Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: from My Heart Radio. My friend Lorne Michael's told me
Speaker 1: that back in the nineteen seventies when he launched Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live, there were only a handful of comedy clubs
Speaker 1: in the United States. Today there are hundreds of comedy clubs,
Speaker 1: and Americans have available to them an ocean of sitcom's,
Speaker 1: late night talk shows and streaming comedy specials. To distinguish
Speaker 1: yourself in that world of comedy is a very difficult
Speaker 1: thing to do. My guest today has succeeded at just that.
Speaker 1: Actor writer comedian Patton Oswald has appeared in many sitcoms,
Speaker 1: including The King of Queens, ap Bio, The Goldberg's Veep, Reno,
Speaker 1: Parks and Wreck, and Brooklyn Nine. He's written two books,
Speaker 1: including a memoir, Silver Screen Fiend, about his of of movies,
Speaker 1: and he does a lot of voiceover work, from My
Speaker 1: Little Pony and Word Girl to Archer and bow Jack, Horsemen, and,
Speaker 1: perhaps most memorably, as Remy in Pixar's Rattatui. First of all,
Speaker 1: I'm a rat, which means life is hard. A second,
Speaker 1: I have a highly developed sense of taste and smell flour, eggs, sugar,
Speaker 1: vanilla bean, oh Small Twisdom. Patton Oswald has released three
Speaker 1: Netflix comedy specials, including last year's I Love Everything, where
Speaker 1: he riffs on parenting, home ownership, and turning fifty. If
Speaker 1: you were to fly a helicopter low over the earth,
Speaker 1: you know what you would see. You'd see people in
Speaker 1: their twenties gobbling drugs, eating delicious food, having sex, People
Speaker 1: in their thirties with actual jobs making the world run,
Speaker 1: People in their forties trying to fund the twenty year olds,
Speaker 1: and then us, the gentle surrendered fifty year olds. We've
Speaker 1: got our earbuds in listening to podcasts what You're done
Speaker 1: by twenty year olds that nobody wants to fuck. In
Speaker 1: April two thousand sixteen, Patton Oswald suffered a great loss
Speaker 1: the sudden death of his first wife, true crime writer
Speaker 1: Michelle McNamara. She was forty six. She left behind patent
Speaker 1: and there then seven year old daughter Alice. My absolute
Speaker 1: first thought was, why isn't it me? She should be here.
Speaker 1: She's doing, in my opinion, the more important work and
Speaker 1: has the better bond with and it would be a
Speaker 1: better example for to raise our daughter with not not
Speaker 1: to I don't believe in you know, um false modesty.
Speaker 1: But if you're going to choose a person to emulate you,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, have do do Michelle more than yeah? Exactly mother.
Speaker 1: You can't replace them right now? No, No, what was
Speaker 1: that like for you in those early stages of managing that,
Speaker 1: not just your grief but your single parenthood you you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't think about this aspect of a part of
Speaker 1: being a dad. At least part of my process is
Speaker 1: going off and having some solitude to be with my
Speaker 1: thoughts and then be there because I was hardwired with
Speaker 1: that old patriarchal model of I'm the one who goes
Speaker 1: out into the wild and gathers up the firewood and
Speaker 1: that kills the meat and brings it all back, and
Speaker 1: then when I'm home I relaxed while they all prepare us.
Speaker 1: And then I had to do I had to still
Speaker 1: go out and get the sustenance, but then be there
Speaker 1: and be the parents. So there was about a year
Speaker 1: of kind of adjusting two. I very early on stop
Speaker 1: judging myself for maybe not being the most dynamic, but
Speaker 1: I was going I'm here, though I'm physically here, when
Speaker 1: I'm home and she's home. I'm here, and I just
Speaker 1: and you find out that if you want to, you
Speaker 1: can adjust your schedule to go, Okay, well, she's in
Speaker 1: school for these hours, so this is when I will
Speaker 1: do work, and this is when I will get stuff
Speaker 1: done in the minute she's done work has got to
Speaker 1: know that I'm not available now and I want to
Speaker 1: go pick her up at school and come home with
Speaker 1: her and just be with her. And that was that
Speaker 1: was how it was for a while. That's where were
Speaker 1: That's where we're recording at this time. Because my two
Speaker 1: youngest boys, not the baby, but the two middle boys,
Speaker 1: they take a nap, right people, I mean, when are
Speaker 1: we recording the podcast? I go one o'clock, it's naptime.
Speaker 1: And when they when they nap, Yeah, the only time
Speaker 1: the house is quiet enough to record. Yeah, exactly a
Speaker 1: lot of times, what what you learn is when my
Speaker 1: daughter was talking to me, I had to get over
Speaker 1: my impulse to go, well, what is the action thing
Speaker 1: we can do to solve this. A lot of times
Speaker 1: she wasn't looking for the action solutions. She just let's
Speaker 1: just talk this out and look at it. We don't
Speaker 1: need a solution right now. I just want someone to
Speaker 1: hear me and then to say back, oh, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is really bad and I don't actually have an answer
Speaker 1: right now. Like that, in a weird way, that was
Speaker 1: more reassuring, because coming back with an immediate action solution
Speaker 1: almost feels to that person, especially to my daughter. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I think it felt like I don't think he really
Speaker 1: was listening to me. I think he just wanted to
Speaker 1: jump to the solution. And it seems like men want
Speaker 1: to jump right to the solution, and women are so
Speaker 1: much more patient and and confident in going let we
Speaker 1: don't need to have us let's just keep let's look
Speaker 1: at this exactly, you know, and menally, no, we solve
Speaker 1: it right now. But but there's and nothing makes a
Speaker 1: man panic more than you don't have the answer, where
Speaker 1: there's not only do not have an answer, but when
Speaker 1: you realize the answer is there is not an immediate solution.
Speaker 1: Like there's friend drama um at school and I and
Speaker 1: I had to go I guess you have to go
Speaker 1: back tomorrow and talk to her, or like like there
Speaker 1: wasn't this specific I wanted to do that, like the
Speaker 1: Good Fellas thing of like if someone was being mean
Speaker 1: to her at school, like grab her and put her
Speaker 1: head in a pizza of and go. You know that's
Speaker 1: not doesn't work that way. When I say to my daughters,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't say this, but she'll be like,
Speaker 1: she'll be crying and should be like, you know, Amanda
Speaker 1: would mean to me it was mean to be on
Speaker 1: a zoom call like, and my wife is so the
Speaker 1: process and the you know, and I'm like, why don't
Speaker 1: you just tell Amanda to go fund herself? You know,
Speaker 1: like maybe I should go talk to a man. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't need to go into the school angry sixth
Speaker 1: year old man yelling at an eight year old your
Speaker 1: your Your wife was a writer her entire career. She was, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she started as a writer in college. She
Speaker 1: taught writing at Michigan and and started it was weird.
Speaker 1: She started writing TV shows and screenplays in Hollywood. They
Speaker 1: were comedies, but they were crime adjacent. And then as
Speaker 1: she wrote them, she even, if you're writing a comedy
Speaker 1: about a crime, you have to at least know the
Speaker 1: crime has got to make sense or it doesn't. You know,
Speaker 1: the comedy falls apart. So in researching the crime aspects
Speaker 1: of it, she started realizing oh no, I really like
Speaker 1: the crime way better. I don't want to write comedy.
Speaker 1: I want actually, I don't want to write Springtime for Dahmer,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want none of that for me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she worked as an assistant for a private eye
Speaker 1: for a while, like, did cases with him, and and
Speaker 1: just that became her thing. And then she when we
Speaker 1: got together, you know, she would tell me that just
Speaker 1: the Labrinthian details of these cases that she would just
Speaker 1: research online. And I was like, why don't you just
Speaker 1: because I had a web master, I had a web
Speaker 1: page for my shows. I'm like, I'll just pay me
Speaker 1: a little lecture. Let's get do you have a website?
Speaker 1: Just write this stuff out. And she started writing it,
Speaker 1: and she was starting to put these crimes together just
Speaker 1: on This is like in the you know, the early
Speaker 1: stages of the internet, and now there's a million crime
Speaker 1: blogs and crime podcasts. Um. She was one of the
Speaker 1: first that was doing it and was getting calls. She
Speaker 1: got a call from Dateline. They hired her as a
Speaker 1: consultant because she had put together a case they weren't
Speaker 1: able to crack. And the reason they weren't able to
Speaker 1: crack it was because when they would go to the
Speaker 1: family and talk to him, it's like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: the news. They would clam up. But some girl on
Speaker 1: the internet, yeah I'll say anything that who cares? And
Speaker 1: they told her everything. It was amazing. So the documentary,
Speaker 1: which is the same name as the that's a six
Speaker 1: part documentary. It's an on HBO. Yes, I'll Be Gone
Speaker 1: in the Dark. It's yeah, they all six episodes are
Speaker 1: out there now. Oh my god. And obviously did you
Speaker 1: did you have any involvement with that at all? Were you?
Speaker 1: I you know, it's a documentary about an extraordinary woman
Speaker 1: that was made by an extraordinary woman. I love Liz
Speaker 1: Garbas Liz Garbage, Oh my god, woman and so prolific.
Speaker 1: I mean, she did I'll Be Gone in the Dark,
Speaker 1: then did all In Then now she's like she just
Speaker 1: is able to capture the essence and the absolute right
Speaker 1: angle of attack for these stories. It's incredible. It's as
Speaker 1: much a tribute to Liz and her crew as it
Speaker 1: is to Michelle and the people around her. And again,
Speaker 1: just like I was with Michelle, I'm just the mediator.
Speaker 1: I guess that the one thing I can give myself
Speaker 1: credit for was knowing when to step the hell back
Speaker 1: and let people do their work. And both times I
Speaker 1: had the wherewithal to do that, Thank God. You know,
Speaker 1: for me as a kid, TV was something that you.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a bit older than you, and TV
Speaker 1: was something that you sat down and you did what
Speaker 1: I called I This might not be the most apt phrase,
Speaker 1: but you would do back then in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: when I referred to as I are vedic listening, you know,
Speaker 1: you did the most intense listening known to man. You'd
Speaker 1: watch one episode of a show or a movie and
Speaker 1: you remember every line because you literally got into a
Speaker 1: mirrorlogical electromagnetic field with the TV and it was going
Speaker 1: into your brain and being chiseled into your brain. And
Speaker 1: I remembered all the words to the show watching it
Speaker 1: one time, because that's all you had. There was no VCR,
Speaker 1: it wasn't coming back nothing. You watched it then and
Speaker 1: that was it. So I would watch Herman Munster, I
Speaker 1: watched Gilligan's Island, f Troop. I watched all the TV
Speaker 1: from when I was a kid. Family Affair. It's weird
Speaker 1: you you just mentioned the air vetic listening for shows
Speaker 1: like Family Affair and Bewitched and and igree Ma Genie
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Do you think that that informed
Speaker 1: your characterization of Jack Donneghee on thirty Rock only because
Speaker 1: now that I'm thinking about it, he was an evangelical
Speaker 1: salesman for that kind of sitcom hypnotism because he didn't
Speaker 1: give a crap about the content of the shows. He
Speaker 1: loved the fact that it got people into a state
Speaker 1: where he could sell ducts, and it was why he
Speaker 1: was so good at mimicking those rhythms on other people.
Speaker 1: Was that like a subconscious thing that got drilled into
Speaker 1: your brain and you didn't realize you had it? Probably subconscious, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you've done a lot of very like rough You
Speaker 1: know that the mammt the you know, Miami Blue is
Speaker 1: way more naturalistic stuff, and you very easily fell into
Speaker 1: those kind of inhuman rhythms that you realize when you
Speaker 1: listen to it. But that is kind of how we
Speaker 1: talk because we've been programmed by the TV. It's really
Speaker 1: weird that that happened a your vedic listening. What was
Speaker 1: that background for you grew up where I grew up
Speaker 1: in the very very bland suburbs of northern Virginia, Sterling Virginia.
Speaker 1: Was your dad in the government, Yeah, he was. My
Speaker 1: dad was a marine for twenty years and then he
Speaker 1: retired and then he worked at USA today at Genet
Speaker 1: and built all their computer systems. So it was he
Speaker 1: was a tech guy out Silver Spring. And I remember
Speaker 1: him saying he would talk vaguely because he couldn't even
Speaker 1: conceive of it. But he's like, it's all gonna be
Speaker 1: on a computer, like everything, Like I had a manual
Speaker 1: typewriter and I wanted an electric And he said, just
Speaker 1: why don't you just wait? In five years, it's all
Speaker 1: gonna there won't be any typewriters. There won't like, there
Speaker 1: won't be any of that. Just but he couldn't articulate
Speaker 1: it enough. He didn't know exactly what was coming. But
Speaker 1: he had an inkland because he saw what was going on,
Speaker 1: you know, with Business Defense Department here. What did your
Speaker 1: mom do? My mom was a legal secretary in Vienna.
Speaker 1: It was all people the suburbs where I grew up.
Speaker 1: It's all around four and everyone went into the city
Speaker 1: and made money and then came to the suburbs. When
Speaker 1: you're a child, it's the funny in your household and
Speaker 1: everybody's going get up there, Patton. That is so funny?
Speaker 1: Are you like the performing the family I had? I mean,
Speaker 1: I was funny in my family, but I was also
Speaker 1: in you know that the term the class clown, that's
Speaker 1: actually a false term. There's a clown click in every
Speaker 1: high school. It's not. There's never just one. There's a
Speaker 1: group of people, boys and girls who were super into comedy.
Speaker 1: And that was my click. So then, of course in
Speaker 1: my home, you know, I could lift more than everyone
Speaker 1: else because I was hanging out all day with these
Speaker 1: comedy nerds. But then I would come home and my
Speaker 1: dad was you know, he introduced me very early on
Speaker 1: to like Jonathan Winters uh and the mother's brothers and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and then that led me surreptitiously to
Speaker 1: Richard Pryor and then, weirdly enough to Steve Martin, who
Speaker 1: Steve Martin was my gateway to Monty Python because I
Speaker 1: heard Monty Python before Steve Martin. I didn't get it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was stupid. Then I heard Steve Martin
Speaker 1: went oh, I get what they were doing. And then
Speaker 1: that led me back into it. And then this whole
Speaker 1: world like kind of opened up. It was great where
Speaker 1: you go to college. I went to William and Mary.
Speaker 1: I went there to study writing. And when I went
Speaker 1: to William and Mary, this is in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: early nineties. They they had a theater department, but they
Speaker 1: really didn't have like a film society or any kind
Speaker 1: of like stay up. They had a couple of improv
Speaker 1: groups and stuff like that. And then now apparently it's
Speaker 1: just it's even more exploded. You know. At the time,
Speaker 1: I think William Mary was more of a feeder school
Speaker 1: for like lawyers, and it was it was that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. They weren't really that focused on the arts.
Speaker 1: They majors exactly. Yeah. I remember I was having problems
Speaker 1: with my senior because I had taken too many courses
Speaker 1: in my major and I didn't have enough credits to
Speaker 1: graduate because I took too many English courses and I
Speaker 1: didn't understand that I was supposed to take some psychology.
Speaker 1: Took a lot of geology and psychology too. But I
Speaker 1: remember I had to petition the committee on degrees and
Speaker 1: and asked them to wave it was just like nine
Speaker 1: credits that I was shy, and I was talking to
Speaker 1: my counsel and I was like, look, I really need
Speaker 1: to graduate like, and he was like, you actually don't
Speaker 1: need to. You can just do a whole other year.
Speaker 1: It's great. You do a whole other year as a
Speaker 1: senior and you only got to take nine credits, will
Speaker 1: be the best year of your life. And I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. Like I have jobs lined because starting
Speaker 1: stopping here, I started actually getting work as a comedian.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, by the time when I was a senior,
Speaker 1: I have jobs lined up. School was in the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and then he was like, oh, what firm, Like
Speaker 1: what firm are you with? Like he in his mind
Speaker 1: I had signed with it. I'm like, oh no, I'm
Speaker 1: doing Charlie Goodnights in um North Carolina. I'm doing their Garvins,
Speaker 1: I'm doing the Comedy Caravan, like I had all these
Speaker 1: gigs lined up. And then he and then he said,
Speaker 1: I don't think William and Marian wants to be known
Speaker 1: for producing comedians like like as a like kind of
Speaker 1: And then I went okay, and then I just like
Speaker 1: I just petitioned so hard and they went fine, just
Speaker 1: get out and they gave me my diploma. But I
Speaker 1: was like ah, and and and then like they William
Speaker 1: and Mary Produced, Michelle Wolf and John Stewart. For God's sakes,
Speaker 1: they should be proud of that. Comedian Patton Oswald. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. If
Speaker 1: you like conversations with comedians who can also act, check
Speaker 1: out our archives and my conversation with Kristen Wigg, who
Speaker 1: credits her college acting teacher and helping her overcome her
Speaker 1: performance anxiety. It was literally acting one on one that
Speaker 1: was one class one class, and I was terrified to
Speaker 1: take it. But something about this class we learned about
Speaker 1: improv and my teacher was really supportive and at the
Speaker 1: end of the class he was just like, have you
Speaker 1: ever considered doing this? And I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: right was your teacher? Was my teacher? Yeah? Here more
Speaker 1: of my conversation with Kristen Wigg at Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: dot org. After the break, I talked to Patton Oswald
Speaker 1: about his move to San Francisco in the early nine
Speaker 1: nineties and whyatt prompted him to tear up his previous
Speaker 1: material and start all over. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. Patton
Speaker 1: Oswald was a fan of stand up as a kid,
Speaker 1: but he didn't try his hand at it until college.
Speaker 1: It was between junior and sophomore year of college. That
Speaker 1: was that somewhere where I'm like, oh, I better actually
Speaker 1: figure out what I'm gonna do, and I because I
Speaker 1: couldn't really And that was something I tried all these
Speaker 1: different jobs. I started training to be a paralegal. I
Speaker 1: was also working as a party DJ. I was writing
Speaker 1: sports for a local paper under a pseudonym, just like,
Speaker 1: what's one of these things is gonna stick? And then
Speaker 1: I one evening, I went, because I always loved comedy,
Speaker 1: went I'll do an open mic and I looked in
Speaker 1: the paper. There was an open mics place called Garvin's.
Speaker 1: And I went to Garvin's Comedy club that was in
Speaker 1: d C on L Street between thirteen and fourteen Street,
Speaker 1: very super sketchy area. I went on. I went out
Speaker 1: and I went on stage. It did not go well,
Speaker 1: but one thing that I said got like a half
Speaker 1: got that comedian laugh from like that kind of ah
Speaker 1: like that. Also, my first night on stage was also
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle's first night on age. He was fourteen years
Speaker 1: old and he when he went on. It looked like
Speaker 1: he'd been doing it for thirty years. He was amazing.
Speaker 1: He just like having my god and and I I
Speaker 1: was nineteen and it but the one I really loved.
Speaker 1: I loved sitting and watching all the comedians hanging out
Speaker 1: and riffing with each other and building jokes at a
Speaker 1: thin air. And I realized, even though there's no immediate
Speaker 1: reward here for me, I want this life. My roommate
Speaker 1: in college as a comedian named Gary Laser, who I was,
Speaker 1: you know, Gary Laser was my my and then he
Speaker 1: and I were roommates. We got in an apartment together
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, lived at him for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. We have Gary was my roommate off
Speaker 1: and on for like four or five years. And Garrett
Speaker 1: I would go to the clubs with him, to the
Speaker 1: Good Times on thirty on thirty of them third or whatever.
Speaker 1: The ben atar was discovered. We got and we go
Speaker 1: to these different clubs with him and his friends and
Speaker 1: they don't get up there and perform. And I remember,
Speaker 1: you know, it was like there's no place else I'd
Speaker 1: rather be, you know, these guys, Gary Leason and going.
Speaker 1: I was married to my first wife, yeah. We were
Speaker 1: together for three years, and that three years went by
Speaker 1: just like many had so many materials. Material I still
Speaker 1: remember his routine and I loved him. And then I
Speaker 1: go and do what I'm doing, and when I come
Speaker 1: back and do thirty Rock, it's like I'm around those
Speaker 1: people again, where like on my best day, I'm not
Speaker 1: as funny as them on their worst day. You know,
Speaker 1: Tina Carlock call them they're so in terms of writing.
Speaker 1: You're not a comedian, you know, they're just so blindingly funny.
Speaker 1: And for you, did you go through a period where
Speaker 1: you're like you're honing, you're working. You said that the
Speaker 1: thing went so and at what point, you know, you're
Speaker 1: here at Garvin's and d C. At what point do
Speaker 1: you sit there and go I think I got this,
Speaker 1: I think that's going well. I really didn't. He Here's
Speaker 1: it was weird. I felt like one of the things
Speaker 1: I like was I'm sitting at the so first of all,
Speaker 1: this material, I'm not hearing joke. Second hand, I'm here
Speaker 1: where they're being created, so I'm upstream. I'm one of
Speaker 1: the people sending it down into the you know culture,
Speaker 1: which that was also really exciting, but very early on
Speaker 1: I learned it's weird how you talked about the air
Speaker 1: of atic listening with with TV. I kind of had
Speaker 1: that with comedy in that I learned the rhythms very
Speaker 1: early on, and I could get away with very very
Speaker 1: mediocre material. But because I had the rhythms, and because
Speaker 1: there was this comedy boom, you could kind of go
Speaker 1: up and talk in those rhythms and people would just
Speaker 1: kind of go, okay, this is comedy. And then as
Speaker 1: I was doing it, I started getting good in that
Speaker 1: I was getting a lot of work. Then I remember
Speaker 1: very very specifically, I moved to San Francisco, and this
Speaker 1: is when the comedy boom was starting to collapse and
Speaker 1: all the clubs were closing, and I went to the
Speaker 1: Holy City Zoo. I'm the new kid in town. I've
Speaker 1: been killing it on the road. I'm gonna do great,
Speaker 1: and and that was I went into this room, Holy
Speaker 1: City Zoo, and on the show was like Greg Proops,
Speaker 1: Margaret Show, Jeanine Garoffalo, Greg Barren, like all these comedians
Speaker 1: doing this stuff that rhythms I'd never heard before. I
Speaker 1: went up with my road rhythms, all my a stuff
Speaker 1: that I thought would kill and it just died. Then
Speaker 1: I watched all of these comedians I'd never seen before,
Speaker 1: who were the best comedians I'd ever seen. I remember
Speaker 1: very specifically, I walked across street from the Holy City
Speaker 1: Zoo to the Taiwan Restaurant on Clement Street, and I
Speaker 1: sat there with my notebook and I tore all the
Speaker 1: pages out of my notebook, all my routines, and I
Speaker 1: wrote it was May five, the tip. And then I
Speaker 1: just started fresh, like I gotta start at zero now
Speaker 1: because none of that stuff works, Like I've got to
Speaker 1: start over the road. Stuff doesn't work. And then I
Speaker 1: started rebuilding that. And that's when probably around four years
Speaker 1: after that was when I really felt like, oh now
Speaker 1: I'm me on stage Francisco. I'm still in San Francis. Well,
Speaker 1: at that I moved away from San Francisco because also
Speaker 1: the clubs were closing there, and I got a writing
Speaker 1: job doing what I was writing on the first two
Speaker 1: seasons a Mad TV. You went down to l A,
Speaker 1: went down to l A, and then that your first
Speaker 1: time in l A. That was my first permanent time
Speaker 1: in l A. Yeah. And then and that's when the
Speaker 1: un Cabaret was happening in Largo. And all these alternative rooms,
Speaker 1: and I was going there and that's when I really
Speaker 1: really felt like I became who I am. And that's
Speaker 1: how many years? So that's my point. How many years
Speaker 1: into your career are you before you go I think
Speaker 1: that the cake is cooked for me? It was like
Speaker 1: eight years before I felt really it's an amazing yeah.
Speaker 1: But but what's weird is, and I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of people have experiences. I was working as a professional comedian,
Speaker 1: but I doesn't. I didn't feel like I was me,
Speaker 1: And I wonder if that's I bet there's a lot
Speaker 1: of actors and writers and performers who had years of
Speaker 1: making money but weren't feeling like they were actually doing,
Speaker 1: you know, something that was theirs. So you start writing
Speaker 1: from Mad TV? And then what kind of zone do
Speaker 1: you find yourself? Does everything get to be different when
Speaker 1: you're in the big league, so to speak? So, um what?
Speaker 1: But here's here. Here's the interesting thing. At the time
Speaker 1: that I was writing on Mad TV, and they were
Speaker 1: amazing writers on that show, and we got to do
Speaker 1: some really good stuff. But Mad TV was my introduction to, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what it's like working for a big network
Speaker 1: where you've got to serve a lot of things before
Speaker 1: you can even get to the comedy, which I've heard
Speaker 1: sometimes can happen on SNL where there's like other considerations
Speaker 1: first and then you got to get to the comedy.
Speaker 1: And at the time that I was my Mad TV
Speaker 1: at the same time Mr Show was happening over on
Speaker 1: HBO and all my friends a lot of my friends
Speaker 1: or on Mr Show, and that was where there was
Speaker 1: nothing but the comedy. It was all about what was
Speaker 1: the best idea and everyone is getting to work at
Speaker 1: the height of their powers. And I was so jealous
Speaker 1: of like why can't I be over there? But it
Speaker 1: took me a while to see that I was learning
Speaker 1: some very important lessons over at mad TV of how
Speaker 1: to circumvent the system. And also when I look back,
Speaker 1: there were real moments of brilliance that the actors and
Speaker 1: the writers could conspire together and get through around the network,
Speaker 1: going but we need to have this thing, and we
Speaker 1: need to have this thing and there, and they found
Speaker 1: ways to give them what they thought they wanted and
Speaker 1: then do amazing stuff. So there's always no matter where
Speaker 1: you are. What I learned was don't look at over
Speaker 1: what other people are doing look at where you are
Speaker 1: and how can you make that as good and interesting
Speaker 1: as you can? So you wrote a memoir silver screen fiend.
Speaker 1: M hm, how did you get that book published? Um?
Speaker 1: I had published a book before of like essays, but
Speaker 1: but it wasn't totally met. There were like a couple
Speaker 1: of memoir chapters, but I wasn't confident enough to just
Speaker 1: write a full memoir at Simon and Schuster and they
Speaker 1: liked it and they said, you have another book in you.
Speaker 1: And then I was looking through my old calendars at
Speaker 1: my time in the in l A, in the when
Speaker 1: I moved there, and I'm like, my god, I was like,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize how obsessed I was with films because
Speaker 1: it was the first time that I really lived in
Speaker 1: a city where you could go see a movie, either
Speaker 1: a new or a classic movie, pretty much every night
Speaker 1: of the week in the theater, not at home, in
Speaker 1: the theater with people the new Beverly Beverly and the
Speaker 1: new Art and the new Art and all those places.
Speaker 1: So I started going and I started kind of and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you went through the same thing with when
Speaker 1: you first started being a theater actor. And there must
Speaker 1: have been a time when you would just obsessively go
Speaker 1: to the theater to watch shows because you realize, I
Speaker 1: want to be doing this, so I'm going to absorb
Speaker 1: as much of it. The love Oh I not to
Speaker 1: do oh my god. My friends and I would go
Speaker 1: watch bad stand up at open mics, not to make
Speaker 1: fun of it, but just to go, oh, don't do that,
Speaker 1: don't do that, don't do you know. It was and
Speaker 1: same with films. Oh when you see like the same
Speaker 1: things happening over and over again, Oh, don't do that,
Speaker 1: don't do that. So that kind of um obsession, I
Speaker 1: really you know, it kind of took over my life
Speaker 1: for like those four years. It's I go, this is
Speaker 1: the most boring addiction memoir ever written, because it's about
Speaker 1: me being addicted to movies. Although I saw people I
Speaker 1: got very close to tipping over the edge of There
Speaker 1: are people that are kind of lost by films, and
Speaker 1: you see them holding their like Leonard Malton guides that
Speaker 1: are just tattered clip and mark because they've got to
Speaker 1: see every movie. And there's a you know, in New
Speaker 1: York is an even just as equally a dangerous place
Speaker 1: to be a film fanatic because you can go see
Speaker 1: I mean not now, obviously, in the heyday, I live
Speaker 1: around the corner from Cinema Village, really live downtown. But
Speaker 1: you say about New Beverley is, and I remember this.
Speaker 1: I would go to There was the KB Cerberus Theater
Speaker 1: in Washington, and I would go there. I'll never forget
Speaker 1: one day in a revival theater. I can see Last
Speaker 1: Tango and I go into that theater and the music
Speaker 1: and the whole and Brando's you know, self flagellation, all
Speaker 1: of it. I go see this movie and I haven't
Speaker 1: seen any movies like that, And I remember coming out
Speaker 1: of the theater and I was hammered and the sky
Speaker 1: was gray. It's washing. The sky was wintertime. I'm in
Speaker 1: school and the sky is leaden. Remember seeing it, going
Speaker 1: like I didn't want to go back into the world.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I wanted to go back into the theater
Speaker 1: and go run it again or show me another movie.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I didn't want to face the world. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get into these weird dives. But the mood that
Speaker 1: I've been in, I wanted to see Alec Guinness in
Speaker 1: Tinker Taylor because I've been so starved for a character
Speaker 1: who's just quiet and competent and can just do like.
Speaker 1: I was so starved for that that that was my
Speaker 1: oasis during all this was Oh, a quiet, non flashy
Speaker 1: guy who can actually get stuff done. He was so
Speaker 1: good He would clean his eyeglasses with a fat part
Speaker 1: of his tie, and it became so much part of
Speaker 1: his character that that that when Lakaray wrote Smile these People,
Speaker 1: he added that trait because of watching the TV shows,
Speaker 1: like he did the character that I created better, and
Speaker 1: now I've got to adjust him to the actor that
Speaker 1: did it like that level of just inhabiting. But the
Speaker 1: thing about writing and acting, there's a risk Alan Moore
Speaker 1: talked about this when you truly inhabit characters long term.
Speaker 1: There's a mental risk for great writers and great actors
Speaker 1: when you sacrifice your personality to go into these other lives.
Speaker 1: You've got to have a safe place to come out
Speaker 1: of and kind of get yourself back on the ground.
Speaker 1: That's why I think you see with a lot of
Speaker 1: actors who go way deep later in life, they kind
Speaker 1: of suffer their personality flickers a little bit and they're
Speaker 1: never quite on a steady keel after a while. You know,
Speaker 1: Peter Sellers is a great example of you know, he
Speaker 1: basically said, I don't have a personality. It's like he
Speaker 1: sacrifices personality before he even started acting. So you've gone
Speaker 1: kind of deep with some of you. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot. There's not a lot of the warm
Speaker 1: of uncular Alec Baldwin at the beginning of Glen Garry
Speaker 1: Glenn us, how do you do you have a place
Speaker 1: where you can come out of characters like that or well,
Speaker 1: I always tell the same story. And this is to
Speaker 1: me one of the most meaningful moments of my career
Speaker 1: where a director really helped me. This guy, Jamie Folly,
Speaker 1: said to me, he said, it's like that scene in
Speaker 1: Patton when Patton slaps the guy and says, you call
Speaker 1: yourself a soldier. He said, that's what we're doing here.
Speaker 1: He says, you call yourself a salesman. He said, you're
Speaker 1: doing this for their own good. You're doing this for
Speaker 1: their own good. You don't want to do this, he said,
Speaker 1: you gott And once he said that to me, I
Speaker 1: felt like, literally like a cartoon character. Were like the
Speaker 1: lightning bolts went through my shoulders down into my fingertips.
Speaker 1: I was like, I looked at my wing. I got
Speaker 1: it and I went out there and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fucking I'm gonna, I'm gonna knock you out. Man.
Speaker 1: If you don't, you gotta you gotta do whatever that
Speaker 1: Just do what the funk I tell you to do.
Speaker 1: And I went out there and and and folly. The
Speaker 1: phrase I use for what I teach acting is authorization.
Speaker 1: What authorizes you do when you if you go into
Speaker 1: an operating room. And I've done this to prepare for
Speaker 1: a film. I watched over a hundred hours of surgery
Speaker 1: in Last Angeles and in western Massachusetts to the movie Malice,
Speaker 1: not because I wanted to learn surgery. My favorite line
Speaker 1: is Walter Matthau. They said, you're playing a doctor, do
Speaker 1: you want to go observe surgery? And Walter math I
Speaker 1: took a pause and said, I'm a movie actor. No
Speaker 1: one expects me to really know how to do surgery.
Speaker 1: But the point is that I wanted to go in
Speaker 1: that room so that when I went into the set,
Speaker 1: when I got on the stage and we did the scene,
Speaker 1: I'd seen it right, I knew it. I was authorized
Speaker 1: to do this because I knew it, And to me,
Speaker 1: that's vital. I need the authorization of that character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but I just wonder how far is too far? Sometimes?
Speaker 1: And I wonder that too, like when I'm writing or
Speaker 1: when I'm doing some of the more dramatic roles. Like
Speaker 1: I just watched the Michael Jordan documentary. This is weird
Speaker 1: how this ties in. But his teammates are talking in
Speaker 1: the documentary about how he was kind of an a hole,
Speaker 1: but he needed to operate at this I'm a demigod
Speaker 1: level to perform at the level that he did, Like
Speaker 1: that's how he won. And at the end, like you
Speaker 1: see how kind of drained he is, he's crying a
Speaker 1: little bit, like I know that I was doing that,
Speaker 1: but it's what I needed to do to with Like
Speaker 1: in art, you do wonder how much of myself do
Speaker 1: I sacrifice? How much do I hold back? You know,
Speaker 1: like that's always gonna be that ongoing question. And also
Speaker 1: with with comedy, how when I was doing that special annihilation,
Speaker 1: how deep into my own darkness do I go as
Speaker 1: a comedian until it stops being entertainment instinct you've developed?
Speaker 1: I didn't. I mean, luckily I had years of doing
Speaker 1: comedy where I kind of had an idea. But when
Speaker 1: it really got down to it, I remember Bob kat
Speaker 1: Goldthwaite was directing the special and he came back into
Speaker 1: the green room before I went on or He was like,
Speaker 1: you just want to go out there, don't you like?
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I can't think about this anymore. I
Speaker 1: have to go out there. And you you must have
Speaker 1: seen this in place where we've rehearsed the ship out
Speaker 1: of it. But now, can we just go and get
Speaker 1: started and then we'll fucking figure it out. If we
Speaker 1: can start, that's the best way to figure it out.
Speaker 1: Just let me fucking go out there and I'll figure
Speaker 1: it out. You know, I see people who are comic
Speaker 1: talent who I think I'll never forget. I said to
Speaker 1: Chris Rock one time. I said, I knew some guys
Speaker 1: that were very powerful group of people in the music
Speaker 1: business and had a lot of access to rights and things.
Speaker 1: And I said to Chris, you should play Miles Davis.
Speaker 1: I said, I know you're an actor. You're you're an actor.
Speaker 1: I mean that you're funny and you do all that
Speaker 1: marauding the stage and the way I always cry, and
Speaker 1: I feel the same way about you. You're an actor.
Speaker 1: And do you sometimes feel like, Okay, I've done the
Speaker 1: comedy thing. I got that in my pocket, marauding the
Speaker 1: stage with a microphone in Charlotte, be dazzling everybody. Time
Speaker 1: to go do something else. You know the thing about
Speaker 1: Santa Bus. It doesn't have to be either or you
Speaker 1: can go do other things and then go do That's
Speaker 1: what I remember. I went and saw me and Maria
Speaker 1: Bamford went and saw Jerry Steinfeld's comedian documentary together, and
Speaker 1: we were walking out and she was like, we picked
Speaker 1: a profession that we can do forever. We could always
Speaker 1: do stand up. We can also do other things. We
Speaker 1: can always do stand up and stand up is such
Speaker 1: a It is one of the last pure, I guess,
Speaker 1: dictatorial posts where I think it, I say it. That's it.
Speaker 1: And if anything, you get to a point where I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll get to the point where Chris Rock is.
Speaker 1: Where you can get to the point where you not
Speaker 1: only elicit laughter, you elicit what I like to call
Speaker 1: the laughter of disbelief, where Chris Rock says things and
Speaker 1: people like the h ship. I mean, that's true, but
Speaker 1: holy fuck, I mean, did can he that? I mean
Speaker 1: that is true? But we don't like he says things
Speaker 1: where the audience you can you feel the laughter is like,
Speaker 1: I mean, we all know that, but we're not supposed
Speaker 1: to say that, all right, But he just said that,
Speaker 1: So I guess we're gonna like that level of you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I can get to that level. But I never
Speaker 1: want to stop doing stand up, but I definitely want
Speaker 1: to do other things because, especially if you do stand
Speaker 1: up long enough and you try to be as wired
Speaker 1: into not only other people's foibles but especially your own.
Speaker 1: You see in acting where people don't go deep enough
Speaker 1: with that or they're not as honest, like, oh you
Speaker 1: pulled back. Why didn't you just stay and go that deep?
Speaker 1: So then you want to do that as an actor,
Speaker 1: actor and comedian Patton Oswald, if you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: don't keep it to yourself, Tell a friend and subscribe
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we
Speaker 1: come back, Patton Oswald talks about falling in love again.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. In
Speaker 1: Patton Oswald's Netflix comedy special I Love Everything. He talks
Speaker 1: about finding love again. Not to bum you guys out,
Speaker 1: but I was very, very resigned to living in the gray.
Speaker 1: I was, after what I went through a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. I was just going to I'm going to
Speaker 1: live in the gray, and I'm just to raise my
Speaker 1: daughter alone and try to put focus all the joy
Speaker 1: and adventure in life on her and give her that life,
Speaker 1: and I will merely exist. I'm not going to hit
Speaker 1: joy again, but that's fine. I can still exist, That's okay.
Speaker 1: And then I met this poem of a woman who
Speaker 1: ReLit the sky, and I just said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: run at love again. If you see love, run at it.
Speaker 1: Run at love. If you see it, trust me, run
Speaker 1: at love. Patton Oswald married actress Meredith Salinger in November
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen. Her breakout role came at age fifteen
Speaker 1: as the lead in the Journey of Natty Gan. I
Speaker 1: wanted to know how Patton Oswald found such a perfect
Speaker 1: match a second time. I was married to this extraordinary woman,
Speaker 1: and I think the fact that I was with her
Speaker 1: for so long was what helped me see very quickly
Speaker 1: this other ex ordinary woman. Because Meredith Sounder, who is
Speaker 1: yes child actress, insanely gorgeous teen actress beyond gorgeous, like
Speaker 1: like classic nineteen forties movie siren gorge Yes, exactly, how
Speaker 1: did you meet her? We have a friend in common,
Speaker 1: Martha Plimpton, amazing actress, and Martha Plimpton likes to do
Speaker 1: these salons where she brings various people together for dinners
Speaker 1: at her house. That's what I do. And the morning
Speaker 1: of it, I had to fly back from Austin at
Speaker 1: like six in the morning. And when I got home, like,
Speaker 1: I can't go out again. I'm so dehydrated and exhausted,
Speaker 1: and I I'm so sorry I have to beg off.
Speaker 1: And then the next day Meredith sent me a message saying,
Speaker 1: you missed the best lasagna last night, dude, And then
Speaker 1: I wrote back story in my life film. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: go get coffee. It's not sorry, you know, And then
Speaker 1: we just started. This was in February of sen I'm
Speaker 1: still deep in my grief, but I'm just talking to
Speaker 1: We're just talking about books and politics. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: the world is insane right now. And it got to
Speaker 1: the point where of the many things I missed about Michelle,
Speaker 1: I missed having someone fascinating to talk to in the
Speaker 1: dark at the end of the day, so as I
Speaker 1: would put Alice to bed and then I would just
Speaker 1: get on my phone like at nine o'clock and I
Speaker 1: would go, hey, are you here, and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's going because she was also like she has dated
Speaker 1: some fascinating and very troubled people in her life, and
Speaker 1: she was taking a hiatus from the damaged Geniuses, and
Speaker 1: so she was just in her apartment with her cats,
Speaker 1: and we would just every night like, okay, same time
Speaker 1: tomorrow night. And for three months we never spoke on
Speaker 1: the phone, never met in person. We would just right
Speaker 1: for like hours about everything and just talking, talking, talking,
Speaker 1: and then without us either because I was not looking
Speaker 1: to date anyone, not having to fall in love and like,
Speaker 1: oh someone, And there was also someone that wasn't it's
Speaker 1: gonna sound weird. She wasn't in my immediate circle of
Speaker 1: friends or family, so every conversation didn't start off with
Speaker 1: the how are you doing okay? How like this was
Speaker 1: just me talking about to someone with an incredibly agile
Speaker 1: brain from your suffering exactly, And so we would just
Speaker 1: connect on all these supper levels and then without knowing it,
Speaker 1: we just kind of I just we fell in love
Speaker 1: with each other without realizing it. And then we finally
Speaker 1: met in May after three months of just talking in
Speaker 1: the lobby of Shutters Hotel and she I go, I go,
Speaker 1: let's go get dinner. She goes, well, let's go somewhere
Speaker 1: where if it doesn't work out. We were so realistic
Speaker 1: about it, like if we meet and it doesn't click,
Speaker 1: we either of us can leave. And I go, absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's a great idea. And so we went to shut
Speaker 1: Hers Hotel and had dinner in the restaurant there. But
Speaker 1: when we met and she tapped me on the shoulder
Speaker 1: in the lobby and I turned around and her first
Speaker 1: words were and I'm saying this as a brag, because
Speaker 1: Meredith Sounder said to me and she goes, oh, you're
Speaker 1: so cute. And I was like okay, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: and playing against him like the woman she is, like
Speaker 1: she is enragingly beautiful, Just like, what the hell are
Speaker 1: you kidding me? Love is love God love. You find
Speaker 1: it where you find it, and when you find it,
Speaker 1: the only thing is you say thank you. You're grateful.
Speaker 1: You're grateful. Yeah, And I was like, I was so
Speaker 1: obviously I had some oh my god, I'm getting married.
Speaker 1: But also it's not like we're in our twenties trying
Speaker 1: to discover ourselves. I don't know if I like at
Speaker 1: that age, if you know, when you find the other person, like,
Speaker 1: let's get married. What I'm not going to go to
Speaker 1: all this and you know, you know, yeah, And I
Speaker 1: remember talking to other widows and they were like, ignore
Speaker 1: all the stuff. Because one of the widows, and I
Speaker 1: knew it was a woman, she was like, I waited
Speaker 1: ten years to get married. And I got the same
Speaker 1: crap from people because they're like, she waited too long.
Speaker 1: She got grief because she waited too long, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. So she's like, there's no way to
Speaker 1: do it, but no one will ever be happy with it.
Speaker 1: You have to be happy. You can't live their lives.
Speaker 1: Go do what you have to do. And it's been great.
Speaker 1: And Meredith is the most amazing mom to our daughter.
Speaker 1: She is like again, it's like Alice had Michelle, this
Speaker 1: amazing crime fighter, and now she has Meredith, who's this
Speaker 1: amazing adventurer. I'm following a small basket of people's careers,
Speaker 1: of which yours is one of them. Wow, I mean
Speaker 1: I find you as somebody who and I really really
Speaker 1: mean this. The thing about you that I find so
Speaker 1: exciting is anything is possible. There's just nothing you could
Speaker 1: do that would surprise me. Dramatically acting I mean the
Speaker 1: writing and stuff like, but in terms of comedy and
Speaker 1: comedy shows and stand up but also a dramatic acting.
Speaker 1: I think that you're capable of anything, Thank you. I
Speaker 1: mean even marrying Meredith Salinger. That is that must have
Speaker 1: been the okay, that was the real point. God, wow,
Speaker 1: the Ratitui married Natty Gain. I don't know how he
Speaker 1: pulled it off. Yeah he did. Comedian Patton Oswald. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing. Is brought to you by
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie donohue,
Speaker 1: and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.