President Obama impersonator Louis Ortiz in D.C. for Inauguration Day

WASHINGTON - Professional impersonator Louis Ortiz has put his physical resemblance to President Obama to good use. Over the last several years, Ortiz has carved a living out of his uncanny resemblance to the Commander in Chief. On Inauguration Day 2013, Ortiz was spotted in Washington, D.C. on the National Mall during the President's swearing in ceremony.

Obama’s not from Kenya. He’s from the Bronx
NBCNews.com and MSNBC Correspondent Trymaine Lee

As the election returns began to trickle in last November, Louis Ortiz, a laid-off telephone man from the Bronx, bit his nails, squeezed his eyes shut and prayed like he’d never prayed before. But when he opened his eyes, all he saw on TV was a wave of Republican red sweeping up from Texas and into the Midwest. “It was too stressful,” said Ortiz. “I couldn’t deal. So I just went to bed.”

Later that night Ortiz was shaken to his feet by a chorus of whoops, hollers and the blare of Spanish music rolling in from his parents’ living room. Ortiz’s mother bounded breathlessly into the room.

“Cito, Cito,” she screamed. “We got Ohio, we got Ohio! Obama won Ohio! It’s over! We won!” Ortiz double-checked his mother’s Electoral College math and let out a scream of his own.

“It was like I was living in a parallel universe with Obama. We had to win,” Ortiz told MSNBC.com on Thursday, standing on a cold, busy corner in the Bronx. “And it was like him getting reelected was the same as me getting reelected. He was fighting for a second chance and so was I.”

If Barack Obama’s presidency has directly benefited an individual American in any real, tangible way, it’s Ortiz, whose resemblance to the president has delivered him from unemployment and near pennilessness to a relatively lucrative career as an Obama impersonator— “Bronx Obama.”

For Ortiz, a second Obama term means a second lease on life, giving him another four years in which to parlay Obama’s political success into his own economic survival, booking paid gigs across the country and as far away as South Korea and even an audience with the Dali Lama. “It’s like I’m in the Twilight Zone,” Ortiz said. “And I love it!”

A filmmaker is currently shooting a documentary called The Audacity of Louis Ortiz; it’s scheduled for release later this year. “Bronx Obama” recently signed on with a talent management agency, William Gold Entertainment, that has bolstered his status and put money, resources and know-how behind the “look-alike thing” Ortiz says he was doing for much of Obama’s first term. He spends hours a day honing his craft and has taken the occasional acting class. He’s worked as part of a group of other impersonators, including a surreal-sounding appearance with a Bill Clinton impersonator and a Donald Trump lookalike moderating a debate with fake Sarah Palin and fake Mitt Romney. His weeks are filled with corporate events and fundraisers, public appearances and media interviews. His fees can be in the hundreds or the thousands, and he’s finally making a decent income. “I live on a plane,” Ortiz said.

Just four years ago life wasn’t all planes, trains, and corporate cash. Back then Ortiz was living small: no income, no prospects. He’d been fired from his job at the phone company about a year earlier and was fighting to get it back. He lost his health insurance and the lack of medical attention exacerbated his multiple sclerosis. He was locked in a nasty custody battle for his then-12-year-old daughter. And the legal costs for the court case involving his daughter and arbitration for his job were mounting.

“I just didn’t know how I was going to make it. And didn’t think I would. I was just sitting down with my little bit of hope,” Ortiz said. “I was really going nuts.” Ortiz was used to providing for himself and helping to support his family, including his daughter, who didn’t live with him at the time. He said he’d always held a job but found himself, for the first time, unable to make ends meet.

“And then here comes this shining star from Hawaii.”

It was the summer of 2008: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were battling for the Democratic presidential nomination, and a couple of his drinking buddies at a local bar pointed out Ortiz’s resemblance to Obama, who was on the cover of one of New York City’s tabloid newspapers. Ortiz had the ears if nothing else, and there was something about the way his eyebrows hung closely over his eyes, the way they squint when he laughed hard or smiled wide.

He didn’t have much to lose, so he shaved his goatee, slipped on a suit and tie and picked up as much of Obama’s cadence as he could.

Where Louis Ortiz, always affable and social, had his light dimmed by hard times, Bronx Obama shined, he said. Bronx Obama stopped traffic. Strangers were asking to take pictures with him. And people were actually paying for him to appear at local events.

Obama’s election in 2008 solidified his role. Ortiz remembers the moment well. He said he’d suited up and grabbed a couple of his buddies to ride with him into Manhattan. (An entourage of men in suits and dark shades helps him get in character.) But as the group stopped at a Bronx gas station for orange juice, gunshots rang out. Then screaming.

Was it a shootout? An attempted assassination? Nope, word had gotten out that Obama had defeated John McCain to become the 44th President of the United States.

“People were cheering and shooting all over the Bronx,” Ortiz said. Later, the group drove into Manhattan where Ortiz was greeted with cheers and backslaps.

Careerwise, things picked up even more after the election. But Ortiz still had one foot in an imaginary Oval Office and the other in his real life in the Bronx. He heard from his lawyer that he wouldn’t get back his old job or the $400,000 back pay he was asking for. He cried for about three weeks, he says: “Niagara Falls.” Then he was asked to do an episode of This American Life. His appearance on the show led to more press and more paying gigs. “When I think back, the lowest point—that I wasn’t getting my job back—turned out to be the highest point,” Ortiz said. “I got my answer and I decided to go full force with the Obama thing.” He began studying his competition, the Jay Lamonts and Reggie Browns who had built up big followings and big bank accounts doing their Obama impersonations.

Earlier this week, about an hour before his train to Connecticut for a shoot with ESPN was scheduled to leave, Ortiz walked into the station and checked the departure board. It’d be a long day, a long couple of weeks really. He’d be at ESPN most of the day. Then it would be back to the Bronx before a gig in New Jersey the next day, then off to Washington, D.C., to schmooze-up the inauguration crowd. Then it would be back to Jersey for a fundraiser at a church on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

“Every once in a while I sit back and say, am I sitting in first class right now on the way to D.C. or some other city to do a show for a bunch of CPA’s?” Ortiz said, breaking slowly into a huge Obama-ish grin. “Yes, yes I am.”

World famous Barack Obama impersonator Louis Ortiz guest stars on MTV's Matt's Apartment, a popular comedy web series.

In this episode of Matt’s Apartment Show – or Matt Zaller’s Girlfriend’s Apartment’s Movie-Related Show, if you’re not busy — Matt  solicits the help of a meteorologist to understand the new movie “Cloud Atlas.” Well, a former meteorologist. Who loves movies.

Watch the episode here: http://mattzaller.com/post/34234107231/in-this-episode-of-matts-apartment-show-or-matt

World renowned Bill Clinton impersonator Tim Watters (appeared over 200 times on NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno), Politicos Comedy Brigade, and William Gold Entertainment teamed up this past November 19, 2012 at Grand Hyatt New York City to donate entertainment to the Annual Gala of Chabad's Children of Chernobyl. Watters performed a keynote speech and assisted in the Celebrity Fantasy auction, appearing side by side on stage with Academy Award Winner Jon Voight.



All of us here at William Gold Entertainment wish Chabad's Children of Chernobyl the best in their noble mission of evacuating children from the radioactive Chernobyl region, provides them with critical medical care, and giving them loving new homes and an excellent education in Israel.

Politicos Comedy Brigade just wrapped up its most successful year yet, and the Comedy Campaign 2012 tour was certainly one of its highlights. Pictured above from left to right, political comedian Scott Blakeman, Barack Obama impersonator Louis Ortiz, Donald Trump impersonator John Di Domenico, and Bill Clinton impersonator Tim Watters prepare to go on stage in Newburyport, MA at Steeple Hall.

By Eric Spitznagel, Bloomberg Businessweek

“If you call most look-alike agencies and ask for a Marilyn Monroe, they’ll charge you $500 and not tell you that the girl has a heroin problem,” says Gold. But if one of Gold’s clients requests a Mitt Romney impersonator from his agency, the New York-based Politicos Comedy Brigade, he’ll send them honest evaluations of his impersonators, including unflattering details. “I’ll tell ‘em, ‘This guy looks really good, but he’s a lot shorter than the real deal.’ Or, ‘His voice is OK, but he’s not a great comedian.’ I want them to know exactly what they’re paying for.”

The Politicos Comedy Brigade, which Gold founded less than four years ago, offers more than just fake Barack Obamas and Mitt Romneys. (He has two of each.) The company’s roster includes a Bill and Hillary Clinton (available together or separately), both Bush presidents, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, Dick Cheney, and two Sarah Palins. For history buffs, there are such former presidents as William Howard Taft, Teddy Roosevelt, and John Adams.

The hottest ticket are his Faux-bamas, who can make up to $15,000 for just a 30-minute performance. The majority of Gold’s business is corporate entertainment. “It’s a mixture of sales conferences, association dinners, and political and nonprofit fundraisers,” he says. The Brigade has done shows for Microsoft, LinkedIn, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Unilever, AT&T, SONY, and General Electric, among many others. Gold’s commission ranges “anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent for any given show.”

“We’re one-stop shopping for political impersonators,” says Gold, a 31-year-old native of Avalon, N.J. “If Motorola wants to do a trade show with Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama talking about which cell phones they use, we can offer that. If they want Obama and Bill Clinton and George Bush doing a Rat Pack-type show, we can offer that, too. We can do anything, in any combination, tailored to their needs.”

Gold puts his performers through an intensive boot camp of voice lessons and acting training before he’ll allow them out into the field. “Most of my guys aren’t professional performers,” he says. “They just look like somebody famous. So they have to go from being a mechanic to performing in front of hundreds of people.” Even after weeks and sometimes months of lessons, Gold is rarely satisfied. “A client might say, ‘I don’t care if your Mitt Romney doesn’t have the voice, we just want them for photos.’ But I won’t settle for that. I want them to be the complete package.”

Fake politics isn’t immune to controversy. Reggie Brown, one of Gold’s Obama impersonators, angered a conservative crowd at a Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans in July. Midway through his speech—in which he made off-color jokes about conservative candidates (plus Romney’s Mormon faith and the touchy subject of polygamy) and then made a reference to Obama’s biracial roots that RLC President Charlie Davis described as “racially insensitive”—Brown’s microphone was switched off and he was escorted away from the podium.

“He was supposedly yanked from the stage,” Gold recalls, “although that wasn’t at all what occurred.” The incident spawned a media frenzy—”the best publicity we’ve ever gotten,” Gold admits—and Brown was suddenly in high demand, fielding interview offers from Bill Maher and Mike Huckabee.

Even if Obama wins the election, it doesn’t mean Brown’s job is safe. “We’ve been having creative differences,” Gold says. Luckily for him, he has more than one Obama to choose from.

Friday night at the Log Cabin in Holyoke people were treated to a look at the lighter side of politics with some political look alike.

It was a debate between Obama and Romney with Bubba Clinton as the moderator.

President Obama’s look alike tells us making people laugh is a great feeling, but with so many big personalities, it can be hard to get a word in.

“It’s incredibly awesome, there’s nothing better than to put a smile on someone’s face and that’s what we’re here to do. I’ve been out stumping for the kid, because quite frankly, he needs my help.  It’s a tough job to fill, I feel your pain,” says the Obama Look-A-Like who did not identify himself.

There was also a Donald Trump Look-A-Like at the show as well.

The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer recently featured Politicos Comedy Brigade's visit to Times Square. Reporter Alina Cho visited with Barack Obama impersonator Maxwell Price and Mitt Romney impersonator Jim Gossett to discuss the state of political comedy during the Election Season.

This story refers to Maxwell Price by his given name Louis Ortiz. Maxwell Price is Louis' stage name.

¿De paseo Obama y Romney?

Los imitadores Louis Ortiz y Mike Cote confunden a los transeúntes por su gran parecido a los candidatos a la presidencia de los EE.UU.

Pareciera que el presidente Barack Obama y el candidato republicano Mitt Romney dejaran a un lado temporalmente la campaña previo a las elecciones y se fueron a compartir un rato. Se trata de un par de imitadores a quienes hay que mirar dos veces para percatarse de que no son los políticos. (AFP)



El boriqua Louis Ortiz imita a Barack Obama y se confunde con la gente en las calles de Nueva York. Los transeúntes lo miran dos veces y luego sonríen al percatarse de que se trata de un imitador. (AFP)



Mike Cote es el imitador del republicano Mitt Romney. Ver a la gente que estrecharnos la mano y luego darse cuenta de que se trata de imitadores, me parte el corazó, dijo Cote. (AFP)



El cabello gris, su frente prominente, sus cejas y ojos pequeños y brillantes son lo suficientemente buenos para confundir a muchos que creen estar ante el multimillonario que quiere llegar a la Casa Blanca.



Mike Cote dice que Romney es difícil de imitar, especialmente su voz. (AFP)



La vida de los imitadores es tan salvaje e insegura como la de los políticos. Pero con dos meses por delante antes de las elecciones presidenciales, ésta es una buena época para Ortiz y Cote. (AFP)

For the full story, please visit El Nuevo Dia: http://www.elnuevodia.com/fotodetalle-depaseoobamayromney-1360989.html/6