Wednesday, June 26, 2013

"Delightfully understated yet playfully demure"

by Pauli

View from your overrated wine cellar.



My kids have discovered Ernest movies... so share the wealth!


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Posted by Pauli at 6/26/2013 10:29:00 PM

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4 comments:

  1. pikkumattiJune 27, 2013 at 12:06 AM

    Genius.

    My 28 yr. old son still quotes me the opening line of this bit . He remembers it verbatim after 20 years.

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  2. AnonymousJune 27, 2013 at 10:06 AM

    Man, I miss Jim Varney.

    Keith

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  3. pikkumattiJune 27, 2013 at 10:58 AM

    IIRC, the first time I saw Jim Varney in the Ernest role was in a series of TV ads for a natural gas company. He'd talk to the camera about something or the other, usually with a pratfall or some other disaster happening to him, and finish it off with "Know what I mean, Vern?"

    Did y'all get similar ads in your part of the world? I've wondered whether it was just a local Houston thing.

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    Replies
    1. PauliJune 27, 2013 at 11:15 AM

      We saw dairy commercials in Western PA. There's an early interview on Youtube which talks about his contract with the ad firm which came up with the character. It was all for local markets, but there were hundreds of them: TV stations, orange juice, milk & dairy, etc.

      I just became interested in him again because of my kids watching the Earnest movies. So I've been googling him. I never knew about "Your world as I see it"--hilarious stuff. There was this rumor that he was gay or bi--but I don't know if it was true. Most discussions on the web say conclude he wasn't and that was an urban legend based on one of his weird voices and the fact that he wore a female disguise in his Africa movie. He was married and divorced twice, but I guess he hung out with his second ex-wife on the Toy Story set. He was the voice of the Slinky Dog. Everybody who knew him said he was a really nice, pleasant person off the set.

      The poor guy pretty much smoked himself to death. He was a chain smoker and developed lung cancer. After the diagnosis he did anti-smoking ads as Earnest. He died in 2000; he was 51, just like Gandolfini.

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