Rain and a Jewish holiday weren't enough to stop Jon Solomon from making the hour-long drive from Lawrenceville, N.J., to see Chris Elliott -- of Cabin Boy fame -- last night.
"I broke my fast on the drive down here," Solomon said. "I wasn't going to miss this."
Solomon, along with more than 100 people from all over the Philadelphia area, crowded the upstairs of the Penn Bookstore to see Elliott. They crammed into the 80 allotted chairs and pulled extra seating off the shelves.
The crowd was gathered to hear Elliott, who also had a role in There's Something About Mary, discuss and sign his new book, The Shroud of the Thwacker.
Set in New York in 1882, the book chronicles the hunt for the world's first fictitious serial killer, Jack the Jolly Thwacker.
After briefly chronicling his career, followed by a short reading from the novel, Elliott opened the floor to questions from the audience.
It quickly became clear that Elliott's synopsis of his career was unnecessary, as the audience proved to be filled with loyal fans.
Many shared their love of Elliott's box-office failure turned cult classic Cabin Boy, including a few who had brought DVDs from home for him to sign.
Five-year-old Colin Krumpe revealed that Elliott's short-lived sitcom Get a Life had found a home among the next generation when he asked, "Where's Spewey?" referring to a pudding-spewing character from the canceled show.
Discussions of Elliott's roots in the entertainment business and his process in writing Thwacker were intermixed with such displays of support from the audience.
Elliott credited David Letterman -- for whom he started working as a runner, getting people coffee -- with giving him his first big break, saying that "early on I discovered I could make him laugh."
He also referred to his father, comedian Bob Elliott, as a source of his own humor, saying that he absorbed a lot of his comedic talent "through osmosis" from his dad.
When asked about his preparation for Thwacker, Elliott said that "I put my own kind of research into it. I made stuff up." In other situations, he would add anachronisms to the novel.
In a twist, a famous 20th-century New Yorker appears via video projection in the Museum of Natural History -- in 1882.
Elliott's style of writing is based on an inaccurate book report on Treasure Island he wrote in high school.
While he had not read the novel, he had seen the movie, and he filled in the gaps with his own inventions, including a possible character named "Puck."
While he got an F, he said the report actually got a lot of laughs from the class. Thwacker is proof, he stated, that "I'm still doing the same old crap I was doing in high school."
