A JASON SEGEL A DAY IS GETTING OLD
Comedian eating photos of star’s face can’t stomach him anymore
When Toronto comedian Noah Maloney first went viral with his plan — film himself eating a picture of Jason Segel’s face every day until Segel ate a picture of his face — his gut feeling was that it would be about two weeks of pulpy unpleasantness before the actor would step up.
Maloney has since had to eat his words.
May 17 will mark the 90th video in Maloney’s series and, to put it simply, the 19-year-old Humber College comedy student is getting sick of consuming the photos.
“When it was viral, we were super confident this would be over in two weeks, especially after (Segel’s) sister tweeted it,” Maloney, 19, sighed recently. “But she deleted the tweets now. So we don’t know what’s going on.”
Maloney’s dietary feat has yielded some positives: he scored a commercial and gets recognized daily (“They’ll just yell at me: ‘Eat my face, Segel!’ ”)
However, with the stunt drawing increasingly less attention (the first video drew 700,000-plus views, while recent entries hover closer to four digits), the Star caught up with Maloney to see if he was eyeing an exit plan. (Segel’s spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment.)
You’re approaching your 90th day doing this. Is that a good milestone or a bad milestone?
They’re all bad milestones now. When we were in the heat of it, we thought, “It sucks this is only going to last three days. We’re not going to get to have fun with it.” Now there’s no fun at all.
Do you have a favourite video?
The band one was probably my favourite. The tattoo one will still probably always be the best. My least favourite is the one that I choked and thought I was going to die. I don’t really have a favourite. It’s all just smushed together and never stops.
What happened when you almost died?
I just dumped the whole picture in a cup of beer. I got too confident and put the whole picture in one ball down my throat and it was just lodged there. For 15 seconds, I was like, “Oh s---, this could be how I go.” It would have meant Jason killed me, which would be a very funny outcome, but at the time it was very scary and I was pretty shaken up.
But you still ate the regurgitated picture.
Yeah, I was home for the weekend and only had one picture and we had to upload before midnight. So I had to pick up my gross, in-my-throat picture and keep going.
How’s your stomach?
Two weeks ago I almost went to the doctor for the first time because my stomach was feeling weird and I felt clogged up. But I forgot to go and the next week felt fine.
Has anyone encouraged you to stop?
My mom really hates it now. At the beginning she was so excited and really happy. But now when I’m home, she won’t help me print off a picture. She won’t let me use her printer. She just does not like it. Other than that, people in my hometown (Woodstock, Ont.) are either really supportive or there are some guys who post on my Facebook that I’m an idiot, which I think is pretty funny too.
Frankly, as the numbers go down it’s becoming less likely that Jason Segel ever eats your photo. Have you considered an exit strategy?
We’re starting a crowdfund to raise the money to drive a van to L.A. at the end of the summer and find him. Either at a press event or possibly his house, if we have to, or with him if we can convince him. That’s our last hurrah, hopefully. Maybe we’ll get a restraining order and I can eat it on camera. If that doesn’t work, we’ll do the original backup plan of changing my name to Jason Segel.
Is some part of you starting to resent Jason Segel for not just eating a picture of you?
Oh yeah. I don’t like him anymore. He definitely knows about it. He’s made the choice not to do it. I don’t get it at all. He tweeted for the first time the other day that he wrote a book, so I’ll probably eat every page of his new book. I’m not a fan anymore, that’s for sure.