Collage by Riley LeBlanc, Photographer.
In 1976, actress Beatrice Straight won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for just over five minutes of screen time in the classic drama “Network.” In this year’s horror hit “Obsession,” with the uttering of “Open or closed?” and “Got a card for the shots?” a phenomenon was born. With just two lines, actor Malcolm Kelner has set new heights for what one can do with limited screen time.
Kelner’s path didn’t start with intentions that leaned towards performing. He grew up playing baseball and pursued it all the way to college in Boston, where he went to Emerson. He studied broadcast journalism in the hopes of ending up in sportscasting. After realizing his journey with baseball would end with college, he started to broaden his horizons, writing for Emerson’s equivalent of The Onion and starting acting classes, moving to Los Angeles after he finished up his studies.
“I lost the love in one thing and was rediscovering the love in the other thing at around the same time. So, that's kind of when it hit for me,” Kellner told The Panther.
After a few years in LA, he crossed paths with Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson in 2023 — then primarily known for their online comedy sketches — and became a member of their cast of regulars.
“Obsession” entered Kelner’s orbit basically at the project’s genesis. He attended a small viewing party to celebrate Barker’s appearance on an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” where Barker saw an episode of “The Simpsons” centered around a monkey paw that came on beforehand, striking him with the inspiration that led him towards the One Wish Willow.
Kelner attended the film’s first table read, later auditioning to be an attendee in the party scene and even reading for the lead role of Bear, later played by Michael Johnston. And so, for a moment, Kelner and “Obsession” passed each other by until the film did reshoots that added a bar scene early on in the film and a bartender was needed. Kelner answered the call and shot the scene in half a day, doing his best to pretend to know how to tend a bar, not thinking much of its later implications.
The seeds of the kind of gags involving everyday people and a role in a buzzy film go back pre-“Obsession” to Kelner’s work as “The Realist” in 2024’s “This Is Me… Now” starring Jennifer Lopez. Upon that film’s release, Kelner stood in front of a billboard and “asked” passersby if they wanted a picture or an autograph. Videos like that one proved vital in teaching Kelner the value of audience response, but also not letting it compromise his belief in the comedic potential of an idea.
“All those videos, on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, they pretty much bombed everywhere I posted them, but I still believed in that concept…So, when ‘Obsession’ came along, I was like, ‘Oh, I'm going to try this again. I'm going to do it and see how it works with a movie that was more of a cultural phenomenon,’” Kelner said. “I have such a minor rule in this. It would make the bit even funnier because I was so unimportant to the movie.”
The running gag began in earnest at the film’s premiere, which Kelner wasn’t even invited to, but instead of hanging back, he turned a bit part into a bit. He brought a cameraman, who asked people exiting what they would say to the star of “Obsession,” and then walked out instead of Johnston or breakout star Inde Navarrette, playing off of his unglamorous appearance in the film.
“I came back with my cameraman because we thought we were going to watch the movie, but we were like, ‘Nope, we're not getting in. We're going to come back.’ And then,after the people started coming out of the premiere, I did my same bit again, trolling them. ‘Hey, remember the bartender from the movie?’ And the whole bit was going to end there,” Kelner said. “I posted three little clips. The third clip blew up on Instagram and TikTok. And then I'm like, ‘Oh, maybe I should keep this going.’”
From there, Kelner doubled down on building so much out of so little, exploring all the comedic avenues possible under “The Bartender” umbrella. He’s squeezed laughs out of every manner of the experience of viral celebrity; freak outs and clashes with paparazzi, podcast appearances, solemn sitdowns breaking down his role, etc.
“Let's say a famous A-list actress or actor is in a movie. What could be the different stories about it? There's a press tour. There's a paparazzi meltdown. There's a controversy. There's interactions with fans, so I tried to think of every possible angle that a big actor would do, every story that could come out,” Kelner said.
In the midst of the growing popularity of Kelner’s content, director and fellow content creator Max Goodrich reached out via DM with a breakthrough idea to expand the Bartender’s lore, “The Bartender From Obsession,” a fake movie trailer for an action flick taking place after the events of Barker’s film.
“Malcolm’s character was a brilliant take on taking advantage of a situation and the way my brain works is always taking a bit to its extreme,” Goodrich told The Panther. “If he's treating the bartender like an A-list character, let’s give him the movie he deserves.”
As they tinkered with setting the trailer to an epic version of T-Pain’s “Bartender,” Goodrich told Kelner he might be able to get T-Pain to appear in the trailer as himself, along with his assistant music director, Party Pip. They were in Anaheim for this year’s Blizzcon, and so Kelner carved out a role for Pain and Pip in the already over-the-top trailer, coming to Bartender’s aide just in time in a moment of need. They were initially promised between the pair coming on set and having to leave to make a plane, but both Pain and Pip stuck around for over an hour riffing and improving with Kelner and company.
Kelner has made multiple appearances at horror conventions off of his limited appearance and now enduring online popularity. He most recently appeared at a screening of the film at FocusFest, where he came out and was pulled offstage by Barker and Tomlinson, his inclusion serving as an unofficial stamp of approval of “The Bartender” experience.
“Through the power of social media and this meme and this community, this collective inside joke emerged with people where they're commenting on all the videos, saying stuff like, ‘Oh, your performance changed my life, man,’” Kelner said. “All these inside jokes that are being shared by all these people kind of concentrated in one place…And so I got approached by a lot of people (at FocusFest), took a lot of pictures, had a lot of conversations. Like I said, you would have thought I was a main character.”
The feedback he and Goodrich received from the trailer has opened the door to exploring that conception of the character further. The future of “The Bartender” is unclear, but open — anything but closed.
