"Funniest Comedian BRIAN HALEY vs RICH HALL"

BRIAN HALEY

Brian Carlo Haley (born February 12, 1963) is an American actor and stand-up comedian. His stand-up act is characterized by playing his all-American l...

Brian Carlo Haley (born February 12, 1963) is an American actor and stand-up comedian. His stand-up act is characterized by playing his all-American looks against manic outbursts and absurd situations. As an actor, he may be best known for his roles as Veeko the incompetent kidnapper in the John Hughes movie Baby's Day Out, the over-the-top football father Mike Hammersmith (aka Spike's dad) in Little Giants, Clint Eastwood's son Mitch in the movie Gran Torino, and Budd Bronski in Season 7 of Wings. After his tour in the Army, he began doing stand-up comedy in his native Seattle and quickly rose to headliner status. In 1988, he moved to Los Angeles where he had immediate success, winning a "Hollywood's Hottest New Comic" competition, appearing on several stand-up comedy TV shows such as An Evening At The Improv and was picked up by ABC Television for a one-year holding deal. In July 1988, Haley was a contestant on the Alex Trebek hosted game show "Classic Concentration". His appearance spanned multiple episodes as he won $11,285 worth of prizes. However, it was his proverbial big break on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1990 that launched his career in earnest. His first appearance led to a flood of television and film roles and an HBO comedy special. In 1994, he starred in the movie Baby's Day Out. The movie was very popular in overseas markets, especially India, where it played at the largest theater in Calcutta for over a year and was even remade with an Indian cast under the title Sisindri. In 1994, he had a stand out role in the comedy film Little Giants as over the top dad Mike Hammersmith, aka "Spike's Dad". In 1995, he replaced Thomas Haden Church on NBC's TV series Wings playing the part of mechanic Budd Bronski. That same year he was in a Clio Award winning Super Bowl ad for Miller Lite beer playing hard luck football quarterback Elmer Bruker, a man that was on every winning Super Bowl team but never played. In 1997, he portrayed "The Hooded Avenger" on the Weird Al Show. From 1998 to 1999 he played bartender Tom Vanderhulst on the short lived CBS series Maggie Winters. He has made numerous guest appearances on TV shows such as 30 Rock, The Drew Carey Show, and ER, including reoccurring roles on The Hughleys, Third Watch and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Read more ↓ Vote

RICH HALL

Richard Travis Hall (born June 10, 1954) is an American comedian, writer, documentary maker and musician, first coming to prominence as a sketch comed...

Richard Travis Hall (born June 10, 1954) is an American comedian, writer, documentary maker and musician, first coming to prominence as a sketch comedian in the 1980s. He wrote and performed for a range of American networks, in series such as Fridays, Not Necessarily the News (popularising the "sniglet" neologism), and Saturday Night Live. After winning a Perrier Comedy Award in 2000, using the character of Tennesseean country musician Otis Lee Crenshaw, Hall became popular in the United Kingdom, regularly appearing on QI and similar panel shows. He has created and starred in several series for the BBC, including comedies with Mike Wilmot and documentaries often concerning cinema of the United States. Hall has also maintained a successful stand-up comedy career, as both Crenshaw and himself. Hall's first professional work was as a writer and performer on the original David Letterman Show (1980) and the sketch comedy TV series Fridays from 1980 until 1982. After the end of Fridays, Hall co-wrote and starred in the satirical comedy series Not Necessarily the News from 1983 until 1990 where he coined the term "sniglet" to describe newly created words and collected and published several volumes of books of them. He was also a regular on Saturday Night Live for the show's tenth season (1984–1985), becoming the only Fridays cast member to be an SNL cast member (Larry David, while also a Fridays cast member who went on to work for SNL, was hired as a writer and only appeared onscreen as an extra). In 1986, Hall had his own Showtime channel special, Vanishing America, which was turned into a book with the same title. He hosted a talk show during The Comedy Channel's 1990–91 season, titled Rich Hall's Onion World. In the United States, he has appeared several times on American talk shows such as Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Hall was previously a writer and on-air contributor on The David Letterman Show, Letterman's morning show that aired on NBC in 1980.

Read more ↓ Vote