Famous and Gravy: Dead celebrity biographies

After five years of grading obituaries from The New York Times, Famous & Gravy finally has a conversation with with someone who actually writes obituaries from The New York Times. Sam Roberts is on the show to share his experiences as a NYT obit writer and to talk about his new book Are They Dead Yet?
Roberts has written roughly 1,500 obituaries over his career. He and Michael dig into what actually goes into that first sentence of an obituary: accuracy, notability, economy of language, and the pressure of a deadline that can show up with almost no warning. Roberts tells the story of writing an obituary for Jesus of Nazareth, a piece he expected to get torn apart and got almost no pushback on, and explains why Alfred Nobel spent the rest of his life trying to outrun the one obituary that got published about him too early. Along the way, Michael runs Famous & Gravy's own grading criteria past a professional to see if the show's been fair.
Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast that asks what a celebrity's life story shows us about ourselves. This week, we ask the person who writes the first draft of it.
LINKS:
Are They Dead Yet? The Art of the Obit by Sam Roberts
Sam Roberts's imagined obituary for Jesus of Nazareth
Life Lessons from Dead Celebrities (Substack)
Dead or Alive quiz game
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Val Kilmer walked off his first professional set at age 13. It was a hamburger commercial, he thought the burgers looked terrible, and he refused to sell them. He never got paid, and it turned out to be a preview of the rest of his career.
Kilmer once said he heard he'd gotten cast in Batman moments after walking out of a bat cave in Africa. He also claimed he rode a horse home faster than should have been physically possible the day his father died. Those stories come from a devout Christian Science faith that later shaped how he handled his own throat cancer diagnosis, including an initial refusal of treatment his children eventually talked him out of. The disease took his speaking voice, and by the time the 2021 documentary Val came out, his son Jack was narrating some of his father's own words. The film traced a career that ran from Jim Morrison and Iceman in Top Gun to Doc Holliday in Tombstone, alongside a reputation on set that made him one of the more polarizing actors of his generation.
Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast that asks, "What does this celebrity's life story show us about ourselves?"
If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode 50 "Golden Rose" (Betty White) and Episode 51 "Goofball Stud" (Bill Paxton).
LINKS:
Val Kilmer NYT Obituary
I'm Your Huckleberry, Val Kilmer's memoir
Collider article on why Val Kilmer quit Batman
Val Kilmer talks with Larry King, previews Top Gun 2
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Website: famousandgravy.com
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Matthew Perry died in 2023 at fifty-four, and despite his very public battle with addiction, the first line of his obituary made no mention of his disease. Michael Osborne and Alice Orr argue that Matthew Perry is a case study in fame and addiction, working through his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, where he admits he has no memory of filming three entire seasons of Friends. They get into his broken engagement to Julia Roberts, the sponsor turned business partner, and the question of what it takes to cultivate a quality of self-love when the disease of addiction is always working against you.
Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast that asks, "What can a celebrity life story show us about ourselves?"
If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like:
Episode 119, Hungry Ghost (Anthony Bourdain)
Episode 108, Gonzo Troubadour (Hunter S. Thompson)
LINKS
Alice Florence Orr, Managing Editor of Podcast Review
NYT obituary, Matthew Perry
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry's memoir
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip trailer, the canceled Aaron Sorkin pilot
Matthew Perry puts Peter Hitchens to shame about addiction
Best moments from the Friends 2021 reunion
Interview with Tom Power about his memoir
Your Favorite Podcast Host is (Probably) in Recovery, Osborne article published in Podcast Review
Famous & Gravy quiz: hello@famousandgravy.com
Website: famousandgravy.com
Dead or Alive quiz game
Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads
Famous & Gravy official website
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Marco Polo spent 24 years crossing the Mongol Empire and came home with stories so wild that his own neighbors called him a liar. In this episode, Michael sits down with Denis Belliveau, who in the 1990s spent two years retracing Marco Polo's actual route: from Venice through Afghanistan during the warlord period, into a newly opened Iran, and across the Silk Road into China, without ever boarding a plane. Denis made a documentary from the experience, which was nominated for Emmys. He now shares his story with students to inspire them about travel, geography, and culture. His website is In the Footsteps of History:
https://inthefootsteps.org/
This is one of our occasional off-format conversations, built around a single interview rather than the show's normal segments. Even though it's been 700 years, we still want to know what can a life story, shows us about ourselves?
Denis talks about getting held at gunpoint near the ancient site of Balkh, being among the first American civilians allowed into Iran since 1979, and the strange coincidences that kept opening doors along the way. He also gets into who Marco Polo actually was: a natural storyteller who charmed Kublai Khan as a teenager, and a man whose curiosity outran the prejudices of his own century.
Thanks to Rachel Huss for telling us about Denis. Read her article here!

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David Lynch died in 2025 at seventy-eight, and his own obituary somehow never mentioned Twin Peaks or Mulholland Drive. Michael Osborne and longtime Famous & Gravy editor Jacob Weiss spend this episode on the gap between David Lynch the public weirdo, the mind behind Blue Velvet and Eraserhead, and David Lynch the strikingly normal man underneath: a lifelong devotee of transcendental meditation who loved coffee, cigarettes, and burgers more than he loved being understood. The strangest thread they pull on: a filmmaker whose work returned again and again to smoke and fire died as the Los Angeles wildfires burned around him, at the same age David Lynch always seemed to defy.
Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast that asks, "Would you want that life?"
If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like:
Episode 82, Rebel Rebel (David Bowie)
Episode 75 Love and OJ Jokes (Norm MacDonald)
LINKS
NYT obituary, David Lynch
"David Lynch Keeps His Head," David Foster Wallace's 1996 profile referenced in this episode
KCRW's David Lynch daily weather forecast archive
Naomi Watts, Laura Dern & Patricia Arquette Tell David Lynch Stories
Documentary on the midnight movie circuit and Eraserhead's cult run
Famous & Gravy quiz: hello@famousandgravy.com
Website: famousandgravy.com
Dead or Alive quiz game
Famous & Gravy on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads
Famous & Gravy official website
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.