Jason Alexander is LI 'Bagel Boss guy' in Jimmy Kimmel's 'Broadway musical' spoof
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Jason Alexander, from left, Jimmy Kimmel, Tracy Morgan and other actors take a bow after the "Bagel Boss guy" spoof on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Credit: ABC / Randy Holmes
This summer's viral video of man going berserk at a Long Island bagel shop has spawned a mock Broadway musical.
A recent edition of the ABC late-night talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" featured a nearly 12-minute segment spoofing the incident, starting with a sketch about the making of a mock TV commercial for the musical "Bagel Boss!" starring Jason Alexander, 60, and then moving on to the faux show's opening number. (The "Kimmel" sketch contains some explicit language and content.)
"So you know those commercials where they have people come out of the theater on Broadway giving a rave review to the show they just saw?" Kimmel, 51, asked the audience after playing a snippet of the July 10 video in which Chris Morgan, who is in his mid-40s, ranted at the Bagel Boss outlet on Montauk Highway in Bay Shore over a perceived insult about his height (he's 5 feet tall). The first half of the video has garnered 26.8 million views on witness Olivia Bradley's Twitter account.
"Well," continued Kimmel, "we went to Midtown with a poster for a made-up musical about the Bagel Boss guy and we asked New Yorkers, who obviously haven't seen it, to talk about how much they loved it." Sure enough, during the segment various people on the street, including apparent locals and out-of-towners, gamely give both impromptu and scripted reactions in the spirit of the joke. Among them is former boxing champion and now motivational speaker Sugar Ray Leonard, 63.
Following this, Kimmel presented a bagel-shop set (actually the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House stage, where the talk show aired for a week last month) with actors on stilts singing about the joys of Bagel Boss, "a cheerful place to grab a bite / where no one ever would pick a fight." A trio of dancing bagels enters stage right: "We're delicious, warm and fresh / We're gluten-y and we're hashtag blessed."
Then "Seinfeld" star Alexander, a 1989 Tony Award winner for "Jerome Robbins' Broadway," enters the stage dressed as Morgan, immediately incensed by something innocent a customer said — and eventually reciting dialogue taken directly from the real-life videos. Eventually God, in the form of "The Last O.G." and former "Saturday Night Live" star Tracy Morgan, 50, no relation, grants the diminutive character his wish to be tall.
Chris Morgan — who until the video went viral had a YouTube channel of similar outbursts elsewhere — has since been interviewed on radio shows and podcasts, and has created a new YouTube channel that includes an attempt at stand-up comedy. He had been scheduled to fight former Mets player Lenny Dykstra in a Celebrity Boxing match at the Showboat hotel and casino in Atlantic City on Sept. 28, but withdrew after Dykstra canceled and was replaced by former "Saved by the Bell" star Dustin Diamond.
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