Friday, Sept. 19, 2003 | 9:23 a.m.
Lisa Ferguson's Laugh Lines column appears Fridays. Her Sun Lite Column appears Mondays. Reach her at [email protected].
There is nothing remotely funny about bolting fenders onto Chryslers. Take it from Tom McGillen.
Before embarking on his comedy career two decades ago, he spent a year working on the assembly line at one of the automaker's Michigan plants.
"I was never more miserable," McGillen -- who headlines through Saturday at Palace Station's Laugh Trax -- explained recently from his Southern California home. "I went up to 186 pounds, and drank between 12 and 18 beers a day. I was a mess."
It was time for a change. McGillen said he'd always known he was destined for a career in show business -- doing what, he wasn't sure. But that didn't stop the Grosse Point, Mich., native from heading to California in search of stardom. "I didn't know what I was gonna do when I got out there."
Becoming a professional comic hadn't crossed McGillen's mind before the mid-'80s, when a comedy-club boom swept the nation. A musician friend of McGillen's had a band that performed at joints along Los Angeles' Sunset Strip, and suggested his humorous pal take the stage during breaks in the music to yuk it up for crowds.
"I got a lot of things thrown at me at first," McGillen remembers. "And then I started getting a little routine together." Before long, he was performing regularly at area comedy clubs. "Boy, I never looked back."
There hasn't been a reason to do so: He's enjoying success with his stand-up act and has earned accolades for his dead-ringer celebrity impressions. "On any given night, I'll run through everybody from Captain Kirk to Robert Wagner to Christopher Walken," he says.
Robert Wagner? "With the 'Austin Powers' trilogy, he's really come back en vogue," contends 46-year-old McGillen who, since he was a youngster, has been imitating the one-time cinematic heartthrob. The result: a vocal likeness that is uncanny and hilarious.
Also in McGillen's repertoire of voices: Mayberry Deputy Barney Fife and a certain yellow, animated sea creature, among countless others. "Believe me, when you're doing some afternoon show in Laughlin, you look down and the front row is all 8-year-olds, thank God I can pull out SpongeBob," he says.
Most recently he has lampooned California's governor race. "It's rude," McGillen says, "but between Arianna Huffington, Gary Coleman and Arnold (Schwarzenegger), how can you tell what anybody's saying? I have them kind of doing a debate where Gary Coleman can't tell what Arianna Huffington is saying, because she's kind of like the lost Gabor sister."
Then there are the "singing impressions." McGillen, a self-taught guitarist, does a bit he calls "Classic Stars Meet Classic Rock." Among the highlights: Jimmy Stewart stumbling through "Freebird"; Marlon Brando mumbling "Night Moves"; and Homer Simpson handling "Best of My Love."
While he admits he could never make a living as a professional guitarist, "I love incorporating it in the act, and somehow I fool people because they go, 'Hey, man, you're pretty good on that thing.' "
The impersonations are big crowd-pleasers, but McGillen isn't content to simply make people laugh: He also needs to get a kick out of the characters. "What I like to do is take them out of the stock movie line and pervert them," he explains. "I like ... the juxtaposition of Brando singing, of Jimmy Stewart singing ... not just standing up there reciting Bogart lines out of 'Casablanca.' "
Yet he remains a fan of the classics -- cult classics, that is. McGillen's signature "Godzilla" bit pays homage to the poorly dubbed, Japanese-imported series of sci-fi flicks. He came up with the bit when he was 13 years old. "I just started moving my mouth and talking like a ventriloquist behind my teeth."
The joke has evolved over the years, and gained a huge fan following. Without giving away too many details, McGillen explains it features a "callback" of the other character voices from his act.
After performing it for so many years, "Some people say, 'Why don't you retire the bit? You don't need it.' But it's like going to a Jimmy Buffett concert and he doesn't play 'Margaritaville' -- you want your money back.
"If I don't do the bit, I end up getting more heat from the audience," he says. "People have come up to me ... and said, 'I brought 10 people here to see that bit tonight,' and they get in my face, so I've left it in."
While some things must stay the same, McGillen is actually a fan of change. "So many comedians I see can't shift gears; they're just stuck in their act," he says.
"Thank God I can go to a guitar if I need to and do singing impressions. I can go to standard impressions. I can go to straight monologue. I can go to one-liners. I have these things in my arsenal that I'm very grateful for and have kept me working."
Beyond celebs, McGillen draws from his kinfolk (he's one of seven children) for his comedic caricatures: Dad was a dentist; Mom worked for the FBI; and two of his brothers are morticians.
The relatives also served as the basis for a sitcom he co-wrote several years ago and is in the process of pitching to CBS execs. The show, McGillen explains, is a take on the "return-to-the-empty-nest theme" which, coincidentally, is a premise shared by a couple of sitcoms hitting the air this fall -- NBC's "Happy Family," starring John Larroquette; and WB's "All About the Andersons" featuring "Me, Myself and Irene" co-star Anthony Anderson.
"That's just the way it goes," McGillen says of the TV biz. He explains the frustration of "standing there, pitching your show" and having producers contend, " 'Aww, nobody's gonna go for it.' Then, two or three years later, there are two or three shows on exactly like yours."
Here's an instance where it might have worked in McGillen's favor if he didn't sound just like everyone else in Hollywood.
Out for laughs
Las Vegas has been very, very good to Geechy Guy. Over the years the comic has been a featured player in several local production shows, including Tropicana's long-running "Folies Bergere." Guy -- a Guinness World Records holder for telling the most jokes (count 'em, 676) in one hour -- headlines Oct. 3 in Golden Nugget's "Funny Bone Comedy Showcase."
They don't call Jeff Wayne "The Casino Comic" for nothing. During his career the funnyman -- who plays the Riviera Comedy Club Sept. 29 through Oct. 5 -- has had steady gaming-establishment gigs in Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City. A bit of trivia: Wayne penned a one-man show, titled, "Big Daddy's Barbecue," which was directed by none other than Ted Lange, aka Issac the bartender from TV's "The Love Boat."
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