Thanks to Avedon Carol at The Sideshow, I now know that the great topical comedian Mort Sahl, the model for Howard Beal in Network, is alive and still on top of the news.
Here’s what he said at a tribute dinner at UCLA:
I know George Bush. I’ve met him and spoke to him a number of times. He told me he had stopped drinking. When I asked him how he did it he said he was born again. I said, you were born again? Why would you come back as George Bush?”
Albert Brooks contributed an unusual take.
"I'm embarrassed tonight," he began. "And angry. And I'm confused. I don't know the people that produced this show at all. But I would strongly suggest that when they do an event like this again, they spend a little extra money and hire a real publicity firm to disseminate the information correctly. I was told that Mort Sahl passed away. So you can imagine my shock, my dismay, and quite frankly my disappointment, when I arrived here this evening and saw him standing there."I worked very, very hard on this eulogy--and unlike other comedians tonight, I don't have a current act, I just can't pull ten minutes off the top of my head--so I do this, or I have nothing. I asked myself, 'What would the late Mort Sahl say?' I think he would have said, 'You do it.' Nobody appreciated a turn of a phrase, a beautifully-written sentence, as much as he did. But then again I say, to the people that produced the show, 'If you don't wanna spring for full-blown publicity, please get someone who will talk to the talent."
After which he read his prepared eulogy, which itself was pretty funny. AB is one of my favorites.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree (Belisarius) on July 8, 2007 7:38 PM