Rich Hall Performs An Epically Funny Tom Cruise Sketch
If you’re a fan of Tom Cruise movies, then you might want to look away now……all one of you (and maybe stay up all night and write a mission statement about why this is evil?). For the rest of us we can lol it up till the Thetans come home, as Rich Hall sums up Tom Cruise’s entire career in the movies in just a few succinct lines.
Then, after pwning Mr Scientology’s achievements in a few quips he delivers an epic punchline. A master. Maybe he should start a new religion?
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Background:
Rich Hall was born in Alexandria, Virginia and grew up in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He is part Cherokee. Early in his career, he performed as a street comedian with a suitcase and stand, traveling the college circuit, and performing impromptu skits for gathering crowds. He attended college at Western Carolina University.
Hall’s first professional work was as a writer and performer on the American sketch comedy TV series Fridays from 1980 until 1982. After the end of Fridays, Hall co-wrote and starred in the satirical comedy series Not Necessarily the News from 1983 until 1990 where he coined the term “sniglet” and collected and published several volumes of books of them. Matt Groening has described him as the inspiration for Moe Szyslak from The Simpsons. He was also a regular on Saturday Night Live for the show’s tenth season (1984-1985), becoming the only Fridays cast member to be an SNL cast member (Larry David, while also a Fridays cast member who went on to work for SNL was hired as a writer and only appeared onscreen as an extra).
In 1986, Hall had his own Showtime channel special, Vanishing America, which was turned into a book with the same title. He hosted a talk show during The Comedy Channel’s 1990-91 season, titled Rich Hall’s Onion World.
In the United States, he has appeared several times on American talk shows such as Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
Outside his homeland, Hall has also achieved popularity in the United Kingdom, where he has lived on-and-off for 23 years. He spends part of his time during the off-seasons writing plays in the United States, where he has a small ranch just outside Livingston, Montana. The rest of the time is spent in London, where he owns a flat.
Hall is a guest on popular BBC panel quiz shows, most notably as a regular guest on QI, for which he has received much critical acclaim and is known as the game’s most frequently victorious guest panellist with ten victories (only permanent panellist Alan Davies has won more shows), and also with appearances in 8 Out of 10 Cats, Have I Got News for You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
He has also appeared on the British stand-up comedy series Jack Dee’s Live at the Apollo. His appearances achieved some cult status due to his line of jokes on Live at the Apollo about Tom Cruise, and the perceivable similarities between many of his roles.
In 2000, he won the Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, in the guise of his own grizzled uncle, Otis Lee Crenshaw, the much-convicted country music singer. He has released several albums and a concert movie as this character. In 2004, he published a book of the man’s memoirs, entitled Otis Lee Crenshaw: I Blame Society, and in 2007 he finished a screenplay for a film based on the book, written for the director Mel Smith.
In 2006, Hall also wrote and acted in the play Levelland at the Edinburgh Festival.
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