· Image Search

Not every stereotypical monosyllabic simpleton in the movies is from the South; one or two are Yankees. Here's how you can tell them apart: while southern gentlemen of dubious intelligence tend to have a lanky, unfed look about them -- the better not to fill out their tattered overalls -- Yankee morons are more likely to be hairy and chubby. When you're talking about a moron who's a bit brighter than the norm, a southerner's more likely to be wily in a kind of unsophisticated, reptilian way; the northerner's slightly higher IQ shows in his use of sarcasm. The differences are subtle, to be sure, but they are there, if you really look. Our subject today -- one Mr. Judah Friedlander -- is the pre-eminent Yankee mouth-breather working in the filmed media today.

We should clarify: by no means should you, gentle reader, construe Friedlander's H!ITG! designation as an implication that he is not a very bright individual in his real life. It's not like we hang out with him or anything, but he's obviously been canny enough to make friends with people who can help him go places in his career. Like, there's a difference between playing a dippy waitress (or something) in a lemon like Gigli (let's just say, for the sake of argument), and a snarky pharmacy-counter employee in Meet The Parents. We actually happen to think that Parents was some shite, but at least it was successful -- and Friedlander must have been impressive enough, in his small role, to the movie's star (Ben Stiller) and co-screenwriter (John Hamburg) that when they reteamed for the current Along Came Polly, they made sure to include him as "Dustin." (We don't know whether Dustin is smart or dumb, because we have no intention of darkening any cinema door while Along Came Polly is crapping up the space within. But still -- crap or no, that's another movie with a #1 box-office opening on Friedlander's CV.)

Friedlander has impressive range playing simpletons, from high-functioning boobs ("Techie" on the short-lived sitcom Lateline; cameraman Julio in Showtime, the Eddie Murphy/Robert De Niro vehicle we'd all been clamoring for) to actually mentally challenged persons (his recent turn as Donald -- the sunscreen enthusiast-cum-card-trick solver -- on Curb Your Enthusiasm) to your garden-variety idiots in between (Molly Shannon's elbow-patched ex Ron in Wet Hot American Summer). Friedlander is so good playing dimwits that he even infused comedy into the mute role of Derek's coal-mining brother Scrappy in the (underrated, y'all) Zoolander. Okay, the wig helped, but it takes a particular kind of actor to keep his dignity (kind of) while spending his time onscreen in a Dickie's overall or Cosby sweater, his mouth perpetually hanging half-open in a drooling stupor. Kudos, Friedlander.

This year, Friedlander switched it up with a new twist on his standard role. As Toby Radloff in the excellent American Splendor, Friendlander had the challenge not only of playing a real person, but one who would appear -- as himself -- in the same film. Toby is not dumb -- quite the opposite, he proudly self-identifies as "a nerd" (or, really, a "nyerrrd") -- but he is at least socially awkward, and at most displays a borderline case of Asperger's syndrome. Basically, it's a testament to how singular a character Toby is that he makes his best friend Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti) look like a real smooth smoothie. And it's a testament to Friedlander's performance that our colleague Sars preferred Friedlander's Toby to...the real guy. When you do a better job playing someone than that someone does playing himself, you really are a god among character actors. Even if you don't shave every day and could probably do with having your adenoids removed.