Wednesday, August 16, 2006

RIP, Gas Man

Subject line stolen from my friend Dez (in reference to his "Homicide" guest spot), but I remain bummed about the death of Bruno Kirby at 57 from Leukemia complications.

Too many great Bruno movie moments to list here, but I'll highlight a few: the tight-assed non-comedian in "Good Morning, Vietnam" (especially the "Eatie Gourmet" non-joke), pretty much every word out of his mouth in "When Harry Met Sally" ("You made a woman meow?" and "Baby fish mouth is sweeping the nation!" especially), his taunting of Daniel Stern in "City Slickers" ("Is this getting you hot? 'I need a price... I need a price...'"), his Italian speaking as Young Clemenza in "Godfather, Part II," and, especially for me, this one exchange with Matthew Broderick in "The Freshman" (apologies if it's not word for word):

"Rudolfo Lasparri of Palermo, Sicily? You want me to be Rudolfo Lasparri of Palermo, Sicily? I don't want to go to Palermo, Sicily!"
"Have you ever been there?"
"No!"
"Then I really don't think you can make an informed judgment, can you?"

Time to put some Kirby in the Netflix queue.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shut up! Just shut up! He doesn't get it! He'll never get it! It's been 4 hours! The cows can tape something by now! Forget about it please!

How do you do the clock?

You're dead. You are dead.

(Hmm, maybe I should have just gone with the first part.)

He really was great, though. A shame.

Toby O'B said...

When loading up your Netflix queue with some Bruno, make sure to add "Between The Lines" (if they have it).

Still one of my favorite movies and it was one of his first big movie roles.

Anonymous said...

I love Bruno Kirby (obviously, his role on H:LOTS was one of my faves). Still can't believe he's gone, either. From all accounts, he was as terrific a human being as he was an actor. Such a terrible loss!