Cool Things About Christopher Guest

This profile of my eternal crush object is super out-of-date, and here are the BEST PARTS.

“Jamie calls the House of Lords ‘the lord thing,’ which is just right,” Guest said. “I actually went for a few years, before they kicked the hereditary peers out. My first day there I was lost. The corridors all look the same. The third time I go around, I see the same guard, who says, ‘Perhaps my lord would like a compass.’ With just a little smile on his face. That was worth the whole thing. I thought, Now we can go home.” But not before Curtis visited the gift shop and loaded up on barbecue aprons, oven mitts and matches, all with the House of Lords insignia.

He’s royal, and he buys tacky shit at gift shops.

Sitting beside him was David Nichtern, Guest’s best friend since childhood. On their first day of nursery school, a bully threatened to beat up Nichtern and was beaten up by Guest instead. At 13, they started playing guitar together in Washington Square Park. Nichtern is a musician and composer who wrote the song “Midnight at the Oasis.”

This one may only be amazing if you’ve seen Guffman eleventy-one times.

While she’s used to the fact that Guest doesn’t talk or emote much, he can still crack her up. “We go to a function, like a charity dinner, and he starts moaning just loud enough for me to hear,” she said. “And I’m trying so hard not to laugh.” He is also, she says, an exceptionally kind person. “He sends a handwritten letter to every actor he has to cut out of his movies, even with the tiniest part,” she said. “He respects that process so much, and he does it so lovingly.”

SEE, he’s also super-nice, even though everyone who meets him says he’s kind of dour.