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............SEPARATED AT BIRTH???.........................


Sam's dad recently auditioned for the role of the young Graham Chapman in the as-yet-unfilmed (luckily for Paul) biopic Gin and Tonic.

Paul's splendid audition style was written up in the New York Times as follows:

June 6, 2004, Sunday
METROPOLITAN DESK

Silly Walks? Dead Birds? Yes, It's 42nd St.

By ALAN FEUER (NYT)

The fat guy with the pheasant on his shoulder went next. He was painted red from head to toe. The pheasant was dead. The director asked his name. "Adam Bloody Knife Daggers in Your Face Forever." And what role was he trying out for?

"Any role with bloody death in it," he said.

Outside the small audition room, there was a guy in a thong with some bananas. Another man was dressed up like a horse.

The open call yesterday for the new Monty Python biopic went pretty much as expected. A few hundred would-be cast members stood in line in the rain on 42nd Street. The actors were outnumbered by the freaks.

"We've had colonels, pepper pots, lumberjacks, silly walkers, men in lingerie and a very nice midget in full armor," said David Eric Brenner, the director.

"One man came as Jesus. When I told him there's no role for Jesus, he said, 'That's all right, I forgive you, my son.'"

Mr. Brenner, 31, was sitting in the audition room casting his new film, Gin and Tonic, based on the life of Graham Chapman, the Monty Python star who died of cancer in 1989. The film, scheduled to begin production in December, has been something of a lifelong dream.

"I've been a Monty Python fan-slash-geek since I was 12 years old," he said. "I saw The Holy Grail and for the rest of my life I've been reciting lines nonstop, like, 'It's only a flesh wound,'" demonstrating his delivery.

Two years ago, Mr. Brenner reached out to a man named John Yoakum, who oversees Mr. Chapman's archives. Mr. Yoakum told him he was in possession of an unpublished memoir by Mr. Chapman. The film, based partly on this memoir, derives its name from Mr. Chapman's favorite drink.

Last month, there was an open casting call in California, where "the loonies lined up down Hollywood Boulevard," Mr. Brenner said. There were plenty yesterday in Times Square, too.

One man, Paul Smithyman, 35, stood in line with an orange rubber traffic cone and claimed to be its manager. "His name is Aristophanes; he's a method actor," Mr. Smithyman explained.

"He was in that Dustin Hoffman biopic, if you recall it. I also manage a Coke can. Now, he gets a lot of work."

Mr. Smithyman's friend, Lee Wilson, said he planned to audition by appearing very British -- which he is.

"I'm just going to go in there and stand and be British," Mr. Wilson, 36, explained. "Don't you think my stance is British? Can't you see the British look on my face?"

Mr. Brenner said that he would almost certainly cast British actors for the film's six major roles. It was a matter of authenticity, he said.

Nonetheless, most of those auditioning were Americans, if not New Yorkers. There was a student from Long Island pretending he was mute and a tax assessor from West Virginia with huge breasts of papier-mâché.

Among these oddities, Mike Ford looked abnormally normal. He was dressed in a T-shirt and a plaid pair of pants.

Was normalcy his gimmick, he was asked.

"No," he said, "when I go inside the pants come off."