DCist Interview: Patton Oswalt

You're making and album and TV show at Lisner this weekend, and you just wrapped up a week of show's at Caroline's in New York last night. Were you road-testing material for the main event on Saturday?

Yeah, I was just going over the set, trying to get it as tight and filler-free as possible.

How did you choose D.C., and Lisner, as the venue for the album and TV show?

I knew I wanted to do something in D.C. this time. I like to do different cities outside of L.A. So far I've done [live albums in] Athens and Austin. I was like, "All right, maybe it's time to go back to around my hometown." We started looking around at different places, and Lisner seemed to be the best one.

You've performed at the Black Cat here before, and in music clubs around the country. That was an unusual move, to play rock clubs instead of the venues that traditionally host stand-up. Why did you want to do that?

I think I wanted to attract a younger crowd, so you wouldn't have the two-drink minimums and the high admission prices that a lot of comedy clubs have. With rock clubs, we can do all-ages shows, and we can set the prices. It's a more intimate, looser affair than if it's at a comedy club.

On your albums 222 and Werewolves and Lollipops, you can hear the audience calling out for certain bits and jokes that you've done before. As a listener, I don't think that spoils the surprise of the jokes, but what does that feel like for you, to know that at least some of the crowd knows what's coming?

It feels gratifying that they know my stuff enough to yell it out. But I hope they also know that this is an all-new album of all-new stuff. I'm not going to be doing anything that was on my first two albums, so hopefully they won't be calling out for that, because that's not how comedy works. It's a mixed bag, I guess.

You just got back from the Sundance Film Festival, where you were promoting Robert Siegel's Big Fan, in which you play your first on-camera leading role. Did Siegel have to convince you to take the part?

The fact that he wanted me to do it and trusted me to do it is what gave me the confidence. I don't know if I would have had the confidence to pursue it outright, but the fact that he approached me, and that I'd read the script and loved it so much -- I thought, "Wow, if he wants to trust me with this, then I feel pretty good."

Had you seen or read The Wrestler at that point?

Yes, I had seen the movie The Wrestler, and I really, really loved it.

Does doing more "straight" acting appeal to you?

I want to do all three: Stand-up, writing, and acting. I've always wanted to do all three. I mainly wanted to do stand-up, and writing and acting helped me to get more stand-up gigs. So yeah, I'd love to do more just-acting.

How have you sustained your interest in stand-up for 20 years? You've talked about how for a lot of stand-ups, it's just a path to movies or other kinds of work.

Stand-up is a dictatorial post. I'm totally in control. I don't have to take it to a committee or go through any kind of filter.

Stand-up is the most fun, acting is the most rewarding, and writing is the most satisfying when I do it well.

Back in November, you wrote a great blog entry about how the end of the Bush Era is not going to spell the death of comedy, even though it's cool to be optimistic and patriotic again. Do you think it's also more acceptable now to be unapologetic about having good taste? I mean, you're a foodie, and also as a guy with discerning taste in music and film. And America's endless appetite for mediocrity, as embodied by Kentucky Fried Chicken and Arch Campbell film reviews, is one of the major themes of your comedy. Can we just feel good about having taste without disguising it, do you think?

Well, I never really disguised it, so I don't know that it would affect me at all. I never disguised it during the Bush years, so I don't know why anything would change now.

You've joked a lot about growing up in Sterling, VA in the '80s, unaware of the Dischord Bands and all the other cool stuff happening in the District during that period. The divide between the culturally bankrupt suburbs and the hipper-than-thou big city is always good for a traffic-boosting comment-war on our site, but isn't that idea becoming kind of outdated? With the internet and blogs disseminating so much of the cultural conversation, does geography still matter as much?

Yeah, that does seem to be breaking down. I think that now, it's so much up to the individual; the person's own level of curiosity and adventurism. You have just as sophisticated and curious people, I think, living in the suburbs as you have in the cities now. It really gets down to a person-by-person basis, which I think is a good thing. Because you can't just put a check-mark in a box next to a whole area and go, "Well, that's what they like, and that's what these people like . . ." It's much more diversified, and I think that's great.

But there's a price, too, right? As someone who makes a living from the original intellectual property that you create, doesn't the Internet also make it harder for you to get paid for your work?

No, I don't think so. I think that, if anything, if you like to generate original ideas and do your own thing, you can post it much quicker. You have the means to distribute your own stuff, and do it on your own terms. The only thing that can get kind of frustrating is when, if I'm working on my new album, I don't want the material out there until I've cut the album. Sometimes people will film you with their camera phones and put it on YouTube. I know they don't mean anything bad by it; they're excited. But give a performer a chance. Don't put shitty cell-phone videos of them on the Internet. Show them some respect.

Have you ever just said, "Please don't do that. Put the phone away," to someone during a set?

A couple of times, yeah. There seems to be this new, subversive form of heckling, where they hold the cell phone up so that you can see it. They want you to get angry at them, because that's what they want to post. You have to be very polite, and not give them that satisfaction. If you can do that, then they get frustrated and put it away.

There's a moment on Werewolves and Lollipops where you go off on a guy who really is being a dick. He screams out in the middle of this quiet, emotional moment in a story you're telling about going to Planned Parenthood --

Yeah, he just can't deal with silence. I get a lot of that: People who just want constant noise, and instant -- I just kind of went off, I guess.

Did you consider excising that moment from the tape, so it wouldn't encourage other people to try to provoke you like that?

Yeah. I had a big debate with my producer about that: "Should we put that on there?" He was really for it, and I was just against it. I had even forgotten that I'd done it.

One myth I'd really like to dispel is that I think a lot of hecklers think, "Wow, I was the most memorable part of the show." But when I deal with a heckler, my mind just shuts off. That's the easiest thing to do now. It's not like I have any amazing skill with it, I've just done it so many times. And I've actually lost a lot of times. I've lost the crowd, and the next day the world didn't end. So I just don't care anymore. Hecklers are the least memorable part of any show.

Music sales are declining year-to-year. Do you know if comedy albums have slipped in the same way?

Well, I was offered a deal for a third album, so they must be doing OK.

You're a big music geek, but you've said many times that the first album you bought for yourself was Phil Collins' No Jacket Required, and that that would be the most recent album that would remain in your collection if you ever had kids --

That was a joke. That was a joke that I made up. That was fiction. It was a joke. I made it up.

Oh, good. Because now that your wife is expecting, I was going to ask if you would actually stick to that pledge once Victoria GG Allin Lo Pan Oswalt is born.

[Laughs.] It was a joke. I invented it. I made it up.

I don't remember what the first album was that I bought. Sorry.

How about the earliest album you bought that you would still play now?

Oh, I don't even remember. I'm so sorry.

You also blogged about turning 40 last month. You were rejecting the notion that aging and having kids would take away your edge or whatever, and you posted the October '98 show calendar from Largo in Los Angeles as an illustration of what you were up to back when you were on the verge of turning thirty.

That got me thinking about how public so much of the last decade of your life has been. There're bigger stars and more recognizable faces out there, but most movie stars are not sharing as much of their own memories and thoughts and perspective as directly as you are when you're onstage.

I would think that their lives are still more public, because the effort that they put into putting in their image out there -- which they do every single day -- that is who they are. So in a way, since their lives are kind of about that artifice, that makes them way more public than mine.

I pick and choose the moments; I wait until I have something to talk about before I go public. They're all about, "Here're pictures of me at this party, going in!" "Here: Picture of me coming out that same party!" Every moment of their lives has to be filmed. Which says a lot more about them than anything I specifically reveal about myself. If you see pictures of someone every single week, posing for pictures -- which is actually a lot of work, and kind of a hassle -- the fact that they're doing that almost every day of their lives tells you so much more about them than anything I could say about myself.

Have you experienced any particular moments where something has happened, good or bad, that's made you realize that you've given up more privacy than you meant to? A first-groupie experience? Or just something that surprised you about becoming a semi-public figure?

Oh, yeah, I've had a lot of those little moments. But you have to realize that everyone else has gone through that, too. You go through those phases: First you're on the outside and you're criticizing everything. Then you get on the inside and go, "Oh. Some of those people I was criticizing are actually nice people who are just struggling the same way I am." There's just as much delusion and weirdness. Me having a groupie is about the same, I guess, as Mick Jagger having a groupie: They're not with me every second of the day. They don't who I am. They're just someone who likes what I do, I guess, and they're filling in a void with that.

I've never been that emotionally connected to that kind of stuff. I don't try to count my fan base. [Laughs.] That just seems to be a waste of time.

Often when you hear celebrities complain about their lack of privacy, the knee-jerk response is, "But you've worked very hard to interest us in what you're doing." To give up your privacy, in a a sense --

I don't really agree with that. There are some celebrities -- and I think they are the exception to the rule -- who just want to be famous. But there are a lot of people who are famous because they have a talent and because they work very hard. And they're like, "I would like to work hard. I would like for you to see my movies and enjoy the work I do." But if I'm out having dinner, that's not part of my work. That's just me trying to enjoy a human moment with my friends, so can't you leave that shit alone?

There are a lot of celebrities who don't seek the spotlight, and people bother them anyway. There are plenty of people -- Britney Spears or Paris Hilton -- who've totally brought it on themselves. But for every one of those, there're hundreds of others who're just like, "I show up, I'm sober, I do my work and try to do the best I can, and then I just want to be left alone." So I think there should be more of a balance. That is just such a cliche: [affects frat-guy voice] "Why the fuck did you become a celebrity?" Most them didn't want to become a celebrity. They wanted to become an actor, or a writer, or a comedian. I didn't want to become a celebrity. I wanted to become a successful comedian, and I wanted to write really good stuff. There's a difference in aims.

Has fame become a problem for you? Are people bothering you at dinner?

No. Ninety-nine percent of the public are very nice and sweet. It's the one percent of the public, and the one percent of shitty celebrities, that give the whole enterprise a bad name.

Since you're a man of refined taste, and a comic-book nerd, I want to ask you what comics you're reading these days.

People always ask me that, and I'm always reading so many dozens of titles that it's just not worth me answering. It changes week-to-week. I read everything good; I'll just leave it at that. I don't want to waste your time with a big list.

We could talk about what else you're reading. One alternate profession that it occurs to me might suit you is literary critic.

[Laughter.]

No, really. You wrote that entry right before the election about how you wanted James Ellroy to write a "Millennium Trilogy" about the Bush Years. And even when you're coming up with put-downs -- I mean, you wrote that Paris Hilton should contract a bloating disease that would be cured only if she could read and comprehend something from the canon of Willa Cather or Wallace Stevens.

You toss off these references so easily that literature must be on your mind much of the time. Have you considered writing prose fiction, or criticism?

The problem is that I read a lot of really good literary criticism, and I really enjoy the stuff that I read, but I don't know how lucid I would be trying to get through to other people, "Oh, here's what's happening, here's why this is good, here's why this is bad." For all I know, I could end up sucking as a literary critic. Because even in a failed piece of work, I can see the attempt at something transcendental, and I'm always so forgiving. So I might be the worst literary critic on the planet.

Also, I just like literary criticism by other writers, and I don't know if I'm that good of a writer yet. I'll read literary criticism by someone who has proven themselves as a good writer, if that makes any sense. I don't know if it does. [Laughs.] But you know what I mean.

What are your writing habits? Do you have office hours or anything like that?

No, my writing habits suck. I have zero discipline, and that's something I've really got to work on. I try to do three to five pages a day. That's my average. I kind of leave at that and try not to antagonize myself too much for not being able to do 20 pages. But sometimes it really takes you. You just get going and you can't stop. When that happens, I try to just make room for it. But as far as regular habits, I don't have 'em. And I would like them. I just don't have them yet.

How do you see parenthood fitting in with that?

I don't know. It's either gonna ruin me, or it'll turn me around and give me what I want. Time will tell. What if it makes me more disciplined? What if it ruins it? "There goes my last shot at discipline!"

Talk to me in five years. I'll tell you.

Can you talk at all about some of the original screenplays you've sold and are waiting to see produced? Or that you know won't be?

Oh, I can, but I hate doing that. It makes me so depressed. Because each of those is a long back-and-forth -- it's stopped being a creative struggle and turned into a political struggle. It just gets me so depressed to talk about them! I hope you don't mind if I just politely pass. I just can't, man.

Sure. But I would like to ask you -- not that I want you to think I take everything you've ever said on stage literally; like the joke about No Jacket Required or whatever -- but you have a bit where you're talking about the guy who wrote Death Bed: The Bed That Eats People. And you ask, "What if that guy had hit a creative wall -- and then fought through it?" When you said that the knowledge that that guy could finish a script helped you to finish yours, that seemed to come from a genuine place, even if you're telling this in a comic way.

Oh, Hell yeah! I think that every day: Someone got up and powered through some pretty awful movies and novels. Why don't I have that doggedness? All I have is self-loathing, and self-criticism. So it's rough. It's really rough, sometimes.

I don't know -- maybe it's a bad thing to be able to power through shit! But at least they finished something. So who am I to criticize them?

So what is the greatest as-yet-unrealized creative ambition that you have?

To write and direct a film. That's an abiding passion. It'll come down to me just deciding to do it. But I haven't made the decision yet. I haven't made the leap. I'm still too busy running my fucking trap about it. I need to shut up and show up, and that hasn't happened yet.

Doing the film with Siegel seems to be a big step in that direction. He's a writer just making his directing debut with this picture.

I've heard so many ways that people have gotten into directing that I'm secure in the fact that there is no one way. So I've gotten over that anxiety. I just don't know what my way is yet.

Do you see yourself writing and directing comedies primarily, or something else?

That's a good question. I don't know what it'll be. Right now I've cleared my mind of what it'll be; I'm just gonna see what it is. I guess that's the best answer I can give you.

Well, Mike Nichols and Woody Allen started out doing stand-up, and they both did okay when they turned to making movies.

Yeah, that's true! You never know. [Laughs.]

Patton Oswalt will perform at GW Lisner Auditiorium Saturday night at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tickets are available here.