The Singular Catherine O’Hara

When I heard the news that Catherine O’Hara died this week my initial reaction was the same as yours.

No, no, no, no, NOOOOOO! Why her? Why couldn’t it be……

Well, so many others.

Inside Out Sadness GIFs - Find & Share on GIPHY — Still on the floor

But it was her and it is now a fact that one of the few performers where the very mention of her name made me and my friends and likely all of you instantly laugh was gone.

And that’s because there were so many characters and comic moments she played in so many films and TV shows that immediately come to mind.

Whatever your favorite – and when you begin to think about it there are far too many to mention – there was a slightly askew warmth behind Catherine O’Hara’s eyes telling you that at any moment she might do anything but that no matter what happened you wouldn’t be able to not laugh. She’d get you and she’d keep you – as long as she chose to.

Beetlejuice GIFs - Find & Share on GIPHY — Also can we talk about that hair? #iconic

And, well, who doesn’t want to surrender to that.

I can still remember watching a tiny TV set in my bedroom late one night as a young college student and turning the channel to some whacked-out syndicated comedy show where I thought I saw Katharine Hepburn doing “a bit.”

My first reaction was:

Wow, she’s really going for it, and on TV yet, who knew?

(Note: My sole reference for Ms. Hepburn at this point was Eleanor of Aquitaine in the classical film drama, The Lion in Winter, where she parried stinging lethal verbiage with Peter O’Toole much too IMPORTANTLY to be ever be called “bit-ty.” …And yes, I really did think that way as a teenager).

But then I quickly realized:

Wait, this can’t be Katharine Hepburn because this woman is far, far funnier than she is and just a little bit “off.” But in a good way. The affect, the way she tilted her head, and the knowing pretentiousness in her voice. It was a more grand but slightly more fun Kate. The way you’d hope she would be at a dinner party. Someone you could hang with and eventually get drunk with because you knew she’d be a lot more outrageous and would tell you the best stories in the world.

As it turns out, that’s who Catherine O’Hara would be for the next five decades or more.

How did Catherine O'Hara die? Schitt's Creek and Home Alone actress passes away at 71, fans pay tributes — An unparalleled career

The kind of performer you always wanted to hang with. A real person onscreen who always made you crack up because you never knew what she was going to do.

Someone who could make insanity into eccentricity that was totally viable. Someone whose presence always guaranteed you a good time, and how often can you say that these days about anyone or anything?

Schitts Creek Moira Rose GIFs - Find & Share on GIPHY — Oh Catherine, we miss you so.

Little did I know when I happened upon her on my little black and white screen back in the 1970s on a little known syndicated Canadian TV called SCTV, the answer would be Zero X No One.

And that I would have years and years of Catherine O’Hara to look forward to.

The Banana Boat Song singing Mom in Beetlejuice, the harried, under appreciated and lovingly careless Mom in the Home Alone films, the impossibly versatile improvisational comic actress in a slew of Christopher Guest movies, including an Oscar-nominated turn in For Your Consideration, all culminating with her master creation – Moira Rose – the penniless matriarch speaking in an accent not of this Earth that we nevertheless all understood in her Emmy award-winning performance in Schitt’s Creek.

White smoke signals new pope : r/SchittsCreek — No one else could pull this off

It was her grounded insanity in a TV series about a spoiled rich family forced to actually work and need, that got so many of us through a global pandemic and once and for all made Catherine O’Hara a household name.

Still, it somehow felt fitting that when the show swept the Emmys in 2020 and she finally emerged as a headliner instead of a perfect comic foil team player, that it was in a year where she couldn’t accept the award in front of all the industry peers that so admired her.

Emmys 2020: Catherine O'Hara Wins Lead Actress in a Comedy Series — Oh how we all screamed for you!

Instead, it was in a pared down ceremony, but one that the rest of us were watching in secret glee that Moira – and, as it turns out, Catherine O’Hara – was finally getting the star treatment in the same way you hoped your crazy aunt or insanely funny co-worker, or under-appreciated friend might one day be recognized in front of everyone for being so perfectly one of a kind.

Most recently she played a former studio head turned producer on Apple TV’s The Studio, where she was surrounded by a cast of fellow performers who had admired her ability to be so uniquely and strangely funny for decades. At the top of list was the show’s star and co-creator, Seth Rogen, who several days ago tweeted that in their very first meeting he confessed to her she was the funniest person he had ever seen onscreen.

This is not merely a posthumous accolade but something I’ve heard people say about her for years. There was just nothing like her off-centered, borderline bizarreness and it made her not only a fan favorite but a performer’s performer.

It also made those of us who sometimes feel totally insane just a little bit less alone.

Rather than me go and on – and make everyone sadder – here are some excerpts of some of her more memorable moments..

It’s been a tough week among so many weeks, which means it’s even more important to take a moment and laugh at someone who was fearless enough to get us through it all. And then some.

#1 Canadian TV’s CBC compilation piece on career highlights:

And then some individual clips over the years:

11.10.25

by notesfromachair

E PLURIBUS UNUM

When I read there was a new television series with the logline: The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness I knew it was my kind of show for my type of mood.

Or moods.

Or mood swings.

Choose one of the above.

It's me!!!!!! (Elphaba voice) — Know thyself

But what I didn’t know was that Pluribus, the new one-hour Apple TV series, was created by writer-director Vince Gilligan, the same guy who created Breaking Bad, one of my favorite TV shows of all time.

Or that it would center on an acerbic gay writer with a devoted spouse who secretly thinks most of what they write, not to mention most of the world, is sub-par, nee trash, despite how they appear in public.

Talk about hitting a little too close home.

Embarrassed GIFs | Tenor — Nothin to see here

I mean, not every day, but at least sporadically.

But let’s table the actual events in Pluribus for a moment and stick to its theme:

Misery vs. happiness in a topsy-turvy world.

It is said you can choose optimism vs. pessimism, or to look at the glass as half-full vs. half-empty.

Monday Chit-Chat: Is the Glass Half Full, Or Half Empty to You? - Water Cooler - Spiceworks Community — Or this point of view…

But what happens when you look out your window or at your screen and see masked government goons disappearing a young Dad in handcuffs while they blithely drive away with his one-year old daughter?

Or watch the White House take a literal wrecking ball to a huge chunk of the historic east wing of the…White House… in order to build a Gatsbyesque ballroom, yet happily turn its back on millions of Americans whose health care costs are doubling, tripling or more because it’s refusing to negotiate the government shutdown?

Break Glass GIFs | Tenor — Oh screw this glass

Or stand incredulous when POTUS is vociferously defended by elected officials after he is filmed literally asleep at his Oval Office desk during a press conference, and then awake yet undisturbed when a man literally faints right beside him at the same gathering moments later?

I guess I could go have a chicken salad sandwich and an iced tea and marvel at how lucky I am to be in the California sunshine but….really?????

The current climate in the U.S. (Note: Not to be confused with climate change, which is another subject entirely) is volatile. And shifting. Right to left and back and forth. And the effect is dizzying, not only to us but everyone else in the world.

The Latin phrase E pluribus unum – which translated means “out of many, one” – appears on the U.S. dollar bill and on all of our coins (Note: Not to be confused with bitcoins, which is also a whole other thing).

But these days it’s hard to see the country as one of anything except, maybe one big glorious mess.

And that’s if you’re an optimistic, glass half-full kind of a person.

My life passing me by… : r/gifs — Evergreen

There are moments in history when the vast majority of the United States are in lockstep, but mostly that’s after we’ve won a war, staved off a terrorist attack, earned the most Olympic gold medals or landed some American humans on another planet or celestial body.

But these days it hardly ever happens otherwise.

Betty White Reveals Her Secrets to Long, Happy Life — Maybe we need to bring Betty back… everyone loves Betty

The fraying edges of what is good and bad and right and wrong in the zeitgeist more and more appears to depend on what side of the “argument” you’re on.

But arguing is tough when there is less and less personal interaction, or more and more dependence on carefully-mastered, fictional talking points being passed off as truths.

Or alternative facts.

40 Of Olivia Benson's Most Intense Episodes Of 'Law & Order: SVU' That Make Her A Hero | The Odyssey Online — Tell ’em Benson

The actions of rabid, fat cat Wall Street investors tell us we are just at the beginning of the AI boom but raise your virtual hand if you think that will get you closer to the real truth or the synthetically drawn truth that those who run the machines would like you to believe.

It’s one thing to hear facts you know aren’t facts spouted by a man in orange makeup, or by a government employee with an innocuous religious symbol of their choice around their neck.

But it’ll be far more difficult to counter the lies and manipulations (Note: Untruths is the polite word but this is not a moment for manners) when you’re going against the grain of a hive mind most of the world has been talked into believing through the means of production.

I suspect this is all only the beginning of what Vince Gilligan is offering up for us to think about with Pluribus. And that, alone, is a BIG thought, though nowhere near a brain-breaking one.

All he’s asking us to do is follow a mouthy lesbian (Note: Among my favorite people) who is faced with the eventual extinction of her own thoughts and persona in favor of hive mind thinking and is told to sit back and enjoy it.

Pluribus Season 1: How Many Episodes Are There In the Apple TV Plus Show? — Help her!

It will bring her unimaginable, incomprehensible happiness, i.e. NIRVANA.

Who is telling her?

Well, for the sake of spoilers, let’s just say the “hive mind.” And the mere small handful of others humans left in the world who are leaning that way because, hey, who doesn’t want Nirvana.

Who wouldn’t want a promise of unlimited joy, peace, global agreement and personal cooperation in just about everything?

Not to mention, everything and everyone is so…. nice.

All the time.

Like – 100% of the time.

Suspicious GIFs | Tenor — As the kids say, this is sus

Personally, one of the joys in life is not to have to be one thing 100% of the time.

Or to be forced to agree with a higher power dictating how you should live and what you should do each day, even if they are sure it will bring you incalculable contentment.

One person’s contentment is often another person’s incarceration. And too often the latter is anything but humane.

Especially these days.

Murat Evgin – “Nobody Told Me” (from Pluribus)

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: apple tv

The Singular Catherine O’Hara

E PLURIBUS UNUM