Jim O’Heir’s ‘Middle Man’ truly kills as a stand-up comic

Chicago native Jim O’Heir, best known as hapless Garry Gergich on the long-running hit NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” stars in a new movie as a stand-up comic who kills — literally.

In the dark comedy “Middle Man” (opening Friday), Lenny Freeman (O’Heir) is a seemingly mild-mannered accountant who has had a lifelong dream of becoming a famous nightclub comedian. The only hitch? He’s not the least bit funny.

When his mother dies, Lenny is left with her mountain of unpaid debt — and her (fortunately) fully paid-off 1953 Oldsmobile. He takes the plunge, quits his boring job and heads off in the ’53 Olds for Las Vegas and a chance to audition for the “Stand-Up Stand-Off.” Along the way he picks up a mysterious hitchhiker, and then things begin to go seriously homicidal.

“As you know, stand-up comedians say, ‘I killed’ when their routine really clicks with an audience. The reverse of that: ‘God! I was dying out there,’ is what they say when they bomb,” noted O’Heir. “While my background really was more doing improv and theater work, I can certainly understand the terminology.”

“Middle Man” was written for O’Heir by the film’s director Ned Crowley — with whom he attended improv classes at Second City in Chicago back in the mid-1980s — and the actor admitted he went back to that period and based certain aspects of his Lenny character “on a guy in one of our classes. He dreamed of being a stand-up comic and, I’m sorry to say, he was just awful.

“Lenny’s only comedic references are those old routines [by such old-time comedians as George Burns and Gracie Allen, Abbott and Costello and Jack Benny]. People today might say Lenny didn’t understand ‘real comedy,’ which isn’t right, because what those classic comedians did was iconic and brilliant — and still holds up today. But the point is, Lenny isn’t in touch with what makes younger millennials today laugh. He doesn’t have a clue about the comedy scene that exists any time after 1960.”

It took a decade for “Middle Man” to get made. In O’Heir’s words, “For a long time Ned had a number of people tell him ‘this script is solid’ and other nice stuff, but nothing happened. You have to remember, I was just a journeyman actor for so many years who nobody knew. Then, along came ‘Parks [and Recreation]’ and it literally changed my life. I became a name that people in Hollywood actually recognized, without having to look me up or Google me.

“Then one day, they said to Ned, ‘If you can get Jim O’Heir to become attached to this script — we’ll make the film!’

“Isn’t it funny how stuff happens?”