Amir Blumenfeld

Amir Blumenfeld in 2005

In 2003, while a sophomore at Berkeley, Blumenfeld began writing articles for the comedy website CollegeHumor after he emailed its co-founder Ricky Van Veen ideas, which Van Veen found funny and posted on the website. When Blumenfeld graduated in 2005, CollegeHumor hired him and Streeter Seidell full-time to write The CollegeHumor Guide to College[2]—a humorous book presented as a guide to university education—and he moved to New York City aged 22.[4] He later moved to writing original videos for CollegeHumor with Dan Gurewitch,[4] and has acted in CH Originals,[9] as well as the series Hardly Working. He has portrayed Woody Allen in episodes of Hardly Working[10] and Very Mary-Kate[11]—MTV's Guy Code Blog listed his among "The 8 Best Woody Allen Impressions We Found On The Internet".[10] His favorite sketch written for CollegeHumor is entitled "Moments Before Cup Chicks", and involves a director briefing the participants of the viral scatological video 2 Girls 1 Cup.[4]

Beginning in 2007, he and Streeter Seidell have appeared in the Prank War series of videos, in which the two play a series of escalating practical jokes on each other. Seidell has described how some of the pranks "showed Amir's true colors, his desire to be famous ... [and] cut deeper emotionally", and how he thought Blumenfeld's faking a marriage proposal from Seidell to his girlfriend went "too far". After seven videos were posted over two years, there was an 18-month hiatus culminating in Seidell tricking Blumenfeld into thinking he had won USD$500,000 after taking a blindfolded half-court basketball shot.[12] The pranks have led to Seidell and Blumenfeld being interviewed by Wired magazine[12] and appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.[13]

In 2009, Blumenfeld starred in The CollegeHumor Show on MTV along with eight other CollegeHumor employees.[14] The staff members wrote, filmed and starred in the show, which is set in the CollegeHumor offices and has a scripted reality premise.[15] Structured as a half-hour sitcom, it incorporates sketches that had already been published online.[16] However, the show was lambasted by critics—Pajiba's Dustin Rowles called it "a series of atrocious sketches haphazardly strung together";[17] GigaOM's Liz Shannon Miller said the show was "deeply disappointing", and that although Blumenfeld's character is "the iconic face of the web site ... none of the other personalities on the show have been developed beyond the surface level"[16]—only one season, consisting of six episodes, was made.[18]

Since 2010, Seidell and Blumenfeld have hosted Pranked, an MTV series featuring pranks recorded on video and posted online.[19] The show has generally received poor reviews, with critics looking down on its clip show format and use of content from YouTube, and calling it inferior to the "prank war" that inspired it.[20][21] The Michigan Daily's Eric Chiu said "Hosts Blumenfeld and Seidell do what they can with their material, but their banter and commentary is mostly forgettable", and "the Prank War series on CollegeHumor.com is a perfect example of discomforting gags done right ... It's a shame that Pranked can't muster up anything near the same level of ingenuity."[20]

In the July 19, 2017 episode of Blumenfeld and Hurwitz's podcast If I Were You for which Seidell was the guest, the two founders of Prank War publicly confirmed that the series was staged.[22]

Blumenfeld's comedy partner Jake Hurwitz in 2014

Blumenfeld met his colleague Jake Hurwitz in 2006,[23] when the latter began an internship at CollegeHumor. The two were seated across from each other, and began to make short videos together, which they uploaded to the video-sharing website Vimeo.[7] Their first video was called "Quick Characters": it was unscripted, and involved either Hurwitz or Blumenfeld spontaneously pointing a camera at the other and instructing them to act in a certain way.[4]

The two later began the web series Jake and Amir, episodes of which they posted to jakeandamir.com.[7] In it, Hurwitz plays Jake, a "normal guy", and Blumenfeld plays Amir, his annoying and obsessive co-worker, who craves Jake's attention.[23][7] Their videos began to be promoted on CollegeHumor, and the website later adopted the series.[7]

External video
Amir Blumenfeld's nomination reel for the Webby Awards

Blumenfeld has described how his character "sort of evolved" from being "super needy [and] weird" to "a little crazier", but that "the root of my character is still the same, the insecurity of it". Regarding his similarity to his character, he said he is "hopefully very different but maybe at the root of it we're the same person. I'm probably a little smarter than the character though. Maybe the things that he thinks I also think but I'm able to suppress them."[24]

At the 14th Webby Awards in 2010, Jake and Amir won a People's Voice award for Comedy: Long Form or Series,[25] and Blumenfeld won one for Best Individual Performance.[1] Blumenfeld received a nomination for the 2013 Streamy Awards for Best Male Performance: Comedy because of his role in Jake and Amir.[26]

On May 13, 2013, Blumenfeld and Hurwitz announced their first new project since Jake and Amir: a comedy audio podcast called If I Were You, in which they give advice to listeners who submit questions.[27] Kayla Culver of The Concordian lauded the podcast as "comfortable to listen to" and "genuinely funny" and said "It's like listening to two best friends having a hilarious conversation on the couch next to you."[28] The Guardian's Miranda Sawyer called If I Were You "a typical example of a comedy podcast" and "amiable enough", but said it contained "far too much laughing", commenting that "New Yorkers Jake and Amir laugh and laugh, giggle and chortle their way around a topic" and "if I wanted stream-of-consciousness waffle with the occasional funny line, I'd listen to [my small children]."[29]

In 2016, Blumenfeld and Hurwitz released an on-demand comedy series called Lonely and Horny on Vimeo. The series was picked up by CollegeHumor for its second season.

Blumenfeld and Hurwitz's experience in podcasting led them to founding the podcasting network HeadGum, which has 34 active shows as of May 2020.[30]

In August 2018, Blumenfeld announced that he started the podcast Buckets with Amir Blumenfeld, where he discusses the NBA with guests.[31]

Blumenfeld starred in the 2009 short film The Old Man and the Seymour alongside colleagues Streeter Seidell and Dan Gurewitch, as well as Shawn Harrison, Liz Cackowski and Jordan Carlos. It is about a growth-hormone deficient man who is mistaken for a student at his nephew's high school. The movie was chosen as a "Staff Pick" on Vimeo, and screened at the Austin Film Festival, the Sacramento Film and Music Festival, the LA Shorts Fest, the Friars Club Comedy Film Festival and the Portable Film Festival.[32]

In 2011, Blumenfeld appeared in comedian Louis C.K.'s television series Louie, during the 10th episode of its second season, entitled "Halloween/Ellie". He played a writer hired to improve a movie script in the second half of the episode. Better With Popcorn's George Prax said that he played "the 'unfunny' guy who actually ends up coming off as the funniest of all to the audience", and that Blumenfeld "should be guesting and starring in many more things". He also called Blumenfeld's first sitcom appearance a "clearly momentous occasion".[33] Blumenfeld also had a part in I Just Want My Pants Back, an MTV show produced by Doug Liman.[34]

He played Kumar Patel's friend Adrian in the 2011 stoner comedy film A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, alongside Thomas Lennon as Harold Lee's friend Todd.[35] Reviews largely did not remark on his performance,[36][37][38][39][40] although IGN's Eric Goldman said "there isn't much to the Todd and Adrian scenes",[35] and Pajiba's Daniel Carlson thought the scriptwriters treated the characters as "living props".[41] T. J. Mulligan of Movies on Film commented that "anything Adrian says or does ... elicit[s] a slight chuckle at best".[42] However, Robert Zak of WhatCulture! commended the film's "strong supporting cast", saying that Lennon and Blumenfeld "provid[ed] constant amusement".[43]

As a writer, Blumenfeld works freelance for ESPN The Magazine,[3] and contributed to the ESPN Guide to Psycho Fan Behavior.[44] He also has a section in Mental Floss called "The Curious Comedian".[45]