FUNNYman, YOUR FACE ISN'T FAMILIAR

If you watched "A STAR IS BORN" and "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY," you may have noticed a pair of well known comedy stars.

Or not.

I didn't notice them.

In the first film, seeing the name in the credit was a damn surprise.

In the second, the comedian was prominently billed. After the film was over I thought, "Where was he?"

Are you still thinking, "I'm sorry I haven't a clue?"

Playing Lady Gaga's father, an Italian who considered himself a pretty damn good singer in the Sinatra mold, but never got a break, is Andrew Dice Clay.

Billed prominently enough in the credits (at the END) to have gotten a best supporting actor consideration, the former Andrew Silverman, now in this mid 60's, only proves that stand-up comedy involves acting, so it's not a surprise that most can do pretty well with the right role.

In stand-up, you have to act as if you're spouting witticisms off the top of your head. In Clay's case, he always complained that people weren't separating him, the nice guy, from his on-stage persona, the greasy, Fonz-inspired misogynist.

Kudos to Clay that the PC brigade hasn't declared that a) a Jew can no longer play an Italian, the same way a woman can no longer play a transgender, and b) that somebody who said mean things about women is allowed to have a job.

"BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY" is a highly fictionalized account of Freddie Mercury's life, including a lot of ridiculous lies (he didn't conveniently get hired the night the band's original singer walked out...he didn't tell them he had AIDS just before "Live Aid," etc. etc.). One of the more common fictionalizations is to "combine" two real people into a fictitious but convenient single character.

Mike Myers SEEMS to be playing a record executive at Elektra hell bent on refusing to release the band's pompous, effeminate, campy, and obnoxious six-minute "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a single.

No, no executive by that name. Perhaps the movie studio was afraid to have Myers play an actual record executive still alive and able to sue (unlike the "villain" of the movie, accused of all kinds of devious doings, and who conveniently died of AIDS even before Freddie Mercury did).

More likely, it was considered a wonderful in-joke to have Myers in the film, since (through "Wayne's World") he was one of the (we are the) CHAMPIONS of that stupid song.

Myers was always inhabiting characters on "Saturday Night Live," notably the German pedophile who mocked being as excited as (pulling on his chest) a "little girl." A few years ago, he began hosting a re-vamped version of "The Gong Show" using about five pounds of prosthetics. Without being told, nobody would know it's Mike. And here, it took the end credits for me to discover he was actually in the film.

Who knows, maybe, with the right make-up, Woody Allen will be allowed to act in a movie again.