By the time Nick Andrews entered  college, he already had a hit YouTube video under his belt and a Wikipedia page. Now, he is in the running for a national comedy competition.

First Andrews’ hands were bananas.

This led to him driving cross-country for an MTV-affiliate reality show mtvU’s College 500.

In one of his latest ventures, the Helena-native portrays the son of God, the rapping version.

Andrews’ first foray into fame was his YouTube smash video “My Hands are Bananas,” which is nearing six million views. The black and white music video features German accents, monkeys and of course hands made of bananas, and it has many parodies online.

“It’s brought a lot of joy to a lot of people,” Andrews said. “But, it’s not the biggest thing I want to achieve.”

Andrews, now a junior at Montana State University, is currently involved in a national comedy competition, for which he played the rapping rendition of Jesus in “Heaven.” The short film was chosen as one of the top eight in Rooftop Comedy’s 2009 National College Funny Film Competition. As one of the top contenders, Andrews, 20, and his partners will create a new video with the theme: Why college sucks.

Andrews said he is not quite sure if college does indeed suck because he gets to do what he loves — writing, acting and filming — for credit, but he is positive his crew will come up with something snazzy.

Those eight films will be whittled down to four, which will be screened at the 2010 Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival, where a combination of live and online voting will determine the winner in June.

Andrews has received massive amounts of positive feedback so far.

“To be in the top eight in the nation — that’s awesome,” he said, adding he was surprised by the nomination because it was up against students from much larger schools.

“We’re all just Montana guys trying to put a Montana film on the map,” Andrews said.

Andrews met his cohorts Shane Dowaliby of Whitefish and Logan Triplett of Kalispell while in film school in Bozeman. The three have formed Little Baby Films. The trio was approached by the organizers of the national competition. Andrews said they were jazzed just to be thought of to begin with and they submitted three short films. Another video, “Catch Phrase,” made it into the top 32 as well.

The three students film and post a new short onto their Web site  — www.littlebabyfilms.

com — nearly every two weeks.

The Little Baby crew finished shooting their junior film this week. Now they face the arduous task of editing the 30 hours of footage into a neat little seven-minute package. Filming on the short, which centers on a hypnotist show, involved about 45 extras — some friends and others they found on Craigslist.

“It’s getting more and more like the real thing,” Andrews said. “This is our biggest production to date. We kind of jumped into the deep pool with this.”

Andrews said the film was going to be named “Chain Reaction,” but an online search revealed that Keanu Reeves beat him to it in 1996 in a movie with Morgan Freeman. So, much to Andrews chagrin, they have to come up with something else, but with that being the only roadblock so far in the project, he is pretty pleased.

Andrews, who graduated from Capital High School, said he is not quite sure where he wants his career to head.

“I like to make people laugh. Comedy is my base, it’s my bread and butter,” he said. “I think it’s hard. Comedy is very hard to make a quality product that is funny.”

Reporter Angela Brandt: 447-4078 or angela.brandt@helenair.com