Tim Heidecker: The Long Con of Anti-Comedy
Half of Tim and Eric, sole architect of the On Cinema universe, and a sincere singer-songwriter on the side. A guide to the comedian who never breaks.
Tim Heidecker is the half of Tim and Eric who never stops. Beyond the Adult Swim sketch shows he made with Eric Wareheim, he has spent over a decade playing an increasingly deranged version of himself on On Cinema at the Cinema, a fake film-review show that turned into one of the longest-running fictional universes in comedy. He has also made a deliberately terrible stand-up special, a weekly call-in podcast, serious acting turns and a run of sincere rock records. This page is the guide to his solo work; our Tim and Eric page covers the duo.
The short biography
Heidecker was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1976. He met Eric Wareheim at Temple University in Philadelphia, and the two began making short videos together. Their DVD of odd shorts caught the attention of Bob Odenkirk, who helped them get Tom Goes to the Mayor (2004–2006) on Adult Swim. Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (2007–2010) followed and became one of the most influential comedy shows of the decade, with its public-access ugliness, broken timing and fake commercials. More Tim and Eric projects followed: the 2012 film Billion Dollar Movie, the anthology Bedtime Stories and Beef House.
Heidecker's solo work, though, has a different shape. Where Tim and Eric is about the texture of bad television, Heidecker on his own is about character, about committing to a persona for years and letting the audience watch it decay.
On Cinema at the Cinema
The project started as a podcast and became a web series in 2012. Heidecker and Gregg Turkington play versions of themselves who host a cheap movie-review show. Turkington is a pedantic film buff with an encyclopaedic, often wrong, love of VHS; Heidecker is a vain, opinionated host who knows nothing about cinema and cares mostly about his own side projects.
Over more than a decade the reviews became a framing device for a long, dark soap opera. Tim's character launches a terrible band, Dekkar; stars in his own spy show, Decker; sells vape pens at his own music festival that kill several concertgoers, then stands trial for murder in a multi-hour mock trial; and runs for district attorney in the film Mister America (2019). The annual live Oscar specials are where storylines come to a head.
What makes it brilliant is the patience. Jokes are set up years in advance. Characters hold grudges across seasons. The show runs on the HEI Network subscription service and was still producing new seasons and Oscar specials in the mid-2020s, making it one of the longest sustained bits in comedy.
An Evening with Tim Heidecker
Released on YouTube in October 2020, this is a fake stand-up special by a real comedian. Heidecker plays a desperately unfunny club comic doing hack material to a mostly unresponsive crowd. The jokes are bad on purpose, the crowd work goes wrong, and the whole thing becomes a portrait of a certain kind of comedian and the formats he depends on.
It's a cousin of Martin Urbano's Apology Comeback Tour and of Gregg Turkington's Neil Hamburger: the bad comedian as a way of looking at what audiences put up with.
Office Hours Live
Launched in 2016, Office Hours Live is a weekly call-in show with DJ Douggpound (Doug Lussenhop) and Vic Berger. It is looser than anything else Heidecker makes: callers, games, recurring bits and a lot of sincere chat. It shows another side of him, warm and quick, and has become a hub for fans of his whole universe.
Music
Heidecker has a parallel career as a singer-songwriter. Some of it is comic (Dekkar, and his 2017 song collection mocking Donald Trump, Too Dumb for Suicide), but much of it is sincere: 1970s-style soft rock and folk about mortality, family and getting older. Fear of Death (2020), made with Weyes Blood, High School (2022) and Slipping Away (2024) are all worth hearing on their own terms.
Acting
He has a strong record in dramatic and supporting roles. Rick Alverson's bleak The Comedy (2012) cast him as a wealthy, cruel Brooklyn hipster; he played a friend of the family in Jordan Peele's Us (2019). Recent work includes the comedy series Killing It, a recurring role on What We Do in the Shadows (2024), the films Y2K and Pavements (both 2024), the animated series Fired on Mars (2023), and further films in 2025 and 2026.
Why he matters
Heidecker's influence runs in two directions. The Tim and Eric aesthetic (cheap video effects, awkward pauses, the uncanny sincerity of local advertising) shaped a generation of internet sketch comedy and even mainstream advertising. His solo work did something rarer: it proved a comedy character could be serialised across a decade and multiple media, with an audience willing to follow every dark turn. Long-form internet-native comedy, from elaborate character accounts to fictional universes built across podcasts and video, owes a lot to On Cinema's example.
His best work, ranked
On Cinema at the Cinema
The masterpiece. Start with the Oscar specials, then go back.
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
The show that rewired American sketch comedy.
Mister America
A mockumentary about Tim's DA campaign that works even if you've never seen On Cinema.
Decker
The worst spy show ever made, on purpose, and a satire of jingoistic action TV.
An Evening with Tim Heidecker
The anti-special. Uncomfortable and often hilarious.
If you like Tim Heidecker
- Tim and Eric, the duo in full.
- Sarah Sherman, whose gross-out video art comes from the same lineage.
- Nathan Fielder, another master of the deadpan long con.
- Zach Galifianakis, who appeared on Tim and Eric and made his own anti-talk-show.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best Tim Heidecker comedies?
Start with Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and On Cinema at the Cinema (begin with its Oscar specials). Then try Decker, the film Mister America (2019), and his fake stand-up special An Evening with Tim Heidecker.
Is On Cinema real?
No. On Cinema at the Cinema is a scripted and improvised comedy in which Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington play exaggerated versions of themselves hosting an incompetent movie-review show. Over more than a decade it has built a long fictional storyline including a murder trial and an election.
Where did Tim Heidecker go to college?
Temple University in Philadelphia, where he met his long-time collaborator Eric Wareheim.
Is Tim Heidecker a musician?
Yes. Alongside comedy songs, he has released sincere singer-songwriter records, including Fear of Death (2020), High School (2022) and Slipping Away (2024).