Birthdate: February 17, 1969
Birthplace: Studio City, CA
Residence: New York, NY, and Burbank, CA
Sex: M
Height: 5'-8"
Weight: 155 lb.
"He's big! He's purple! He's your best friend! He's...NOT BARNEY!"
After building a reputation as the class clown at Gasi High School, Damson discovered the joys of amateur cinema. With a Betamax video camera and a troupe of amateur actors at his disposal, Damson began writing, directing, and producing parodies of television commercials. He quickly displayed his knack for skewering terrible real-life commercials which did not deserve life beyond the drawing board. As he succinctly put it, "let those advertisers make commercials. If they suck, I'll improve upon (them)!" It provided a more viable option to pulling them off the air - and a more fun one, at that.
Before long, Damson's parodies earned him recurring appearances on "The Tonight Show" and "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes," where his productions garnered a national audience for the first time and led to landing on the cover of People magazine.
A guest shot on "Saturday Night Live" soon followed, and his brilliant performance both in front of and behind the camera virtually guaranteed him a place on the cast for the 1986-87 season, as well as the writing staff. Along with Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, and several lesser lights, Damson made his dramatic entrance that fall and quickly carved out his own niche.
Damson shocked many and offended quite a few in a sketch lambasting Kate "God Bless America" Smith, whose corpulent body remained in a vault over six months after her death. People considered it not merely repugnant but unpatriotic. Damson gave a half-assed apology on camera while pointing out to producer Lorne Michaels that Kate Smith does not equal the Statue of Liberty: "It's time they understand that they're only worshipping some fat opera singer, but worse...a decomposed one."
Damson provides the backbone of humor when following Loki on his crusades for justice. When televangelist Oral Roberts attempted blackmailing his followers for loot to prevent his imminent death at God's hand, the breaking story and all its comic potential bumped a Damson sketch spoofing "60 Minutes" in the form of an investigative report on people addicted to honey roasted peanuts. Infuriated, he wrote a vicious, mean-spirited, but still hilarious replacement sketch which featured Roberts being burned alive, received all sorts of hate mail from Roberts' groupies, and responded by preparing a real-life assault on the talking head, with camcorder in hand. Loki and Damson scaled the space needle at Oral Roberts University and exposed Roberts as a manipulative fraud before a national television audience but wound up in jail as a result. Fumes Damson: "We should've shot him when we had the chance!"
Not surprisingly, corporations soon came calling for Damson's services in legitimate, quality commercials as a product spokesman. After Lorne Greene died in 1987, the Alpo pet food company signed up Damson as his successor, providing new blood for their dog food advertising campaign. Damson endorsed Alpo wholeheartedly for two years, until the company introduced its cat food line - and hired Garfield as its pitchman. Damson quit in protest. In the aftermath, he quickly inked a deal with Quaker Oats and its Instant Oatmeal line, specifically as a youthful foil against old stogie Wilford Brimley. Many of Quaker's ad campaigns depict the two as mortal enemies. Damson has one distinct advantage: HE has his own oatmeal flavor (Damson Plum) named after him.
Among Damson's most famous - and controversial -sketches: "George Michael's Sex Machine," spoofing both the ex-Wham lead singer, his curvy butt, and the schlock syndicated sportscaster of the same name; "Dot-Busters," a satire of Ghostbusters which offended Hindus around the world; "Bullets on Broadway," a recurring anti-Woody Allen bit about a hit man who goes after bad New York stage performers and stages creative death scenes before a paying audience.
In stark contrast to his brilliant parody and satire, Damson's other comedic efforts, such as stand-up performances and access cable TV specials, yielded disappointing results, so his future after SNL remains tenuous - a fact which perhaps spawned his relunctance over leaving the rapidly dying show. The 1995-96 season marks his record tenth with the program, and while he has increasingly distanced himself even from the writing team, he must now come up with another suitable vehicle for his vast talents.