A few years ago, as I was driving onto a movie studio lot, the guard stopped me.
“Hey, man, I love your movies,” he said. Which was a nice thing to say except I don’t make movies. But instead of just waving and delivering an airy “Thank you!” I paused for a moment and looked confused. It was then that the guard realised that I wasn’t who he thought I was.
“Oh, sorry,” said the guard. “You just look a little like Jack Black.”
I was hoping for someone a little more dashing. But it did the trick: I went on a high-protein/zero-carbs diet that very day.
I may have, in my plump past, looked like Jack Black, but I don’t have his voice. I could never make a living as a Jack Black impersonator, assuming such a living could be made.
The trick to impersonations, as everyone knows, is getting the voice right.
Back in the 1970s, comedians Rich Little and Fred Travalena had big careers impersonating presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, respectively, even though there wasn’t a physical resemblance.
Both of them, when they appeared on television comedy shows, wore elaborate and not-very-convincing make-up. They needn’t have bothered. If you can do the voice, you can do the person.
To make a decent wage at the celebrity impersonation business requires that the person you can impersonate be popular or notorious or in some other way desirable for audiences – the guy who did a dead-on George W Bush really made a solid pile for a solid seven or eight years, I’m pretty sure, and then it must have stopped suddenly when the caravan moved on.
Even the minor impersonators – those not good enough to get jobs on big television shows – still did extremely well appearing at parties and galas and corporate events.
Big cities like New York and Los Angeles have agencies dedicated to representing these performers. You can get a Michael Jackson lookalike to show up at your birthday party (assuming you’d enjoy such a thing), or (almost) anyone else. As long as they are – or were – popular.
I got a call from a friend of mine the other day desperate for some help. Do I know, he asked, of any really good Donald Trump impersonators? He needed one for an event and said the words that everyone in show business, no matter how rich or famous, no matter what sector, motion picture, television, carnival act, always want to hear, which are: we are willing to pay a lot of money.
I didn’t, as a matter of fact, which seems like an indication of a big fat market opportunity.
In New York City, right this minute, if you Google “Donald Trump impersonator NYC”, there are about four possibilities, none of whom look much like him.
I’m not sure how they sound, but you’d think that New York, which has unfortunately been in the Donald Trump business for almost three decades, would have more than four.
The website I looked at has four Lady Gagas, for heaven’s sake. And nine Justin Biebers and eight Bill Clintons and three Pelés (ask your parents) and one Salvador Dali, which I suspect is really just a costume bit with a moustache appliance. Not really an act per se.
You’d think there would be more. But maybe these kinds of things are lagging indicators – first, there needs to be a market and then the supply shows up, after long sessions looking into a mirror, pouting and shrugging, and getting the hair twist just right. Plus, you’ve got to look a little orange, and that takes time to perfect.
Somewhere, right this minute, there’s a guy who has been told that in the right light he looks a little bit like Trump, practising his Trump in the mirror. He is getting the voice down right, perfecting the pooched-out lips, experimenting with absurd hair swirls.That someone is probably the biggest Donald Trump supporter around, because celebrity and political impersonators can go as high as their originals. So if you can do Trump, you desperately want him to be president.
Let’s hope, though, that whoever is perfecting his Donald Trump impression realises that the demand – even if, and I cringe to say this, he wins – will be short-lived.
There’s a word for a performer who has lost his or her caché: we call it a “boat act”, meaning someone who appears on cruise ships mostly, as an on-board entertainer. Which is to say, someone people won’t pay to see onshore.
Their act only has value if it’s thrown in there with the buffet and the spa and the passing scenery. It’s a sad end for a performer. But to be honest – and in the larger sense – we’re all boat acts, eventually.
Even politicians. Some more than others, we hope.
Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl