'West Wing' Addition: Alan Alda

DATE December 3, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Alan Alda discusses his acting career
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, TV critic for the New York Daily
News, sitting in for Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of "The West Wing" promotional spot)

Mr. ALAN ALDA: I have returned to announce my candidacy to be the next
president of the United States.

Unidentified Announcer: Alan Alda joins "The West Wing." A new challenger...

Unidentified Woman: We've got a situation.

Unidentified Announcer: And what timing.

Unidentified Man: I can't move.

Unidentified Announcer: What a season. All new "West Wing," NBC, next
Wednesday.

BIANCULLI: Alan Alda, after years of hosting PBS science shows and adopting a
fairly low profile, is playing senators in two current high-profile Hollywood
projects. On TV's "The West Wing," he plays a noble and principled senator, a
California Republican named Arnold with eyes on the presidency. In the movie
"The Aviator," directed by Martin Scorsese, Alda plays a ruthless senator.
The film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, is Alda's first
movie role in three years.

Alda is most famous and celebrated for playing "Hawkeye" Pierce, the
pacifistic Korean War doctor, in the long-running CBS sitcom "M*A*S*H." That
show's final episode remains the most-watched entertainment program in TV
history. Alda is the only person to win Emmys for acting, directing and
writing. After "M*A*S*H," he starred in "The Four Seasons," "Sweet Liberty,"
"The Seduction of Joe Tynan" and Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and
"Manhattan Murder Mystery." His recent films include "Flirting with Disaster"
and the Woody Allen musical "Everyone Says I Love You." Terry spoke with Alda
in 1997, when that film was released. Here's Alda singing in that film.

(Soundbite of "Everyone Says I Love You")

Mr. ALDA: (Singing) Looking at you while troubles are fleeing, I'm admiring
the view, 'cause it's you I'm seeing, and the sweet honeydew of well-being
settles upon me. What is this light that shines when you enter like a star in
the night, and what's to prevent her from destroying my sight if you center
all of it on me? Looking at you, I'm filled with the essence of the
quintessence of joy. Looking at you, I hear poets tellin' of lovely Helen of
Troy. Darling, life seems...

TERRY GROSS, host:

That's Alan Alda from the soundtrack of Woody Allen's film "Everyone Says I
Love You."

How did you start working with Woody Allen?

Mr. ALDA: I worked with Woody for the first time, I think, about 30 years ago
on a pilot that he wrote, and I had one of the most--a relatively small part
in it. And it was about a troupe of improvising actors, and I had been an
improviser. And I think it's one of the things that makes me enjoy working in
his films is that I enjoy improvising, and he wants the actors to improvise.
And we had--after that pilot, we ran into each other every once in a while,
but I didn't actually work with him again until "Crimes and Misdemeanors,"
when he just sent me a letter and asked me if I wanted to be in the movie.

GROSS: I thought it was so clever of him to cast you as, you know, this vain,
self-absorbed producer, because you had had this image for so long as, you
know, like, Mr. Feminist, Mr. Sensitive. And it was such a wonderful turn
for you. I...

Mr. ALDA: Yeah. You know, what's funny about that is that I think the last
six or eight movies I've been in, I've played either the bad guy or somebody
who does kind of reprehensible things. And everybody always says, `Boy, this
picture is such a departure,' you know?

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. ALDA: I must have made such an impression the other way that every time,
no matter how many times I do the other thing, people are going to think it's
a departure.

GROSS: Let me ask you a few questions about "M*A*S*H." What were your first
impressions of the script?

Mr. ALDA: I thought it was an extremely good pilot. I was in the Utah State
Prison at the time, and it was basic...

GROSS: Filming. Filming a movie.

Mr. ALDA: Yes. Yes. Well, yes. Yes. Yeah, I was trying to work on the
image there a little bit. I was shooting a movie for about three weeks in the
Utah State Prison. And they sent me the script of "M*A*S*H," and it was the
best script I had read while I was in prison, certainly, but it was also the
best script of any television show I'd ever seen, I think. And Larry Gelbart
had written it, and it was really sharp, you know? But I was concerned about
what would happen after the show went into production. I didn't know if Larry
would be part of it. And I was worried that it would become the high jinks at
the front and that the war would just sort of exist as a pretext for silly
stories. And, in fact, some of the early scripts done by freelance writers
who didn't know what the possibilities were and were sure that on television
you don't go for anything substantive, wrote, in essence, "McHale's Navy" in
Korea, you know, "McHale's Navy" on the ground. And it really scared me at
that point.

But by then we had already had an agreement, because before I agreed to do the
show, I had a midnight meeting with Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds, who were
producing the show, and we all agreed that we wanted to do a show in which the
war was seen for what it is, as, you know, a place where people are badly
hurt. And the humor came out of the reaction to that; the humor came out of
the crazy pressure everybody was put under.

GROSS: Now I want to ask you about your formative years. You grew up in show
business. Your father was Robert Alda, who, among other things, originated
the role of Sky Masterson in the Broadway production of "Guys and Dolls,"
played George Gershwin in the 1945 film "Rhapsody in Blue." What was he doing
before the movies when you were a young boy?

Mr. ALDA: Well, when I was born, he was in burlesque, and I spent the first
three years of my life standing in the wings watching strippers and comics and
chorus girls. And it was a bizarre beginning to a life. I think probably a
lot of--most of the questions you ask me today can be answered by that, I
think.

GROSS: What did you make of it as a very young boy watching strippers? Did
you have any idea what that was about?

Mr. ALDA: I didn't. I didn't. But I do remember--you know, children are so
much more aware than everybody gives them credit for. I remember
thinking--'cause when the chorus girls would take me up to their dressing
room, you know, they would take me up and they would comb my hair and talk to
me, and I was like a mascot, like a little pet. And then they'd say, `OK,
Ally(ph), we're going to change our clothes now. Turn your back.' And I'd
stand with my face pressed against their costumes hanging on the wall, and I'd
smell the perfume and I'd hear them behind me. And I remember thinking, `They
don't think this means anything to me, you know, but this is really
interesting.' It had to make--it had to have a tremendous impact on me. It
was a very unusual beginning to a life.

GROSS: Do you remember the most impressive striptease act from that period?

Mr. ALDA: No. I have talked--I've interviewed people, strippers and comics
from that period, because I was thinking of writing about it, and I heard some
really interesting stories. There was a woman who stripped with a snake and
another woman who stripped with a bird, trained birds, and the birds would
take her clothes off. (Laughs) But the one with the snake was really weird.
And there was another one who stripped with a swan; she did a dance called
Leda and the Swan. She said, `Well, I got another booking in Philadelphia, me
and the duck.' You know, they were--they all had to have a gimmick, as they
said in the song in the musical "Gypsy." And some of them, the gimmick was
just that they would go as far as they could go, and usually on closing night
they would be raunchier and more naked than they had been up until then,
because if the cops closed them down, they were on the road the next day
anyway.

GROSS: Well, growing up on the burlesque circuit, you must have grown up
thinking that one of the most important things you could do was have a good
gag, good jokes.

Mr. ALDA: I really had a tremendous education watching the greatest comics
that we had at the time: Rags Ragland, Phil Silvers, Red Buttons. Hank Henry
was another great burlesque comic; he was my father's partner, and my father
and Hank would write their own sketches. Watching them from the wings and
then later watching Sam Levine when he acted with my father in "Guys and
Dolls"--I would stand in the wings twice a day for two years watching them,
and I'd especially watch Sam. All of these people were a tremendous education
for me. I stood on the side and, watching from the side, you see not only
what their performance is, you see where it comes from, 'cause you're only a
few feet from them. And you hear the audience reaction and you see the way
they play the audience. They have the same material every day, but they play
the audience in a different way depending on what the audience gives them
back. And that interaction gives you a clue into the way their brains work.

I think I grew up with that interaction with the audience in my head, so when
I would write for "M*A*S*H," for instance, which we didn't do in front of a
live audience, I would know--when I wrote the comedic moment, I would know
what the audience reaction was. I could hear their reaction. In most cases,
that would be true. I mean, I would--then if I'd see it played in front of a
live audience, I'd be happily surprised to see that I had guessed right.

BIANCULLI: Alan Alda, speaking with Terry Gross in 1997. We'll hear more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's interview with Alan Alda.

GROSS: I know when you were seven, you got polio. What were your early
symptoms?

Mr. ALDA: It seemed like a bad cold. I was in a--we were in a movie theater
that night--the first night that I got it. My father worked for Warner Bros.
so we always went to the same theater on Hollywood Boulevard, the Warner's
theater, because he could get in free there. He was on a term contract and
making basically nothing a week. And it was a crowded theater and I was
sitting a few rows away from them and I was blowing my nose, honking all
during the show. And on the way home I was honking in the car and my mother
said, `Was that you? I thought'--she's like, `I couldn't watch the movie,
somebody was making so much noise.' And we got home and I threw up and then
had all these symptoms of the flu. It seemed like the flu. The next day--she
recognized the fact that I had--that I probably had polio. She had been
reading in the newspapers and in magazines about the symptoms, and she saved
my life because she had a doctor there within--you know, by the next morning,
a doctor was in. By that time my neck was stiff already. And, you know, your
muscles just contract.

And the other woman who saved my life was Elizabeth Kenney, the nurse,
although I never met her. She was a nurse in Africa, Sister Kenney, who
discovered a cure, a treatment for polio. This was before there was a
vaccine. And if you got it you either died of it or you were paralyzed, until
Sister Kenney realized that you could get the muscles that had contracted
because of this disease--you could get them to open up again through heat and
massage. And just about two years before I caught the disease she was invited
to come to America and she lectured all over America, and the doctors who
treated me had learned from her, I suppose, how to do her treatments.

GROSS: So this heat treatment--I've seen a little bit and read a little bit
about it. They would wrap your legs in, I think, very, very hot wool
blankets--wool blankets that were--What?...

Mr. ALDA: Yeah. Yeah.

GROSS: ...boiled in water? Or...

Mr. ALDA: They weren't boiled, they were heated in a double boiler, so it
was dry heat, so it wouldn't scald you. But it actually...

GROSS: Oh. So your legs weren't burned by it?

Mr. ALDA: Yeah. Actually, all my--every muscle in my body, I think, maybe
except my left arm, was affected, so I had to be wrapped--my whole body was
wrapped up in these things; every hour a new hot pack. And they were
practically scalding, really. It was a very tough thing for my parents to go
through because they had to do this every hour and they had a seven-year-old
kid who was screaming and pounding the bed in pain. And, you know, I was
trying to cooperated with them. I didn't want them to have to suffer, but I
couldn't help it. It was very painful.

But it saved my life. I have no residual effects from this. But the only
residual effect I have is that the massage was so painful, because they would
stretch your muscles--a little bit like taking your thumb and putting it back
by your elbow--that's how painful it was. And to this day I can't take a
massage. Everybody says, `Oh, hey, we can get a massage down here,' you know,
when we go on vacation. And I say, `Make an appointment for me at the other
end of the island.' I don't want to be anywhere near it. Massages to me are
torture.

GROSS: You were...

Mr. ALDA: But if you wanted to get information out of me you send me to a
masseuse and I'll give names. I'll tell where they all are. I can't stand a
massage.

GROSS: Do you have any sense of what the impact was on you of being out of
circulation for--I guess it was about eight months while you were getting
these treatments and from being really sick? I've really met so many artists
who were very sick for an extended period during their childhood.

Mr. ALDA: It sounds like a good straight line but...

GROSS: Right, and they're sicker today.

Mr. ALDA: Yeah, that's right.

GROSS: The humor today.

Mr. ALDA: I remember standing on my bed looking out the window at my friends
playing without me and wishing I could play with them, but none of them even
visited me. Only one came to visit me. But you have to realize that there
was an epidemic on at that time, and even though I was no longer contagious
the parents didn't want to take the chance. And it was like the plague. It
was like the time of the plague. You were a pariah. So I think I functioned
like somebody who was an outsider from that time on.

There was several things that made me an outsider. One was that. Then my
parents had me tutored because I needed to be tutored that year, but that
seemed convenient to keep tutoring me so I could travel with them. So I
didn't go to school until about the seventh or eight grade. So I didn't know
how kids worked. I didn't even know what the language was. When I was--when
my father was in burlesque, the burlesque comics would say, `You want to beef
about--Hey, I'm beefing about this. I'm beefing about that.' `Beefing'
meant--as far as I knew, it meant arguing.

So I get to this school and this kid gives me a shove and I complained to him
and he says, `You want to beef about it?' And I said--I think beef means to
argue, and I say, `Yes, I do want to beef about it.' Pow! He gives me a shot
in the head. This other guy comes over and he gives me a shot, and the people
don't even know me now. They've got somebody they can hit. So I didn't know
how things worked. I was an outsider there. I was an outsider because I came
from burlesque, and the world was divided up into entertainers and civilians.
And I would look at the civilians and think that they came from another
planet.

So I've always been something of an outsider. It always--I would laugh when
I'd read people--write about my life who would say that I had a sheltered life
and I was, you know, Mr. Ordinary Nice Guy and all that stuff. I mean, I see
things from a very skewed angle.

GROSS: Just about everyone I've ever met who grew up in the '50s or '60s was
in some production or another--high school, junior high school, summer camp,
of "Guys and Dolls." Were you ever in a production of it?

Mr. ALDA: Yeah, I was in a--when I was a young, out-of-work actor, only about
six or seven years after I'd stood in the wings watching them do it every day,
every week, I got a call that a little theater in Illinois was doing it, and
would I come out there? And did I know the show? And did I know the part?
And I said, `Of course, I do.' You know, when you're an out-of-work actor
you say yes to everything. Well, I'd only seen it. I hadn't learned it. I
didn't know the songs really well, you know, and I didn't know the words. And
they had lost their leading man and had to do it in two days. I had two days
to get out there. And my hands were shaking when I got on the plane. And I
didn't stop shaking until the plane--I never stopped shaking. I mean, I went
on opening night with two days' rehearsal. I didn't know what I was doing and
it was...

GROSS: Which part was it?

Mr. ALDA: Pardon me?

GROSS: Which part?

Mr. ALDA: I was playing my father's part.

GROSS: Sky Masterson.

Mr. ALDA: Sky Masterson. And I was out on the opening scene and the--I
couldn't even afford my own suit, so they loaned me a suit that had been
hanging on a rack for six months someplace. And I kept my hands in my pockets
because they were shaking so hard. And I started--I said I'm nervous because
I was playing with a piece of lint in my pocket, you know. And I'm out there
on the stage playing the scene with the mission doll. So halfway through the
scene I take my hand out of my pocket with the lint in it and, you know, I
causally look down at the lint and it's not lint, it's a cockroach.

GROSS: Oh, no.

Mr. ALDA: Yeah. And it was very interesting. The sight of that cockroach
brought me back to reality with such a jolt that I lost all my nervousness and
I really looked at the woman I was talking to and really talked to her, and I
opened my mouth and a song came out. Everything was great. I mean, I'm
surprised they don't bring a cockroach on with me, you know, every time I go
on stage as a result of that.

GROSS: Wow, what a thought. Now you were going to go to med school...

Mr. ALDA: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and then became, I think, an English major. What was the turning
point where you said, `Well, forget that, it's show business'?

Mr. ALDA: Well, I never really wanted to go to medical school. My father
wanted me to go. He always wanted me to be a doctor. And...

GROSS: And you were, but just on television.

Mr. ALDA: Yeah, and he was finally satisfied with that. But the thing was I
agreed that I would go to a pre-med course in chemistry. At the time I was
afraid that if I did well in this chemistry course I'd have to be a doctor and
then I'd have to touch sick people. So it really didn't--it was not in my
best interest to do well in the course. And I managed to sort of sleep
through the classes and I got a 10 in the final exam.

GROSS: Ten out of 100?

Mr. ALDA: Yeah, 10 out of 100. Yeah. It's (laughs)--and the professor
called me into his office and he had this kind of stunned look on his face and
he said, `Why are you here?' And I thought that was a better question than
I'd seen on any of the tests.

GROSS: Do you think part of your aversion to being a doctor had to do with
being sick when you were a kid?

Mr. ALDA: Part of my disinclination to be a doctor?

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. ALDA: I don't know. You--yeah, maybe. Could be. I don't know. No, I
think I just thought it was icky to get--to have, you know, people bleed on
you and things like that. I want--here's the thing. Doctors were civilians.
I was in the arts. I was in show business and that was my life. That was my
identity. I didn't want to do anything else. And when people ask me for
advice, young people who want to be actors or writers, especially if they want
to be actors, I say to them, `If there's anything else you can do, you should
do it. If there's any hint that you can do something else, don't waste your
life trying to be in show business, because you have to have an all-consuming
need to do it, an all-consuming passion.' And I did have that. There was
nothing else that I would consider being.

GROSS: Alan Alda, I want to thank you a lot for talking with us.

Mr. ALDA: Thank you.

BIANCULLI: Alan Alda, speaking with Terry Gross in 1997. Next week he'll be
featured in TV's "The West Wing," playing a senator running for president.
Later this month he also portrays a senator in the new Martin Scorsese film,
"The Aviator," about Howard Hughes.

I'm David Bianculli and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: Coming up, comedian Patton Oswalt has "No Reason to Complain."
That's the name of his stand-up show on Comedy Central premiering this
weekend. Also, film critic David Edelstein reviews "Closer," a movie with
some of the best-looking actors in the business.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Patton Oswalt discusses his life and career
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, in for Terry Gross.

Our next guest is comic and actor Patton Oswalt. In 2002 Entertainment Weekly
named him their "It" comedian of the year, describing him as `one of
stand-up's most scathingly literate minds.' His newest stand-up special, "No
Reason to Complain," premieres on Comedy Central this weekend. Oswalt's
previous specials have been shown on Comedy Central and HBO and he appears
frequently on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." On the CBS sitcom "The King of
Queens" he plays Spence. And in the movies, he's been seen recently as the
monkey photographer in "Zoolander," the disco deejay in "Starsky and Hutch,"
and is Delmer Darian in "Magnolia." He's written for Mad TV and been hired
to punch up screenplays. Oswalt's first comedy CD was called "Feelin' Kinda
Patton." Terry spoke with Patton Oswalt in July when that comedy CD was
released. Let's start with a track from it called "How We Won the War."

(Soundbite of "How We Won the War")

Mr. PATTON OSWALT (Comedian): I don't have any material about the war or
anything like that, man. I really--I just don't have--'cause guess what,
hippies? We (censored) won! Yeah! We went in there and we met our stated
objective to uh--hang on. We went in--here's--wait a minute--to go to
liberate the--hang on. No. Here's why we went. Wait a minute. We went to
get the uh--to strike a thing--uh--we (censored) won, OK?

(Soundbite of cheering)

Mr. OSWALT: It's like our country is being run by a bunch of, like, bad
alcoholic dads right now, or, you know, it's like, `You said you'd get me a
bicycle for my birthday.' `It's a drawing of a bike. (Censored) go out and
play. Leave Daddy alone. Daddy's drinking. Go outside.' Drawing of a bike.
Close enough.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Patton Oswalt, welcome to FRESH AIR. What kind of reactions do you get to
your political material?

Mr. OSWALT: It's a real mixed reaction these days, and that was the main
reason I put the CD out. You know, I'm on a sitcom, so a lot of people--I
either get, you know, people that have seen my stand-up for the 16 years that
I've done it and go, `Oh, yeah, he does political stuff, whatever,' or I get
people who have seen me on the sitcom or on TV and are expecting a very
family-friendly kind of evening. And I either get, like, disappointment,
which is always depressing, or kind of condescending outrage of like, `Hey,
you dumb sitcom actor,' you know, `you don't have an opinion on'--like, you
know what I mean?

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. OSWALT: Yeah, I feel like I'm--it's almost like I'm being viewed as a
dilettante, I guess, whereas I've been doing this stuff for a long time. So,
you know, the reactions are always very mixed. I've gotten some very violent
reactions, especially in, of all places, Pittsburgh, where I was booed off
stage.

GROSS: Really? What got you booed off stage?

Mr. OSWALT: The material about Bush. They just got really, really quiet
during that whole section. And then I went back into my other stuff, and then
there was a moment of silence. And a guy in the front row said, `Why don't
you take your faggot ass back to Hollywood?'--like really sharp, like the
whole room heard it. And then I kind of went, `Ha-ha, are you still angry
about the Bush stuff?' And the whole crowd just `A-a-a-a-a!'--just all
started, like, screaming and pounding their tables. They were all--there was
300 people at the Funny Bone in Pittsburgh pounding their tables and chanting
`Bush rocks.' And I had to be led off stage by the club owner while people
were throwing drinks on me and throwing fried shrimp at me. And...

GROSS: Wow.

Mr. OSWALT: ...I got locked up in the manager's office because--they had to
lock me up in there because people, you know, wouldn't leave and fights were
breaking out, and people were down at the bar going, `Send him down here!'
You know, like, it was insane.

GROSS: Now--so where do you put your political material in the context of a
set? Do you lead with it and then risk getting booed off stage before you've
even gotten started?

Mr. OSWALT: Well, you know...

GROSS: Do you put it in the middle where you can kind of sneak it in or...

Mr. OSWALT: Yeah. I never lead with it. I remember a long time ago when I
was starting out and I was just such a--you know, `I want to be edgy da-bi,
da-bi.' And I would just come right out of the gate trying to freak people
out. And I was working with, of all people, Bill Hicks in North Carolina, and
he said, `You need to walk them towards the edge. Do you--you've got to walk
them towards the edge, man.' So I've always remembered that.

So, you know, I just do jokes that have nothing to do with politics, and then
I do jokes that are very personal and then jokes that have to do with
politics. And I think I've learned now how to mix it in a little better and,
you know, get them to at least trust you and go, `Oh, OK, he's funny. You
know, he knows what he's doing as a comedian,' and then start edging in. And,
I mean, I think now I make fun of both sides equally. But the minute you make
fun of one person's side, they just--you know, arms folded across the chest
and superangry.

GROSS: When you were a kid and you were being funny, was that considered in
your family a discipline problem?

Mr. OSWALT: It depend--I mean, I could be funny, and they would appreciate
it, and then other times I was just a loudmouth and I would just embarrass
them. Or I'd get into arguments with my grandfathers, who were both very
conservative, and just ruin family dinners. And it was always a drag. I
was--again, I look back on some of my behavior and go, `Oh, man, if I'--I'm
amazed my dad just didn't hit me with a pipe 'cause I would--if I could go
back now and see myself with my dad, I would tell my dad to hit me with a
pipe.

I wasn't, like, a bad kid, but I was the classic overeducated, rebellious
teen-ager, but rebellious within just disagreeing with stuff for no reason.
So I was the kind of kid where my parents would go, `Well, it's raining
outside, son.' I'm like, `What do you mean? Just 'cause there's water coming
out of the sky doesn't mean it's raining, man!' You know, just--I was like
the safest, plushiest suburban punk, you know what I mean? Like no--I had
never felt any real doubt or pain or anything like that, but I wanted--and it
was so sad, too, because I realize now I was like the--I missed the
whole--all the great movements in music I missed, you know?

Like, all during the late '70s I was just listening to, you know, Kansas and
Styx. And then in the mid-'80s I saw the movie "Repo Man" and thought I had
discovered punk. And I was the classic, like, unhip letting-you-in-on-it kid.
So, like, it's 1985 and I'm in Sterling, Virginia, going, `Hey, man, have you
heard of a group called Fear? 'Cause you got'--and they're like, `Yeah,
we--that--yes, five years ago, Patton. What are you babbling about?' Like,
you know, I could not have--I missed the whole--I was living outside of DC and
I never saw Fugazi, for crying out loud. I went and saw Genesis on the
Invisible Touch Tour, so I had no basis for my rebellion.

GROSS: Your father was a Marine. So was he even more into discipline when
you were into being rebellious?

Mr. OSWALT: My dad actually, I feel like, was rebelling against his
upbringing in that I think he had a pretty strict upbringing, and he was
going, `Well, I don't want to put that on my kids.' I do remember one night
he told me, `I don't want to ever see you and your brother go to war.' So I
think he was the kind of warrior that had--who had seen, you know, three years
of combat and realized how, I think, pointless and brutal and impersonal it
was and, you know, was very much a man of peace because of it. Even though,
you know, he was still every much--he and my mom are very conservative people,
and yet they're embarrassed by--they're not like just, you know, cold
ideologues. So as far as discipline, you know, my dad had a much more kind of
passive way of going about it. He was smart enough to let me alone, to just
read and daydream and, you know, come up with my own thing rather...

GROSS: Were you named for General Patton?

Mr. OSWALT: Was named for General Patton. And you know what? Parents, don't
put that on your kids. Don't name your kids after world-changing conquerors
'cause there's no way they're going to live up to it. You know what I mean?
`This is my son Alexander MacArthur Tecumseh,' you know, `Rommel. That's him.
And he's ready to take your order at the Starbucks.' Like that's--don't do
that to them. It's horrible.

BIANCULLI: Comic Patton Oswalt, speaking with Terry Gross last July. More
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's interview with comic Patton Oswalt.
Oswalt appears frequently on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," and on the CBS
sitcom "The King of Queens," he plays Spence.

GROSS: What was your early comedy like, when you first got up on stage?

Mr. OSWALT: Just really superforgettable because I came along--I started
comedy in '88. It was a really good and bad time to start. It was good
because the boom was dying, but it was bad--and I'm seeing this happen again
with "Last Comic Standing"--where there were these certain things that
everyone knew you had to do as a comedian. And there was this mentality of
`You've got one shot. You've got one shot. You spend your time now getting
ready for that one shot, and if you blow it, you're done.' And it was also
all about you get into comedy so that you can get out of comedy, so that you
can get a sitcom or get into movies and not have to do this anymore, whereas I
was very confused because I thought doing comedy was great, like I thought
that was the reward.

I mean, when I became an emcee and was making 25 bucks a set, you know, I
wasn't rich. But if I did four weekends a month, I could pay my rent and buy
enough Ramen noodles to survive. And I thought that was amazing. Like, I
couldn't believe that I only had to work three nights a week, and everyone
else was--back then you had to get your clean five minutes and get on "The
Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson and hope that he called you over to the
couch. And that was it. And everyone structured their stuff to be a clean
five minutes.

And I was constantly being pushed and pulled between, you know, trying to be a
normal-looking comedian in a suit. I remember I went down to the Potomac
Mills mall and bought these awful, awful double-breasted, cheap suits, like
four of them, like an orange one and a yellow one and a blue one and a black
one...

GROSS: Blah.

Mr. OSWALT: ...with a bunch of colorful shirts and skinny ties. Like,
that's what I was going to do. Here's my--it was awful. But then I was
also--luckily, I had friends like Blaine Capatch and Mark Voyce, who were
comedians back then who just were not paying attention to any of that and were
kind of the freaks. But I got along with them better because they would
reference books that I read and music that I was listening to at the time, but
that was kind of how the alternative comedy movement was starting in its own
way, so that when we all moved to San Francisco and then, later, LA, it was
just the people that--because then once Johnny Carson left "The Tonight Show,"
these guys' plans were in ruins.

GROSS: Now you've said, `You can't argue comedy with anyone.'

Mr. OSWALT: No.

GROSS: `Comedy and eroticism are beyond argument and qualification. If
something makes people laugh or arouses them, then the argument is over.'

Mr. OSWALT: Yeah.

GROSS: Do you ever feel like arguing with an audience and explaining, `No,
it's funny. Let me explain why'?

Mr. OSWALT: Yeah.

GROSS: `Laugh. It's funny.'

Mr. OSWALT: I know exactly what you're saying. Yeah, it is hard to--it's
hard on both sides. Yeah, you want to argue your point; like the people that
were booing me off stage in San Francisco. I literally said, `Do you really
think that after the half-hour set you've just seen,' where I compared Bush to
Lex Luthor and said that he's literally the Antichrist--I literally said
that--`do you now think that I'm actually pro-Bush? Like, you must know that
I'm being ironic right now.' I felt like a college professor, like, you know,
begging a class not to walk out on me, and they still booed me off stage.
And, also, at the same time you get frustrated because you see people laughing
at something that's so easy and so pandering and hackneyed. But you don't
want to be the one going, `Don't you people see how empty and unnutritious
this is?' because then you feel like a snob. Like, it's so frustrating both
ways.

GROSS: I think it would be great if, at the end of your act, you left and
then you came back on the stage; instead of doing an encore, you critiqued the
audience.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. OSWALT: That would be...

GROSS: That would be fun.

Mr. OSWALT: `All right. Let's review. Now you did not--you laughed hard at
this bit and yet were silent for the one after. But that doesn't make sense
because it would follow that if you saw the irony in this, you would
naturally'--like, really come on with a blackboard.

GROSS: Well, you...

Mr. OSWALT: `Those who want to stay and take notes, yes, fine.'

GROSS: I want to play another track from your new CD. And this is something
totally apolitical. It's called "My Christmas Memory."

Mr. OSWALT: Yeah.

(Soundbite of "My Christmas Memory")

Mr. OSWALT: When I was growing up, my favorite Christmas memory was the
Alvin & The Chipmunks album because we had it on LP. And you know what I'm
talking about? The, you know, (singing mimicking Alvin & The Chipmunks)
`Christmas, Christmas time is here.' Remember that song?

Audience: (In unison) Yeah.

Mr. OSWALT: The little chipmunks are singing, and then there's that guy,
Dave, going, `All right, now, Chipmunks, let's all,' ber, ber, ber. My
brother and I had that on an LP, so what we would do is we would play that on
the slowest speed possible on the record player. So then it sounded like four
normal, monotone guys just singing this boring Christmas song and then this
demon from, like, the ninth level of traitors and murderers just screaming at
them. And then it just was so different. It was like, (singing) `Christmas,
Christmastime is here, time for toys and time for cheer.'

(Soundbite of growling)

Mr. OSWALT: Simon (growls).

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. OSWALT: OK. `We adore you, little ...(unintelligible).' OK. `Alvin
(growls).'

GROSS: That's from Patton Oswalt's new CD.

And, you know, I grew up listening to Alvin & The Chipmunks, and my brother
and I used to slow it down. And I don't...

Mr. OSWALT: Yeah.

GROSS: I think this is just, like, really funny. Can you talk a little bit
about how you decided to make this just, like, childhood memory into something
to do on stage?

Mr. OSWALT: Yeah, that's a bit I really like because I feel like I'm kind of
unveiling an actuality because the way people react to that, it's something
that I think a lot of people did do and didn't realize how funny it was, like
it's...

GROSS: Exactly, yeah.

Mr. OSWALT: Yeah. Nothing's funnier than when you're just doing something
that you're not intending it to be funny or weird or memorable. It's just
something you compulsively want to do out of fun. And so I just--it wasn't
like I decided to make it a bit. I think that was another one of--because I
don't sit and write. I just go up with some general ideas, but all of my bits
usually get written when I'm on stage. And I think I was doing a show near
Christmas, and I was doing a couple other bits about Christmas, and then that
memory on stage just popped into my head because I think that's when I really
started getting good or at least happier with what I was doing--was when I was
comfortable enough on stage to just start talking about something and trust
that it would go somewhere, you know? And sometimes it doesn't, but when it
does, like the Chipmunks bit, it's like, oh, I get a really good, solid, real
bit out of it.

GROSS: When you were growing up, who were the comedians that made you want to
be a comic, too?

Mr. OSWALT: When I was really, really young: Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby's
early albums were like--"Why Is There Air?" I think is one of the best comedy
albums I ever heard. And then there was a Richard Pryor album called "Are You
Serious?" which was this--it's the album that covers his transition from being
this kind of Las Vegas, Bill Cosby, clean-cut clone to then being the really,
you know, raucous kind of comedian that he became. But it's called "Are You
Serious?" And he's sort of making the transition, like he's got one foot in
the, you know, "Richard Pryor: Live in Concert" thing, and he's got his
other foot still in Bill Cosby world. And it's so raw and real. And it was
so captivating to listen to a guy that was just that comfortable in being able
to put a clanky transitional thing out as an album and be that real and in the
moment on stage.

And then much later, when I was starting, Jay Leno I thought was one of the
greatest comedians I've ever seen live, which is why I think a lot of
comedians are so frustrated with him because we don't know what happened to
him. He was unbelievable as a live comedian: smart and sharp and, really,
kind of irreverent and just didn't seem to care if the audience liked him or
not but, like, just a rock star. And then he got "The Tonight Show," and all
of those qualities--it's like he sat on them. I don't get it. And then when
he's a guest on other people's shows, he's the old Jay, like supersmart,
superquick, superfunny. I mean, he just did "Inside the Actors Studio" and
so subversively mocked every single thing that James Lipton was trying to do
with him. I was like, `What happened to this guy? That's the--ohh!' You
know? It's just so frustrating.

GROSS: Well, you know, two of the comics who you mentioned who were really
influential on you, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor, are African-American comics
who used, you know, their upbringing as the subject of their comedy.

Mr. OSWALT: Yeah.

GROSS: Did you feel that your upbringing would be worthy of that?

Mr. OSWALT: No.

GROSS: You know, that your suburban upbringing would have the same kind of
edge?

Mr. OSWALT: No, absolutely not. That's why I was so desperately, in my
teens, flailing to be dangerous, you know, like--oh, man, I remember after I
saw "Repo Man"--again, "Repo Man," that's how out of touch I was. It took
till "Repo Man" for me to get--I bought, like, a cheap pair of handcuffs, and
I would clip them onto my belt loops, like, `I got handcuffs on my belt. Look
out!' You know?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. OSWALT: Could not have been a less-dangerous kid if I tried. Like, I'd
roll one sleeve up and, like, wear my boots but not tie the laces up because,
also, I thought, like, the idea of a rebel was like Judd Nelson in "Breakfast
Club."

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. OSWALT: That's how out of touch I was, just absolutely no edge, nothing.
So, yeah, these guys--like, the thing that also blew me away about, like, Bill
Cosby and Richard Pryor was it wasn't that they were comedians talking about
`the black experience.' They just were amazing comedians who happened to be
black. And they would talk about stuff in a way that would just be universal
to--a martian could come down and watch Richard Pryor's contra(ph) movies and
go, `Oh, that's what relations are like between men, women, black, white.'
You know, like they--anyone can understand it. It's so amazing how--everyone
talks about how Richard Pryor was edgy and vulgar and profane. But I think he
was one of the most emotionally assessable comedians I've ever seen.

BIANCULLI: Comic Patton Oswalt, talking with Terry Gross last July. His
newest stand-up special, "No Reason to Complain," premieres on Comedy Central
this weekend. Coming up, a review of the new Mike Nichols film, "Closer."
This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: New film "Closer"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

Following his acclaimed television adaptation of Tony Kushner's "Angels in
America," director Mike Nichols has turned to a four-character romantic drama
by the English playwright Patrick Marber.

"Closer" stars a quartet of well-known actors: Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Clive
Owen and Natalie Portman. Film critic David Edelstein says the movie takes a
cold look at modern relationships.

DAVID EDELSTEIN reporting:

I love it when movie stars talk dirty. Their images are so sanitized and
there isn't much sex in mainstream American movies to begin with. So give me
Clive Owen interrogating Julia Roberts about oral sex with Jude Law, or Owen
being straddled by "Star Wars"' icy princess Natalie Portman, making crude
anatomical references, and I'm a happy little voyeur. On the other hand,
"Closer" doesn't have actual sex. The undressing is all psychological.

The film is based on a play by Patrick Marber and directed by Mike Nichols,
the king of anti-romantic cinema, who made his name with "Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?," "Carnal Knowledge" and other fashionably cynical portraits
of heterosexual nastiness. This one is a sort of hermetically sealed chamber
drama in which four strangers play musical beds. In the beginning,
buttoned-up obituary writer Dan--that's Jude Law--meets punky magenta-haired
sexpot Alice, played by Natalie Portman, when they lock eyes on a London
street, and then boom! She gets hit by a car. They chat and flirt in a
hospital waiting room, then on a bus, then in front of his workplace, and you
can tell this is an opened-up play because the conversation is fluid even
though the settings keep changing.

Then there's a jump in time, Dan has written a novel about Alice and is having
his book jacket picture taken by Anna--that's Julia Roberts. After more
psychological undressing, they go into a long liplock, which is when Portman's
Alice shows up and things get dicey. Dan is so frustrated, he goes on the
Internet and pretends he's a woman named Anna, and has cybersex with
dermatologist Larry, played by Clive Owen. Then he directs Larry to the real
Anna's favorite spot, the aquarium.

(Soundbite of "Closer")

Mr. CLIVE OWEN: (As Larry) You are Anna?

Ms. JULIA ROBERTS: (As Anna) I'm sorry, did I photograph you? Did we meet
somewhere?

Mr. OWEN: (As Larry) Come on. Don't play games, you nymphette.

Ms. ROBERTS: (As Anna) Excuse me?

Mr. OWEN: (As Larry) You were up for it yesterday.

Ms. ROBERTS: (As Anna) Oh, was I?

Mr. OWEN: (As Larry) Yeah! Why do I feel like a pervert?

Ms. ROBERTS: (As Anna) I think you're the victim of a practical joke.

Mr. OWEN: (As Larry) I am so sorry. No. We spoke on the Net last night, I
know you've seen me.

Ms. ROBERTS: (As Anna) I wasn't on the Net last night.

Mr. OWEN: (As Larry) Where were you between the hours of 6:45 and 7 PM?

Ms. ROBERTS: (As Anna) That's really none of your business. Where were you?

Mr. OWEN: (As Larry) On the Net, talking to you. Well, I was talking to
someone.

Ms. ROBERTS: (As Anna) Someone pretending to be me. I think you were talking
to Daniel Wolfe.

Mr. OWEN: (As Larry) Who?

Ms. ROBERTS: (As Anna) This guy I know. It's him...

Mr. OWEN: (As Larry) No. I was talking to a woman.

Ms. ROBERTS: (As Anna) How do you know?

Mr. OWEN: (As Larry) Believe me, she was a wo--she wasn't, was she?

EDELSTEIN: There is something thrilling about the instant intimacies of
beautiful people. And the title "Closer" is apt, since the deeper emotion,
the tighter and crueler are Nichols' close-ups. He really gets in their nice
faces. The movie is about how people bond and then need, for some perverse
but deeply human reason, to test those bonds, which is a terrible idea. It's
not an accident that a key disastrous conversation occurs in an opera house
playing "Cosi Fan Tutte," Mozart's bitter farce of two men testing their
fiancees' fidelity.

I'm not going to spoil it by telling you who ends up with whom. But it's
worth pointing out that the two characters who at first appear to be
victimized end up as victors. They're the unromantic ones, the ones who
calculate coldly the relationship between sex and power.

Now if your taste runs to psychodrama with arch theatrical banter and booming
dramatic beats, you'll probably be blown away by "Closer." It certainly has
more nuances than comparable exercises by Neil LaBute, but it's in the same
arena. And I found it sour and airless with the feel of a mathematical proof.
The acting is superb, though, with one exception. Jude Law was in "Alfie" a
few weeks ago, and although his character here is supposed to have depth, it's
hard to see him as anything but a callow womanizer. Natalie Portman has a
chance to prove she's not the petrified zombie of those "Star Wars" pageants.
She's raw here, with a pleading presence that can suddenly turn cold. Clive
Owen is stunning, too. I'd never before noticed his big choppers, the center
of his frightening big-bad-wolf leer. He's the rough-trade Lennon to Jude
Law's fine-featured McCartney. My favorite of the quartet, though, is Julia
Roberts. She gives the quietest, least ostentatious performance, wary but
exquisitely vulnerable.

The oddest thing about "Closer" is that it's being hailed as an event for
putting sex front and center. But it's a sort of film that makes you think
twice about having it or at least risking intimacy, given the inevitability of
betrayal. It's actually the perfect sex movie for a puritanical culture.

BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for the online magazine Slate.

(Credits)

BIANCULLI: For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.