Tim Batt explains what makes Neil Hamburger a uniquely incredible comedy experience, ahead of Hamburger’s sole NZ show.
America’s Funnyman Neil Hamburger performs at Auckland’s Whammy Bar on Weds July 31 – tickets available here.
Neil Hamburger is a disgusting creature. Sweaty, constantly hacking phlegm and donned in an off-the-rack department store tuxedo that you can tell, just by looking, smells of dried vomit and the year 1976.
He appears on stage clutching too many drinks. A drunk who got cut off and made an escape with everyone else’s martinis. His glasses are oversized, framing a bug-eyed face perched below a comb-over that is stomach-churning in its confidence. The combination of his aesthetic and a propensity for anti-climactic blue humour is not for the faint-hearted comedy-goer.
I absolutely love him.
I’ve seen Neil Hamburger perform live twice. It was at the same Australian comedy festival a few years ago, days apart. The first time, I was dead sober and laughed my ass off. The second time I brought a friend, and he brought a lot of weed and I laughed my ass off again.
As a presence, Hamburger is the dream of an old vaudevillian Las Vegas comic, as imagined by a solvent-addicted rough sleeper. The portrait is seamless—there is absolute commitment to the performance with no winks, nods or character breaks. For all intents and purposes, you are simply watching a degenerate command a stage with authority for the show’s duration.
Loathe as I am to explore the man behind the creation instead of just celebrating the brilliant performer that is Neil Hamburger—the act can only really be enjoyed with a bit of context. Hamburger is the creation of Gregg Turkington, a mild-mannered collaborator of so-called anti-comedy duo Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. Together with Heidecker, he (Turkington, not Hamburger) has hosted the long-running On Cinema At The Cinema—a parody film review show on Adult Swim in the style of Siskel & Ebert. Through its off-handed jokes during real(ish) film reviews, the pair built a background lore and mythology so absurd and intricate that it spawned a video series unlike anything I’ve seen before or since.
The Tim Heidecker Murder Trial was a 2017 comedy event; An ultra-realistic looking, multi-day filmed mock trial—itself the eventual resolution of a storyline on involving Heidecker’s On Cinema version of himself selling faulty vapes at a music festival. It was brilliant. I mention this event to give you the depth and commitment of the twisted and imaginative minds you’re dealing with here.
In the world of Turkington’s creations, the ideas are tragic and hyper-real. It’s satire, I guess. But satire without any of the smug, obvious self-awareness that let the audience in early, like what you’d see from Stephen Colbert’s character from The Colbert Report. Instead, it’s a shit-covered mirror reflection of society’s least glamorous figures.
The Neil Hamburger character is so well-fleshed out that it sustained a beautiful and surprisingly moving 2015 feature film, Entertainment (featuring John C. Reilly and Michael Cera). The authenticity of these projects from Turkington is unsettling. It’s very dark humour.
Hamburger’s audience are fans of what I cautiously describe as Internet Humour (the label anti-comedy is often applied but I don’t agree with it). Shows that trade on Internet Humour are usually high-context, super stylised and proudly lo-fi. They’re also often stupid, detailed and broadly offensive to those who hold conservative social mores (but importantly without targeting minorities). The kings are Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, with Eric Andre being another notable star.
There will be others in the audience who enjoy the show for puerile jokes on a surface value. Some will enjoy the act as performance art. Some will be stratospherically high. I may be among that set. What Hamburger does is undeniably comedy but it is very specific.
The part of his comedy that speaks to me is the unflinching commitment. His self-styled role as America’s Funny Man is combative and I’ve long held that the funniest human emotion is anger.
Hamburger is angry on stage and he seems to be inviting you to get angry at him. There’s a long history of Hamburger’s performances ending in his near lynching by audiences who are not in on the joke. He’s opened for huge rock bands in the past and their audiences pelt him with whatever can be fashioned into a projectile.
There’s fertile ground for an assessment of why Turkington has been putting himself through this for 15 years performing as Hamburger but I’ll leave that to some other armchair psychologist.
All I can advise is that you don’t miss this utterly unique performer.
