I love the films of the Coen Brothers, so even a lesser entry to their canon like Intolerable Cruelty brings me a great amount of pleasure. It was because of this that I was pretty excited to meet Irwin Keyes when he appeared at the HorrorHound Weekend on Friday, March 22, 2013. He played the ice cold hit man Wheezy Joe, whose addiction to his inhaler proved to be his downfall. I didn’t need to look much further than that credit to know that I wanted to meet him. But it turns out that he’s done quite a bit more that interested in me.
He was at the show as part of a reunion of cast members of the Rob Zombie horror film House of 1000 Corpses, so he was actually pretty pleased when I opted for the Intolerable Cruelty photo. We had a connection right away when he said, “ah, at last someone with taste.”
From there we went into talking about my real film interests, namely Hal Roach films like Laurel & Hardy and the Our Gang. It turns out he is quite a fan of them as well, and then we went into talking about mutual acquaintances like Chuck McCann. Naturally I gave him the info about the Way Out West tent and told him that he should show up at one of their meetings, only to find out that he indeed had been to several of them! It was clear I had found the key to his heart. And to think that almost everyone he was meeting that week associated him with an exploitation horror flick…
By the way, his other notable appearances include an uncredited bit role in the first Friday the 13th film, plus a recurring role George Jefferson’s bodyguard Hugo in five episodes of The Jeffersons, and roles in other sitcoms such as Police Squad, Laverne & Shirley, Married with Children, and Growing Pains, and movies like The Private Eyes and Stardust Memories.
It was quite a fun encounter and he was a super friendly guy. $20 got me the signed photo and a free photo op for both Carolyn and me. And he even added his famous quote from the film. He had the key to my heart as well.
Celebrity encounters from the Spring 2013 Cincinnati HorrorHound will conclude in the next posting…
Irwin was a long time member of the Way Out West Tent a couple of decades ago!
Bob
October 2nd, 2014