2020 Directed by Ben Berman
Filmed in Los Angeles in pre-COVID times and produced by Abso Lutely Productions, An Evening With Tim Heidecker features Tim’s unique, no-holds-barred takes on modern inconveniences, PC culture, politics and marriage. You can call it a send-up, a parody, a character, a performance piece, or whatever you’d like, but at the end of the day, it’s jokes! Please clap.
Tim Heidecker: An Evening with Tim Heidecker
USANR
USA
If you haven't been to a hundred open mics with non-fictional versions of this guy it's stolen valor to enjoy this.
I am dating myself here but I remember Heidecker doing this character, and these jokes, in small clubs and open mics, probably a decade ago. (Not that I was there. I just saw the performances on YouTube.) This style of comedy works better in those contexts, where the audience isn’t in on the joke, and there’s a sense of real hostility.
That said: I find this stuff very funny. Like Andy Kaufman, or more recent examples like Dan Klein’s This Is Comedy special or Kyle Mooney’s Bruce Chandling character, it takes the piss out of comedy itself, and the hacky forms it often takes. I don’t really like the term “anti-comedy,” because if something makes you laugh, it can’t really…
An hour of purposely “bad” stand-up may not sound like your idea of a good time, but the reason this works is because Heidecker actually creates a real character.
Ends with Heidecker singing a few of his many piss-themed songs, which I had never delved into because of my innate squeamishness about matters of piss-drinking. Turns out they’re pretty catchy!
If you at all resemble a snowflake ummm yeah... you might want to avoid this one. This guy will say ANYTHING! You’ve been warned!!!
I'm still impressed by how well Tim Heidecker taps into arrogance, privilege, entitlement, etc. and builds various personas out of it that are all distinct but feel entirely lived in and connected to each other. The Tim in On Cinema and Mister America isn't the same person as the cruel, apathetic hipster in The Comedy, the past his prime suburban dad jackass in Us, the basic suburban dad in Eastbound and Down, or even the self-centered hack in this special. But they're all manifestations of the same awful traits that have shaped so many guys like him, and in each character we can see someone adjacent to a person we know (or maybe something that reminds us of ourselves).
Part…
One of the funniest things I have ever seen that I can not in good conscience recommend to a single person I know.
