Rob O'Reilly
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Rob O'Reilly

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"Rob O'Reilly Needs Your Help"


Tue Jan 23, 2007
Cris Glaser

Cleveland comic Rob O'Reilly desperately needs your vote. Too bad the folks at The Tonight Show are giving you a tough time casting it.
On Friday night's show, Leno rolled clips of 10 contestants in contention to become a "Tonight Show Correspondent." The winner scores an on-camera job as the show's freelance interviewer at events like the Republican National Convention, Olympic Games, and the Academy Awards.
Check out O'Reilly and his nine competitors, and see if you can pick out what's wrong:
For starters, the 30-second clip that identifies O'Reilly isn't really O'Reilly at all. Even he doesn't know who the dude from New York is. Scroll down two rows, and there's Brad "Woody" Wollack from L.A. Only that's not Woody. That's O'Reilly. And up until this morning, there wasn't even a function to vote for him. "Literally, I was the only one who didn't have a little thing to vote below me," says O'Reilly, who's in New York this week to make the comedy-club rounds. "So everyone has gotten a head start over me."
Well, we're here to help.
O'Reilly's 30-second audition tape is an edited version of a five-minute series of street interviews he conducted in September on the Boston University campus, where he graduated last year with a degree in television comedy-writing. In each interview, he poses a multiple-choice question, like "When was the Chinese Exclusion Act enacted?" He then gives his targets three choices: the 19th century, the 1800s, or the Gilded Age. Of course, everyone gets it right, because all three answers mean the same thing. The interviews can be seen in their entirety on O'Reilly's website.
O'Reilly is now counting on you to vote for him since he thinks the odds are stacked against him. In addition to being misidentified on the Tonight Show website, he managed to miss Friday night's airing of his tape. Standing outside a New York bar with his girlfriend to watch the show, a bouncer told them that the club was too packed to let them in. They raced back to his apartment, only to arrive one minute after the closing credits. "I have heard it over a speaker phone, though," says O'Reilly. "On the positive side, I was one of 10 people chosen over thousands to compete. If I win, it would be life-changing, to say the least." -- Cris Glaser
- Cleveland Scene


"A Comic on the Rise Leads this Week’s Picks"

Rising Smartass
12/22/2005

The Funny thing about Rob O’Reilly is that he’s funny now. Rob’s Spanish teacher was so amused by his classroom gags and pranks that the prof persuaded him to enter Bay High School’s annual talent show four years ago. Once onstage and armed with plenty of jokes, O’Reilly proceeded to bomb in front of the 800 people in attendance. “It was like losing my sexual virginity,” he says. “It was awkward and there was one person laughing.”

Today, after a little reconfiguring of material, the 20-year-old O’Reilly makes the comedy-club rounds near Boston University, where he’ll graduate in May with a degree in comedy writing before spending the winter in Los Angeles as an intern in Warner Brothers’ comedy development department. Just three months ago, O’Reilly placed 5th out of 95 comics at the Boston International Comedy and Movie Festival. Talent scouts from Letterman and Comedy Centrals Premium Blend even asked him to send videotapes of his act, which is “kinda like Candid Camera, online not filmed,” he explains. “It’s about the weird shit I do to people to catch everybody offguard. I like messing with people.”

O’Reilly performs at 8 p.m. tonight and 8 and 10:15 p.m. tomorrow at the Improv, 2000 Sycamore Street. Tickets are $10, available by calling 216-696-4677.
- Cleveland Scene


"Local Comedian to Perform at National Comedy Festival "

Eric Eakin

Want to hear something funny? Rob O’Reilly. Really-O’Reilly.
O’Reilly, 20, Bay High graduate has already won several comedy competitions and was named 2004’s funniest amateur comedian at a competition held recently in Lakwood-out-laughing some 40 other jokemeisters. Rob currently attends Boston University, where he is studying television writing.

He also will be appearing at the prestigious Boston International Comedy & Movie Festival, which will feature 96 young comedians from around the continent.

He recently opened for comedian Dane Cook in front of more than 1,400 students. When not at BU, he opens for other national headliners as a feature act across America. He has been published in Judy Brown joke books, the Daily Free Press and Boink Magazine.
And he’s come a long way from his first gig: performing for a bunch of friends in his basement. (He was voted class clown in eight grade.)

Rob’s humor style has been described as “an intellectual blend of observational humor and self-deprecating jokes about being Irish and nerdy.”

For example: “I have a black friend who refused to go in the sunlight. She told me that it’s cooler within the black community to remain a light skin tone. I didn’t understand since white people tan. It’s like white people want to be darker skinned, but black people want to remain lighter skinned, so we’re all meeting in the middle. It’s as if we all want to be Mexican,” he said.

O’Reilly has a girlfriend, but he keeps her out of his act. “She’s like the worst possible thing for my act because she’s the best thing that ever happened to me. But see me a couple of months after we break up because then I’ll be hilarious.”
O’Reilly’s favorite comedians include Mitch Hedberg, David Cross, Brian Regan and Jim Gaffigan.

And his goal ten years out: Standup. He’s going to ride the standup bus to the punchline.
- Westlife


"'Goofball' O'Reilly Headlining at 20"

June 3, 2005

Rob O’Reilly coming to Casey’s Pub in Lorain Monday, is a goofball. In the comedy world, that’s a serious compliment. But what sets him apart from other comedians who follow the intellectual formula that says “silly equals laughs,” is that he happens to also be an intellectual. That’s the prerequisite when you’re both a headlining comedian and student at Boston University.

O’Reilly has been successfully juggling both the comedy and academic worlds in Boston and throughout the East Coast. His silly brand of thoughtful humor has caught the attention of talent scouts from “The Late Show with David Letterman,” who actually saw him at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival, rather than during one of his regular performances in Boston. Since his comedy is similar to the same style favored by Letterman and his writers, it should only be a matter of time before he earns a diploma and makes his late night debut on the show. From a comedy intellectual point of view, that’s a no-brainer.

Red hot since performing in front of 1,400 people with Dane Cook and winning comedy contests from Cleveland to Pittsburgh to Boston, O’Reilly is taking advantage of his summer vacation by shifting his career to the stages of New York City. But first, he’s scheduled shows near his hometown of Bay Village. Later this month he’ll be performing at the Cleveland Improv with Pablo Francisco. And as a prerequisite (for lack of a more intellectual term), he’ll headline at Casey’s Pub in Lorain.
Show time is at 8:30 PM. $10 Admission. 440-986-2000. - Morning Journal


"Class Act"


Fall 2005
Student turns stand-ups at local clubs

The best thing about college is that no matter who you were in high school, you can reinvent yourself. Take Rob O’Reilly. A few years ago, the BU junior was a nerd stuck in Bay Village, Ohio. Now… well, he’s a nerd. But he’s using that nerdiness to be funny. And popular. O’Reilly is a stand-up comic, one of many college-age performers storming local clubs such as The Comedy Studio.


When choosing a college, O’Reilly was looking into engineering programs but then switched to communications because he loved comedy.
“My first real performance was in front of a large group of my friends in my basement,” remembers the comic, “and that was horribly not funny at all. Losing my stand-up virginity was like losing my actual virginity – very awkward, and there was one person laughing.”

But he continued to write, coming up with lines about white homeboys and college roommates. “Most of my jokes were about how big of a nerd I am, which isn’t all that far from what it’s like now,” O’Reilly says.
- Boston Metro


Discography

"Strip Solitaire"
Debut CD available on iTunes in October, 2008

Photos

Bio

With an appearances on Comedy Central’s "Live at Gotham," NBC's "America's Got Talent" and NBC’s "The Tonight Show" as Jay Leno's correspondent, 23 year-old Rob O'Reilly is quickly gaining a reputation as an up-and-coming comedian to watch in New York City. It all began in Cleveland, Ohio, where Rob made his stand-up debut at a high school talent show and later won the city’s largest comedy competition. While attending Boston University on an academic scholarship, he became a finalist in the 2005 Boston Comedy Festival and retired any notions of a "normal career." With his youthful point-of-view making him a favorite at three NACA conferences, Rob now headlines colleges across the country. He booked 27 colleges out of NACA Northeast (2007) alone.