When Zach Galifianakis made his hilarious entrance on Conan last night, I was reminded of this passage from a 2009 New York Times Magazine profile of him…
Despite his fondness for making jokes about his girth (“I’m gaining weight for a role — ‘The Zach Galifianakis Story’ ”), Galifianakis, 39 years old and 5-foot-8, makes a curiously delicate impression in person: small, precise hands, clear blue eyes and a face that can radiate wholesomeness, perversity or demonic glee in equal measure. “Zach has one of those faces, like Buster Keaton or W. C. Fields, that can make you laugh with just a look,” the comic Andy Kindler, a longtime friend of Galifianakis’s, told me. “You’ll be hanging around him and catch yourself cracking up without having a clue what you’re laughing about. To me, he’s a great physical comic.” There’s also a slight but definite quality of menace to Galifianakis’s onstage persona — obvious when he’s throwing one of his famously over-the-top tantrums, but present even in his most lilting piano interludes — that keeps his audience in a constant but almost intangible state of tension. Comics from Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor to Chris Rock have made use of tension of this kind, but Galifianakis’s anger has a peculiarly surreal effect, perhaps because its source is so mysterious.
I think the entrance he makes here illustrates this point perfectly, and the interview on the whole was a fun one to take in. What’s not to love about Zach Galifianakis?