They're Jake and Amir - and you're not

Comedy duo shows Tel Aviv’s International Student Film Festival how it’s done.

By HANNAH BROWN
Jake and Amir (photo credit: HANNAH BROWN)
Jake and Amir
(photo credit: HANNAH BROWN)
‘I ’d love to throw up on your face,” said Amir Blumenfeld, one half of Jake and Amir, the hottest Internet comedy duo. He and his comedy partner in crime, Jake Hurwitz, were sitting at a café at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, where they had come to give a seminar on developing short comedy films at the International Student Film Festival, sponsored by Tel Aviv University.
The festival, which ran earlier this month, was one of the biggest cultural events of the year for students. If you’re not a fan of Jake and Amir – or a 12-year-old boy – you would be grossed out rather than amused by this remark. But the person Amir said this to, my son Rafi, is both a huge fan and a 12-year-old boy, so he laughed.
“Put that in your article,” Amir said to me.
“In our last video, he threw up on my face,” explains Jake, whose role in their skits is to be the “straight man,” constantly annoyed by the antics of his crazed office-mate, Amir.
The festival included a dozen or so of some of the world’s most acclaimed directors, but it was Jake and Amir, who came to teach about creating comedy shorts, who generated a great deal of the buzz. Jake, 26, and Amir, 29, added a different element to the festival – fun and new media.
The two started out at the College Humor website, a site with all kinds of videos – political satire, movie parodies and other kinds of comedy. Jake and Amir worked there – Jake as an intern and Amir in an actual job – when they began posting their videos online, just for fun, about six years ago. The videos caught on, their bosses at College Humor took note and the rest is Internet history.
This is the first time they have received the kind of serious recognition conferred by an invitation to address film students at a festival, however.
What did they plan on telling their master-class audience? “We’ll take them through a brief history of Jake and Amir,” said Jake.
“There are 1,200 slides in our presentation,” said Amir. “So it should take five hours.”
“Or a year.”
But jokes aside, these are sincerely nice guys, who were willing to take a 12-year-old fan seriously.
“Just get started and don’t quit,” Amir told Rafi, who wants to post his own videos on YouTube.
“Just keep doing it. You won’t get better if you don’t practice,” Jake added.
They have certainly been practicing, having made over 500 comedy videos, most around two minutes long, that have been seen by literally millions of viewers. Each of their episodes gets an average of 500,000 viewers. They also made a half-hour movie, Jake & Amir: Fired, that sold for $3 online.
“It was sort of scary,” said Jake.
“Making something longer like that.
We had a big crew.”
“We’re always writing,” said Amir.
The two hope to find a place for their talent on television or movies in the future. But don’t worry – they won’t sell out.
“We always write stuff we like. We never write something where we say, ‘We hate it but we think our fans will like it,’” Amir said.
Their parents have been supportive, although Amir, whose father is a doctor, said, “My parents think I’m a lawyer.”
Jake said, “I don’t speak to my parents.”
But then they both laughed. Jake explained, “They just didn’t know what it was at first. As it became more of a viable career, they were just happy they didn’t have to pay my rent.”
Amir was born in Israel – in Afula – but moved to Los Angeles as a child.
He still has family here. Jake grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. One of their most popular videos is called Hebrew, where Amir realizes Jake can’t speak Hebrew. Amir, who is fluent, gabs away. It features English subtitles.
“Based on the popularity of the Hebrew video, we realized maybe we should do some more videos where I speak Hebrew,” said Amir.
This was Jake’s first visit to Israel and so far the country was a hit with him.
“Will being here inspire a new video? A new lifestyle is more like it,” said Jake.
“I want to take it back with me.”
“He wants to take someone back with him,” said Amir.
Although the two were dressed as casually as everyone else there, they got quite a bit of attention from the festival crowd. One of the organizers admitted to me that although she hadn’t known who they were before the festival, she was inundated with interview requests for the duo.
Asked whether they planned to have a very public breakup and go on to solo careers a la the Beatles, Jake replied, “We plan to first become as successful as the Beatles, then break up.”
“I’ll be John,” said Amir.
“No, I’ll be John,” Jake insisted.
When I pointed out to them that there were four Beatles – enough to go around – Amir said, “I’m more of a Ringo, actually.”
Jake: “We’re George and Ringo.”
Amir: “The not good-looking ones.”
Then they were off into the Tel Aviv sun to meet more well-wishers.