And the Oscar goes to…America. Ben Gleib and Angie Greenup take an Oscar Road Trip

Yesterday, one of the Academy Awards visited Katz’s Delicatessen in New York City and asked patrons to fake an orgasm like Meg Ryan did in that scene from When Harry Met Sally.

This afternoon, Oscar is jogging up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps a la Rocky.

Tomorrow, who knows? Perhaps you do.

oscarroadtrip-gma

Gearing up for the 85th annual Academy Awards on Feb. 24, 2013, comedians Ben Gleib and Angie Greenup are traveling with an Oscar statue for an Oscar Road Trip. They kicked off the trip earlier this week with an announcement on ABC’s Good Morning America in Times Square, then after a few meet-and-greets in Manhattan, set off for a cross-country meet-and-greet with fans, giving some of them prizes in the form of tickets to attend the official red carpet in Hollywood on the 24th.

You can follow the Oscar Road Trip on Twitter @OscarRoadTrip or via The Academy’s Facebook page, and suggest a side trip in the process.

oscarroadtrip-gleib-greenup

Gleib and Greenup chatted with The Comic’s Comic on Tuesday afternoon at Serendipity, the cafe in New York City’s Upper East Side that you might have known from the 2001 rom-com Serendipity, starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, but that would only be by happy accident if you did.

How much of the trip has been planned already?

Gleib: “A lot of it, probably 70 percent, is already planned as far as cities we’re stopping in. But we’re going to be adding a few cities en route, and then people in each city can tell us where to go. We’ll be doing Twitter challenges. Pretty much, we’ll just go where I want to go, things I want to see.”

So what do you want to see?

Gleib: “Girls, mostly. I’d like to see hot girls. Because now that I’ve got an Academy Award with me, so hot girls will look at me differently than with the disdain they usually have in their eyes, when they see me, non-Oscar, non-Oscarworthy.”

I’m going to ask you, even though we’re not on camera, who are you wearing?

Gleib: “Thank you so much. I’m wearing JCPenney’s finest, actually. JCPenney outfitted us, 21 days of outfits,  for each of us, Angie and I, they’re taking care of us. People on Twitter actually chose what I wore on Good Morning America yesterday. Which is good. Because whenever I’m on Chelsea Lately, Chelsea (Handler) always hammers me on my outfits. I need America to decide for me what to wear! It takes the pressure off of me. I can blame others now. So far, it’s been good. It has been a positive response so far, to my wardrobe. I never thought my clothing would matter to anybody. But it seems to have become a topic of conversation.”

Well, I think once Chelsea decides it’s a topic, then it becomes a topic.

Gleib: “She dictates the national conversation. It’s amazing. I can’t escape it.”

So how nice is it to team up with Angie, the team of Greenup and Gleib?

Greenup: “He’s loving every minute of it. We’re going by BenGie now, they say.

Gleib: “That’s our couple name.”

Greenup: “It’s pretty cute.”

Gleib: “It’s cute. Why are you making a disgusted face while you say that?”

Greenup: “Because those combo names are all so stupid.”

You’re giving away tickets to the official red carpet stands at the Academy Awards. Will you two be on the red carpet, too, then?

Gleib: “Yes.” Greenup: “Oh, yes. That’s our final stop on the trip. We’ll bring Oscar into the stands, onto the red carpet, and they can just hang out with it.”

Will you be interviewing the celebrities on the red carpet?

Gleib: “In fact, we’ll be interviewed on the red carpet.”

Oh! Then I might as well stop now. I don’t want to spoil this for you with too many questions.

Gleib: “No, you don’t want to ruin it for other interviewers. But we’ll be on the carpet, interviewed by all of the press outlets, and we’ll be part of ABC’s pre-show. They’ll highlight and summarize our whole trip…Then we get to go to the show.”

Greenup: “It’s cool. With my hosting experience, I’m used to interviewing celebrities on the red carpet, so being on the other side, it’s fun because of all of these news outlets will be following us along the way. Extra, Access Hollywood, and whatnot, they’ll have seen us through the past couple of weeks, showing clips of our road trip, and then see us at the end.”

Gleib: “And aside from my stand-up career, Sean, I’m sure you know and do recognize that I’m a serious actor and I have been for a long time. Until now, the Academy had not recognized me for that. I got the call. ‘Look, we’re sorry you’re not nominated this year for your work in Ice Age: Continental Drift, but this is the second-best thing we can do, which is to give you this Oscar on loan. So I’ve won an Oscar! I’ve won an Oscar for my acting for the next three weeks. Then it gets yanked back like a delinquent car payment.”

Greenup said the road trip stops with Oscar will be “movie-related,” though not necessarily for Oscar-winning movie moments. Case in point: The Katz’s Deli stop for When Harry Met Sally.

Gleib: “We had people in the restaurant recreate the famous orgasm scene that Meg Ryan portrayed, and we gave the winners free bleacher tickets to the Oscars.”

Greenup: “Yeah, if they were willing to have the entire restaurant watch them reenact that scene, we should probably give them tickets to the red carpet.”

Here is the promo video Greenup and Gleib shot last weekend before launching their road trip. Roll it.

If you want to catch up with Gleib, Greenup and Oscar, the Oscar Roadtrip is scheduled to visit the following cities on the following dates:

February 4 New York
February 6 Philadelphia
February 7 Washington, D.C.
February 8 Baltimore
February 11 Chicago
February 13 St. Louis
February 14 Kansas City
February 17 Houston
February 18 Dallas
February 21 Phoenix
February 24 Hollywood

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

View all posts by Sean L. McCarthy →