Who is Brian Atene? A month ago, apparently, if you Googled his name, all you would turn up was a school photo from the late 1970s. Now, thanks to the star-making power of You Tube, the Google query “Brian Atene” triggers an avalanche of 49,900 results. The sudden prominence is all down to a YouTube audition tape that took blogger Panopticist‘s fancy. His posting was picked up by Boing Boing, one of the most popular blogs of them all, and the video became a near sensation. It’s not hard to see why. The tape feature Atene’s hilariously inept and bizarrely over-confident “audition” for a role in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. The sheer awfulness of the tryout reaches a crescendo with Atene’s carpet-chewing “reading” of a speech from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders.

Atene clearly doesn’t suffer from self-esteem issues. Because rather than praying that this ephemeral fame will quickly blow over, Atene is (it seems) back after 20 years, and he just loves the attention.

Of course, given the impossibility of gauging the provenance of material on the web, these videos might not be “authentic.” They could be cleverly designed artefacts from some acting-school project or viral-marketing campaign. However, if that is the case, they reveal a talent for provoking vicarious embarrassment that puts Ricky Gervais in the ha’penny place.

And if the videos are “for real,” be afraid, be very afraid.