Saturday, January 05, 2008

Love Letters

First, a self serving programming announcement. I will filling in Sunday night co-hosting the Sportstalk show on KABC radio in LA from 7-10 pm pst. You can also hear it here. Name me a better gig. I have to watch the NFL playoff games all weekend.

Feel free to call. 1-800-222-KABC. Surely I'll say enough stupid things that you'll have to correct me on.

LOVE LETTERS by A.R. Gurney is an enormously successful play. Ingenious in its design, an actor and actress sit at tables or stand at podiums and just read love letters. So no blocking or rehearsal or memorization is ever really needed. Actors can easily rotate in and out of the piece and frequently do. This can result in prestigious A-level actor pairings but there have also been productions by Charlton and Lydia Heston and Shirley Jones & Marty Ingells. Since I couldn’t attend either of those I shall wait to see LOVE LETTERS until one of the following pairings is announced:


Nick Counter & Lorena Bobbitt

Lars & the Real Girl

Amy Winehouse & Kenneth from 30 ROCK

James Wood & Sean Young

Paul McCartney & Heather Mills

Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama

Ann Coulter & Al Franken

Woody Allen & Mia Farrow

Sherri Shepherd & Gore Vidal

Kellie Pickler & Randy Jackson

Michael Jackson & Elizabeth Taylor

Billy Bob Thornton & Angelina Jolie

Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman

Whitney Houston & Bobby Brown

Mary Tyler Moore & Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

Regis Philbin & Kelly Rippa

Dr. Laura & Dr. Phil

Liza Minelli & David Gest

Jack Klugman & Lauren Becall

Donnie & Marie

Bill Clinton & (the voice of) Monica Lewinsky

Paula Abdul & Simon Cowell

Lou Ferrigno & Marlie Matlin

Andrew Dice Clay & Amy Grant

Bjork & Bob Dylan

Katie Couric & Walter Cronkite

Jennifer Aniston & Brad Pitt

Richard Hatch & Tonya Harding

The President of Iran & Rene Taylor

Robin Williams

22 comments :

R.A. Porter said...

Great list, but I don't get the Nick Counter & Lorena Bobbitt pairing.

Poor woman would find she had nothing to work with.

Anonymous said...

Ann Coulter and Christopher Hitchens

R.A. Porter said...

Mike Huckabee, the vertical politician
Paris Hilton, the horizontal heiress.

Tallulah Morehead said...

Ann Coulter and Reality.

Anonymous said...

In 1992, I attended the taping of an episode of DAME EDNA'S HOLLYWOOD at NBC in Burbank. LOVE LETTERS was running in L.A. at the time. During a commercial break, I asked Dame Edna to please bring her legendary stage show to Los Angeles. (That event still lay 9 years in the future.)

Dame Edna replied that she'd like to test the waters first by doing LOVE LETTERS with Lily Tomlin.

Anonymous said...

I don't get Richard Hatch & Tonya Harding...

How about Sam Kennison and Rita Rudner?

Hallie

Rob said...

Sherry Shepherd and Christopher Hitchens

Reality and George Bush

Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann

Jay Leno and the Writers

Isaiah Washington and TR Knight

Yoko Ono and Simon Cowell

Brian McNamee and Roger Clemens

David Caruso and Stella Adler

George Takei and William Shatner (Oh my!)

Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump

Mitt Romney and Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell, and Portia DiRossi.

Larry Craig and Barney Frank

Anonymous said...

Ellen Degeneres and Anne Heche

Anne Heche and Anne Heche

Alec Baldwin and Kim Bassinger

And lest we forget, the most obvious...
Britney Spears and Kevin Federline

Anonymous said...

OJ Simpson and Gloria Allred.


Though my favorite was Lou Ferrigno and Marlie and Matlin. Very cruel but very funny.

Anonymous said...

Robert W. Morgan and Emperor Bob Hudson

Anonymous said...

Dice Clay and Amy Grant got the biggest laugh from me, for some reason

Anonymous said...

How about: Kim Cattrall and Kurt Russell, ideally in the voices they used in BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA.

Alto2 said...

Ahmedinajad and Rene Taylor ... now that's funny!

Warren Fleece said...

Anton Chigurh from "No Country For Old Men" & the cast of "The View"

Anonymous said...

WGA and AMPTP?

Anonymous said...

Lou Ferrigno & Marlie Matlin...

That is INSPIRED.

Rob said...

MTM and Ken Levine
Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuco
Janet Jackson and Michael Powell
Michael Jackson and MacCauley Culkin
The readers of this blog and Jose Feliciano

Rob said...

Ken,

Is your Sportstalk like the sportstalk we have here for the University of Louisville and University of Kentucky?

A lot of semicoherent people who use the word "we" a lot make a bunch of stupid statements about the team?

My favorite are the people who say, "There's a kid in sixth grade out in Monkey's Eyebrow with a great hookshot. You gonna pursue him?"

Little Miss Nomad said...

Robin Williams - that's funny.

Anonymous said...

Jay Leno wanted me to ask...

Was any of your Sportstalk show written by a WGA member?

Anonymous said...

Rene Taylor? Now wait a minute. I think you've stepped over the line.

Fran Drescher and Lou Ferrigno conjure up another interesting situation. Now the remainder of tonight's comments will resurrect 40 year-old Helen Keller jokes.

Anonymous said...

Judging from the difficulty so many actors have reading from TelePrompters on award shows, I think I'd insist on some rehearsal.

How about Paris Hilton and David Letterman?

Flava Flav and Brigitte Nielsen
New York and Tailor Made
Howard Stern and Oprah Winfrey
Burt and Linda Pugach
Jack Black and Kyle Gass
Eddie Murphy and Scary Spice
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and Matthew and Gunnar Nelson

Oh, this could never end...