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    Preview: Paul Reiser at Mount Vernon’s Knox Memorial Theatre

    “I was always drawn to comedy,” Paul Reiser explains during our phone interview last week.

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    On March 3, the comedian, actor, writer, author and musician brings The Big Font Comedy Tour to Knox Memorial Theatre in Mount Vernon – the inaugural event of the Mount Vernon Arts Consortium‘s second season of programming.

    If you weren’t immediately aware of Reiser’s years-long roots as a standup comic in New York City, he’ll likely forgive you.

    “That still tickles me,” he says.”People go, ‘Oh, I didn’t know he does comedy.’ Well, what do you mean you didn’t know? Then it’s, like, ‘Ehh…okay, that’s fair.'”

    Maybe his impressively diverse filmography is partly to blame. Forty years after his breakout role in the 1982 Barry Levinson-directed dramedy, Diner, Reiser’s on-screen cachet has only continued to flourish in two hit shows for Netflix – Stranger Things as Dr. Sam Owens, a character created by the Duffer Brothers specifically for him, and Chuck Lorre’s acclaimed series The Kominsky Method, for which Reiser received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2021. He recently starred in the Hulu original series Reboot, and joined the third-season cast of the Amazon superhero satire, The Boys.

    Of course, most people of my generation grew up watching Reiser command the sitcom soundstage as Paul Buchman opposite Helen Hunt in Mad About You, the Emmy, Golden Globe, Peabody and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning series that aired for on NBC for seven seasons from 1992 to 1997 (and rebooted for a twelve-episode eighth season for Spectrum Originals in 2019).

    Mentioning his roles as Carter Burke in the 1986 film Aliens, as Detective Jeffrey Friedman in Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) (which he’ll reprise in the upcoming sequel, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley), and in Bye Bye Love, The Book of Love, and Fatherhood, barely scratches the surface of his lengthy résumé.

    And then there are the four best-selling books he authored (Couplehood, Babyhood, Familyhood, and How to Get Into Carnegie Hall), and the studio album (Reiser was a music major when he attended college at Binghamton University) he recorded with British singer-songwriter Julia Fordham in 2010, Unusual Suspects for which he co-wrote each of the tracks and accompanied Fordham on piano.

    Reiser views his return to touring as a comic as a way of tying all those threads – and the generations of people who have followed his career over the years – together.

    “What’s been really fun going back in these recent years is that my audience is growing,” he says. “It’s interesting because now there are Stranger Things people, and there are The Kominsky Method people. And then there are people who didn’t know I do comedy because I hadn’t been doing it for such a long time.”

    Grant Walters: If you’ll allow me, I’d love to rewind back to the beginning. What was going on artistically in the Reiser household between the time you were growing up in the ’50s and ’60s and when you decided to pursue a music degree in college? What was the first creative thing you were conscious of that really changed you as an individual?

    Paul Reiser: There were a whole lot of creative things in our world. My parents were very…I don’t want to say diligent, but they appreciated a lot of good music – a lot of classical music and a lot of show tunes. And then I had older sisters who when I was a kid – not on purpose – kind of introduced me to other types of music. My one sister closest to my age got me into The Beatles, and another sister got me into the blues, and another into more alternative stuff. So, I got into a lot, but it was always without any sort of coaxing.

    GW: And, eventually, your attention turned to comedy. What do you remember about that?

    PR: I just remember loving and watching comedians on The Ed Sullivan Show or The Red Skelton Show that my dad would watch, and I would sort of sneak and watch. When I got a little older, more like high school, I started really just taking a more thoughtful approach to it and, you know, really watching George Carlin, and Robert Klein, and Richard Pryor. And still not thinking, “Wow, I’m gonna do that,” but the seeds were there.

    What turned out to be sort of a cathartic moment was being introduced to the classic Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner record, The 2000 Year Old Man. Somebody just turned and said “Oh, you like comedy? You should hear this.” And I remember that just sort of opened up the walls, like…”whaaaat?!” It was just a whole other world of thinking and it became a very influential sensibility in my life.

    That time, you know, in the early ’70s…it’s hard for younger people think about this, and I sound really old saying it [laughs], you couldn’t even record [shows]. So, if you wanted to see something, you had to wait up until it was on. It seems so primitive [laughs]. As a result, everything became a little bit more important. I remember on school nights if George Carlin was on, or Steve Martin, or Albert Brooks, or Rodney Dangerfield was gonna be on …Carson, I would kind of sneak and stay up late and keep the TV on quietly in my room and watch.

    GW: I imagine finally being able to translate those loving, formative memories to the screen when you wrote and produced There’s…Johnny! must have been so rewarding. I’ve been able to watch some of the series, and it’s just a really wonderful tribute to the show, to the people who made it, and to the era in general.

    PR: What was really funny in doing the research for There’s…Johnny! is that we were given access to the vaults and we would just go in and I’d say, “Well, who was on in ’72? Let’s see George Carlin in ’72.” And I would watch these shows that I hadn’t seen in 45 years, but I remembered them really clearly because they were more important. You didn’t have fifty-thousand shows that you were watching, so it made an impact – and it certainly impacted me.

    Official trailer for There’s…Johnny! (Hulu)

    But that period always seemed so rich watching it. It always seemed like a party was going on with Johnny Carson – I thought, like, “What? That just seems like the coolest world!” And people just drop by and they know each other and they tease each other. So, it was a reverential love letter to that time and to that perspective on show business. Because that was our goal for all of us when we started. If we could get on the …Carson show, that was it. I didn’t have any plan beyond that. I didn’t have any plan at all, really.”

    GW: So, what ended up motivating you from being an observer to getting up on stage and becoming a working comic?

    PR: You know what it was? There was a path laid out for me. In the early ’70s, you suddenly would see comedians that were on TV that only months earlier were playing these two or three clubs in New York. So, suddenly there were breadcrumbs. It’s, like, “If you come here and follow this path, there’s a magic door that you enter, but you have to go to these clubs.”

    And, still, there was no plan, but I said, “Alright, I’m gonna try.” I look back and it seems crazy ’cause I had no skill, but, you know, when you’re young you’re sort of protected by your ignorance and you go, “Boy, if I had any idea of how not good I was, I probably would never have gone up.” I remember during college, I would just go up on audition night…and you’d wait online for hours – five, six hours, seven hours, sometimes waiting to get on at one in the morning for 17 people and not be good. But that was where you started. So, it just kept calling to me and I kept wanting to do it, and you just want to keep doing it till you think you have it.

    But, I realize it’s 40 years down and I’m still working on it. Like, I don’t think I got it yet. It’s an elusive goal to master standup to me, anyway.

    GW: Now that you’ve done standup for so many years, what do you think makes good standup from your viewpoint?

    PR: Well, you know – you’re a person up there, whether the person you’re presenting is true or not. You know, you may not be that person. Steve Martin is not that person we all fell in love with, but he had a persona and it was the wacky, crazy guy. But, he was more than that. So you have to tune into and be clear on who you are on stage. And it takes a long time.

    I think I can look back and say, well, when I was even doing it four or five, six years, I don’t think I was clear on who I was yet. It’s just been kind of fun to come back to it in the last few years, because you realize you have a different perspective. You’re no longer the 20-year-old trying to make it, you know?

    I’ve had an embarrassing share of success, but I have a more of a perspective on life – I’ve raised kids and been married, so you see things more clearly and you have more confidence in them. And I talk about that in my act. There’s certainly a bunch of bad stuff that ain’t great about getting older, but there are a lot of good things too. Part of that is getting more comfortable with yourself. It may just be, you know, the reason you’re comfortable is you stop caring about other people [laughs].

    But, I don’t know. The short answer is I think you have to have a clear sense of who you are and what you want to say, and you have to make it enjoyable for people to spend an hour-and-a-half with you. It’s a really audacious thing when you think about it. It’s like, “I’m gonna stand on stage and hold your attention for an hour-and-a-half.” Wow. You know, I don’t know that I would have the wherewithal to sit and listen to anybody for an hour and a half, but I’m going to ask that of you, the audience.

    GW: I first got to know you on television when I was a kid – first on My Two Dads, and then certainly on Mad About You, which I watched with my family every week and loved. Sitcom work often gets spun by actors as being among the most exhausting and stressful work they’ve done. Was that the case for you?

    PR: You know, it sort of depends how involved you are. For some people, you’re in a cast of eight people and you have a few lines and it’s a half hour show. It’s not rocket science and you’re not mining coal underground. It’s light work. Having said that though, when you’re involved in the creation of the show, and the production of it, and the writing of it as I was with Mad About You, it’s really all encompassing.

    So it did for a while, until I sort of got a handle on it, become all encompassing to the exclusion of everything else. It does take up your time. So, even when you’re not working, you’re working on next week’s show or next season’s, and you’re thinking. And Mad About You was all the more so, because it was based on my marriage, and everything at home becomes fodder for the show. Your notebook is always out and it can be distracting. It was probably not the most rewarding time to be married to me [laughs].

    GW: What was a project you learned the most from over the years?

    PR: Well, certainly Mad About You was the longest thing – I mean, it was seven years and it was the most impactful. It took me from one point in my life to a very different one where I was much more known, and it was just a new level. So, that was sort of life-changing. But there are certain projects that I’m most often connected to [publicly] that don’t have the biggest impact. Stranger Things is a global phenomenon, but it’s got nothing to do with me, you know? It was great fun and great people, but I just show up and do my part.

    But on the other hand, There’s…Johnny! is something I developed for years and was trying to get it off the ground, and it ended up having a very odd lifespan and bounced around. Very few people saw it, but it meant the world to me and I loved getting it out there and I love when people have seen it. I did a movie in 2005 called The Thing About My Folks with Peter Faulk that I had been working on for years. He was an idol of mine and I had always wanted to work with him. So I wrote this movie. I love the idea of having crossing something off your bucket list and getting to do it. And I remember that as being just such a joyful time. I was working with this guy that I adored and, and we were in this beautiful vintage car driving around beautiful foliage in the autumn in New York. It’s just the satisfaction of knowing that I had this idea and I pushed it uphill and got to do it.

    I just finished this other movie in Ireland, which has a similar but shorter path. I’ve been working on it for a bunch of years, and it was just joyful. And there’s another movie I’m very proud of and I can’t wait to have it come out later this year. So, the ones that you put the most work into are usually the most impactful and resonate the most.

    GW: And what work have you done that’s given you the best, or most unexpected, gifts?

    PR: I have always been one to connect the dots and really try and draw the through line from the early days to now and keep track. It sort of helps me and it makes me even more appreciate the journey. I can so remember being 17 or 18 and dreaming of being a comedian and on the road, and even the crappy parts seem elegant. You know, it’s like, “[sarcastically] Wow, waiting for a connecting flight in Chicago because you have a show that night in Cleveland – that must be great!” Well, it’s not great sitting in the airport, but when you put it in that context when I’m sitting in those situations, I’ll just remember, “This is what you wanted. This is it – you’re doing it.” And it involves the not great part by necessity.

    The other thing is getting to meet, and work with, and be seen on somewhat of a level playing field with people that you started out with just looking up to. On Mad About You, we had all these guest stars, one after the other, that were our TV idols – Mel Brooks, and Carl Reiner, and Carol Burnett, and Carroll O’Connor, and Jerry Lewis. We never got jaded about it. Helen Hunt and I were always, like, “Do you believe we’re in a scene with Carol Burnett?!”

    I was recently at an event and I’m looking around and I’m saying hello to people – and, well, there’s Dick Van Dyke, there’s Norman Lear. I’m thinking, “How did this happen?” I know I’m not in high school anymore, but I very well remember being in high school thinking, “Boy, if I could someday meet these people.” It’s never not thrilling. And you know, what I have found is that everybody has their own version of that – even those people have people they looked up to, and same goes for the people before them. So, it’s sort of a continuum and it’s validating to feel that you’ve made the right choices.

    And for me, you know, getting back and doing standup…I say, you never quite get it. I mean, before I called you, I was working on a bit that I had put down for a while, and I went, “Well, let me see if I can make this work.” It’s just elbow grease; “Let me take this apart. Where is this not working? Okay, is it this word? Is it this sentence?” It’s very satisfying. And then when it works and you click it and you go to a club and you try the new cleaned up version, you go, “Oh, that was really fun.” And of course, the next night you can’t find it again. It kind of disappears. It’s a very ephemeral thing – it rarely stays put.

    GW: So, when you encounter a moment on stage when something doesn’t work as you’d hoped, how do you turn that around for you and the audience? I mean, you have impeccable timing and range, so is that just instinctual?

    PR: You’re never gonna miss by a mile, you know? It’s like a great baseball player. If you you’re hitting 300, you’re great. And that means you’re striking out two out of three times. You may get on base, you may hit a home run, you may strike out, but you’re not gonna accidentally shove the bat down your pants or something like that [laughs]. You know how to do it. So, a joke may not work and it may be, “Ooh, wrong choice of words,” or “Gee, I lost a bit of energy there,” or, “I thought this area would be funny and it’s, maybe it’s not.”

    I’ll go to clubs…like, the other night I just tried a piece and I went, “Ah, you know, I think this one is just not gonna work. I don’t know that it’s worth the effort. If I get it to work, it’s still a pretty thin slice of comedy. [laughs]” And you don’t know, because there’s no way to do it without bouncing it off of human beings and live people.

    But, you know, in those situations you can actually get a laugh commenting on how it didn’t work. You know, you think about Carson. The biggest laughs were when he missed a joke in a monologue, and he would get a bigger laugh than the joke would’ve gotten. When the audience knows you, they’ll go with you. The core of the audience, we’ve really kind of grown up together. You know, there are people who come over to me all the time say, “We got married when Mad About You started, and we had a kid when you guys had a kid on the show. And now our kids, as are yours, are grown and leaving the nest.” There’s been a connection after all these years.

    I say this – and it’s true: it’s really like getting together with old friends. It’s like if they come to the theater at this point and they’ve bought a ticket, it’s a good chance they already know and they have a suspicion they’re gonna like what they see [laughs]. So you’re coming out to friendly, faces. And that’s a great place to start as opposed to when you’re 18 and going, “I’ve got nothing to say and you never heard of me. How are ya? [laughs]” That’s a tough plug.

    GW: I was watching a really funny clip you posted on social media a while ago, and it was a bit on how you’ve grown more paranoid as you’ve gotten older about things that could kill you in your house. I’m curious what does actually scare the hell out of you at this point in your life?

    PR: Have you watched the news ever? That scares me. The world scares me, you know? And then once you have kids, everything does become more fearful ’cause you’re fear fearful on behalf of others. No, everything scares me. But you try and manage it to a point that you’re not incapacitated by it.

    Part of what’s great about comedy is it’s cathartic. I don’t have the bandwidth or the skill to go on stage and really make sense of the world and its biggest problems.

    But what was so fun about Mad About You, which grew out of my standup, is the continuing saga [laughs] – there are always pieces of a relationship that are just incomprehensible and darkly frustrating – and really funny. It’s always been a great relief and release for me to go on stage and say, “Okay, listen to this argument I got into with my wife.” And people are laughing ’cause they’re going, Ooh yeah, I get it.” It’s validating. People like to hear that they’re not the only ones – it’s nice to know you’re not alone. Misery loves company.

    Paul Reiser brings The Big Font Comedy Tour to Knox Memorial Theatre in Mount Vernon on Friday, March 3. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets are $38-$58, plus applicable taxes and fees, and are available through the Mount Vernon Arts Consortium website.

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    Grant Walters
    Grant Waltershttps://columbusunderground.com
    Grant is a freelance writer for Columbus Underground who primarily focuses on music and comedy. He's a Canadian transplant, born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and schooled in Vancouver, British Columbia. Grant is also the co-author of two internationally acclaimed books: "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1960s" and "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1970s." He has also penned numerous articles and artist interviews for the nationally recognized site, Albumism.
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