How about Robert Stack playing himself hosting a fake episode of Unsolved Mysteries in BASEketball?
I mean, I think it’s great, but might squeak in as an edge-case of “worse version of his presenter persona”…
I saw him do a short film about his making of a noir movie with a water fowl as a key character. It was hilarious, and that version of himself is not one young filmmakers should look to for inspiration.
I’m from Philly and I’ll need you to narrow this down. We have an incident every couple of days.
I laughed!
If we broaden “playing himself” to include “portraying himself in a book,” Chris Elliott counts for his books Daddy’s Boy: A Son’s Shocking Account of Life with a Famous Father and The Guy Under the Sheets: The Unauthorized Autobiography.
And in somwhat the same vein, there’s Norm Macdonald’s Based on a True Story: A Memoir.
He was booed during a comedy show in Philly years ago, and went on a legendary(?) 12-minute rant.
Me too. I miss that town.
What @planetcory posted. IIRC, there was a comedy tour in town that got delayed. The crowd got drunker and drunker and very belligerent. The other comics wouldn’t go out, but Bill Burr tore up his prepared material and went out and insulted the crowd for 12 minutes.
And just for the sake of some random Chris Elliot trivia: the actor who plays Natalie ‘Sugar’ Berzatto on The Bear is his daughter, Abby Elliot.
Albert Brooks plays himself in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, and writes his character as desperate for a Presidential Medal of something, and as unable to read an audience. It’s an underrated movie, I think.
That wasn’t Burr playing a darker version of himself. That was Burr’s actual darker side bubbling to the surface. The man doesn’t take any shit on stage.
I didn’t say it was. Burr was accused of being a racist upthread, and I originally brought up the incident as an example of him denouncing racists. It’s a sidetrack to the thread’s theme.
Also, he appeared on Brooklyn Nine Nine as himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJRm_dLKJNk
Conan O’Brien himself did (and wrote?) this on The Simpsons, in Bart Gets Famous, in which he, as a talk show host, was only interested in hearing Bart’s meme line “I didn’t do it”, but was also quick to dismiss him as unoriginal for saying the line.
Not exactly. It was the Opie and Anthony Traveling Virus Tour. Great shows, great line ups. Probably the best comics of the time. They drew a rowdy crowd at each show but this one was worse. It was at what was then called the Tweeter Center in Camden. It’s literally under the bridge to Philly so it was a Philly crowd. Lots of tailgating before the show so the crowd was blitzed. Well respected Philly comic Dom Irrera went up and the crowd didn’t even give him a chance. He wasn’t a regular on the radio show and was probably not a good fit in the best of circumstances. Burr was scheduled to go on next and after he saw what the crowd did he threw out his material and started ranting. There weren’t any comics that refused to go on but a few cut their time short.
It took a little while for Burr to get back to normal because after that people wanted him to come in and trash their city and he had an act to do.