Debaser YouTube phenom Doug Walker, a.k.a. "That Guy With The Glasses"

People are always asking us to help plug something of theirs—an upcoming show, a new record, some book they wrote. Because we’re not in the pandering business, we think there should be a trade-off. Debaser allows these folks to plug whatever they want, with one caveat: They also have to tell us something embarrassing about themselves. This week, The A.V. Club grills Naperville's That Guy With The Glasses (a.k.a. Doug Walker) about his film-parodying website, troubles with YouTube, angry film reviews, and the bad movies he secretly likes.

The A.V. Club: What is the origin story for That Guy With The Glasses?
Doug Walker: I started doing these 5 Second Movies on YouTube, and they got a really a big following. So I tried acting in a few sketches and created the character of the Nostalgia Critic. That seemed to catch on too, and after being kicked off YouTube three or four times, [Mike Michaud] came along and said he was looking to start this [short-video production company] business called Channel Awesome. He said, “We’d love to give you a site because there’s money to be made off of this. You can make a living doing this.” At the time I didn’t believe it, but man was he right. I still can’t believe what a big fan base I have.
AVC: Why did YouTube kick you off?
DW: The second time I was kicked off, I asked the people at YouTube why, and they said they had gotten complaints from studios saying my movies were infringing on their copyright. At the time, once you got two complaints, your whole channel was gone. So I gave every single video its own channel and listed them under the "favorites" category. Once I started a feud with The Angry Video Game Nerd, my videos became really popular, and YouTube went out of its way to take them down.
AVC: Why does your site choose to focus on nostalgia from the late-'80s/early-'90s?
DW: There’s a huge audience for it. The majority of stuff you see people talking about online are either current movies like Dark Knight or things from the past like G.I. Joe. All the current shows are just recreating the late-'80s/early-'90s shows. Ninja Turtles is back, Care Bears is back, Transformers is back, so there’s just a huge audience audience for it. If it ever starts to die down, of course we can do other stuff. But right now, we’re just going to keep exploiting it.
AVC: What film or cartoon were you most embarrassed to review?
DW: It would either be Sonic or Pokemon. They came out after my time, and it’s just hard to admit that I actually sat down and watched Pokemon: The First Movie or several episodes of The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog. My girlfriend always asks, “What are you going to do for work today?’ and I go, “Oh, I’m watching Sonic The Hedgehog.” And she’s like, “Oh, okay. I’m going to the office.” [Laughs.]
AVC: What film did you trash that you secretly like?
DW: The first Ninja Turtles movie because of what they had to bring to the screen. If you had to tell someone the plot of that and say, “Okay, make it plausible,” I think they did a pretty decent job. Another one I enjoyed watching, believe it or not, was that crazy-ass Sonic show, just because it was so stupid. I remember a lot of times I just stopped the show because I was laughing so hard, trying to analyze the logic behind scenes that made no sense.
AVC: Who makes you laugh, and influences your work?
DW: It’s going to sound weird, but my number one inspiration is Daffy Duck. There’s a moment in Nostalgia Critic where I put Daffy Duck right next to me so the viewer can go, “Oh that’s where he ripped all that off.”
AVC: You mean the manic freak-outs?
DW: Yeah, and the high-pitched voice. When I first started the show, I tried to keep my voice lower because I thought people wouldn’t like the high-pitched voice, and think it was weird and annoying. But the more I did it, the more people laughed. There’s also a lot of Lewis Black in there, Stephen Colbert, a little bit of Bill Murray; the really smug angry ones. The Nostalgia Critic allows for so much over-the-top anger, and I love coming up with different expressions and ways of freaking out. I love playing the bad guy, the loser, the jerk.

Here's one of Walker's best editions of 5 Second Movies—"Weird Al" Yankovic's UHF: