Famous and Funny People

PAUL F. TOMPKINS AND JO KOY: TWO FUNNY MEN, ONE FUNNY ARTICLE

2011-10-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

One funny weekend

Top comics Paul F. Tompkins and Jo Koy tape their newest Comedy Central specials at Glendale’s Alex Theatre Friday and Saturday

By Carl Kozlowski 10/06/2011

There are two kinds of comics who tend to make a splash on the national scene: those who figure out how to appeal to everyone in the room, like Jerry Seinfeld or Bill Cosby, and those who might have a smaller audience base but whose fans are utterly passionate about them, like Patton Oswalt or Lewis Black.

This weekend, the Alex Theatre plays host to the latest Comedy Central special tapings of two comics whose careers definitely fall into the latter category: Paul F. Tompkins on Friday and Jo Koy on Saturday. Both men enjoy cult followings and have found their niches in putting highly original spins on jokes about their personal and family lives, though their backgrounds couldn’t be more different.

“The evolution of my standup is that it’s more personal now, and I draw on my own life as the source of my comedy,” explains Tompkins, whose special will be his fourth for the network. “The stories I’ll be telling in this hour will be centering around various jobs I had in show business and out — from day jobs and television and film. That’s the theme of the show.”

A Philadelphia native, Tompkins has plenty of workplace material to choose from, as he — like most performers — bounced around plenty of meaningless jobs while keeping his real focus on climbing the ladder in the comedy world. Asked for a taste of the new stories, he recalled a past gig he had at a rather unusual video store.

“In Philly, I worked in a video store that was all beta, called Beta Only,” he notes wryly. “That was my last job I had before I moved to Los Angeles. Beta was basically over at this time. We didn’t have a whole lot of customers, and it didn’t occur to me until years later that maybe it was a front for money laundering. It was either a front or a really terrible idea.”

Since moving to LA in 1994, Tompkins has landed a series of hot gigs, including working as a writer and performer on the legendary HBO comedy series “Mr. Show” and having his own regular segments on the original Craig Kilborn version of “The Daily Show” and HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” in addition to an HBO special. His most recent claim to fame, however, is hosting his own live monthly show at the Largo club in West Hollywood and his own “Pod F. Tompkast.”

Tompkins also made a big move in his offstage life recently, marrying actress Janie Haddad. And, as he faces the pressure of filling the 1,300-seat Alex Theatre — one of his largest venues yet — he’s thankful to have a loving partner fully supporting him.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, so I’m able to make the performance adjustment, as I’ve played all sizes at this point,” says Tompkins. “The biggest fear is getting people in there, and the challenge is shrinking the room. How do I make a place this vast feel like a small nightclub?”

For his part, Jo Koy — who was raised in Seattle by his Filipino mom and Caucasian dad, but started his stand-up career while caring for his grandmother in Las Vegas — faces live audiences for 300 shows each year. He has parlayed his wildly successful touring career into being hired as the national ad spokesman for Boost Mobile phones and also has established himself as a favorite panelist on the popular late-night E! Channel talk show “Chelsea Lately.”

Jo Koy built much of his act around stories of him interacting with his mother, who famously calls him “Josep!” instead of his actual birth name of Joseph, and says that his new special will feature a lot of material about his current life as a single dad to an 8-year-old son.

“We’re calling the new special ‘Lights Out,’ because we thought it would be a cool slogan for the tour and the style of comedy I’m doing,” explains Jo Koy, who derived his stage name from Filipino slang for “joker.” “This one’s going to get a lot deeper with my son. He’s 8 now, so there’s a lot more stories about him. I’m going to open up old stories with my mom and really bring those to life. It’s a lot more personal, and I can’t wait.”

While his ultimate career goal is to be a movie star, as the son of a career Air Force officer, Jo Koy has a special affinity for performing for US troops. He hasn’t performed in the Iraq or Afghan war zones yet, but he makes a point of visiting veterans’ hospitals along his tour stops and visiting wounded soldiers.

“In Washington, DC, I visited the VA hospital and gave out T-shirts and DVDs to amputees,” says Jo Koy. “I never cried so hard in my life, ‘cause here’s a 20-year-old with his arm missing. When you’re part of a military family, you have respect for a soldier.”

THE MAN WHO MAKES YOU BOTH LAUGH AND FEEL TERRIFIED ABOUT THE US ECONOMY: MATT TAIBBI

2011-10-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

Before the fall

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi examines the roots of America’s financial meltdown in ‘Griftopia’

By Carl Kozlowski 11/11/2010

As the American financial system spiraled into near-collapse in 2008, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi admits he was still distracted by the bells and whistles of a historic presidential campaign that was certain to put either an African American or a woman into the top levels of power for the first time ever. Caught up in the hoopla over Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, Taibbi — like virtually all American media and the public they are supposed to be watching out for — didn’t notice that decades worth of shady financial maneuvers were finally about to fall like a proverbial house of cards.

Two years later, Taibbi has more than made up for that lack of foresight by turning his eagle eyes and sharp wit on the mess that the unholy union between Washington and Wall Street wrought. Writing in the tradition of past Rolling Stone writer P.J. O’Rourke, who pointed out global problems with a vicious wit that made painful information palatable to average readers, if Taibbi hasn’t helped slaughter the sacred cows of the financial sector, he’s certainly stuck an enormous fork in them.

Taibbi has just released his fifth book, “Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America,” which he’ll be signing tonight, Nov. 11, at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena as part of a five-city tour. Speaking exclusively by phone with Pasadena Weekly, he explained some of the motivations behind the book as well as the motives behind the dark forces that have too much control of us all.

“Right now the biggest problem we have is that the companies I write about really are too big to fail,” says Taibbi. “They’re so concentrated and have such a reach into all the economy that it's true we can't let them go under, which puts us at the vulnerability of another collapse because we can't let these guys suffer the consequences of their actions.”

Taibbi, 39, grew up in Boston as the son of NBC newsman Mike Taibbi and engaged in a highly colorful series of career moves before finding fame at Rolling Stone. After graduating from Bard College in upstate New York, he moved to Russia to study at St. Petersburg Polytechnical University for a year before becoming an outfielder for a Russian pro baseball team and eventually a Mongolian professional basketball player.

He returned to the United States when a bout with severe pneumonia nearly killed him, but returned to Russia again as a journalist for English-language papers aimed at expatriate readers. He eventually returned to New York again, working his way through controversial stints at papers including the New York Press before landing at Rolling Stone in time to conduct gonzo-style coverage of the 2004 Democratic presidential campaigns. Yet he has found that the economic disasters he now covers make it difficult to inject humor in his work.

“It was hard. A lot of what I’d written previously had a lighter tone to it,” recalls Taibbi. “I used to put in slapstick but there’s no way to do it with this. My favorite book growing up was ‘Dead Souls’ by Gogol, a great Russian novel about a financial scam. I find this stuff grotesque and funny in a really, really dark way and I’m fascinated by the ingenuity of these scams. If I focus on that more than the overwhelming big picture, I can keep a sense of humor about it.”

Indeed, Taibbi finds great sport in explaining why former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan is “the biggest asshole in the universe,” dissecting the secret appeal of Sarah Palin, and spotlighting the ways in which the spike in gas prices has little to do with whether we “Drill baby, drill!” and much more to do with unethical speculation by powerful commodities brokers. Perhaps most frightening of all, he shows that dozens and perhaps even hundreds of major American infrastructure projects have been purchased and placed under the control of foreign financial interests.

“There's a lot of anger in the public about the economy but they haven't figured out who the real enemy is,” Taibbi says. “The tea party thinks the enemy is government, the left mentions Wall Street a little bit but they’ve not articulated it strongly. People need more time to figure out the connections but they're getting there. Almost everyone you know now has experience with modern financial services through losing pensions, houses, etc. They're getting an education but not getting together to create that movement that can really impact things yet.”

JIM CARREY"S FAVORITE DIRECTOR, TOM SHADYAC, MAKES A LEAP OF FAITH

2011-10-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

From hope to faith

Director Tom Shadyac shares his quest for the meaning of life in ‘I Am’

By Carl Kozlowski 03/17/2011

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For nearly 15 years, movie director Tom Shadyac was on top of the world, owning a mansion on 500 acres of land in the foothills of east Pasadena, a private jet and a collection of fancy cars. His films — from collaborations with Jim Carrey on the two “Ace Ventura” films, “Liar Liar” and “Bruce Almighty,” to smash hits with Eddie Murphy on “The Nutty Professor” and Robin Williams on “Patch Adams” — grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.

But in 2007, Shadyac suffered a double-whammy of misfortune: The “Bruce Almighty” sequel “Evan Almighty” became one of the most expensive comedies ever made and the biggest comedic box-office bombs of all time. Then he suffered severe head trauma in a bicycle accident. Side effects of the accident included blurred vision and severe migraines that never seemed to go away, and Shadyac thought he was going to die.

The life-threatening injuries miraculously healed, but the experience humbled Shadyac, causing a radical transformation in how he viewed life, sending him on a spiritual and philosophical quest that took him around the planet in search of answers from various world religions and famous philosophers. As a result, he wound up feeling that his wealth and extravagant lifestyle — in a world where millions of people go to sleep hungry every night — were a form of mental illness.

Shadyac decided to change his life and his mindset, and wound up selling off his land and his house — as well as his jet — and moved into a mobile home on the Malibu coastline. Although he gave away most of his wealth, he spent $1 million to finance a highly personal documentary titled “I Am,” a mix of insights and analysis into the meaning of life.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve run into haters, but people who don’t see eye to eye,” Shadyac says of some of the responses to the film. “And that’s to be expected and welcome. My father himself, whom I loved dearly, thought much of my vision might be utopian. Yet my father built a huge business that takes care of people first, cures cancer first, ahead of profit motive.”

Shadyac’s father, Richard C. Shadyac Sr., an attorney, was a friend of TV legend Danny Thomas, who founded St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. The elder Shadyac, according to online sources, served in many capacities with the facility, and from 1992 to 2005 acted as St. Jude’s CEO.

In choosing some of the world’s deepest thinkers and most spiritual figures — among them Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Desmond Tutu — Shadyac put himself in an awkward spot that actually fit well with the project. He found that with this highly intellectual crowd, his past work on films like “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” didn’t register at all, thus leaving him “without the ability to use my ego as a crutch.”

He originally planned to just ask his subjects what was wrong with the world and how to fix it, but eventually he decided it was more valuable to focus on what mankind is doing right. Grabbing a pitcher of water to pour a drink, Shadyac pauses — as if just realizing that the container provided him with the perfect analogy.

“I think both perspectives on life — half-full, half-empty — can be valuable, but I just want to know the truth,” says Shadyac. “Truth can be a matter of perspective, but I also think there’s a definite truth that exists, that there are laws to the universe the way Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King believed.

“I moved from hope to faith. Hope is the belief we might get it done and do right as a species, and faith is the knowledge we will get it done. When you see the underlying story of who people really are and what the nature of reality is, I think it tells a very positive story.”

In making the film, Shadyac came to see the value in many different forms of spiritual thought. The film quotes Jesus Christ from Scripture and St. Francis of Assisi, but also frequently invokes Gandhi and Muslim beliefs on a couple

of occasions.

Shadyac explains that in his personal spiritual life, he practices what he terms “the Lectio Divino,” meditating on an assortment of divine readings and trying to glean the “meat and marrow” from all parts of the world. Shadyac believes that’s in keeping with the biggest lesson his film has to offer: that we are brothers and sisters who share the same DNA and must feel connected to all creatures if we are to make the planet healthy again.

Despite all the deep thoughts, Shadyac reassures comedy fans that he now feels ready to dive back into just making people laugh again.

“I think laughter is a sacred act, so, of course I’d do comedy again,” he says. “If you’ve got an idea for ‘Ace 3,’ I’m all ears.”

SERJ TANKIAN: The Man with some really rockin' poetry

2011-10-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

PHOTOS: Chris Anthony (Serj Tankian) System for success

System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian releases new book of poetry

By Carl Kozlowski 03/24/2011

Give Serj Tankian five minutes and he’ll find a new way to impress you. He’s sold millions of albums and toured the world as the lead singer of System of a Down, written symphonies for jazz ensembles and orchestras, joined the fight for countless social justice causes, co-wrote a musical that debuted at Harvard and is headed to New York City, and now he’s just published his second volume of poetry, “Glaring Through Oblivion.”

And from the sound of things in a recent exclusive phone interview with the Pasadena Weekly, Glendale resident Tankian is just getting started. He took a few minutes to reflect on his career while preparing for a book tour that includes a stop on Tuesday at the Barnes & Noble in the Americana at Brand in Glendale.

“I’ve co-scored a film, but I’m looking forward to scoring a full film,” says Tankian, who speaks with a tone that’s mellow but at

a pace that’s near manic with energy. “I’ve arranged my rock songs for orchestra before and released it on CD/DVD as ‘Elect

the Dead Symphony.’ I also have a museum project in the works,

an art project collaborating with an artist friend of mine developing interesting installations of multi-century exhibits.”

Tankian has had plenty of time for his varied solo projects since the System members opted to take a hiatus in 2005 (they are currently reuniting for a world tour). The band formed in 1994 and quickly made a massive mark on the music world with a unique sound that combined hard rock with exotic instrumentation, as well as lyrics that combined serious social commentary with absurdist jokes — coming together in the band’s uniquely memorable videos that mixed creepy and funny imagery.

“I think it’s just that life is absurd and commenting on that is a necessity,” explains Tankian when asked about the odd mix in System’s work. “It’s also that life is absurdly serious. It’s also in my character. I don’t stick to one shtick. It’s always been there. I’ve never been afraid to express myself. A lot of bands in hard rock are afraid to be taken lightly, so I’ve never been afraid. I feel we go through such a wide array of emotions in a day, why pick only one for your art?”

That broad spectrum of emotions is present in nearly every page of “Oblivion,” a striking coffee-table book with dark yet vivid paintings by Roger Kupelian. The poems within are a blend of critiques on modern technology and political extremism, mixed with more personal poems about Tankian’s reflections on love and his place in the world.

The tome follows a prior volume of poetry titled “Cool Gardens” that he published in 2001, and the process of writing a new book has inspired Tankian to attempt his first nonfiction book. Still in the works, that’s about “the intersection of spirituality and justice,” and was inspired by a lengthy personal conversation he had with the Dalai Lama three years ago.

“There were a lot of requests from people who bought the first book asking for a second,” says Tankian. “It just felt right, and I

had my friend whose work fascinated me, so I wanted to work with him and do something cool. And there was expression of course – the first and foremost reason to put out anything. What is different about this one compared to ‘Cool Gardens’ was a lot of one-liners — art matched with a one-liner of truth or a joke.”

CHRISTOPHER TITUS: NOT JUST A COMIC BUT A MODERN-DAY CARLIN-STYLE PROPHET

2011-10-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

Comedy with a cause

Christopher Titus teams with Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon and Billy Gardell to raise funds for foster teens

By Carl Kozlowski 05/05/2011

Christopher Titus endured a lot of emotional pain growing up with a verbally abusive alcoholic father and a schizophrenic mother who ultimately committed suicide. But he lifted himself out of despair with laughter, becoming a standup comedian who turned his pain into riveting and relatable tales that eventually earned him his own self-titled sitcom on FOX.

Titus has come a long way in his career, with a third standup special for Comedy Central set to air July 4. But he’s kept his heart open to the hardships of others, establishing the nonprofit Insight Youth Project, which raises money for children from dysfunctional and abusive families, and using revenue from stand-up shows to help organizations that help teens who are homeless or in foster care.

On Saturday, Titus will join Dana Carvey, SNL alum and “Weeds” star Kevin Nealon and Billy Gardell, star of CBS’ “Mike & Molly,” in “Laugh Your A$$ Off, Save the World,” a fundraiser to benefit the Olive Crest center for troubled teens at Glendale’s Alex Theatre.

“There are 56,000 foster and homeless teens in Los Angeles, and that’s a big deal for me,” says Titus. “We want to eradicate the problem of teens being homeless from Los Angeles by 2020. I had a tough childhood, with a tough dad and an insane mom, but can you imagine living in the bushes by the 101 [freeway]?”

The Insight Youth Project seeks out private, faith-based charities because Titus believes state-run foster homes are often places where caregivers “are just out to cash a check,” and that private programs make more effort to truly help.

He chose Olive Crest — serving children and families in California, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest since 1973 — because it provides housing, counseling and education for both troubled youths and their parents so that the families have a better shot at staying together before kids are placed in foster care.

“Right now they’re trying to fill a $150,000 shortfall for their counseling program,” Titus says of Olive Crest. “I really learned about these issues by volunteering with a Hollywood day shelter called My Friend’s Place. They told me these kids live in the bushes by the freeway, and I was like ‘holy shit.’ This is freakin’ Los Angeles, one of the most beautiful cities on earth, and economically we set trends and that’s not one we should be setting.”

Plenty of other social issues are upsetting Titus these days, fueling the outraged comedic sensibilities that flourished during the three-year run of his sitcom “Titus.” His new comedy special is called “Neverlution,” and is also rooted in his frustrations with the world.

“We’re a society built on revolution, but now we’re placated by Starbucks and iPads, and so we’re never going to get angry enough to have a revolution again,” says Titus. “We spend $900 billion on bullets and defense, and $90 billion on education. Why is Singapore kicking our ass on math and science? We’re not paying attention to what matters. I’m not Democrat or Republican, but that’s just messed up.”

Indeed, Titus is fiercely independent politically, finding faults with both parties. But mostly he believes that individuals should find a charity that they believe in and get involved rather than waiting on government agencies to do it for them.

“Just remembering what a screw-up I was as a teenager, I was a horrible student at 17 and they wouldn’t give me my diploma because I had to go to summer school to graduate,” Titus recalls. “But I turned into a guy with a Writers’ Guild nomination. Who

you are is a choice. What you want to be is a choice, and sometimes people don’t give these kids a choice. We need to give money to groups that give kids counseling and a different life.”

KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR SKYHOOKS THE KOZ

2011-10-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

Forgotten heroes

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shines a light on lesser-known legends with the documentary ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’

By Carl Kozlowski 05/26/2011

Say the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and two words usually come to mind: “Lakers great.”

But aside from winning five NBA championships during the Lakers’ legendary “Showtime” era, and one before that with the Milwaukee Bucks, Abdul-Jabbar is also known for being the highest scorer in NBA history and the only person to earn national championships in high school, in college under legendary UCLA coach John Wooden, and in the pros.

Unlike many sports stars, Abdul-Jabbar didn’t fade into obscurity when he walked away from the game in 1989. Rather, the UCLA history grad dove into numerous other projects, including establishing the Skyhook Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving lives through sports and education. He’s also authored seven books, the most recent of which is “On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance,” which relates the African-American cultural movement in 1930s Harlem.

Now Abdul-Jabbar has taken his interest in that historic era to a higher level, co-writing and producing a documentary of the same name that focuses on the Harlem Rens, the first all-black professional basketball team. As part of his promotional tour for the film, Abdul-Jabbar will be joined Saturday by award-winning composer Bill Cunliffe, who scored the documentary, at Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal Church for a showing and discussion of the movie.

Last week, Abdul-Jabbar fielded questions from Pasadena Weekly via email while on a cross-country flight to promotional appearances in New York City.

Pasadena Weekly: How did you get inspired to work in films?

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: I have always enjoyed films since I was a kid watching John Wayne, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Randolph Scott, Tyrone Power and the Marx Brothers, so film has always been something that I have appreciated and felt that I could contribute to. “On the Shoulders of Giants” is such an effort. I am very happy with the results of this film and hope to get more opportunities to make more films.

How did you learn about the Rens and decide to do the film about them out of all the great African-American stories to tell?

I learned about the Rens while I was still in high school, but not in any depth. After retiring I was able to find out so much more about this forgotten team, and I did not want to see them fall through the cracks of history. “On the Shoulders of Giants” pays homage to the Harlem community, which was my home, and a great team that has never been fully appreciated. I chose this story because it was a natural start to use basketball to begin my film career. As you noted, there are many stories about African Americans that have gone untold. I think it is a rich area for me to explore. My plans are to develop a library of films that celebrate social and racial tolerance about these forgotten heroes.

What do you hope people will take away from seeing “Giants?”

I hope people can get an idea of what it took for basketball to become as popular as it is worldwide. The humble beginnings of the game are virtually unknown and the struggles of black Americans to participate have never been fully illuminated.

Was there anything you were surprised to learn from the story of the Rens?

I had no idea that black Americans had to go through so much hardship just to have an opportunity to play professional basketball. Their story really parallels that of the Negro League baseball players. I am sure you are aware of Ken Burns’ fine documentary on that subject. I was also surprised to find out that Coach Wooden played against the Rens when he was a professional basketball player with the Indianapolis Kautskys. Also, Rens star Dolly King officiated many of my high school basketball games. At the time, I had no idea that he had been a star for the Rens during the 1940s.

How is your fight against cancer proceeding?

I am doing very well with my battle with leukemia. I am in remission and I intend to do what is necessary to maintain that status.

What did Coach Wooden mean to you and how did his death affect you?

John Wooden was my teacher, mentor and friend. What I learned from him has affected my life and given me guidance in how to be the best citizen I can be. He is an inspiration and I miss him every day dearly.

What would you advise kids going into sports? Do you feel that the trend is going toward or against prospects finishing college before hitting the pros?

I advise any young athlete to get a college degree. Their sports career is something that they can pursue at the same time as their education. This is one very important lesson that I learned from John Wooden: not to neglect my intellectual development because athletes should not feel that they cannot pursue both at the same time. Most professional athletes have on average a very short career — three, four years, max. Your education lasts you your whole lifetime.

What do you feel can be done to increase the literacy of kids in poverty who don’t have a lot of educational opportunities?

That problem has to be solved by society as a whole. The things that are done to improve our school systems, like Head Start, go a long way toward getting the message over to families that education is a key to a successful life.

And finally, how do you feel about the state of the Lakers?

The Lakers have always managed to find a way to the top. I am sure they will try and keep that record intact.

THE REAL-LIFE MUSIC MAN: MARVIN HAMLISCH

2011-10-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Marvin goes POP

Legendary Marvin Hamlisch leads the Pasadena POPS in performing his own hits

By Carl Kozlowski 07/21/2011

After a career in which he has won four Emmys, four Grammys, three Golden Globes, three Oscars, a Tony as well as a Pulitzer Prize, Marvin Hamlisch has certainly become accustomed to being the center of attention. But he probably never expected the whirlwind of controversy he was entering when he accepted his job as the new conductor of the Pasadena POPS.

Arriving in the midst of upheavals that saw longtime conductor Rachael Worby resign after a decade of handling the POPS baton, Jorge Mester resign after a quarter-century at the helm of the Pasadena Symphony, and a battle royale between the California Philharmonic and the POPS over the right to perform at the LA County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, Hamlisch has remained above the fray.

If anything, he was the picture of diplomacy, exuding optimism for the arts in a recent conversation with PW about his conducting debut this Saturday, as he leads the POPS in a concert on the lawn adjacent to the Rose Bowl.

“I don’t feel that this is a competition,” says Hamlisch. “I feel there’s a lot of great music to be played and there’s room for all three orchestras. You don’t have to pick one or the other. I know what I do, and I can’t wait until people actually see me do it.”

Hamlisch’s confidence is born from a lifetime spent hearing and playing music. The son of an accordionist and bandleader, the lifelong New Yorker was playing songs on the radio by ear at 5 and was accepted to the legendary Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division before he turned 7.

From there, his life was a whirlwind: playing piano for Barbra Streisand at her rehearsals, then later playing at parties for movie producer Sam Spiegel. It was through his connection with Spiegel that Hamlisch earned his big break, composing the score for the film “The Swimmer.”

From there, his life has been a collection of impressive musical milestones. He wrote or co-wrote countless classics, including the musical score for Best Picture winner “The Sting” and the theme song for the timeless Robert Redford-Streisand romance “The Way We Were.” He doesn’t compose film scores as often anymore, with his last major film being 2009’s political satire “The Informant!” But Hamlisch has kept himself more than busy with his second career as the director for seven POPS orchestras around the country.

“I work with Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Seattle, San Diego and Dallas besides Pasadena,” explains Hamlisch. “Each symphony has a person I talk to and we sit down and decide what’s best to perform based on budget — we can’t always get a specific star we want because we can’t afford a given star. We get good ideas about what makes a show and if it works. I take it somewhere else.

“So here in Pasadena I’ll be doing shows based on my music, Broadway or film. The whole idea of these things is to show off the wonderful music and have a good time. There’s a lot of humor in the shows.”

Hamlisch’s first love was composing, but he made the move into conducting after his agent told him that one of his idols, George Gershwin, had engaged in both forms of work. Hamlisch recalls: “I thought if it’s good enough for Gershwin, it’s good enough for me.”

Having found success the four biggest arenas of modern entertainment, Hamlisch won’t admit to having a favorite genre. But he does admit that there are key differences between conducting for movies and theatrical musicals.

“The key in films is creating background music to support the story, so that often people don’t notice it’s there,” says Hamlisch. “In a musical, you’re using music and lyrics to keep the story moving, so they’re much more in the forefront, and people are therefore more aware of the music.”

When he’s not working, Hamlisch still keeps himself awash in music. He counts Leonard Bernstein as his composing idol, but says that he can appreciate tunes in many styles, ranging from Earth Wind & Fire to Bach, Beethoven and Michael McDonald. But right now he’s eager to hear the musicians he’s about to work with for the first time: the performers in the Pasadena POPS.

“These are top notch musicians from Pasadena. I haven’t met them yet, and my first rehearsal is next week,” says Hamlisch. “I look forward to showing what a good POPS concert is all about: American music and a good time. That’s what my philosophy is and what it’s all about.”

JESTER IN THE OUTFIELD: The funniest Dodger ever, Jay Johnstone, cracks wise with the Koz

2011-10-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

Author and former Dodger Jay Johnstone steals home at the South Pas Library

By Carl Kozlowski 08/11/2011

During a 20-year career in Major League Baseball, Jay Johnstone was widely respected by fans and fellow players alike for his solid hitting and defense.

But Johnstone was especially beloved for some of the wacky pranks he played on and off the field, such as pretending to be a groundskeeper so he could till the diamond in the middle of a game or setting a teammate’s cleats on fire. One prank involved his impersonating former Dodger Manager Tommy Lasorda. Johnstone put on Lasorda’s uniform and padded it out before running out to the pitcher’s mound with a can of Slim-Fast, the diet-drink the portly Dodger skipper did TV commercials for in those days.

All of Johnstone’s shenanigans eventually paid off in a big way — the veteran outfielder, a resident of Pasadena, penned three New York Times bestselling books about his exploits. His debut work, “Temporary Insanity,” knocked a Howard Cosell memoir off the top of the chart, angering Cosell but firmly establishing a second career for Johnstone. After he left baseball, Johnstone released two more books, “Over the Top” and “All of My Best Friends Are Crazy,” both co-written with former Los Angeles sportswriter Rick Talley.

At 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 18, Johnstone will appear at the South Pasadena Public Library to read from and sign a new edition of “Temporary Insanity,” which he has re-released at his own expense.

“That was the book I knocked Howard Cosell off the top of The New York Times chart with back in 1985, and he wasn’t happy about it,” Johnstone recalls with a chuckle, speaking by phone recently while en route to a special appearance at Dodger Stadium. “I was a straight-arrow kid when I was growing up in West Covina, so I think a lot of the funny stuff I pulled has to come from having Jimmy Piersall as my first roommate with the Dodgers. He went nuts twice, so he was a little off, but he taught me about life in general, and I’m glad I roomed with him.”

Indeed, Johnstone loved to be outrageous, performing stunts that included leaping on top of the Dodger dugout just before a game and running in full uniform through the stands to get a hot dog as the crowd cheered him on. His books were collections of his wackiest stories, similar to those recounted by other famous team clowns, such as relief pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee. Nonetheless, Johnstone maintained high standards for the kinds of tales he revealed.

“I had the publishing companies come to me and ask me several times to really fire away,” says Johnstone. “One wanted a tell-all like [former Yankee Jim Bouton’s] ‘Ball Four,’ and I said absolutely not. I had so much fun being a prankster, and they wanted me to write about that stuff. I’m not a tell-all person, putting people down.

“So they finally said tell those and the stories of your friends, and that’s how it came about. Little kids can read them. All three are in the Library of Congress. My mother was really happy about that. There’s only one piece of heavy language in them, and [former Cub] Lee Elia said it, not me. I tell people it’s a great bathroom reading book.”

Johnstone’s run of books came to an end in the ‘90s, partly because his co-author had an aneurysm that ended his writing career and because Johnstone had felt Talley, who later died in 1995, was the only writer who could truly capture his voice. He recalls telling Talley he never wanted to have his stories embellished because they were already wildly entertaining, and he never wanted to deal with ballplayers angry at what he wrote.

Today, at age 65, Johnstone makes special appearances for both the Dodgers and the Los Angeles Angels in addition to running Sporthings & More, a Burbank company that helps more than 350 nonprofit groups raise funds through appearances and speeches by sports stars or silent auctions of sports memorabilia.

But most of all, he loves getting in front of crowds at Rotary Clubs and high school career days nationwide and delivering motivational, yet funny speeches that spread joy, especially in these troubled times.

“I like making people laugh and having fun,” says Johnstone. “I still tell some of the jokes, because a lot of people haven’t heard them. But it was all in good fun, and there were no drugs or scandals with women.”

EVERYBODY LOVES PHIL - Rosenthal, the Creator of "Raymond," that is

2011-04-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

EVERYBODY LOVES PHIL - how Philip Rosenthal re-created "Raymond" for Russians

By Carl Kozlowski

Phil Rosenthal is the co-creator of one of the most successful family sitcoms of all time – the nine-season ratings juggernaut “Everybody Loves Raymond.” The show won the Emmy for Best Comedy Series twice along the way, and is still playing in reruns in nearly 150 countries around the globe.

But just when Rosenthal could have kicked back and counted his money the rest of his life, a Russian television network came calling and invited him to re-create “Raymond,” adapting it for Russian TV audiences. Russian TV had never featured a sitcom before (go figure), so Rosenthal saw it as an intriguing challenge and jumped in.

He was smart enough to bring a camera crew with him, filming a humorous documentary about the process and surprising ups and downs involved for the new documentary “Exporting Raymond,” which opens in limited release today and expands over the next few weeks. It's a funny film, of course, but also fascinating for its insights into Russian culture and how an American phenomenon has to change to be understood by a foreign, and formerly enemy, nation.

Rosenthal sat down for a one-on-one interview with me recently to discuss his film and the history of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” offering up both amusing anecdotes and surprising revelations along the way.

Q: How did you first meet Ray Romano?

PR: Ray did standup for 12 years and had been trying to do a show like Letterman, finally got on Letterman and on the basis of one six-minute appearance Letterman said “There should be a show for this guy.” He was looking for a writer to create the show for him. I met Ray at Art's Deli, they had seen some of my work. He met a dozen other people, I don't even think I was his first choice. But we did hit it off. We're both from Queens, and for every story he had about his crazy Italian family I had one too about my Jewish family. It just happened to work out that I was gonna create the show, and here we are.

Q: It was immediate for Letterman to take interest, but how long did the process take from getting the call and hitting the airwaves?

PR: I would say it was about six months, really fast.

Q: I also remember the drama in first season, starting on a Friday night where no one was watching and then moving to Mondays where everything blew up. What was that like?

PR: At first you're slightly disappointed that you get a bad time slot. There hadn't been a hit in that time slot since “Gomer Pyle.” We didn't change that, but the three people who watched kept coming back and CBS noticed. To. their credit, the network liked the show and supported it enough to stay there. They liked it so much that when something crapped out for them on Monday nights on their big schedule, [network head] Les Moonves said he'd put us on but that if we didn't do well that was it. So we were nervous. Now it's like we made the playoffs, but you can be sent home anytime.

That first Monday, our ratings doubled. Great, but now we were really nervous because we had been fairly sampled and felt we could only go down from there. When our ratings actually went up the next week, we knew that maybe we could stay a little longer at the party. So I do remember that. I clipped the story in Variety that said our ratings went up that second week, because I knew that meant something.

Q: “Raymond” was great because it was a solid, family show but wasn't gushy. They were rather harsh, yet people loved and related to that. Was it that people related, this is what families are really like, or was it 'look at those people'?

PR: Yes, it was that they related because there were moments where there was some gush. Not whole special episodes, but there were moments that you could tell that underneath it all we really loved and cared about each other as family. Not in a sentimental way, but in a real way – and I think in a way people related too. We argue and make fun of each other, but you're not allowed to. The finale is about all that. I think that people understood by how good the acting was on that show, and maybe some of the writing, that underneath this harsh exterior is love.

Q: Did you have definite lines about how far you could take things with them? How harsh they could go?

PR: Yes. I never wanted Deborah to hate her husband. We always wanted her to be frustrated with him, because it was quite reasonable to be frustrated with him, but never wanted it to cross over into 'I hate you.” And we made sure it never happened.

Q: Did you ever find out you crossed the line without knowing it – that the network or viewers complained anyway?

PR: We got a note in the eighth season of the show. Somebody at the studio or network sent a note saying 'We tested the show and we think Deborah's being too harsh to Ray.” And we said, really? In the 8th season of the show – you suggest changing it now? We should change what we're doing, in the 8th season? We've been so successful, we should now go the other way?

Q: Transforming it to Russian, it looked like they were willing to follow the letter of the script but had a hard time getting the tone right. The actors were reading it like it was high drama. It must have been driving you crazy.

PR: Everything drove me crazy. Everything! But I realized it wasn't Russians, per se, it was the business. That's universal. I run into the same creative 'no' here that I did over there. It's just the action that's different. There's plenty of people who won't get what you're putting out. And it may not be their fault, maybe you're not bringing it out the right way.

Q: In America, the show was built around Ray's comedy. But in the Russian film, there's big fights over who to cast. Did you have any fights about who to cast for the supporting roles on the show in America?

PR: Of course. Lots of battles. I was told that the head of the network wanted a particular actress to play the wife. This was before we even knew who Patricia Heaton was, or that she was available. But I had three actresses picked out. And it came to me that “we want this person, someone outside the picture.” I said they were completely wrong for the role, but the exec said 'you didn't hear me. Les Moonves wants this woman for the role.” She was completely wrong for the part – not a bad actress, but blond and wispy. I went to my agent worried, saying 'what would you do? This could kill the show.” And he said “I would cast her.” I said, “I'm not casting her. I quit.” He said “Don't be an idiot. Why don't you meet with her?” I said I am being a little hasty, I'd love to be proven wrong and hire the girl who the head of the network wanted. We asked if she would read for it and she said no, because she was so-and-so and so-and-so doesn't read, but it was weird because she wasn't that big of a so-and-so. She met with me though – the morning of the afternoon that I was bringing my three actresses in to audition. I was told that at the end of the auditions that Les would ask me if I'd go with his girl. So I'm really nervous. I convinced her to read for me in the middle of the interview, and she's ten times worse than I thought she would be for the role. So I'm very sad, because this is the day I'm not going to have a show. My three actresses read, they're very good, and right on cue Les asked me what I thought about his girl. And I said 'I met her, I loved her, but I had her read and it's just not what I wrote. I think she could do it, but maybe we could do better. And Les said, “It was just an idea.” So he let me keep looking and two weeks later we found Patricia Heaton, who was probably the best wife ever on TV.

Q: Had she already been known for anything before?

PR: She'd been on 'thirtysomething,' but I'd never seen her.

Q: I've been to some events where Patricia Heaton and Doris Roberts were at pro-life events. It was always impressive to me that they were able to be outspoken about their views on an issue that was unpopular in much of Hollywood. Did you foster an open-minded set? Did you ever address whether it was an issue to speak up?

PR: We live in a free country, and everyone is free to say whatever they want – especially off the set. You do want someone's personal life not to interfere with the picture the audience has you in their head of the character. You don't want someone watching the show to be taken out of the character and the viewing experience because of a political view that they have in their mind about you. But other than that, everyone's free to say whatever they like.

Q: You have a great relationship with the Russian driver you had in the movie. What was your most unexpected relationship in Russia?

PR: I would say that because when he takes me to the museum, I got something I certainly never expected to get – this revelation about his life. I was just getting to know him and had no idea what was coming as in documentaries you don't know what's coming and you have to be lucky to have the camera on to catch it. He revealed something deep about himself and when somebody feels comfortable enough to do that with you, you develop a real friendship and I'm still in touch with him. That was the biggest surprise – making genuine friends over there. The translator came to New York for the first time two weeks ago and met my parents and saw the film. But I won't do this again. Poland took it, and Israel, England wants it. They may have the same language, but why did we need 'The Office?' I could take the show to Alabama and come up with a need to put a twist on it. There's cultural differences everywhere, but that said we're on the air in 148 countries in our original form – just dubbed or subtitled. We got a letter once from Sri Lanka saying 'That's my mother!'

Q: What was the biggest creative fight in Russia?

PR: For me, it was essential that the show play in front of a live studio audience. It was written and rehearsed like a play, and you needed the audience reactions because all that does for the acting and writing. The audience doesn't want many little scenes cut together like a movie. They want content. You could have two people sitting and talking in theater, or on the show, and hopefully it would be funny enough anywhere. In Russia, they refused to get a studio audience. They said “But we'll have to get chairs.” That's where they were coming from. So that was an argument.

Q: What was the most gratifying aspect of doing the show in Russia?

PR: Making friends. Always. That was the best part of doing the show here. It's a big reason to go into the business.

Q: What are you working on these days? Or do you just kick back and enjoy life?

PR: I work. That's what I enjoy. I love everything about the business except the business. I have two screenplays I might direct. I have an animated show. I have a show that England wants to bring me on. Raymond is done. Now i've brought it to somewhere else and tried. But if another country wants something new, I may be open to it. I even have a Broadway show idea and a reality show idea I'm working on.

Q: What do you think makes somebody stand out in comedy and be worthy of having their own show?

What makes a particular comic stand out from the sea of people who are pretty funny but not making it big?

PR: A clear point of view. A relatability. And a certain likability, I would say. That's all it is. It helps to have a point of view to your material and what you choose to say, but also how you say it. If you have a very abrasive manner that nobody likes, you're not gonna go far. It's the same in life. Larry David may be abrasive, but he's extra funny to make up for it.

Q: You had a very classy show. It wasn't reliant on dick jokes like “Two and a Half Men.” People of all stripes hate the sex obsession of comedy. How do you feel about the state of comedy?

PR: I think there's always been good and always been bad, and always more bad than good. It's always been that way. Some executive watched this movie and said “I love your movie but good doesn't really enter into it. I said, great. That'll be the title of my next book: “Good Doesn't Really Enter Into It: A Story of Hollywood.” You're always fighting the fight. How many books do you read that are wonderful? How much art really speaks to you? How many people do you really like? There's always more bad. If there was more good than bad, then you wouldn't know what was good.

TITUS CONQUERS COMEDY AGAIN FOR A CAUSE

2011-04-29T16:53:00.000-07:00

Next Saturday Night in Glendale: Comedian Christopher Titus Stands Up for a Worthy Causeby Carl Kozlowski

Christopher Titus thought he had a lot to endure while growing up, with a severely alcoholic and emotionally abusive father and a mother who ultimately committed suicide. Yet instead of succumbing to despair himself and letting his hardships defeat him, he became a standup comedian who turned his pain into riveting and relatable tales that eventually earned him his own self-titled Fox network sitcom.

But even as he’s attained the highest of comedic success – including his upcoming third standup special for Comedy Central, which will debut July 4 – Titus has kept his eyes and heart open to the hardships of others. He’s established the charity Project InSight to organize annual stand-up shows to benefit various faith-based, private organizations that work to improve the lives of teens who are homeless or in foster care.

Saturday night, May 7th, at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, Titus will perform in a special show called “Laugh You A$$ Off, Save the World” with stellar talent including Kevin Nealon (“Saturday Night Live,” “Weeds”), Billy Gardell (star of CBS’ hit sitcom “Mike & Molly”) and Dana Carvey (“SNL”, “Wayne’s World”) to raise funds for the Olive Crest center for troubled teens. The event will be hosted by Jillian Barberie of Ch. 11’s “Good Day LA,” who is a former foster child herself, and is aiming to raise funds for the program’s comprehensive care services.

“There’s 56,000 foster and homeless teens in Los Angeles, and that’s a big deal for me,” says Titus. “We want to eradicate the problem of teens being homeless from Los Angeles by 2020. I had a tough childhood, with a tough dad and an insane mom, but can you imagine living in the bushes by the 101?”

Titus is particularly concerned about teenagers in the foster care system because of the general societal attitude that holds that troubled children must be reached at a young age or else it’s too late to do anything constructive for them. He notes that many teens spend their entire lives in foster care and then are forced out into society without ever having had anyone to truly care about them, develop their interests and train them to deal with the real world.

Project InSight seeks to work with private, faith-based charities because Titus believes that state-run foster homes are often houses where the foster caregivers “are just out to cash a check,” and that private programs make more effort to truly help their wards. He also strives to find efficient organizations, stating that many bigger charities have such large bureaucratic structures that up to 40 percent of the money they raise goes to maintain their payroll and public relations.

This year, he chose to help Olive Crest because it has provided wraparound services -including safe houses, counseling and education for both the troubled youths and their parents so that the families have the best shot at staying together before kids get sent into foster care – for more than 50,000 kids in California, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest since 1973.

“Right now they’re trying to fill a $150,000 shortfall for their counseling program,” says Titus. “I really learned about these issues by volunteering with a Hollywood day shelter called My Friend’s Place. They told me these kids live in the bushes by the freeway, and I was like ‘Holy shit.’ This is freakin’ Los Angeles, one of the most beautiful cities on earth, and economically we set trends and that’s not one we should be setting.”

Plenty of other social issues are upsetting Titus these days, fueling the outraged comedic sensibility that flourished during the three-year run of his sitcom “Titus.” His new comedy special is called “Neverlution,” and is rooted in the frustration he feels.

“We’re a society built on revolution, but now we’re placated by Starbucks and IPads and so we’re never going to get angry enough to have a revolution again,” says Titus. “We spend $900 billion on bullets and defense, and $90 billion on education. Why is Singapore kicking our ass on math and science? We’re not paying attention to what matters. I’m not Democrat or Republican, but that’s just messed up.”

Indeed, Titus is fiercely independent politically, finding serious faults with the approaches of both parties. But most of all, he believes that individuals should find a charity that they believe in and get involved with their donations and volunteering, so that private citizens can solve the country’s problems rather than waiting on the gargantuan and financially strapped government to do it for them.

“Just remembering what a screw-up I was as a teenager, I was a horrible student at 17 and they wouldn’t give me my diploma because I had to go to summer school still to graduate,” Titus recalls. “But I turned into a guy with a Writers’ Guild nomination. Who you are is a choice, what you want to be is a choice – and sometimes people don’t give these kids a choice.

“We need to give money to groups that give kids counseling and a different life,” he continues. “Maybe they’ll start a charity, follow a dream, get into standup or music rather than just try to survive every day.”

“Laugh Your A$$ Off, Save the World” takes place at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 7th, at the Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. Tickets are $35 to $250 and are tax-deductible.

Call (818) 243-2538 or visit in-sightyouth.com for more information and to learn how to help if you can’t attend.

Tell It To Her Heart: Taylor Dayne

2010-08-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

She'll always love singing

Dance diva Taylor Dayne celebrates more than 20 years in the music biz with a free show at Americana at Brand

By Carl Kozlowski

Most dance-music divas come and go like the wind. Anyone remember Expose? How about the Spice Girls? Even the Pussycat Dolls have managed to implode after one hit CD. Yet Taylor Dayne is one of the smart and lucky ones, having parlayed a fervent gay following and continued overseas popularity to keep touring worldwide more than 20 years after bursting onto the pop charts with her hit song “Tell It To My Heart.”

In fact, the New York native just returned from performing in a packed stadium of 25,000 fans at the Gay Games international sports exhibition in Cologne, Germany. Amid working on a greatest-hits collection in which she’ll re-record 10 of her biggest hits and four new songs, Dayne is continuing to tour stateside, including a free show at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Americana at Brand in Glendale. Dayne spoke with PW by phone from her home in New York about the keys to her success and the joy she’s received from being a mother for the past few years.

“What drew me to singing is that, like anything someone loves, I turned on the radio as a child and I could sing along with any artist, and I got good at it,” says Dayne. “Your life’s dream always starts with something you’re good at, and then you excel and have pride in it. As a child, I held on to singing with two hands and never looked back.”

Dayne began singing professionally with bands after graduating high school, but established herself as a solo artist after finishing college. By the time she was 25 in 1987, she had released her debut CD for Arista Records and managed to score four Top 10 hits off of it: “Tell It To My Heart,” “Prove Your Love,” “I’ll Always Love You” and “I’ll Be Your Shelter.”

By the time her initial hot streak of singles ended, Dayne had managed to land seven Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart. Yet it’s her base of club fans, rooted strongly in the gay community, whom Dayne is particularly thankful for, as evidenced by not only her Gay Games concert but her performances in nine Pride Festivals across the US this summer.

“You take a powerful female voice with a couple of hits and you’re moving in that territory [of gay fans],” says Dayne. “There’s an identification they have with female artists of that nature. Mix classic dance-pop with a big voice, and I certainly have a hell of a hairdo, plus I’ve worked this relationship and put out music consistently for 22 years — that all speaks to that audience. And in the artistic community, that’s the most loyal audience outside the one for the Grateful Dead.”

Dayne has also made time for a side career as an actress, having performed on Broadway in Elton John’s “Aida” stage musical in 2001 and acted in independent films such as “Fool’s Paradise,” “Stag” and “Jesus the Driver” in addition to Warren Beatty’s big-budget film “Love Affair.”

She is actively involved in charitable work and serves as a representative of the Dream Foundation, which grants special life wishes to terminally ill adults in the same fashion that the Make-a-Wish Foundation helps dying children. She also has testified to members of Congress on the importance of public-school music education on behalf of the National Association of Music Merchants.

But it’s motherhood that is the most important aspect of her life these days, since she had a surrogate mother deliver twins eight years ago. “Motherhood is a complete joy, and it’s filled out my life in such a way that there ain’t a dull moment,” she laughs. “I went for one and I got two, and I’m a single parent. I come out and speak when asked for a lot of gay groups with the movement and gay couples trying to parent. As an ally in the heterosexual community, here I was having a surrogate just like they often do, and that was ahead of its time. But I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to be a mom, and that’s the best thing in the world to me.”

  

THE GREATEST SONGWRITER YOU NEVER HEARD OF

2010-08-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

JD Souther photo by Erick Anderson The Kid's Back in Town

Classic ’70s songwriter JD Souther plays Levitt Pavilion as part of Make Music Pasadena

By Carl Kozlowski 06/17/2010

“Go with the musical questions. I never tell the truth about personal stuff.”

It’s with those words, uttered with sly sarcasm in a laconic drawl, that JD Souther greets a reporter by phone while riding through the streets of Austin, Texas. Yet it’s those simple words that explain much more about the legendary songwriter, who helped craft dozens of classics like “New Kid in Town,” and “Best of My Love” for The Eagles, and other greats for artists like Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, before entering a 25-year self-imposed exile from recording in 1984.

But now he’s back, with a new studio album called “If the World Was You” released last fall, and a new live concert EP called “Rain –– Live at the Belcourt Theatre” that not only bring his sterling roots-based songwriting back to the fore, but also put him on stage at Pasadena’s Levitt Pavilion Saturday night for a free show as part of the Make Music Pasadena festival.

“Hearing you say I sound better than ever is completely reviving,” he says. “I wouldn’t be back in the studio if I didn’t feel we had something to offer. Now I’ve got two more albums planned, with seven songs in good shape, but we have guys who can still tweak more tunes in rehearsals, and then we record live.”

Souther discovered his passion for music while growing up in the Texas Panhandle, where the high elevation and flat terrain enabled some of the nation’s greatest radio stations to be heard. Reeling off memories of call letters like KOMA (“the Oma in Oklahoma”), WLS of Chicago, and “Louisiana stations that I heard when the wind was right from the Gulf,” he recalls being immersed in a spectrum of sounds that took the place of formal musical training.

“My musical education is like Duke Ellington: He said there are only two kinds of music; good and bad,” says Souther. “Jazz guys came in and said, let’s play the way we want as well as we can, and the rock and blues guys felt the same. It goes to show; anyone’s best bet is the truth about themsleves. If you play the music that’s truly in your heart, you can’t go wrong.”

Souther moved out to Los Angeles at the start of the 1970s and quickly found himself writing and recording with a bevy of breakout artists. Glenn Frey of The Eagles was his roommate, and between the two young performers a nonstop string of top-quality jam sessions ensued in their apartment and at the pads of their friends.

“I find it interesting that a lot of people think that this particular time in our young lives was interesting, because that time [his early-20s] was interesting in everyone’s lives,” recalls Souther. “It just occurred for us on a bigger scale. It was before two or three corporations owned all the stations, so you could flip around the dial and find anything to your taste. So many kinds of music were allowed then. FM didn’t have to play Top 40 hits, so you could hear Hendrix followed by the Flying Burrito Brothers and Hank Williams, all in a row. I long for the time when diversity was a positive, not a rarity on radio.”

After a decade of writing and occasionally recording smash hits, including his one solo Top Ten hit “You're Only Lonely” and a duet with James Taylor called “Her Town Too” which hit No. 11, Souther decided to walk away. The question of where he went and why has been one of the enduring musical mysteries of the past three decades, but his answer is surprisingly simple and straightforward.

“I just didn’t have anything I wanted to record,” he explains. “There were a lot of things I wanted to do, a lot of places to go in the world, and I built my dream house. But then I went to Cuba in ’98 and started playing again, started listening to a lot of Cuban music, and I had books and books of poems that I could turn into music. I found a band made out of great jazz musicians who turned out to know each other, rehearsing and rehearsing and did gigs for a month, got a remote truck and recorded the CD live in one room.”

Souther is excited to be playing Pasadena, a place of many fond memories from his 30 years in Los Angeles. He has never played a local venue before, a fact that keys excitement in him that one might expect to hear from a star about to play Madison Square Garden. But then again, these days he’s enthusiastic about coming back, and about the fact that his kind of music has found an enduring audience.

“It’s a great time for music, because there’s more ways to release your own work and that democratizes it, with less money paying off but it exposes the phonies,” says Souther. “The year I came out, 1,000 records came out and now 115,000 come out. They can’t all be good and very few make it. But if you do, you feel blessed.”

Nervy Nellie - Alison Arngrin

2010-08-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

Nervy Nellie

Former child star Alison Arngrin hits Vroman’s with her hilarious memoir, ‘Confessions of a Prairie Bitch’

By Carl Kozlowski 07/01/2010

Most people have to spend their workdays sucking up to everyone around them in the interest of workplace civility. But actress Alison Arngrim got to live out every worker’s secret dream and act hostile all day long during her best job ever, as child villain Nellie Oleson on the classic TV series “Little House on the Prairie.”

In fact, her character’s behavior was so bad that Arngrim titled her new memoir “Confessions of a Prairie Bitch,” and is coming to Vroman’s on Friday to read from and sign the laugh-out-loud funny tome. Now 30 years after the series ended, and following a lengthy adult career as an actress and activist against AIDS and child trafficking, she maintains a wicked sense of humor about her childhood career that can draw explosive laughter from even the most serious of minds.

“‘Little House’ was a supposedly family show, but there was so much death and depravity,” Arngrim recalls with a chuckle. “I think that’s why people went so nuts over me because Nellie was so mean on a show where everyone was so good.”

Arngrim was born into a showbiz family. Her father was a manager for Liberace, and her mother was the voice for cartoon characters such as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Gumby and Sweet Polly Purebred, the girlfriend of Underdog. She started acting in commercials at the age of 6.

But she was 10 when the call came for her to audition for “Little House.” While she was turned down for the lead roles of Laura Ingalls and her sister Mary, she landed the role of Nellie Oleson and delivered an audition that left the show’s creator, TV legend Michael Landon, “in tears from laughing,” she remembers.

“I was fascinated with villains, wanted to play the bad guy and didn’t think they had parts like that for girls my age,” recalls Arngrin. “My dream role was [the classic evil girl title character of] ‘The Bad Seed.’ We didn’t think that the show would be a hit, and my dad thought it would flop after a season so he wondered why they built all the sets. It wound up lasting 7 years.”

The show still airs in 140 countries, and has remained so wildly successful in France that Arngrin makes at least two trips a year there to perform her solo comedy show, which shares her book’s title. In fact, on her next two-week trip in mid-July, she’ll also be hosting a week-long country music festival there.

Yet what really drives Arngrin these days is her social activism on behalf of AIDS-related and anti-child-trafficking causes. She was thrust into the battle against AIDS shortly after her run on “Little House” ended, when actor Steve Tracy, who played her husband on the show, revealed publicly that he was dying of AIDS.

“Steve died of AIDS around the time of Rock Hudson, but he admitted it freely while Hudson denied his gayness until just before

he died and Liberace said he was on a watermelon diet. There were no meds then, nothing, not even AZT. Steve let them use experimental drugs on him in hopes it could help others.”

So she started volunteering with AIDS Project Los Angeles, working on the hotline and in its speaker’s bureau to help out smaller agencies across the country.

Arngrin's involvement in child abuse and trafficking causes stems from an even sadder, more personal place, as she was physically and sexually abused from age 6 to 9. When she was approached by the National Coalition to Protect Children, she jumped at the chance because she was impressed with the fact that the group had already changed laws in three states.

“We have changed laws all over the country and have a petition going to Congress for increased funding for the cause,” says Arngrim. “The FBI can now find people uploading child pornography. They know where these people are, but they don’t have the manpower and money to arrest them all. You’d think it’d be a no-brainer and yet it's very difficult. Many groups say ‘if only, if only, boohoo.’ But we take on cases and we win.”

Eating Up the Attention: Larry Wilmore

2010-08-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

Eating up the attention

Emmy-winning writer Larry Wilmore eyes the next course following ‘Dinner for Schmucks’

By Carl Kozlowski

Larry Wilmore has had a richly varied career, from winning an Emmy and a prestigious Peabody Award for “The Bernie Mac Show,” which he co-created, to writing his own nationally published humor book about the African-American experience, “I’d Rather We Got Casinos.”

But his latest career move might be his most visible to date. His major supporting role in the new comedy film “Dinner for Schmucks” not only placed him next to comedy stars Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, but also forced him to share screen time with a most unusual performer.

“It’s my biggest role yet in a film” explains Wilmore. “I had to audition for it, and I’d forgotten about it because I was focused on another project when the call offering the job came. But when I learned I got it, it was exciting, because the thought of working with Rudd and Carell was pretty good. But there was a vulture in the cast as well, and it was crapping all the time, so it was really scary to be around it. Steve Carell got terrified a couple times too.”

“Schmucks” is a remake of the 1998 French screwball comedy hit “Le Diner de Cons,” following the antics that ensue when a group of corporate executives force employees who are vying for promotions to bring the biggest fool, or “schmuck,” they can find to a lavish private dinner. The person who brings the biggest schmuck to dinner earns the coveted position, but the twist here is that Rudd plays a man who has a crisis of conscience while participating in the contest with Carell as his guest. The pair team up to turn the tables on the mean-spirited execs, resulting in nonstop hijinks.

As a Pasadena resident, Wilmore was also happy to shoot “Schmucks” close to home. While the interior sets were located on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood, the mansion where the dinner was hosted was the Pasadena mansion that served as the Caped Crusader’s secret home base in the 1960s “Batman” series.

“That was also a lot of fun, because I’ve lived in Pasadena for years but never knew the Batman house was here,” says Wilmore, the joy of discovery still in his voice. “We shot some pre-dinner scenes outside that house, but the actual dinner was shot at Paramount.”

For Wilmore, the biggest challenge of all on the film was adjusting from his natural writer’s mindset, which made him want to work from the film’s screenplay, to adopting the improvisational techniques that Carell and Rudd favored. Director Jay Roach (of the “Meet the Parents” and “Austin Powers” films) shot 900,000 feet of film while most directors shoot 500,000 feet on a feature, which meant that the cameras were always kept rolling through the leads’ infinite attempts to make the scenes as funny as possible.

“It was really a lot of fun watching Carell and [supporting actor] Zach Galifianakis really go for it,” says Wilmore, who’s perhaps best known to the public as the “African-American Correspondent” on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” “They did a scene where they’re playing mind games with each other. To see them going take after take, doing it really different, made it almost impossible not to laugh. It was really scary, challenging and fun at the same time.”

With the film’s world premiere at New York’s classic Ziegfeld Theatre now behind him, Wilmore is waiting to see what his next career move will be. He’s a consulting producer and actor on the new NBC show “Love Bites,” but he doesn’t see another book happening any time soon, and he seems doubtful that he’ll suddenly face a major loss of privacy from his heightened profile.

“My life’s really gonna change,” he laughs. “I don’t think so. I’m very low on the totem pole in terms of power on this movie. I’m more of a straight role in it, not one of the crazy parts, though I still have a lot of funny lines. But there are no more offers yet — I’m thinking maybe less. I’m counting on this article to really put me over the top. This is what I call the tipping point.”

Double Funny: Harland Williams

2010-08-09T12:07:00.000-07:00

Double funny

Comedian and children’s author Harland Williams keeps his two careers separate

By Carl Kozlowski 08/05/2010

Harland Williams has a skewed way of looking at the world. As a standup comic, he’s prone to expressing awe and wonderment at the most ridiculous things imaginable, while his acting career has featured him playing everything from an accident-prone astronaut in “Rocket Man” to a hitchhiking serial killer who’s invented a six-minute workout for abdominal muscles in “There’s Something About Mary.”

But what even his comedic fans may not realize is that Williams is also a popular children’s author, with eight tomes to his credit, including “The Things You Don’t Know You Don’t Know” and “The Kid With Too Many Nightmares.”

Williams turns back to comedy Friday and Saturday, performing in rare appearances at the Ice House comedy club in Pasadena.

A Toronto native, Williams spent several years working as a Canadian forest ranger before embarking on comedy as a profession. But he grew up loving to write, since his mom was a professional writer while his dad was a lawyer and member of the Ontario provincial parliament. In fact, his first book was released even before he became famous as a comic, making Williams one of the few celebrity authors who can legitimately claim that he was published due to the quality of his writing, not the notoriety of his name.

“I just get the inspiration from my childlike mind,” explains Williams. “I want to do them because it combines writing, composing, drawing and painting. It’s such a visual and mental combination of disciplines that it’s just really fun. I don’t necessarily pick a topic; it’s what I find amusing that I think they’ll find amusing. My first priority is cool, funny drawings and silly stories. The difference between me and most celebrities is I do my own artwork, since I illustrate as well.”

Williams also eagerly noted his online podcast talk show “The Harland Highway,” which he offers for free at iTunes.com and his own Web site, harlandwilliams.com. In it, he engages in a weekly rant, tells stories and performs characters — “just like coming to a concert with just your ears.” He also takes pride in his guest list, which has included top comics including Dane Cook, Tom Green and Orny Adams.

The one disappointment Williams feels about his comedic and acting success is that his performance schedule keeps him too busy to write books as often as he’d like. He’s careful not to cross the two professions and draws a clear line regarding what material is appropriate in each arena.

“I don’t intermingle my styles. I think people go through stages in life, so for kids ages 3 to 10, my material is presented in my books with that age bracket in mind, for them to enjoy during those years,” says Williams. “But there are also human beings in the world who are 15 to 100, and they don’t want to hear about a kid’s book, so I tailor my humor and artistic expression toward that age. It’s like, are you a counselor for kids or a therapist for adults? They’re two separate things.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHEECH AND CHONG - I LITERALLY INTERVIEWED THEM AT 4:20

2010-05-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

INTERVIEW: With ‘Hey Watch This,’ Cheech & Chong Ready to Reclaim Comedy Throne

by Carl Kozlowski

“You can hear the entire audio of Carl’s exclusive Cheech & Chong interview on his radio show “Grand Theft Audio” from 6 to 8 p.m. PST on THIS Thursday night at www.latalkradio.com, channel one. Free downloadable podcasts will be available starting Friday at www.itunes.com, by searching “Grand Theft Audio.”

***

Anyone who smoked a joint in the ‘70s was also likely aware of Cheech and Chong. The counter-cultural comedy superstars smoked and toked their way through nine albums, four feature films and thousands of concerts worldwide – offering living proof that stoners could also be ambitious and hard workers if given the right incentives, i.e., money, women and weed.

But eventually the laughs started to fade, and with the Reagan White House constantly touting its War on Drugs and overtaking the nation’s airwaves with incessant “Just Say No” sloganeering, even Robert “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong lost their buzz and decided to split up. In the past 25 years since that ignoble occurrence, which also signified the end of their friendship for nearly two decades. Cheech’s career has taken him far into the mainstream with major roles on network TV hits like “Nash Bridges” and “Lost,” while Chong wound up serving time in federal prison on highly questionable paraphernalia-distribution charges.

Now they’re back, revived and ready to roll (no pun intended) with a new DVD called “Hey Watch This!” and plans for not only a sequel to their most famous film “Up in Smoke” but a nearly-completed animated film as well. The DVD – which depicts on-stage and behind-the-scenes highlights of the duo’s 2009-2010 worldwide concert tour – is a means of reclaiming their status as the greatest pot-related comedy act of all time. It’s no coincidence that the tour was a smash hit, opening many doors for them to make a mark in the nation’s current medical marijuana and pot-legalization debates.

Sitting down for an interview, the dynamic duo looked both far into the past to explain how they met and into their suddenly vibrant future.

“We actually met up in Canada, where Tommy’s from (Chong is a naturalized U.S. citizen), and we were doing shows with a little comedy opening for a band,” Marin recalls, squinting his already heavy-lidded eyes. “Then the band split up but we stayed together, playing music as The Royal Shakespearean Strippers. Well theoretically we played music, but really did so much comedy we never around to playing any music. That’s when we realized you don’t need a whole band for comedy, just two guys, and it just seemed the obvious way to go.”

While they made their mark worldwide, Chong says they weren’t quite as wild as their image would suggest. In fact, his favorite “wild” road story really is just an amusing tale of a surprise celebrity encounter.

“Getting high with George Harrison was pretty incredible. He played guitar on ‘Basketball Jones,’” says Chong. “I got stoned with George one time, got high and started talking. I looked over and the guy next to me was Wally from ‘Leave it to Beaver.’ That was even more mind-blowing.”

While their split was acrimonious, there’s a certain activity that neither comic ever stopped.

“When you get older, you smoke less and less and less because it takes less to have an effect,” says Marin. “But stop? Never!”

“I’m still experimenting. I’ve been experimenting for 50 years and I’ll say one thing – you can’t get hooked on it,” adds Chong with a sly grin. “I do it in my act too, but pot smoking is really unsafe for work because you get so stoned you forget to fuck it up. We should send some more to Washington. Then they’ll forget to fuck up the country.”

Chong knows plenty about governmental overreach amid the War on Drugs, as he himself was busted for conspiracy to distribute drug paraphernalia and served nine months in prison in 2003 after federal agents raided his home for bongs and other marijuana-related devices made by the company Nice Dreams, even though it was Chong’s son Paris who served as the company’s CEO and handled nearly all business matters. While he expresses humorous defiance in loudly and proudly proclaiming his renewed use of weed, Chong also detailed the tricky ways in which the prison system strives to make offenders offend again, ensuring a constant flow of money into the system.

“Ironically, I’m invited to give an address for the Democratic person running for Congress in Pittsburgh against the woman who put me in jail,” says Chong. “I was really innocent. It was my son’s company and technically I was innocent as I can be. The US will invade any country it wants, haha, and so the same goes for messing with your life. It was good research, though, and I’m a writer. They had all the dope you wanted but then they drug test you. Once you’re in prison, when you violate their rules, they can give you five extra years with barely an honest hearing, and add more time to your sentence, so I stayed away from it.“

Chong claims that, despite seeing Marin in an anti-drug commercial (a charge Marin disputes but admits “not remembering”) and a slew of mainstream projects, he never abandoned hope that Marin would be willing to reunite. That hope remained even after the duo had a meeting in which they argued so much they briefly threw out entire concepts for films, and finally, in 2008, Marin relented to Chong’s pressure.

The resulting tour, which led them across the U.S. as well as Australia and many points in between, proved to be a multi-million dollar smash hit. And it’s shown that they’re a long, long way from ever calling things off again.

“What brought us back together?” Marin asks. “We got 150 hours of community service knocked off.”

“The real answer? M-O-N-E-Y,” clarifies Chong. “Our individual careers had petered out, and we said ‘we blew it’ so let’s try it again.’ The brand was bigger than either one of us, then we both looked at each other and had some stranger running the Cheech and Chong website and making big money selling Tshirts of us. So it’s harvest time now, time to bring it all in.”

CARELL AND FEY DISH IT OUT

2010-05-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

The new movie “Date Night” pairs two of TV's hippest stars, as Steve Carell of “The Office” and Tina Fey of “30 Rock” play a suburban New Jersey couple out on their weekly 'date night' who wind up being chased by crooked cops in a race for their lives due to mistaken identity. The film is a great deal of silly fun, but underlying its premise is a subtle exploration of how even a good marriage can go stale and the importance of keeping even the most seemingly secure of relationships fresh and exciting.

Carell, Fey and director Shawn Levy (“Night at the Museum” films) sat down with Relevant to discuss their movie at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.

RELEVANT: Steve and Tina, we know NBC's having a little bit of trouble these days. Do they get a bulk rate for loaning you out to 20th Century Fox?

TINA: First just say thank God is having trouble or my show wouldn't be on the air.

STEVE: Neither of us.

TINA: And the Fox advertising money is helping NBC out some, so that's good.

RELEVANT: Once they take your bag away, you had no props. How hard was that?

TINA: Once I lost my purse and coat, it was just me and my arms and the night. I was trying to hide my arms the whole time behind things like doorjambs. The only thing they didn't take was my high heels.

LEVY: Because of course you're going to be keeping your high heels on when you're running for your life.

RELEVANT: You didn't really wear your heels the whole time did you?

TINA: I took 'em off when we were in the car, I'd cheat a litle bit. And we had a few grandma sets where I could fit in without them. Steve built all the shoes, so the reinforcement was amazing. He's also a cobbler.

LEVY: We always do the script as written because it was very strong and didn't need to be changed. Once we had it to our satisfaction, we opened it up and played around. So it's hard to determine what's improvised. We also did readings, notes and rehearsals throughout a full year before the shoot. Steve and tina would give their input, i'd go back and we'd rewrite. But I bet if someone called out ten favorite jokes from the film, i'd wager half of them came up on set on shooting day. We didn't improvise from scratch everyday but we knew it inside out and then after we did some improvs.

RELEVANT: Steve and Tina, both being married, do you have date nights?

TINA: Maybe once a month my husband and I get out. It's a real effort, it's usually very late at night and if we get more than 10 blocks from my house, it's a miracle. I'm always exhausted. Steve's had tons of weird stuff happen.

STEVE: We're always happy to get invited to award shows, but that's it. Just the thrill of getting dressed up. Once it's 10, we're wiped out. If you have kids you know you're in trouble, trying much later. The kids are up at 530 and so are you. Generally our best date nights are very very simple and we spend a good deal of them talking about our children anyway.

RELEVANT: Steve, you've made many many movies while The Office is on TV and Tina it seems you film one once every two years. Are either of you looking forward to having movie careers after your shows are off the air?

TINA: About once every two years is all I can handle because being the creator my year at 30 Rock starts in middle of June and all the way to March. I want to write more movies but with films it's just for fun now and we'll take it as it comes.

STEVE: I'm gonna move towards voicing video games. I'm always happy to be employed so there's no giant plans.

RELEVANT: Did this come out of a longstanding desire to do something together?

STEVE: We were both offered, and our interest was weighed initially. We spoke on the phone to see how we get along. Tina said wouldn't it be fun to be hanging off a car in the middle of New York City, I said 'yeah!' When I heard she was involved and Shawn was the other component, I signed up.

TINA: I liked the idea that it was married couple, grown up, because that's who we are. At a certain point you can't do a movie about your wedding, and I thought that this is a movie my husband and I would go see.

RELEVANT: Steve, you've been a movie star for a bit longer than Tina. Was there anything you taught e her about being a movie star?

STEVE: Yes, I taught her about attitude, and there's no pretense about her so I taught her pretense. I dont think either of us think of ourselves in that movie star realm at all, and Tina doesn't need any advice from me.

TINA: This is like an enjoyable and very long-sustaining prank that I'm pulling on the American people.

'

RELEVANT: Tina, how did you learn to dance so ridiculously in the big scene?

TINA: We made a decision not to plan it.

SHAWN: Not to even hire a choreographer.

STEVE: It would've been too good.

TINA: I forget if it's the part where Steve carries me around...But we only did two long takes and the first take when he carried me around I forgot and let go of the pole so he was yelling 'Hold the pole!' I knew I could count on Steve to deliver, and one of my favorite things in the movie is Steve licking the pole and then becoming nauseous. I'd like to say we went to a bunch of strip clubs and really studied, but we didn't.

I also wanted this movie to feel at the top of its intelligence in dealing with marriage and each other, worn down by everyday lives and the struggle to come together and this night sparks that.

SHAWN: Some of the easy ways to do this movie is 'they're on the cusp of divorce and here's one last try' or they'll move to the city but no they wouldn't do that. They're still suburban and I had to keep it nuanced, no matter how crazy their lives ended up being.

RELEVANT: Do you have any advice for real life couples to keep things exciting, Steve?

STEVE: Every relationship is unique so there's not a lot of advice to offer. With my wife Nancy and I, there's an open communication and lots of laughter. We just have fun with one another and never forget to stop that. That, and amazing lovemaking.

2010-04-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

Still smokin’
With their new DVD “Hey Watch This,” Cheech & Chong reclaim their thrones as comic royalty
By Carl Kozlowski

Anyone who smoked a joint in the ‘70s was also likely aware of Cheech and Chong. The countercultural comedy superstars smoked and toked their way through nine albums, four feature films and thousands of concerts worldwide – offering living proof that stoners could also be ambitious and hard workers if given the right incentives, i.e., money, women and weed.

But eventually the laughs started to fade, and with the Reagan White House constantly touting its War on Drugs and overtaking the nation’s airwaves with incessant “Just Say No” sloganeering, even Robert “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong lost their buzz and decided to split up. In the past 25 years since that ignoble occurrence, which also signified the end of their friendship for nearly two decades, Cheech’s career has taken him far into the mainstream with major roles on network TV hits like “Nash Bridges” and “Lost,” while Chong wound up serving time in federal prison on highly questionable trafficking charges.

Now they’re back, revived and ready to roll (no pun intended) with a new DVD called “Hey, Look at This!” and plans for not only a sequel to their most famous film “Up in Smoke” but a nearly-completed animated film as well. The DVD – which depicts on-stage and behind-the-scenes highlights of the duo’s 2009-2010 worldwide concert tour - is a means of reclaiming their status as the greatest pot-related comedy act of all time, but also remind fans and newcomers alike that their comedy was also quite clever and covered tons of material unrelated to drugs as well. It’s no coincidence that the tour was a smash hit, opening many doors for them to make a mark in the nation’s current medical marijuana and pot-legalization debates.

Sitting down with PW for an exclusive interview (with the full audio of the chat also running on my Internet-radio show “Grand Theft Audio: The Jake, Brant & Carl Show” from 6 to 8 p.m. April 22 on www.latalkradio.com, Channel One and on ITunes podcast downloads April 23), the dynamic duo looked both far into the past to explain how they met and into their suddenly vibrant future.

“We actually met up in Canada, where Tommy’s from (Chong is a naturalized U.S. citizen), and we were doing shows with a little comedy opening for a band,” Marin recalls, squinting his already heavy-lidded eyes. “Then the band split up but we stayed together, playing music as The Royal Shakespearean Strippers. Well theoretically we played music, but really did so much comedy we never around to playing any music. That’s when we realized you don’t need a whole band for comedy, just two guys, and it just seemed the obvious way to go.”

While they made their mark worldwide, Chong says they weren’t quite as wild as their image would suggest. In fact, his favorite “wild” road story really is just an amusing tale of a surprise celebrity encounter.

“Getting high with George Harrison was pretty incredible. He played guitar on 'Basketball Jones,” says Chong. “I got stoned with George one time, got high and started talking. I looked over and the guy next to me was Wally from ‘Leave it to Beaver.’ That was even more mind-blowing.”

While their split was acrimonious, as evidenced by their agreeing to voice a “South Park” skit in 2000 only if they could record at separate times, Chong now adopts a mellow tone in explaining the dissolution of their partnership.

“We had a nice string. Everybody has a string: Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, no matter how funny you are it only lasts so long,” says Chong.

“Every new generation wants their own heroes. Now if we do 3,4, 5 movies we'll run the string out again,” adds Marin.

On the other hand, there’s a certain activity that neither comic ever stopped.

“When you get older, you smoke less and less and less because it takes less to have an effect,” says Marin. “But stop? Never!”

“I'm still experimenting. I've been experimenting for 50 years and I'll say one thing – you can't get hooked on it,” adds Chong with a sly grin. “I do it in my act too, but pot smoking is really unsafe for work because you get so stoned you forget to fuck it up. We should send some more to Washington. Then they’ll forget to fuck up the country.”

Chong knows plenty about governmental overreach amid the War on Drugs, as he himself was busted for trafficking and served nine months in prison after federal authorities raided his home, even though it was Chong’s son Paris who served as the company’s CEO and handled nearly all business matters. While he expresses humorous defiance in loudly and proudly proclaiming his renewed use of weed, Chong also detailed the tricky ways in which the prison system strives to make offenders offend again, ensuring a constant flow of money into the system.

“Ironically, I'm invited to give an address for the Democratic person running for Congress in Pittsburgh against the woman who put me in jail,” says Chong. “I was really innocent. It was my son's company and technically I was innocent as I can be. The US will invade any country it wants, haha, and so the same goes for messing with your life. It was good research, though, and I'm a writer. They had all the dope you wanted but then they drug test you. Once you're in prison, when you violate their rules, they can give you five extra years with barely an honest hearing, and add more time to your sentence, so I stayed away from it.“

Chong claims that, despite seeing Marin in an anti-drug commercial (a charge Marin disputes but admits “not remembering”) and a slew of mainstream projects, he never abandoned hope that Marin would be willing to reunite. That hope remained even after the duo had a meeting in which they argued so much they briefly threw out ideas for films.

“My son read an email Cheech sent to me. We'd had a meeting and decided that we're not going to get back together again, but then I hadn't seen my buddy in so long I missed him,” Chong says. “I said even though we're not together professionally, we should see each other personally. So my son came up with the idea for the tour.”

That tour, which led them across the U.S. as well as Australia and many points in between, proved to be a multi-million dollar smash hit. And it’s shown that they’re a long, long way from ever calling things off again.

“What brought us back together?” Marin asks. “We got 150 hours of community service knocked off.”

“The real answer? M-O-N-E-Y,” clarifies Chong. “Our individual careers had petered out, and we said 'we blew it' so let's try it again. The brand was bigger than either one of us, then we both looked at each other and had some stranger running the Cheech and Chong website and making big money selling Tshirts of us. So it's harvest time now, time to bring it all in.”

“Cheech & Chong’s Hey Watch This” will be released on DVD worldwide on Tuesday, April 20 (natch).

IF YOU WATCHED TV GROWING UP, YOU KNOW THIS GUY

2010-03-13T11:32:00.000-08:00

Telling tales

‘Over-performer’ Stephen J. Cannell takes over mystery book writing much the way he conquered episodic TV

By Carl Kozlowski 03/11/2010

Stephen J. Cannell’s sonorous voice commands your attention while his expressive face and darting hands can keep you focused for hours at a time. These storytelling skills have served the fit and energetic 69-year-old television icon well, enabling him to convince America’s network executives to buy more than 40 of his TV series during a four-decade career that earned him numerous awards, including an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series for “The Rockford Files.”

In addition to Jim Rockford, played by James Garner, Cannell’s created many other memorable TV characters for shows such as “The Commish,” “Hardcastle and McCormick,” “The Greatest American Hero” and the ultimate badass group of all television — “The A-Team.”

Despite his mastery of the TV game, the lifelong Pasadena resident and devoted family man has shifted professional gears, authoring 15 crime novels over as many years, with nine titles built on the adventures of Los Angeles private detective Shane Scully.

All 15 of his released novels (with two more ready to go) have been New York Times best sellers, and that’s not likely to change with the release this month of Cannell’s newest Scully novel, “The Pallbearers.”

Cannell will be appearing this weekend at the Left Coast Crime Conference at the Omni Hotel in Los Angeles, where he’ll be discussing and signing his new tome — a story that has the hardboiled Scully facing some rough memories following the murder of his childhood mentor.

“My initial idea was to go back and deal with that part of his life that I had talked about in several of the novels but hadn’t really detailed. I had said that he was from a group home and decided to show the first chapter as a prologue, as a child, and show who Walter Dix was as a surrogate father for him,” explains Cannell. “I knew Walter was going to be a murder and not a suicide, so I started looking on the Internet for group-home incidents like corruption and graft, which led me into my plot. I wanted to show this guy who had given Shane and the other kids so much by reaching out to them and at the same time to be able to explore Shane’s early life and why he is who he is.”

The book also features bad guys who are mixed martial artists (MMAs), which is one field that Cannell knew little about. An incredibly disciplined and physically fit man, Cannell gets up at 4 a.m. each day and works out before engaging in a day of writing and meetings. His schedule is so intense that more than 25 years ago his wife, Marcia, insisted that he hire a driver so he could maximize his work time en route to his Hollywood Boulevard offices and get home at a reasonable time to be with his family.

“I was looking for some heavies at the front of this story that would be really frightening. I wanted some people at the beginning of the story who could pose a real threat to Shane and the pallbearers,” says Cannell. “They train all day long. It was almost like human cockfighting. I did speak to some MMA fighters before I wrote the book. It’s a very competitive field, and most don’t make much money.”

Cannell landed an unexpected bonus from his immersion in the world of ultimate fighting. It was there that he met heavyweight champion Rampage Jackson, who went on to become the choice to replace Mr. T as B.A. Baracus in the June feature film version of “The A-Team.” (Mr. T is in talks over a possible cameo in the film.)

That “The A-Team” is finally making it to the big screen after more than 20 years off the air has already created enough buzz to make the film a prime candidate as one of the summer’s leading box office moneymakers. The cast includes Liam Neeson, flexing the action-star cred he earned with last year’s “Taken,” as John “Hannibal” Smith, a role made famous by George Peppard. The cast also includes “District 9’s” Sharlto Copley as the lunatic “Howling Mad” Murdock, a role originated by Dwight Schultz, and “Hangover” star Bradley Cooper filling the shoes of Dirk Benedict’s smooth-talking “The Face.”

With all the money and effort behind the revival, it’s interesting to hear Cannell describe the freewheeling nature of the show’s conception.

“It was [former NBC chief executive Brandon] Tartikoff’s idea and he called me over and said I want you to create a show called ‘The A-Team,’ and I thought, oh my God, it’s right on the nose,” says Cannell. “He said, remember ‘Road Warrior?’ It’s like that, but not that. Remember Belker [actor Bruce Weitz, who did not appear on the show], that crazy guy on ‘Hill Street Blues’ — that guy could be in the show. And you know that guy, Mr. T in the ‘Rocky’ movie? He drives the car.’

“And that was the pitch. I was with [long-time producing partner] Frank Lupo. We went to the commissary and I said, ‘What the hell was that?’ And I said, ‘I think he’s telling us to break all the rules.’ I always wanted to do a show on soldiers of fortune and this was a chance to just cut loose and include everything from an invisible dog to rescuing an entire Mexican village. That was a huge show as it developed one hit after another and was the start of the NBC dynasty. We lit up that time period and gave them a promotion base, and the network roared.”

Over the years, Cannell has won accolades for his writing, including the Saturn Life Career Award in 2004, the Marlow Lifetime Achievement Award from Mystery Writers of America in 2005, the WGA Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement in 2006, the NAPTE Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award in 2007 and the 2008 Final Draft Hall of Fame Award, recognizing entertainment industry leaders who foster the art of screenwriting and nurture and inspire the creative process.

Considering all the success he has enjoyed and the impact he’s had on American pop culture, it’s interesting to note that Cannell nearly took an entirely different career path: following his father and taking over his interior design and furniture business. Cannell, who is dyslexic, worked extra hard at writing while working for his dad throughout the first four years of his marriage to his eighth-grade sweetheart. Cannell stayed up late into the evenings banging out scripts for TV, sending them out to agents and learning from the rejection notices how to improve.

“I’d come home every night and I wrote for five hours, had a snack and wrote from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m., and then had dinner. I’d work a half day as a writer on Saturday and a half day on Sunday. It was a high priority on the list of things I wanted to accomplish and I put it ahead of fucking around and going to the beach,” says Cannell. “I put it up there with my wife and kids. I believed in the concept of over-performing. I believe anyone can achieve their goals in life if they over-perform; that means you have to work 10 times harder than anybody you see. My agent would get me a meeting with a producer tomorrow and I’d say, ‘No, a week from tomorrow.’ She didn’t get it, but I wanted to get ready all day long for eight days for one 45-minute meeting.”

All the hard work eventually had a downside on his personal life. Once he got the chance, Cannell decided to establish his own television studio, competing against the likes of Universal to fill network airtime. However, that didn’t leave enough hours in a day for him to keep as close to his family as he now wishes he had been.

“My wife is my best friend. She’s put up with a lot of bullshit because this is not an easy business to be in. But I’ve been a good husband, I did not cheat on her, I don’t play around,” says Cannell, turning introspective and facing the floor as he takes a moment to continue. “I lost a son. My oldest, Derek, died when he was 15 ½,” suffocating at a beach after a sand castle he was building collapsed on him. Cannell has two grown daughters, Tawnia and Chelsea, and a grown son, Cody.

“That was a huge wake-up call. I was doing ‘Greatest American Hero’ in 1981,” Cannell recalls. “I never missed his games, or plays, things that were important to him. But I was getting home late at night, missing dinners and going in on weekends. All the time I thought I’d catch up with him later on, but it never happened. So I stopped that. And with the rest of the four children I decided: I will be home with you every night for dinner. But I did burn out around 9 o’ clock because of getting up so early.”

Cannell credits his father’s example and his own strong Episcopal faith as a member of All Saints Church with his ability to stay strong amid the temptations and frustrations of Hollywood. He stopped producing for TV in the mid-1990s, when the networks’ pay rules changed and he found he would start making far less for all of his efforts on a new series.

The move freed him up creatively to pursue writing novels, as well as establishing a secondary career as a character actor. He has appeared in more than 50 TV series and films and currently has a recurring role as himself on ABC’s “Castle” — the very type of lighthearted mystery series that he once would have created himself.

“I’ve done the hard work for decades and I still work hard,” says Cannell, relaxing recently in his wood-paneled and lushly carpeted office. “But there is something to be said for creatively stretching and enjoying it all, mixing it up and keeping it fresh. I might return to TV one day again, but for now it’s all about keeping things fresh.”

HEY LOOK IT"S THE BANGLES!

2010-03-13T11:29:00.000-08:00

Sisters of charity

The Bangles — Debbi Peterson, Susanna Hoffs and Vicki Peterson — help raise funds for La Salle High School

By Carl Kozlowski 03/11/2010

Think back to those school fundraisers of your teenage years. The image likely includes bake sales, car washes or, if you were lucky, a dance with a deejay.

On Saturday night, La Salle High School is hosting the fundraiser to top all high school fundraisers, featuring a performance by rock superstars The Bangles, who first strutted their signature hit “Walk Like an Egyptian” to international fame in 1986 and are still touring and recording today.

So how did the small Catholic high school score so big? Bangles guitarist Vicki Peterson and her drummer sister Debbi have a nephew in his senior year there. So they decided to send him out with something neither he nor grateful students and school officials will likely soon forget, performing a concert to raise much-needed funds for the school’s arts program. The show, set for 7 p.m. Saturday, is open to the public.

“My nephew is very active in the music department and he’s a senior, so it’s our last chance to help out while he’s still in school,” Vicki Peterson explains in an interview with the Pasadena Weekly. “We’ve done something for almost all of our kids’ schools, and certainly art departments suffer in funding.”

While Peterson gladly engaged in a trip down memory lane, she emphasized that The Bangles have remained more than a nostalgia act. They tour nationally each summer, and in the past decade they’ve mounted tours of Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan — all while releasing the CD “Doll Revolution” in 2003 and currently recording a new album.

Both efforts have inspired the Peterson sisters and lead singer Susanna Hoffs (bassist Michael Steele rarely joins them) to keep creating fresh songs, as opposed to relying on past hits and cover tunes.

The band is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, having met in 1980 through an ad in The Recycler. Vicki recalls that she and Debbie had just fired a guitarist, who still lived with Vicki, and placed the ad in hopes of finding a new band to work with. Hoffs answered the ad and called in, but Vicki picked up the phone and started an instant friendship.

“We had actually stopped looking for a singer and had nearly given up on trying to have a band, but she called that ad and I happened to pick up the phone,” Peterson recalls. “It was sort of serendipitous. That was December of 1980, right after John Lennon was shot, and by the next year we’d recorded our first little 45 that we funded ourselves and were playing clubs and stuff.”

The Bangles signed with seminal alternative label IRS Records in 1983 and put out a hitless EP before jumping to the major label CBS Columbia. There, they made a bigger splash with their debut album “All Over the Place,” after two songs — “Going Down to Liverpool” and “Hero Takes a Fall” — attracted KROQ-FM airplay and a performance on David Letterman’s show.

But it took a song written by Prince to break them wide open with the public. He wrote the smash hit “Manic Monday” as a means of wooing Hoffs (whom Peterson adamantly says never reciprocated, despite a rumored romance with the rocker), and it became the first smash of their careers when included on their 1986 album “Different Light.”

“Our first full album caught his attention, and he sent ‘Manic Monday,’” says Peterson. “I’m sure he had his reasons, but he’s a very mysterious person. It’s not like I call him up and we hang.”

Despite The Bangles’ ability to write their own popular songs (the smash ballad “Eternal Flame” was a Hoffs composition), Peterson said that record labels held a lot more sway over artists in the ’80s and could force groups to take on outside songwriters’ tunes. The Bangles played ball to resoundingly successful effect, as “If She Knew What She Wants” — another one of “Different Light’s” four hits — was written by their friend, songwriter Jules Shear.

“Nobody’s gonna turn their back on a good song, so we always kept an open mind. We always did covers anyway, though writing was always important to keeping our point of view and it’s something I still love about what we do,” says Peterson. “I was hoping that one of us would have an original composition on that level, and Susanna finally did with ‘Eternal Flame.’”

The greatest gift from the music gods came in the form of outside songwriter Liam Sternberg’s “Walk Like an Egyptian.” The song exploded worldwide, creating an instantly popular new dance move that fans all over the planet replicated. To this day, it stands as one of the most-played songs from the ’80s.

“Liam is a very interesting, eclectic writer. Susanna and I could have written a ‘Manic Monday’ but not a ‘Walk.’ It’s a pretty out there composition,” Peterson says. “It didn’t really impact me until much later, until I realized that it was one of the things people didn’t just remember from The Bangles, but the ’80s, and that colleges were having ‘Walk’ nights and frats were having themed parties. It was a cultural headstone in a way that was fun, silly and irreverent that people now associate with the ’80s.”

The fun kept going through their next CD, 1988’s “Everything.” But after “nine years together, 24/7, with no relationships, we were four exhausted young ladies,” says Peterson. Hoffs and Steele walked away from the band, though The Bangles never officially broke up. In 1999, Hoffs called up the Petersons and asked if they’d want to work with her again.

Peterson had spent much of the intervening decade as a member of the critically acclaimed Continental Drifters, an ensemble of top alternative-rock musicians based in New Orleans. So her one demand with Hoffs was that the group wouldn’t just rest on its laurels but really re-fire and maintain their creative spark by writing all new material for a new CD, which became “Doll Revolution.”

“Debbi and Susanna and I wrote songs via cassettes in the mail. We wrote a song originally for ‘Austin Powers 2,’ and we talked Michael [Meyers] into doing it with us that time,” Peterson says. “That was first time together in the studio in ages, and then we went to the Hollywood Bowl for a sold-out tribute to The Beatles night.

“We’re looking forward to the benefit. We’re even trying to work up a song to sing with the choir,” says Peterson. “It’ll be a special night and I do hope people come out and help kids get the money for trips to perform in other cities.”

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE..WRITER

2010-02-23T07:03:00.000-08:00

Friday, January 29, 2010

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE...FICTION WRITER

"Time" heals all

With “Angel Time,” Anne Rice continues her quest for truths hidden amid eternal mysteries

By Carl Kozlowski

Anne Rice has spent her entire life caught up in a spiritual quest for truth. Yet she has carried on that search in a highly public and creative fashion, creating novels rooted in indelible portraits of evil and lost souls throughout her 11-novel series about the Vampire Lestat before tossing that vastly lucrative path aside to write novels in which Jesus and holy angels are the heroes.

Rice will be signing her latest novel, “Angel Time,” in a free 1 p.m. Saturday event at Vroman’s Bookstore. Following the story of Toby O’Dare, a contract killer assigned to yet another murder who is visited by a mysterious stranger – an angel who offers him a chance to save rather than destroy lives. When he agrees to take that chance, he is whisked back to 13th-Century England, amid an era in which children suddenly die or disappear and accusations of ritual murder have been made against Jews – a dark world in which he is determined to bring light.

“Both vampires and angels challenge the imagination. You have to live up to a classic concept, with angels they’re a creature who’s a messenger of God who comes from Heaven ,” explains Rice. “So you think: ‘what’s he going to sound like when he talks, what’s he going to say?’ It’s exciting to me, to write about angel Malchiah and make him believable to my audience.

“We have to respect what they are. Angels are messengers of God and live in the presence of God, but over and over in Hollywood movies, they’re made into sad figures who want to be on earth instead of Heaven. My angels want to be in Heaven. It’s kind of thrilling and very similar to writing about vampires.”

It’s been a rather unique full-circle journey for Rice, who grew up in a devout Roman Catholic family in New Orleans before questioning her beliefs upon attending college out of state in Texas. Yet Anne didn’t rebel in the conventional sense of those around her in the heyday of hippiedom; she was a few years older than that generation and decided to question things on an intellectual and philosophical level rather than through the use of drugs.

She reached her professional breakthrough in 1976 with the release of her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, a full three years after she finished writing it. Following the illicit deeds of an immortal vampire, the book was an extremely dark exploration of the very questions Rice was harboring in her real life. While writing the remaining ten books in the vampire series, which went on to sell tens of millions of copies worldwide, she also wrote three erotic novels under the pen name of A.N. Roquelaure.

But even as she eventually came to describe herself as an atheist and had great wealth and adulation surrounding her, Rice wasn’t truly happy. In 1998, she started to rediscover her strong faith in the Catholic Church, and by 2004, she announced that she would no longer write about vampires. Instead, she was devoting herself to “what the Lord wanted” in her writing.

“The answer to why I switched is my personal conversion. I didn’t really have the same worldview after that conversion,” Rice explained in an exclusive interview from her home in Rancho Mirage. “I didn’t have any more tales to tell with Lestat because I now saw the world through different eyes and the vampires didn’t make a connection for me.

“Vampires were people groping for faith, living through darkness, and I personally found the change those characters were looking for,” Rice adds. “I came to the end of my quest. The last two [Lestat books] reflected the split in me and were written after I’d been writing in faith.”

Rice’s shift away from faith was one that is common on the nation’s college campuses, even though she now feels it was “tragic” for her life. For despite her vast wealth and a happy 41-year marriage to Stan Rice, a lifelong atheist who died in 2002, she wishes she had never walked away from her beloved mother church.

“I went through a crisis at 18. I was at a secular college campus in Texas, away from my Catholic roots and had a whole host of new influences,” recalls Rice. “I rejected the faith of my childhood as too limited. I wanted to learn what the modern world was about. I ended up styling myself as an atheist, but was really agnostic. As Catholics we encounter a whole lot of new information, and we don’t know how to incorporate that into our faith.”

Rice particularly recalls her first readings of existentialist writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus as leading her astray, but with the wisdom of time now says “it isn’t necessary to leave your church in order to read Sartre or Camus, but when I was 18 it didn’t seem that way and that I had to leave and seek knowledge a different way. It was a tragedy.”

Rice ultimately decided to return to the Catholic Church but also came back with a strong sense that she was supposed to write about Jesus Christ now and devote all her future work to Him. She feels that even her vampire novels were reflections of the search for the great truths of existence, just from the dark flipside of the path she walks now.

“There was not a specific incident that sparked my return to the church. I’d been thinking a long time and one day I made decision to go back, and realized I didn’t need answers to all the sociological questions I had,” explains Rice. “God had the answers for what was the meaning of the Holocaust or why was there a Second World War? – and that was enough. That burden was not for us. It was a release to let it go but it was also intellectual. Americans tend to believe in that story that you turn towards or against faith due to tragic loss, but that never happened for me. They’re always casting my story in those terms but it didn’t fit.”

Ultimately, Rice has been pleased that some of her old fans have followed her new direction and tries not to concern herself too much with those who haven’t been as kind about it. She drew particular ire from some fans on Amazon.com for her Christ-centered novel Blood Canticle, and wound up attempting to defend herself in writing – only to find Amazon pull her response down without explanation.

“I don’t disavow my past books at all. I have communication with my followers everyday, and love their feedback and comments,” says Rice. “I hear a lot from fans who are curious and searching for faith. I get a lot of emails about my conversion – how did you do it, what do you believe in? I spoke at a synagogue about “Christ the Lord” outside of Birmingham, and people asked how did faith get back to you? Sometimes it’s hard to express how complicated it is.”

Posted by America's Funniest Reporter at 6:18 PM

FEELING KINDA "WORDY" WITH NPR SUPERSTAR SARAH VOWELL

2008-10-15T10:43:00.001-07:00

Purely funny
NPR’s Sarah Vowell tells about ‘Wordy Shipmates’ at All Saints

Think of warring factions within a religion, and the strife in Iraq between Sunni and Shia Muslims might come to mind. Unless you happen to be Sarah Vowell, best-selling humor essayist and star contributor to NPR’s “This American Life.”
Vowell has just released her fifth book, “The Wordy Shipmates,” in which she reveals the internecine (and sometimes humorous) conflicts that existed between the disparate factions of Puritans who helped found our own nation. Illuminating the battles over separation between church and state that were carried out via dramatic court trials, vicious pamphlet wars, and even orders of exile, Vowell also takes time to show the strange and surprising ways that Puritan culture affects our lives to this day (including via a Puritan-themed water park).
Speaking by phone from her New York City apartment before launching a promotional tour that brings her to Pasadena’s All Saints Church tonight for a reading and signing event sponsored by Vroman’s Bookstore, Vowell readily admits that the similarities between Puritan factions and Iraq’s Muslim factions helped light the fire for her new work.
“I wrote about this for a lot of different reasons. One of them is just simply that I have an illustration in the book — the seal of the Massachusetts state colony, with an Indian saying ‘Come over and help us,’” Vowell explains. “This is the official seal the Puritans brought with them from England, and it shows the ironic vision of how they saw themselves: they’re here to help, whether anyone wants their help or not. I feel that — and their notion of themselves as God’s new chosen people as always right, the city on the hill — I find that to be just a really enduring component of the American DNA.
“But also just in terms of the whole intricacies of Islam — there were so many days I’d put down the newspaper about all these squabbling theological factions over there and get back to work on my squabbling theological factions that were here. Every era has them.”
American history’s dark and quirky underbelly is a continuous source of fascination for Vowell, whose previous book, “Assassination Vacation,” detailed an extensive trip she took across America, visiting the sites of famous assassinations and digging up odd forgotten facts about the killers and their victims that have been otherwise scrubbed from our official historic texts. She developed her passion for history when she and her sister drove along the notorious Trail of Tears that cost the deaths of 4,000 displaced Cherokee Indian ancestors back in 1838. The audio documentary that resulted changed the course of her life.
“I had started out writing about music and books, but at ‘This American Life’ I started doing stories about music and family. That trip made me fall in love with history and the process of discovering it,” Vowell recalls. “The documentary wasn’t just about the Trail of Tears, it was also about our driving on it, so there were all types of off-topic shenanigans. I guess part of it is that I write about American history for Americans, which is to say a bunch of amnesiacs who don’t care about history.”
Ironically, Vowell’s stop at All Saints Church comes even as she admits to being a secular atheist. Some might think she is not the ideal candidate to write about one of America’s founding religions, but she says her earlier childhood upbringing in a Pentecostal church has maintained its influence on her in many ways.
“I have an incredibly classic evangelical background, and while I’ve thrown off the trappings of the mythological aspects of Christianity, I’m still influenced by the teachings of Christ, I guess,” says Vowell. “Also, religion was my entry into scholarship basically. In the town where I lived until I was 11 years old, almost no one had gone to college and almost the only scholarly facet of life was Bible study. I think that kind of childhood was enormous influential to me becoming a quasi-scholar/writer. Religion was the only way you got to spend your life in a library, and the thing I love most about the Puritans is their love of words and knowledge and learning, scholarship and intellect.” — Carl Kozlowski

FROM "STINKFIST" TO FINE WINE SCENTS: the story of Tool singer Maynard James Keenan

2008-09-17T23:22:00.001-07:00

Taste in the making
Tool’s Maynard James Keenan shifts his focus from writing dark lyrics to creating zesty wines
By Carl Kozlowski 09/11/2008
As lead singer and songwriter of the rock bands Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, Maynard James Keenan has crafted some of the loudest, most inventive and disturbing music of the past two decades. Yet the author of such tunes as “Prison Sex” is also a man of unexpected contradictions; a guy who prefers to live amidst the desert atmosphere of small-town Wilcox, Ariz., where he oversees a burgeoning winery called Arizona Stronghold.
On the one hand, Keenan writes lyrics that can make one’s stomach turn, such as this couplet from the tastefully titled “Stinkfist”: Knuckle deep inside the borderline.This may hurt a little but it’s something you’ll get used to.Relax. Slip away.On the other hand, he’s capable of discussing the more refined scents of fine wines for hours, speaking with passion about the meticulous processes he follows to put out a product he can be proud of. He’s already sold 13 million CDs and sold out stadiums around the world, but now Keenan wants to take over your wine cellar.
To accomplish this, Keenan is kicking off a tour of a dozen Whole Foods stores with an in-store appearance Tuesday night at the Pasadena location on South Arroyo Parkway, where he plans to sign bottles for fans.
While he says the events will likely be straightforward affairs, they nonetheless offer his rabid fan base (which includes multiple stalkers he’s had to chase from his Arizona farm with paintballs) a rare chance to meet one of rock’s most reclusive frontmen.
Keenan developed his almost-obsessive love of privacy — protected for years by wearing masks and disguises onstage — as an only child who spent a nomadic youth moving across Michigan and Ohio. While overseeing his annual grape harvesting season, which runs from August through November, Keenan spoke by phone from Wilcox to explain just how he manages to keep up with it all.
“I come from a small-town background and did a little farming for summer jobs as a kid. For me it’s an extension of the art form. I’ve been collecting wine since the early ’90s but as far as breaking ground and getting involved in making it, that was around 2001-02,” Keenan explains. “It’s a generalization that California is a good spot to grow grapes. It’s a very easy spot to grow grapes and it produces fantastic wine, but it also is a comfortable place to produce it. Arizona is seen as a hostile environment, but because of that it should create spicier wines.”
Keenan considers his wines to be “a lot more European in their structure, with a lot of mineral structure and long-aging wines that are not California style.” His world travels as a rock star have greatly influenced his approach to winemaking, due to the exposure he’s had to flavors from all over the planet.
“I’m traveling around the world seeing places like Spain and Italy, and some of my favorite wine is from those places or in France. There are so many nuances to the wines in those regions because of the landscape and the culture,” he says. “As Americans we want things very palatable and safe and we need things sold in a consistent manner, versus the regional manner found in Europe.
“You’ll have a great flavor in a town in Italy and you’ll never encounter it again unless you move there,” he continues. “There are definitely little winemakers throughout California that are doing fantastic things, but overall they’re very safe.”
Keenan, 44, entered the Army after high school in order to raise the funds to attend Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Mich. He moved to Los Angeles after graduation in 1988 and wound up working in interior design and set construction.
Keenan specialized in redesigning pet stores, due to a love of animals that is surprising considering he’s the author of songs with titles like “Disgustipated” and “Killing You.” He teamed up with fellow LA musician Adam Jones to form Tool in 1990 and within two years they were releasing their first CD.
Despite the drive he felt to get signed quickly, Keenan still felt a need to develop side projects and has consistently taken about five years between the release of Tool CDs. Though busy with his bands, Keenan found time to develop his own California wine label as well, called Caduceus. “For Caduceus, it’s very small, low production and high quality. With Stronghold, we want to take it as big as we can. We purchased about 60 acres of vineyards in Wilcox, outside of Tucson, with the intention to have a large venue to cherry-pick the best grapes for our wine,” says Keenan. “With our other grapes, we’re putting $19 bottles of Arizona wine in front of people to expose them to what Arizona wine will do — and eventually they’ll find their way back to Caduceus and Page Springs Cellars,” the label run by his wine business partner Eric Glomski.
These days, most of Keenan’s non-alcoholic creativity is being organized and released under the Puscifer banner. While he promises the group will eventually perform live, he’s first opening a store named after the band in Arizona, with various merchandise, paintings, art and limited-edition stuff. He also owns three tapas restaurants.
“It’s always been a multifaceted, multi-medium project. I’ve worked with different chefs, filmmakers, designers, and it’s gonna be quite a large project. I’ve been working on this project since the early ’90s, and it took a long time to pull together,” says Keenan. “For the music, it’s not about the individual — so the more you let the music speak for yourself, the more powerful the music will be. With food, it’s more about the recipe. I just like different flavors, and I can’t sit still. I have different ideas that don’t fit the personalities in different groups, and I have to stretch my legs.”

EIGHT MINUTES WITH LEWIS BLACK

2008-07-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

EIGHT MINUTES WITH LEWIS BLACK
For those who don't know, I've interviewed dozens of comedians in my years as a reporter. You can find the profiles in my "Famous and Funny People" blog section on my site, www.americasfunniestreporter.com. This interview was with Lewis Black at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, CA on Friday, June 20, 2008 after he did a hilarious Q&A with the audience at a book signing for his new collection of essays, "Me of Little Faith." This interview hasn't appeared anywhere but here so enjoy...
America's Funniest Reporter: Nobody seems as crazy as they did in the Bush elections about religion, but the fringe keeps saying that Obama’s a Muslim. So how do you feel religion is playing out in this election? Is it a factor?
BLACK: I think it’s playing out a little less, but it just gets stupid. It’s playing out stupid. Before it was idiotic and now we’ve moved to stupid. They say Obama is a Muslim because they can’t say bad things. They can’t use the other words they’d like to say, so they come up with that as the excuse.
AFR: Do you think we’re moving past this permanently?
BLACK: Yeah, I think so. I think most Americans are tired of it. Once you have a president who says he’s religious, but people see he’s just insane, they pick up on it. I think people are sick of it. You see it even with the born-agains, saying these people have got to just stop it. I think it’s the end of it. And a lot of that outpouring had to do with 9/11. That’s how people respond when the shit hits the fan.
AFR: Do you think that when things calmed down and saw more trouble wasn’t coming they backed off from it?
BLACK: Yeah, I think so and they’re sick of it. Look – you can be on your hands and knees all you want but you gotta know how to fix things. Look there’s a flood now in the Midwest and they’re still putting up sandbags. No amount of prayer, you can pray whatever, but we ended up in the position where they didn’t do the basics. Look that was in ’93 that the place flooded. They were told in ’93 to build a larger embankment, and they didn’t. We have to start doing things when they do something and go, yeah now we gotta get it done.
AFR: So this is a problem that goes across other administrations.
BLACK: It goes across all of ‘em. This country’s never dealt with its problems, always fooling around with other crap.
AFR: Some people act like Obama is the Messiah. What is your reaction to that?
BLACK: I think the kids are reacting to something they’ve never heard, which is hope.
AFR: Do you have faith in him?
BLACK: I don’t have that much faith anymore. Hope is a great thing if you’re 22. I’m 60. Hope’s not that big a deal. Hope to me is that the hotel I stay in will have a breakfast buffet tomorrow. That would be nice. I think what he’s doing is great. I think what’s really amazing is that people go “God he speaks so well.” Like there’s something wrong with that. How do we know he can do anything? Well if he can speak that way he can focus people. That’s the important thing. Whether he gets anything done with the idiots wandering around is another thing. I don’t think it’s that difficult. It’s just here’s what the liberals think, here’s what the conservatives think, let’s meet in the middle and move on. Something’s gotta give.
AFR: Gay marriage is fresh in the news, and All Saints Church here is the most liberal church in America and has said they'll crank out gay weddings as fast as they get asked. So how do you think gay marriage will play out in relation to faith? Are people chilling out about it?
BLACK: In a sense it’s – it’s a hell of a thing to compare it to, but abortion. States allowed abortion, and eventually it became the law of the land. It’ll take a number of years because it has to do with ignorance. If people don’t spend time with gay people, they don’t get it. It’s a concept and a concept that weirds them the shit out. All you have to do is get out in the country 20 minutes to see that they’re not exposed to it. Compare this to parts of the country, it’s like 10 years ahead out here. They just got cable!
AFR: Has there been any presidential candidate ever that didn’t let you down?
BLACK: No! No, not really. Look all that had to happen, all my generation had to do was legalize pot and they couldn’t do it. It’s that simple. I mean really, that was it. They couldn’t even do the basics. I was reading an article by a friend of mine today. Hemp can’t be grown in this country. You’ve gotta be kidding me. Not even cannabis – hemp! It’s a law that’s 40, 50, 60 years old
AFR: What do you want to be doing next?
BLACK: Next? Lying down.
AFR: No, your next big project?
BLACK: I do the show, it goes back on the air July 30. I go back on tour, the CD comes out August 5 and then I do a run in New York but after that I don’t know. I may do a movie this summer but it doesn’t look like it.

JIM GAFFIGAN: SURVIVING CATHOLIC LIFE THROUGH LAUGHTER

2008-03-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

JIM GAFFIGAN
BY CARL KOZLOWSKI
Growing up as the youngest of six kids in a Catholic family in Indiana, Jim Gaffigan found out early on that being funny was one sure way to get some attention in a boisterous household. And when he eventually became one of America’s top standup comics, he found that his faith not only provided plenty of good-natured joke material, but also a source of strength amid some of the hardest moments of his life.

Through it all, he has built his tremendous success as a comic – with sold-out shows in front of thousands, and multi-night stands in cities such as Minneapolis and Washington, DC – on a reputation for comedy that’s clean as well as clever. He’s also become a frequent presence as an actor in TV, film and commercials, having starred in his own sitcom “Welcome to New York” on CBS and a currently hot string of appearances as the creator of “Pale Force” cartoons that are frequently shown on NBC’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” – depicting himself and O’Brien as pale-white superheroes who have to stumble into victory each time.

Most impressive in a field where comedic elder statesman George Carlin has morphed his career into a seemingly never-ending diatribe against the Catholic Church, Gaffigan wears his faith so proudly that his Myspace profile even lists Pope John Paul II as his top personal hero. Speaking with OSV by phone from his New York City home, the father of ___________ shared the ways in which being Catholic has been just as important as being comical to him.

“As a comedian, you’re looking at the things that make you who you are. I’ve been pursuing it 18 years and what makes me are my Midwestern upbringing, being Catholic and my obsession with food and my desire to do as little work as possible,” explains Gaffigan. “I find that Catholics have a sense of humor about the Catholic experience, but I never go superdark or heavy. My style of comedy is the lazy guy’s perspective and it works from the perspective of a lazy Catholic. I am practicing, but a lot of that is a greater function of being married to a woman who is what I call Shiite Catholic.”

Gaffigan is just joking about the differences between his own personal practice and the highly devout practice of his wife, but the small divide parallels that of the differences he sees among audiences in different parts of the country.

“In secular places like New York City or Los Angeles there’s definitely a little ‘Is this guy a religious freak?’ or in places down South there’s sensitivity about ‘Is he making fun of Jesus?’ And the answer is I’m not, I’m making fun of human beings and how they respond to religion,” says Gaffigan, whose dream project is to star and produce a comedy script he wrote about the Catholic American experience. “It’s interesting being Catholic because I’ve gone through the rebellious experience and now I’m defensive of it.”

Indeed, that Catholic pride shines through in his appreciation for Pope John Paul II, whom he almost named his son Jack after. He saw the late pontiff not only as a great Catholic leader, but as a historic figure who was a “citizen of the world.” Most importantly, Gaffigan related to him because of John Paul’s own background as a performer in his early adulthood, and he’s used that fact to draw inspiration for his own career.

“I feel being a comedian is not that different from communicating what a priest might do at a Mass, in that it is kind of putting things in perspective. There is a performing thing to being a priest and a little theater in Mass, you gotta get people’s attention,” says Gaffigan. “I think God has a sense of humor and it’s an interesting day and age we live in in which we live in such a secular world. It’s kind of fun to walk that line, because if you do a joke that makes both religious people and secularists laugh I think it’s kind of exciting.”

Gaffigan is quick to note, however, that as a Catholic he’s not as big an anomaly as one might expect amid the TV and movie industry. He notes that “there’s tons of people who are Catholic in Hollywood,” and points out that he sees Brooke Shields at his parish in New York City, and that he’s run into Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert when Colbert taught Sunday school there.

Yet he recalls the many lonely times in his initial move to New York City during the ‘90s, when he came from Indiana and its slower-paced life and found himself overwhelmed by his new metropolis. It was his faith and prayer that carried him through to the success he is today.

“I aspire to be a better Catholic and I think my material is helping me find my way through it. I’m definitely an oddball observational guy and people will bring 15 year olds to my show because it is clean,” says Gaffigan. “I’m clean because it’s an artistic thing. Most comedians will throw in occasional curse words to get more mileage out of the joke, but I made an effort to throw that out seven years ago. But the topics I talk about - escalators, Hot Pockets and bacon – don’t require language. I love the challenge of making ketchup funny and dealing with issues like camping and having a fresh angle on that.

“I do love the fact that at my show the goth kids are next to the youth ministers, I really get a kick out of that,” he says.

To learn more about Jim Gaffigan and his work, visit www.jimgaffigan.com.

MYSTERY MAN (Stephen J. Cannell story)

2008-02-26T17:42:00.001-08:00

The story of the man behind 40 of our most beloved TV series includng "The A-Team" and "The Rockford Files" - and his new career as a best-selling author

By Carl Kozlowski

Stephen J. Cannell writes in a concentrated rush, his pen stabbing the page as he sits behind the desk in his tastefully appointed office six stories above Hollywood Boulevard. His rapid strokes belie the thoughts racing through his head, of another tense scene in yet another thriller of his own creation. He asks a new guest to wait just a moment, but the words keep flying onto his notepad for another ten minutes before he unfurrows his famous eyebrows and declares himself finished.

The moment comes as a surprise, for as a TV producer who created more than 40 series including the blockbusters “The Rockford Files” and “The A-Team,” Cannell ensured that the public knew what the man behind the writing looked like. Each week, every episode of every series he produced ended their credits with a shot of Cannell typing briskly at a typewriter before flinging a completed page into the air. To see him turn even more retro by handwriting his next novel is a revelation, and a symbol of how the media giant has fully reinvented himself as a crime novelist whose books have proven to be as successful as his small-screen work.

In fact, just as 13 of Cannell’s series hit the blockbuster benchmark of five seasons on the air, so too have all 12 of his novels thus far managed to hit the New York Times best-seller list. His likely lucky number 13 is the new novel “Three Shirt Deal,” the sixth novel following another investigation in the adventurous life of Shane Scully , a rule-breaking and quick-witted LAPD Detective who uncovers a massive wave of corruption that ties together murderous cops, gang bangers, an LA mayoral candidate and the son of a powerful lawyer. While six of his novels have followed Scully’s adventures, the six others were stand-alone thrillers.

“Sorry, but you’ve gotta write it all the moment inspiration hits,” he says, bounding out of his chair and across the room filled with awards from his nearly 40-year writing career to offer a handshake that’s surprisingly strong for a 67-year-old.

That strength comes from both an inner focus that has driven the lifelong Pasadena resident to the heights of the television industry and from the daily 4 a.m. workouts that have propelled him through both his career and an unusually well-balanced private life that includes a 49-year marriage to his high school sweetheart Marcia and three thriving adult children (a fourth died in an accident at age 15 in 1981). It also comes from the core moral principles he learned from his father, who owned a successful furniture and interior design business but more importantly invested his son with bedrock moral principles that helped lift him head and shoulders above the stereotypically scandal-plagued denizens of Hollywood.
“My dad was my best friend, the most powerful and important relationship in my life with the exception of my wife. This guy taught me how to think, behave and be the right kind of person and I constantly try to live up to the high standards that he lived and he set for me,” recalls Cannell, who settles down to a daily five-hour writing regimen even before he heads to the office. “I had severe dyslexia and school was a really hard thing for me, but the idea of being a writer was something I really cherished and did well at in school.”

He’s done well with writing his entire life since then, reinventing the cop show formula of tough and stoic heroes solving cookie-cutter mysteries to incorporate characters whose quirks made them pop-culture standard-bearers rather than two-dimensional drones. But after building a TV empire by creating his own studio – taking on all the risks and rewards of his hits and failures rather than just drawing a nice salary from the big studios like David Kelley (Ally McBeal, Boston Legal) and Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) – Cannell chose to sell his studio in 1996 and reinvent himself as a novelist.

“I think novels are much more fun to write and the reason for that is you have the wonderful omniscient tool where you can go into a character’s thoughts, while everything in a screenplay has to come out of characters’ mouths,” explains Cannell, who developed his affinity for the crime genre because it was the easiest way to break in at his first studio, Universal. “The process is still the same, writing five hours a day. I draw my ideas by trying to make connections in real events that nobody else might catch, and weave those together into the fictional crime plots of my novels.”

Despite his using longhand to craft some of his writings, Cannell’s approach to marketing his novels is cutting-edge. At his websites, http://www.cannell.com/ and http://www.threeshirtdeal.com/, he has launched a four-part series of webisodes – short scenes that tie in with the novel and are intended to bridge the events of his previous novel ______ and the new one. Amid an age in which teens and twentysomethings are launching their showbiz careers with similar short episodic tales that can be viewed globally online, it shows that Cannell is still maintains a cutting-edge rather than curmudgeonly mindset.

Another site feature, “Shane Scully’s Tour of Duty,” features minute-long videos plus photos of prominent locations from each of the previous five Scully novels. The idea is to give readers an extra layer of entertainment while also offering a realistic setting for the tales as they unfold. In keeping with that spirit of always staying new, he names his fellow mystery novelists such as T. Jefferson Parker, Joseph Wambaugh, Dennis Lehane and especially Janet Evanovich rather than a list of dead authors when asked whose work he regularly reads and admires.

“I’m not a guy who goes on the Today Show and when Matt Lauer asks who else he’s reading only lists dead authors so they won’t knock me off the New York Times bestseller list,” laughs Cannell.

Just as Cannell doesn’t begrudge giving his competition an endorsement, his sense of loyalty extends far beyond his marriage and into the lives of his employees. For instance, he has had the same boat captain for his Mediterranean-based yacht for 23 years, and also kept his first secretary with him for 28 years prior to her retirement. But perhaps his closest employee is Michael Potter, who has served as Cannell’s personal assistant and chauffeur for 24 years and offers an inside glimpse of the producer’s private character.

“He started needing a driver because in those days he had six or seven shows on the air, and his wife suggested having a VCR in his car with a driver would save him 90 minutes a day as he watched dailies to and from home instead of stuck in the office,” recalls Potter. “It was born out of functionality, to reduce time away from his family, rather than a show of status. I believe that what happens in the limousine stays in his limousine, but I’m 56 and I’ve met five great men in my life. Stephen’s one and his father was another.”

Cannell’s desire to help others learn from his success even spills over into the interview, as he animatedly spells out the specific steps he would advise aspiring actors to take in launching their career and offers fascinating examples of others he has seen break the usual Hollywood career mold, including Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss.

“Over-preparing is the key to everything in life,” he says, when asked for his core philosophy. “You have to be so good and so much better than everyone else that no one can turn you down.”

That philosophy has paid off in spades throughout his novel-writing career, with reviews that have been appreciative beyond the confines of his genre. The Los Angeles Times stated about his first novel, “The Plan”: “Sharp dialogue, tight pacing…the work of a pro who hasn’t forgotten any of his old tricks” and the Cleveland Plain Dealer noted “Cannell certainly knows how to tell a story…You’ll probably read the entire book with a smile on your face.”

The novels are driven by the same strong moral codes that suffused his TV series and all his subsequent novels: most cops are good and the good ones will root out the bad ones through the system. Yet overall in Cannell’s TV series and books, America’s justice system still works and the people who work for it engage in truly heroic efforts, and the heroes like Scully who are married always stay true to their spouses. .

“I was raised Episcopalian and was confirmed at All Saints, but really my moral code comes from my parents. It’s one thing to have religious examples, it’s another to watch a man you respect and love live morally and see it works to be straightforward, not to lie, to live the Golden Rule,” he says, referring to his father. “I’m certainly not perfect in this regard at all, nobody is, but I try really hard in my own life to live by those same principles.

“Life’s all about choices. I also believe in prioritizing. Most people aren’t good at it. But if I decide I want to accomplish this goal, I will accomplish it.”

Cannell’s new novel “Three Shirt Deal” is in bookstores everywhere.

SEVEN MINUTES WITH FLEA OF THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS

2008-01-14T18:46:00.001-08:00

SEVEN MINUTES WITH FLEA OF CHILI PEPPERS

Give it away
Through the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, rock bassist Flea offers musical opportunities to everyone

By Carl Kozlowski
When Michael Balzary was a self-proclaimed "wild child" growing up in LA in the late 1970s, he found much-needed direction and inspiration through the music education programs at Fairfax High School. It was there that he also found his lifelong best friend, Anthony Kiedis, adopted the nickname of "Flea" as his public moniker and started his life's work as rock's premier bassist when the two teamed up to create the mega-selling rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers.
But when Flea, who's now 45, went back to speak to Fairfax High students several years ago, he made a discovery that shocked him.
"They used to have a marching band, orchestra, jazz band and all sorts of student productions to play in, but now they had basically no music program at all, just a volunteer teacher and a few instruments," Flea recalls. "They used to give you the instruments and teach you how to play, and now it was all gone. Then I read a book called "Songs of the Unsung" by Horace Tapscott, a great musician who started a music school in South Central in the '60s. I was really inspired by him and, after reading it, decided to start a school."
Thanks to the fact that the Chili Peppers have sold well over 40 million albums, Flea had the wherewithal to put his intentions into action. He put up the money and oversaw the planning for the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, and even personally knew and enlisted the teachers before it opened in 2001. And for the past three years, he's recruited the Chili Peppers along with some of rock's biggest names — from Patti Smith to Tracy Chapman to this year's special guest, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam — to perform a fiery fund-raiser called Hullabaloo to raise most of the school's annual budget.
This year's Hullabaloo is being held Saturday night at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, offering fans the chance to see one of the best live bands on the planet rock it out in a venue that holds just 1,400 people. The prices range from $250 for regular admission to the show and an open bar and appetizer spread beforehand, to $500 for VIP tickets that entitle buyers to attend an exclusive rooftop after-party at a Hollywood hotspot with a special performance by popular local scenester Mickey Avalon.
All the money goes to a great cause, as the Silverlake Conservatory of Music currently teaches 600 Angelenos of every age and background among the six studios that rotate users all day long, including free lessons for those who can't afford them. Keeping with Flea's old public school tradition, the Conservatory also provides the instruments for the students to use — "that's why we need a fund-raiser," Flea says, laughing.
"We just ask that you take care of the instrument we give you and that you show up on time," says Flea. "I don't know if music programs are coming back to the schools. I would hope that would be a priority in a kid's education, but who knows? Maybe if we get a decent leader in this country."
The Conservatory doesn't just focus on rock music. Emanating from its studio walls on a recent Tuesday afternoon were piano riffs from famous classical pieces, the squawk of a tuba and assorted other jazz instruments. While it may seem surprising, the mix of sounds is totally apropos for a school run by Flea, who also is a proficient trumpet player. He studied the trumpet as well as bass guitar at Fairfax High, but also was heavily influenced by his stepfather, acclaimed jazz musician Walter Urban, Jr.
"I just love music, period," says Flea. "Jazz is one of the most sophisticated forms of music in terms of harmonics, covering the spiritual and emotional as well."
And with that spirit of musical adventure helping guide the Chili Peppers to ever more sophisticated albums and critical acclaim — including a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year for their 2006 double-CD "Stadium Arcadium" — Flea can look toward his own future with excitement, but, more importantly, can see the futures of a new generation of musical talent blossom.
"I was a street kid out of control. Having music was the one thing that was a discipline that was essential to me. It gave me something to do and something to believe in," he explains. "School music programs were everything to me; they gave me a path away from self-destruction and toward giving good energy to the world. There are a lot of kids like me who need this. I just wanna give back. That's the whole thing."

JON LOVITZ'S SECOND ACT

2008-01-14T18:44:00.000-08:00

JON LOVITZ'S SECOND ACT
'SNL' alum takes a shot at career reinvention with his Laugh Factory residency
By CARL KOZLOWSKI

You may think you know Jon Lovitz, but you don't. Maybe you think of him like most people do, as one of the prime performers in the Saturday Night Live renaissance of the late '80s, who played a wide array of deceitful yet ultimately lovable characters, ranging from Mephistopheles himself to Tommy Flanagan the pathological liar to the sonorous-voiced Master Thespian. Or perhaps you recall him for the distinctively paunchy, hilariously nasal characters he portrayed in more than a hundred TV and film roles following his stint with the late-night powerhouse. He's one of those rare performers whose mere appearance signals laughter on the way.
Yet that impression is far too limiting, for Lovitz is also a man who can tell a vivid tale of the harrowing days he spent trapped in New York City after 9/11. He can also amaze you with a candid, impassioned defense of his friend Michael Jackson. (Hell, it's stunning to think of Jon Lovitz and the King of Pop being friends in the first place.) And now, he's making a bold leap by opening up his life onstage, taking a swing at standup-comedy success with a weekly Wednesday-night showcase at the Laugh Factory.
He decided to take this creative turn because, at 46, he was growing tired of playing the same types of roles and had experienced occasional dry spells between films. Eager to shake things up for himself, he approached Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada last June. Lovitz's initial performance was so enthusiastically received, Masada instantly urged him to work up a full routine.
Lovitz's performance rests squarely on his shoulders, and for a guy who's built a career on playing insecure losers, he steps up to the challenge in surprisingly strong fashion. Veering from topic to topic on a recent Wednesday – politics to bizarre childhood tales to ridiculously overstated complaints about the state of television advertising – he conveyed a childlike spirit that won over two consecutive crowds, no matter how conservative their politics or stringent their morality. But most of all, his appearances are another example that, in showbiz, it's never too late to reinvent yourself.
"I've seen plenty of comics become actors, developing their persona and career and image through standup before signing a TV sitcom or movie deal," says Masada, who has watched literally thousands of the comedy hopefuls who wander through his club's doors. "[Lovitz] has one-in-a-billion timing that has taken him farther in the past six months than I've seen people go in 20 years of trying. I can see him taking this show to Broadway by the time he's finished here." Masada has given Lovitz an unheard-of yearlong commitment. "Like very few people – Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, and Chris Rock – he can make anyone of any age and any background laugh hard."
Lovitz's journey to the standup world began with what he recalls as an idyllic childhood as the only boy among five kids growing up in Tarzana, where he says his doctor father helped spearhead the construction of the suburb's main hospital. Friends star Lisa Kudrow was a neighborhood friend of his, and Lovitz's father was also the family physician for the Jacksons – as in Michael, Janet, and the rest.
Those experiences helped Lovitz hone a sense of the absurd at a very young age, as well as a fierce loyalty to his friend Michael. One of the funniest bits in his show comes when he recounts the difference between growing up "not a Jew, but Jewish" and the disparities he perceived between his upbringing and that of a macho kid in Texas: "Most boys at 12 go hunting with their fathers, kill a deer, and then learn how to gut them and skin them. I had the same experience with a bagel. My father would come in screaming, 'You're cutting it wrong! Look at all the dough you're wasting!'"
Yet it was around that time, at age 13, that Lovitz saw Woody Allen's classic 1969 film Take the Money and Run and decided he wanted to be just like him.
"I heard his routine and performed that and other Jewish comics like Lenny Bruce's routines in my college dorm, and when I graduated I took comedy workshops on Saturday nights at the Comedy Store," he recalls. "I always wanted to do it but didn't have the guts to take the stage on my own like that, until [fellow SNL alums] Dana Carvey and Dennis Miller told me I should do it, and I heard how much Dana was making at it. Right away, I started hosting shows for [fellow SNL-ers] Kevin Nealon, Victoria Jackson, and Norm MacDonald. I did 10 minutes first; then they asked if I could do 30."
Lovitz was able to work at getting into SNL because of his father's thorough emotional support. Despite his success as a doctor, the senior Lovitz had really wanted to be an opera singer, and so the patriarch encouraged his children to follow their hearts careerwise. Thus, young Jon headed off to UC Irvine to pursue acting – a professor there served as the inspiration for the Master Thespian – and soon afterward began performing with the legendary Groundlings comedy troupe, where SNL producer Lorne Michaels discovered him.
During Lovitz's five-year run on the late-night powerhouse, he recalls upsetting only one celebrity with a stinging impersonation: iconic gay playwright/actor Harvey Fierstein. Lovitz pretended that Fierstein was hosting a talk show from his boudoir, desperately hustling attractive male guests for physical affection while always being thoroughly rebuffed.
"Harvey didn't like it, and he came in to the show to complain about it," says Lovitz. "His point was that he was getting more famous as me than as him. Watching him, I realized I was doing him quite well. He thought I was doing a gay stereotype," laughs the comedian. "But I only played him one time after that. If it hurts someone, it's not worth doing."
That surprisingly gentle philosophy is rare among today's generation of notoriously mean-spirited humorists, but it allows Lovitz to get away with poking extensive fun at all types of politicians and pop culture. Even when the admittedly staunch Democrat calls on the Republicans in the Laugh Factory crowd to raise their hands and "out" themselves, they do it joyfully and wind up laughing harder at his take on Bush than even the Democrats in the house. And when Lovitz fires off his best riff of the show, complaining about celebrities like Bob Dole or Tony Bennett making ads for penile dysfunction medications, it's hard to find an audience member who isn't doubled over with laughter.
At the end of the night, Lovitz surprises the crowd one more time by sitting at a portable keyboard and pounding out jazz-pop tunes he's written. But even these are childishly dirty and absurdly off-kilter in the best way, as they revolve around another unlikely friend of his – squeaky-clean TV dad Bob Saget of Full House fame – and Lovitz's unfounded impression that Saget is gay. As he spells out one incredibly deluded allegation after another in a voice that could lull an infant to sleep, Lovitz tickles the ivories with fast-jazz fury, transformed by the moment into the all-around entertainer he's always dreamed of being. As the audience bursts into a final round of applause, one senses Masada is right: This is career reinvention at its most exciting, and could very well signal the rebirth of a star.

HANGIN' WITH JO KOY

2008-01-14T18:43:00.001-08:00

HANGIN' WITH JO KOY

Elevated Laughter
Filipino-American 'Tonight Show'comic JoKoy headlines Asian talent showcase
By Carl Kozlowski

Growing up all around the planet as a military child, JoKoy dreamed of being a standup comic. Watching Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg during their 1980s performing heydays, he could barely wait to graduate from high school in order to break off on his own and take the plunge into onstage stardom himself.
Like countless other performers in the entertainment industry, the road to success wasn't fast. But thanks to incredible perseverance, JoKoy (a stage name he took from his childhood nickname) finally landed on "The Tonight Show" in January and achieved one of the most incredible and rare feats that any comic could hope for: a standing ovation on his first appearance.
With his career newly afire from that success, he has found himself in greater demand than ever across the country and landed an appearance on ABC's fellow late-night show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" this past Monday.
This weekend, the Filipino-American performer takes the stage at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium as the headliner of "Asian Elevation," a show being touted as "the premiere Asian Pacific American talent show," and gives Pasadenans a chance to catch his magic live and in person.
"'The Tonight Show' was amazing, and that was the greatest day of my life. I got that from [performing at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in] Montreal, where the show's talent bookers saw me, liked my routine and wanted to put me on the show," he recalls. "I couldn't wait. Six months later, I was finally on it. And then to have a standing ovation was even more amazing because they told me I was only the third comic ever to receive one on the show."
It is that kind of acclaim that has made JoKoy, who was born on an American military base in Japan but finally settled in Seattle with his family for his high school years, a hero to legions of young Asian-American performers. His presence at "Asian Elevation," which features 10 eclectic acts vying for a $1,000 grand prize, should easily garner him a similar response to his appearance on "The Tonight Show."
The 35-year-old comic started performing in 1995 in Las Vegas, where his family had moved after he graduated from high school. He credits his experiences there, in which he balanced "odd jobs" with nonstop performances at open mikes and eventually rented theaters to produce his own showcase shows all over Sin City, as his true "growing-up years."
In fact, JoKoy is part of a small but die-hard group of Asian-Americans who have braved the standup comedy world amid decades that have seen other minority stars from the aforementioned Murphy to current Latino favorite Carlos Mencia get their moments to shine. He's proud to be in a tradition that includes Pat Morita, Kevin Shea, Edwin San Juan, Dan Gabriel and current "MAD TV" star Bobby Lee, but he feels that the time has come for Asian-American comics to truly kick in the doors to success.
"There's basically a handful of Asian comics out there, and just a handful of funny ones too. I want more. That's my goal, and it just takes time," he says. "Hopefully we're the pioneers to helping others get out there because the more of us, the better. I don't want us to be Asian comics; just be a funny comic, and if you're Asian, you're Asian. I can make anybody laugh, and I want my fans to be every color."
Onstage, JoKoy is able to elicit waves of laughter by talking about anything from bathroom habits to male-female relations to his personal stories of life with his 3-year-old son. But his strongest barbs come in attacking the stereotypes held against his race:
"Being Asian in LA means you get the worst compliments. 'Oh, you're Asian? I love orange chicken,'" he squeals in an excited Caucasian girl's voice. "Don't thank Asians for orange chicken, thank the Mexicans. They know how to cook it."
"Asians are always considered to be bad drivers. I drove here; I've got a car. We build the best cars; you don't think we can drive them? You think an engineer at Lexus is bragging about what he built, but when it comes time to drive, he goes (in thick Asian accent) 'Oh no, I just build car …'?"
Speaking of his inspirations for material and the road he's traveled thus far, JoKoy also notes how amazed he is to be actor/comic Jon Lovitz's official opening act for both Lovitz's weekly Wednesday night shows at West Hollywood's Laugh Factory and for Lovitz's upcoming national comedy tour. But as he notes, sometimes all the timing falls into place.
"They say it takes you 10 years to find your [comedic] voice, and it really came around my ninth or 10th year onstage. I realized I know how to say something and say it funny, and no matter the topic, I can make it funny," he explains. "Some things I say are my point of view — being Asian in America and then about my son also and observational off- the-wall stuff — but it's all delivered the same way. I'm having fun, and people just get it."

BOB SAGET IS A DIRTY BASTARD BUT I DIG HIM

2008-01-14T18:42:00.001-08:00

BOB SAGET IS A DIRTY BASTARD BUT I DIG HIM
Bob Saget is an Old, Dirty Bastard (Who Knew?)

By Carl Kozlowski

As one of the dads on the long-running ABC sitcom Full House, Bob Saget found himself trapped for 9 years in a hell of milquetoast characters and endlessly recycled family crises. Compounding the agony was his other weekly gig as the host of America's Funniest Home Videos, reciting horrible jokes accompanying an endless stream of people falling down and taking hits to the crotch.
Basically, if you asked anyone over age 10 back in the early 90s what they thought of Bob Saget, at best they'd respond that he was lame.
But there was always a much hipper, funnier, and downright dirtier comic just dying to get out. Saget cashed the TV checks but yearned for the day he could perform uncensored again. He was the wicked mind who directed Norm McDonald's cult classic comedy Dirty Work, and in an infamous cameo in the stoner favorite Half Baked, he joked "I suck dick for crack." Star comics with far more hipster cred than Saget could ever dream of possessing gave him props as the most brilliantly dirty mind of them all, but no one in the power suites of Hollywood or the streets of Middle America would ever believe it.
Now the evidence is readily available on movie screens across America. For Bob Saget tops nearly 100 of our greatest comic minds, including George Carlin and Robin Williams, by telling the dirtiest version of the dirtiest joke ever told in the new documentary, The Aristocrats. As the movie's ads trumpet, the film is unrated because it would have received the commercially suicidal rating of NC-17 for having "No violence. No nudity. Unspeakable obscenity!"
And Saget's taking the newfound notoriety all the way to the bank again, performing most Friday nights at L.A.'s top comedy club, The Laugh Factory, to wild response and taking his show on the road to shocked college and theater audiences nationwide.
"I'm actually almost ashamed of how dirty I got. I guess people are talking about it, but then they also talk about the guy who shoots people," jokes Saget, who also just finished an acclaimed off-Broadway run in the new play Privilege. "In two years I'll be G-rated again because so much of what I do is R-rated. I was just in Athens Georgia for 700 people, and they added another show because the line was like a rock concert. Marquee said 'Second Show Added To Full House.' I guess I'll never really escape it."
Saget started his odd career journey at the age of 17, after graduating high school in his native Philadelphia and appearing in his college friends' student movies. He took the train to New York City as often as possible and quickly made a great impression on the standup scene, landing comedy powerhouse Chris Albright as his manager before Albright went on to head comedy programming at HBO.
While Saget's early shows were more innocent than his current nirvana of naughtiness, centering around such gags as having his guitar spew water while he sang "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," he always had a dark sense of humor. That bizarre bent came from numerous family tragedies, as Saget lost two sisters and his dad lost four brothers to untimely deaths.
Saget rode his stage persona to the nine-year run of "Full House" and the massive success of "Home Videos," but for ten years that meant he abandoned live comedy. When the shows ended and Saget realized his directing career wasn't catching fire, he decided to hit the road again.
"It was a real proud moment to say 'I suck dick for coke' in 'Half Baked,'" Saget recalls with more than a trace of sarcasm. "But somehow Harvard decided to honor me as a member of their humor magazine the Harvard Lampoon, a year after they honored [acclaimed playwright] David Mamet! They actually put together a 2 ½ hour show honoring me, and I realized there must be a market for me at colleges again."
As Saget notes, getting back into a good comic rhythm is not as easy as riding a bike. Nonetheless, he poured out effort and soon found his act was better received than ever before, as he decided to say literally anything that came to mind. Sure, it might be a shock to see Danny Tanner from Full House lobbing F-bombs, but after the initial ten seconds of gasps, audiences can't help laughing.
His return to the stage has led to a flurry of other work that never seemed possible during his G-rated Full House days. For instance, Saget lampooned his squeaky-clean image brilliantly in a recent episode of HBO's show Entourage, allowed his house to get driven into for the WB network's Jamie Kennedy Experiment, and just finished an acclaimed dramatic turn on Showtime's series Huff. Best of all was his run in Privilege, which gave him a newfound confidence in his abilities.
"I wish I wasn't so dirty in this movie, but everyone's talking about it. Then again, they talk about you if you shoot a guy," he notes wryly. "I actually don't understand what the big deal is, I haven't changed that much, just gotten older. I'm not X-rated at all, I do no gynecological material. I do sex jokes, some dick jokes and poop comedy. I talk about my kids and relationships, some news stuff. But people that know me, its no big deal because I haven't changed. I just always wanted to make people laugh as much as I could."

WHAT DO WILL FERRELL, JON LOVITZ & PEE WEE HERMAN HAVE IN COMMON?

2008-01-14T18:40:00.001-08:00

WHAT DO WILL FERRELL, JON LOVITZ & PEE WEE HAVE IN COMMON??

THE EVENT INFO AT THE END IS OLD, BUT THE STORY TELLS YOU PLENTY ABOUT A PLACE THAT MADE TONS OF COMEDY FOLKS FAMOUS!

THEY'RE ALL GONNA LAUGH AT YOU!
The Groundlings have given improv comedy Lisa Kudrow, Pee-wee Herman, and the late, great Phil Hartman. After 30 years, the troupe is still feeding modern comedy
By CARL KOZLOWSKI

hink of American comedy over the last three decades, and chances are you'll come up with a member of improvisational comedy-theater troupe the Groundlings. After all, the company has launched the careers of top talents from original Saturday Night Live Not Ready for Prime Time Player Laraine Newman to The Critic's Jon Lovitz to Friends' Lisa Kudrow. It's also given us Pee-wee Herman, the SNL cheerleaders played by Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri, and the incredibly diverse characters of the late, great Phil Hartman.
Add the stellar, Emmy-nominated work of Cheryl Hines on HBO's groundbreaking sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm, and throw in a dash of Edie McClurg's dead-on depiction of every high school's batty, bitchy secretary in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and you've got a recipe for comedy that's satisfied the nation's appetite for laughter like no other group in the country. Yet, the Groundlings have also slipped under America's pop-culture radar, never drawing quite the praise and attention of Chicago's and Toronto's equally influential Second City troupes. In fact, they seem to go largely unrecognized outside the heart of the Los Angeles comedy industry.
But on Tuesday night, the Groundlings will get their rightful due. The venerable troupe is celebrating its 30th anniversary at the Henry Fonda Music Box Theater with an all-star, roof-raising fundraiser that's sure to be the comedy event of the year. Things have come a long way since their early days as a hippie comedy collective, where anyone could wander in and learn at a workshop or perform in a show for a mere buck a week – and, even more oddly, as a group started as a way for a boy from the Bible Belt named Gary Austin to reinvent his life and give others the chance to do the same.
"It's funny, looking back, because in the '60s, I was very conservative," recalls Austin, who founded the Groundlings in 1972. Today, at 63, sitting in the troupe's Melrose Avenue home base, he looks like Garry Shandling's slightly older brother. "But when I was a little kid, I always loved performing and getting in front of audiences. There were three things I wanted to do: be an evangelist, be a baseball player, and be a cowboy singer – all things done before crowds of people."
That need for notice stemmed from being raised in the hardscrabble oil fields of Oklahoma and Texas, as his father spent his post-Navy career working for the notorious Halliburton company. Austin remembers stories his mother told him about her own rough childhood in Oilton, Oklahoma – a town built so close to oil derricks that children were covered by the misty black spray while walking to and from school every day.
Austin spent his high-school summers working for Halliburton and his Sundays surrounded by holy-rolling members of the Nazarene church. He came away with a distaste for both that has since sparked him to write the acclaimed solo shows Oil and Church. He escaped to San Francisco State University, "where I was finally introduced to the world at large," and joined a sketch-comedy troupe that served as a fun outlet for his repressed creativity.
But it wasn't until he graduated and landed his first job as a social worker in Watts – "where my first week was right during the [1965] riots" – that he spotted a sign on Sunset Boulevard advertising an appearance by seminal San Francisco improv troupe the Committee and decided to check it out.
"I was blown away by it and knew I had to be a part of it," says Austin, recalling a feeling that countless performers would later have after seeing the Groundlings. "You had to come to a workshop every Saturday afternoon, and there were 50 people taking the class for a buck apiece. Del Close [regarded within comedy as the ultimate improv teacher] took over directing the workshops and reinvented the form there with a game called the Harold.
"But my favorite recollection is the Group Grope, where everybody was lying on the floor, feeling each other up," he continues, cackling. "This was the '60s. Often, the Group Grope got us going, and we'd extend the experience beyond the workshop."
By 1972, the Committee had charted a decade-long run in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and founder Allan Myerson decided to move on. Those who stayed behind, however, wanted to form their own group – and thus, the Groundlings were born.
"I picked the name based on Shakespeare's description in Hamlet of the people who watch plays while sitting on the ground," explains Austin. "It was a name that didn't force us to only do comedy, like [now-defunct competing troupe] Kentucky Fried Theater, because at first we wanted to be open to all types of theater."
Not Ready for Prime Time
Whatever Austin's intentions, the group took off quickly due to its comedic elements and rave reviews from the Los Angeles Times. Although city zoning and parking regulations tied up plans to perform in their own space for years, the doors of far more established venues, like the Improv comedy club, were opened to them, and soon the Groundlings were packing theater seats. A rotating group of 90 students competed for 25 available performing slots in the weekly shows. Stars like Lily Tomlin dropped by regularly to watch, and, one night in 1975, she brought along a young NBC producer named Lorne Michaels.
Michaels was scouting the nation for talent, hoping to create an entertainment revolution of his own with Saturday Night Live. Among the Groundlings, he immediately took a liking to Laraine Newman. A fan of improv ever since she started performing it at Beverly Hills High School at age 15, Newman had also seen the Committee in San Francisco and liked the idea of being able to create her own material with improv, rather than struggling to fit others' demands.
"I was at CalArts for about a minute, when my sister took me to a Gary Austin workshop, and I loved it immediately," recalls Newman. "So many people I came through there with became [members of] the top writing staffs on sitcoms like Cheers and Just Shoot Me. But most importantly, I learned about being in a company and how to deal with the give and take of other people's time on stage. It didn't help fully when I got to SNL, because the stakes were much higher there, but for any show folk, there is a familial feel, whether you're in summer stock or road tours or Broadway."
For Newman, the character creation encouraged by the Groundlings enabled her to come up with such SNL-worthy individuals as Cheri the Stewardess and a Valley girl who was part of The Godfather's group-therapy sessions. It also led to her currently fruitful voiceover career and a recent lifetime achievement award from the Chicago Improv Festival. "The training really holds up, no matter what you do," she says.
Michaels also wanted to hire a Groundling named Archie Hahn and invited Austin to direct the new venture, but both declined – a decision Austin still doesn't regret.
"I believe the Groundlings would have dissolved if I'd gone," Austin says. "I was the only teacher and hadn't trained anybody else how to do it yet. I'm very glad I also didn't have to deal with the drug problems at SNL, because you had actors coming in late and stoned, and they would win any argument in making NBC decide whether they or the director had to go," he says. "The chaos might not have succeeded, and I'd come back home without a theater, because I'd forsaken the same ship I'd asked everyone else to sacrifice for. To sacrifice that for anything would have been a mistake."
Yet Austin did leave in 1979, handing control of the troupe and its school to Tom Maxwell, a fellow Southerner who had come to L.A. years before as a USC graduate film student. That was also the year the Groundlings finally found their footing with the opening of their permanent location on Melrose.
During his time working with Austin, Maxwell had seen a growing need to weed through applicants for spots in the Groundlings school, and over the next decade he created a stratified system that made students' talent levels easier to define and track. But more important, his decade-long reign through the '80s saw the city and the entertainment industry becoming more aware of the Groundlings.
"It's always been a character-driven company, in that we built scenes and shows around characters rather than themes," says Maxwell, speaking from his home in Vermont, where he continues to write several produced sitcom scripts a year. "But in 1984, the Olympic Arts Festival gave us a breakout hit with Phil Hartman's Chick Hazard show; our special show Casual Sex was being made into a movie; and [Groundling member] Paul Reubens was breaking out into his own solo show as Pee-wee Herman at the Roxy."
During this time, amid the "Morning in America" era of shiny happy Reaganness, the shows also lost some of their early political flavor – a factor that continued in the Groundlings' most recent main-stage show, Groundlings' National Park. But, according to Maxwell, "It was never a conscious decision to be more or less political – just, let's work with what's happening organically. If an actor wanted to be political, they could, and if they didn't, that was fine, too."
Phil Hartman Stumbles In
Mainly, the Groundlings served as a home for an ever-changing band of comedy hopefuls. It was a place where a Columbia Pictures accountant, like Julia Sweeney, or a member of A&M Records' publishing staff, like Cheri Oteri, could finally exercise the creative spirits bursting within them. But perhaps the most famous Groundling to date (maybe next to Will Ferrell) was Phil Hartman – a man who literally stumbled across the cast when his then-girlfriend and future fellow performer Jaye P. Morgan took him to see the troupe for his birthday.
Hartman's tragic 1998 death at the hands of his wife, Brynn, has turned his story into a shared legacy of countless Groundlings members. Much like the similarly untimely death of Second City Chicago graduate Chris Farley, Hartman's time with the troupe has taken on mythic proportions.
"I was in the backstage room giving notes to actors when I noticed our 30-seat theater was filled with laughs, and our show hadn't even started yet," Austin recalls. "But I looked, and there was this guy standing on stage. After the show, he and Jaye P. asked how to be Groundlings. We had just started doing auditions to weed people out, but he flew through them, and he soon was writing for the main-stage show."
During his decade-long stretch with the Groundlings, Hartman was best known for creating an improvised detective sketch called "Chick Hazard," in which he would construct and solve a different crime each week based on audience suggestions. But for Austin, Hartman's funniest creation was "Lightman." As Austin talks, he leaps onto the theater's stage to re-create this character.
"Phil comes from backstage and toward the audience, dressed in 27 lit flashlights and a bathing suit, with one more standing on his head," says Austin as he continues his performance. "He would shine them on the audience and then say, in a deep, dramatic voice, 'I am Lightman!' And would shine it on whomever he wanted to interview on the spot in the audience. It wasn't the best sketch he ever did, but it was the most popular."
Edie McClurg was a member of the Groundlings' official first cast from 1975 to 1985, having honed her chops with the Pitschel Players' troupe in San Francisco and as a standup at L.A.'s Comedy Store, where she battled for stage time with the late Shirley Hemphill of What's Happening!! fame. Oddly enough, she had a straight-laced ´´ career before setting foot on a comedy stage: She taught radio classes at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for eight years, then became operations manager and jack of all trades at Kansas City's NPR affiliate.
That officiousness and prim and proper Midwestern viewpoint helped McClurg launch a career of playing stuffy, upright women who wield a sharp tongue when audiences least expect it – particularly in Ferris Bueller and in Planes, Trains and Automobiles as the car-rental checkout clerk who suffers a foul-mouthed tirade from Steve Martin.
"When we started, it was more of a commune, and if you came up with some type of material in the workshop, it would get in the show," recalls McClurg, who sprinkles her conversation with the high-pitched chuckle immortalized in the aforementioned John Hughes films. "Improvisation has been the core of my technique, and when I'm presented with a script, I always fill it in with what I call the noise of life – little comments characters say under their breath – so it's fuller than a character just talking to another character."
While McClurg was one of the earliest Groundlings stars, Jon Lovitz came along in the early '80s as part of the second big wave of talent. In fact, when he was plucked by Lorne Michaels to become the second Groundling on SNL in 1985, Tom Maxwell laughed and said, "We've got one once a decade."
At the time he joined the Groundlings, Lovitz was torn between serious acting dreams and the comedic side his acting teachers kept trying to force him to develop. He had already bounced between New York and L.A., and felt studying with the troupe was a way to give his life and career some direction.
"I remember driving there to the theater the first time and crying, because I was really committing my life to being a comedian, and I was wondering, what if it doesn't work out?" recalls Lovitz. "But I went, and I loved it, and then I met Phil Hartman, and he invited me to understudy his show Chick Hazard: Olympic Trials."
Lovitz's voice trails off for a second.
"Jesus, it's been 20 years," he continues. "But I have a career because of it. When I was doing the show with Phil, Laraine came and saw it, and I wound up hired in '85 on SNL. They kept me for the next year and asked who I worked well with, and I said Phil, so they put him on SNL, too. Then I told Lisa Kudrow, whom I've known as a little sister since she was six, that the Groundlings were the way to go when she asked me how to get into acting. It took her 10 years before she got Friends, but look at her now."
That sense of family – of personal recommendations helping to launch careers and fulfill dreams – crops up time and again when talking to Groundlings alums. For Lovitz, who spoke at the greatest length and with the most passion of anyone interviewed for this story, going through the troupe was the best school experience he had ever known.
"The camaraderie was just great there," he says. "It was like a bunch of class clowns working together. In real school, you get in trouble for goofing off, but here was a school that taught you how to goof off really well. I was a messenger, and we all had day jobs, but people loved it so much that they were paying to be a part of it. I learned how to create characters, how to write and supervise my scenes. I still use everything I learned there."
Learning Her Enthusiasm
Although Hartman was a colleague of Lovitz's, he was a teacher to many others who passed across the Groundlings stage. Julia Sweeney started taking his classes at the Groundlings in 1984, and by 1986 was a member of the Sunday Company – the intermediate performance level that showcases alternative forms of sketch comedy and allows much experimentation en route to berths in the main performance company. After becoming a good friend and mentor to Sweeney, Hartman also gave her a recommendation that inspired Lorne Michaels to hire her for SNL in 1989.
"There's so many memories there, because it's like talking about the home you grew up in," explains Sweeney, who's now preparing to launch her third solo show, Letting Go of God. "It really taught me how people had careers in show business, and that people could cobble together fine livings in showbiz even if they weren't big stars."
It was also where she launched her most famous character, Pat – a drooling, annoying office drone of indeterminate gender, who drove people to squeamish laughter for years both on the Groundlings stage and at SNL. Whether Pat is a male or a female is a question Sweeney has to this day never resolved publicly.
"I was working with somebody as an accountant, who was a guy, who had some of Pat's mannerisms, like drooling and standing too close," Sweeney recalls, chuckling. "Then there was a woman who was annoying, too. I realized I couldn't play the man, so I combined the two."
For Cheri Oteri, who started with the Groundlings in the early '90s as part of a relatively quick journey to stardom on SNL and her own recently announced sitcom deal with ABC, the troupe offered a chance to break out of cubicle hell at A&M's publishing company. She had long been the funny person at the water cooler, with coworkers telling her to get into standup. Although the prospect of standup cowed her, she became immediately intrigued by the moment-to-moment risks of improv.
"I had never done acting or anything like that before," she says. "But then I auditioned, and it was like my world opened up, because I found something that interested me so much and excited me and would be so difficult as well. There were so many people I enjoyed watching there, and I would always run up the back stairs to catch my favorite sketches that other people did." On Friday nights, she would go to the late show by herself after work. "I would learn more than I ever had from watching improv games," she says.
Just as Phil Hartman was the teacher and gateway for so many who entered the Groundlings troupe, Lisa Kudrow was the catalyst and teacher for Cheryl Hines as she set foot in the theater to pursue her dreams. Now an Emmy-nominated star for her turn as Larry David's ever-suffering wife in Curb Your Enthusiasm, the theater and television production graduate from the University of Central Florida was not impressed with the Groundlings the first time she saw them in the early '90s. But she gave them a second chance two years later, after meeting Hartman's sister. Today, she maintains such a strong love for the troupe that she's the only alum to currently sit on the nonprofit theater's board.
"They really encourage you to find out what's funny about you, instead of trying to be funny for someone else. I learned that improvising and giving and taking with your fellow actors was an interesting way to work, and one that turned out to be key to what I do now," says Hines, whose work on Curb depends on improvising lines at a rapid clip. "There was a moment when I was taking a class at the Groundlings when I decided I don't really care what other people think about me. Once I stopped worrying whether someone thought I was funny or not, it really changed my perspective on comedy."
Ultimately, it's that total freedom to say and express oneself in a way that may not be flattering or polite that bonds Groundlings graduates across their numerous creative endeavors. And perhaps it's fitting that the alum who really scored in standup proudly represents brashness in all its glory every time she's onstage: the indefatigably vicious comedian Kathy Griffin.
"I had moved here from Chicago at age 18, after getting my first commercial, and didn't know anybody and assumed that the privileged kids like Emilio Estevez were always going to get the breaks," recalls Griffin. "But I went to see a Groundlings show and walked backstage and met Phil Hartman, who took me around and introduced me to people. Soon I was there and found that the people there, no matter how successful they were getting, couldn't get enough improv. It was actually kind of sick."
Griffin says she misses the political incorrectness of those times the most. "My favorite sketch was, I did a monologue as a black woman watching Rambo and talking to the screen," she says. "It was a really big hit there, got great reviews, and got me a lot of meetings and auditions. But I'd go to a meeting at, say, 20th Century Fox, only to find out an executive wanted me to crack their friends up, and there was no real audition after all. The ironic thing is that I can't even play the woman watching the screen and yelling anymore, because people are just so uptight now. Times have changed." But the Groundlings live on.

COMEDY ON THE FRONT LINES

2008-01-14T18:39:00.001-08:00

Comedy on the Front Lines
While entertaining U.S. troops, two L.A. comics see the war for themselves
By CARL KOZLOWSKI

It's been a long time since standup comic Butch Bradley bombed on stage. But since 9/11, when the staunch conservative was inspired to do his part in the "war on terror," he has traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan on four different trips to perform for U.S. troops in some of the planet's most heavily bombed areas.
That same sense of comedic derring-do also served fellow comic Sarah Tiana well on her own recent trip to Iraq. A committed antiwar liberal before her journey, she wanted to see for herself just what the situation overseas actually was – and she returned with a new perspective.
Although both L.A.-based comedians traveled separately, with Tiana under the auspices of the organization Comics on Duty and Bradley with the USO and Dog Tag Comedy, they represent a new generation of wartime comics, artists who often put aside their own misgivings about the war to follow in the classic tradition of Bob Hope and the USO, providing American soldiers with laughter in dark times. While their backgrounds and careers have taken distinctly different paths, each has learned that, while war is indeed hell, entertaining the troops is a little slice of heaven.
"One base I performed at had been attacked the day before by 20 terrorists, and, though they killed them quickly, one soldier said he was under such duress that he realized during my show he hadn't laughed in months, and said how good it felt," Bradley recalls. "That's why you go. It's the first thing in my life I did that felt completely good. It's also a reality check. Freedom's not free; there's a cost, and these people know and respect freedom so much that they're over there trying to spread it."
Bradley grew up amid the casinos and comedy clubs of Atlantic City, watching masters like Don Rickles and Rodney Dangerfield from the time he was 11. He credits his "cool mom who worked in the casinos" with letting him get this early comedic education, and he never looked back while launching a performing career that's taken him to headlining status in Vegas and his hometown, numerous appearances on Comedy Central and CBS's The Late Late Show, as well as his overseas adventures.
Tiana, meanwhile, realized just three years ago that comedy was her calling, when friends told her to try it just as she was about to give up her dream of acting. She grew up in the small Southern town of Calhoun, Georgia, where people didn't start comedy careers but did join the military. Her innate curiosity about the world – coupled with the fact that many from her hometown were dodging bullets in a far-off desert –inspired her to sign up to make soldiers laugh.
"I would say I'm pretty liberal, but I don't believe in being partisan," says Tiana, a regular at the Improv and the Comedy Store who's also played colleges nationwide. "I just believe in my heart, and I wanted to go over there and see for myself, not to just be told what to think by either side. That's a big problem in this country: believing everything they read, taking everything they watch on the news at face value."
While Bradley and Tiana were both happy about bringing some relief to the troops, they faced plenty of hardships and frightening moments as well. Bradley notes that Iraq's existing infrastructure has allowed it to make many advances, despite the incessant fighting within its borders, yet he found that Afghanistan remains rife with risk. In fact, a Black Hawk helicopter he was on drew rocket fire that came so close he felt the heat when it passed by.
"I did a show at a base called Salerno, where many of the troops were spending their time assisting the victims of the Pakistani earthquake, but the base had still been attacked 46 times," he says. "At night, there's no lights on at all, because they're afraid of drawing enemy fire." When traveling between bases, he adds, they risked fire whether in the Black Hawks or vehicle convoys in which "being successful means that everyone made it through alive. You're taught to constantly look for cellphones that can set off insurgents' bombs, or for single-driver cars and motorcycles that can easily be suicide bombers."
Being female, Tiana believes she was so protected by her troop guards that she was often distracted from the dangers. While her worst moment came when "a rat peed on me while I was using a computer," she found that being a woman among thousands of men with long-term loneliness was memorable in its own way.
"I've never been asked to pose for so many pictures in my life, and so many of them wanted me to pose holding their guns," she recalls. "So many men said I reminded them of their wife or girlfriend, and so I went out of my way to really give them attention. I'd put on extra perfume, and I'd find they'd rub their shirts against it to keep that scent with them, but at the core I was treated with so much respect for having taken the risk of being there."
Thanks to their armed escorts, Bradley and Tiana were able to see life outside the bases' protective isolation. Along the main highway that U.S. contractors have built through Afghanistan, he started to notice signs of modern life never before seen in the desolate country – such as its first fully operational Exxon station. Now, one might be understandably cynical that Big Oil has already set up shop there, but other signs of progress are unquestionably impressive.
"One of the greatest things is going into Kabul and seeing that women are free to work and wear real clothes of their own choice, instead of being forced to wear burqas and being beaten if they want to act on their own," says Bradley. "That kind of radical society they had with the Taliban was just a masculine society controlling women and children, and using the Koran to get what they want."
Tiana's most powerful experience of the Iraqis' newfound freedoms was being able to visit the ziggurat that stands on the site where it's believed that Abraham – a religious leader jointly respected in the Koran, the Torah, and the Bible – was born. Under Saddam Hussein's rule, all visitors outside of the dictator's inner circle were blocked from going there, but now it hosts thousands of pilgrims a day. She also saw the lush vegetation that returned to regions of Iraq after coalition forces knocked down dams Hussein had created along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to prevent opposing Muslim factions' basic access to water.
"I've always hated war and the concept of fighting and violence," she says, "but when you go there and see it yourself, you realize that there is real progress being made. Besides, right or wrong, the decisions have been made to be there, and our troops have to be supported, like family. You always support family."

IT'S THE UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE!!!

2008-01-14T18:35:00.001-08:00

Righteous Hilarity
Upright Citizens Brigade pushes comedy boundaries for the masses~ By CARL KOZLOWSKI ~

It's a packed house at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, where the crowd is being treated to a hilarious in-depth analysis of R. Kelly's epic song cycle and video "Trapped in the Closet." Onstage, hipster comic luminaries like Patton Oswalt and Paul F. Tompkins are among the panel of "experts" assembled to discuss the symbolic undercurrents of Kelly's ludicrously involved, 15-chorus epic of adultery and revenge.
The audience cheers like rowdy British soccer fans at a World Cup match. Yet the folks behind this UCB production, as always, have a stunning surprise for their fans: The actual amorous midget (Drevon Cooks) who features prominently in the climax of "Closet" comes bursting through the backstage door to take the absurdity to an even higher level.
In the world of the UCB Theatre – founded by the eponymous quartet who achieved cult-hero status with a three-year sketch series on Comedy Central – anything goes, and every show aims to top the one before it. The cover price is low – from free to $8 – because to UCB, it's way more about the funny than about the money.
"I think our comedy is what's different and helps us stand out. If people are talented, we let them do anything they want," says UCB founding member Ian Roberts. "As long as it's funny, we're with them. We're never 'The Man,' telling them what to say or do."
Roberts formed the UCB in Chicago during the early '90s, along with Matt Walsh, Matt Besser, and Amy Poehler. It's a testament to their unique bond that, despite individual successes, the four still work together as tightly as possible, more than a decade after they met amid the Windy City's thriving improv scene.
Mixing together an anarchic combination of adventurously unhinged improvisation and demented characters with an undercurrent that satirizes the cultural fear of our times, the UCB became a nearly instant sensation in Chicago. When close associate Adam McKay was hired as a writer for Saturday Night Live in 1997, he hooked the group up with agents as well, and they all headed off to make their mark in the Big Apple, which had traditionally been averse to improvisational comedy.
As graduates of the ImprovOlympic training center (which has an L.A. base now, known as I.O. West, in Hollywood), their specialty was long-form improv, in which multiple scenarios are built from a single suggested topic, resulting in interweaving scenes that flow in and out of each other for up to an hour at a time. New Yorkers had never seen anything like it, and the combination of a novel art form with super-cheap ticket prices and big-name guest talent quickly made the Brigade a sensation – particularly for a weekly showcase that became known as "Asssscat."
"We felt we were onto something almost from our first show, and it wasn't long before we had long lines wrapped around the block," recalls cofounder Walsh, who has gone on to solo success as a Daily Show correspondent and appears in the forthcoming Comedy Central series Man Bites Dog. "We soon managed to get a Comedy Central pilot through our manager, and the first season of our TV series [also called Upright Citizens Brigade] was built mostly on ideas we took from 'Asssscat' scenes."
Walsh and Roberts are speaking in the backstage "green room" of their theater, following one of the free Sunday-night "Asssscat" shows, which are performed with a rotating array of L.A.'s best improvisers as well as such famous UCB friends as Tim Meadows and Andy Dick. Also in the room is the troupe's seemingly wildest member, Besser, who answers a question about the group's creative inspirations by ripping a long, furious hit off a bong.
If one can even attempt to define the UCB aesthetic without the use of drugs, it would seem they draw their greatest influence from Monty Python. Being on Comedy Central honed their creative abilities to the point where they not only were forced to edit their ideas down to the fast-paced bone, but also managed the brilliant trick of establishing clues to a running joke throughout each season that built to a final episode revolving around and explaining all the clues that had come before.
"We'd play with the reality of our setups and on cutting them down so the fun could begin fast," recalls Walsh. "By the time the third season finished, it was all so complex that Comedy Central decided it was too expensive to continue. We got replaced by British shows about robots and clips from Japanese game shows."
Yet, UCB's forced TV death didn't doom it into a creative dead end. Along with Walsh becoming a star in his own right on Comedy Central, Roberts has gone on to sell several unproduced screenplays. Besser enjoys the most bohemian life of the troupers, creating wicked one-man shows such as Dumbass, in which he discusses a yearlong period when his home phone number was mistakenly listed as the national customer-service line for an array of products, and his attempts to befuddle those who called him.
But it's the fourth member, missing on this night of recollections and revelry, who's made the greatest impact in the mainstream: Amy Poehler, who has achieved solo fame as the cohost of SNL's popular "Weekend Update" segment, as well as with a bevy of movie roles. But she chipped in to purchase the L.A. theater with her cohorts, and she continues to perform there whenever she has a week or the summer off from the New York-based comedy institution.
"We opened the theater here last August, because Besser, Ian, and I were all out here in L.A., and we still wanted a place to play," explains Walsh. "We were doing such crazy shit that we'd be getting kicked out of most other clubs, so we figured we'd own our own space where no one could bother us."
That approach has paid off with a new generation of students packing classes, eager to learn how to replicate the magic UCB long-form style, plus a full slate of shows even weirder than "Trapped in the Closet" proved to be. Among them are "Fucked Up and Illegal Videos," which featured everything from graphic bumfights to a vagina that smoked cigarettes, and "World's Dirtiest Sketch Contest," which is often literally scatological.
"This is a place where people share their ideas with each other and trade ideas rather than just being so competitive they don't watch each others' work and stand off on their own," explains Besser. "We'd rather have twice as many people here for half as much money per person than half as many people for twice the cost. Our demographic skews young, and when we were young we didn't have the money to see a $12 show. It would have prohibited me from seeing us, so that's how I choose the price."
"It's kind of impossible not to try something new at the prices we charge," adds Roberts. "Most shows are $5. How can you not check out something for $5?"
Indeed, when it comes to the UCB, there is no other choice but to go. Go now.

HE'S ON "THE OFFICE," AND NOW HE'S ON MY BLOG!

2008-01-14T18:34:00.001-08:00

HE'S ON "THE OFFICE", NOW HE"S ON MY BLOG
Hot 'Ice'
The Craig Robinson Band must be seen to be believed
By Carl Kozlowski

Think of a night out at a comedy club, and you might think of a bunch of jokesters making wisecracks to appreciative audiences. But no matter how funny the talent, the odds of finding a truly fresh comedy concept are slim these days.
Thankfully, Pasadena's very own Ice House is breaking the mold, on Wednesday nights in particular, by offering an array of fresh voices each week in its special tapings for the Comedy Time Network's cellphone-programming service. Even better, the club is completely reinventing the concept of a comedy headliner by topping the shows with the Craig Robinson Band.
A mix of outrageous, audience-interactive comedy and sonic stylings in the tradition of James Brown and Stevie Wonder, the band surrounds the keyboard-playing Robinson with experienced pros on bass, drums and horns. In his role as the fiery and funny frontman, Robinson builds on not only his decade as a headlining club comic but also his popularity as a cast member of the former FX show "Lucky" and current NBC Emmy Award-winning hit "The Office" to bring the show's energy to a fever pitch. Best of all, the fun costs just $5 (plus a two-drink minimum). There's likely no other club in the country featuring a nationally known comic who also knows how to bring the pain with a mix of raucous original tunes and booty-shakin' R&B.
"I actually had a couple bands before in LA, and there was always dissension because everyone wants to be the head of a band. So this time I decided to grab some musicians, put my name on it and have them play as part of my act," explains Robinson. "I want to get us traveling, and there's talk of having us perform at some major premieres. We create onstage, and want to put the shows on a CD and a DVD and all of that stuff. But most of all, we try to keep it a no-pressure situation."
The band is comprised of two alternating drummers, Asa Watkins and Donald Barrett, whom Robinson describes as "thrilling and amazing to watch"; saxophone player John Valentino, who has played with such luminaries as the late Phyllis Hyman and the Whispers, and loves to milk laughs from the contrast between his near-Shaquille O'Neal stature and his tiny alto sax; fellow comedian Will Walls on bass; and Dave Sampson, who "makes love to your soul with his guitar."
Together, it's the joyous energy they share onstage that brings the laughs, as Robinson leads sing-alongs of classic tunes before pulling lyrical switcheroos that turn songs in a humorously dirty or bizarre direction and the audience bursts into laughter at having been fooled. Or Robinson will improvise what sounds like a classic romantic plea for men in the audience to repeat after him to their ladies, and winds up taking things in an outrageously naughty direction. Valentino's constant attempts to jokingly woo women in the audience as he plays take it to another level as well, with the drummers adding to the mix of musical mirth by constantly mugging as they play.
For his part, Chicago native Robinson, a "30ish" single guy, began performing comedy by hosting shows and attending open mic nights during his college years at Illinois State University. But his most memorable early experience — when, he claims, "Comedy chose me" — came when he had rubber chickens thrown at him during one of his first shows in his hometown.
"I was always kind of funny, but then I did this open mic in Chicago called Hecklers Heaven. There were three people in the audience who got chickens, and three others got scorecards, and if you had all three chickens thrown at you, you had to get off the stage," Robinson recalls. "For the first three minutes nobody could bother you, but you were onstage for eight minutes total, so they could be ruthless for five. That first week I just told jokes, got a low score and jumped offstage when two chickens hit me. But I returned the next week with my keyboard, I got a whole lot of love but no chickens, and that was all she wrote."
Robinson taped HBO's "Def Comedy Jam," which aired in 1997, and by 1998 he was headlining shows all over the country and in places as diverse as Acapulco, Sydney and Amsterdam. He quickly discovered that "silliness and music are universal." He moved to Los Angeles in 1999 and since then has amassed appearances on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" and HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher."
"Moving to LA provided more opportunities to get into television and film and be seen by power people," says Robinson. "Chicago had that home vibe, but I had to turn LA into my home. There are a lot more places to perform and a lot more opportunities to make something happen with your career."

MEET THE GUY BEHIND "SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS"!

2008-01-14T18:24:00.001-08:00

Vintage Vocalist
Tom Kenny finds his inspiration as the voice of "Spongebob Squarepants" in the retro cool of his '60s childhood
By Carl Kozlowski

Tom Kenny opens the lid of his vintage 1955 Seeburg V200 jukebox and slides a rare 45 rpm record into a slot. A second later, the box is blasting out a tune called "King Kong" by a long-forgotten singer named Big T Tyler who sounds like Little Richard on speed, and Kenny is off and running with a fierce air guitar solo, duckwalking back and forth across the hardwood floor of his spacious Studio City kitchen.

He may be 44, but Kenny is still just a big kid inside. While that might pose a problem for some men, maintaining that youthful spirit has been the key to his entire career as the voice of one of the most famous characters in American kid culture today: Spongebob Squarepants.

Yes, Kenny is living the strange yet lucrative life of being one of the most versatile voices in the cartoon world, portraying the joyful talking yellow sponge as his main gig while picking up plenty of guest role work ranging from an evil robot in "Transformers" to women in "Rocko's Modern Life." It's a living that affords him the opportunity to collect the kinds of things he loved as a kid, as his office space is filled with dozens of volumes of vintage comic books ranging from superheroes to "Lil' Abner" and he even has actual original comic strip drawings from the artists behind "Popeye" and "Dick Tracy."

Yet he also enjoys the fact that he hasn't had to sacrifice his privacy the way that on-camera stars do and the fact his wife Jill Talley not only loves what he does for a living, but is also a voice actress herself.
All in all, he's got the life he dreamed of ever since he was a kid growing up in Syracuse, New York with a best friend who turned out to be famous as well – Bobcat Goldthwait. And with a little luck, it's a career he can ride for a long time to come.

"There's a real prejudice that exists about age in Hollywood, but for me, it's the best job in showbiz because it all centers on your sound rather than how young you look. I get just enough recognition that it's an ego stroke, but it's both a rabid cult following and relative anonymity in one," says Kenny. "It's great because even though I'm 44, I'm often the spring chicken in the room when I show up for a job among the other voice actors."

Kenny grew up as one of five children of an accountant and a housewife who "were a little puzzled by my creativity and were wondering why I was acting like this." Nonetheless, they allowed him to follow his dreams and by the time he was a sophomore in high school, he and Bobcat were talking their way into running weeknight comedy shows at bars across Syracuse.

Despite getting onstage at an unusually early age, he hadn't yet made the move into his eventual specialty in voiceovers. Kenny had never been the class clown, instead finding his niche in making a select group of friends laugh. But in his final years of high school, he started to realize that creating laughter was his destiny.

"I didn't always have the skill, but I definitely had the desire and fantasy. Then I saw the cachet of that and that it was this skill not everybody had. It was as good as being able to throw a football really far," recalls Kenny. "It's that phase when you're a teenager discovering what you're into and I was lucky I had likeminded people. When you meet those few people in high school that are into the same weird things that you are, it changes your life."

Living in a university town like Syracuse gave Kenny a surprising array of cultural opportunities. Spending his teen years there during the late 1970s and early '80s meant he was able to see Steve Martin perform at the height of his standup popularity, to witness Andy Kaufman at his creative peak, and to hear classic "Looney Tunes" animators like Bob Clampett give talks in town.

Rather than going to college himself, Kenny played in a local rock band called The Tearjerkers for two years before leaving to pursue standup in Boston at age 20 – a move that started what he calls "the longest year off to find oneself in history." Eventually he moved to San Francisco with two friends and created a sketch group, because he found Boston's comedy scene was dominated by "jocks" and San Francisco afforded the opportunity to "explore weirdass ideas."

"We moved from Boston to San Francisco because it seemed more hospitable to the kind of weirdass comedy we were doing. One thing that was eye opening to me comedy wise was that I moved there from college and had this dumb kid fantasy that there's revival movie houses and a book store on every corner and the comedy clubs were all intellectual," Kenny recalls. "But no, alpha male comics who were bullies ruled the roost in Boston. In retrospect I can see why they were great, but at the time it rankled me because my friends and I were into weirder, more challenging kinds of stuff. It was much harder to do that than AIDS jokes. Jocks weren't supposed to be doing comedy – jocks had the locker room, I had the club, so I was like get out of here. San Fran is definitely more welcoming of oddball things."

Eventually, he broke off and worked the standup circuit for a decade, earning spots on Pat Sajak's and Conan O'Brien's talk shows.

"I had met club owners through the group, and so I called and asked for my own stage time. I started making a living at standup really fast – making a living at it, like wow, they're paying me money for doing this. Standup was so huge then, that all you had to do was not be terrible to make a living at it," he says. "And you do all right because there were so many gigs – every fish restaurant and bowling alley had a comedy night. If you're a young single guy with an affordable apartment, it was great: $200, $500, couple thou a week. Sure beats the Army for training in life."

However, he never really felt he even knew how to do standup. He hated the club owners, who often discouraged performers from doing new material, and couldn't see himself honing his act into a set 50-minute routine that would never change, either, like many of the road veterans he encountered.

"The way some people could deconstruct it and break it down – write a joke and distill it down like Stephen Wright, distill a joke to its barest essence, I never got the hang of that because it wasn't my passion," he explains. "But I made a good living at it all through the '80s and into the '90s. I did a sketch show on Fox called "the Edge" and I knew Janeane, Sarah and David Cross from standup."

And it was through those connections that he landed the gig that would change his life in more ways than one: a spot in the cast of HBO's groundbreaking sketch comedy series "Mr. Show." He lasted through three of the series' four seasons, having built a concurrent voiceover career that finally took too much time for him to remain in the cast – yet he found a lasting connection to the series through the fact he met his wife Talley on a prior sketch series called "The Edge" and then worked with her throughout "Mr. Show."

"Comedically our tastes are very similar, we laugh at the same things so it makes writing together and improvising together easy, and we pretty much agree on what makes something funny," says Talley. "He's great with the kids because he's a kid at heart, and he never stops working even when he's home. He does funny voices and he does the laundry. He's a Renaissance man, but what makes him great is he's humble."

One thing that doesn't hold an appeal for Kenny is the world of current sitcoms. He grew up on the glory days of '60s television, when he loved shows that had a rather unique twist on daily life.

"I was spoiled by my sitcoms. They were about people with horrible secrets: 'My wife is a witch and no one must find out!' 'I talk to a horse and no one must find out!' 'The guy posing as my uncle is a Martian and no one must find out!'" he says, laughing. "I always fantasized there was a support group for these people where they could open up to each other. I don't know what that says sociologically about the times they came out. We also had shows about outcasts who weren't normal, but they they're the normal ones, like the people on 'Green Acres' who thought Eddie Albert was crazy. Or that the Addams Family was normal. Sorry, after that, 'Friends' ain't doing it for me."

Instead, he finds plenty of creativity in his work on "Spongebob" and other cartoons, which he feels have taken on the mantle of creativity that sitcoms once had.

"I wouldn't say my creative inspiration is on autopilot, and I always read the storyboards very religiously. The creative process is really, corny as it sounds, just like playing – getting into it and being as true to the vibe of each show, whatever that might be," he says. "I was a giant evil robot on 'Transformers' the other day, so getting immersed and playing with the other actors is another big thing. That's the main thing, it's like any acting I guess – the freer and looser in the moment you are, the better your performance will be and the more you'll work."

And so it is that he and Jill have made a life for themselves and son Mack, 9, and daughter Nora, 4, in a spacious two-story home filled with framed posters of such forgotten drive-in classics as "I Walked With A Zombie" and "Running Wild." But it's in two framed pictures in his kitchen, drawings that his grandfather doodled back in 1918, that it becomes obvious Kenny places family above all the trappings of fame.

"I love living in Studio City, it's the greatest, the best. The schools are good, and most of my work at Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and commercials is within 15 minutes of my house," says Kenny. "You want a little bit of "Leave It to Beaver" in your life, you wanna keep the helicopters and shootouts of L.A. to a minimum. We've got our little slice of life, mid-Americaness, but get on the 101 for three exits and you're in freaky Hollywood and we take the kids to the Ripley's museum, the Chinese, the Egyptian. I like that you're sort of cocooning without realy having to cocoon. So we've stayed, dug in and put a bunch of roots and improvements to the house because we figured, let's make a good life for ourselves."

MEET AMERICA'S MOST ALTERNATIVE DAD!

2008-01-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

Un-split Personality: With Alternadad, Neal Pollack Gets Real
By Carl Kozlowski
Even celebrities with the wildest lives usually wind up becoming parents; for Neal Pollack, that time came four years ago. But the story behind Pollack's life being turned upside down by domesticity isn't completely rooted in reality, for Neal Pollack has been living two lives for the past decade.
Confused? So was Pollack. The real Neal Pollack is a writer with a wife and a kid who released a hilarious memoir called Alternadad in January. But for years, he also had a false literary persona named "Neal Pollack" who pretended to be a Forrest Gump-style presence throughout the rock music and literary history of the 20th century.
The fake Pollack was named Rolling Stone's "Hot Writer of 2000" for authoring "The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature," in which he imitated macho writers like Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway while detailing his fake adventures across the globe. He also wrote a book called "Never Mind the Pollacks" in which he shared debauched moments with rock royalty, then toured the country with a punk band called the Neal Pollack Invasion, which blasted its way through book events in an attempt to break the staid atmosphere of readings. But eventually he grew weary of juggling it all, and now he's trying to maintain his cockeyed view of the world while discovering the pleasures of being a dad.
"I had an eight-city tour for Alternadad, and I'll just say it was a lot different than the past. A lot of my events were 'family shows' with kids' bands and dance troupes for kids, and my readings tended to be shorter," explains Pollack. "This is a book about family and trying to create a slightly off-kilter family culture so I wanted to provide a concrete example of it."Indeed, his main L.A. bookstore appearance, at the indie store Skylight Books in the hipster enclave of Los Feliz, was punctuated by a special appearance by his son, Eli, and a gaggle of his preschool-aged friends, crawling and running through the room while at times pretending to be cats.
All the potential distraction, however, only added to the hilarity of his tales – which include an outrageous business trip to Amsterdam, the debate he had with his wife over circumcising their son, and the time a baby Elijah redecorated his bedroom with his own turds.
Just as that night revealed the dad behind the writer persona, writing Alternadad forced Pollack to reveal his true self, rather than the character, and to dig deeper for his humor than he had in the pop-culture realm where he became famous. And in a world where alternative-culture fans are trying to raise kids who can think for themselves and learn more from their teachers than from a television, Pollack's work is, in its own way, a primer on how to pull it off.
"Hipster parents have always been around, and now an entire generation has reproduced and there's a debate over whether to give up your pre-parent identity when you have a kid. There's an unwillingness to give in to mainstream kiddie culture, so parents are playing movies, TV and music that they like to their kids, and it's a very mild cultural rebellion," says Pollack. "For me, that's very exciting — for people to forge their own way — and it's as simple as playing music I like for him and not buying kiddie records. It's about paying attention to what your kid is interested in and being aware of other things he'd have fun doing."
Pollack grew up in Phoenix and got into writing via "cute little stories and made my own comic books" as a boy before becoming a teen correspondent for the Phoenix Gazette. He really launched his career as a reporter in Chicago, where he was a star writer for the weekly Chicago Reader throughout most of the '90s before branching into the acclaimed national publication McSweeney's in the late '90s. Meanwhile, he was also performing his pieces at spoken word venues throughout Chicago, creating and polishing the stage presence that would become key to his later success – and eventually those McSweeney's articles would form the heart of his "Anthology."
"The pieces I was writing were in the first person so it didn't occur to me to not name the character after myself since it was a parody of first person ego. In print I committed to him completely, but in public I never really did," Pollack recalls. "In public I was mostly myself which might have confused some people, and maybe confused me a little bit. I wasn't a really good actor so I wasn't prepared to play a parody of Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal in public. I'm not Sasha Baron Cohen, and I don't have the ability to transform myself."
Intriguingly, Pollack did actually release a vinyl album with the Neal Pollack Invasion, and he also released a record with Chicago rock favorites Jon Langford and Pine Valley Cosmonauts in conjunction with the "Anthology." Yet nonetheless, he eventually felt that playing in character had run its course and dropped his façade, now noting that "if I had to do it all over again I would have promoted it with characters, and me clearly as the author, not as a twist on myself."
Neal's wife Regina was with him through all the changes, as he met her during his McSweeney's phase. And when it came time to pack up the rock gear and settle down, the two got married. But while marriage didn't seem like a big switch after a long and happy cohabitation, the arrival of Elijah signaled a whole new lifestyle.
"Having a kid has rearranged my day basically. Before I had a kid, having fun was my first priority and now it's my second," says Pollack. "I'm getting up earlier in the morning, have more responsibilities and have a new best friend, but I don't know if it's changed me all that much. It brought me back to a more genuine version of myself, and I think that's been for the better."
Neal Pollack's Alternadad is available in bookstores everywhere. Read his hilarious blogs at www.nealpollack.com

YES, THEY HAVE MORE THAN THAT ONE SONG...THE STORY OF SOUL ASYLUM'S COMEBACK

2008-01-14T18:21:00.000-08:00

Back on Track
By Carl Kozlowski
Imagine spending a decade in a rock band without seeing a glimmer of commercial success, despite fighting your way out of the indie world and onto a major record label. Then suddenly your lead songwriter crafts a tune that's nothing like anything else in your oeuvre and it becomes a smash hit that's so influential it earns your band a Grammy and a personal visit to the White House with President Clinton.
Suddenly, you're riding a wave: two straight platinum albums put you in the club of million-selling superstars, your lead singer is shacked up with movie star Winona Ryder, and you're voted Best Live Band in America in Rolling Stone polls. You think all those years of hard work have paid off with good times that may never end.
But then they do, thanks to an album that spends an embarrassing single week on the charts and which gets zero airplay. You and your band mates get the alarming feeling that it's time to check out and live the "real life" everyone else around you has been stuck with all along: kids, marriage, running other businesses.
To top it all off, your bass player – whom you've been great friends with since high school – finds out he has throat cancer.
For most bands, dealing with these ups and downs would mean the end. But Soul Asylum isn't most bands, and in the face of such overwhelming adversity, its members regrouped to honor their bass player Karl Mueller's dying wishes and record another CD in the hopes of showing they still had "it" – a fact they proved in July when they returned with their first CD in eight years, The Silver Lining (Pick this up!), and managed to sell it to the same big label they had in their heyday.
Nearly 25 years after their formation, Soul Asylum embody the spirit of so many of their best lyrics: a never-say-die attitude that finds strength amid the weakest moments of life.
"We needed a break from it all, because we were sick of the road. We wanted a two-year break and it extended to four years," says guitarist Dan Murphy, recalling the dark period that started in 1998 with the belly flop of its last CD, Candy From A Stranger. "Then Karl got sick, and we dealt with that too, recording around his illness and his chemotherapy needs. We managed to finish it before he died, but that's a heavy toll to deal with. Before you know it, eight years went by."
One key element of Murphy's ability to bounce back with lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Dave Pirner was the fact that even at their peak, Soul Asylum was never known for egos and drug rehab. Aside from Pirner's two-year relationship with Winona Ryder, they never really adopted any traditional rock star traits, so when the time came to slow the ride down, they were able to get off safely.
Murphy started an art gallery in the band's native Minneapolis and devoted himself to being dad to his now 16-year-old son. He also recorded a CD with alt-rock supergroup Golden Smog.
Pirner felt drawn to explore another part of the US and wound up jamming with jazz musicians in New Orleans, releasing a little-known solo album in 2001 that reflected his new city's laid-back energy, and having a young son of his own. (He also had to flee that city when Hurricane Katrina hit, though he's returned to find that his own home was unscathed.)
And Mueller faced off against cancer in a strenuous battle that he ultimately lost a year ago. Before he passed, the band had taken out a $60,000 bank loan and vowed to record on their home turf in Minnesota with John Fields and Steve Hodge, producers they chose themselves after enduring an insanely long and bloated recording process on their last big-label CD, Candy.
The resulting release of The Silver Lining underscored how much respect the band had garnered years before, as The Tonight Show hosted a live performance of their new single "Stand Up and Be Strong" the night before its release. And with a mix of tunes that some critics have termed the best since their breakthrough 1992 CD Grave Dancers Union, Murphy says he and the band feel the new set has plenty of worthy songs to tour behind.
"We started as a college band on an indie label, and then our seventh record broke it for us, but in the school we come out of, having a hit record ruins your credibility in a way," says Murphy. "We found that people were not happy, and were kind of fleeting. The kind of music we helped create was college rock, and it turned into grunge. We were seen as a band with a pop song on the radio and people not thinking it was cool."
That pop song was "Runaway Train," a midtempo acoustic song with haunting lyrics about a teen living a harsh life in the streets. It became a worldwide hit, won the band a Grammy for Best Rock Song, and even today remains a staple of many radio stations -- all despite the fact it was an almost total anomaly for a band that had built a reputation on rapid-fire rock and blistering live performances.
The song's video had the biggest impact. Rather than focusing on the band performing the song, it was filled with stark, milk carton-style images of actual runaways above their names and the dates in which they were reported missing. The results seemed positive, as the band received an invitation to meet President Clinton at the White House after several of the video's youths were reunited with their families. But Murphy recalls even the best of intentions can go awry.
"Some weren't the best scenarios. I met a fireman on the East Coast whose daughter was in the end of the video, and he'd been in a bitter custody battle with his wife over her," Murphy said. "It turned out the girl hadn't run away, but was killed and buried in her backyard by her mother. Then on tour, another girl told us laughingly 'You ruined my life' because she saw herself on the video at her boyfriend's house and it led to her being forced back into a bad home situation."
Even as the band rebounds from its own travails, Murphy noted that lead singer Dave Pirner is still involved in helping the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and that the band performs benefits for the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, which helps missing and sexually exploited teens and children. While he hopes that most of the kids who reunited with their families have overcome their issues and developed into "twenty-somethings who are OK and contributing to society," he has come to realize that happy endings often can come about only through hard work.
"My recognition was that there's a reason that young kids run away, mostly because of abuse. There were some happy results from it, but you have to resolve the situation that caused an 11- or 13-year-old to think the harsh world is better than their home," said Murphy. "I don't think people are genetically wired to leave a loving home situation, but rather a harsh abusive situation. You have to fix that dysfunctional situation before you can truly say everything's OK."
These days, having overcome their own array of dysfunctional situations, the band appears to have rediscovered the sheer joy of playing music for fun, rather than as the force driving the treadmill of touring and recording. Judging from a jovial, high-energy performance at the Los Angeles Tower Records store and a fiery show at the world-famous Troubadour club on the new CD's release date of July 11, they're fully recharged.
The CD itself opens with a furious five-song volley of tunes that mix Pirner's defiant lyrics with Murphy's often-astounding guitar licks, a potent combo familiar to anyone who's heard band classics like "Somebody to Shove" and "Just Like Anyone." While the ballads on this CD pale somewhat in comparison to tunes like "Train," at least their presence is limited as the band makes leaps away from the sentimental glop that formed much of "Candy From A Stranger."
Driven by the furious beats of Michael Bland, who served a long run with fellow Minneapolis native Prince, Murphy and Pirner play with a sense of purpose that seemed to go missing at several shows I'd seen them perform during the wilderness years. Bland could easily be the best drummer they've ever had, and Pirner and Murphy are eagerly awaiting Tommy Stinson, who played with fellow Minneapolis legends The Replacements and recorded a couple of the new CD's tunes. Stinson is currently on the road as a member of Guns n'Roses.
But even with a potentially strong lineup, Murphy notes that losing Mueller has affected him on both an emotional and musical level.
"To be totally frank with you, it's all weird to me. I'm used to Karl and Dave as the core of the band, and there's a connection you expect. The band sounds great; it's a little emotional for me and Dave but it's in the Soul Asylum tradition for sure," Murphy muses. "Karl was a founding member and a really dear friend of mine and was my ears into punk rock. Back in 1978, he went to England and saw The Damned and The Cure and said there's this whole other kind of music out there that got me out of Aerosmithland. I miss him dearly, we had so many shared experiences. We never assumed [his cancer] to be life threatening."
Will rock fans and radio station programmers still care about them, no matter how good the music is? Judging from Murphy's everyman demeanor, it doesn't matter if they reach the heights of "Runaway Train." They'll be happy if they can make a living through the band again, and regain the acclaim they enjoyed prior to Candy.
"I think this CD is tuneful and I consider it a continuation, but it's fuller and more realized, more fun to play live and somewhat political, but not something to read as a treatise," Murphy says, referring to songs like "Lately," a galloping, catchy rocker that tells the story of a man who's watching his best friend's marriage unravel due to his extended tours of duty in Iraq. "I'm cautiously optimistic... This record is fine to play but this business is tough, we've been through a lot of shit with the band, but we've made it through the other side. It's time to see what's next."

IT'S JOSH FROM "THE WEST WING": BRADLEY WHITFORD!

2008-01-14T18:20:00.001-08:00

MISS JOSH FROM "THE WEST WING"? BRADLEY WHITFORD, FOLKS! Current mood: creative
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Church and State:"Josh Lyman" Talks God and GovernmentBy Carl Kozlowski
Bradley Whitford has endured some head-spinning events on the national and global political stage over the last seven years. He's seen the switch from the high-rolling Clinton years to the war-torn Bush era, experienced the horrors of 9/11, and protested the war in Iraq.
Yet despite all the political drama he's seen in the real world, Whitford has experienced plenty more as part of his day job. It's not typical office politics that he has to deal with. As an Emmy-winning actor on NBC's The West Wing, he has found a place in the homes of tens of millions of Americans as Josh Lyman, advisor to Josiah Bartlet, perhaps America's greatest fictional president ever.
In May, Whitford's run with the series will come to an end, as NBC has announced its cancellation. The current season has largely focused on the race to find Bartlet's successor, setting up a logical end to the show that has won more Emmys than any other program in TV history.
"This show has exceeded my wildest expectations because it's been about something that has been increasingly urgent since 9/11; people -- wherever they are on the political spectrum -- believe government matters," says Whitford. "The show has gone through an interesting shift, because we began during the Clinton presidency and were considered sort of the moderate, ethically pure fantasy of the Clinton administration. I actually don't think the country has swung as far to the right as people say, but it became sort of the alternate, pathetically inadequate fantasy government for people of a different political persuasion than, say, Karl Rove."
Whitford was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin -- an experience which he looks back on fondly and considers as the inspiration for his decision to settle in the small city of Pasadena, CA rather than in the typical Hollywood star environs of Malibu or the Hollywood Hills. He and his wife of 14 years, actress Jane Kaczmarek of Malcolm in the Middle, have chosen to raise their three children in San Marino because they felt it is a more natural place for them to grow up.
"We were living in Hollywood and we started going to All Saints Church, and through that discovered some of the schools. I grew up in Madison, which is the size of Pasadena," explains Whitford. "It felt more Midwestern, and it was more about raising kids out here rather than the creepy Hollywood scene you get on the West side of L.A. "
Indeed, All Saints Church, an Episcopal stronghold that proudly touts its reputation as the most progressive/liberal church in America, has been a major influence on Whitford's life as he navigates the trenches of Hollywood. He was glad to hear the church's leadership take outspoken stands on controversial issues, and he makes a strong defense of its presence at the center of a recent nationally famous firestorm with the IRS over the church's tax-free status -- a battle that came about because the IRS claims that the church's rector crossed the bounds of political propriety in a pre-election sermon in 2004.
"It's absurd that they should be investigated. We live in this time where the definition of being religious means you adhere to dogma. It has nothing to do with executing values anymore, and my feeling about All Saints is that it is all about executing values, values that I believe in," says Whitford, who was raised as a Quaker. "They are much less concerned with dogma than executing the great universal values of love and forgiveness. It's very upsetting to me as a political junkie that it's a great virtue to name yourself a Christian, a tremendous political advantage that gives you a moral standing, and then we don't hold these people to actual standards."
When considering the parallels and differences between the real Bush or Clinton presidencies and that of the Bartlet administration, Whitford notes that sometimes the real world is stranger than fiction.
"I think that one of the eternal questions is, is God a really wonderful writer, or is He the worst writer?" says Whitford, laughing. "If we did an election on the show where what happened in 2000 happened, and the candidate's brother happened to be governor of the deciding state -- it would be just unbelievable. Our show tears things not from headlines but from Page 28. [Show creator] Aaron Sorkin really shied away from feeling that the show was a response to what was happening."
In fact, Whitford says he's always been surprised that neither critics nor the show's fans have considered the show in the way he does: as a "backstage comedy about the amount of time politicians spend creating the perfect moment to present their ideas… which makes [politics] show business and that's sad." He points out that nearly everywhere he goes, people ask him if the show's president, Martin Sheen, or Whitford himself will consider running for office. In reality, Whitford's already lined up his next job: a plum role in a new Aaron Sorkin-penned series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, in which he'll star with Matthew Perry of Friends fame.
But now that West Wing is going off the air after seven hectic seasons, Whitford is looking forward to spending some time with his family. Coincidentally, Kaczmareks' own seven-year run on Malcolm is coming to an end, with its final episode airing the same night as Whitford's. And even stranger still, Whitford has won an Emmy for his role while Kaczmarek has earned the good-natured nickname of "Susan Lucci of prime-time" for the fact that she has been nominated six straight seasons without a win.
"It's been an extraordinarily bizarre thing. We were picked up the same week for our pilots and now we're ending together," muses Whitford. "And the trajectory of the shows from starting to their peaks to their passing on has been identical. Now I just want to shake my Etch A Sketch for a while and spend time with my children."

THROWING COMEDIC GRENADES, IT'S MARGARET CHO!

2008-01-14T18:18:00.000-08:00

THROWING COMEDIC GRENADES, IT'S MARGARET CHO!
Killing Them Loudly: Margaret Cho, Comedy Assassin, Has A New Book And DVD
By Carl Kozlowski
Margaret Cho has identified with society's outsiders from the time she was a child. Embracing the unexpected came naturally while growing up amid hordes of hippies in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, walking to school past stoners, burnouts, junkies and drag queens, and she's transformed those experiences into one of the most unique worldviews in comedy
Although she started with material that focused on her experiences with a hysterically befuddled immigrant mother and her experiences as a bisexual, Cho has become an ever more daring and expansive performer at each step of her career. She has also managed to pull off a feat no comedian has accomplished since the early-80s heyday of Richard Pryor by releasing a string of concert films to theaters nationwide rather than being relegated to cable specials and cheapo video releases.
Now, with her new book, I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight, and the accompanying DVD release of her latest concert movie, Assassin (Pick this up!..), Cho has taken direct aim at her most political targets yet: the Bush administration and all who would seek to roll back the civil rights advances of the past 40 years. Shot in a theater just three blocks from the White House, Assassin is as likely to induce gasps as guffaws as Cho says the things millions of disgruntled Americans are too scared to say.
"I think I've always been political, but it's grown the last couple of years because of the whole idea of representing a voice that has remained unheard and speaking for an audience that has been left out by most entertainment -- such as gay audiences and women, Asian Americans, and people of color in general," explains Cho. "I think it's all pretty funny. The message is there, but the comedy is more important to me anyway. I always want to be a better entertainer, but I don't always want to be a politician. If people are looking at the message more than they're looking at the material, that's their own problem."
Despite the unshakable strength with which she holds her life philosophies, Cho has undergone some major changes in the decade since she boomed onto the American scene. In her first book, I'm the One That I Want, and its attendant comedy tour and film, she shared the exhilarating high of being the first Asian actor to star in her own sitcom but also the devastating lows of ABC making it embarrassingly ethnic while ordering her to lose a drastic amount of weight or lose her contract. Cho lost 30 pounds in two weeks, but wound up in an emergency room with kidney failure.
But despite proudly espousing her right to be any weight she chose in that film and tour, Cho has noticeably slimmed down in the past year or so. She has also gotten married, a move that stirred confusion among some who fear that she might be selling out her outsider fan base.
"I don't feel uncomfortable saying 'us' when discussing the gay community, because I feel that it's all part of one big outsider community that I'll never leave. I absolutely feel that I'm a part of the gay community," says Cho. "The weight loss, though, was a conscious choice that I made just for me because I started belly dancing and that brought in a lot of different feelings for me physically, and dancing really improved my life and also changed the way that I was because I'd never had a physical activity that I enjoyed. Becoming a belly dancer was something I chose, because it's a hobby that ties in with a culture that celebrates women."
Furthermore, she sees the criticism from the gay community as rooted in a problem as old as the human race.
"It's weird that today, nobody would question the motives of white students marching with MLK in Mississippi, but today, someone working with a cause that's not explicitly about them is defined as an oddity," she says. "I always knew that the gay community was where I belonged, and I was always friends with lots of gay boys in the community. It was natural to land in the middle of the gay community because I never was apart from it, never went away from it. I don't care if people look at it badly."
To those who wonder if her marriage to writer/artist Al Ridenour has made her sell out in some way, she has admitted publicly that the union is "not a committed, traditional one." Nonetheless, Cho is an ardent supporter of gay marriage rights and has performed at many benefits for the cause.
"I think the fight for gay marriage will be state by state for awhile, I'm hoping that there isn't a federal ban because it would be unfortunate," says Cho. "People hang onto homophobia so hard. They give up sexism and racism but this is the one thing that's very difficult to educate away. I hope our government will be able to see through our own bigotry to some day allow gay marriage to exist."
Despite her frustrations with the nation's political scene, Cho is happier these days than she has been in a long time. She's even daring to make another foray into the world of network sitcoms, this time signing with Fox to produce a sitcom based on her impersonation of her mother, and she's also watching Fox News with amusement.
"It's a really interesting time because there's a real day of reckoning for the conservatives now. It's interesting to watch the Fox News channel and see how they're trying to minimize the damage and act like the Democrats are throwing a temper tantrum," says Cho. "It would be funny if it weren't so detrimental to the American public. It's hard not to gloat at the same time, but it's sad because our leaders are endangering national security just to get one over on each other. It's incredible, the depth of corruption. The crime here ultimately is they're not thinking of the American people enough, and that's clear in the war, after Katrina, everything going on in the last couple years, and it's intense.
"But I'm hopeful because there's a lot of enthusiasm for people to change things, and that energy is all over the place and it's really exciting. It seems to be really coming from young people, too, and for that I'm really hopeful because that means our future will be better than today."

THE MUTATION OF DENNIS MILLER

2008-01-14T18:17:00.001-08:00

The Mutation of Dennis Miller
By Carl Kozlowski

Comic bit #1: "Condoleeza Rice has often been described as W's 'foreign policy tutor.' Oh, yeah, I love the sound of that. It's nice to know we're signing our nuclear arsenal over to a man who needs after-school help."
Comic bit #2: "He's much smarter than his enemies think he is. I think he's a genius. People whine about him getting into Yale -- the way I see it, if your old man buys a building you should get into Yale! But I think he could have gotten into Yale on his own; he's a very smart man."
The two quotes might seem to be from dueling commentators on a show like Crossfire. Yet, at least physically speaking, they come from the mouth of the same person: Dennis Miller.
The first quote was offered on a January 2001 episode of Miller's acclaimed HBO series Dennis Miller Live, as one of the rants that earned him a slew of Emmys during a nine-year run on the premium cable network. At that time, Miller was still regarded as one of the most brilliant left-wing comic minds in America -- a reputation hard-earned during six years as arguably the funniest "Weekend Update" host ever on Saturday Night Live.
But three years later, Miller offered the second quote to the conservative magazine The American Enterprise. In the intervening time, he had flipped sides of the political spectrum and was considered one of the most brilliant right-wing comic minds in America.
Sure, his fans are confused about what caused such an epic change in his attitudes. But when one considers some of his other career moves -- such as starring in commercials he would have mocked a decade ago -- it can be argued that Miller merely put his iconoclastic spin to his own career. Or maybe he simply followed the clichéd path of growing more conservative as he grew older.
A recent visit to the CNBC Dennis Miller talk show set and his backstage dressing room provided some insights:
"I've always been libertarian, until September 11th when the part of me that believes in killing the terrorists came to the fore. That's painted me as some kind of right-wing fanatic, and I'm not," Miller says, with a hint of exasperation. "I just think we have to kill the terrorists before they kill us. Every other thing? I'm for gay marriage; I'm pro-choice, but I think we're in a 100-year war with terrorists and we have to kill them before they kill us."
Grouped with former leftist journalistic icon Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair, Slate and Atlantic Monthly fame -- who now staunchly supports President Bush and the Iraq war -- Miller is perhaps the most famous figure to publicly admit such a change in philosophy.
"It's funny, but I still feel like the same me on TV, whether it's with [this] show or Monday Night Football. There's all these permutations of me on TV, but even with the old SNL reruns that my oldest kid watches on Comedy Central, I'll look up and think it's the same kind of me that I am now," says Miller.
"It's all been built on arcane references, precision of language, and a reasonably imperturbable nature on TV. The basics are there, but I've been getting paid, making a living and having fun with it for next to 25 years and you know that blows my mind that I've stuck with it. That's my favorite part of showbiz, hangin' in knowing that something good is coming along.
Along the way came career shakeups that make a rollercoaster seem calm and steady. Miller abruptly ended his run on HBO, where he had earned the cable network its first Emmy for an original series. He spent two years on ABC's Monday Night Football, earning kudos from critics but causing confusion amid the sport's less-intellectual fan base. And since January 2004, he's found a new home on a surprisingly low-key cable network, CNBC, for his new daily humor.
Dressed, oddly enough, in pajama pants that he's slipped on between two Thursday afternoon tapings of his "daily" show, Miller's backstage domain is large and comfortable but strangely too quiet. I grew up on his wild energy and unpredictable comments and still consider his landmark late-80s comedy CD "The Off-White Album" to be the funniest record ever made, so I expected to be greeted with a barrage of hipster lingo and the moniker "Daddio!"
Sure, Miller is a happily married father of three now, and over 50 years old, but it's still disconcerting to see him curl up in a chair in front of a muted TV screen and start chatting like, well, a "normal" person. He even notes "that's always odd" when a commercial showing him hocking NetZero Internet service comes on the air.
..> ..>
"Bill and Hillary's marriage couldn't have been any more about convenience than if they had installed a Slim Jim rack and Slurpee machine at the base of their bed." -- Dennis Miller, in American Enterprise..>..>
A native of Pittsburgh, who studied journalism and started his comedy career there before achieving breakthroughs in New York City, Miller now lives in the bucolic hills around Santa Barbara. He has mellowed somewhat with age, but Miller expresses concerns with recent FCC rulings.
"When I start hearing about $500,000 fines for individuals' comments, yeah I'll tell you I watched myself today…" states Miller. "Not only do you have the sturm and drang of having everyone in America talking about you slipping up on TV, forget it -- they've behavior-modded me out of it. Bleeps are fine, but on live TV swear words are a problem."
Miller's current half-hour show has an eclectic array of guests, to say the least -- one day featuring a Cal Tech rocket scientist, another featuring movie icon Sylvester Stallone -- and Miller notes that he likes to stay out of booking guests so that he can be surprised each day and "let my natural curiosity for any type of person flow."
But the biggest changes are the aforementioned philosophical shifts, which stemmed from Miller famously telling a January 2004 press conference that he would not be mocking President Bush at all on his new show. It seemed disingenuous for a political satirist to announce he's taking his own nation's president off the table, but he decided that his own personal political convictions could be protected.
"I thought it was so integral that he got re-elected that I laid off him for awhile. There's something to be said for standing up in front of a roomful of press and saying I'm not going to do Bush jokes. At least it was honest, and I could see they were gobsmacked," he laughs. "There's jokes I get presented with everyday that I'll take out because they're ripping on people I know. Guess what, if they're my friend, I pull it out. I'm not interested in hurting people, and it's not just because of 9/11."
One of Miller's most famous appearances was on the Tonight Show in February 2003, just days ahead of he official start of the Iraq war. Jay Leno served Miller a perfect softball pitch, asking him "War's inevitable. What have you got?"
Miller's response -- a three-page-long rant that took several minutes to recite -- was a hit with the Tonight Show studio audience, and earned Miller headlines in those seemingly happier days when the war seemed like it would be a cakewalk. In it, Miller said things like, "I want us to invade France. And then I want us to invade [French Prime Minster] Chirac. To call the French scumbags [for not participating in the war] is to be disrespectful to scum."
Red-meat material all the way, although looking back now it seems a bit odd that Miller just happened to have the perfect speech at the ready. Even in the world of prepackaged corporate entertainment, this moment seemed too perfect a cheerleading opportunity and led some critics to allege that Miller was merely switching political teams in a high-profile way in order to keep viewer interest going while he was between gigs.
"In a talk show setting, there is some spontaneity, but all questions are set up for guests to tell an amusing story or something interesting. That was probably the case there, and Dennis was passionate about it and had a lot to say," explains Jimmy Brogan, a top comic and former Tonight Show writer from 1992 to 2001. "It's just a function of that, he's always well-prepared when he comes on the show and makes Jay and the audience laugh really hard. It's not like he wrote it or any other bits that afternoon. He makes sure it works really well."
A comic who rises to Miller's defense, particularly over his philosophical shifts, is Butch Bradley. A veteran of multiple appearances on CBS's The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, Bradley has also performed on several USO tours to Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Dennis Miller was on the forefront, as one of the first to address our fears after 9/11. Everybody was afraid to offend anyone, and to me he was one of the first guys to air the honest fear we all had and make us laugh and think at the same time," recalls Bradley.
"Beyond that, anyone who says 'How dare he change his attitude?' how do you not check yourself after something like 9/11? What a shame if it doesn't change you. That's what makes him special, he listened to his voice."
The CNBC show initially lacked a studio audience, leaving Miller to indeed listen to his own voice rather than an appreciative crowd of laughter -- a mistake that Miller convinced producers had to be rectified in order to give the show any comic energy. The show has also taken on humorous field correspondents like fellow SNL alum Tim Meadows and Last Comic Standing standout comic Ant, who help break the show out of strict political discussion and riffs on the news.
But after spending nearly half his life mocking world events, Miller has found the key to successfully delivering topical humor is to believe that it's not tough after all.
"When I was starting, I thought I'd have to have a sword-in-the-stone moment of inspiration where I'd have to lay around for it to be visited on me," says Miller. "SNL was just a machine, and if you screwed two or three 'Updates' up, guess what, they have someone new and ready to go. So I learned how to pick up any newspaper and have five usable jokes in five minutes."
"I don't ever wanna get self-important. I'm a comedian, and I want everyone in my life to know it," he says. "The stream-of-consciousness style is my monkey trick. I sit there, I watch stuff, and cultural references bump into my head. I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid."

AL FRANKEN MAKES NO APOLOGIES FOR THE TRUTH

2008-01-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

Unbalanced: Al Franken Makes No Apologies for The Truth (with jokes)
By Carl Kozlowski
Al Franken has built a 30-year career by marching to the tune of his own drummer, starting as a writer and occasional humorous commentator on Saturday Night Live before reinventing himself in the 80s for a lucrative run as the very gay, very needy self-help guru Stuart Smalley.
That character elevated Franken to a string of other opportunities, including a satirical day-by-day planning book and a feature film called Stuart Saves His Family. Yet that was by no means Franken's final career phase; after two seasons playing a nebbish newsman on his own NBC sitcom called Lateline, Franken wrote a scorchingly funny attack on the right-wing media called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. That book hit No. 1 on the venerable New York Times bestseller list, partly thanks to a threatened lawsuit from the Fox News Channel over his use of the words "fair and balanced."
Two years later Franken is here with a new book, titled The Truth (with jokes). He's also attempting to save the nation through his daily role as liberal radio network Air America's most prominent host, and in 2008 he hopes to save Minnesota by running for the U.S. Senate from the Land o' Lakes.
Before he can accomplish any of those heroics, however, he has to finish his national book tour. In an Arriviste Press interview, Franken talked about his unlikely career, shocking political revelations, and why he just can't wait for the "Fitzmas" holiday.
"This book is filled with black humor about awful things, but that's a good place to be these days. There's bigger fish to fry than deconstructing Ann Coulter because the Republicans won the last election on fear, smears and queers but did not bring us any change -- which is what Americans really want," said Franken.
"They exploited 9/11 to get into Iraq, and I think all this is coming home to roost, and even quicker than I thought it would. Hell, when I wrote the book, there were actually people who thought the president was competent," he said.
Indeed, Franken has turned his sights on the perceived culture of hypocrisy and cronyism running rampant in the administration and Congress - a scenario that was just spotlighted by President Bush's recent failed nomination of his former secretary, Harriet Miers, to the U.S. Supreme Court. He is also practically giddy over the prospects for indictments of Republicans ranging from Dick Cheney on down through House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and is amazed that so much trouble has been visited upon the Republican Party at a time when it has virtually total dominance over the Federal government.
"I'm looking forward to the midterm congressional elections of 2006, and I think my motto for that race would be 'subpoena power.' We need to take at least one of the houses and get subpoena power because imagine how much more we could do when these guys are getting indicted while holding all the power. That's hard to do," said Franken, laughing. "The day [special prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald hands down the indictments, I'm celebrating a new national holiday and calling it Fitzmas. One of the things that really irks me is the lack of oversight that Congress has given to our contracting in Iraq, because there's a tremendous amount of war profiteering, which Truman called treason, and I agree. As a result of not reconstructing fast enough, we've lost the support of the people there and fueled the insurgency."
While he takes pride in the wide array of topics he addresses in The Truth, ranging from Bush's bungled Social Security plans to the shocking abuse by Republicans of the Terri Schiavo case for political gain, he's particularly pleased to show a dark side of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that goes beyond the widespread accusations that he raised funds illegally. Franken contends that the allegedly anti-abortion politician has in fact looked the other way for the past decade after learning that American-run sweatshops in the territory of Saipan are forcing female workers to have abortions in order to keep their jobs.
"A Republican lobbyist named Jack Abramoff went into Saipan and helped it stay exempt from U.S. labor and immigration law while allowing them to make garments that say 'Made in USA', while bringing women from China, locking them up in barracks and forcing them to get abortions," explained Franken. "Abramoff is friends with Tom DeLay, and DeLay promised not to let legislation get to the House floor that would put them under our labor laws. DeLay killed it even after it passed in the Senate in legislation by fellow Republican Murkowski of Alaska… So Delay's the guy who closed down Congress over Schiavo and called an emergency midnight session for that, but it was fine with him that they were aborting babies [in Saipan]. And he knows that that's part of the problem over there."
But according to Franken, the GOP's scare tactics have only escalated in the last elections to exploit the War on Terror. "This time it was terror that was used against the American people. It was scaring them, so they felt they needed someone to care for them. Bush said he was resolute, and they smeared [Kerry] enough to make you think he was a little Nancy. They took a genuine war hero and turned him into this French-loving wuss, below this guy who got out of serving. Social issues play, but I think we can respond to that. During Clinton, abortion went down every year, and it's leveled off under Bush, and we've got to make the argument more effectively," said Franken.
Franken and the rest of Air America's hosts have had to deal with their own kind of battles for support lately, as the 19-month-old network of 70 stations had to overcome an extremely rocky start in which a shady financier failed to provide enough funds to keep the channel on the air in Los Angeles and Chicago. Despite giving plenty of fodder for enemies like Rush Limbaugh to scoff at, the network has battled back to become a viable and growing force for the long run.
Perhaps more importantly, Franken's show could offer him a platform to mount an effective run for a U.S. Senate seat in 2008 that would wrest control back from Republican Senator Norm Coleman and return the seat to the grand liberal tradition it had established under the late anti-war Senator Paul Wellstone. Ironically, a real-life political run would make for an interesting study in how prescient Franken was when he wrote the novel Why Not Me? in 1999, which purported to tell the story of a disastrous Franken presidency.
"I moved back to Minnesota in January, and I will look at the 2008 Senate seat. And as far as Republicans criticizing me over being from show biz, I didn't hear them do that over Arnold, Reagan and Grandy, but they'd do it," he said with a touch of feistiness. "I tend to talk a lot of policy and wonkery on the show, and I think people will know that I'm serious about this. Paul Wellstone said the future belongs to those who are passionate and work hard. So I have to do that, and we all do if we're gonna turn this thing around. Be just and good."

Carlos Mencia Just Said That

2007-12-19T23:13:00.000-08:00

As ‘Mind of Mencia’ starts its third season, the comedian keeps his vow to unite people by outraging everyone
By Carl Kozlowski

It’s a July night in 2004, and comedian Carlos Mencia is in rare form, pacing a stage with manic energy and unleashing a withering comedic assault that will leave no corner of the audience before him unscathed.

“Having people do the Tomahawk Chop at Atlanta Braves games is like having a team called the Wetbacks, and pretending to jump a fence every time they score a touchdown.”

The words come fast and furious, and the response from the crowd at the Brea Improv in Orange County is an amazing display of human psychology. The packed house of 300 people inhales a collective, highly audible gasp, stares at each other in “Did he just say that?” mode, and then bursts into a roar of laughter – all within a split second.

Yes, Mencia just said that.

“Everyone’s got their nasty prejudices they bury way down; the old names never die. On September 10, 2001, niggers and Spics were it. But on September 11, it was a game of tag, and Arabs were finally it. Olly olly oxen free!”

The crowd displays another mix of shock and awe. For nearly two and a half hours, far beyond the 45 minutes most comedy-club headliners take, Mencia offers his own personal State of the Union address. His mix of social, political, racial, and sexual observations are all over the map and impossible to define as either conservative or liberal, but they all come together in a coherent worldview that seems to say, “I may offend all of you, but at least this way, we see we’re all alike.”

And sometimes, he just wants to make his fanatical followers think.

“We’re sending our soldiers to die for freedom of speech, but you have to be afraid to repeat my jokes at work tomorrow? Let’s have our soldiers die for something more important than McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and oil.”

These are the kinds of things people aren’t supposed to get away with saying after two decades of “political correctness” that scrubbed American public discourse into a bland sense of propriety. But Carlos Mencia’s determination to speak his mind – loudly, proudly, and publicly – helped him build a career that rose from plum late-night spots with Letterman, Leno, O’Brien, and Ferguson, to his HBO specials, to, most significantly, his own show on Comedy Central.

“The network wants to call it Nothing Sacred,” says Mencia after his Brea Improv tour de force. “But I wanted to call it You Think It, I Say It.”

Both sides ultimately settled on Mind of Mencia, which debuted in 2005 and will start its third season this Sunday, April 1. The show has proven to be a ratings winner for Comedy Central, helping to soften the blow the network suffered when previous ratings winner Chappelle’s Show collapsed after star Dave Chappelle walked out. Mind of Mencia’s success has solidified the journey the 39-year-old comedian has made from ? the barrios of East L.A. to his current home, the proverbial “mansion on the hill” overlooking the San Fernando Valley from a perch high above Encino, and he offered CityBeat the chance to come along for the whole ride.

Back in the Day
Mencia’s been building his following for more than a decade, since his surprising start at a Laugh Factory open mike night. He was then Ned Holness (that’s his given first name and his biodad’s last name), an accountant trapped in corporate-America hell, but his fast-and-funny mouth kept his coworkers daring him to hit a stage and see if he could really bring the heat.

He blazed through his set, whipping the audience into a frenzy before stopping at three minutes because he was secretly nervous and blanked out on more material. But his timing was perfect – three minutes was all the time the club allowed newcomers anyway. Soon he earned the attention of Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore, and a month later he made the leap to a prime weekend shot there. Not long afterward, she convinced him he needed to change his name if he was going to be regarded seriously as a Latino comic, so he adopted his mother’s maiden name of Mencia for his stage persona.

From there, he soared quickly, but it was still the mid-’90s, and mass audiences weren’t ready to embrace a Latino as the center of a sitcom or host of a broad-based talk/sketch show. Much like Chris Rock after he left Saturday Night Live, Mencia realized he was at risk of never attaining a true career breakthrough – so, also like Rock, he made a conscious decision to stop playing the TV game and instead reinvent himself in the clubs. Any club, anywhere, any time – playing all 50 states as he honed his voice and learned to be utterly fearless.

“I went everywhere from Alabama to Alaska, and that teaches you how to make people laugh, period,” explains Mencia. “I learned how to make people roll with anything I said, no matter how pissed off they would normally be at hearing the kinds of things I was saying.”

It was a risky move for a man who, with his Tonight Show appearances, had already gone far past the wildest dreams of his hardscrabble youth in the working-class neighborhoods of East L.A. His Honduran-born father and Mexican-born mother had 11 girls and six other boys besides Ned, which led to an upbringing that wouldn’t be out of place in the odd families of John Irving novels. But, as he rolled through his old neighborhood in his black Mercedes on another hot day in that summer of 2004, nervously awaiting word from Comedy Central about whether he’d even get to shoot a pilot, it was clear that his risk paid off.

“My birth father had built our little house behind a bigger house, further back up the driveway,” says Mencia, pointing out the two homes in question. “But my uncle and aunt lived next door, and they weren’t able to have children, so my birth mother gave me away to them, since their own house was so packed. I was the only child in my uncle’s house, but I grew up with two moms and two dads, all next door to each other.”

One might think that unusual situation would be the spark that inspired Mencia’s comedy, but he didn’t see much funny in his childhood. It was happy enough, but it was also rough growing up Latino and being looked down on in a Caucasian-controlled society. In those days, he recalls, each racial and ethnic group kept to its own unspoken boundaries, and even crossing into another neighborhood seemed like a journey to another world.

“We would be amazed one night a year, on Halloween, when we would cross over a hill to get to the houses that we thought were mansions in the Asian area and get some real candy, like Snickers, man. The rest of the year, you were the man if you could even get a piece of Brach’s candy, because we were stuck with the fucked-up Mexican shit like Chiclets!”

The keys to his understanding the outside world were the trips he took to the neighborhood Jack in the Box with his birth father, “because it was my one connection to the world that I saw on TV,” he says. “It wasn’t the burgers that mattered, it was the idea that we were sitting where the rest of the people got to go on TV.”

As he cruises past the area’s countless elementary schools – “It’s because of all the damn kids! These families are still huge!” – he thinks about how much things have changed, for himself and for this new generation of Latino kids. Mencia lives in a mansion now, with marble tile floors and a pool overlooking a canyon.

In that house, he sits and almost obsessively watches cable news channels with what little down time he has, always searching for the truth that lies somewhere between CNN and Fox News Channel. What’s surprising, as he mentally notes stories to make fun of, is how quiet he is while doing it. In fact, he is quiet much of the time in private, seeming to save his fire almost exclusively for comedy-club stages and TV studios.

It’s the quiet, family-man Carlos who married Amy, a statuesque former model, in December 2003 after they’d spent nearly nine years together, and they have a baby son. He could be forgiven for choosing not to return to the scene of his hardships, but he doesn’t forget where he came from – and all the memories of division help drive him as he strives to bring everyone together by taking them all down a step or two on America’s social ladder.

“When white people killed all the Indians, who did all the work? Go get the niggers! Then, in the ’50s, they finally said, ‘Hey, I ain’t doin’ shit for you motherfuckers no more.’ And The Man said, ‘Fine! We’ll call Julio and give him a quarter to come pick our fields,’” he said back at the Brea Improv.

It’s a harsh assessment of life that still holds true to him three years later, as he ponders the lessons he’ll offer his own son about life in a capitalist America.

“I’m gonna be honest, that he’s lucky to be my kid,” Mencia admits. “He’s not going to have to fight the way I fought. My kid’s going to go to school, and kids will be like, ‘Is your dad Carlos Mencia?’ That’s a pressure, but you won’t have to live in projects, and all those hardships. The hard part for me is giving my kid perspective, saying, ‘You’re lucky,’ and that there are a lot of people who don’t have our lives. We’re going to have to visit poor people in our family, in Honduras and Mexico, to give him a perspective on life and not have a sense of entitlement.”

A Much Bolder Show
Now it’s early 2007, and, surprisingly, Mencia hasn’t had to tone down his signature foul-mouthed comedic rage on the TV show. In fact, the incessant bleepings Comedy Central is forced to apply to his opening monologues only add to the funny, due to their sheer absurd constancy. And the swearing creates its own built-in bonus material when the seasons come out uncensored on DVD box sets.

Mind of Mencia has built its following around an unrelenting willingness to gleefully offend people of all stripes. Many dismiss it as sophomoric, but it’s worth nothing that the show is executive produced, not only by Mencia, but by Robert Morton, who earned a place in TV-comedy royalty through a 14-year stint as David Letterman’s producer.

Morton’s services – not to mention his endorsement – are hard to come by, but he sees numerous parallels between Letterman and the Latino firebrand.

“They are two of the hardest working people I’ve ever seen in the business, they pay attention to detail like no one I’ve seen, and they’re both extremely funny first and foremost. They understand their audiences,” says Morton. “He’s got a power you don’t see in standup comics very often. He’s got an electricity he’s able to create. He never deviates from that point of view and that voice.”

Thanks to that strong voice, Morton found that the key to the show lay in reflecting Mencia’s standup “or, as we often say, dressing up the pig.

“Watch any bit,” Morton continues, “and it’s an excuse to get him to do his standup. Sometimes it’s man-on-the-street, sometimes fake news or doing a song, but essentially he’s always doing his act. But when we started, we kept things relatively small until we realized what he’s capable of doing. Now we do more commercial parodies, have different types of monologues, and he’s become a great actor as well. Everything, from his instincts onstage to his television instincts, are much better and are now impeccable.”

Indeed, the March 15 taping of the third-season premiere revealed a much bolder show. But, even as Mencia dressed up as a dinosaur for a wicked children’s-show parody, and a video elaborately spoofed high school sports films, he saved his main fire for his monologue: a viciously funny take on the death of Australian “crocodile hunter” Steve Irwin and how white people seem to be the only ones who go out of their way to mess with deadly animals.

By the end of his typically feisty monologue, a good number of Mencia’s staff was laughing and cheering, even when well out of hearing range of the boss and without knowing a reporter was in their presence. It was a rare moment, not only for bitter Hollywood but for the work world in general – when’s the last time you gave your boss a fist pump and a “whoop” when he did something you liked? Spotted among the 10 writers were people who epitomized Mencia’s loyalty to friends, such as ’80s MTV favorite Ken Ober (host of Remote Control) and Brad Williams, a vertically challenged comic who was plucked out of obscurity at a Mencia road gig after someone in the crowd thought he might have a beef over Mencia’s humor regarding his height.

“I just laughed at the idea, and I knew then that I wanted to do standup,” recalls Williams. “And the idea that he called me out of the crowd expecting trouble and wound up hiring me just shows he knows what’ll work, and he sticks with you.”

Mencia’s loyalty to his friends and his low-key, everyman exterior are the same now as they were in 2004. Yet there is a noticeable difference between his life before the series and his current existence. He still greets coworkers and visitors alike with hugs and hand bumps, but he’s part of a big machine now, more beholden to deadlines and promotions. He spends his days in a suite of offices on a Hollywood studio lot rather than at home, and he is no longer able to take a day off to cruise around L.A. But the added responsibility is a tradeoff he’s gladly made.

Of course, as genuinely approachable and even kind as Mencia seems behind the scenes, he’s been a polarizing public figure from the start. His website even shows his favorite pieces of hate mail from people who can’t stand how openly he airs America’s racial dirty laundry. Surprisingly, however, he notes that the angriest people are folks from places like Ecuador, who rush up to him in public or send notes complaining that he’s never made fun of their ethnicity. And he also feels that he and his show have been misunderstood by many who take offense.

“My show is backyard – you and your friends hanging out in the backyard after a barbecue and two beers. It’s the shit you would say. And I think that people recognize that I’m not being mean, I’m not being vicious,” he explains, sitting in his spacious office. “You mean to tell me that black people don’t do white jokes, and Asian people don’t do Hispanic jokes? We all make fun of each other – that’s just the way it is.”

In fact, Mencia feels that, by tearing each other apart with laughter, his show has enabled people to come together.

“I can’t be the black show. I can’t be the white show. I wouldn’t know what to do there, but I can do a show as an American who sees all that stuff and laughs at it and says ‘Hey, it’s OK to laugh at this whether you’re black or white or Hispanic,’” says Mencia. “And another thing that the show has done is allow a lot of white people to laugh at this stuff, when most of the time they’re told they can’t say or laugh at things anymore. This show is for everybody, so laugh your ass off. We get calls all the time from people thanking us for that.”

One particular part of his act does seem to get singled out more than most, however – and it isn’t a racial thing at all. It’s his portrayal of “stupid” people, and his mocking their speech patterns with a “dee dee dee” that many interpret as a mockery of the mentally handicapped. But even with this, Mencia claims that the increased visibility he’s received from doing Mind has resulted in some odd responses.

“It came from a joke where I was making fun of stupid people – normal stupid people, and how they fuck everything up,” he explains. “Everyone has a moment where you see a couple you’ve never met and you think, ‘I hope they don’t have kids.’ Why? Because he’s ‘duh,’ she’s ‘duh,’ and then their kids are ‘dee dee dee!’ In the end, it’s not about the mentally retarded, and I know people who are mentally retarded, and now they say it. Slightly retarded kids from schools tell me, when they’re in class and other people get the answers wrong, they go ‘dee dee dee.’ And I’m saying this to kids in special-ed class who are mildly retarded! But they get it, and that’s all that matters.”

‘You’re a Fucking Thief’
Some others don’t “get” Mencia’s success, however. Two people who seem particularly annoyed about it are fellow celebrity comics Joe Rogan, of Fear Factor hosting fame, and ABC sitcom star George Lopez, who are the loudest among many comics who have accused Mencia of stealing jokes from themselves and others.

In fact, a story has entered into comedy folklore that Lopez once found Mencia at the Laugh Factory and grabbed him by the neck, slamming him against the wall while threatening him due to his belief that Mencia had lifted 13 whole minutes of his act to use in an HBO special. Yet Lopez did not return CityBeat’s calls asking about Mencia, and the idea of HBO executives – certainly savvy tastemakers in American comedy – not noticing that much material being stolen defies logic.

Mencia’s friend and fellow comic Ted Sarnowski, who drove Mencia around back in their earliest days as comics in 1988 and was rewarded nearly two decades later with a writing job on Mind, claims to have a crystal-clear recollection of how the feud with Lopez began.

“I did a radio show with Frazer Smith on KLSX, and Lopez was the resident comedian, and I had a joke about the enchurrito – did an enchilada fuck a burrito, and there’s the enchurrito? Unbeknownst to me, George Lopez took that joke and was using it without my permission, not knowing I’d given the joke to Ned, saying it was better for him,” says Sarnowski. “This was back in ’88, when they all first started. I never gave Lopez the joke; he took it from me after I did it on the radio. I gave it to Ned, and that’s where George started his whole ‘You’re a fucking thief’ [thing].”

A more direct attack on Mencia’s credibility has been waged by Rogan, who established himself as a headliner through years in clubs as well a major role in the long-running NBC sitcom Newsradio. Rogan is also a master martial artist and a commentator for Ultimate Fighting Championship telecasts, and on the night of Saturday, February 10, at the Comedy Store, he apparently decided to blend those two worlds by staging a verbal battle royal over the issue with Mencia, who was also at the club.

Thanks to Rogan’s cameraman friend named Redban, who constantly films his public appearances for Rogan’s website as well as for Redban’s own, the footage hit the Web and created a sensation. In it, Rogan loudly brings up several examples of jokes he claims Mencia stole, with Mencia denying all the claims, even as a third comic, Ari Shaffir, shows up to claim Mencia stole a joke from him as well – and then there’s a clip of Shaffir telling the allegedly stolen joke on a TV show in 2004.

The joke is about the idea of creating a wall along the Mexican border to keep Mexicans out – and then wondering how to create that big of a wall without using Mexican labor. Here again, the claims against Mencia don’t seem to hold much weight.

For one, the normally outspoken Rogan ignored two attempts to discuss the issue with CityBeat. And secondly, Shaffir’s claim on the joke is unfounded. I heard Chicago comic Tim Joyce tell the exact same joke and saw him receive a standing ovation for it at a showcase for producers and network executives at the former club Moomba in fall 1999, a full five years before Shaffir claims to have invented the joke.

In other words, despite Rogan’s pages of ranting about the issue at Joerogan.net, the best example he and his cohorts can think of is one they patently didn’t create, either. When dealing with topical, news-related humor, jokes can often cross over into the realm of the meme, becoming a common thought that anyone may share with countless others.

Ultimately, the entire incident backfired on Rogan, according to Comedy Store talent coordinator Tommy Morris, who says Rogan has been asked to stay away for a while, while the stage remains open to Mencia.

“The thing being misconstrued is that we chose Carlos over Joe, but the whole issue really has to do with Joe Rogan illegally taping inside the club,” explains Morris. “Joe went onstage and was fighting a beef that had been going on for years, so we let it go for a few minutes. We ran around the room asking people to turn off cell phones to avoid another Michael Richards incident,” in which competing club the Laugh Factory was spotlighted as the location of Richards’s racist tirade last November, thanks to cameraphone footage taken by audience members. “We didn’t realize that his cameraman had run out, grabbed a camera, and was filming from around the doorway.”

According to Morris, Rogan had already been banned from filming at the club, because “he was putting outlandish stuff on his website. We told him we’d love him to perform here, but just not to tape here, and that was established months and months ago.”

So Rogan was asked to “take a break,” which Morris said was clearly explained as not being a ban from the club, “but Joe is the one who came back on the Internet and got ugly. And if you project negativity, you’ll get that right back in return.

“I know what they say about Carlos being a joke thief, but isn’t that the oldest fucking issue in the history of comedy? Robin Williams, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Lewis – all called joke thieves, but all are among the greats,” continues Morris, his voice rising in frustration over the whole situation. “Joe can say we’re going down without him, but the truth of the matter now is that we’re doing better than we have in years. Joe’s actions don’t reflect the respect he claims to have for us in words. He does care about Mitzi, she cares about him. I want Joe here, I want balance in all of this, but it’s gonna be a while.”

For his part, Mencia attributes the accusations to “jealousy, and it’s part of the way it’s always been,” he adds.

“You name me a comedian that becomes popular, and [others will] say that’s hacky bullshit. It comes with the package,” he says with resignation. “As soon as I started getting fame, I knew I’d be representing people regardless of what they think or don’t think. I have a good heart, I’m a good human being and a nice person, and I’m gonna try and be that person for the longest time I can. You might not understand everything I am, you might not like my cussing, but would you like to have a kid who takes care of his family, who’s responsible and spreads laughter and life lessons through his TV show? If my kid turned out to be exactly like me, I would be proud.”

Nice and Twisted

2007-12-19T23:09:00.000-08:00

Comedian Dane Cook has learned the secret to getting away with anything

By Carl Kozlowski

Hanging out with comedian Dane Cook can be a dangerous proposition. By his own account, he estimates, “At least 15 of my favorite restaurants have closed after I started going there.”
The closings weren’t by order of the Health Department. Rather, they’re just another part of the bizarre, unexplained events that seem to follow Cook everywhere he goes – whether his life is being threatened by a fellow customer for cutting in line at Rite Aid, or he’s getting caught in the middle of a gang fight at the Sunset Strip’s dearly departed “Rock ’n’ Roll Denny’s.”

“I was sitting there with four of my buddies from Boston,” says Cook over a long lunch at a different Denny’s. “I had just said, ‘I haven’t had such a good time in a long time,’ when suddenly 12 guys pull up in Escalades, come in, and immediately start throwing ketchup bottles at this group of guys who look pretty shady themselves. Every patron immediately went for the kitchen, because they were blocking the [exit] doors and whipping ketchup bottles, and at that moment I knew what the passengers of the Titanic felt like.

“But after it was over, I felt like, ‘What a rush!’” He laughs, swigging a Coke. “But we should be scoping out places to hide right now. It’s part of living in L.A., dude.”

Cook’s mix of comedic storytelling, manic energy, and self-deprecation has earned him a rabid following in both his native Boston – hometown of Jay Leno, Denis Leary, and Steven Wright, among many others – and his adopted hometown of Los Angeles. When his name is announced during his regular weekend gigs at the Laugh Factory, the crowd erupts in the kind of cheers normally lavished on rock stars – replete with squeals from female fans pleased to find in Cook a comic who resembles Ben Affleck more than Jon Lovitz.

Cook’s career got another boost on Tuesday, when Comedy Central Records issued his new CD, Harmful If Swallowed, the inaugural release from the cable network’s new label. It comes with a DVD compilation of his Comedy Central appearances, including the uncensored hour-long version of his 22-minute televised special. This fall, he’ll appear in both the Farrelly Brothers’ Siamese-twin comedy Stuck on You and the Ice Cube action flick Torque – and he’s developing series ideas with UPN.

The release of Harmful also represents a vindication of Cook’s lifelong comedic dreams. He grew up listening to Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor, and wishing he could duplicate their magic, but he might never have made it onto any stage, thanks to a crippling series of childhood panic attacks.

Cook literally had to pretend he didn’t exist in order to survive his first performance. While trying to work up the courage to do his own material, he’d watch other Boston comics at an open mike hosted by a pre-fame, pre-Mr. Show David Cross.

“He kept asking for ‘Ernest Glenn,’ so my hand shot up on his fifth try of the name,” Cook recalls. “I went onstage as Ernest Glenn and scored a laugh with my first joke. It was about a tabloid headline that read ‘I Was Raped by a Snowman.’ That’s not part of my repertoire now.”

What is part of his repertoire now is a freewheeling style that can have Cook humping a sidestage mirror or cracking jokes while performing handstands by the end of a set. He veers wildly between innocuously goofy ideas, such as wondering what it would be like to have a pet ram, and comically graphic tales of sexual embarrassments. Sit too close, and you might find him singling you out as someone who’s just as twisted as he is.

“My being aggressive onstage now is all a put-on, because I used to be the most introverted guy in school,” Cook says. “I would get sick if I had to talk in front of the class. Then I’d go home and tell my dad I wanted to be a standup, and he’d say, ‘Whoa, then you’ve really got to find your voice, to talk to people.’ Once I figured this out, standup saved my life and gave me a life. I’ll always support it and do it, no matter where my career takes me.”

One place his career has taken him is to the hallowed stages of the late-night talk shows. He was thrilled to land a spot on the Late Show with David Letterman, but that evening he got an even greater surprise upon learning in his dressing room that Letterman was sick, and the backup host would be none other than Cook’s childhood hero, Bill Cosby.

“I couldn’t believe how nice he was,” Cook says. “He came into my room, where I was sitting alone waiting for my family, and talked to me for a half-hour about comedy, and made me feel like I was special, just saying my name over and over, like ‘Dane Cook! Dane Cook is in the house!’” He slides into a pitch-perfect rendition of the comedy legend. “Then, as I was about to start my routine on the air, he came up and hugged me and whispered, ‘Massachusetts, baby! Go get ’em!’ and I had the best set of my life. Because what could go wrong after that?”

Indeed, not much has gone wrong, and these days each show Cook does seems like smooth sailing. The key to his success, he explains, lies in an old Redd Foxx quote.

“Years ago, Redd said one of my all-time favorite comments in comedy: ‘If you’re likable, you can get away with saying anything,’” he says. “I realized I was likable, and I decided to see how far I could push people, and how much I could get away with. I love dark and Evil Dead ideas, and those go through my brain, so I feel I can go from friendly, warm, and relatable to bizarre and twisted, and people will go along for the ride. Thankfully, they have.”

Sick of the system

2007-12-19T23:01:00.000-08:00

Michael Moore takes aim at America’s deadly health care industry By Carl Kozlowski

The doctors are in: Michael Moore and LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa offer their prescription for a healthier city

Think of Hollywood movie premieres and images of red carpets, glamorous celebrities and paparazzi will likely come to mind. Michael Moore had an entirely different idea in mind for the Hollywood debut of his new film “SiCKO.”
The rabble-rousing populist documentarian, who previously took on
automaker General Motors over massive corporate layoffs in “Roger & Me,” confronted America's gun and media culture in the Oscar-winning “Bowling for Columbine” and exposed the horrific handling of the War on Terror by the Bush administration in the 2004 smash hit “Fahrenheit 9/11,” actually did have a fancy premiere in Hollywood Tuesday night.

But on Monday he took his movie to the streets of downtown LA — literally.

In one of the more surreal movie events ever to hit Los Angeles, Moore arranged for a full-sized movie screen to be set up on a Skid Row street in back of the Union Rescue Mission and unspooled the film before a raucously appreciative audience of hundreds of homeless people, complete with popcorn and Pepsis.

With LAPD officers posted near the screen, the roar of police helicopters occasionally scanning from the skies and the sound of sirens passing rapidly in the night, it was an occasion vastly different from the staid critics' screening held the previous Thursday at The Grove's movie theater on the West Side.

But make no mistake, the chance to sit among the poorest of the poor as they watched a famous man actually show up and advocate for their needs was a powerful experience.

As Moore strode from behind the screen toward the crowd in his trademark baseball cap and sneakers, dozens of people in the audience leapt to their feet spontaneously, pumping their fists in the air and screaming his name while others ran toward him to shake his hand or attempt to hug him.

It was clear that this was no mere publicity stunt. The only press around was a cable movie channel and a crew from Noticias television, leaving the Pasadena Weekly with a citywide exclusive interview with Moore, thanks largely to the fact that that same night Moore abruptly called off the next day's scheduled press events in Beverly Hills in favor of participating in a health care reform rally at Los Angeles City Hall.

“I said to Michael I want people who are in the street and in the movie to see the movie, and asked if he could do a premiere on the streets of Skid Row. He loved the idea and made it all happen,” said Andy Bales, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission. “I've seen the film four times at other cities' events and I think it will get people talking — and hopefully it's his goal too to move us from me-centered to we-centered society and make sure everyone has health care.”

Children of God
Indeed, “SiCKO” is a film that speaks squarely to the concerns of the poorest members of society, as when Moore tells the story of a 63-year-old homeless and disoriented woman named Carol Reyes, who was dumped off by a taxicab in front of Union Rescue Mission in March 2006 after officials at Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital decided that caring for her had become too costly.

Moore shows the incredibly sad footage, taken by the Mission's security cameras, of Reyes pacing lost and alone and wearing only a thin hospital gown on the street. She had long lived in a public park in far-away Gardena and had no idea she would be dumped in downtown's Skid Row, leaving her in danger until Mission staff went out to see what was wrong.

Initially, it was impossible to determine which hospital she had come from because the names of two different hospitals had been rubbed out from her patient wristbands. But eventually the Bellflower hospital was pegged as the culprit, and public outrage forced officials to do their jobs.
Criminal charges were filed against the hospital's officials and Kaiser was forced to pay a large class-action lawsuit settlement designed to stop the practice of patient dumping from occurring again.

“These corporate hospitals like Kaiser take patients who can't afford to pay their own hospital bill in cabs and dump them like they're garbage in front of these buildings, when they're human beings created by God,” says Moore, speaking from behind the giant movie screen on San Julian Street as “SiCKO” was shown.

“It's a travesty, and I'm so grateful to the people here at the Rescue Mission and Andy Bales because day after day, week after week, they saw sick people dumped here and one day they said ‘enough is enough' and they called the police on the hospital, and the police and city attorney filed criminal charges. It was a rare moment when the rich faced arrest for their treatment of the poor.

“When somebody is left to die in an ER or on the streets of LA, you should call 911 and report an attempted murder: murder by the hospital, murder by the health insurance company, murder by the pharmaceutical company, because that's exactly what they're doing.”

Reaching out
It may sound like Moore is merely unleashing his usual righteous indignation, but the surprising thing about “SiCKO” is the fact that he lays out his arguments in a relatively subdued fashion. This isn't the Bush-bashing spectacular of “Fahrenheit,” and he's not pulling a string of pranks to get his point across like he did on his two Emmy-winning 1990s TV series, “TV Nation” and “The Awful Truth.” He doesn't crash the offices of any health care company to subject CEOs and their public relations shills to hilarious humiliation.

Instead, Moore realized that even as “Fahrenheit” exploded to set the all-time gross record for documentaries with its $120 million take, he had become such a polarizing figure that he risked having half of America tune him out completely on the subject. So he decided that — just as the best legislative progress comes from bipartisan cooperation — he too had to reach across the ideological divide and point out that the American health care debacle is no single party's fault.

He even takes his biggest slap at Hillary Clinton, pointing out that she sold out over the years between her 1994 efforts to create universal health care as first lady and her current status as Congress's second-largest recipient of health care lobbyist donations.

Moore's new approach is a decided attempt to have the issues take center stage, rather than his own controversial image, which was burned into the American psyche at the 2003 Oscars ceremony when he went on live worldwide television to warn that the rationale for the then-impending war in Iraq was built on lies rather than any genuine threat to our national safety.

“But people should ask why I'm controversial. I told the American people from the stage of the Oscars that we were being lied to about weapons of mass destruction and I got booed,” he recalls. “These days, I get a lot of Republicans stopping me on the street and apologizing to me. They now see I was trying to warn them the Emperor has no clothes, and I'm now in the middle of mainstream America.”

It's middle class, mainstream America that Moore really focuses on in “SiCKO.” He realized that the media had long informed Americans of the fact that more than 50 million people lacked health coverage in the US, so he decided to turn his attention to those who are ostensibly covered and still get screwed through payment denials, refusals of life-saving procedures and insanely high premiums.

One particularly sad segment of the film spotlights the tragedy of Dawnelle Keys, a Los Angeles woman whose

18-month-old daughter Mychelle contracted a 104-degree fever, vomiting and diarrhea on May 6, 1993. Keys tried to take her toddler to the emergency room at King/Drew Medical Center and found a doctor who said Mychelle had a bacterial infection that needed immediate treatment with antibiotics.

Yet because King/Drew was considered an unaffiliated hospital under Keys' Kaiser Permanente health care plan, the insurance giant refused to approve the medication and attendant blood culture, forcing Keys to spend hours begging for an ambulance to take her daughter to a Kaiser-approved hospital.

By the time Mychelle was finally taken to the approved hospital, she was in need of resuscitation. Within 30 minutes of arrival at the “correct” facility, the child was dead.

“She would have been 15 and a half years old now,” said Keys at a health care-reform rally Moore attended at Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday morning.

Horror stories
Other victims depicted in the movie include a retired couple who were forced to move into a relative's storage room when health care costs forced them to sell their house, and a woman whose husband died on her birthday because the health insurance company she worked for refused to approve a bone marrow transplant from his own brother.

Moore collected the tragic tales after putting out an open call through his Web site, www.michaelmoore.com, for people to submit their health care travails. Within a week, he had received more than 25,000 emails on the subject and that total continued to grow exponentially.
“Over the past few decades, the pharmaceutical companies have done an excellent organizing job for us. They have so abused the people of this country, even those who have health insurance, and the people who think they're covered find that the whole point of the companies is to see how little of the bill they have to pay,” Moore said from the podium at the same rally.

“Health insurance in this country is a racket; it's Vegas, and the house always has to win. It's a system based on figuring out what the odds are and that's why they don't wanna insure people who might get sick. They send out investigative teams to find out if you had pre-existing conditions so they can get their money back.”

“SiCKO” offers damning testimony from former insurance corporation employees who blow the whistle on the corner-cutting prevalent in the industry, with one woman showing that her former employer would refuse anyone who had any pre-existing condition found in a 37-page list. But the climax — and the film's sole problem-solving prank — centers upon the plight of volunteer 9/11 rescue workers who now suffer from life-threatening illnesses that the government won't cover because they weren't on the public payroll.

In a brilliant move, Moore rents three boats and fills them with the sick volunteers before making a hilarious trip to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The reason for the excursion is that the US-run base houses accused terrorists, who, officials at the prison facility have openly bragged, receive the finest medical care possible.

Moore decides to take the rescue workers there in hopes of enabling them to receive the same quality care as our alleged national enemies. Instead, they wind up receiving the care they need and huge supplies of medicine from a Havana hospital, but the trip has nonetheless resulted in the US Commerce Department investigating whether Moore broke laws in defying the government's embargo against the communist nation.

“Sixty-two percent of the American public now is opposed to the embargo against Cuba. The American people have had it, and are tired of being told who the enemy is. The American people fell for that when we were told Saddam was going to attack us,” Moore says at the Skid Row screening. “We don't wanna listen to anyone else in the government telling us who our enemy is, whether it's Saddam or Castro or whatever. We as human beings wanna live in this world with other human beings, and the people in Cuba are human beings and we want them to share with us and we will share with them.”

Furthermore, Moore believes that government outrage over his trip is yet another sign of the Bush administration's efforts to quash dissent in the post-9/11 world.

“The Bush administration is coming after me because this film is an embarrassment to them. I pointed out how the detainees we have at Guantanamo Bay are getting better health care than the 9/11 rescue workers who ran down to Ground Zero to save peoples lives,” says Moore. “That is so wrong on so many levels, so they're going after me because I point out the truth to people. What kind of free country is this anyways, where you make a documentary and you've got the government investigating you? What kind of free country is it where you can't travel where you want to travel? I'm just grateful the Bush administration is showing the American people exactly how free we are.”

But what of those critics who point out that Cuba's health care system is ranked 39th in the world by the World Health Organization, two places behind America's supposedly hopeless system? The movie shows the list, but Moore himself doesn't discuss that salient point in the film. He had no problem laughing off the critique in his Skid Row interview, however.

“We're paying 60 times as much as the Cubans are,” he says, shaking with laughter. “And we're only two steps ahead of them. I think it's pretty funny.”

‘A Christian thing to do'
While the American way of life deteriorates at home, Moore shows that the quality of life in some other nations is vastly better. He takes the audience on a European vacation to England and France, revealing societies that are stable democracies with full speech and press freedoms and well-off families. In Paris, he joins a dinner of American expatriates who speak with awe at the services that French society provides, extending far beyond free health care to include 24-hour house calls from doctors, free college education and even free laundry service.

Yet the Americans stress that the tax rates in their adopted society don't cramp their dreams, pointing out that they have good homes and cars to go along with their lack of worry over basic survival.

And in England, he spotlights a doctor who still manages to own a new Audi and a million-dollar home on his government salary. Moore sums up the travelogue by questioning whether we're taught contempt for the French simply because the government doesn't want us to be jealous and start getting any ideas about free quality care for ourselves.

“These are countries that say we're all in the same boat and we sink or swim together. Countries that live with the concept of ‘we' and not ‘me.' It's not ‘me me me' in these other countries, it's ‘we,'” says Moore. “And if we allow too many people to slip between the cracks of society, we all suffer. Not just those who slip between the cracks, but all of society is ruined. All the rest of the world's 25 leading industrial nations provide health care as a basic human right. Could it be that maybe they're right and we're wrong?”

Despite all the sadness spotlighted in the film, Moore finds hope in the fact that the majority of Americans are finally getting fed up. While he argues that most Americans are brainwashed by newscasts often funded by pharmaceutical commercials, he also feels the true need for a better way is starting to break through the ad clutter.

Moore also said he was encouraged by California having two competing health care reform proposals working their way through the halls of government in Sacramento. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is touting a plan that mandates that all Californians purchase health insurance from a private carrier, but places few controls on the price and quality of the coverage. Businesses would be forced to spend 4 percent of their payroll costs on providing insurance to employees or paying into a state fund for uninsured workers.

Meanwhile, two competing Democratic bills offer their own distinct visions. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez has a bill that would cover all children, but would not cover single, childless and unemployed adults and would exempt the self-employed and businesses with payrolls less than $100,000 per year.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata would also exempt the self-employed, but according to a report by the Los Angeles Times, would mandate health insurance for individuals making at least $40,840 per year and families of four with earnings at or more than $82,600.

But Moore believes that it's the federal government that needs to come up with one overarching piece of legislation in order to prevent a morass of 50 competing state-level bills, and he heartily endorses HR 676, a comprehensive health care bill co-sponsored by US Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich and his fellow Democrat John Conyers.

Moore firmly believes that true and lasting reform is coming to America as soon as the current White House resident is shown the door at the end of 2008. But until then, he has three last things for all of us — especially the enemies who like to toss epithets such as “communist” at him — to consider.

“Go for a half-hour walk each day and eat some fruits and vegetables. Take care of yourself, and that's what I need to do,” says Moore, who has lost 25 pounds and counting on a diet and exercise program. “Second, demand that the candidates running for president next year make a pledge to support universal health care for all, and it's not enough to say they want it — they need specifics in the plan.

“But behind it all, we need to realize that if we say we're a Christian nation, providing health care for every American is the Christian thing to do,” concludes Moore, a Catholic who embarked on his quest for social justice after opting not to become a priest.

“I don't know why we call a Christian act socialism. I think Jesus would want for every one of us to take care of human beings and guarantee it for everyone.”