{"id":3484,"date":"2010-12-01T23:13:45","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T13:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=3484"},"modified":"2010-12-01T23:16:19","modified_gmt":"2010-12-01T13:16:19","slug":"r-i-p-leslie-nielsen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=3484","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P – Leslie Nielsen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Leslie Nielsen, 1926 - 2010.<\/p><\/div>\n

I was saddened to hear over the weekend about the passing of Leslie Nielsen, star of The Naked Gun<\/em> series and scene stealer in Airplane!<\/em><\/p>\n

It says a lot about Nielsen\u2019s lasting impression on popular culture that his death dominated so many news headlines and was mentioned by such a vast cross section of personalities on Facebook and Twitter despite the fact that his most notable performances were in films that are now over twenty years old (Christ, that makes me feel old).<\/p>\n

Much has already been written in obituaries and tributes about Nielsen\u2019s qualities as a comedian.\u00a0 He was the master of deadpan.\u00a0 He had a history of playing stoic straight laced characters for the first thirty years of his acting career and then he parlayed that brilliantly into his roles as a comedian where he acts completely oblivious to the chaos going on around him.<\/p>\n

He also had a knack for delivering lines perfectly with an impeccable sense of timing and body language.\u00a0 One of my favourite Leslie Nielsen scenes was the one that Pat linked to on Facebook:\u00a0 when he plays his most famous character, Lieutenant Frank Drebin and he takes the place of an umpire in a baseball game.\u00a0 On paper, the scene doesn\u2019t sound particularly funny.\u00a0 All he has to do is call the pitches.\u00a0 It\u2019s just the way that Nielsen shifts so preposterously from being nervous and uncertain with his delayed first call (\u2018…strike?\u2019) to his impossibly boisterous and pre-emptive third call (\u2018steeeeeerrrriiiiiike threeeeeee!!!\u2019).\u00a0 It never<\/em> fails to me make me laugh.<\/p>\n[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=x-S-eeInJVk&feature=player_embedded[\/youtube]\n

Thats probably the biggest compliment I can pay to Nielsen.\u00a0 His memorable performances in Airplane!<\/em>, Police Squad!<\/em> And The Naked Gun<\/em> trilogy make them perfect comedies in my eyes and I find that they have unlimited replayability.\u00a0 I have literally watched all of those films more times than I can recall.\u00a0 And I laugh throughout those films every<\/em> time.\u00a0 At the same gags.\u00a0 Nielsen was just that funny and lovable in his own inimitable style.\u00a0 It’s been years since he had done his best films but I’m sad that he’s gone.<\/p>\n

R.I.P Leslie Nielsen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was saddened to hear over the weekend about the passing of Leslie Nielsen, star of The Naked Gun series and scene stealer in Airplane! It says a lot about Nielsen\u2019s lasting impression on popular culture that his death dominated so many news headlines and was mentioned by such a vast cross section of personalities …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[695,696],"class_list":["post-3484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-leslie-nielsen","tag-naked-gun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3484"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3488,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484\/revisions\/3488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}