Trumpet Guy

About

Trumpet Guy, also known as Trumpet Fight Guy, is a nickname given to Douglas Levison, who is most famous for his appearance in a viral YouTube video where he gets into an argument with a teenager over the boy's playing of the trumpet. The clip inspired numerous video and redraw memes.

Origin

On October 14th, 2013, a video titled "trumpet fight" was posted to YouTube with the caption: "Crazed New Yorker refuses to let a man play his trumpet in the streets of the city." The video depicts a middle-aged New Yorker with a trash bag telling a teenage boy that he sucked at playing the trumpet. He demanded that the boy leave the area where he was playing while the boy continued to play his trumpet. As the video progresses the man continues to tell the teenager that he has no talent and about how his own life accomplishments are far superior to that of the trumpet players' until the video abruptly ends. The video gained over five million views in ten years.^[2]

Spread

Many people found Trumpet Guy's rant (real name Doug Levinson^[1]) to be very quotable. Some of the most popular quotes include:

"You're no artist!"
"No talent!"
"You're nothing!"
"In 1975 I walked Bob Dylan up on stage!"

The video was brought back to light following a September 12th, 2018 video in which Youtuber Whang! made a video dedicated to analyzing the original clip.^[3] Whang's video gained over 1.5 million views in five years (shown below).

The topic was also made popular around the same time in the OneyPlays community after being referenced several times.

Since the original video went viral, Doug has participated in a handful of YouTube interviews where he shared his side of the story.^[4][5] Through these various interviews, it was revealed that the teenager had been disturbing the peace in front of New York's Holocaust museum, and he had almost run Douglas over with his bike.^[6] In addition, the song that he was playing is known as ''Oh Suzannah'', a song infamous for its racist lyrics.^[7] Doug took the time to share parts of his life story in the later parts of the videos.

In 2014, Doug embraced his infamous reputation by playing the role of an angry pedestrian yelling at a group of singers in a deleted scene from the film Heaven Knows What.^[8]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References