You might recognize Jim O’Heir from his role as Jerry/Larry/Gary on the sitcom Parks and Recreation, but chances are you didn’t remember his real name. No worries, neither could his fictional colleagues. In Ned Crowley’s debut black comedy feature, Middle Man, O’Heir’s character is equally unremarkable. Though he has lifelong aspirations of making a name for himself on the Vegas comedy circuit, he is painfully unfunny. Maybe that’s why he so easily falls in with a violent drifter and soon finds himself in the midst of a killing spree that informs a new, much more successful stage presence.
Lenny Freeman (O’Heir) is an aspiring comedian who was born several decades too late. For him, the height of comedy is Abbot and Costello and George Burns. He has every classic routine memorized and he longs to revive that sort of antiquated comedy in Vegas. After the death of his mother, Lenny quits his dead-end accounting job and hits the road in a vintage station wagon to pursue his dreams. The trouble is, even if people were still into the wholesome wordplay he reveres, he doesn’t have what it takes to write his own material. He’s so blinded by his desires and the grief of losing his mother (who was clearly the only person in the world who loved him) that he misses the fact that everyone he meets finds him tedious…
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