Why settle for catching glimpses of Alex Karpovsky on the set of Girls when you can see him in a genu-whine short film? “Actor Seeking Role” kicked off the Rooftop Films Summer Series not long ago, and now it has descended onto your humble small screen. As of this week, it’s available on Vimeo.
In the 19-minute short, Karpovsky plays Paul, an aspiring method actor who, while scrounging for his big break on Broadway, has a steady gig playing a patient at a Manhattan medical school (hence the hospital gown). You might call Paul a “hack,” since he literally coughs for a living, but even if casting agents find him “too contemporary” for more respectable roles, he has at least one fan in his boss at the med school, a doctor played by Dylan Baker (the William H. Macy lookalike was last seen in another North Brooklyn production, Applesauce). Paul is every bit as quietly tortured as the character Karpovsky played in his psychological thriller Rubberneck. But this film was actually directed by another Greenpoint filmmaker, Michael Tyburski, who co-wrote it with Ben Nabors.
Play it, above, and look for a cameo by Gramercy fixture Joe Junior, home of what was recently declared “the greatest hamburger in New York.”