Louie Anderson (1953-2022)

[Zoneboy]

https://apnews.com/article/louie-and...8ca6549d5b5c04


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Louie Anderson, whose four-decade career as a comedian and actor included his unlikely, Emmy-winning performance as mom to twin adult sons in the TV series “Baskets,” died Friday. He was 68.

Anderson died at a hospital in Las Vegas of complications from cancer, said Glenn Schwartz, his longtime publicist. Anderson had a a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Schwartz said previously.

The portly, round-faced Anderson used his girth and a checkered childhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota, as fodder for his early stand-up routines.

In later years, his life as one of 11 children in a family headed by a troubled father and devoted mother became a source of reflection and inspiration for Anderson, both in his screen work and in his best-selling books.

In 2016, he won a best supporting actor Emmy for his portrayal of Christine Baskets, mother to twins played by Zach Galifianakis, in the FX series “Baskets.” Anderson, who received three consecutive Emmy nods for the role, credited his mom with elements of the character.

He was a familiar face elsewhere on TV, including as host of a revival of the game show “Family Feud” from 1999 to 2002, and on comedy specials and in frequent late-night talk show appearances.


Anderson voiced an animated version of himself as a kid in “Life With Louie.” He created the cartoon series, which first aired in prime time in late 1994 before moving to Saturday morning for its 1995-98 run. Anderson won two Daytime Emmy Awards for the role.

He made guest appearances in several TV series, including “Scrubs” and “Touched by an Angel,” and was on the big screen in 1988′s “Coming to America” and in last year’s sequel to the Eddie Murphy comedy. Anderson also toured regularly with his stand-up act.

Anderson’s early jobs included counseling troubled children. He changed course after winning a 1981 Midwest comedy competition, where he was spotted by veteran comic Henny Youngman, who was the contest’s host, according to Schwartz.

Anderson worked as a writer for Youngman and then gained onstage experience while crisscrossing the United States. His big break came in 1984 when Johnny Carson, known for showcasing rising comedians on “The Tonight Show,” brought him on to perform.

His books included “Dear Dad – Letters From An Adult Child, ” a collection of letters from Anderson to his late father; “Good-bye Jumbo… Hello Cruel World,” a self-help book, and “The F Word, How To Survive Your Family.”

His book, “Hey Mom,” published in 2018, was a tribute to the wisdom imparted by his mother and a how-to tips on facing life’s challenges.

[Dude111]

Very sad

[AB]

Rest in peace.

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Louie Anderson was comedy's eternal kid

As New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman points out, Anderson, who died Friday at age 68, and Bob Saget, who died early last week, appeared on the same HBO Young Comedians Special in 1985. And last May, Saget interviewed Anderson for his Bob Saget's Here For You podcast, "reminiscing and laughing, and gingerly approaching topics with the sensitivity and warmth of intimates catching up during the long, isolating pandemic," says Zinoman. "It’s funny and now, considering the loss of both men, terribly heartbreaking. Both still prolific in their 60s, they sounded joyful about the current moment and were looking to the future." Zinoman adds: "The outpouring of love for Bob Saget took some by surprise and was in part a testament to his good-natured, filthy humor and personal generosity. But it was also because of a vast audience that saw him as the friendly paternal face on Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos. That comedy fans also knew him as one of the dirtiest joke tellers around burnished and deepened his reputation. But if Saget became one of the few cultural figures who could be described as America’s Dad (does any current star get described in such sweeping terms these days?), Anderson fit seamlessly into an equally idealized role as our culture’s eternal kid. There was a boyish innocence and sweetness to Anderson that never left him, even when he was playing a mother on Baskets, a remarkable and sincere performance that marked the start of his acclaimed second act (which included his turn in Search Party). Like Saget, Anderson had a broad résumé as an actor, author and television host, but he was a stand-up at heart who never stopped touring. I saw him do a 90-minute set in 2018, and he had the low-key improvisational, searching energy of someone still obsessed with finding an incredible new bit...More prominently, his great topic was family, particularly his ever-optimistic mother and irate father. (As soft-spoken as he could be, Anderson could also yell as much as Sam Kinison.) While his early comedy featured plenty of punch lines, Anderson’s great gift was acting out stories, brilliantly evoking moments with quick-change characterizations, displaying the depth and technique of a seasoned actor."

ALSO:

• Louie Anderson made vulnerability funny: "Louie Anderson was, by far, the funniest stand-up comic I have ever seen perform live," says Robyn Bahr. "About a decade ago, when I was an unemployed and depressed recent post-grad who had no sense of my future, I visited my cousins in Las Vegas, who were able to score some discounted matinee tickets to see Anderson at a resort club. Although I was vaguely familiar with the comic because he had produced and starred in a 1990s Saturday morning cartoon from my childhood, Life With Louie, I had zero expectations for the event. I certainly had nothing better to do. About an hour later, however, I was guffawing so hard at Anderson’s everyday observations, endearing familial impressions and lithe, in-the-moment wit, that he started heckling me for being too enamored with the show. 'Do you need some help over there? Yikes.' Of course, his derision only made me laugh harder. For Anderson, it was probably just another Thursday afternoon. For me, it became a flashbulb memory, a reminder that art has the power to not only divert people from their dispirited ruminations but also help them reframe their despairing mindsets. And quite honestly, the comedian wasn’t too peppy that day. If anything, I appreciated the underlying pathos in his dry (famously nasal) deadpan delivery. Anderson, who died Friday at the age of 68 of complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had a gift for entwining humor with vulnerability. He was a raconteur who could allude to hard truths about the human condition but without ever disheartening the audience."
• The through line in all of Anderson's work was "family": "Anderson’s comedy was defined by his own family, and the ups and downs of his experience growing up with a father he described as alcoholic," says Michael Schneider. "Almost everyone escapes childhood with some sort of trauma, but the scale varies — and Anderson was on the extreme end of that. But the comedian was able to channel his pain into his work, and his tales of surviving a dysfunctional family and a sometimes cruel world with a laugh were supremely relatable to his millions of stand-up fans." As Anderson told Schneider in 2018: “I take little things from everybody. All the real things is all the stuff that matters. I always tell comics, ‘If this material that you’re doing means nothing to you, why should it mean anything to me? Why would you think I’m going to give you two seconds of my time if you’re doing stuff that’s just fodder?’”
• What Anderson did with the character of Christine Baskets was incredible: "A cis man playing one of the most layered, complex women on TV, where you completely forget the actor and just fall for the woman and her eccentricities and how real to life she feels," says April Wolfe of Anderson's Emmy-winning Baskets character. "So good! Like damn he was so good in that role that I feel like I am simultaneously mourning the loss of that character like she’s real."
• Anderson playing Christine Baskets never felt like a stunt: "Anderson made Christine into a character of subtle complexity, exactly the sort of quiet, spotlight-shy work you wouldn’t expect from a former game show host who put himself and his autobiography at the center of much of his material," says Daniel Fienberg. "Anderson’s investment was always in honoring Christine as a person, not in getting attention for oddball casting."
• Paul Rodriguez chokes up recalling Anderson: "He used to laugh it off and joke about it. He said that his cholesterol was higher than the economy and inflation," Rodriguez recalls of his Quicksilver co-star. "He would make jokes and I would tell him, 'You know, Louie, take care of yourself,' and you know, I think he knew there was a problem, but his size was so much a part of his persona, his character, you know? I think maybe he might have been a little intimidated to work on losing weight. He wanted to live life on his own terms."
• Twenties star Jojo T. Gibbs recalls acting with Louie Anderson in what turned out to be his final role, airing last November: "Rest in Peace Louis!" Gibbs wrote on Instagram. "Thank you so much for your positive energy and your kind and wise words of advice and affirmation! Im so grateful I had the opportunity to meet you and to share the screen with you! A gift! Rest easy my friend!"
• Lena Waithe also thanked Anderson for his two episodes on Twenties: "Thank you for gracing us with your wonderful presence, Louie. You were so kind and funny," she wrote on Instagram. "After your first table read with us you sweetly said, 'Beautiful writing' and I’ll never forget it - because your opinion meant so much to me."
• Search Party writer Craig Rowin recalls Anderson's stint on his show in 2020: "I was lucky enough to be on set when Louie Anderson performed this scene on Search Party," Rowin tweeted. "His takes were not only hilarious, but all the extras in the courtroom would literally burst out laughing and clapping when they would yell 'cut' because he was so hilarious. RIP."
• Watch Anderson recall how his parents inspired Life with Louie in 1995 on Late Night with Conan O'Brien
• Watch Anderson's visits with David Letterman

For Louie Anderson, honoring his late mother with Baskets' Christine Baskets was his life's work

"It felt right that Louie Anderson hit the peak of his popularity playing a version of his own mother on the FX comedy series Baskets," says Matt Zoller Seitz, in paying tribute to the comedian and Emmy-winning actor, who died last Friday at age 68. "Honoring his mother was Anderson’s life’s work, and the 68-year-old entertainer, who died on January 21 of cancer, accomplished it beyond his wildest imaginings. Throughout his long career as a stand-up comic, writer, actor, Family Feud host, and series creator (the animated Life With Louie), Anderson drew on what he called his 'poor white-trash' Minnesota youth. He grew up in St. Paul in a house with 11 children where every month the family would have to decide 'whether to shut off the gas or the lights.' He described his father, Louis William Anderson, a trumpeter who once played with Hoagy Carmichael, as a self-pitying alcoholic who invoked his World War II experience to win arguments ('Oh yeah? Well, have ya ever been pinned down by a sniper in France?') and constantly groused and snarled at his spouse, his kids, and random strangers. Anderson described his mother, Ora Zella Anderson, as an upbeat and inexhaustible person — the kind of housewife who might’ve been a performer, entrepreneur, or politician had she not been born in 1912 who managed to be kind despite her husband’s cruelty. He returned to the stark differences between his mother and father so regularly and incisively that he made it the text rather than subtext of his life’s work. He cast them as recurring characters in his routines, including his very first national TV appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1984...Late in life he managed to become her, in a sense, by playing Christine Baskets, the doting mother of two sets of identical twins (one played by Zach Galifianakis, the other played by Garry and Jason Clemmons). After decades of taking supporting and walk-on parts in comedies like Coming to America, Back by Midnight, and Do It for Uncle Manny, Anderson’s soulful work on Baskets cemented his bona fides as a screen actor (he was nominated for three Emmys as Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy, winning in 2016). Christine was acerbic but never wantonly vicious. When she laid a hand on her sons, it was comically exaggerated, like something out of a cartoon. Her unconditional love always shone through. The role opened new avenues for Anderson as a longform storyteller whose work was about more than setups and punchlines."

ALSO:

• Christine Baskets was one of TV's greatest characters: "For me, Christine is one of the great TV characters, up there with Homer Simpson, Tony and Carmela Soprano or any of the Golden Girls," says Shane O'Neill. "She was a caricature of a matriarch, but brought complexity and nuance to a type that is usually relegated to sketch comedy, two-dimensional walk-ons or viral videos of monstrous Karens. As a fat person, as a Midwesterner, and as a drag enthusiast with a folksy middle-aged persona of my own, watching Christine Baskets in all her ridiculousness, nuance, power and covert wisdom was thrilling. It was a portrait of a woman I know and love who has never been presented with such affection and skill on television, before or since."

What Louie Anderson was like on the set of Baskets

"Louie bought the entire crew Arby’s one night," Baskets co-creator and showrunner Jonathan Krisel writes in Variety. "He had already filmed his scenes for the day, but he wanted to spoil us. He even brought the manager from the Arby’s to help pass out all the food. He was just like that. He knew everyone on the crew so well. When we’d be setting up a shot and the cinematographer and I would be discussing if we wanted the shot “dirty” — meaning in a close-up you see a piece of the off-camera actor — if Louie heard that, he’d immediately start singing 'Ridin’ Dirty' by Nelly. It was like clockwork, and it was always extremely loud and somehow always funny. I remember in Season 2 we filmed a scene where Christine’s mother’s death finally gets to her, even though she’s been trying to carry on. I knew Louie had it in him to do a great performance, but on the first take (he) was feeling a little scattered. I was telling him, 'This is a big moment,' and he kept saying, 'Oh yeah, don’t worry, I know.' But I wasn’t sure he was in the right emotional space. I thought, maybe by take four we might get close. The first take was the one. I was so caught off guard by the depth of his performance that I just started crying watching it there live. He nailed it. And only seconds before, we were just chatting — like, there was no run-up where he needed to get there. It blew me away."