Entertainment (2015) on Netflix
A broken middle-aged comedian tours clubs across the Mojave Desert, working toward Los Angeles and a meeting with his estranged daughter. Eddie the Opener shares the bill.
- Netflix2.7/5
- IMDb5.7/103,470 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Comedian is a broken, middle-aged stand-up touring the Mojave Desert on his way to Los Angeles, where he hopes to meet his estranged daughter. He performs in character at a prison after a clown act by Eddie the Opener, and the convicts enjoy his sexist, racist, and homophobic jokes. At his hotel he records a voicemail for his daughter, with a soap opera on the television. The next night a bar audience receives him poorly, and he harangues it. After the show his cousin John criticizes the routine's distastefulness, and The Comedian blames the heckler. From a later hotel he records another voicemail. He tours an oil field, then plays a bar where Eddie goes over well and he does not. With no rooms free, he stays at the manager's cousin's house.
Cast
- Mike Hickeyas The Heckler
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Entertainment (2015)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The aircraft boneyard the comedian visits is a real military facility in Mojave, California, where no actual tours take place; the crew was allowed only a few hours to film and could shoot in certain directions only.
- Gregg Turkington and director Rick Alverson initially clashed over the Neil Hamburger character, including Turkington's rules of never showing him without glasses and never having him talk in a normal voice. Alverson argued the film would not be credible if Turkington kept the Hamburger voice throughout.
- The dialogue was improvised rather than fully scripted, with Gregg Turkington describing it as built on descriptions of the tone or mood needed in particular scenes, and then running with that.
