There’s a conspiracy in Hollywood. I don’t know that I’ve unearthed some great secret, because surely everyone knows. Maybe the relevant players have all been paid off with blow jobs or something, I don’t know. But it’s become this huge elephant in the room that no one ever talks about. And it gets worse every day.
I am talking about the fact that there are maybe five actual actors in Hollywood, and in addition to playing roles in movies, they play roles as other actors! By pretending you are two or three people, rather than just one, you can make up to three times the cash! I totally get why people do it. What I don’t get is how they get away with it.
Take for instance the actor known as both Gary Sinise and Vince Vaughn. I could tell his personas apart when one of them played serious roles, like for instance, paralyzed Vietnam Vet, and one of them competed at being the most irritating person on earth, namely supporting roles in Ben Stiller movies. But now sometimes the serious veteran is Ben Stiller’s sidekick. And this amalgam actor person even has had the audacity to put both of his personas in the same movie! This is when I know things have gone too far. The level of coverup is vast for anything like this to be possible.
And then there’s the girl known both as Natalie Portman and Keira Knightly. What’s she playing at? P. thinks Keira Knightly is actually Brooke Shields’ astrally projected younger self, but I’m talking about serious facts here, not some fantasy. Although I haven’t seen Brooke Shields around lately, maybe we’re seeing someone attempt a hat trick, creating two additional personas — both with younger and hotter bodies! And fewer eyebrows!
And what about Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, passing himself off as a gay chef on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? We all saw you in Twister. We know you can’t cook.
And who has ever seen Jerry O’Connell and Jason Bateman in the same room? I tell you no one has, unless it was a room of mirrors.
P. didn’t believe my conspiracy theory. Until last night. A commercial for that new Drew Barrymore movie about baseball came on.
“I hate that guy.” I said.
P. looked at me. “Mike Myers? You hate Mike Myers?”
“That’s not Mike Myers. That’s that other SNL guy. That really annoying one.”
“Mike Myers.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
I looked it up on IMDB. “It’s Jimmy Fallon.”
“Who the hell is Jimmy Fallon? I’ve never heard of him before.”
“Yes, you have. He was just in that taxi movie with Queen Latifah.”
“That was Mike Myers.”
“Dude. It was not.”
He looked at the pictures on IMDB.
“No. Mike Myers acts out roles a lot. He’s always playing other characters. This “Jimmy Fallon” is just another character — him as a skinny person.”
Finally, he seemed to give in. We went back to watching TV. About a half hour later, I saw him looking at me. Just staring.
“What?”
“It’s Mike Myers, really, right?”