The Tory Party

Before They Were Famous-Type People

Maybe you already know these. Or maybe you will gasp, like I did when Mischa Barton ralphed in The Sixth Sense.

• Matt LeBlanc was the dude in the Heinz ketchup commercial where he puts the bottle on the roof of a tall building and goes downstairs in time to catch some on a weenie from a hot dog stand. Then he eats it real sexy, like, hey, I`m a hot guy eating a weenie, and flirts with this chick while presumably ketchup continues to splatter behind him. He was that guy!

  
  Hi, I`m a hot guy eating a weenie.

• Morena Baccarin (from Firefly and Serenity, and if you don’t know what those are then you better Google RITE NOW) was the chick in the Secret pit stick commercial where she asks her roommate if she borrowed her black shirt, and her roommate says, “Does it LOOK like I borrowed it?” And she looks at the shirt and it doesn’t have white pit stick streaks on it, so she’s like, huh. But maybe it smells like smoke and watered-down apple martinis, but the commercial’s over before the roommates resolve their fundamental distrust.

  
  So I got out of my lease and became an intergalactic escort.

• Michelle St. John (from Smoke Signals and The Business of Fancydancing, the latter which director Sherman Alexie brought to my school and proceeded to be the best. guest artist. ever and we’ve had some good ones) was the voice of Nakoma in Disney’s Pocahontas. You may remember Nakoma as the best thing in that movie (”She listens to you.” “Sher she does.”)

  
  Best. Face. Ever.

  You may also remember that Irene Bedard as Pocahontas did not do the singing (Broadway star Judy Kuhn did). So-o-o-o now that I’ve heard Michelle St. John at the end of Fancydancing blast out a vocal that was soulful and rich and technically beyond reproach, the question is begged: why did they pick for the lead an actress who couldn’t do the singing? Would closing the gulf between the Bedard’s light, hollow performance and Kuhn’s sanitized, theatrical singing have made Pocahontas a better movie? Well, better writing and less emphasis on animated cute in a story that ends in genocide would have made a better movie. But more Michelle St. John would have helped.

While researching these, I encountered this milt-able website:
In the 80s. Of their “Before They Were Famous” list, some are obvious, but there’s this:

Matt Damon: Snotty little brother of the rich boyfriend of Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza - only in one scene, a family dinner

Ha! Which reminds me that everybody in the damn hell ass world was in that movie. Click here to see. Frippin` Vincent D`Onofrio even.

Which then reminds me that Alyson Hannigan and Seth Green (Juliette Lewis, too) were both tiny little kids in My Stepmother is an Alien, which I’ve been thinking of a lot now that I`m up to the werewolf part in Buffy Season 2.

Image stolen from BuffyFan.dk

Which reminds me that Christian Bale was the star of The Newsies which I haven’t seen, but the thought of singing dancing Newsie Christian Bale makes me want to go to Blockbuster RITE NOW!

LOOK! Looklooklooklooklook!