Neil Hamburger and the man who made him

When stand-up comedian Neil Hamburger speaks, his timing is off, his voice is as nasal and phlegmy as his manner is aggressive, and his jokes are unfunny and dated. There's a greasiness to his hair that matches his mien and an oversize-ness to his glasses that goes perfectly with the entirety of that off-kilter persona.

"That's who he's been forever," says Gregg Turkington, the Australia-born, Arizona-raised actor-writer-comic who created Hamburger in the early 1990s, and who brings him to Johnny Brenda's on Thursday for a sold-out show. Next week, on Nov. 13, Hamburger makes his leading-role debut in Rick Alverson's Entertainment, which Turkington wrote with Allentown-born comic Tim Heidecker.

"Hamburger is a guy who hit the pizza-parlor circuit with lots of aspiration - only to become a grizzled veteran with 10,000 shows under his belt, a variety of bizarre situations, and somewhat less aspiration," Turkington says.

He started Hamburger's roll as part of the indie-rock scene with records on Chicago's Drag City label (which still releases his albums, e.g. 2014's First of Dismay) and an act as louche and muddled as it is crudely confrontational.

Despite all that, Hamburger is adored - a ranting anti-comic in the mold of Lord Buckley and Andy Kaufman, and one who has fielded film offers - but always to do something dumb, his creator says.

"Most directors and writers imagined Hamburger in some hyped-up Borat-style prank comedy where you put him on the street and see what 'hilarious' situations he got himself into," Turkington says. "That wasn't ever going to work. There are no 'hilarious adventures' offstage. The guy is a shell."

Turkington is protective not just of his creation, but of himself. He has long been reluctant to jump into film, with only a few credits as Hamburger (such as 2006's Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny).

Around 2007, he started hanging with Heidecker and fellow Philadelphian Eric Wareheim as part of their Tim & Eric schtick, and eventually interested their pal writer/director Alverson, who wanted Turkington in a non-Hamburger appearance for his lo-fi, mean-spirited, social-climbing 2012 flick, The Comedy.

"I told Rick I didn't want to act, that I couldn't act," Turkington says, "yet he was persistent especially because of how I tried to get out of it."

But in the end, Turkington was so thrilled to work with Alverson that when the director brought up the possibility of a film expanding on the Hamburger character, he jumped. "Alverson knew Hamburger was an empty vessel offstage, a shell, as that is what I always thought of that character. The offstage Neil Hamburger is just not the life of the party."

Meantime, other oddball directors, such as Peyton Reed, took notice of The Comedy. Reed hired Turkington for the summer's Marvel hit, Ant-Man. "It's hilarious and interesting someone like Reed wound up at the helm of this gigantic movie. Madder still considering unusual casting, such as me," he said.

When it came to tackling Entertainment, Turkington, Heidecker, and Alverson used California's Mojave Desert, a near-barren Bakersfield, and parts of the Golden State's north to magnify the bleakness of its main character, stuck in a show-biz dead-end.

Turkington wanted to show a California life miles away from the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun" and found it in towns such as Modesto and Tehachapi, with their beyond-dive bars and automobile graveyards.

As for the Hamburger persona, Turkington and company "called him 'The Comedian' so that he wasn't wed to my character's backstory, which allowed me to do things I wouldn't do as Hamburger."

But Turkington created Hamburger as a character who can change at his maker's whim. Listen to the albums chronologically and you'll hear slight changes happening, "as they would in real life, or listening to Pink Floyd's first album to its last," he said. "If you plucked from the middle it would mean nothing, but taken in order, you'll hear gradual changes."

As for his stand-up routine, Turkington as Hamburger tells audiences there is no topicality ("I think we can let go of the Michael Dukakis material"), let alone a plan. "I'll just be by the bar, go backstage, put on that costume, and I'm ready to go."