Mon, April 21, 2003

If you're a regular Letterman viewer, you probably know who Gerard Mulligan is, even if you don't realize it. In the last few years, he's replaced Calvert DeForest and the late Leonard Tepper as the guy who shows up by the door at Dave's left and plays various characters, like Janet Reno or Kenneth Lay. In recent months, he's been Saddam Hussein and Clonaid movement founder Raël.

Mulligan's "day job" is as a writer for the show, coming up with monologue jokes and other bits. A few minutes searching on the Web did not yield Mulligan's age, but he's easily at least as old as Letterman, and has been with Dave for a long time, even back at the old NBC show. The fact that writers like Mulligan and Bill Scheft are still on staff is probably on the top ten reasons Letterman consistently finishes third in late night. Appealing to younger viewers (while certainly not a stated goal of CBS, network-wide) is not the specialty of old-school comedians.

Not that I'm complaining. I think a third-place Letterman is probably better than a first-place Letterman. (As he says, "We promise to start trying as soon as someone starts watching.") He's certainly ten times better than a first-place Leno. I think the nothing-to-lose attitude probably contributes to a lot of the show's better moments. But, putting the ratings war aside, I also get too much of a kick out of Mulligan to see him go.

Gerard Mulligan embodies the "if you don't get it, who cares?" mentality that Letterman often exudes and announcer Alan Kalter positively swims in. He plays every character as himself in that character's outfit, and always storms off stage hollering something at the world. Until recently, it was usually a showbiz non-sequitur like, "ABC, don't cancel Once and Again!" Last week, playing Hussein, he made a rare in-character choice and went with "Geraldo, I'm on my cell!" His delivery would be best described as "deadpan," except it's always in his outside voice. He consciously avoids delivering punch lines with any specific "punch," preferring to steamroll past them and on to the next line. It makes the whole exchange come off as more conceptual, which in my opinion is funnier.

Among my favorites was Mulligan's appearance as Raël in a video clip depicting a house party at Clonaid headquarters. The video consisted of ten or twelve copies of Mulligan superimposed over each other in a spartan living room set. Mulligan was snacking, talking on the phone, or dancing. The dancing Raëls were probably the funniest thing I've seen on The Late Show in the past year.

Most people probably roll their eyes at the Mulligan bits, because they are produced and performed in such a half-hearted style. For me, that's the entire charm.

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