Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#4585
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Jon Glaser works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Jon Glaser appears in 14 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Jon. A Parks and Recreation Special is the clearest case: a film rated 7.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, drama, horror. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Andrew DeYoung, Michael Cusack, Adam McKay and others, Jon Glaser helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
A Parks and Recreation Special (2020) as Councilman Jamm · Don't Look Up (2021) as Meow Man · Friendship (2025) as Big Sam
Career snapshot
Ranked #4585 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
14
2001–2025
Career length
24 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.6
A Parks and Recreation Special
Average Nutevio score
6.0
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
A Parks and Recreation Special
Most frequent director
Andrew DeYoung
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Andrew DeYoung
Most common genre
Comedy
14 titles
Average runtime
1h 36m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2020s
6.4 average MV
The 2020s are where the work and the material meet. Friendship, The Paloni Show! Halloween Special!, Don't Look Up — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2020s
6.4
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2020s
6.4
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Be Kind Rewind, The Rocker, Baby Mama.
Most productive era
2000s
5 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.31 film | — | 6.03 films |
| Action | 5.11 film | — | — |
| Comedy | 5.85 films | 5.84 films | 6.45 films |
| Romance | 5.82 films | 5.81 film | — |
| Horror | — | — | 6.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
2001Pootie Tang
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Recording Engineer (as John Glaser).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
2020A Parks and Recreation Special
7.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2025Friendship
The current state of the argument, as Big Sam.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
14 of 14 films
as Meow Man
Directed by Adam McKay
as Big Sam
Directed by Andrew DeYoung
as Werewolf Jones (voice)
Directed by Michael Cusack
Directed by Dylan Redford
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Councilman Jamm
A Parks and Recreation Special (2020)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Councilman Jamm gives Jon Glaser a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Meow Man
Don't Look Up (2021)
Performance score7.0
Don't Look Up asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Meow Man is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Big Sam
Friendship (2025)
Performance score6.5
Friendship asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Big Sam is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Werewolf Jones (voice)
The Paloni Show! Halloween Special! (2022)
Performance score6.5
The Paloni Show! Halloween Special! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Werewolf Jones (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Councilman Jamm
Start here. A Parks and Recreation Special is the clearest statement of what Jon Glaser does — accessible, 25 minutes, and rated 7.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Jon at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia (2020)
Keeps the comedy register of A Parks and Recreation Special but asks for a colder reading of it.
Don't Look Up (2021)
Keeps the comedy register of Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Paloni Show! Halloween Special! (2022)
Keeps the comedy register of Don't Look Up but asks for a colder reading of it.
Friendship (2025)
Keeps the comedy register of The Paloni Show! Halloween Special! but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Louis C.K.
Director
1 film together
Notably Pootie Tang
Todd Phillips
Director
1 film together
Notably School for Scoundrels
Michael McCullers
Director
1 film together
Notably Baby Mama
Michel Gondry
Director
1 film together
Notably Be Kind Rewind
Larry Charles
Director
1 film together
Notably The Dictator
Jason Moore
Director
1 film together
Notably Sisters
Judd Apatow
Director
1 film together
Notably Trainwreck
Morgan Sackett
Director
1 film together
Notably A Parks and Recreation Special
Dylan Redford
Director
1 film together
Notably Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia
Adam McKay
Director
1 film together
Notably Don't Look Up
Michael Cusack
Director
1 film together
Notably The Paloni Show! Halloween Special!
Andrew DeYoung
Director
1 film together
Notably Friendship
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Morgan Sackett
Director
1 film together · 7.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Parks and Recreation SpecialAdam McKay
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Don't Look UpAndrew DeYoung
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
FriendshipMichael Cusack
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Paloni Show! Halloween Special!Michel Gondry
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Be Kind RewindLarry Charles
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The DictatorJason Moore
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SistersMichael McCullers
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Baby MamaJudd Apatow
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TrainwreckTodd Phillips
Director
1 film together · 5.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
School for ScoundrelsLouis C.K.
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Pootie TangDylan Redford
Director
1 film together · 4.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Omniboat: A Fast Boat FantasiaSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Don't Look Up
as Meow Man
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Baby Mama
as Vegan Waiter
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
A Parks and Recreation Special
as Councilman Jamm
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Don't Look Up
as Meow Man
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
A Parks and Recreation Special
as Councilman Jamm
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Jon Glaser has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
24 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
14 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
A Parks and Recreation Special
as Councilman Jamm
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
A Parks and Recreation Special
as Councilman Jamm
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Trainwreck
as Schultz
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Don't Look Up
as Meow Man
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
A Parks and Recreation Special
as Councilman Jamm
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Pootie Tang
as Recording Engineer (as John Glaser)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Rocker
as Billy
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
Which Jon Glaser performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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