This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

You probably came across the comedian and actor Billy Eichichner the same way i did somebody probably sent you a

video of this manic guy running around new york city quizzing passers-by on questions like is this a real

tyler the creator lyric or not did you hear that madonna died and would you have sex with pauld for a dollar? Let's go. Miss, for a dollar. Would you have sex with Paul Rudd? Of course I was. Yes, thank you. Here's a dollar. Miss for a dollar. Would you have sex with Paul Rudd? Yeah. Yes, here's a dollar. Billy on the street was designed to go viral, and it did. Madonna even had the good sense not to sue him.

A decade later, Billy Eichner is starring in a form of comedy that by contrast, you'd almost

call serious and respectable. A romantic comedy called bros.

I loved rom-coms. I grew up in New York City, in Queens, and my parents and I, one of the ways we bonded is by going to movies. And I loved entertainment, loved Hollywood from a very young age. I don't know how that happened, but it just happened. I can't remember my life

before I wasn't interested in that. And there was a period of my life when my parents and I

would go to the movies every single Saturday night, regardless of whether there was even something

we really wanted to see or not. Like, we were just big moviegoers, and I loved romantic comedies.

Those were honestly some of the movies I looked forward to seeing most, and the movies

I have returned to again and again over the years.

What were some of your favorites?

I saw, if you're old enough, like me, to remember when the major studios used to do

sneak previews of movies, which they don't do anymore. But they would show you the whole movie

a week before it came out. And so my parents and I went to see a sneak preview of when Harry

met Sally at the Fresh Meadow Cineplex Odeon in Queens.

I remember seeing Moonstruck. I remember seeing Working Girl. I remember watching broadcast news and

Tutsi and just so many movies like that, which I love the Nora Ephron movies,

sleepless in Seattle. As I got older, you've got male, my best friend's wedding. Oh, I remember I saw a pretty woman at the Lowe's Trilon in Queens on Queens Boulevard. I don't know why I have a, I can tell you, I don't only remember the movies, but for some reason, especially with those movies, because I love them so much, I remember where I saw them.

In some cases, I remember where I was sitting in the movie theater.

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