Heere's . . . Rich Little Impersonating Johnny Carson And Many Others

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Rich Little, 7:30 p.m. tonight, Lindbloom Student Center at Green River Community College, 12401 S.E. 320th St. Auburn; $17-$20, 253-833-9111. -------------------------------------------

In television's variety-show heydays of the late 1960s and '70s, impressionist Rich Little's dead-on sendups of everyone from Richard Nixon to John Wayne and Truman Capote made him a household name. Little, who will perform tonight at Green River Community College, isn't on TV much these days, but he keeps busy performing hundreds of club and concert dates each year. We reached him last week at his home in Las Vegas.

Q: Who are your top five favorite people to do impressions of? A: Hmm, I guess Clinton, Jack Nicholson, Reagan, Bush and Johnny Carson. Q: Do you prefer doing impressions of politicians? A: Well, politicians get a big reaction because they're great subjects and they leave themselves wide open to all kinds of problems. Also, they're people of authority and people like to see people of authority and people running the country come down to their level. And beneath it (laughing). It's kind of bursting their bubble a little bit. Q: Does Clinton give you a lot of material? A: Yeah, Clinton does, he writes it himself. Q: How do you keep up-to-date? A: Just watching the news a lot. I'm constantly adjusting the humor without being too cruel. But if you're going to do Clinton now you're obviously going to get into his problems, which he does have. If people object to that, I just say, "I don't write the news." Q: Who are difficult people to impersonate? A: A lot of movie stars are hard to do. Robert Redford, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise. They don't really have distinctive voices. Q: How do you reach a younger crowd? A: You have to do people they can identify with. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Nicholson's great. But I don't really draw from a really young crowd. Mostly 25-30 and up. Q: So you don't do South Park characters or Beavis and Butt-head? A: No, (laughing) I don't think so. Not for the crowd I appeal to. Q: Do you think young people even recognize some of the older actors, politicians and comedians that you do impressions of? A: No, they don't even know who they are. That's very true. Young people today are into music and their own movies and they don't really care about the past. Q. Has anyone ever complained about your impression you do of them? A: Not really, no. Most people find it flattering. Even Nixon liked my Nixon. Q: Is there anyone you avoid doing? A: I stay away from doing a lot of religious people. I don't really do jokes about Billy Graham or anything like that because that's pretty touchy. And I have to be a little careful doing Reagan that I don't get too into the vagueness and the absent-mindedness, which he's always had. It's a little bit touchy now that he has Alzheimer's. You don't want to offend anybody but it's hard to do a Reagan without kind of staring. He's always done that. But then with other politicians I kind of make them as vague and clueless as Reagan, so I kind of even it up. Q: What have different stars had to say about your impressions? A: John Wayne loved it. I once showed him how to do his walk. He said he'd forgotten how to do it and needed a refresher course. I did it in front of him and he said to me, "I've been walking like Loretta Young for years." So he was great. Q: What about Johnny Carson? A: Carson you never could quite tell or not. He laughed a lot and reacted a lot on camera. But I had to be a little careful because he's a little sensitive. He seemed to like it but then after a while I think he got tired of me doing it and it became trickier. When I was doing "The Tonight Show," I started doing him less. Q: Would you like to do more TV? A: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, but it's very tough to get on TV these days. They just want younger people and they want current people who are in series. I couldn't get on "The Tonight Show" now. And I used to host it. Q: Is that strange for you? A: Yeah, it is kind of weird because I did it about 20 times and I used to host it a lot. But I'm not bitter about it or anything. I'm still working. More than I ever have. Q: And you enjoy the touring? A: Oh yeah, I enjoy that a lot. I love getting out and performing for an audience.