Stand-up comic Bert Kreischer has been telling his story of The Machine for years. In case you aren’t familiar with it, Kreischer was a student at Florida State, and enrolled in a Russian studies program, when his class took a trip to the Motherland. Young Bert fell in with the Russian Mafia, which controls everything over there, and won their respect by nicknaming himself “The Machine” and drinking every alcoholic beverage these tough guys put in front of him. The story has inspired an upcoming 2023 movie titled The Machine, starring Kreischer and Star Wars legend Mark Hamill. And now we are learning that we might have Joe Rogan to thank for the film.
Bert Kreischer has been performing stand up comedy for years, but was known long before that as the top partier at the nation’s top Party School. Kreischer actually was the inspiration for the Ryan Reynolds movie Van Wilder. That, alone, is impressive. Now you add the story of The Machine to his resume, and you can see why Hollywood came calling. While promoting the movie The Machine, Kreischer explained that he spent years refining this story until it became the iconic story that has now been adapted into a movie. But it was Joe Rogan who started Kresicher on this path. The comedian told CinemaBlend:
Oh, I told it for the first time probably almost like 15 years ago. And I sprinkled it into, like, radio shows. But it was never great. And then I told it on [‘The Joe Rogan Experience’] probably nine years ago, and it took me... he’s like, ‘You’ve got to tell this in clubs.’ I started that, and it took one year before it didn’t suck. Then I recorded it four years after that. So, for five years I worked on that story. Someone sent me a clip of it (recently) of the first time I told it, and it does not sound even remotely similar.
That’s what’s special about The Machine, and the way that Bert Kreischer tells the story. Even though you know that he’s told it thousands of times, each rendition of it feels like it’s coming off the cuff, like he’s telling it to an audience for the first time, despite the fact that it has been rehearsed and polished. As Kreischer says, that clip of him first telling it sounds completely different from the bit that inspired his new movie. Here’s a clip of a shirtless Kreischer telling the story.
The thing about the new movie The Machine is that it doesn’t just stage the classic story. It takes the next steps of the story, where Bert Kreischer plays himself as a family man trying to put his party reputation behind him and become more of a family man. Only, the Russians come back into his life, looking for a watch that Bert might have stolen during his escapades. So they kidnap him and his father (Mark Hamill) until the watch can be retrieved.
Bert Kreischer expanded his audience through stand-up specials appearing on streaming, and while he’s not part of our list of the funniest stand up specials on Netflix at this time, he does have a handful of great hours that are available to watch if you have a Netflix subscription. As for the movie version of The Machine, it arrives in theaters on May 26, so grab a ticket now.
