Waaaaaay back at the beginning off this (gasp) century, I decided to do two different low-budget documentaries on two very different friends and collaborators—artist P. Craig Russell and “Genuine Nerd” Toby Radloff.
Holy crossover!
People of a certain age might remember Toby from his appearances on vintage MTV News segments (most of which we produced locally here in northeast Ohio). MTV was huge in the late 80s, when those segments originally aired, so they were seen by a least a few million people. It was a pretty high profile gig seeing as how I was fresh out of college with a shiny new degree in Communications and a camcorder!
Comic-book folks might know Toby from his appearances as “Himself” in the late Harvey Pekar’s ground-breaking American Splendor underground comic, as well as its critically acclaimed film adaptation. The movie version featured Paul Giamatti as “Harvey” and 30 Rock’s Judah Friedlander as “Toby” (although Harvey and Toby also briefly appear as “Themselves”—it’s a brilliantly “meta” bit).
Toby is also a cult movie icon, having starred in Z-movies like Killer Nerd, Bride of Killer Nerd and Townies (the latter was an underground comedy that I made in the late 1990s, right before I became Craig’s original art agent/rep).
Tob even went on to appear on the Howard Stern Show and in the “Cleveland” episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. So he’s done a lot of cool stuff, especially for a self-proclaimed “Genuine Nerd!” You can read even more about him via his Wikipedia page.
But back to the dual documentaries. The Nerd Who Came to Dinner was going to be a “window segment” that would appear in both docs, which I thought was a fun (and yet again, meta) sort of idea. Unfortunately, just after we started shooting, my Non-Hodgkin lymphoma reared its ugly head for the second time, this time with a vengeance. Google “What is the survival rate for Richter's transformation?” and you’ll understand what sort of a pickle I was in!
So I would basically be spending the next year of my life getting bombed with chemo. Obviously it worked—seeing as how I’m pecking these words out in 2025—but at that time had to put a stop on anything that wasn’t directly related to actually surviving my second cancer shit show.
I did finish the underground Toby doc a few years later, as well as Night Music: The Art of P. Craig Russell a few years after that. The doc on Craig actually had screenings at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus and even at (gasp) the Cleveland Museum of Art!
So that’s the story behind this video snippet, which ended up appearing on the Toby DVD. Both flicks are low-budget, shot on video affairs, but there are some fun bits in them. We might run some excerpts from Night Music here as part of future From the Vault offerings.
As for the great Toby Radloff? He recently retired from his life-long day job at the VA, which was where he originally met Harvey Pekar. He’s enjoying both retirement and our new video venture, Toby Radloff’s Cult Corner. Check it out to hear Toby’s unique take on vintage cult movies!
But please watch The Nerd Who Came to Dinner first, natch.
