You know, I've been thinking about the failed actor arc lately, and I think it might be sadder than I'm anticipating.
I recently watched a documentary on the Angry Video Game Nerd's career. For those who don't know who that is, he's known for making videos where he spergs out about old video games noone cares about anymore. But important to note is that even though his shtick is Vidya, his real passion is filmmaking, and it shows in his videos.
Anyway, the creator of the documentary pinpoints the commercial and critical failure of AVGN's self made movie as the moment that "broke" him, the moment he realized that these internet videos he saw as just a stepping stone to his real ambition, they were actually the ceiling of his career. So since then he's been stuck making AVGN videos to make a living, forever aware that he'll probably never do any better than that, even though he so badly wants to. And that also shows in his post-movie content.
Another guy with a similar story is Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic. Got huge by making angry movie reviews, made like 3 movies, all failed to turn him into a "real" filmmaker. Doug was so sure of his imminent success that he retired the critic character in the last movie. Then he made a new show with new characters (I wanna say "Demo Reel" but I can't remember the name). A colossal failure. This was what likely what "broke" Doug. He brought back the critic character after this, because like AVGN, he realized that this was pretty much it.
I really sympathize with both guys. I'm not old enough to have a "this is as far as you go" moment, but frankly you don't need to be to imagine how soul crushing it must be. In fact I respect them for soldiering on for their fans and their families.
Now I'm sure you can see the similarities to Olly's story. But what's important are the differences:
1. AVGN and NC were pioneers for YouTube, and have inspired an entire generation of content creators, showed them that YouTube can be used for more than just posting fails and cat videos. They are two of the biggest names in YouTube history. Olly.......... not so much.
2. Clearly it takes a big ego/ambition to make a movie with yourself as the star, and an even bigger ego to make 3 movies. They both think (or thought) very highly of their filmmaking ability. But I'm confident in saying they aren't as narcissistic as Olly.
I don't think this upcoming play is going to "break" Olly. I think he'll try to "break out" more than once, like Doug did. But I'm really interested to see how his narc brain will process the realization that he'll be doing Philosophy Tube till he's 40. It's hard to imagine him just resigning to his fate and keep making videos like the other two.
. You can really see that he has no friends from these random statements he makes. All of them have you going "Who even says that?"
