As steady readers of this blog know, I have a lot of amazing friends. This is deliberate misdirection: If you surround yourself with talented people, you can fool some of the people some of the time into thinking you're in that league. In that spirit, let me tell you about Charlie Frye and his wife Sherry…
Charlie and Sherry have been touring longer than they might admit as Charlie Frye and Company. Sherry is the Company. She "assists" (purposely not by much) as Charlie does impossible feats of juggling, balance, magic and physical comedy. The act involves no speaking so they can do it all around the world — and do. It is not uncommon for me to get an e-mail from them from Sri Lanka or New Zealand. No matter where they wander, they delight audiences since juggling is a universal language. Here's a little taste of what they do…
I love this act. No matter how many times I see it, I love it. When they were playing Vegas a lot, I used to go there and see them often…and not just because of the showgirls walking around backstage naked. Well, not entirely because of the showgirls walking around backstage naked. I especially loved going to a late dinner with Charlie and Sherry because Charlie would start juggling the plates and the silverware and the veal cutlet and once I think we stopped him from trying to balance a very short busboy on his nose.
Anyway, tonight's the last night of a week-long engagement at the Magic Castle up in Hollywood. Charlie and Sherry haven't played there for a few decades because they've been too busy…and I'm going to claim partial-credit for getting them to make time. Jack Goldfinger, who books the acts for the Castle, asked me to do a little arm-twisting…and that was one reason they came to town. Another was that I told Charlie — who is also a pretty good cartoonist — that if he performed in L.A., I'd bring my partner Sergio Aragonés to see him. Sergio is one of Charlie's heroes.
So that's what I did last Wednesday night. Sergio and I put on ties (the Castle has a dress code in the evenings) and we went up there, dined and took in the 8 PM performance. Charlie and Sherry shared the stage with the fine magic act of Mark Kalin and Ginger, and it really was a great show. Sergio was blown away by what he saw on stage so afterwards, I had to stand there as Sergio and Charlie exchanged compliments.
And more compliments and more compliments and if Charlie hadn't had to do the 10 PM show, those two guys would still be standing there gushing over each others' skills. Much of the discussion was about how they're kind of in the same line of work, creating wordless visual humor and having to practice for thousands of hours to be able to present it effectively.
In the photo above, Sherry and Charlie are on either side of Sergio. I'm the big guy with the orange tie…and the fellow at left is a pretty great performer, himself. It's Paul Reubens, who I worked with years ago and who happened to be at the same performance to catch Charlie's act. You probably know him best in his character of Pee Wee Herman but Paul does an awful lot of other things and he has something coming up that sounds pretty exciting. It was nice catching up with the guy.
Anyway, that's what I did Wednesday night. Thursday, I stayed home all day and worked on a script and on my taxes. Friday, my assistant John and I had lunch with Charlie and Sherry but otherwise, it was a pretty boring day, too. A little later today, I'll try and tell you about Saturday when things got interesting again.