Music Wit: May 2013

Last night I noticed that Jim Carrey's "Man on the Moon" is now streaming on Netflix Here's a fun and wacky scene from it, where I am playing piano on camera along with some of my long-time colleagues. But, for me, the most fun part of filming that scene was not actually filmed. Here's a description from http://www.jimcarreyonline.com/movies/motm.html?p=6

"Jim was talking to the piano player trying to find out what songs he knew. The guy starts to play 'Come Sail Away,' the old Styx tune, and Jim goes into full rock concert mode. He didn't get all the lyrics right, but when he started hitting the high notes, the crowd went wild. Courtney Love, who was sitting in the front row, went even wilder, jumping out of her seat and screaming . He also did Billy Joel's 'Piano Man' which had the crowd cheering. There was a bongo routine that 'Andy' performs where he does a call-and-response vocal thing similar to the 'hi-dee, hi-dee, hi-dee, ho' part in 'Minnie the Moocher.' The only difference was that he was speaking in Latka Gravas-type gibberish! The crowd tried its best to keep up, but he had us tongue-tied in the end. In between shots, some folks in the crowd start to yell, 'Day Oh, Day-ay-ay Oh' to see if 'Andy' would respond. He obliged with a fine version of 'The Banana Boat Song.'

"People wanted a bit more of the Latka voice, so they kept calling for it. After loosening up his vocal cords for about 30 seconds, Jim turns into Latka. He spoke in that same, halting manner that Andy used including the wide-eyed look where he seems to be searching for the correct English words. He ended it by saying, 'I'm glad you all came here today to be in my movie. When you see how this scene looks in the movie, I hope you think it -- how do you say? -- kick ass! Tank you, veddy much.'

"I think my favorite moment was when the calls for Elvis went up. First, Jim did the classic line, 'You can all just watch me while I catch my breath.' Then he took grabbed the mike stand, sneered, motioned to the band, and went into 'Jailhouse Rock' - straight up. No hamming around. Dead on. It could have been the excitement of being there, but I don't know that Andy ever did it better. He had all the arm, hip, leg, and head movements down to a tee. The Elvis studio version fades outs, but this was live, so Jim was directing the band to do a slow, big finish ending. When he was done, everyone in the theater was on his feet cheering."

We had time for all that fun because it took so long to reset the scene after each take. If you watch the clip you will understand why.