Comedian-songwriter Henry Phillips stars as sad-sack self
You might have caught Henry Phillips performing his quirky comic songs on Comedy Central or on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show — or in various YouTube clips.
Or you might have seen “Punching the Clown,” his 2009 movie in which he plays himself that won the Audience Award at Slamdance.
In “Punching Henry,” he once again plays a sad-sack version of himself in a low-energy, gently amusing comedy in which he is up for a TV show, but a series of personal and professional crises move the finish line further away.
J.K. Simmons is the producer pitching the show — he’s excellent, as usual, and the role is about 15 times bigger than his one in “La La Land”; Phillips’ friend and fan Sarah Silverman is a radio talk-show host whose interview of Phillips forms the spine of the film.
At a gig that night, which serves as an audition for Jay, he is booed off the stage (one suspects the real Henry Phillips can handle a basic heckler better than his fictional counterpart).
Jay thinks it’s great, and so does Now, which hires a couple of young Internet geeks to record portions of his act and try to make it a viral hit to pump up interest in the show.
[...] his YouTube video draws only 11,000 hits — will that doom his TV show?