When news broke that Fred Willard died, someone tweeted that he was the most naturally funny person who existed. To me, that comment resonated as the hyperbole you bestow on someone who just died. But then, I honestly can't think of a funnier person in my own life than him. Chris Elliott comes damn close, and I might even call it a tie, but I'll wait till Elliott croaks before I change my opinion.
I came upon Willard, like many people, on a show called “Fernwood Tonight,” which later became “America Tonight.”
April 26, 2011: This file photo shows actor Fred Willard arriving at the fifth annual BritWeek in Los Angeles. (AP)
It remains one of the great surreal comedic experiments of its time -- a fake talk show with bogus guests, an amazing disgruntled bandleader in Frank De Vol, and lurid backstories concerning its main host Barth Gimble (played by Martin Mull, who also played his twin Garth Gimble on "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman").
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The show was an exquisite wreck, largely due to its co-host played by Willard, who may be the one person who invented slapstick dialogue. Meaning, his stream of conscious thoughts were exercises in idiocy -- like a weird guy who sits next to you on the bus and confesses to you his strange, sociopathic desires -- in between humming show tunes.
Never mind the examples -- you can find them on YouTube.
Willard went on to movie fame, playing essentially the same character over and over: an idiot.
He was David Brent before David Brent. He was Michael Scott before Michael Scott. I never met him personally, and I wonder if the character Fred Willard plays is just Fred Willard.
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My connection to him was brief. When I was editor of Stuff magazine, we invited Fred to be our guest editor. Normally this is a publicity ploy -- you do it to get some free media for both the magazine and the celebrity.
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Magazines used to pull this gimmick all the time, and it was as fake as you'd expect it to be. No celebrity ever edits a thing. Maybe he or she will drop by the office and take a picture. That's it. They want nothing to do with us lowly scrubs.
Not Fred. We had to send him ALL the page proofs of the issue. And he read them. And he made notes on every damn single page!
We got them, and they were genuinely helpful, super funny, and 100 percent Fred.
We ended up just running his comments all over the magazine, with speech bubbles coming out of a picture of his face.
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It was great.
He was great. He was awesome.
RIP FRED.
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