see there. Anchorman and Anchorman 2. The first film brought together familiar “Frat Pack” members Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson to join their colleagues Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn for the seminal street fight scene, then adding in the pipe smoking Tim Robbins for good measure. Like any sequel, Anchorman 2 tried to top the original for its fight scene with Will Smith, Liam Neeson, John C. Reilly, Kanye West, Jim Carrey, Sacha Baron Cohen, Marion Cotillard, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Vince Vaughn again. It was not quite as funny, since we had seen it before, but having one cameo right in top of the other does give you the movie equivalent of a sugar high. Austin Powers in Goldmember. Another sugar high, in part mocking how Hollywood portrays real life people with much better looking actors. With the movie within a movie, of course Tom Cruise would play Powers, right? Adding Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey, and Danny DeVito, all still major stars at that time, upped the ante for this film, with the piece de resistance being Steven Spielberg as the director. Unfortunately these cameos at the beginning set a bar that the rest of the film was unable to match. Speaking of Austin Powers, Carrie Fisher did a number of cameos including in the first Austin Powers film, where she plays a group therapist for Dr. Evil and his son. I am sure she enjoyed that given her own mental health history. Fisher had an even better cameo in Scream 3 riffing off her fame by claiming that she lost the Princess Leia role to “the one who slept with George Lucas.” With that I give you my Top 10: 10. Robert Patrick in Wayne's World. Terminator 2 had come out a year before Wayne’s World, instantly turning Patrick into an iconic villain for his turn as the steely, cold and relentless T-1000. So his portrayal was still fresh in our minds. When the cop stopping Wayne Campbell turns out to be Patrick reprising his role, the audience roared. 9. Tom Hanks in The Simpsons Movie. “The Simpsons” show had always featured big name guest stars, so it was to be expected that the movie would follow suit. In a commercial for the “second Grand Canyon,” Hanks directly spoofs his All-American image opening with “The U.S. government has lost its credibility, so it’s borrowing some of mine.” By having him selling what would be the destruction of Springfield, he makes the threat a little more real. Besides, who can resist his closer, “If you’re going to pick a government to trust, why not this one?” 8. Peter Ustinov and Oscar the Grouch in The Great Muppet Caper. The Muppet movies always feasted on cameos, with Mel Brooks, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Elliot Gould and Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy (in Bergen’s last screen appearance) in the first one. The Ustinov one works best because it sets expectations and then surpasses them. At first, it appears to be a typical Muppet cameo with Ustinov talking with Miss Piggy. She throws him out of his truck, and you think that’s it. But then the camera shows him crashing into trash cans, which is especially funny given Ustinov’s proper English gentleman persona. The real surprise comes when Oscar emerges from one of those cans. The idea of a two-time Academy Award winner empathizing with a Muppet known for trash is Jim Henson humor at its finest. 7. Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis in The Player. Their surprise appearance is a fitting coda to Robert Altman’s scathing Hollywood satire. A running subplot has two struggling filmmakers working on Habeas Corpus, a gritty downbeat movie with “no stars” about a woman executed for a crime she did not commit. Altman parallels this story with the main plot about a Hollywood producer’s corruption. So of course Habeas Corpus gets corrupted too, with Willis bursting through at the last minute to save Roberts from the electric chair, topping it off with a Willis-style one-liner “Traffic was a bitch.” 6. Marcel Marceau in Silent Movie and John Hurt in Spaceballs. Call this the Mel Brooks division. His movies sent up Hollywood genres, so it would only make sense that he would have fun with actors’ images. Silent Movie featured many gimmicks, including practically no spoken words and plenty of cameos, including Paul Newman, Liza Minelli, James Caan, Burt Reynolds, and Anne Bancroft (Brooks’ wife). After they all, playing themselves, agree to star in the movie-within-a-movie, it comes down to Marceau, who says an emphatic “No!” when asked to do the same. At the time Marceau was a world famous mime, so of course Brooks has him deliver the only spoken line in the movie. A decade later Brooks had John Hurt reprise his iconic role in Alien. Once again an alien bursts out from his chest, with Hurt delivering a pitch perfect “Not again!” only this time the alien launches into a musical number. One played against type, one played off one of the most terrifying scenes in film history. Either way Brooks would do anything for a laugh. 5. Bob Hope in Spies Like Us. When I saw this film for the first time in 1985, I had no idea what the Hope cameo was about. It just seemed bizarre that a star whom I mostly knew from his TV specials would show up in what was supposed to be a tent for UN doctors in Afghanistan. Only later did I learn that Spies Like Us was inspired by the Hope and Crosby "Road To" movies. The Hope cameo was the perfect way to tip the cap to the master. 4. Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall and Kurt Vonnegut in Back to School (NSFW). Call this the literary division. The fact that these are not actors, but serious writers playing against comedians, makes their scenes even funnier. Sometimes cameos serve as wish fulfillment. In Annie Hall, Alvy Singer desperately wants to shut up a man behind him loudly pontificating about McLuhan. The author himself obliges, appearing to tell the blowhard he knows nothing. When Allen said, “If only life were like this!” I’m sure many in the audience agreed. But nine years later, Back to School argues that having the author on your side may not be all it's cracked up to be. Billionaire college student Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) needing to write a paper on Vonnegut and, not having read any of his books, hires the author himself to help him. However, Melon gets an “F” for not writing the paper himself. Then the topper as the professor tells him that whoever really wrote the paper “knows nothing about Kurt Vonnegut.” I didn’t know anything about Vonnegut either, but figured if he was willing to get cursed out by Rodney, he couldn’t be bad. 3. David Bowie in Zoolander. Bowie was one of those out of nowhere cameos. You hear his voice first, then you see him but you still can’t believe that a rock god would appear in this movie, let alone judging Zoolander and Hansel’s “walk-off.” The movie does a freeze frame with his name, as if to say, “Yes, it’s actually him.” The film keeps cutting away to Bowie’s reaction shots during the walk off, lending an extra layer of bizarreness to the whole affair. Looking back now, after Bowie’s death, the cameo makes a little more sense. Bowie’s fashion sense became as iconic as his music, so why wouldn’t he appear in a satire of that industry? 2. Bruce Springsteen in High Fidelity. Another rock god cameo, but executed very differently than Bowie’s. Record store owner Rob Gordon obsesses over music and his love life. With the best singer-songwriters fans can feel as if they are speaking directly to them. So it rings true when Rob imagines Bruce counseling him on his ex-girlfriends. The scene is low-key as it is personal for Rob. That makes it no less impactful, especially when Bruce tells Rob that reaching out to his exes will probably be better for him than for them. 1. Sean Connery in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The only cameo I have seen where the audience gasped. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves had well-documented casting problems. As many have written, including me, Kevin Costner’s Midwestern earnestness didn’t fit the larger than life and very British Robin Hood. Christian Slater seems to have no idea why he was in the movie, and I didn’t either. Connery’s surprise appearance as King Richard in the film’s final scene give the film gravitas it had been lacking. Having played Robin Hood himself in 1976’s Robin and Marian, Connery also had instant credibility as a king. The films draws out his appearance just a little, so first you hear Connery’s famous voice, than struggle to see him for a second. Then you share the awe of the characters when you do see him. While the rest of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was hit-and-miss, thanks to Connery it leaves on a high note. Adam Spector September 1, 2018 Contact us: |
