February 16, 2021 • 41 mins
In the glut of comedy that exists today - with hundreds of comedy clubs, sit-coms, late-night talk shows, and podcasts - Patton Oswalt has distinguished himself over his three-decade career by being a talented actor who also happens to be very funny. Patton talks to Alec about the sudden death in 2016 of his first wife, author Michelle McNamara, how it changed his relationship with their daughter. Patton says the strength of his first marriage allowed him to “run at love” when it came a second time (he married actress Meredith Salenger in late 2017). Alec and Patton also compare notes on the deep imprint their favorite TV shows growing up have had, what Patton learned about FOMO while writing for MADtv, and why Patton started all over when he started performing at comedy clubs in San Francisco in the early 90s.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from My Heart Radio. My friend Lorne Michael's told me
that back in the nineteen seventies when he launched Saturday
Night Live, there were only a handful of comedy clubs
in the United States. Today there are hundreds of comedy clubs,
and Americans have available to them an ocean of sitcom's,
(00:26):
late night talk shows and streaming comedy specials. To distinguish
yourself in that world of comedy is a very difficult
thing to do. My guest today has succeeded at just that.
Actor writer comedian Patton Oswald has appeared in many sitcoms,
including The King of Queens, ap Bio, The Goldberg's Veep, Reno,
(00:51):
Parks and Wreck, and Brooklyn Nine. He's written two books,
including a memoir, Silver Screen Fiend, about his of of movies,
and he does a lot of voiceover work, from My
Little Pony and Word Girl to Archer and bow Jack, Horsemen, and,
perhaps most memorably, as Remy in Pixar's Rattatui. First of all,
(01:15):
I'm a rat, which means life is hard. A second,
I have a highly developed sense of taste and smell flour, eggs, sugar,
vanilla bean, oh Small Twisdom. Patton Oswald has released three
(01:36):
Netflix comedy specials, including last year's I Love Everything, where
he riffs on parenting, home ownership, and turning fifty. If
you were to fly a helicopter low over the earth,
you know what you would see. You'd see people in
their twenties gobbling drugs, eating delicious food, having sex, People
(01:57):
in their thirties with actual jobs making the world run,
People in their forties trying to fund the twenty year olds,
and then us, the gentle surrendered fifty year olds. We've
got our earbuds in listening to podcasts what You're done
(02:18):
by twenty year olds that nobody wants to fuck. In
April two thousand sixteen, Patton Oswald suffered a great loss
the sudden death of his first wife, true crime writer
Michelle McNamara. She was forty six. She left behind patent
and there then seven year old daughter Alice. My absolute
(02:42):
first thought was, why isn't it me? She should be here.
She's doing, in my opinion, the more important work and
has the better bond with and it would be a
better example for to raise our daughter with not not
to I don't believe in you know, um false modesty.
But if you're going to choose a person to emulate you,
(03:03):
oh yeah, have do do Michelle more than yeah? Exactly mother.
You can't replace them right now? No, No, what was
that like for you in those early stages of managing that,
not just your grief but your single parenthood you you know,
I didn't think about this aspect of a part of
being a dad. At least part of my process is
(03:27):
going off and having some solitude to be with my
thoughts and then be there because I was hardwired with
that old patriarchal model of I'm the one who goes
out into the wild and gathers up the firewood and
that kills the meat and brings it all back, and
then when I'm home I relaxed while they all prepare us.
(03:48):
And then I had to do I had to still
go out and get the sustenance, but then be there
and be the parents. So there was about a year
of kind of adjusting two. I very early on stop
judging myself for maybe not being the most dynamic, but
I was going I'm here, though I'm physically here, when
I'm home and she's home. I'm here, and I just
(04:09):
and you find out that if you want to, you
can adjust your schedule to go, Okay, well, she's in
school for these hours, so this is when I will
do work, and this is when I will get stuff
done in the minute she's done work has got to
know that I'm not available now and I want to
go pick her up at school and come home with
her and just be with her. And that was that
was how it was for a while. That's where were
(04:30):
That's where we're recording at this time. Because my two
youngest boys, not the baby, but the two middle boys,
they take a nap, right people, I mean, when are
we recording the podcast? I go one o'clock, it's naptime.
And when they when they nap, Yeah, the only time
the house is quiet enough to record. Yeah, exactly a
lot of times, what what you learn is when my
(04:50):
daughter was talking to me, I had to get over
my impulse to go, well, what is the action thing
we can do to solve this. A lot of times
she wasn't looking for the action solutions. She just let's
just talk this out and look at it. We don't
need a solution right now. I just want someone to
hear me and then to say back, oh, yeah, that
is really bad and I don't actually have an answer
(05:11):
right now. Like that, in a weird way, that was
more reassuring, because coming back with an immediate action solution
almost feels to that person, especially to my daughter. Sometimes
I think it felt like I don't think he really
was listening to me. I think he just wanted to
jump to the solution. And it seems like men want
to jump right to the solution, and women are so
(05:33):
much more patient and and confident in going let we
don't need to have us let's just keep let's look
at this exactly, you know, and menally, no, we solve
it right now. But but there's and nothing makes a
man panic more than you don't have the answer, where
there's not only do not have an answer, but when
(05:55):
you realize the answer is there is not an immediate solution.
Like there's friend drama um at school and I and
I had to go I guess you have to go
back tomorrow and talk to her, or like like there
wasn't this specific I wanted to do that, like the
Good Fellas thing of like if someone was being mean
to her at school, like grab her and put her
(06:16):
head in a pizza of and go. You know that's
not doesn't work that way. When I say to my daughters,
I'm like, I don't say this, but she'll be like,
she'll be crying and should be like, you know, Amanda
would mean to me it was mean to be on
a zoom call like, and my wife is so the
process and the you know, and I'm like, why don't
you just tell Amanda to go fund herself? You know,
(06:41):
like maybe I should go talk to a man. You know,
you don't need to go into the school angry sixth
year old man yelling at an eight year old your
your Your wife was a writer her entire career. She was, yeah,
I mean she started as a writer in college. She
taught writing at Michigan and and started it was weird.
(07:01):
She started writing TV shows and screenplays in Hollywood. They
were comedies, but they were crime adjacent. And then as
she wrote them, she even, if you're writing a comedy
about a crime, you have to at least know the
crime has got to make sense or it doesn't. You know,
the comedy falls apart. So in researching the crime aspects
of it, she started realizing oh no, I really like
(07:23):
the crime way better. I don't want to write comedy.
I want actually, I don't want to write Springtime for Dahmer,
you know, I don't want none of that for me. Yeah.
So she worked as an assistant for a private eye
for a while, like, did cases with him, and and
just that became her thing. And then she when we
got together, you know, she would tell me that just
(07:44):
the Labrinthian details of these cases that she would just
research online. And I was like, why don't you just
because I had a web master, I had a web
page for my shows. I'm like, I'll just pay me
a little lecture. Let's get do you have a website?
Just write this stuff out. And she started writing it,
and she was starting to put these crimes together just
on This is like in the you know, the early
stages of the internet, and now there's a million crime
(08:07):
blogs and crime podcasts. Um. She was one of the
first that was doing it and was getting calls. She
got a call from Dateline. They hired her as a
consultant because she had put together a case they weren't
able to crack. And the reason they weren't able to
crack it was because when they would go to the
family and talk to him, it's like, oh, this is
the news. They would clam up. But some girl on
the internet, yeah I'll say anything that who cares? And
(08:30):
they told her everything. It was amazing. So the documentary,
which is the same name as the that's a six
part documentary. It's an on HBO. Yes, I'll Be Gone
in the Dark. It's yeah, they all six episodes are
out there now. Oh my god. And obviously did you
did you have any involvement with that at all? Were you?
I you know, it's a documentary about an extraordinary woman
that was made by an extraordinary woman. I love Liz
(08:52):
Garbas Liz Garbage, Oh my god, woman and so prolific.
I mean, she did I'll Be Gone in the Dark,
then did all In Then now she's like she just
is able to capture the essence and the absolute right
angle of attack for these stories. It's incredible. It's as
(09:13):
much a tribute to Liz and her crew as it
is to Michelle and the people around her. And again,
just like I was with Michelle, I'm just the mediator.
I guess that the one thing I can give myself
credit for was knowing when to step the hell back
and let people do their work. And both times I
had the wherewithal to do that, Thank God. You know,
(09:34):
for me as a kid, TV was something that you.
I mean, I'm a bit older than you, and TV
was something that you sat down and you did what
I called I This might not be the most apt phrase,
but you would do back then in the sixties and seventies,
when I referred to as I are vedic listening, you know,
you did the most intense listening known to man. You'd
(09:54):
watch one episode of a show or a movie and
you remember every line because you literally got into a
mirrorlogical electromagnetic field with the TV and it was going
into your brain and being chiseled into your brain. And
I remembered all the words to the show watching it
one time, because that's all you had. There was no VCR,
it wasn't coming back nothing. You watched it then and
(10:16):
that was it. So I would watch Herman Munster, I
watched Gilligan's Island, f Troop. I watched all the TV
from when I was a kid. Family Affair. It's weird
you you just mentioned the air vetic listening for shows
like Family Affair and Bewitched and and igree Ma Genie
and stuff like that. Do you think that that informed
(10:39):
your characterization of Jack Donneghee on thirty Rock only because
now that I'm thinking about it, he was an evangelical
salesman for that kind of sitcom hypnotism because he didn't
give a crap about the content of the shows. He
loved the fact that it got people into a state
where he could sell ducts, and it was why he
(11:02):
was so good at mimicking those rhythms on other people.
Was that like a subconscious thing that got drilled into
your brain and you didn't realize you had it? Probably subconscious, Yeah,
because you've done a lot of very like rough You
know that the mammt the you know, Miami Blue is
way more naturalistic stuff, and you very easily fell into
those kind of inhuman rhythms that you realize when you
(11:24):
listen to it. But that is kind of how we
talk because we've been programmed by the TV. It's really
weird that that happened a your vedic listening. What was
that background for you grew up where I grew up
in the very very bland suburbs of northern Virginia, Sterling Virginia.
(11:46):
Was your dad in the government, Yeah, he was. My
dad was a marine for twenty years and then he
retired and then he worked at USA today at Genet
and built all their computer systems. So it was he
was a tech guy out Silver Spring. And I remember
him saying he would talk vaguely because he couldn't even
conceive of it. But he's like, it's all gonna be
(12:07):
on a computer, like everything, Like I had a manual
typewriter and I wanted an electric And he said, just
why don't you just wait? In five years, it's all
gonna there won't be any typewriters. There won't like, there
won't be any of that. Just but he couldn't articulate
it enough. He didn't know exactly what was coming. But
he had an inkland because he saw what was going on,
you know, with Business Defense Department here. What did your
(12:29):
mom do? My mom was a legal secretary in Vienna.
It was all people the suburbs where I grew up.
It's all around four and everyone went into the city
and made money and then came to the suburbs. When
you're a child, it's the funny in your household and
everybody's going get up there, Patton. That is so funny?
(12:49):
Are you like the performing the family I had? I mean,
I was funny in my family, but I was also
in you know that the term the class clown, that's
actually a false term. There's a clown click in every
high school. It's not. There's never just one. There's a
group of people, boys and girls who were super into comedy.
And that was my click. So then, of course in
(13:10):
my home, you know, I could lift more than everyone
else because I was hanging out all day with these
comedy nerds. But then I would come home and my
dad was you know, he introduced me very early on
to like Jonathan Winters uh and the mother's brothers and
stuff like that, and then that led me surreptitiously to
Richard Pryor and then, weirdly enough to Steve Martin, who
(13:31):
Steve Martin was my gateway to Monty Python because I
heard Monty Python before Steve Martin. I didn't get it.
I thought it was stupid. Then I heard Steve Martin
went oh, I get what they were doing. And then
that led me back into it. And then this whole
world like kind of opened up. It was great where
you go to college. I went to William and Mary.
I went there to study writing. And when I went
to William and Mary, this is in the late eighties,
(13:53):
early nineties. They they had a theater department, but they
really didn't have like a film society or any kind
of like stay up. They had a couple of improv
groups and stuff like that. And then now apparently it's
just it's even more exploded. You know. At the time,
I think William Mary was more of a feeder school
for like lawyers, and it was it was that kind
(14:13):
of thing. They weren't really that focused on the arts.
They majors exactly. Yeah. I remember I was having problems
with my senior because I had taken too many courses
in my major and I didn't have enough credits to
graduate because I took too many English courses and I
didn't understand that I was supposed to take some psychology.
Took a lot of geology and psychology too. But I
remember I had to petition the committee on degrees and
(14:38):
and asked them to wave it was just like nine
credits that I was shy, and I was talking to
my counsel and I was like, look, I really need
to graduate like, and he was like, you actually don't
need to. You can just do a whole other year.
It's great. You do a whole other year as a
senior and you only got to take nine credits, will
be the best year of your life. And I'm like, no,
you don't understand. Like I have jobs lined because starting
(15:00):
stopping here, I started actually getting work as a comedian.
So I'm like, by the time when I was a senior,
I have jobs lined up. School was in the way. Yeah,
And and then he was like, oh, what firm, Like
what firm are you with? Like he in his mind
I had signed with it. I'm like, oh no, I'm
doing Charlie Goodnights in um North Carolina. I'm doing their Garvins,
I'm doing the Comedy Caravan, like I had all these
gigs lined up. And then he and then he said,
(15:22):
I don't think William and Marian wants to be known
for producing comedians like like as a like kind of
And then I went okay, and then I just like
I just petitioned so hard and they went fine, just
get out and they gave me my diploma. But I
was like ah, and and and then like they William
and Mary Produced, Michelle Wolf and John Stewart. For God's sakes,
(15:42):
they should be proud of that. Comedian Patton Oswald. I'm
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. If
you like conversations with comedians who can also act, check
out our archives and my conversation with Kristen Wigg, who
credits her college acting teacher and helping her overcome her
(16:06):
performance anxiety. It was literally acting one on one that
was one class one class, and I was terrified to
take it. But something about this class we learned about
improv and my teacher was really supportive and at the
end of the class he was just like, have you
ever considered doing this? And I was like, oh, yeah,
(16:27):
right was your teacher? Was my teacher? Yeah? Here more
of my conversation with Kristen Wigg at Here's the Thing
dot org. After the break, I talked to Patton Oswald
about his move to San Francisco in the early nine
nineties and whyatt prompted him to tear up his previous
material and start all over. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
(16:56):
listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. Patton
Oswald was a fan of stand up as a kid,
but he didn't try his hand at it until college.
It was between junior and sophomore year of college. That
was that somewhere where I'm like, oh, I better actually
figure out what I'm gonna do, and I because I
couldn't really And that was something I tried all these
(17:17):
different jobs. I started training to be a paralegal. I
was also working as a party DJ. I was writing
sports for a local paper under a pseudonym, just like,
what's one of these things is gonna stick? And then
I one evening, I went, because I always loved comedy,
went I'll do an open mic and I looked in
the paper. There was an open mics place called Garvin's.
And I went to Garvin's Comedy club that was in
(17:38):
d C on L Street between thirteen and fourteen Street,
very super sketchy area. I went on. I went out
and I went on stage. It did not go well,
but one thing that I said got like a half
got that comedian laugh from like that kind of ah
like that. Also, my first night on stage was also
Dave Chappelle's first night on age. He was fourteen years
(18:02):
old and he when he went on. It looked like
he'd been doing it for thirty years. He was amazing.
He just like having my god and and I I
was nineteen and it but the one I really loved.
I loved sitting and watching all the comedians hanging out
and riffing with each other and building jokes at a
(18:22):
thin air. And I realized, even though there's no immediate
reward here for me, I want this life. My roommate
in college as a comedian named Gary Laser, who I was,
you know, Gary Laser was my my and then he
and I were roommates. We got in an apartment together
for a couple of years, lived at him for a
couple of years. We have Gary was my roommate off
and on for like four or five years. And Garrett
(18:44):
I would go to the clubs with him, to the
Good Times on thirty on thirty of them third or whatever.
The ben atar was discovered. We got and we go
to these different clubs with him and his friends and
they don't get up there and perform. And I remember,
you know, it was like there's no place else I'd
rather be, you know, these guys, Gary Leason and going.
I was married to my first wife, yeah. We were
(19:05):
together for three years, and that three years went by
just like many had so many materials. Material I still
remember his routine and I loved him. And then I
go and do what I'm doing, and when I come
back and do thirty Rock, it's like I'm around those
people again, where like on my best day, I'm not
(19:27):
as funny as them on their worst day. You know,
Tina Carlock call them they're so in terms of writing.
You're not a comedian, you know, they're just so blindingly funny.
And for you, did you go through a period where
you're like you're honing, you're working. You said that the
thing went so and at what point, you know, you're
here at Garvin's and d C. At what point do
(19:49):
you sit there and go I think I got this,
I think that's going well. I really didn't. He Here's
it was weird. I felt like one of the things
I like was I'm sitting at the so first of all,
this material, I'm not hearing joke. Second hand, I'm here
where they're being created, so I'm upstream. I'm one of
the people sending it down into the you know culture,
which that was also really exciting, but very early on
(20:12):
I learned it's weird how you talked about the air
of atic listening with with TV. I kind of had
that with comedy in that I learned the rhythms very
early on, and I could get away with very very
mediocre material. But because I had the rhythms, and because
there was this comedy boom, you could kind of go
up and talk in those rhythms and people would just
(20:33):
kind of go, okay, this is comedy. And then as
I was doing it, I started getting good in that
I was getting a lot of work. Then I remember
very very specifically, I moved to San Francisco, and this
is when the comedy boom was starting to collapse and
all the clubs were closing, and I went to the
Holy City Zoo. I'm the new kid in town. I've
(20:54):
been killing it on the road. I'm gonna do great,
and and that was I went into this room, Holy
City Zoo, and on the show was like Greg Proops,
Margaret Show, Jeanine Garoffalo, Greg Barren, like all these comedians
doing this stuff that rhythms I'd never heard before. I
went up with my road rhythms, all my a stuff
that I thought would kill and it just died. Then
(21:17):
I watched all of these comedians I'd never seen before,
who were the best comedians I'd ever seen. I remember
very specifically, I walked across street from the Holy City
Zoo to the Taiwan Restaurant on Clement Street, and I
sat there with my notebook and I tore all the
pages out of my notebook, all my routines, and I
wrote it was May five, the tip. And then I
(21:37):
just started fresh, like I gotta start at zero now
because none of that stuff works, Like I've got to
start over the road. Stuff doesn't work. And then I
started rebuilding that. And that's when probably around four years
after that was when I really felt like, oh now
I'm me on stage Francisco. I'm still in San Francis. Well,
at that I moved away from San Francisco because also
(21:58):
the clubs were closing there, and I got a writing
job doing what I was writing on the first two
seasons a Mad TV. You went down to l A,
went down to l A, and then that your first
time in l A. That was my first permanent time
in l A. Yeah. And then and that's when the
un Cabaret was happening in Largo. And all these alternative rooms,
and I was going there and that's when I really
(22:18):
really felt like I became who I am. And that's
how many years? So that's my point. How many years
into your career are you before you go I think
that the cake is cooked for me? It was like
eight years before I felt really it's an amazing yeah.
But but what's weird is, and I'm sure a lot
of people have experiences. I was working as a professional comedian,
but I doesn't. I didn't feel like I was me,
(22:39):
And I wonder if that's I bet there's a lot
of actors and writers and performers who had years of
making money but weren't feeling like they were actually doing,
you know, something that was theirs. So you start writing
from Mad TV? And then what kind of zone do
you find yourself? Does everything get to be different when
you're in the big league, so to speak? So, um what?
(23:00):
But here's here. Here's the interesting thing. At the time
that I was writing on Mad TV, and they were
amazing writers on that show, and we got to do
some really good stuff. But Mad TV was my introduction to, oh,
this is what it's like working for a big network
where you've got to serve a lot of things before
you can even get to the comedy, which I've heard
(23:20):
sometimes can happen on SNL where there's like other considerations
first and then you got to get to the comedy.
And at the time that I was my Mad TV
at the same time Mr Show was happening over on
HBO and all my friends a lot of my friends
or on Mr Show, and that was where there was
nothing but the comedy. It was all about what was
the best idea and everyone is getting to work at
(23:41):
the height of their powers. And I was so jealous
of like why can't I be over there? But it
took me a while to see that I was learning
some very important lessons over at mad TV of how
to circumvent the system. And also when I look back,
there were real moments of brilliance that the actors and
(24:04):
the writers could conspire together and get through around the network,
going but we need to have this thing, and we
need to have this thing and there, and they found
ways to give them what they thought they wanted and
then do amazing stuff. So there's always no matter where
you are. What I learned was don't look at over
what other people are doing look at where you are
and how can you make that as good and interesting
(24:27):
as you can? So you wrote a memoir silver screen fiend.
M hm, how did you get that book published? Um?
I had published a book before of like essays, but
but it wasn't totally met. There were like a couple
of memoir chapters, but I wasn't confident enough to just
write a full memoir at Simon and Schuster and they
liked it and they said, you have another book in you.
(24:48):
And then I was looking through my old calendars at
my time in the in l A, in the when
I moved there, and I'm like, my god, I was like,
I didn't realize how obsessed I was with films because
it was the first time that I really lived in
a city where you could go see a movie, either
a new or a classic movie, pretty much every night
of the week in the theater, not at home, in
(25:10):
the theater with people the new Beverly Beverly and the
new Art and the new Art and all those places.
So I started going and I started kind of and
I'm sure you went through the same thing with when
you first started being a theater actor. And there must
have been a time when you would just obsessively go
to the theater to watch shows because you realize, I
(25:30):
want to be doing this, so I'm going to absorb
as much of it. The love Oh I not to
do oh my god. My friends and I would go
watch bad stand up at open mics, not to make
fun of it, but just to go, oh, don't do that,
don't do that, don't do you know. It was and
same with films. Oh when you see like the same
(25:52):
things happening over and over again, Oh, don't do that,
don't do that. So that kind of um obsession, I
really you know, it kind of took over my life
for like those four years. It's I go, this is
the most boring addiction memoir ever written, because it's about
me being addicted to movies. Although I saw people I
got very close to tipping over the edge of There
(26:13):
are people that are kind of lost by films, and
you see them holding their like Leonard Malton guides that
are just tattered clip and mark because they've got to
see every movie. And there's a you know, in New
York is an even just as equally a dangerous place
to be a film fanatic because you can go see
I mean not now, obviously, in the heyday, I live
(26:37):
around the corner from Cinema Village, really live downtown. But
you say about New Beverley is, and I remember this.
I would go to There was the KB Cerberus Theater
in Washington, and I would go there. I'll never forget
one day in a revival theater. I can see Last
Tango and I go into that theater and the music
and the whole and Brando's you know, self flagellation, all
(27:01):
of it. I go see this movie and I haven't
seen any movies like that, And I remember coming out
of the theater and I was hammered and the sky
was gray. It's washing. The sky was wintertime. I'm in
school and the sky is leaden. Remember seeing it, going
like I didn't want to go back into the world.
I didn't. I wanted to go back into the theater
and go run it again or show me another movie.
(27:22):
I couldn't. I didn't want to face the world. I mean, yeah,
I get into these weird dives. But the mood that
I've been in, I wanted to see Alec Guinness in
Tinker Taylor because I've been so starved for a character
who's just quiet and competent and can just do like.
I was so starved for that that that was my
oasis during all this was Oh, a quiet, non flashy
(27:43):
guy who can actually get stuff done. He was so
good He would clean his eyeglasses with a fat part
of his tie, and it became so much part of
his character that that that when Lakaray wrote Smile these People,
he added that trait because of watching the TV shows,
like he did the character that I created better, and
now I've got to adjust him to the actor that
(28:04):
did it like that level of just inhabiting. But the
thing about writing and acting, there's a risk Alan Moore
talked about this when you truly inhabit characters long term.
There's a mental risk for great writers and great actors
when you sacrifice your personality to go into these other lives.
(28:24):
You've got to have a safe place to come out
of and kind of get yourself back on the ground.
That's why I think you see with a lot of
actors who go way deep later in life, they kind
of suffer their personality flickers a little bit and they're
never quite on a steady keel after a while. You know,
Peter Sellers is a great example of you know, he
(28:44):
basically said, I don't have a personality. It's like he
sacrifices personality before he even started acting. So you've gone
kind of deep with some of you. I mean, there's
not a lot. There's not a lot of the warm
of uncular Alec Baldwin at the beginning of Glen Garry
Glenn us, how do you do you have a place
where you can come out of characters like that or well,
(29:05):
I always tell the same story. And this is to
me one of the most meaningful moments of my career
where a director really helped me. This guy, Jamie Folly,
said to me, he said, it's like that scene in
Patton when Patton slaps the guy and says, you call
yourself a soldier. He said, that's what we're doing here.
He says, you call yourself a salesman. He said, you're
doing this for their own good. You're doing this for
their own good. You don't want to do this, he said,
(29:27):
you gott And once he said that to me, I
felt like, literally like a cartoon character. Were like the
lightning bolts went through my shoulders down into my fingertips.
I was like, I looked at my wing. I got
it and I went out there and I was like,
I'm gonna fucking I'm gonna, I'm gonna knock you out. Man.
If you don't, you gotta you gotta do whatever that
Just do what the funk I tell you to do.
And I went out there and and and folly. The
phrase I use for what I teach acting is authorization.
(29:50):
What authorizes you do when you if you go into
an operating room. And I've done this to prepare for
a film. I watched over a hundred hours of surgery
in Last Angeles and in western Massachusetts to the movie Malice,
not because I wanted to learn surgery. My favorite line
is Walter Matthau. They said, you're playing a doctor, do
you want to go observe surgery? And Walter math I
took a pause and said, I'm a movie actor. No
(30:12):
one expects me to really know how to do surgery.
But the point is that I wanted to go in
that room so that when I went into the set,
when I got on the stage and we did the scene,
I'd seen it right, I knew it. I was authorized
to do this because I knew it, And to me,
that's vital. I need the authorization of that character. Yeah,
(30:32):
but but I just wonder how far is too far? Sometimes?
And I wonder that too, like when I'm writing or
when I'm doing some of the more dramatic roles. Like
I just watched the Michael Jordan documentary. This is weird
how this ties in. But his teammates are talking in
the documentary about how he was kind of an a hole,
but he needed to operate at this I'm a demigod
(30:53):
level to perform at the level that he did, Like
that's how he won. And at the end, like you
see how kind of drained he is, he's crying a
little bit, like I know that I was doing that,
but it's what I needed to do to with Like
in art, you do wonder how much of myself do
I sacrifice? How much do I hold back? You know,
like that's always gonna be that ongoing question. And also
(31:14):
with with comedy, how when I was doing that special annihilation,
how deep into my own darkness do I go as
a comedian until it stops being entertainment instinct you've developed?
I didn't. I mean, luckily I had years of doing
comedy where I kind of had an idea. But when
(31:34):
it really got down to it, I remember Bob kat
Goldthwaite was directing the special and he came back into
the green room before I went on or He was like,
you just want to go out there, don't you like?
I'm like, yeah, I can't think about this anymore. I
have to go out there. And you you must have
seen this in place where we've rehearsed the ship out
of it. But now, can we just go and get
started and then we'll fucking figure it out. If we
(31:55):
can start, that's the best way to figure it out.
Just let me fucking go out there and I'll figure
it out. You know, I see people who are comic
talent who I think I'll never forget. I said to
Chris Rock one time. I said, I knew some guys
that were very powerful group of people in the music
business and had a lot of access to rights and things.
And I said to Chris, you should play Miles Davis.
(32:16):
I said, I know you're an actor. You're you're an actor.
I mean that you're funny and you do all that
marauding the stage and the way I always cry, and
I feel the same way about you. You're an actor.
And do you sometimes feel like, Okay, I've done the
comedy thing. I got that in my pocket, marauding the
stage with a microphone in Charlotte, be dazzling everybody. Time
(32:39):
to go do something else. You know the thing about
Santa Bus. It doesn't have to be either or you
can go do other things and then go do That's
what I remember. I went and saw me and Maria
Bamford went and saw Jerry Steinfeld's comedian documentary together, and
we were walking out and she was like, we picked
a profession that we can do forever. We could always
do stand up. We can also do other things. We
(33:00):
can always do stand up and stand up is such
a It is one of the last pure, I guess,
dictatorial posts where I think it, I say it. That's it.
And if anything, you get to a point where I mean,
maybe I'll get to the point where Chris Rock is.
Where you can get to the point where you not
only elicit laughter, you elicit what I like to call
the laughter of disbelief, where Chris Rock says things and
(33:23):
people like the h ship. I mean, that's true, but
holy fuck, I mean, did can he that? I mean
that is true? But we don't like he says things
where the audience you can you feel the laughter is like,
I mean, we all know that, but we're not supposed
to say that, all right, But he just said that,
So I guess we're gonna like that level of you know,
(33:45):
maybe I can get to that level. But I never
want to stop doing stand up, but I definitely want
to do other things because, especially if you do stand
up long enough and you try to be as wired
into not only other people's foibles but especially your own.
You see in acting where people don't go deep enough
with that or they're not as honest, like, oh you
pulled back. Why didn't you just stay and go that deep?
(34:09):
So then you want to do that as an actor,
actor and comedian Patton Oswald, if you're enjoying this conversation,
don't keep it to yourself, Tell a friend and subscribe
to Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we
come back, Patton Oswald talks about falling in love again.
(34:40):
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. In
Patton Oswald's Netflix comedy special I Love Everything. He talks
about finding love again. Not to bum you guys out,
but I was very, very resigned to living in the gray.
I was, after what I went through a couple of
years ago. I was just going to I'm going to
live in the gray, and I'm just to raise my
(35:01):
daughter alone and try to put focus all the joy
and adventure in life on her and give her that life,
and I will merely exist. I'm not going to hit
joy again, but that's fine. I can still exist, That's okay.
And then I met this poem of a woman who
ReLit the sky, and I just said, I'm going to
run at love again. If you see love, run at it.
(35:26):
Run at love. If you see it, trust me, run
at love. Patton Oswald married actress Meredith Salinger in November
two thousand seventeen. Her breakout role came at age fifteen
as the lead in the Journey of Natty Gan. I
wanted to know how Patton Oswald found such a perfect
(35:47):
match a second time. I was married to this extraordinary woman,
and I think the fact that I was with her
for so long was what helped me see very quickly
this other ex ordinary woman. Because Meredith Sounder, who is
yes child actress, insanely gorgeous teen actress beyond gorgeous, like
(36:09):
like classic nineteen forties movie siren gorge Yes, exactly, how
did you meet her? We have a friend in common,
Martha Plimpton, amazing actress, and Martha Plimpton likes to do
these salons where she brings various people together for dinners
at her house. That's what I do. And the morning
of it, I had to fly back from Austin at
(36:31):
like six in the morning. And when I got home, like,
I can't go out again. I'm so dehydrated and exhausted,
and I I'm so sorry I have to beg off.
And then the next day Meredith sent me a message saying,
you missed the best lasagna last night, dude, And then
I wrote back story in my life film. Maybe we'll
go get coffee. It's not sorry, you know, And then
we just started. This was in February of sen I'm
(36:53):
still deep in my grief, but I'm just talking to
We're just talking about books and politics. Oh my god,
the world is insane right now. And it got to
the point where of the many things I missed about Michelle,
I missed having someone fascinating to talk to in the
dark at the end of the day, so as I
would put Alice to bed and then I would just
get on my phone like at nine o'clock and I
(37:14):
would go, hey, are you here, and you're like, oh, yeah,
what's going because she was also like she has dated
some fascinating and very troubled people in her life, and
she was taking a hiatus from the damaged Geniuses, and
so she was just in her apartment with her cats,
and we would just every night like, okay, same time
tomorrow night. And for three months we never spoke on
(37:34):
the phone, never met in person. We would just right
for like hours about everything and just talking, talking, talking,
and then without us either because I was not looking
to date anyone, not having to fall in love and like,
oh someone, And there was also someone that wasn't it's
gonna sound weird. She wasn't in my immediate circle of
friends or family, so every conversation didn't start off with
the how are you doing okay? How like this was
(37:58):
just me talking about to someone with an incredibly agile
brain from your suffering exactly, And so we would just
connect on all these supper levels and then without knowing it,
we just kind of I just we fell in love
with each other without realizing it. And then we finally
met in May after three months of just talking in
the lobby of Shutters Hotel and she I go, I go,
(38:20):
let's go get dinner. She goes, well, let's go somewhere
where if it doesn't work out. We were so realistic
about it, like if we meet and it doesn't click,
we either of us can leave. And I go, absolutely,
that's a great idea. And so we went to shut
Hers Hotel and had dinner in the restaurant there. But
when we met and she tapped me on the shoulder
in the lobby and I turned around and her first
words were and I'm saying this as a brag, because
(38:42):
Meredith Sounder said to me and she goes, oh, you're
so cute. And I was like okay, and then yeah,
and playing against him like the woman she is, like
she is enragingly beautiful, Just like, what the hell are
(39:03):
you kidding me? Love is love God love. You find
it where you find it, and when you find it,
the only thing is you say thank you. You're grateful.
You're grateful. Yeah, And I was like, I was so
obviously I had some oh my god, I'm getting married.
But also it's not like we're in our twenties trying
to discover ourselves. I don't know if I like at
that age, if you know, when you find the other person, like,
(39:25):
let's get married. What I'm not going to go to
all this and you know, you know, yeah, And I
remember talking to other widows and they were like, ignore
all the stuff. Because one of the widows, and I
knew it was a woman, she was like, I waited
ten years to get married. And I got the same
crap from people because they're like, she waited too long.
(39:45):
She got grief because she waited too long, you know
what I mean. So she's like, there's no way to
do it, but no one will ever be happy with it.
You have to be happy. You can't live their lives.
Go do what you have to do. And it's been great.
And Meredith is the most amazing mom to our daughter.
She is like again, it's like Alice had Michelle, this
(40:10):
amazing crime fighter, and now she has Meredith, who's this
amazing adventurer. I'm following a small basket of people's careers,
of which yours is one of them. Wow, I mean
I find you as somebody who and I really really
mean this. The thing about you that I find so
exciting is anything is possible. There's just nothing you could
do that would surprise me. Dramatically acting I mean the
(40:32):
writing and stuff like, but in terms of comedy and
comedy shows and stand up but also a dramatic acting.
I think that you're capable of anything, Thank you. I
mean even marrying Meredith Salinger. That is that must have
been the okay, that was the real point. God, wow,
the Ratitui married Natty Gain. I don't know how he
pulled it off. Yeah he did. Comedian Patton Oswald. I'm
(40:58):
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing. Is brought to you by
I Heart Radio. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie donohue,
and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from My Heart Radio. My friend Lorne Michael's told me
that back in the nineteen seventies when he launched Saturday
Night Live, there were only a handful of comedy clubs
in the United States. Today there are hundreds of comedy clubs,
and Americans have available to them an ocean of sitcom's,
(00:26):
late night talk shows and streaming comedy specials. To distinguish
yourself in that world of comedy is a very difficult
thing to do. My guest today has succeeded at just that.
Actor writer comedian Patton Oswald has appeared in many sitcoms,
including The King of Queens, ap Bio, The Goldberg's Veep, Reno,
(00:51):
Parks and Wreck, and Brooklyn Nine. He's written two books,
including a memoir, Silver Screen Fiend, about his of of movies,
and he does a lot of voiceover work, from My
Little Pony and Word Girl to Archer and bow Jack, Horsemen, and,
perhaps most memorably, as Remy in Pixar's Rattatui. First of all,
(01:15):
I'm a rat, which means life is hard. A second,
I have a highly developed sense of taste and smell flour, eggs, sugar,
vanilla bean, oh Small Twisdom. Patton Oswald has released three
(01:36):
Netflix comedy specials, including last year's I Love Everything, where
he riffs on parenting, home ownership, and turning fifty. If
you were to fly a helicopter low over the earth,
you know what you would see. You'd see people in
their twenties gobbling drugs, eating delicious food, having sex, People
(01:57):
in their thirties with actual jobs making the world run,
People in their forties trying to fund the twenty year olds,
and then us, the gentle surrendered fifty year olds. We've
got our earbuds in listening to podcasts what You're done
(02:18):
by twenty year olds that nobody wants to fuck. In
April two thousand sixteen, Patton Oswald suffered a great loss
the sudden death of his first wife, true crime writer
Michelle McNamara. She was forty six. She left behind patent
and there then seven year old daughter Alice. My absolute
(02:42):
first thought was, why isn't it me? She should be here.
She's doing, in my opinion, the more important work and
has the better bond with and it would be a
better example for to raise our daughter with not not
to I don't believe in you know, um false modesty.
But if you're going to choose a person to emulate you,
(03:03):
oh yeah, have do do Michelle more than yeah? Exactly mother.
You can't replace them right now? No, No, what was
that like for you in those early stages of managing that,
not just your grief but your single parenthood you you know,
I didn't think about this aspect of a part of
being a dad. At least part of my process is
(03:27):
going off and having some solitude to be with my
thoughts and then be there because I was hardwired with
that old patriarchal model of I'm the one who goes
out into the wild and gathers up the firewood and
that kills the meat and brings it all back, and
then when I'm home I relaxed while they all prepare us.
(03:48):
And then I had to do I had to still
go out and get the sustenance, but then be there
and be the parents. So there was about a year
of kind of adjusting two. I very early on stop
judging myself for maybe not being the most dynamic, but
I was going I'm here, though I'm physically here, when
I'm home and she's home. I'm here, and I just
(04:09):
and you find out that if you want to, you
can adjust your schedule to go, Okay, well, she's in
school for these hours, so this is when I will
do work, and this is when I will get stuff
done in the minute she's done work has got to
know that I'm not available now and I want to
go pick her up at school and come home with
her and just be with her. And that was that
was how it was for a while. That's where were
(04:30):
That's where we're recording at this time. Because my two
youngest boys, not the baby, but the two middle boys,
they take a nap, right people, I mean, when are
we recording the podcast? I go one o'clock, it's naptime.
And when they when they nap, Yeah, the only time
the house is quiet enough to record. Yeah, exactly a
lot of times, what what you learn is when my
(04:50):
daughter was talking to me, I had to get over
my impulse to go, well, what is the action thing
we can do to solve this. A lot of times
she wasn't looking for the action solutions. She just let's
just talk this out and look at it. We don't
need a solution right now. I just want someone to
hear me and then to say back, oh, yeah, that
is really bad and I don't actually have an answer
(05:11):
right now. Like that, in a weird way, that was
more reassuring, because coming back with an immediate action solution
almost feels to that person, especially to my daughter. Sometimes
I think it felt like I don't think he really
was listening to me. I think he just wanted to
jump to the solution. And it seems like men want
to jump right to the solution, and women are so
(05:33):
much more patient and and confident in going let we
don't need to have us let's just keep let's look
at this exactly, you know, and menally, no, we solve
it right now. But but there's and nothing makes a
man panic more than you don't have the answer, where
there's not only do not have an answer, but when
(05:55):
you realize the answer is there is not an immediate solution.
Like there's friend drama um at school and I and
I had to go I guess you have to go
back tomorrow and talk to her, or like like there
wasn't this specific I wanted to do that, like the
Good Fellas thing of like if someone was being mean
to her at school, like grab her and put her
(06:16):
head in a pizza of and go. You know that's
not doesn't work that way. When I say to my daughters,
I'm like, I don't say this, but she'll be like,
she'll be crying and should be like, you know, Amanda
would mean to me it was mean to be on
a zoom call like, and my wife is so the
process and the you know, and I'm like, why don't
you just tell Amanda to go fund herself? You know,
(06:41):
like maybe I should go talk to a man. You know,
you don't need to go into the school angry sixth
year old man yelling at an eight year old your
your Your wife was a writer her entire career. She was, yeah,
I mean she started as a writer in college. She
taught writing at Michigan and and started it was weird.
(07:01):
She started writing TV shows and screenplays in Hollywood. They
were comedies, but they were crime adjacent. And then as
she wrote them, she even, if you're writing a comedy
about a crime, you have to at least know the
crime has got to make sense or it doesn't. You know,
the comedy falls apart. So in researching the crime aspects
of it, she started realizing oh no, I really like
(07:23):
the crime way better. I don't want to write comedy.
I want actually, I don't want to write Springtime for Dahmer,
you know, I don't want none of that for me. Yeah.
So she worked as an assistant for a private eye
for a while, like, did cases with him, and and
just that became her thing. And then she when we
got together, you know, she would tell me that just
(07:44):
the Labrinthian details of these cases that she would just
research online. And I was like, why don't you just
because I had a web master, I had a web
page for my shows. I'm like, I'll just pay me
a little lecture. Let's get do you have a website?
Just write this stuff out. And she started writing it,
and she was starting to put these crimes together just
on This is like in the you know, the early
stages of the internet, and now there's a million crime
(08:07):
blogs and crime podcasts. Um. She was one of the
first that was doing it and was getting calls. She
got a call from Dateline. They hired her as a
consultant because she had put together a case they weren't
able to crack. And the reason they weren't able to
crack it was because when they would go to the
family and talk to him, it's like, oh, this is
the news. They would clam up. But some girl on
the internet, yeah I'll say anything that who cares? And
(08:30):
they told her everything. It was amazing. So the documentary,
which is the same name as the that's a six
part documentary. It's an on HBO. Yes, I'll Be Gone
in the Dark. It's yeah, they all six episodes are
out there now. Oh my god. And obviously did you
did you have any involvement with that at all? Were you?
I you know, it's a documentary about an extraordinary woman
that was made by an extraordinary woman. I love Liz
(08:52):
Garbas Liz Garbage, Oh my god, woman and so prolific.
I mean, she did I'll Be Gone in the Dark,
then did all In Then now she's like she just
is able to capture the essence and the absolute right
angle of attack for these stories. It's incredible. It's as
(09:13):
much a tribute to Liz and her crew as it
is to Michelle and the people around her. And again,
just like I was with Michelle, I'm just the mediator.
I guess that the one thing I can give myself
credit for was knowing when to step the hell back
and let people do their work. And both times I
had the wherewithal to do that, Thank God. You know,
(09:34):
for me as a kid, TV was something that you.
I mean, I'm a bit older than you, and TV
was something that you sat down and you did what
I called I This might not be the most apt phrase,
but you would do back then in the sixties and seventies,
when I referred to as I are vedic listening, you know,
you did the most intense listening known to man. You'd
(09:54):
watch one episode of a show or a movie and
you remember every line because you literally got into a
mirrorlogical electromagnetic field with the TV and it was going
into your brain and being chiseled into your brain. And
I remembered all the words to the show watching it
one time, because that's all you had. There was no VCR,
it wasn't coming back nothing. You watched it then and
(10:16):
that was it. So I would watch Herman Munster, I
watched Gilligan's Island, f Troop. I watched all the TV
from when I was a kid. Family Affair. It's weird
you you just mentioned the air vetic listening for shows
like Family Affair and Bewitched and and igree Ma Genie
and stuff like that. Do you think that that informed
(10:39):
your characterization of Jack Donneghee on thirty Rock only because
now that I'm thinking about it, he was an evangelical
salesman for that kind of sitcom hypnotism because he didn't
give a crap about the content of the shows. He
loved the fact that it got people into a state
where he could sell ducts, and it was why he
(11:02):
was so good at mimicking those rhythms on other people.
Was that like a subconscious thing that got drilled into
your brain and you didn't realize you had it? Probably subconscious, Yeah,
because you've done a lot of very like rough You
know that the mammt the you know, Miami Blue is
way more naturalistic stuff, and you very easily fell into
those kind of inhuman rhythms that you realize when you
(11:24):
listen to it. But that is kind of how we
talk because we've been programmed by the TV. It's really
weird that that happened a your vedic listening. What was
that background for you grew up where I grew up
in the very very bland suburbs of northern Virginia, Sterling Virginia.
(11:46):
Was your dad in the government, Yeah, he was. My
dad was a marine for twenty years and then he
retired and then he worked at USA today at Genet
and built all their computer systems. So it was he
was a tech guy out Silver Spring. And I remember
him saying he would talk vaguely because he couldn't even
conceive of it. But he's like, it's all gonna be
(12:07):
on a computer, like everything, Like I had a manual
typewriter and I wanted an electric And he said, just
why don't you just wait? In five years, it's all
gonna there won't be any typewriters. There won't like, there
won't be any of that. Just but he couldn't articulate
it enough. He didn't know exactly what was coming. But
he had an inkland because he saw what was going on,
you know, with Business Defense Department here. What did your
(12:29):
mom do? My mom was a legal secretary in Vienna.
It was all people the suburbs where I grew up.
It's all around four and everyone went into the city
and made money and then came to the suburbs. When
you're a child, it's the funny in your household and
everybody's going get up there, Patton. That is so funny?
(12:49):
Are you like the performing the family I had? I mean,
I was funny in my family, but I was also
in you know that the term the class clown, that's
actually a false term. There's a clown click in every
high school. It's not. There's never just one. There's a
group of people, boys and girls who were super into comedy.
And that was my click. So then, of course in
(13:10):
my home, you know, I could lift more than everyone
else because I was hanging out all day with these
comedy nerds. But then I would come home and my
dad was you know, he introduced me very early on
to like Jonathan Winters uh and the mother's brothers and
stuff like that, and then that led me surreptitiously to
Richard Pryor and then, weirdly enough to Steve Martin, who
(13:31):
Steve Martin was my gateway to Monty Python because I
heard Monty Python before Steve Martin. I didn't get it.
I thought it was stupid. Then I heard Steve Martin
went oh, I get what they were doing. And then
that led me back into it. And then this whole
world like kind of opened up. It was great where
you go to college. I went to William and Mary.
I went there to study writing. And when I went
to William and Mary, this is in the late eighties,
(13:53):
early nineties. They they had a theater department, but they
really didn't have like a film society or any kind
of like stay up. They had a couple of improv
groups and stuff like that. And then now apparently it's
just it's even more exploded. You know. At the time,
I think William Mary was more of a feeder school
for like lawyers, and it was it was that kind
(14:13):
of thing. They weren't really that focused on the arts.
They majors exactly. Yeah. I remember I was having problems
with my senior because I had taken too many courses
in my major and I didn't have enough credits to
graduate because I took too many English courses and I
didn't understand that I was supposed to take some psychology.
Took a lot of geology and psychology too. But I
remember I had to petition the committee on degrees and
(14:38):
and asked them to wave it was just like nine
credits that I was shy, and I was talking to
my counsel and I was like, look, I really need
to graduate like, and he was like, you actually don't
need to. You can just do a whole other year.
It's great. You do a whole other year as a
senior and you only got to take nine credits, will
be the best year of your life. And I'm like, no,
you don't understand. Like I have jobs lined because starting
(15:00):
stopping here, I started actually getting work as a comedian.
So I'm like, by the time when I was a senior,
I have jobs lined up. School was in the way. Yeah,
And and then he was like, oh, what firm, Like
what firm are you with? Like he in his mind
I had signed with it. I'm like, oh no, I'm
doing Charlie Goodnights in um North Carolina. I'm doing their Garvins,
I'm doing the Comedy Caravan, like I had all these
gigs lined up. And then he and then he said,
(15:22):
I don't think William and Marian wants to be known
for producing comedians like like as a like kind of
And then I went okay, and then I just like
I just petitioned so hard and they went fine, just
get out and they gave me my diploma. But I
was like ah, and and and then like they William
and Mary Produced, Michelle Wolf and John Stewart. For God's sakes,
(15:42):
they should be proud of that. Comedian Patton Oswald. I'm
Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. If
you like conversations with comedians who can also act, check
out our archives and my conversation with Kristen Wigg, who
credits her college acting teacher and helping her overcome her
(16:06):
performance anxiety. It was literally acting one on one that
was one class one class, and I was terrified to
take it. But something about this class we learned about
improv and my teacher was really supportive and at the
end of the class he was just like, have you
ever considered doing this? And I was like, oh, yeah,
(16:27):
right was your teacher? Was my teacher? Yeah? Here more
of my conversation with Kristen Wigg at Here's the Thing
dot org. After the break, I talked to Patton Oswald
about his move to San Francisco in the early nine
nineties and whyatt prompted him to tear up his previous
material and start all over. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're
(16:56):
listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. Patton
Oswald was a fan of stand up as a kid,
but he didn't try his hand at it until college.
It was between junior and sophomore year of college. That
was that somewhere where I'm like, oh, I better actually
figure out what I'm gonna do, and I because I
couldn't really And that was something I tried all these
(17:17):
different jobs. I started training to be a paralegal. I
was also working as a party DJ. I was writing
sports for a local paper under a pseudonym, just like,
what's one of these things is gonna stick? And then
I one evening, I went, because I always loved comedy,
went I'll do an open mic and I looked in
the paper. There was an open mics place called Garvin's.
And I went to Garvin's Comedy club that was in
(17:38):
d C on L Street between thirteen and fourteen Street,
very super sketchy area. I went on. I went out
and I went on stage. It did not go well,
but one thing that I said got like a half
got that comedian laugh from like that kind of ah
like that. Also, my first night on stage was also
Dave Chappelle's first night on age. He was fourteen years
(18:02):
old and he when he went on. It looked like
he'd been doing it for thirty years. He was amazing.
He just like having my god and and I I
was nineteen and it but the one I really loved.
I loved sitting and watching all the comedians hanging out
and riffing with each other and building jokes at a
(18:22):
thin air. And I realized, even though there's no immediate
reward here for me, I want this life. My roommate
in college as a comedian named Gary Laser, who I was,
you know, Gary Laser was my my and then he
and I were roommates. We got in an apartment together
for a couple of years, lived at him for a
couple of years. We have Gary was my roommate off
and on for like four or five years. And Garrett
(18:44):
I would go to the clubs with him, to the
Good Times on thirty on thirty of them third or whatever.
The ben atar was discovered. We got and we go
to these different clubs with him and his friends and
they don't get up there and perform. And I remember,
you know, it was like there's no place else I'd
rather be, you know, these guys, Gary Leason and going.
I was married to my first wife, yeah. We were
(19:05):
together for three years, and that three years went by
just like many had so many materials. Material I still
remember his routine and I loved him. And then I
go and do what I'm doing, and when I come
back and do thirty Rock, it's like I'm around those
people again, where like on my best day, I'm not
(19:27):
as funny as them on their worst day. You know,
Tina Carlock call them they're so in terms of writing.
You're not a comedian, you know, they're just so blindingly funny.
And for you, did you go through a period where
you're like you're honing, you're working. You said that the
thing went so and at what point, you know, you're
here at Garvin's and d C. At what point do
(19:49):
you sit there and go I think I got this,
I think that's going well. I really didn't. He Here's
it was weird. I felt like one of the things
I like was I'm sitting at the so first of all,
this material, I'm not hearing joke. Second hand, I'm here
where they're being created, so I'm upstream. I'm one of
the people sending it down into the you know culture,
which that was also really exciting, but very early on
(20:12):
I learned it's weird how you talked about the air
of atic listening with with TV. I kind of had
that with comedy in that I learned the rhythms very
early on, and I could get away with very very
mediocre material. But because I had the rhythms, and because
there was this comedy boom, you could kind of go
up and talk in those rhythms and people would just
(20:33):
kind of go, okay, this is comedy. And then as
I was doing it, I started getting good in that
I was getting a lot of work. Then I remember
very very specifically, I moved to San Francisco, and this
is when the comedy boom was starting to collapse and
all the clubs were closing, and I went to the
Holy City Zoo. I'm the new kid in town. I've
(20:54):
been killing it on the road. I'm gonna do great,
and and that was I went into this room, Holy
City Zoo, and on the show was like Greg Proops,
Margaret Show, Jeanine Garoffalo, Greg Barren, like all these comedians
doing this stuff that rhythms I'd never heard before. I
went up with my road rhythms, all my a stuff
that I thought would kill and it just died. Then
(21:17):
I watched all of these comedians I'd never seen before,
who were the best comedians I'd ever seen. I remember
very specifically, I walked across street from the Holy City
Zoo to the Taiwan Restaurant on Clement Street, and I
sat there with my notebook and I tore all the
pages out of my notebook, all my routines, and I
wrote it was May five, the tip. And then I
(21:37):
just started fresh, like I gotta start at zero now
because none of that stuff works, Like I've got to
start over the road. Stuff doesn't work. And then I
started rebuilding that. And that's when probably around four years
after that was when I really felt like, oh now
I'm me on stage Francisco. I'm still in San Francis. Well,
at that I moved away from San Francisco because also
(21:58):
the clubs were closing there, and I got a writing
job doing what I was writing on the first two
seasons a Mad TV. You went down to l A,
went down to l A, and then that your first
time in l A. That was my first permanent time
in l A. Yeah. And then and that's when the
un Cabaret was happening in Largo. And all these alternative rooms,
and I was going there and that's when I really
(22:18):
really felt like I became who I am. And that's
how many years? So that's my point. How many years
into your career are you before you go I think
that the cake is cooked for me? It was like
eight years before I felt really it's an amazing yeah.
But but what's weird is, and I'm sure a lot
of people have experiences. I was working as a professional comedian,
but I doesn't. I didn't feel like I was me,
(22:39):
And I wonder if that's I bet there's a lot
of actors and writers and performers who had years of
making money but weren't feeling like they were actually doing,
you know, something that was theirs. So you start writing
from Mad TV? And then what kind of zone do
you find yourself? Does everything get to be different when
you're in the big league, so to speak? So, um what?
(23:00):
But here's here. Here's the interesting thing. At the time
that I was writing on Mad TV, and they were
amazing writers on that show, and we got to do
some really good stuff. But Mad TV was my introduction to, oh,
this is what it's like working for a big network
where you've got to serve a lot of things before
you can even get to the comedy, which I've heard
(23:20):
sometimes can happen on SNL where there's like other considerations
first and then you got to get to the comedy.
And at the time that I was my Mad TV
at the same time Mr Show was happening over on
HBO and all my friends a lot of my friends
or on Mr Show, and that was where there was
nothing but the comedy. It was all about what was
the best idea and everyone is getting to work at
(23:41):
the height of their powers. And I was so jealous
of like why can't I be over there? But it
took me a while to see that I was learning
some very important lessons over at mad TV of how
to circumvent the system. And also when I look back,
there were real moments of brilliance that the actors and
(24:04):
the writers could conspire together and get through around the network,
going but we need to have this thing, and we
need to have this thing and there, and they found
ways to give them what they thought they wanted and
then do amazing stuff. So there's always no matter where
you are. What I learned was don't look at over
what other people are doing look at where you are
and how can you make that as good and interesting
(24:27):
as you can? So you wrote a memoir silver screen fiend.
M hm, how did you get that book published? Um?
I had published a book before of like essays, but
but it wasn't totally met. There were like a couple
of memoir chapters, but I wasn't confident enough to just
write a full memoir at Simon and Schuster and they
liked it and they said, you have another book in you.
(24:48):
And then I was looking through my old calendars at
my time in the in l A, in the when
I moved there, and I'm like, my god, I was like,
I didn't realize how obsessed I was with films because
it was the first time that I really lived in
a city where you could go see a movie, either
a new or a classic movie, pretty much every night
of the week in the theater, not at home, in
(25:10):
the theater with people the new Beverly Beverly and the
new Art and the new Art and all those places.
So I started going and I started kind of and
I'm sure you went through the same thing with when
you first started being a theater actor. And there must
have been a time when you would just obsessively go
to the theater to watch shows because you realize, I
(25:30):
want to be doing this, so I'm going to absorb
as much of it. The love Oh I not to
do oh my god. My friends and I would go
watch bad stand up at open mics, not to make
fun of it, but just to go, oh, don't do that,
don't do that, don't do you know. It was and
same with films. Oh when you see like the same
(25:52):
things happening over and over again, Oh, don't do that,
don't do that. So that kind of um obsession, I
really you know, it kind of took over my life
for like those four years. It's I go, this is
the most boring addiction memoir ever written, because it's about
me being addicted to movies. Although I saw people I
got very close to tipping over the edge of There
(26:13):
are people that are kind of lost by films, and
you see them holding their like Leonard Malton guides that
are just tattered clip and mark because they've got to
see every movie. And there's a you know, in New
York is an even just as equally a dangerous place
to be a film fanatic because you can go see
I mean not now, obviously, in the heyday, I live
(26:37):
around the corner from Cinema Village, really live downtown. But
you say about New Beverley is, and I remember this.
I would go to There was the KB Cerberus Theater
in Washington, and I would go there. I'll never forget
one day in a revival theater. I can see Last
Tango and I go into that theater and the music
and the whole and Brando's you know, self flagellation, all
(27:01):
of it. I go see this movie and I haven't
seen any movies like that, And I remember coming out
of the theater and I was hammered and the sky
was gray. It's washing. The sky was wintertime. I'm in
school and the sky is leaden. Remember seeing it, going
like I didn't want to go back into the world.
I didn't. I wanted to go back into the theater
and go run it again or show me another movie.
(27:22):
I couldn't. I didn't want to face the world. I mean, yeah,
I get into these weird dives. But the mood that
I've been in, I wanted to see Alec Guinness in
Tinker Taylor because I've been so starved for a character
who's just quiet and competent and can just do like.
I was so starved for that that that was my
oasis during all this was Oh, a quiet, non flashy
(27:43):
guy who can actually get stuff done. He was so
good He would clean his eyeglasses with a fat part
of his tie, and it became so much part of
his character that that that when Lakaray wrote Smile these People,
he added that trait because of watching the TV shows,
like he did the character that I created better, and
now I've got to adjust him to the actor that
(28:04):
did it like that level of just inhabiting. But the
thing about writing and acting, there's a risk Alan Moore
talked about this when you truly inhabit characters long term.
There's a mental risk for great writers and great actors
when you sacrifice your personality to go into these other lives.
(28:24):
You've got to have a safe place to come out
of and kind of get yourself back on the ground.
That's why I think you see with a lot of
actors who go way deep later in life, they kind
of suffer their personality flickers a little bit and they're
never quite on a steady keel after a while. You know,
Peter Sellers is a great example of you know, he
(28:44):
basically said, I don't have a personality. It's like he
sacrifices personality before he even started acting. So you've gone
kind of deep with some of you. I mean, there's
not a lot. There's not a lot of the warm
of uncular Alec Baldwin at the beginning of Glen Garry
Glenn us, how do you do you have a place
where you can come out of characters like that or well,
(29:05):
I always tell the same story. And this is to
me one of the most meaningful moments of my career
where a director really helped me. This guy, Jamie Folly,
said to me, he said, it's like that scene in
Patton when Patton slaps the guy and says, you call
yourself a soldier. He said, that's what we're doing here.
He says, you call yourself a salesman. He said, you're
doing this for their own good. You're doing this for
their own good. You don't want to do this, he said,
(29:27):
you gott And once he said that to me, I
felt like, literally like a cartoon character. Were like the
lightning bolts went through my shoulders down into my fingertips.
I was like, I looked at my wing. I got
it and I went out there and I was like,
I'm gonna fucking I'm gonna, I'm gonna knock you out. Man.
If you don't, you gotta you gotta do whatever that
Just do what the funk I tell you to do.
And I went out there and and and folly. The
phrase I use for what I teach acting is authorization.
(29:50):
What authorizes you do when you if you go into
an operating room. And I've done this to prepare for
a film. I watched over a hundred hours of surgery
in Last Angeles and in western Massachusetts to the movie Malice,
not because I wanted to learn surgery. My favorite line
is Walter Matthau. They said, you're playing a doctor, do
you want to go observe surgery? And Walter math I
took a pause and said, I'm a movie actor. No
(30:12):
one expects me to really know how to do surgery.
But the point is that I wanted to go in
that room so that when I went into the set,
when I got on the stage and we did the scene,
I'd seen it right, I knew it. I was authorized
to do this because I knew it, And to me,
that's vital. I need the authorization of that character. Yeah,
(30:32):
but but I just wonder how far is too far? Sometimes?
And I wonder that too, like when I'm writing or
when I'm doing some of the more dramatic roles. Like
I just watched the Michael Jordan documentary. This is weird
how this ties in. But his teammates are talking in
the documentary about how he was kind of an a hole,
but he needed to operate at this I'm a demigod
(30:53):
level to perform at the level that he did, Like
that's how he won. And at the end, like you
see how kind of drained he is, he's crying a
little bit, like I know that I was doing that,
but it's what I needed to do to with Like
in art, you do wonder how much of myself do
I sacrifice? How much do I hold back? You know,
like that's always gonna be that ongoing question. And also
(31:14):
with with comedy, how when I was doing that special annihilation,
how deep into my own darkness do I go as
a comedian until it stops being entertainment instinct you've developed?
I didn't. I mean, luckily I had years of doing
comedy where I kind of had an idea. But when
(31:34):
it really got down to it, I remember Bob kat
Goldthwaite was directing the special and he came back into
the green room before I went on or He was like,
you just want to go out there, don't you like?
I'm like, yeah, I can't think about this anymore. I
have to go out there. And you you must have
seen this in place where we've rehearsed the ship out
of it. But now, can we just go and get
started and then we'll fucking figure it out. If we
(31:55):
can start, that's the best way to figure it out.
Just let me fucking go out there and I'll figure
it out. You know, I see people who are comic
talent who I think I'll never forget. I said to
Chris Rock one time. I said, I knew some guys
that were very powerful group of people in the music
business and had a lot of access to rights and things.
And I said to Chris, you should play Miles Davis.
(32:16):
I said, I know you're an actor. You're you're an actor.
I mean that you're funny and you do all that
marauding the stage and the way I always cry, and
I feel the same way about you. You're an actor.
And do you sometimes feel like, Okay, I've done the
comedy thing. I got that in my pocket, marauding the
stage with a microphone in Charlotte, be dazzling everybody. Time
(32:39):
to go do something else. You know the thing about
Santa Bus. It doesn't have to be either or you
can go do other things and then go do That's
what I remember. I went and saw me and Maria
Bamford went and saw Jerry Steinfeld's comedian documentary together, and
we were walking out and she was like, we picked
a profession that we can do forever. We could always
do stand up. We can also do other things. We
(33:00):
can always do stand up and stand up is such
a It is one of the last pure, I guess,
dictatorial posts where I think it, I say it. That's it.
And if anything, you get to a point where I mean,
maybe I'll get to the point where Chris Rock is.
Where you can get to the point where you not
only elicit laughter, you elicit what I like to call
the laughter of disbelief, where Chris Rock says things and
(33:23):
people like the h ship. I mean, that's true, but
holy fuck, I mean, did can he that? I mean
that is true? But we don't like he says things
where the audience you can you feel the laughter is like,
I mean, we all know that, but we're not supposed
to say that, all right, But he just said that,
So I guess we're gonna like that level of you know,
(33:45):
maybe I can get to that level. But I never
want to stop doing stand up, but I definitely want
to do other things because, especially if you do stand
up long enough and you try to be as wired
into not only other people's foibles but especially your own.
You see in acting where people don't go deep enough
with that or they're not as honest, like, oh you
pulled back. Why didn't you just stay and go that deep?
(34:09):
So then you want to do that as an actor,
actor and comedian Patton Oswald, if you're enjoying this conversation,
don't keep it to yourself, Tell a friend and subscribe
to Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we
come back, Patton Oswald talks about falling in love again.
(34:40):
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. In
Patton Oswald's Netflix comedy special I Love Everything. He talks
about finding love again. Not to bum you guys out,
but I was very, very resigned to living in the gray.
I was, after what I went through a couple of
years ago. I was just going to I'm going to
live in the gray, and I'm just to raise my
(35:01):
daughter alone and try to put focus all the joy
and adventure in life on her and give her that life,
and I will merely exist. I'm not going to hit
joy again, but that's fine. I can still exist, That's okay.
And then I met this poem of a woman who
ReLit the sky, and I just said, I'm going to
run at love again. If you see love, run at it.
(35:26):
Run at love. If you see it, trust me, run
at love. Patton Oswald married actress Meredith Salinger in November
two thousand seventeen. Her breakout role came at age fifteen
as the lead in the Journey of Natty Gan. I
wanted to know how Patton Oswald found such a perfect
(35:47):
match a second time. I was married to this extraordinary woman,
and I think the fact that I was with her
for so long was what helped me see very quickly
this other ex ordinary woman. Because Meredith Sounder, who is
yes child actress, insanely gorgeous teen actress beyond gorgeous, like
(36:09):
like classic nineteen forties movie siren gorge Yes, exactly, how
did you meet her? We have a friend in common,
Martha Plimpton, amazing actress, and Martha Plimpton likes to do
these salons where she brings various people together for dinners
at her house. That's what I do. And the morning
of it, I had to fly back from Austin at
(36:31):
like six in the morning. And when I got home, like,
I can't go out again. I'm so dehydrated and exhausted,
and I I'm so sorry I have to beg off.
And then the next day Meredith sent me a message saying,
you missed the best lasagna last night, dude, And then
I wrote back story in my life film. Maybe we'll
go get coffee. It's not sorry, you know, And then
we just started. This was in February of sen I'm
(36:53):
still deep in my grief, but I'm just talking to
We're just talking about books and politics. Oh my god,
the world is insane right now. And it got to
the point where of the many things I missed about Michelle,
I missed having someone fascinating to talk to in the
dark at the end of the day, so as I
would put Alice to bed and then I would just
get on my phone like at nine o'clock and I
(37:14):
would go, hey, are you here, and you're like, oh, yeah,
what's going because she was also like she has dated
some fascinating and very troubled people in her life, and
she was taking a hiatus from the damaged Geniuses, and
so she was just in her apartment with her cats,
and we would just every night like, okay, same time
tomorrow night. And for three months we never spoke on
(37:34):
the phone, never met in person. We would just right
for like hours about everything and just talking, talking, talking,
and then without us either because I was not looking
to date anyone, not having to fall in love and like,
oh someone, And there was also someone that wasn't it's
gonna sound weird. She wasn't in my immediate circle of
friends or family, so every conversation didn't start off with
the how are you doing okay? How like this was
(37:58):
just me talking about to someone with an incredibly agile
brain from your suffering exactly, And so we would just
connect on all these supper levels and then without knowing it,
we just kind of I just we fell in love
with each other without realizing it. And then we finally
met in May after three months of just talking in
the lobby of Shutters Hotel and she I go, I go,
(38:20):
let's go get dinner. She goes, well, let's go somewhere
where if it doesn't work out. We were so realistic
about it, like if we meet and it doesn't click,
we either of us can leave. And I go, absolutely,
that's a great idea. And so we went to shut
Hers Hotel and had dinner in the restaurant there. But
when we met and she tapped me on the shoulder
in the lobby and I turned around and her first
words were and I'm saying this as a brag, because
(38:42):
Meredith Sounder said to me and she goes, oh, you're
so cute. And I was like okay, and then yeah,
and playing against him like the woman she is, like
she is enragingly beautiful, Just like, what the hell are
(39:03):
you kidding me? Love is love God love. You find
it where you find it, and when you find it,
the only thing is you say thank you. You're grateful.
You're grateful. Yeah, And I was like, I was so
obviously I had some oh my god, I'm getting married.
But also it's not like we're in our twenties trying
to discover ourselves. I don't know if I like at
that age, if you know, when you find the other person, like,
(39:25):
let's get married. What I'm not going to go to
all this and you know, you know, yeah, And I
remember talking to other widows and they were like, ignore
all the stuff. Because one of the widows, and I
knew it was a woman, she was like, I waited
ten years to get married. And I got the same
crap from people because they're like, she waited too long.
(39:45):
She got grief because she waited too long, you know
what I mean. So she's like, there's no way to
do it, but no one will ever be happy with it.
You have to be happy. You can't live their lives.
Go do what you have to do. And it's been great.
And Meredith is the most amazing mom to our daughter.
She is like again, it's like Alice had Michelle, this
(40:10):
amazing crime fighter, and now she has Meredith, who's this
amazing adventurer. I'm following a small basket of people's careers,
of which yours is one of them. Wow, I mean
I find you as somebody who and I really really
mean this. The thing about you that I find so
exciting is anything is possible. There's just nothing you could
do that would surprise me. Dramatically acting I mean the
(40:32):
writing and stuff like, but in terms of comedy and
comedy shows and stand up but also a dramatic acting.
I think that you're capable of anything, Thank you. I
mean even marrying Meredith Salinger. That is that must have
been the okay, that was the real point. God, wow,
the Ratitui married Natty Gain. I don't know how he
pulled it off. Yeah he did. Comedian Patton Oswald. I'm
(40:58):
Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing. Is brought to you by
I Heart Radio. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie donohue,
and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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The Bobby Bones Show
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