Budding actor has comedic approach

Owen Rose hones his comedy on YouTube. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

For Owen Rose, life is a joke. He performs comedy on his YouTube channel.

The burgeoning actor explained his content.

“It's like a stand-up comedy minute for me,” he said. “It's trying to fit as many jokes as I can into a short amount of time about basically anything that's going on in my life.”

Nothing in Owen’s life is immune from a comic interpretation, including jobs, roommates and cutting his own hair.

“I will make jokes about anything and everything,” he said. “Whatever I think is funny, no topic or loved one is off the table. It really comes down to what YouTube thinks is appropriate to joke about or not. Most of it is just me talking just about stuff that's going on in my life.”

Owen’s content initially centered on such things as tech reviews.

“When I first started my YouTube channel, I used to do tech videos because that's what I was interested in, like phone reviews,” he said. “This was back when I had an iPod. I didn't even have a phone. So I borrow other people's phones and unbox them and that transitioned into me just talking to the camera.”

A budding thespian, Owen, 20, already has appeared in a reality court satire portraying an entitled college student being sued for throwing a party that damaged his neighbor’s car.

As character Austin Michaels, he offered the following smug defense: “I don’t see anything wrong with a little bit of partying. I think since she’s the only neighbor who didn’t move her car, there’s probably something wrong with her.”

Owen gets just the right shot for his own film.

Austin didn’t fare well in the court of Equal Justice.

During Owen’s staged court drama, he convincingly played it straight akin to Adam West in television’s campy version of Batman.

“It was like one of those fake court shows,” he said. “They just give you the scenario. They give you a page rundown of what the case is going to be, and you got to memorize as much as you can. Then you go into the courtroom, and it's all improv. I was playing a frat boy who got sued for having a wild party and throwing some water balloons filled of foam on their neighbor's car.”

A showrunner encouraged Owen to give his performance some gusto.

“We were preparing with the lady before we went on, the producer of the show, and she was basically saying ham it up, make it dramatic,” he said. “Not like it's a big joke, but just pretend like you're being sued over this dumb thing. There's a bit in it where I give her a flyer where it says here's some handmade store bought cookies.They put little jokes in it.”

Owen explained his love of performance.

“It's being in front of a camera, but acting is something different because I'm not making jokes,” he said. “Hiding behind a joke is different than acting because it's the truest form of portraying art through yourself or through a person. It's different from acting in that way. Acting is a completely different thing, a lot harder thing.”

Owen relishes the opportunities to be someone else.

“I enjoy playing other people because it gives you a character to become, rather than just presenting your true, authentic self,” he said. “There are pros and cons to both of them depending on what kind of message you're trying to convey.” 

Owen’s Austin reacts to the judge’s comments.

Owen took a temporary job in Alaska to earn some much-needed revenue.

“I was going to acting school in L.A. and I'm trying to go back there after Alaska,” he said. “I just came here because I ran out of money.”

Owen always had an interest in performing.

“It mainly started when me and my friends in middle school,” he said. “We would do skits in the library. We would skip Spanish class and go to the library because the librarian loved us. We would make skits or raps. That's when I first started acting, but not consciously. I just wanted to make cool things.”

Getting in front of the camera came next for Owen.

“I wanted to be a YouTuber because I looked up to all these YouTubers,” he said. “In the middle of high school, I was like, maybe this is not a good plan. Maybe it's not the most reliable. It's like trying to be an astronaut as a kid, maybe it just doesn't work out. But I was always interested in film, so I went to college to try to be a filmmaker, and then that's where I started acting was in the filmmaking classes.”

Owen cut his acting teeth in student films.

“We were making short films,” he said. “I would just start acting in those. That's when I realized I wanted to fully follow it as a career path. I don't think I want to be a YouTuber now. It's a good stepping stone, because in the end goal, I do want to be an actor.”

However, Owen enjoys making content in the interim.

“I love making YouTube videos,” he said. “It's a passion of mine.  I like displaying parts of who I am on camera, making jokes. It's just really fun.”

Owen, right, works on a student film.

Owen targets daily occurrences for content subjects.

“This is the thing that I struggle with a lot because my videos don't really have a specific topic,” he said. “Most of the time, I'm just going throughout my day. Whenever something funny happens or I think it's something funny, I just write it down. I have a huge notes list of stupid things that I think or people say to me. I go through those and I see if I can get enough to make one continuous flow of a video.”

Not everyone is a fan of Owen’s style of comedy.

“My mom doesn't like my videos a lot because she says I'm too negative about things,” he said. “Not everything in life is good, obviously. A way of making it humorous is just making fun of the things that are bad. It'd be different if I went on my YouTube channel and was talking about all the things that I hated and not adding any humorous element to it. I watch a lot of stand-up comedy. What they do is they're picking apart things in a funny way. That's what I want to try to do.”

Owen didn’t start off at ease in front of the lens.

“It took me a while to get comfortable on camera,” he said. “My first YouTube videos, I was in seventh grade, were embarrassing. I was learning how to talk for the first time in front of a camera. But the more you do it, the more you get comfortable doing it. I think about stand-up comedy the same way, but I'm also terrified of trying that. If your jokes don't work, you're going to see right away. People are going to tell you immediately. I've always wanted to try it, but that's terrifying to me.”

Owen was initially inspired by a comedian/musician.

“I used to listen to a lot of Bo Burnham,” he said. “He was a musical comedian. I don't really listen to him anymore, but I just like the musical element, making comedic songs. I started doing that.”

Owen’s film is about two boys who find a dead body, leading them down a dark path.

Owen now favors a comedian known for podcasting.

“More recently, I like Theo Von's style of comedy, where you can't even really tell if he's joking or not,” he said. “It seems like his whole character is the bit. That's so admirable to be dedicated to the bit so much that it's your whole style of comedy. People think he's dumb because he's playing into a joke, but never alludes to the fact that he's joking. That's so genius to just have that character always on.”

Owen’s YouTube inspirations include a vlogger who is an independent filmmaker.

“The biggest one was Casey Neistat,” he said. “I watched a bunch of his stuff because I was interested in filmmaking. I thought he had a really cool perspective on independent filmmaking because he would refer to vlogs as movies, basically short films. Every day was another short film. He had a narrative. He had a resolution at the end, music and backtracking shows. Every day, he made a short film about his life. I thought that was just the coolest thing.”

Owen was impressed with Neistat making the films with so little.

“He was my big inspiration for making movies with what you have and not just the equipment,” he said. “If you just have yourself, make it about yourself or what you're doing or what's going on. He always had the backdrop of New York City, so it's a lot easier for him to find people to talk to than it was me living in my house in Florida.”

Owen cited his acting inspirations.

“I really liked Jim Carrey, but that was before I knew a lot about movies,” he said. “When I first started getting into movies, it was either Ryan Gosling or Daniel Kaluuya. They both have such a subtle rage behind their eyes and almost a loneliness that they portray, like Daniel Kaluuya and Nope. That's one of my favorite movies. It's a very subdued and quiet performance, but you can tell everything that's going on in his head through his eyes.”

Owen said actors need to be able to show emotion without dialogue.

“Ninety percent of communication is nonverbal,” he said. “Without any dialogue, to communicate something just through your facial expressions is very inspiring to me.”

Owen developed a love of film at a time when his activities were limited.

“I fell in love with film probably sophomore year of high school,” he said. “During Covid, my family sold our house and bought an RV because they thought we were going to live in an RV full-time, which didn't really work out. We were only there for six weeks. But during that time, I watched tons and tons of movies, and that's where I started falling in love with movies. La La Land was the first one where I was like, this is insane that you can make somebody feel this way through a movie.”

Younger Owen makes a video in his middle school library.

The power of film to make the viewer feel emotion appealed to Owen.

“And then Punch-Drunk Love,” he said. “You feel something different through that. The acting in that from Adam Sandler is an insane, rare dramatic performance from him that is really underrated. The music in that, everything comes together to make you feel something through film. That's what I fell in love with: how certain films can make you feel a certain way. It's a two-hour pocket of emotion that you can turn on and learn something about something or yourself or others. It's my favorite form of art.”

While impressed with dramatic portrayals, Owen wants to do comedic roles.

“I want to do comedy mostly,” he said. “The dream gig would be one of the main cast on a sitcom. They don't really have as many sitcoms anymore as 10 or 20 years ago. But have eight years of your life dedicated to playing the same funny character on TV, that would be a dream role. I also love dramatic things. I don't think I would do well in period pieces. I'll steer clear of those. But comedy mostly. That's what I really want to do. Writing comedy and performing comedy.”

Owen doesn’t care for everything labeled comedy.

“I don't really like comedy movies a lot,’ he said. “Most of the time, movies that are trying to make me laugh don't really make me laugh. All of Wes Anderson's movies are hilarious. It really depends on what kind of comedy it is. If it's just a flat-out TV comedy, I'm not really that interested in doing it. But if it's a stylized, commentary comedy, that's my dream.”

Owen auditions for an independent film.

Owen would take an acting career as far as it could go.

“I don't really think about that right now,” he said. “But if that's what it comes to, I'll sell my soul to the devil.”

Owen wants his social media followers to be entertained.

“I just want them to laugh,” he said. “In my videos, the whole thing is me being satiric. When they don't catch on to the fact that it's not a joke, that's when it seems like I'm a brash, arrogant dude saying something stupid. I just want people to laugh. I just want people to get it.”

Owen hopes to be remembered someday for being funny.

“Funny is what I'd go for,” he said. “Just be a funny performer.”

Owen’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@owenrose3674/videos