Please Rewind Talent Wall

Bob Golub

Bob Golub’s career moves between stand-up comedy, acting, screenwriting and directing, with personal storytelling at its center. Born in Sharon on September 6, 1957, he began working as a stand-up comedian in the 1980s. His club career took him through New York City, Pittsburgh, Miami, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, giving him a foundation in live performance before his work expanded across film and autobiographical theatre. As an actor, Golub has appeared in films including Goodfellas, Art School Confidential, The Glass Beads, Johnny Virus, The Kings of Brooklyn and The Watermelon. It is a varied group of credits, spanning a major crime film and a number of independent productions. Alongside acting, he has also worked as a screenwriter and film director. The most personal project in Golub’s career is Dodo, the one-man show he toured from 2003 to 2006. Its title came from the nickname of his late father, who lost an eye as a child, struggled to find employment and started a family roof-repair business. In the show, Golub portrays him as an angry, frustrated alcoholic who abused his wife and children. Golub has said that this environment shaped his path toward comedy: he tried to become funny enough to make his father laugh, using humor in an effort to deflect violence. Golub later transformed that material into the self-written and self-directed independent feature Dodo, released in 2010 by Celebrity Video Distribution. Described as a docu-comedy, it combines recorded live performance, filmed autobiographical recreations and hundreds of hours of home video featuring Golub and his family. The result brings together the different strands of his work—stand-up, acting, writing and directing—while showing how comedy can emerge from painful and complicated family history.