Potato computer, tee hee...

Via Fuzzball Favorite website Fametracker, we bring you:

Powers Boothe vs. Treat Williams
Battle of the Swaggering Stars With Ridiculous Names

You'd think all you need to be a star is a pretty mug and a fancy handle. You don't want to be stuck with the Mary-Louise Parker syndrome (or is that Penelope Ann Miller?) -- i.e, lots of talent, comely enough, but with a name that's three dull monikers strung into one forgettable tag.

No, you want a name like Powers Boothe.

A name that sounds like it was spat out by a computer designed to concoct movie-star names, except one that was programmed in 1948. (We know there weren't really computers in 1948, but this was a primitive one. Wooden, with punchcards and big spools of tape, and it runs on potatoes.)

Powers Boothe is a great name for a swaggering, mustachioed sumbitch, which is just what the actor Powers Boothe is -- or, at least, what he plays a lot of the time. Currently, you can catch him as the slimy, even-more-evil-than-Al-Swearengen brothel owner Cy Tolliver on Deadwood, or the cartoonish, even-more-evil-than-Cy-Tolliver Senator Rourk in Sin City.

You may also confuse him, as we have done many times, with Treat Williams.

It's not that they're very similar. Williams is more aging bohunk than swaggering menace. He currently plays the not-at-all-evil dad, Dr. Andy Brown, on Everwood and can be seen in theaters in Miss Congeniality 2: Congenial Defects.

It's just that his name is...you know, Treat. Treat Williams. Which sounds like it was spat out by that same damned potato-gobbling wooden computer.

If either Treat Williams or Powers Boothe would just get a little more famous, we could sort this whole mess out right quick. But as it stands, they're both just famous enough to linger at the periphery of our celebrity-addled brains, but not famous enough to burrow in and make themselves a permanent home. And so we live in a buzz of half-remembered goofy names: Powers Treat? Treat Boothe? Boothe Williams?

And don't even get us started on Canadian actor Boothe Savage. Or his actor son, Tyrone Savage. Or Hollywood legend Tyrone Power, who we're sure was quite the leading man in his day, though we wouldn't know because we can't tell him apart from Boothe Savage or Powers Boothe or Treat Williams. Or Fred Ward, for that matter, who starred as Remo Williams and looks quite a bit like Treat Williams.

And, oddly, none of the aforementioned actors are swaggering, mustachioed bohunk Stacy Keach, whose leering mug is the one we picture first when we think of any of the assorted Treats, Tyrones, Powers, Boothes, and Remos.

You know Stacy Keach -- he's famous for playing Mike Hammer. Not to be confused with Armand Assante, who also played Mike Hammer. Not to be confused with Armand Hammer, the industrialist. Or Arm & Hammer, the baking soda.

Seriously, potato-computer, you're not doing anyone any good.

Advantage: Powers Boothe. Because we like our wood dead, rather than ever.

--MFF

Comments

[Bombadil]

What about those two cats David Keith and Keith David. That must suck.

[SuzanH]

See, you have to go with Powers Booth because of that epic piece of cinematography, Jim Jones: The Guyana Tragedy.

Sincerely the best movie ever about crazy charismatic preachers. A double bill of that and Mark Harmon as Ted Bundy and you have yourself an evening!