Matt Besser
Matt Besser is an actor, born 1967.
The important work is not on this list. Matt Besser is one of the four founders of the Upright Citizens Brigade, the improv troupe that became a theatre, a school, and eventually the training pipeline for a large slice of American television comedy. The troupe had its own Comedy Central show from 1998 to 2000. He also hosts Improv4humans, a long-running improv podcast that was on the Earwolf network and is now run by Besser and Brett Morris themselves.
So his screen credits read like what they are: the day work of a man whose real institution is elsewhere. Abraham Lincoln as a tour guide in Bad Teacher. A market research man in The TV Set. Small parts in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Junebug, Year One, Between Two Ferns: The Movie. Guest turns on Reno 911!, The Bernie Mac Show, The Millers, Comedy Bang! Bang! and Mad Love. Two or three minutes each, and the credit rows tell you the type at a glance: a department captain, a doctor, a sheriff, a judge. He is cast as authority and then used to undercut it.
The more revealing entries are the improv-native ones: Martin & Orloff, the debate-format oddity Crossballs: The Debate Show, and the documentary Thank You, Del: The Story of the Del Close Marathon. Those show the actual job. The film credits are the receipts.
Movies (8)
TV (11)
Where to start with Matt Besser
The screen credits are the wrong place to start with him, which is worth saying up front. If you want the real thing, it is the podcast and the theatre, and neither is a filmography entry.
That said, Martin & Orloff is the closest a film here gets to the sensibility, and Crossballs: The Debate Show is the strangest thing on the list, a show built on unsuspecting guests arguing with improvisers in earnest. Thank You, Del: The Story of the Del Close Marathon is the one to watch if you want the history rather than the jokes.
For the scattered acting, The TV Set gives him the most usable material, Bad Teacher the most quotable minute, and Reno 911! the best format for what he does. Comedy Bang! Bang! is the closest television ever came to putting his kind of comedy on screen unfiltered.