The Right Stuff-A Talk With Comedian Steven Wright

The Right Stuff–
A Talk With Comedian Steven Wright

by Benjy Eisen

Steven Wright doesn’t go on stage and ask, “Why’d the chicken cross the road?” He doesn’t do knock-knocks and he won’t talk dirty for a cheap laugh. He has never handed out rain gear and then smashed watermelons onto the front five rows. No, Steven Wright is an authentic comedian, an absurdist with a gift for not only being weird, but for also being able to make us — and the world around us — look weird.

“I’ve tried to write jokes about three times and I can’t sit down and write a joke on purpose. It’s just too forced,” explains Wright, in a phone call from Rhode Island. “The world is just so much weird stuff all around, I just notice things in my daily life and that’s where all the material I’ve ever written has come from.”

Wright is one of the great observers, a comedian who gets on stage and gives us 50 percent truth, 50 percent absurdity and we laugh at all of it, because all of it is laughable. Or most of it anyway. “If I think it’s funny, if it makes me laugh, I write it down,” he says. “But I cannot predict, 20 years into it, which ones they’re laughing at and which one’s they’re not. It doesn’t surprise me if they don’t laugh and I think it’s hilarious. It doesn’t surprise me at all, it’s happened so many times. They’re in charge of what I keep. They’re like the editors. The audience is deciding everything.”

So then, if the audience doesn’t laugh, does that mean that it’s not funny? “No. I just think that they didn’t agree with me.”

One person who agreed with him from the start was Johnny Carson, former host of “The Tonight Show.” Carson’s executive producer discovered a young Wright performing stand-up at Ding Ho’s Comedy Club and Chinese Restaurant in Cambridge, MA, and invited him to perform on the show. Carson immediately asked him to return for a second time — that same week. Wright proved so uniquely funny that his nearly unprecedented double visit raised enough eyebrows and caused enough laughs to virtually kick-start a successful career in comedy. A career that, two decades later, has made Wright a legend of American comedy.

So legendary, in fact, that a number of unofficial fan websites have been dedicated to him since virtually the birth of the Internet. In 1999, Entertainment Weekly published an article about the plethora of Steven Wright websites which offer “Wrightisms,” with just one problem … most of the jokes on them aren’t his. No one is sure why, but they, along with a wealth of e-mail chain jokes, are falsely attributed to him. That, in itself, could somehow be part of a “Wrightism.” Taking the Internet wrongs and making them (excuse me, but I have to) “Wright,” Wright says that his official website is finally going to be launched later this month. Like the accidental outcome of some of his fan websites, the official one won’t have any actual Wright material either. What will be on it? “I don’t know,” he laughs. And leaves it at that.

In 1989, Wright won an Academy Award for the film The Appointments of Dennis Jennings. It was a short that he co-wrote and starred in. Nearly a decade later, Wright made his directorial debut with One Soldier (which, again, he wrote and starred in). One Soldier was screened at film festivals and eventually ran on the Independent Film Channel. And now, he’s starting to think about another film project, perhaps getting ideas for it together after a short live tour that includes a stop at Whitaker Center on October 24. At this point, however, not much about the film is clear other than it may be a Western.

“They’ll be some horses in it,” says Wright. “That’s as far as I am. That’s all I can say now that I know will still be in it when it comes out.” When I ask if that’s how he’s going to pitch it, he laughs and says, “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to say. I’m going to have a big meeting. Then I’m going to time the silence. If I can break 20 seconds, that’ll be my record.”

Talking of records, Wright released a comedy album in 1986, called I Have A Pony. It was nominated for a Grammy, but lost to Bill Cosby. “He had so many already, I wish that I had gotten it,” he said. When I tried lightheartedly to pick a rivalry between the comics, Wright laughed and said, “He’s a legend. He should get it.”

Maybe. But the same could be said of Steven Wright. Entertainment Weekly placed him as one of the 50 funniest people alive. On GQ’s list of 75 greatest jokes of all time, Wright has five entries, including one in fifth place. His HBO specials are enormously popular. In addition to being a welcome guest at virtually all of the late night television talk shows, Wright has also appeared on such programs as “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons.”

On the silver screen, Wright has had parts in Desperately Seeking Susan, So I Married An Axe Murderer, Natural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs, Mixed Nuts, Canadian Bacon, and others. He had a guest-starring role in Albert Brooks’ The Muse. He was the guy on the couch in Half Baked. His unmistakable voice can be heard in the animated films, The Swan Princess and Babe 2: Pig In The City.

All told, Wright’s favorite thing to do is still to perform live. And, even with all of his credentials, it is still what he is best known for. “There’s nothing like being in front of a live crowd,” he says. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s pretty intense.”

As I talk to Wright on the phone, between questions and answers there are a lot of silences and I get the feeling that the joke is on me. His flatline delivery and turtle pace seem even more surrealistic in conversation that they do on the stage or on screen. Midway into our chat, I stump him. I ask if he would ever find himself in his audience. “Would I find myself in my own audience if I didn’t know me? I’m going to have to build a time machine in order to answer that.” Until he builds it, who else can be found at a Steven Wright show? “The audience is made up of all different kinds of people. They’ll be people that are 15 years old and they’ll be people in their 60s. The thing is…there’s like no in-between.” We both laugh and, once he knows I get it, he adds: “Can you imagine?”

Steven Wright will be performing one of his famous live shows at Whitaker Center on October 24. Tickets are $32.50 and $29.50 and are available at the Whitaker Box Office or by calling 214-ARTS.