HOLLYWOOD -- If anybody knows how to saunter into a room, it's Harland Williams. The Toronto native proved it by sauntering into a Beverly Hills Hotel room full of earnest reporters as if he had just wakened from his bunkhouse bed down the trail apiece, and suddenly found himself surrounded by nosy city folk.
They wanted to find out about Williams, who plays a quiet but likable boyfriend dude to Molly Shannon's Catholic school girl Mary Catherine Gallagher in Superstar, which opens in a few weeks.
Superstar is the Bruce McCulloch movie version of the Saturday Night Live skit created by Shannon as a tribute to nerdy collegiate kids who dream of being somebody.
Like Williams did, and does.
Now some of the reporters recognized Williams from his serial killer role in There's Something About Mary and his goofy astronaut portrayal in Rocket Man, and from smaller parts in Dumb And Dumber, Down Persiscope and the recently released Dog Park.
One even admits that she recognized him as the voice of the crazy newt on the cartoon show Ned's Newt.
A few didn't have a clue.
One of the clueless found out about Harland Williams when he asks a seemingly innocent question. Like what's he going to do for the millennium?
"I'm going to put human beings with wrinkles in a can," says Williams in a droll monotone. "I'll put Pringle's out of business."
A few of the writers look at each other. A few more look at Williams then look away trying to figure out the image in their heads. Another shakes his head in confusion. Only one chuckles because he knew about Williams, how he started doing stand-up at Yuk Yuk's in '82 just around the time Jim Carrey and Mike Myers were trying to figure out if they could be funny for a living.
So was Williams then. Now it has been confirmed for the 34-year-old, who lives comfortably in L.A. but still mostly exists in his peculiar little world.
Since Superstar deals with the life and times of growing up in a Catholic high school, somebody wants Williams to give them his collegiate lowdown by profiling his years at Toronto's Senator O'Connor High.
"My dad's Anglican. My mom's Catholic," begins Williams, trying to be helpful, not loopy.
"All the girls went to Catholic church. The boys went to an Anglican church. So I thought I was Anglican my whole life."
Even though he went to a Catholic school.
But Harland Williams thought he was the only Anglican going there, until his mom recently straightened him out and told him he was baptized Catholic but, as a father compromise, went to Anglican church.
"Yeah," says Williams, "and there was nothing worse when you're 14 and they make you put on the blazer and the tie. And you want to wear your Iron Maiden jacket and Def Leppard pants."
Williams got by academically, he says, and honed his skills for his future rebellious and subversive comedy endeavours.
"I was the seventh dwarf version of Jim Morrison," reports Williams of his formative years. "I was Dopey Morrison."
He grins at the memory he's ready to share with the already baffled-looking questioners around him.
"We used to sit in class and eat pop rocks and smile," remembers Williams. "Like, when you smile, the pop rocks would hit your teeth and crackle.
"And priests didn't know pop rocks and how they worked, because they're always busy praying. So we'd be smiling and crackling, and they must've thought we were possessed or something."
It was obsession that got him onto the Yuk Yuk's stage.
And 17 years later, it seems to be talent that keeps him going, slowly following in the footsteps of his mega-successful wacky peers, Carrey and Myers.
So what was with you guys?
"Too many rum-and-raisin Lifesavers I guess," Williams says.
Everybody was nodding their heads, agreeing that they were still Harland Williams confused.
The HARLAND WILLIAMS File
THE BEST OF TIMES: "Yeah man, I just wrapped a movie with Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry in Montreal. It's called The Whole Nine Yards. It's a dark comedy Pulp Fiction-style. I'm an undercover FBI agent hired as a hitman to knock off Bruce."
THE WORST OF TIMES: "It was the first time out on the road. I was doing, like, 10-minute sets. They sent me to New Brunswick, with two other comics. I was the middle act and I was supposed to do a half-hour. I was terrified.
"I got up on stage and I said to myself, 'Well I have a little bit of time,' so I figured I'd talk to the audience. So the first guy I talked to was a punk guy with a leather jacket.
"I said, 'Hey sir, what's your name?' I put the mike right to his mouth. He had like a giant burp waiting. The crowd went nuts. He immediately was funnier than anything I could have done. For half an hour, it was silent for me."
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