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It's been a long and difficult year for those of us who make celebrity-watching our business. (And, no, it's not our pleasure -- you might think it would be our pleasure, and we thought it would be too, when we started. But that's before the world of celebrity was hijacked by the likes of Paris Hilton and Tara Reid. Sure, these screeching grotesques are fun to watch for awhile, like gaping at a car wreck, but soon you feel like you're strapped in a chair with forks in your eyes, just like in Clockwork Orange. Thus endeth the digression.)
There's been much to lament and little to cheer this year. Even a fresh young blossom of talent (Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls) quickly wilted into tawdriness, under the glare of overexposure (Lindsay Lohan in pantyhose on the cover of Entertainment Weekly).
Come to think of it, the very fact that we end up mentioning Lindsay Lohan in a Fame Audit celebrating Catherine O'Hara illustrates just why we're writing a Fame Audit celebrating Catherine O'Hara.
Because it's been a long year of cheap stars who offer lots of skin but little pleasure. And we could end the year with more snark and grumbling, but, as Damon Wayans once said -- or perhaps it was a clown, or Damon Wayans dressed up as a clown -- we ain't going out like that.
And so: Catherine O'Hara.
O'Hara's small role in Lemony Snicket gives us occasion to sing her praises: is there any movie she doesn't spruce up by her presence? Is there any comedian with whom she can't go toe-to-toe? She stole a scene from the sublime Eugene Levy in Waiting For Guffman -- just one of the many hilarious scenes they've shared over the years, from SCTV to Christopher Guest -- and that's testament enough for us. We grew up watching the gorgeous Ms. O'Hara and her stable of brilliant characters on SCTV -- she was the WASPy, willowy complement to Andrea Martin's brash, honking malcontents. We loved O'Hara's blank-eyed Lola Heatherton and her crackly Hepburn (though it was, to be honest, the second best Hepburn on the show, next to Martin Short's).
And then, for awhile, we thought we'd lost O'Hara, the way you think you lose comedians that you don't see them in a movie for awhile. But she was busy, as it turns out, aging gracefully, and engineering what seems to us the perfect kind of career: always busy, always funny, respected by her peers, reliably good in the paycheck jobs (Home Alone, Surviving Christmas) and reliably great in the prestige projects (Beetlejuice, Guest's mockumentaries).
So there's not much more to say than this: thanks. Thanks, Catherine O'Hara. Also: you're funny. Thanks for that too. Oh, and this: you should get way more attention than Jennifer Lopez. Or Anne Heche. Or Tara Reid. Put together. Maybe you wouldn't want to, but you should. Though we're kind of glad that you don't.
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