Old People As Actors

I was watching a commercial for the Minnesota Closed Captioning phone service, to which I wish I had a video of some kind to show you, because this commercial just cracks me the fuck up. At the end of the commercial there is like a 5 second shot of a girl calling her grandpa, he picks up the phone and the grandpa says "hello Jessie". Now the reason this is funny to me, other than the way the grandpa says hello(which is cruel of me because he's deaf), is because I imagine the stage direction he must have received from the director of the commercial.

The rabbit hole gets pretty deep on this one. I mean, is this really a deaf old guy? Or is it a slightly less older guy playing what he thinks a deaf old guy sounds like? Did they just bring in some old confused deaf guy to the studio and tell him to answer the prop phone? Was he confused when he answered and realized there wasn't anyone on the other line, or even that the phone was plugged in? Did he actually have to sit down and audition for that role? Which to be honest, when you're that old, is pretty much the role of a lifetime? Did someone in charge of casting actually say, upon seeing the old guys impression of a really old guy who sounds like a dolphin, "That's him! That's the guy I want answering the phone! By God, it's like hearing Shakespeare for the first time!"

These are just the things I think about from time to time...