Brian Fischler

The World’s Funniest Blind Comedian and Writer

Comedy

Early on, Brian was known as the Blind Comedian. These days he is a comedian who happens to be blind.

Brian Fischler performing at the Hollywood Improv in a checked trilby and dark wraparound sunglasses, close up on the microphone, mid-line and half-smiling under purple stage light.
The Hollywood Improv.

Watch

A set

Three minutes from Laugh For Sight 2024

Gotham Comedy Club, New York. Captions are on by default. This is a club set and the language is club language. Brian works clean on request — just ask.

Vomitous Interruptous

From That Real Blind Tech Show, with Allison Meloy and David Goldstein. Allison is explaining something useful about GitHub. Brian is not helping.

Transcript

Allison: So it’s going to be open source on GitHub. But even with that, if you—

Brian: [retching]

Allison: Oh my God.

Brian: Sorry, that’s my thoughts on GitHub. Sorry, go ahead.

Allison: I’ll send you a direct download link, dear. Don’t worry, don’t worry. But yeah, so if you — even if you’re putting an app together, you still need a signed developer account, even if you’re hosting it somewhere else.

Brian: Okay, hold on, just in case that didn’t come through, like the half burp half laugh—

[vomiting sound effect from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off]

Brian: That was me vomiting in my mouth.

Allison: Yes, I know. Yes. Yes.

Brian: I haven’t vomited in my mouth in a while. When was the last time you vomited in your mouth?

Allison: Probably the last time I had a little too much to drink.

Brian: Give me a little kiss, baby.

Allison: Really? So close to after-vomiting?

Brian: David, are you an AV kind of kisser?

David: You said AV, and I’m thinking, where is this going?

Brian: After vomiting, baby.

David: Yeah, yeah, no, I got it.

Brian: It’s what the cool kids call an acronym. Sorry, Allison, I just have weird shit popping into my head.

Allison: You derailed my talk with your vomit.

Brian: Vomitous Interruptous.

Allison: And there’s the show title.

The act

What it’s about

Like most comedians, Brian’s act is personal. Family. Getting older. The way blindness has changed his life. And the reliably absurd encounters that happen when the rest of the world has no idea how to behave around a blind man.

He came to stand-up from film and entertainment by way of executive search on Wall Street, and started performing as his sight was going. Twenty-plus years later he has worked most of the rooms worth working, largely as an opener — which is to say, as the comic a headliner trusts to hand them a warm room.

2007

The Walk This Way Comedy Tour

A short tour with three other disabled comics, on the shared premise that all four of them walked non-traditionally. It finished at Columbia University — the only booking in Brian’s career that arrived with a written list of subjects he was not permitted to mention.

He opened with: “Columbia University. I had to go into stand-up comedy to get in here.”

Credits

Where and with whom

Clubs

  • Gotham Comedy Club
  • Carolines on Broadway
  • The Hollywood Improv
  • The Comedy Store
  • The Laugh Factory
  • The Comedy and Magic Club
  • The DC Improv
  • The Orlando Improv
  • The Ft. Lauderdale Improv
  • The West Palm Improv

Opened for

  • Kevin James — two shows, the Comedy and Magic Club
  • Ray Romano — two shows, the Comedy and Magic Club
  • Pablo Francisco — several dates around the country
  • Rich Vos and Bonnie McFarlane
  • Tom Papa — guested, the West Palm Improv

Television and film

  • The Today Show, NBC — several appearances
  • Top Gear USA, History Channel — won the Blind Drift Challenge
  • NBC Nightly News — on testing Be My AI
  • Today in New York
  • Today in South Florida
  • Beverly Hills, 90210 — the original series
  • VisionZone: You’re Not Alone Anymore — short film
  • Texas Instruments Speak & Math commercial, as a child, with Bill Cosby

Also

Acting, briefly

VisionZone

Around 2009, Optelec — a maker of low vision devices — produced a short narrative film to promote VisionZone, a social network for blind and low vision people and their families. The site lasted a few years. The film survives.

Brian, totally blind at the time, was cast as a man with low vision. The part called for a white cane rather than a guide dog, so Nash was removed from the set and spent the entire shoot sitting off camera, watching his handler pretend to see better than he did.

Along the way

Photos

Four people posed together at a bar: Sarah Silverman in a red Boston Red Sox beanie and purple scarf, Kevin Nealon in a red diamond-patterned shirt, Brian Fischler in a brown hat and tinted glasses wearing a denim shirt embroidered with the Guiding Eyes for the Blind logo, and Kevin Pollak in a black leather jacket.
With Sarah Silverman, Kevin Nealon and Kevin Pollak at the Hollywood Improv, for the first Los Angeles Laugh For Sight.
Jim Gaffigan, Robert Klein and Brian Fischler standing together in front of a Laugh For Sight sponsor backdrop, with Brian's yellow Labrador guide dog Nash in harness in front of them.
With Jim Gaffigan, Robert Klein and Nash at Laugh For Sight, Gotham Comedy Club. Klein has been Brian’s mentor in comedy.
  • Brian Fischler and Kevin James standing together in front of a wall covered in comedians' signatures and scrawled messages.
    Opening for Kevin James at the Comedy and Magic Club.
  • Brian Fischler with Ray Romano and another man standing outside a door marked Green Room.
    Opening for Ray Romano at the Comedy and Magic Club.

Get in touch

Booking

Brian is not in the clubs six nights a week any more, and that is deliberate. He is available for corporate shows, benefits, colleges, hosting and select club dates.

Brian@LaughForSight.com