The Gentle Art of Impressions

Once again, I take my hat off to Frank Caliendo. He has good variety, and most importantly, he incorporates relevant jokes into his impressions e.g. Al Pacino's habit of turning kid's sayings into cool tough guy talk ('You sir, are a liar. Liar liar, your pants [beat] are on FIRE!').


It's really criminal to go to the trouble of learning the exquisitely fine details of someone's voice, cadence, facial expressions and body language if all you're going to do is repeat some famous catchphrase or line from a movie. You gotta take it to the next level.

When it comes to impression-worthy subjects, there's a predictable few that keep cropping up: Bobert De Niro, Cristobal Walken, Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger (though he doesn't really count). When you think about it, maybe this is the X factor for any aspiring young actor or actrix - acquire a distinctive or odd speech style.

While we're on the topic, we can't forget Hammertime's Brog favourite, New Zealand's own Tony Martin. He's been producing high quality impressions, along with a whole grab bag of champagne comedy, for over a decade now. He manages to do both locally relevant pollies and journos ('Peter Harvey, going down a slide') as well as international celebrities (Patrick Stewart at a McDonald's drive through comes to mind - towards the bottom of the page). He even combined Tony Soprano with Amanda Vanstone ("Amanda Vanstone is not herself", halfway down the page).

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So I heard that Brett Whitely's The Olgas for Ernest Giles sold for $3.48 million the other day. This is considerably more than it cost to paint (to borrow a Micallef joke). Which brings me to my question for the day: surely art buyers should just invest, I don't know, $3.07 million in training themselves, saving a handsome $410,000 in the process, which they could then spend on Frank's Pizza. Alright, so it's not a question.