The Catalyst interview: Steven Wright

When Steven Wright made his national TV debut on the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson introduced him by saying “I think you’re going to find him a little different.”

“A little different” barely scratched the surface of the standup comedy routine America saw that summer night in 1982. Wright’s laconic delivery of brief observations, surreal and weird and gut-punch funny, was an immediate hit – so much so that Carson had him back on the following week.

He was soon one of the best-known comedians in America. He even won an Academy Award, in 1989, for a short film he co-wrote and starred in.

Massachusetts-born and bred Steven Wright’s idiosyncratic comedy has been emulated and adapted over the years by many standups. But never, ever duplicated: As the audience will immediately notice when Wright takes the Palladium Theater stage Nov. 10, nobody does it better. To borrow (for no apparent reason) from Carly Simon.

St. Pete Catalyst: Talking about his music, Neil Young once said “It’s all one long song.” I found a quote where you said “My show is like a painting – it’s never finished.” They struck me as similar things to say. What do you mean?

Steven Wright: Oh, I love Neil Young. He’s one of my favorite guys. It’s like, when a painting’s finished, you put it on the wall. You do something with it. Then you start on another one. And then that one’s finished. This isn’t like that – it’s like I’m painting on the same canvas, all the time. Some things are there for a while, then there’s new things in there, then other things drop off. It’s all canvas, though. So if it was in a museum, it would be one painting, but if you saw it every two years some of it would be the same, some of it’s different. That’s how I see it.

Are there little white spots left untouched? Like “I’m going there someday”?

No, not at this point. You might paint over things, get rid of things, but at this point it’s all been painted on. Forty years I’ve been doing it.

Did your distinctive unemotional style emerge fully-blown from the beginning? I can’t imagine you as one of those “Hey, everybody, how are you?” kind of comics.

I was never like ‘Hey, how are you?’ It was always how it is, right from the beginning. You can tell this is how I speak. I’m really into surrealism and abstract wordplay and everything; sixty-five percent of it was like that from the beginning. There was other material that was more like, a normal comedian-thing. And after I kept doing it, then that stuff dropped away. And then it was, it’s just how it is.

I came upon this word, on Wikipedia: Paraprosdokian, which is a way of twisting words for surprising effect. It said “It’s popular among comedians like Steven Wright.” When you’re wring, do you ever think “This would make a good paraprosdokian”?

I don’t even understand – what is that word?

What I mean is, do you see things in terms of non sequiturs and absurdities?

No, another analogy I use is: The world is a giant mosaic painting. I started drawing and painting when I was in junior high. I still paint, sometimes. I did that way longer than I ever wrote anything, so maybe that’s why I have all these painting analogies. You know, a mosaic painting, little tiny fragments – the world is like that. A giant mosaic painting.

So when you wake up and before you go to sleep, there’s thousands of pieces of information that go past you. Conversations, something you read, something you hear on the radio, you see something, you’re thinking of something, you’re remembering something, all this stuff …

So I don’t try to write jokes. I did in the beginning. But now I just notice. I just notice things. I don’t go outside to see if I can find a joke. It’s just that I’ll see something and go ‘Oh, that could mean that.’ I’ll take this little piece of the mosaic from this square over here and connect it to that square over there. There’s a connection, but no one ever really connected it before. So I’m just observing and some things jump out as jokes.

When you first appeared on Johnny Carson’s show, in 1982, there was literally no one doing that kind of cerebral comedy.

Johnny Carson changed my life twice. From watching that show is even why I wanted to be a comedian. I would see these great comedians – Robert Klein, David Brenner, George Carlin, Richard Pryor. And Carlin was my favorite guy.

And when I went on in ’82, my life changed again ‘cause I went on the show. So I made my goal by watching it, then I actually went on it.

There was a radio show in Boston where this guy played two comedy albums every Sunday night. And I would be in bed with my radio; I was trying to find the Bruins game. I was a Bruins fan in the Bobby Orr days.

I accidentally stumbled onto this guy, and I tuned into this show every Sunday for two years. I’m laying in my bed, 14, 15, 16. And I heard every album till I was studying them without noticing.

And I heard Woody Allen performing standup. I didn’t even know he had done standup …

I know that album! “I shot a moose in upstate New York …”

Yeah, yeah! It’s a great album. So I’d be laying there listening to different guys thinking ‘I like that, no, I don’t really like that.’ But that album, like you said with the moose thing, within those stories there were jokes in there. And that’s how I learned the structure of a joke, from him. So I was very influenced by Woody Allen.

And George Carlin would talk about everyday, little things, which is what I do, except I do a different thing with it.

How about contemporary comics?

I like Bill Burr, and Chappelle, Chris Rock, Jim Gaffigan, Louis C.K. … and Hannibal Burress. He’s a genius, that guy. I think now, meaning in the last 10 years, there’s more great comedians at one time than there ever has been.

You’re coming to St. Petersburg – did you know the Dali Museum was here? It’s not far from the theater where you’ll be. I know you’re a big fan of Dali’s.

I’ve been to that museum many times, and I look forward to visiting it again. In fact, I think they have an entire new building?

Yeah, it’s been up for a few years now. Pretty spectacular.

On my Mount Rushmore of creative beings, there’s like the Beatles, Neil Young, Dylan, Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, David Lynch movies, Fellini movies … and Dali. Dali and Rembrandt are my favorite painters. And they’re completely different.

Everyone’s head is like a soup, made of different ingredients. I love Surrealism. Some of the titles of Dali’s paintings are insane. He had one painting called ‘The Weaning of Furniture Nutrition.’ And when I made one of my HBOs in the late ‘80s, I wanted to see if I could use that title. And we contacted the Dali estate people, and they wouldn’t let us use it. So I came up with another one, Wicker Chairs and Gravity, because I talked about wicker chairs in the show. And, I think, gravity.

Tickets are on the Palladium website, here.

Salvador Dali’s “The Weaning of Furniture Nutrition.” From dalipaintings.com.