Word: deadpan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. PAT PAULSEN, 69, doleful comedian whose mock campaigns for President may have fooled even himself; of complications from cancer; in Tijuana, Mexico. The deadpan Paulsen sharpened his stump wit on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, opposing sex education ("Let the kids today learn it where we did--in the gutter") and declaring a war on poverty "by shooting 400 beggars a week." His 1968 run for the White House won him about 200,000 write-in votes...
...runs succumbed to complications from pneumonia and kidney failure. Paulsen became a household name some 30 years ago on the Smothers Brothers show, where he first announced tongue-in-cheek that he was running for President under a new party, the Straight Talkin' American Government or STAG. Paulsen's deadpan political schtick caught on with thousands of Americans, many of whom voted for him in five presidential elections. He claimed to have finished second behind President Clinton in last year's New Hampshire primary. His political views -- on foreign aid ("We don't want any, thank you") and crime ("Take...
...Caprice is "the unofficial freedom-mobile in the Middle East"; that cows in Arizona used to feed on cantaloupes and honeydews; and why Sierra Blanca, Texas, receives 225 wet tons of New York City sludge each day. Listening to the routinely outsize tales of ordinary Americans with an amiable deadpan worthy of Richard Ford, he suggests that distance makes the head grow fonder too. People who buy snakes in bottles of Jim Beam may, in fact, be closer than we know...
Kevin Smith, by contrast, owes nothing to nobody. As he proved with a few bucks and some black-and-white film stock in Clerks, he's an original, a deadpan, dead-on observer of the whole Gen-X mess. In Chasing Amy, he has moved up slightly--color film, more than one setting, scenes with actual extras in them. But he's still a guy making two-shots of people talking about their troubles, working them through on the basis of faulty information and silly suppositions...
MOVIES . . . CHASING AMY: "If you loved 'Sleepless in Seattle,' you?ll just hate 'Chasing Amy,''" says TIME's Richard Schickel. As director Kevin Smith proved with a few bucks and some black-and-white film stock in 'Clerks,' he?s an original, a deadpan, dead-on observer of the whole Gen-X mess. In 'Chasing Amy,' he has moved up slightly?color film, more than one setting, scenes with actual extras in them. But he?s still a guy making two-shots of people talking about their troubles, working them through on the basis of faulty information and silly suppositions...