“I think I’m doing quite well.”

James Pope, the gentle-souled dweeb Kyle Mooney plays in Brigsby Bear, is an almost literal man-child, quite literally sheltered. Thirty if he’s a day, James still lives with his eccentric hippie parents (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams), but he has a good excuse: They’re all holed up together in an underground bunker,…

Kyle Mooney’s new film, Brigsby Bear, gets it’s title from the fictional, fictional show within the movie, involving an anthropomorphic educational bear. So when Mooney was in Chicago on a press tour for the film, The A.V. Club asked if we could conduct an appropriately timed, “bear-themed” interview, in that we would…

The more detail you go into describing the plot of Brigsby Bear—the new comedy from SNL’s Kyle Mooney and Drew McRary, a.k.a. Good Neighbor—the crazier it sounds, but here goes. Brigsby Bear stars Mooney as James, a thirtysomething man-child who lives in a bunker with his parents after an unnamed disaster has left the…

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [goddamned Five-Timers Club] star!”

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [starship captain and superhero’s boyfriend] star!”

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [very talented, not at all Asian, Five-Timers Club] star!”

Saturday Night Live’s sometime Donald Trump, Alec Baldwin, took another week off, leaving the show to make its satirical bones elsewhere. Kate McKinnon was a suspiciously Forrest Gump-ian Jeff Sessions, and Weekend Update continued to come hard at the Trump administration, (plus McKinnon’s KellyAnne Conway kept…

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [current all-time SNL hosting] star!”

The next time Kyle Mooney and Drew McRary make you go “Ha!” and then go “Huh?”, it might not be at 12:50 on a Sunday morning. The Saturday Night Live duo and founding members of the sketch group Good Neighbor have sold their feature-length comedy, Brigsby Bear, to Sony Pictures Classics. Variety reports that the…

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [Rebellious movie] star!”

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [shoo-in Oscar-nominated movie] star!”

With more scripted television programs in production than ever before, it follows that there are now a wider range of opportunities for television actors. Looking back at the performances that caught The A.V. Club’s eyes in 2016 confirms that hypothesis: While some of our favorite character actors found new facets of…

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [’rassling] star!”

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [movie] star!”

We’re just two months out from the 2017 iteration of the Sundance Film Festival, descending on Utah like a horde of movie-loving ski bum locusts from January 19 to January 29. Today, we’ve got the initial lineup for the festival, with 66 films either in competition, or as part of its NEXT non-competition slate.

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [go-to bigger-than-life fictional hero/villain] star!”

Though it wasn’t the sequel to the 1988 David Seltzer film Punchline that fans have been clamoring for, NBC has now released a cut segment from this weekend’s Saturday Night Live that would’ve actually featured Hanks’ return to the world of stand-up comedy. The bit was part of Weekend Update, and it featured Kyle…

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [staggeringly famous and beloved movie] star!”