anyone familiar with actor Christopher McDonald? . . .

ran across this article at salon.com, and was interested because I went to school with this guy . . . well, more precisely, he and I were at the same college at the same time and, no, I didn't know him . . . but I've always thought he was a pretty good (and funny) actor, and it seems Cintra Wilson agrees . . .



Beautiful Bastard
by Cintra Wilson
salon.com
May 20, 2004

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/05/20/mcdonald/index.html

Today we bemoan the relative obscurity of character actor Christopher McDonald, who is generally known as, "You know, that guy who played the bastard husband in 'Thelma and Louise.' Not Michael Madsen. The other guy."

Why would Michael Madsen be a householdish name, and not the handsome and exquisitely hilarious Christopher McDonald? Why is Alec Baldwin, the oiliest toxic sponge since latter-day Jerry Lewis, playing the leapingly zany John Barrymore role in "20th Century" on Broadway, while Chris McDonald lives and breathes air? Consider the name recognition of actors who should be condemned to pulling Chris McDonald around in a rose-covered pony-cart for the rest of their professional lives: Kevin Bacon. Rob Schneider, Pat Swayze. Jim Belushi. Tom Arnold, for the love of Moses. What went wrong? Where did we, the audience, fail Chris McDonald?

(snip)

There's a distinct laundry list of roles for which McDonald gets cast:

1. Smug, fatuous, sarcastic honky pricks (blue-collar)
2. Smug, fatuous, sarcastic honky pricks (white-collar)
3. Really sarcastic, angry dads
4. Murderous honky pricks so angry they can't even be sarcastic
5. Guys so cartoonishly dumb they can't pull off sarcasm and hence require slapstick
6. Hybrids of the above

Usually the scripts suck such abysmal amounts of donkey waste that the director and/or casting agent appear to have winked at each other at some point and said, "Fuck it. Give it to Chris McDonald. He can bleed some yuks out of it."

- more . . .

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/05/20/mcdonald/index.html

He's a good character actor. I also remember him when he played Jack Barry in "Quiz Show" (a wonderful, underappreciated film). He's a better actor than the roles he sometimes plays.

the third-season episode of ST:TNG where he was a crewman on the Enterprise-C. Not smug at all, quite a heroic role in possibly the best ST:TNG episode ever.