Oh, O'Dowd

The other day I was talking with the inveterate Chris Dunn about an actor we both enjoy, Chris O'Dowd.  And no, it's not because he likes all actors named "Chris."  Various films came up -- things like small roles in St. Vincent with Bill Murray, and Pirate Radio, the fun and odd State of the Union, which was ten 10-minutes TV episodes written by Nick Hornby, directed by Stephen Frears and also starring Rosamund Pike which won the Emmy Award this year for Best Short Form Comedy or Drama Series, and the Netflix adaptation of Get Shorty with Ray Romano, which I think is wonderfully acted and produced, with terrific dialogue -- and I absolutely hate with gnashed teeth what they did with all of the main characters and most of the rest.

He's done a great deal more, mind you (including the National Theatre production of Of Mice and Men ​with James Franco), but we weren't doing a deep film historian analysis.  Anyway, I also mentioned that he's a periodic guest on The Graham Norton Show on BBC America, a show I like a lot and and written about quite often hear.  This is my favorite of his appearances. 

To set it up, the show has a segment at the end, “The Big Red Chair.”  While it's a nice change-of-pace for a talk show and I like that they have it, I don't personally care for the segment and usually stop watching at that point -- however every once in a while I keep it on, and this just happened to be one of those times.  What they do is have a member of the audience sit off-stage in a big red chair and tell some embarrassing story about themself – and if at any point the host or panelists don’t like the story they can pull a big lever that tilts the chair over backwards.  But if they make it through, they get to walk off.  Chris O’Dowd is one of the panelists on this particular show, along with Colin Farrell, Rod Stewart Rachel Weisz and Dawn French, one-time comedy partner of Jennifer Saunders.  (Side Note:  That's a seriously good panel..)  The host, Graham Norton, by the way, is Irish, too, which helps play into the tale somewhat…