The Ghost of Tom Snyder

I’ve never been a ghostwriter…but I was a ghost writer.

I tried a lot of different types of writing styles in the years after I graduated from college. One skill I had (and maybe still do?) tuned out to be the ability to pick a character voice and riff in character, about anything.

Want Mark Twain giving you a walkthrough of a Tomb Raider game? David Foster Wallace reviewing a My Chemical Romance album? Natasha Lyonne telling you how to change a tire? I can probably do that.

The thing is, no one really wants that. Maybe if I were a comedian I could find an outlet for it, but I’m not good at impressions. And if you’re going to “do” a Natasha Lyonne, you gotta have that raspy noo-yawka not-for-nuttin-but-ya-got-any-Nicorette? voice, otherwise why bother?

Then, in 2007, Tom Snyder died.

Tom Snyder was a broadcasting stalwart for the latter half of the 20th century.

Here’s Tom in the 1970s, as the striped jacket and Brady-sibling hair testifies.

Here’s Dan Ackroyd playing him in an early SNL season.

By the 1990s he’d let his hair go white but was still the affable high-energy guy whose monologues would lurch and ramble to subject to subject.

He had a late-night talk show, often just one single guest, with an hourlong talk. Like a podcast that was filmed.

His guest introductions, to me, were legendary.

I will admit now that I mostly watched Letterman (Snyder’s lead-in program) and really only saw the introductions. I rarely watched the interviews themselves. So to me, Tom’s actual interviews didn’t exist, just the rambling genial hedge maze of an introduction to the interviews.

So after he died, I started a blog: The Ghost of Tom Snyder.

The idea was that when a celebrity died, after walking through the Pearly Gates he’d be interviewed by Tom. And so what I wrote on this blog was Tom’s lengthy stream-of-consciousness introductions for each guest. I never actually wrote any dialogue. If jazz great Oscar Peterson was the guest, I never wrote any Oscar Peterson dialogue. None of the guests ever even got to say so much as “Hello.”

Part of the fun of this was the speed and which I wrote it. I’d hear that, say, Don Knotts had died, at age 95. A TV legend, Barney Fife himself! I’d never really watched The Andy Griffith Show but I had the Disney Channel growing up, and Don Knotts movies were everywhere on it. I didn’t really watch any of them either, but I got the goofball vibe he was sending out.

I’d get into character and start writing as Tom. I don’t want to get all fancy and say I was channeling Tom: I’m sure I was not. I was simply doing an impression. But “Tom” said a whole bunch of things that I’d never thought of about Don Knotts, since I (admittedly) never really thought about Don Knotts. But I felt Tom had thoughts about Don Knotts, and they cropped up.

I get when fiction writers say their characters write themselves. I was able to reliably tap into Tom whenever, say, Boris Yeltsin died, I’d do a write-up.

Folks, we’re going to have ourselves one humdinger of a conversation, let me tell you what, better than when we had Linda Ronstadt on. Lemme tell you, back in the day – wow. Just wow. Smart lady, too. Quite a get for us back in the old days, the old set, with that awful dented coffee urn and the – what was the name of that intern? The one who was always out of breath? Gene? Terry? One of those neutral-gender names that you think girl instead of boy. But it was a boy. Not much of one, but still.

It read like that.

Because I thought of him as a 1970s liberal guy (which he was!) I often had him rambling about Nixon and Watergate and Kissinger. That as fun: it’s fun to write angry people ranting about stuff they dislike!

Then something bad happened. A former child star died young, age 25. His name was Brad Renfro: you can see him as a kid in The Client with Susan Sarandon, and as a teenager in Apt Pupil with Ian MacKellan. Greta young actor, died from an overdose, very sad.

What I wrote was angry. The wasted potential, the wasted life. I couldn’t help it, it just came out. “You moron. I have socks older than you. I have FILLINGS older than you!” (This was him, not me; I don’t even have fillings.)

That wasn’t fun.

I was writing this for an audience of one, basically, a friend from work. All you need is one audience member, really! I’d changed workplaces but sent the link when Tom had a new interview.

Then I got a text from the friend, that simply said DON’T YOU DARE.

So I checked the news.

Heath Ledger had died.

That was the second death of Tom Snyder. I just couldn’t do it anymore. Or rather, if I did, it would cease to be fun and silly and vaguely respectful. It’d be dealing with real-world issues.

SUPER MARIO OF THE WEEK

Lenticular images, from the shop Pop Culture Heaven shop at the convention I’m at this weekend!

SPIDER-MAN OF THE WEEK

MICKEY MOUSE OF THE WEEK

PRINCESS LEIA (‘s DAD) OF THE WEEK

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

PUNK RUNK FLEA MARKET: EDISON, NJ — July 25

ANIME NYC: NEW YORK, NY— August 27-30