COMEDY: BERT KREISCHER
Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, 1925 Blanshard St.
When: Thursday, Sept. 8, 7 p.m.
Tickets: $39.75-$97.35 through the Select Your Tickets box office (250-220-7777) or selectyourtickets.com
Bert Kreischer, as the world knows him today, first came into being in 1997, when a Rolling Stone magazine article written about his antics at Florida State University instantly crowned him frat-boy royalty — an icon of undergrads everywhere.
The article was primal-urge paydirt for Kreischer. Will Smith signed him to a development deal, while Oscar winner Oliver Stone optioned the rights to Kreischer’s life story, which would eventually become the inspiration behind National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, starring Ryan Reynolds.
Being branded “the top partier at the No. 1 Party School in the country” certainly had its benefits for Kreischer, and the native of St. Petersburg, Florida, lived up to that billing right out of the gate. His comedy career was built around the image of Kreischer in a perpetual state of arrested development — he always performs his stand-up while shirtless — with nary a detour into high-brow territory.
Fans ate it up. Which is kind of genius, when you think about it: Why bother portraying yourself as something you’re not, when a Google search for “Bert Kreischer naked and drunk” nets 150,000 results? “Here’s the weird thing about me,” Kreischer told the New York Post, during an interview to promote his 2014 memoir, Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child.
“I was never one to tell you stories about me. I was always the guy who others told stories about. I was like that up until I was 35 years old. And then I started telling stories about me onstage.”
Today, he’s close friends with Tom Segura, Bill Burr and Joe Rogan, A-list comedians with decades of hard-fought experience; they befriended Kreischer during the late 1990s when he was the doorman at the Boston Comedy Club. He now regularly collaborates with all four on a variety of projects.
The long-held perception is that Kreischer is the least-talented of the quartet of friends, but perhaps the most likable. Last year, that narrative was altered slightly, when Kreischer received Variety’s Creative Impact in Comedy Award. “This is the first time I’ve ever been [honoured] like this in my career, in 22 years,” Kreischer said, during his acceptance speech. “And it’s not lost on me in the slightest.”
Kreischer has broadened his appeal by dropping a small portion of his sophomoric antics. But while his comedy has matured slightly, Kreischer is careful to remind fans that he has not. It’s a delicate albeit winning balance. His current tour of North America brings the comedian to Victoria tonight for a performance at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, which should draw an estimated 5,000 people.
Bert Kreischer: The Undergraduate, the now-legendary Rolling Stone feature, was the spark to the flame. Without it, The Machine would not exist. That’s Kreischer’s alter-ego, and the title of a story that wound being his entry into mainstream comedy. Versions of Kreischer telling the hilarious story (which initially appeared on Kreischer’s Showtime special of the same name) are everywhere, and have netted tens of million of views on YouTube.
The story took place during Kreischer’s junior year in university, though “junior year” is somewhat ambiguous; Kreischer spent six years at Florida State. It was during a school-sponsored trip to Russia — believe it or not, Kreischer studied Russian in university — that he forged an unlikely bond with several Russian mobsters, to whom he mistakenly referred to himself as “The Machine.”
He was 22 when the events in the story occurred. He appeared on stage for the first time as a comic a scant four years later. “It was a very big moment, the moment that got me to where I am today,” Kreischer said of The Machine, during a 2021 interview with Variety.
Cameras rolled last year on a big-screen version of The Machine, starring Kreischer as himself. Mark Hamill of Star Wars fame plays his father. “I’ve never done a movie like this,” Hamill told Variety, “and I’ve never met anyone quite like Bert.”
mdevlin@timescolonist.com
