Jello Biafra (birth name: Eric Boucher) has had quite the colorful career in show business already. In addition to being the lead singer of the notorious Dead Kennedys and the crooner of such memorable ditties as “Too Drunk To Fuck” and “California Uber Alles,” Biafra has branched out into politics, running for mayor of San Francisco in 1979 on the platform that businessmen should wear clown suits. For the last 30 years, meanwhile, he’s also been semi-quietly cultivating an acting career in both TV and movies, cropping up in such memorable films as Tapeheads and Bikini Bandits. Back in 2014, he made a memorable guest appearance on IFC’s Portlandia as a man who has been in a coma since 1986 and is appalled to find that everything he hated about the 1980s is still around, only mutated into something even worse.
As it happens, Biafra is looking for more acting work, and he has posted a 7-minute acting reel to the official YouTube channel of Alternative Tentacles, the influential punk label he founded back in 1979. For a moonlighting singer, Jello Biafra displays some admirable range here. As the clips prove, he can play a humorless FBI agent and a sleazy businessman with equal aplomb. Certainly, he holds his own against Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein in that aforementioned Portlandia sketch. And he’s willing to attempt a Southern accent or endure grotesque makeup if necessary. Hopefully, casting directors will see this reel and decide that there is sufficient room for Biafra in some upcoming productions.
[via Dangerous Minds]