Monday, December 08, 2003

Paul Bearer

I shed a tear when Dr. Romano, the pissy surgeon from the television show ER, was killed in an episode a few weeks ago. Not because I liked the character; I didn't, and was glad to see the one-note Robby go. I like actor Paul McCrane, though. I mean, come on, he's a redhead.

No, I cried when Romano perished in a fiery cataclysm of raining helicopter wreckage because of a single thought that occurred to me: "Shit. We'll have to change the song."

You see, Paul McCrane played the shy, conflicted Montgomery MacNeil in the movie Fame. It's pretty much where he got his big break. His big singing moment in the film comes about midway through, with the folkish ballad, "The Dogs in the Yard". But at the end of the film, in the big graduation sequence, Monty joins his classmates to sing "The Body Electric," a rock fusion bastardization of Walt Whitman's poem, with some ballet, modern dance and tambourines thrown in for good measure.

Monty sings:

I sing the body electric
I glory in the glow of rebirth
Creating my own tomorrow
When I shall embody the earth

And every week for the past several years, when that video clip has been played at a local watering hole where show tunes are second only to boy watching as the primary entertainment, my buddies and I have drowned out Paul McCrane with our own lyrics:

I got my start in this movie,
But nowadays, I star on ER.
I play a really bad doctor
So tape me on your VCR

So, yeah, given that Romano is now a little grease spot in the ambulance bay at TV's Cook County Hospital, we've got to revise the ditty. Here's my first stab at it which, unfortunately, we can't debut for another week or so, since not all of the ersatz choir has caught up with their Tivo backlog:

I got my start in this movie,
And then went on to star in ER.
I played a really bad doctor,
But now my remains are all charred.

Ya think? Okay, perhaps not, but you've got to hear it sung by a dozen drunken show queens in a crowded bar, in perhaps as many keys.

Sigh. Poor Paul McCrane. First that unfortunate Fame perm, then getting dumped in acid in Robocop, absorbed by the Blob, forced to squander his talent as a putrescent doctor on TV, and now dogged by our doggerel. He just can't catch a break.