David Wain keeps getting cool cast members for his Doug Kenney biopic, A FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE. He recently got Natasha Lyonne to play a female writer of the NATIONAL LAMPOON magazine (Anne Beatts?), and today, it comes out that he’s got bald funnyman Paul Scheer to play bald funnyman Paul Shaffer.
Shaffer wrote music and sketches for the NATIONAL LAMPOON RADIO HOUR, where he worked with folks like Michael O’Donoghue, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis, Christopher Guest, Joe Flaherty, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Richard Belzer. Obviously, he and a bunch of those performers went on to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, before Schaffer became David Letterman’s bandleader and sidekick for nearly 35 years. People forget how much more to him there is than his music, and how he came up with some of the funniest dudes and dudettes in showbiz.
Scheer, aside from his endless TV appearances and bit parts in comedies like MEET DAVE, PIRANHA 3D, and DADDY’S HOME, is a super-prolific performer, and hosts the terrific How Did This Get Made? podcast over at Earwolf. If you’ve ever seen him perform or heard him speak, you know he’s a hell of a funny guy, and doesn’t flinch at the idea of going completely nutso and absurdist (at its best, his show NTSF:SD:SVU was a great example of that). While Schaffer is typically associated with a somewhat more grounded style of humor, he is also quite mannered and easily identifiable due to his profile and voice, so Scheer should have a hell of a time inhabiting the comedian/musician’s shoes.
I can’t even think of any more big names they have to cast (Doyle-Murray? Belzer? Flaherty?), but they’ve gotten some impressive folks attached to this thing, headed up by Will Forte as Doug Kenney and Domhnall Gleeson as Henry Beard. Scheer as Shaffer might not have all that much to do, given that his association with the LAMPOON only extended to his gig on the RADIO HOUR, but seeing the comedian playing the SNL/LATE NIGHT legend will be a treat in and of itself.
Can’t wait to see some stills of these guys as these icons of comedy.
Check out Scheer’s hilarious recounting of his experience on the MEET DAVE set below:
