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Playing David Letterman in a muckraking biopic about the epic early '90s battle over The Tonight Show is kind of a risky career move for a generally unknown actor. The character is a real guy who's (a) alive, so everyone knows what he's like and therefore how accurate your performance is, and (b) kind of a big deal in show business, and someone who might hold a grudge against you for playing him in a story he probably doesn't want told, so much that he could make things difficult for you later. (This is the only way we can account for the fact that there still has yet to be a definitive biopic on Stephen Baldwin.) Plus, if you're going to play Letterman in an HBO movie, although it's not quite as ghetto as doing a movie for regular TV, the part of the budget where the gap between feature money and TV-movie money is most noticeable is the line item for make-up and wigs. So, not only are you gambling your future on a single part, you're also doing it in a hairpiece from the bowels of the Warner Bros. wardrobe department that hasn't been cleaned since the Nixon administration.

But maybe if you find yourself in this position and you're John Michael Higgins, you decide that all the risks are worth it, and that even if you do end up doing your career some damage in the short term, you'll be able to undo it over time with the sheer force of your own innate awesomeness.

Which is what happened. To John Michael Higgins. In case you were wondering. Because that whole first bit there, though it was told in the second person singular, was about him, and not you. Maybe it will be true of you one day, if HBO ever makes another movie out of The Late Shift and you bear a reasonable resemblance to David Letterman. It could happen. Anyway, Higgins did a good job in the role, unlike that poor bastard Daniel Roebuck, who played Jay Leno under about sixty pounds of chin putty (and, not coincidentally, was last seen playing a beleaguered dad in Sleepover). Higgins portrayed Letterman as a character -- you know, through acting -- instead of just doing an extended impression. Higgins looked a lot like Letterman, too, and nailed his subtle mannerisms. It helps that the audience -- the members of it one cares about, anyway -- are on Letterman's side in this whole saga to begin with, so Higgins ends up as the story's sympathetic hero. Only dumb people prefer Leno over Letterman (people who regard him as a bitchin' everyman supported by various African-American bandleaders), and dumb people don't even know how to get HBO, do they? That's what we've heard. From HBO.

Anyway, if it hurt Higgins's career to piss off Letterman -- beyond the fact that he probably will never get booked on The Late Show -- you'd never know it. Now, Higgins is doing really well for himself. He's guest-starred on some of our most beloved sitcoms -- like Seinfeld (as Elaine's head-shaving date whose discovery, when he finally lets his hair grow in again, that he's actually started balding since he's been shaving turns him into a lazy, despondent, soiled-sweatshirt-wearing George Costanz-alike) and Arrested Development (as lawyer Wayne Jarvis, the ethical yet flexible would-be replacement for Henry Winkler's incompetent Barry Zuckerkorn). Higgins is so good, he even classed up Ally McBeal in its twilight years, when America was quietly and discreetly looking away as the show figuratively played with its stewed prunes and figuratively defecated in its figurative hospital gown. To quote everyone on that one (alas, only one) episode of AD Higgins appeared on: "What a professional."

Higgins has also, to the betterment of all comedy everywhere, joined the Christopher Guest repertory company. In last year's A Mighty Wind, Higgins is Terry Bohner, the absurdly tanned frontman of The New Main Street Singers, who's bounced back, as an adult, from the "musical" abuse of his childhood. Now, he's an earnest, pastel-clad dork married to a woman (Jane Lynch) hilariously matter-of-fact about her former porn career. The movie's cast is so big that Higgins, at the head of his "neuftet," doesn't get much to do except look discomfited at his wife's cheerful confessions, and then nerdily commit to lyrics exhorting us to "do what the Good Book, do what the Good Book, do what the Good Book tells you to!" (Also, his singing voice? Lovely. Between his angelic tenor and his talent for WASPy smarm, he'd make a great Billy Flynn on Broadway.)

But the greatest role of Higgins's career so far is Scott Donlan in Best in Show. The dog show satire was Higgins's first Guest joint, and given the way he steals his every scene, it's not surprising that he got invited back for the next one. Scott and his parter, Stefan Vanderhoof (Michael McKean), are parents to an obscenely pampered purse dog (tm Sars), and while we don't get the whole backstory of Stefan and Scott's relationship, it's nicely conveyed in a couple of key moments. Like when they're packing for their trip, and Scott is trying to figure out how many kimonos he needs to bring (as you do), and Stefan asks, very gently and patiently, "We're going to be in Philadelphia for forty-eight hours. How many tea services can you do?" (Turns out the answer is about six.) And then, when they arrive at the hotel, the clerk at the desk confirms, "We have you down for a queen," and Scott instantly starts with the mugging, faux-indignantly replying, "What are you suggesting, my dear man?" When the moment comes, shortly thereafter, for the topic of payment to be discussed, Scott dismissively turns his back and, with a wave of his hand in Stefan's direction, sniffs, "Talk to Daddy." (It's a line that still gets a fair amount of play in our household.) Scott is a flaming queen, true. As such, he's got some over-the-top queenisms -- and they're not all fresh, either, as when he asks an uncomfortable butcher to let Scott hold a particular "meat stick" on offer -- but Higgins plays Scott much as he had played Letterman so many years before: as a character, not a caricature. Scott never shuts up and seems to have a good sense of humour about himself, but he has a specific kind of dignity, too; to see him lead his dog in the show is to see some serious, world-class prancing.

Higgins's next role is as something called "Andre Divine" in La La Wood, the big-screen adaptation of Martin Short's Primetime Glick, soon to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It must have been easy, on that set, for every take to be as overplayed as humanly possible, and then cranked up even 10% more. That's what Martin Short is all about. So we hope Higgins can shake that off by returning to the recording studio for Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, in which he plays Mentok the Mindtaker opposite such all-stars of deadpan comedy as Gary Cole and Stephen Colbert. That is where our boy belongs: perfectly underplaying his role as a green-skinned psychic who also happens to be a judge in a cartoon courtroom. Because, you know, you wouldn't want a role like that to be played too "big."