When comedy writer Justin Halpern started the Twitter phenomenon called "Sh*t My Dad Says," he explained his dad-cataloguing like so: "I'm 29. I live with my 74-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down sh*t that he says." Tomorrow, a book of his dad's bon mots will hit stores, and later this month, CBS may announce the series pickup of a comedy pilot based on the property, starring William Shatner as the irascible father.
There's just one thing. I kind of don't believe his dad is actually saying this stuff anymore?
I mean, once upon a time, perhaps Halpern's father Sam was spouting expletive-laden pearls of wisdom that easily met Twitter's 140-character limit with little to no modification. I just have a hunch that since that beginning, Justin's been responsible for the bulk of those too-perfect Tweets, and profiles like these don't help matters any.
From Paste:
Although Halpern reads his dad the stories for the book before he sends them to his editor, Sam will never give an interview and doesn't seem to care about the attention. "He's so curmudgeonly that he's impenetrable almost," Justin says. "He's the type of guy, if people were harassing him, he'd just come outside with his shotgun." He pauses. "Which is not loaded, but you never know."
From the LAT:
Sam did have one stipulation after hearing about the experiment. "Keep the money from whatever you get. I have my own money," Justin recalled his dad saying. "I just don't want to do any interviews."
He reinforced that last week when The Times requested Justin pitch the interview idea again to his father, who is apparently a longtime reader of the newspaper. "'The L.A. Times wants to interv --' 'No,' " Justin recapped in an e-mail.
"He hates attention," Justin said about his dad.
Which is why his son would start a cottage industry around him! Makes sense.
No. No, actually, it doesn't make sense. I mean I hate to be the guy who craps on someone else's achievement, and there are certainly tons of people who love Halpern's Twitter, but this all smells more than a little Catfish-y to me. In all the years I've been a journalist, the only time I've ever seen people unilaterally refuse an interview is when something strange is going on.
Certainly, if Justin were writing the bulk of his father's tweets, there'd be ample reason to keep Sam under wraps: What if the dad's voice doesn't match his tweets, or a journalist brings something up that he doesn't remember writing? On the other hand, I can't think of a good reason for Sam to give absolutely no interviews. If he really does value his privacy to such an obsessive degree, then why would his son build a Twitter account devoted to his most private musings? (According to Justin, he didn't even tell his father about the Twitter until it had already become famous. If that's supposed to square with the low profile his father supposedly fights to maintain, then it's kind of a dick move on the son's part, no?).
Admittedly, it's just a theory. I don't have any proof that Justin is behind his dad's tweets, other than the fact that he's a former Maxim and Holy Taco writer whose writing is suspiciously similar in certain ways (then again, don't we all sound like our dads to a degree?). Still, we live in a skeptical era of Photoshoppery, hoaxes, and weird excuses. Justin's dad may talk a lot of sh*t. I'd just be more inclined to buy it if once in a while, he said that sh*t to a reporter.