Actor Steve Landesberg passed away on Dec 17th at age 65. Why do I post that information here on the official Sam & Max blog? Because Mr. Landesberg was my original casting choice to play Sam in LucasArts adventure game "Sam & Max Hit the Road". While casting the characters in the game, Steve Landesberg occurred to me because of his ultra dry delivery and his easy way of firing off chains of obscure facts. LucasArts put in the call but we never made it past his agent. And that was that.
I subsequently sifted through a flood of tapes from various actors and landed upon the great Bill Farmer who took the character of Sam in a direction that I loved, so I certainly have no complaints about where we ended up.
Steve Landesberg left a lot of fine work behind. Here's a short clip of his character, Dietrich from the Barney Miller show.
