The words, “person, woman, man, camera, TV,” have haunted Americans for a week, and now, thanks to a man named Jason Kravits, they will live on forever in song.
For those who somehow missed this news cycle, “person, woman, man, camera, TV” are the five words that President Donald Trump repeated in an interview with Fox News while bragging that he passed a cognitive test that wasn’t designed to be particularly challenging.
Trump’s blabbering of random words inspired many jokes and memes on Twitter, but they reminded Kravits of the “Cell Block Tango” song from Chicago, so he spliced together clips from Trump’s interview and the 2001 movie and created a hilarious “Brain-cell Block Tango” remix.
[embedded content]
“It’s not a hard connection to put the two together, once you hear it. I’m sure I wasn’t the first person to think of it,” Kravits, a middle-aged actor currently sheltering-in-place in New York, said in an email.
He explained that he was struck with inspiration at around midnight on Friday, so instead of going to sleep he spent three hours making the parody music video.
“When I woke up it had already started to take off,” Kravits said. “Singer Frenchie Davis reposted it on Facebook and that’s when people really started to see it.”
“[Trump] doesn’t need my help to look dumb, I think he’s got that covered.”
“I decided early on I wanted to do things that made people smile and laugh to help us all get through [isolation,]” Kravits explained. So he taught himself video editing in quarantine. Kravits has dabbled in creating videos over the past few months and made a Styx parody of the celebrity “Imagine” video from March, along with a “Sing-A-Lone” series, which features videos of his friends singing a song of his choosing.
If you’re not familiar with Kravits’ online comedy, however, you’ll likely recognize him from his roles on TV shows such as The Practice, Gilmore Girls, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Big Bang Theory, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and even the finale of Friends.
Kravits said that politics have been at the forefront of his mind ever since he was a kid growing up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., “where politics was part of the fabric of life.” He even played both Michael Bloomberg and Alan Dershowitz in a recent episode of Showtime’s Our Cartoon President.
Stunned by how the Brain-Cell-Block Tango vid erupted. Thx to all who sent kind words + shared. Also, appreciate the (underserved) comparisons to brilliant @RandyRainbow and @sarahcpr, both of whom I adore. Now pls donate to artists @TheActorsFund and VOTE!
— Jason Kravits (@jasonkravits) July 27, 2020
As for the online response to his “Brain-cell Block Tango” song, Kravits says it’s been almost entirely positive. But he does have a message for the few people who said the video makes the president look “dumb.”
“Look, he doesn’t need MY help to look dumb, I think he’s got that covered,” Kravits said of Trump. “Really, he’s a buffoon. A dangerous, narcissistic, sad, mentally-unwell buffoon.”
“It frustrates me that, among other things, his actions (or inactions) on COVID have not only cost thousands of Americans their lives and loved ones, they are making the pain of this situation last so much longer than it could have, or should have,” Kravits continued. “Many of my friends in the arts are looking at the possibility of a year or more of not being employed.”
If you’re interested in seeing more of Kravits’ comedy, he has an improvised cabaret act called “Off The Top” that was touring around the world until the coronavirus hit.