The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Paul F. Tompkins

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Comedian Paul F. Tompkins talks with Andy Richter about growing up under the shadow of a contentious marriage, the gradual evolution to performing personal material, and making his mark on the podcasting world.

Hello, America, or at least the America who is listening to a podcast, even more specifically this podcast, which is the three questions with Andy Richter. podcast uh which is the three questions with andy richter uh but also today uh and i am very excited about this my dear old pal paul f tompkins is here andy hi hi how are you i'm well how are you i'm good i'm good this is your milieu this world is really, you're the king of podcasts. You get tired of people being like podcast Paul kind of thing? Well, you know what? That's a new one. I have not heard that before.

I just made it up. Old podcast Paul. Here he comes. He hates Dick Tracy. I hope that when you're like 90 sitting in the corner of a tavern every day, you shuffle in. That's my guest Paul. What the fuck? What is this bleak picture?

It's not bleak. You're getting out of the house. You're 90. But I'm 90 and I'm sitting in a tavern every day. But not for the whole day. You go in and you play Yahtzee with some young people and you regale them with tales of show. That actually sounds fun. See, doesn't that sound nice?

Yeah. Well, how are you doing? I haven't, I haven't talked to you in a long time. I know I'm, I'm doing okay. You know, I think I'm doing like everybody else is doing. It's, it's up and down and some days are better than others. And, you know, it's nice to have things like this to look forward to and feel busy and that you're doing something different than panicking

and, you know, wondering what life is going to be like in the future. Yeah. But I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. What is your thought process? yeah but i'm doing all right i'm doing all right how what is your thought because i mean my thought process of like what life will be in the future is i have just come to the conclusion i need to just stop thinking about it because it's like it's like trying to figure out who's going to win the 2023 super bowl you know i no fucking way of knowing oh bills um but i try to uh i i pretty

much get to that point i i always arrive at that point oh yeah because like where i am now is i have no idea what is going to happen i truly have no idea about anything i mean but it makes you realize well you didn't before either you know but you you sort of told yourself that there were certain things that you could count on and certain things that you, you could see the trajectory of events or blah, blah, blah. And then realizing like, wow, I just know nothing. I have no idea. I can't see into the future. And, uh, I just have to be, or I have to be, I have to be present in a way that I, I don't think I ever have been before? You know, and just living today and doing, and you know, my wife, Janie and I, we talk about this all the time because it's easy to get down on yourself about things.

And it's great to have somebody say, hey, you're just doing the best you can. Like if today's a bad day, tomorrow's a different day. And maybe tomorrow you'll do better and you'll feel better and you won't be as depressed or you won't be as as uh fatalistic or whatever but to having given myself the permission to have bad days and say that you know that we truly everyone is doing the best that they can right now. Now you're part of, you are a, from a big Catholic Philly family. Yeah. Is it a funny family? I mean, are you the funny one?

Pretty much everybody's funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's it was a lot of it was a lot of jokes and roasts all the time and um you know i i loved uh if i could get my mom to laugh that was like a big victory you know um because she's a tough nut to crack some she could be but you could you would see her laugh at she she was a person who liked to laugh and so if if you said something you thought was funny and it was not it did not get a laugh it fucking sucked it was really bad when it was treated like

you know you're you're being annoying right now as opposed to you're being hilarious right now right was was really it was always devastating you know and um so that she was was the person that I think was the beginning of refining of comedy skills. You know what I mean? Right, right. Figuring out, okay, how do I – I got to go and load it up. How do I phrase this so that it gets the desired effect? Yeah, yeah. desired effect yeah um you know because she could be she could be really tough and she could be really um uh uh she could really shut you down you know and uh it killed me every time it killed

me every time yeah yeah yeah she was just yeah she was just toughing you up she was like your first manager sure come on you can do better than that but she was she was one of those moms that was always the thing that i wasn't doing was the thing that she wished i was doing so when i was when i would do plays or i would do stand up you know it's like well i wish you would draw again like well mom i never got better. My art skills absolutely leveled off to a point where I stopped doing it because I realized I wasn't getting any better. And it was frustrating.

You know, it's like, I know in my brain what I want this to look like. And I can't make it happen, you know? And I wasn't interested enough to continue it, to pursue it, you know? What do you think the mechanism in her mind for doing that was, do you think,

do you think that she was like turning something that she did to herself onto you? You know, like, Oh, I, she had, she dissatisfied with herself.

Yeah. I think that she, you know, she was a very, um, she was a frustrated and burnt out person. You know, she was someone who did everything that, asked of her, of her generation,

her religion, her upbringing. And it turned out to be fucking hard, you know? She had six kids and my dad was very old fashioned. And I think that he believed his job was to go out and make a living and provide for the family. And then when he came home, his time was – he was off. He was off the clock. Right, right, right. And so she really grew to resent him.

And I grew up in a household with a broken marriage where everyone just stayed. And the tension was there every day, every single day. Did it change at a certain point or were you born into it, do you think? I wasn't quite born into it because I do have a younger brother. So there was a definite, after him, there was a definite point where it was declared over, silently declared over, you know, and this Cold War began. There were no more babies being made. Yeah, no more babies being made. And I was young.

I remember when I was very young and I remember when they moved into separate bedrooms. Oh, wow. And the reasoning was that, well, sometimes your little brother crawls into bed with us and we don't want to roll over on him or something. Which, you know, it took me a couple of years to decode that when I was like, oh, no, you guys, you can't stand each other. Yeah. And they did not speak to each other unless it was absolutely necessary. And, you know, it was, you go over to your friend's houses and you see how their parents are with each other and, you know, you know that it's different and that this is not,

that you know that this is not like a wholly practical choice, but that there is an emotion here. And I would sometimes hear my mother, you know, be, just be like angry in the kitchen, like slamming pots and stuff and railing against my dad or against us. railing against my dad or against us, you know, that she would, she just felt, she definitely felt like she was all alone in keeping this house together. We weren't helping her out. My dad, of course, wasn't helping her out. And that she, and she had nowhere to go. You know, she had nowhere to turn and she was stuck in this situation.

And it was a tough thing realizing that, oh, we're part of this. I'm part of the situation that you're stuck in. You know, I'm part of the reason that you are unhappy. Yeah, yeah. Was a real heavy burden for a kid. And I honestly, until my mom died in 2006, my dad died in 2011 and it wasn't until my dad died that the specter of their their terrible relationship was lifted like i remember the feeling of the weird feeling of relief i had after my dad yeah yeah and like oh yeah i've been like as long as one of them was still there this whole this whole heavy thing was always going to be on top of it.

Right. Right. You know? And of course then you have to deal with like the weird guilt of feeling relief about that, you know, but I, I, I lived sufficiently long enough to, to, to be able to deal with those feelings and say, I know what the, I can identify what this is and I'm absolutely okay with feeling this. It doesn't, it doesn't lessen any

other feelings that I have. But yeah, man, it was tough. It was tough. And it took me a long time to realize how tough it was and how much it impacted me. Even after going, you know, being in therapy and doing work on myself, it was, it's still an ongoing process. You know, I'm still processing it and still realizing a lot of things. And my relationship with my dead parents changes from, you know, day to day. And sometimes I'm mad at them and sometimes I'm not. And, you know, sometimes I'm forgiving and sometimes I'm resentful. And, you know, I do think, though, I mean, from my own experience, relatives with whom you have a problematic, problematic relationship that you end up feeling all kinds of things. But a lot of what you feel is resentment.

Yeah. And it's like, like, why did you put this on me? Yeah. They die. You feel a little bit like, whew, that they're gone. And then you feel bad about the guilt.

But I always feel like that the relief outweighs, you know, like the, the, the law, the, the absence of resentment is so much more vital and important than feeling guilty that they're gone. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Did you feel when your parents passed that, did you feel a change within, I mean, you can always pass and say you don't, that's too personal, but in your own marriage, did you think that like it created some freeing up in you that you could do something differently in your own marriage? I think that it did. I mean, when I got married, the big fear for me was I don't want to, because of whatever time bombs are buried within me, I don't want to replicate any part of that marriage. Because I did not have a good model for marriage growing up in the immediate. And I was like, what if I don't know how to do this? I was pretty sure that I did, but there was always that fear of like,

I don't want to be angry like my mom and I don't want to be remote like my dad. You know, I don't want to, and I can feel both of those things, uh, uh, happen at different times. And I, but I'm glad that I'm aware of it, you know, so I can, I can either head it off at the pass or I can process it quickly enough. My wife and I are great about talking shit out. We're great about it. And, um, I hope we always will be, you know, we fought a lot more at the beginning of our relationship than we did after we got married. Like, we were very much testing boundaries when we first got together and it got serious, you know, and all of the fights we had were about figuring out how do I stay who I am and be in a relationship with you? How do I, what concessions do I make? What am I willing to do?

And what are the things that are, that I don't realize are okay to concede on that it doesn't mean like I'm erasing my own identity to be in a relationship with you. erasing my own identity to be in a relationship with you. And then, and then we, we, we hit our stride as a, as a, as a, as a, as an entity, you know? And so now the fights we have when we do fight, if it's a big fight, it's like knowing that this is not a deal breaker. This is just a frustrating thing, and we're going to talk it out. And, you know, we'll use whatever tools we need to use.

If we need to bring in a third party to hash it out, whatever, we're prepared to do that, you know. I thought you meant like a hammer when you said whatever tools. No, sometimes we will get tools and we'll just we'll we'll build a device and we'll say what is this i think you're hitting each other with things i'll show you we have big inflatable hammers and then we just start laughing and we forget what we're even talking about that would be pretty awesome all right it's time for the hammers i think those i think those inflatable sumo suits are the key to a happy marriage

uh go get the big gerbil balls we are dueling i actually want one of those big gerbil do you remember we did that fucking ebay thing and i and i got inside one of those big gerbils. Do you remember we did that fucking eBay thing? And I got inside one of those gerbils. I do. Yeah, we did it. We did a, I mean, when was this? Like 2006? Oh my God. Something like that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was when the internet was still, nobody knew what the fuck to do with the internet. Yeah, yeah. And eBay basically hired the two of us to be comedy versions of ourselves to create short internet content. So we basically went around and did where you would see a remote piece in a late night talk show. We were doing those, but just to go on the internet to get people to use eBay. And the conceit was, I think, that we were teaching people how to win.

Yes. Because they were really pushing hard on the notion that you don't buy something on eBay. You win it. You win the right to pay money, the most amount of money that anyone was willing to pay for it.

What a victory. Victory is mine. This started out at $9.75 and I've paid a thousand dollars for it but yeah we had to do all kinds of weird shit and one of them was those big fucking hamster balls yeah which were hot so hot in there it was so hot in there the instant you get in it it's like fuck this this is not like unless we're in snow this sucks this is bad I'm gonna send you I have a picture

of myself in that thing let me I'm gonna send it to you alright yeah we also we were traveling around in an RV with our big dumb smiling faces on a giant sticker they put like one of those big skins over it

and it was us like it was us. Like, it was kind of like if you said like, smile like the biggest fucking glad-handing asshole you can be. And we did that. And we would be riding around because we drove all around. I think it was all in California, but we went from like. It was supposed to be all over the country. And then the thing shrunk so quickly to where it's like uh yeah we're maybe an

hour outside of la you'll go yeah yeah yeah well we did go we went north we went to like san francisco or something but we would be driving in this thing sitting around talking and todd levin who ended up being a conan writer was a like the copywriter on the thing yeah that's how i met him in this rv having a lot of fun and then and then we'd like drive past a building that had a mirrored front and i could and i would catch a glimpse of our big stupid faces and realize we're riding around in this basically this thing that says andy and paul are assholes and i and it would totally take i was like oh fuck that's right you know you would remind me periodically out of nowhere i guess when it occurred to you yeah yeah and you we'd be like

sitting there um and this is also before before smartphones were really a big thing so we weren't like on our phones all the time no no so there would be quiet moments we spoke to each other and then there'd be sometimes we just like kind of hang out and enjoy like the the rhythm of the road and then you would turn to me out of nowhere and say our faces are on the side of this thing yeah um but well now is is kind of does that situation at home do you think that inspires you to want to get into comedy just to kind of just to sort of seek out some levity and lightness or is it something that you just feel like you can do and you know uh i mean probably both i mean it definitely was a thing the thing about my about my mom particularly because i knew my dad is just like he's off in his own world and

so to get my mom to laugh was important because I could make other people laugh. Like when I would go to school, I was definitely like the class clown and everything. People thought I was funny. And I was like, I know that I'm good at this. So if I can make her do it, it's like, that's the proof. That's the true proof that I am meant to do this. And so, through high school, I was always funny. And then I knew that I wanted to be in show business.

And one time, I was getting close to graduating high school. And I think I was maybe going into my senior year of high school or I just entered it. And, um, I, it was, it was kind of late at night. It was like right before, you know, bedtime or whatever. And my mom and I got in an argument in the kitchen, like with only the, the light over the sink that was always on, we got in this like screaming fight about, because I said I wanted to go into show business and she got so mad. And I remember her saying, don't you realize how hard a life that is? And I said, but I said, yes, I do. Neither one of us knew what the fuck we were

talking about. Yeah. Yeah. But then that year, even though I did, I did the school plays and stuff like that. I had, I had convinced myself that I was going to go to college and I was going to figure out something else to do because I didn't know how to go about being in show business. I had no idea. And I remember my oldest sister, who was also sort of creatively minded. How much older? She's the oldest and I'm second to last. So she is, yeah, she is, I'm going to be 52. We're about 10 years apart. Okay, yeah, because that's practically a grown-up. Oh, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She had heard about, she'd seen something about an audition for a movie called Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was like a Disney sort of kids thriller kind of thing, you know, like a supernatural element. Jason. I remember it. Yeah.

Jason Robards was in it. I think. Yeah. Yeah. There was an audition for it. She sent me like the clipping, like they're going to be seeing people in Philadelphia. You should go do this.

And I didn't go because it was too scary. And I forget whatever excuse I told myself at the time was not that it was too scary. But I remember the feeling of like, I don't know how to do that. And I was like, you know, I probably was like, I don't know, 11 or 12, something like that. But I couldn't, even though I had done stuff at school, I'd been in front of audiences and, you know, I wasn't afraid to, to make, to, to like, uh, be funny in front of the class and stuff like that. This was too big and too scary for me. And I think it was the, I don't know if it was the, the, I don't know, honestly don't know what the difference between fear of failure and failure of fear of success is because they feel like the same fucking thing to me. They sure do.

But I was – I think I was scared to go and find out that maybe I wasn't good. Yeah. And it was easier to not try because then I could still have the idea that I was good. Yeah. still have the idea that I was good, you know? Yeah. And that is a, that's a thing that I've had to watch forever, forever. To that feeling of if, what if you go and you fail and then you'll know for sure that you're not good.

And that's, you know, getting back to the standup discussion. It's like, you know, it it definitely the setback that i felt like i i went through it kept me from wanting to try again because i was like it was the feeling of like well what if i work up an hour and nobody gives a shit you know what if i what if i work on an hour of stand-up material and people just shrug at it like that yeah that will hurt my feelings yes yes yes no i had i mean there's there's a i mean my analog for that that and i that i would talk to people about is like i said i was and you know just the way i look at it's like i was number one on the call sheet on three television shows like i had which is that in and of itself is being successful beyond my wildest dreams

absolutely when i started going into this thing yeah but all three of those shows quote unquote failed and and at the end of every one of i was the one who came up with that quote by the way And at the end of every one of those- I was the one who came up with that quote, by the way. So thank you for attributing it to me. His shows fail. It's a direct quote. Well, but you know what I mean? Absolutely, yeah.

You know, it's like the marketplace is a different thing than sort of like people's collective opinions or your own feeling about the quality of something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. opinions or you know your own feeling about the quality of something yeah yeah and but and at the end of it i everyone you know so many supportive people in my life that would say like the while the show was so funny and it was so well written and it's before its time and all these other things that are supposed to kind of assuage my sadness over it and i always would feel like yeah but america rejected me like like i i was put in front of America as, here's a show. This guy is supposed to be, like, you're supposed to fall in love with this guy and his crazy gang of cohorts. And then you're going to want to come back here until we, you know, for years and years until we take it away from you.

And I just would tell people, like, I get it. I know. We did a good job. I said, but there will always be just a big shit smear on my soul of being put in front of everybody and everybody going, eh, and then it's taken away. And like I say, I can rationalize my way out of all that. And people say such lovely things about the stuff that i've done and there are still people that you know will strangers just tell me how much they

liked one of these shows but it still is in there it's still this feeling of like oh well yeah you know and it and it has also informed me of like and maybe that's not for me you know maybe maybe that's just like maybe i'm an ensemble player which is like kind of more suited to my leave me the fuck alone ism uh um but yeah so but so did you think it was stand-up for sure at that time like when you're going in like is that did you have like a i didn't think it was stand-up for sure at that time like when you're going in like is that did you have like a i didn't think it was stand-up for sure until i went into stand-up like i because i just didn't know anything about it like i the thing that got me into stand-up was uh a friend of mine who was a couple years older had graduated high school before me went to college in arizona got into stand-up there and then when he came back to Philly, he said,

do you want to get an act together? I didn't know anything about open mics. I didn't know. I just didn't, I couldn't conceive of how one started. It seemed like a job that somehow magically other people had. I didn't know there was a way into it. And then the first time I set foot on a stage at a comedy club and I was performing in front of people that I did not know, and it was working well enough for me to feel like I want to do this again. That was it. That was it. I was like, this is the thing that I want to do for sure. And you were 17? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I graduated high school in June and went up for the first time in July.

Do you think it was helpful that you had somebody there with you? 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that- Was that Rick Roman? It was Rick Roman, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah.

Because I ended up knowing- He came to Chicago to do improv. Yeah, yeah. And then tragically died in a weird- He drove a taxi cab into the river. Yeah. Which it seemed very, people were sort of unsure as to whether it was an accident or, you know, no one could really know. From what I heard later, that particular stretch of road, that was not the first time that that had happened.

And they finally put up guardrails, I think, where there were none at this particular spot. So that made me, that quieted those wonderings for me a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Because he was a complicated, he was a weird guy. Yes, he was. school of kind you know sort of his first his first the first thing he came at you was being kind of off-putting yeah like being kind of weird but then you kind of had to like settle into it because there were lots of you know there are lots of uh lots of guys improv guys in rugby shirts named mike who wanted to punch his face yeah oh yeah just because they didn't they didn't get like no it's he's just he's odd don't take offense at it he's just kind of a weirdo he

loved getting people to that point like that was he loved it he loved it so many nights that were scary with him where it was like i know please stop talking to that guy. It's not my, it is so not my thing. Like, no, no, no, don't do that. Yeah, yeah. Don't miss that guy with the Western belt mad. But yeah, but so anyway, so then, I mean, is this act that you have with Rick, does it kind of, do you take that somewhere or are you just kind of doing it in Philly? We did it for a year and a half. We were a team for a year and a half. And we started to, like people liked us right away because we were weird.

We were different. Like what we did was kind of two man sketch almost, you know, we weren't really ourselves on stage we were very presentational and absurdist uh very much influenced by uh monty python and um uh we just liked being weird like uh yeah and it was it was a lot of fun and we started we graduated from open mics to showcase nights you know i i don't i think we we did maybe a couple paying gigs where we bombed horribly um and then after a year and a half we just kind of we were we were definitely going our separate ways you know and so we split up i took a month to kind of cobble together a solo act and um as soon as i got on stage by myself, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is what I want to do still. And then he got into improv and moved to Chicago not long after that. And I think really found his thing, you know? Yeah. And then, yeah, and then died um a few years later um and it was that was that was the first time a contemporary of mine died and i just didn't know how to deal with it well i mean the way i deal with anything back then was getting drunk. That was the tool we all had.

I was however old, like in my early 20s, and it was just like, I will treat this grief the way I treat my happiness by getting shit-faced. Poor booze on it. Yeah, poor booze on it. Were you in LA by this time? No, I was still in Philly. Oh, i was still in philly i was still oh you're still in philly yeah yeah yeah i i did stand up for eight years in philly before i moved to la okay yeah now uh when when you start to do stand up by yourself are you going straight into like being paul on stage and saying Paul observations, or was there a kind of transition where you still were doing absurdist

character and stuff? Kind of half and half, you know, like I, I, I would talk to the audience. But I, I did have some,

you know, my act was my, my earliest act was a, was a kind of mishmash of sort of observational things and then absurdist things. And it didn't really – I was very much a new guy in comedy. It took me a while to figure out – to kind of put together an act that was cohesive. And then when I got to L.A., things further changed and i kind of went back and forth like i i was very excited by the um the uh uh the alternative movement that was happening

that was very conversational very honest uh you were very much yourself on stage and i really enjoyed that feeling but But then the, but that was, but what I would put together in clubs was much more high concept, not showing any of myself, you know, just like very quick, silly jokes.

It was very theatrical and very performance based. And then it was, it was a very gradual evolution to more personal material that was more, that came more from my own life. And another thing that, that, that kind of stalled me out on standup was, well, what do I talk about now? You know, at this, at this stage of my life, what do I, what, what do I, what's my point of view? What do I want to say?

What is my theme at this particular station in my life? And I didn't know what it was. And it also coincided with the world kind of getting more and more fucked up and thinking like, well, was that, what? Shut up device. Yeah. No one was talking to you. Right. What? Shut up, device. Yeah.

No one was talking to you. Right. And by the way, Siri, I think he was being very clear. Thank you. The problem's on you, Siri. You wouldn't understand because you're a thing. Yeah. But yeah, I didn't know. I was like, I have these feelings about the world, but I, they're not, I can't make them funny. Like any, I feel like,

like sort of Twitter was the way I would try to, to do commentary on, on, you know, life and politics and social issues and stuff. And like, a lot of times I was like, well, this one was funny, but this one was just kind of corny. Like sometimes I'd just delete something as it was like, this is like Mark Russell, you know what funny, but this one was just kind of corny. Like sometimes I'd just delete something. And it was like, this is like Mark Russell. You know what I mean?

Like, what am I doing? Mark Russell without the piano. Well, is that, is it just kind of, are you just sort of like, is there a, are you still concerning yourself with what do I have to say? Like, is that a concern that carries with you? Or is that something that once you're doing it, you're just doing it and it kind of evolves into a different thing? Well, I tried to sort of force it. There was a couple of years ago, I was like, I'm just going to write some material and I'm just going to go up on stage and I'm going to fake it till I make it. I'm going to see what happens. I'm going to start working these muscles again in the hope that it will come back to me, and I'll get in the rhythm of doing this the way that I'm used to doing it. Yeah.

And it didn't happen. I think I was in the – I believe I was in the midst of a depression that was just not allowing my mind to open up in that way. And I was not connected to the material. I didn't feel like the audience was connecting with it. I got some laughs, but it didn't feel true. It didn't feel honest. And I sort of, I realized, well, this is not the way it's going to happen. And the way I was thinking it was going to happen before everything shut down was at some point, I realized, well, this is not the way it's going to happen. And the way I was thinking it was going to happen before everything shut down was at some point, you know, because there's always a later at some point I'll just, I'll put together like a night of material. And so I'll have more room. I won't be like putting myself in a, in a five to eight minute situation where

there's other people on the show and I have to worry about time and stuff like that. I'll like get a night at UCB Franklin and say, can I have, you know, a half hour to just like work some shit out? And that's how I'll get back into it because, you know, the best stuff that I was doing, you know, the last couple hours I did, I worked out when I would do those variety shows at Largo where I could go up first and do a monologue and do as much time as I wanted, you know? And I could record that and then listen back to it, take the best stuff, refine it, you know, when I would go on stage somewhere else. And I thought, okay, I'm going to get back to doing that. And then I just didn't. And now here we are, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the figuring out what I want to say is, it is difficult because, you know, there's a lot of things that I want to talk about, but the challenge is, is this funny? You know, is there a way to talk about my own, masculinity, where I came from, is there a way to make that funny and not, I don't ever want to be just going up there and getting a bunch of applause breaks. You know what I mean? Yeah. I just want to make people laugh.

I just want it to be funny. And if I can't, if it's not coming out that way, you know, if I, if I'm not thinking of it in that way, in terms of, you know, tell my stories and make them funny, then it's not, it's not time yet. You know, I still need to think about it more. I still need to figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. I, I agree. Cause that it's just cheerleading, you know, and that's for me, you know, I occasionally but I mainly only do it on Twitter. Like I'll think of like a joke that's about politics, but it's, you know, but it's first and foremost, it's a joke. And it's just a sort of like commenting on something that's happening or like pointing out a silly aspect or an absurd aspect. happening or like pointing out a silly aspect or an absurd aspect but when i i think people think like because i talk about politics on twitter that like i have some interest in being a political

comedian and like no because that's like they're two different things to me it's not funny it's not you know you know and i have no interest in getting applause by talking about, you know, Trump blows. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he does. But, you know, such a brave stance to take in front of an audience of young people in Los Angeles. can't you tell my loves are growing you moved to la uh you know probably got off the bus in your simple flower dress uh went to schwab's uh hung out until a bit a big producer met you i put on a tighter flower dress over that flower dress rumbled um but do you, how soon after that do you end up on Mr. Show? You know.

Two years. Two years. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. I got here in 94. I did a little bit of standup, but it felt like, oh man, I have to start over from, nobody knows me here. Do I have to start from literally like open mics again?

Yeah. And so I got connected to a couple out ofof-town gigs and they weren't they were in comedy clubs and they weren't satisfying and then um i got into sketch writing because i was introduced to jay johnston um and who was also on mr show and yeah just uh hilariously fantastic actor absolutely and he and i he and met. We hit it off right away. He had moved to town like a few months after I did. And a comic that I knew named Jeff Hatz, who was a DC comic that I knew from my time in Philadelphia, said, hey, I do this show at a place called the Diamond Club. If you ever want to do it. Classy.

Oh, so, so classy. if you ever want to do it. Classy. Oh, so, so classy. The Diamond Club was this dance club that had a tiny back room with a stage. And we would do shows in this stage. There was this group of people that all kind of got to LA around the same time

from Chicago, from San Francisco, from New York. And we put together these weird shows week after week. And the show would last until the dance music started in the main room. So the back room was open before the main room. Yeah. And you'd go through the empty dance hall to get into this little theater. And then we were supposed to do like about an hour. And then you knew that the hour was up when the base started and you're

like, Oh, okay. We're going a little over time. But so Jeff invited me and said, yeah, you can do whatever you want. You could do like character or a sketch or whatever.

And I was like, Oh, a sketch might be fun. And I called up Jay Johnston and said, do you want to write something together for this show? And that was it. We had a ball writing this thing. We did it.

People really liked it. The community really liked it. We started making friends with all these different people. And it was an extremely exciting time. And Jay and, and Jay and I wrote a show, a solo show together. It was just us and put it up a few different times.

And then Bob Odenkirk and David Cross saw us do that show and they were getting their second season of Mr. Show. And they now had a big enough budget for a writing staff. And we got hired then. So that was 1996. And I was, even at the time,

I was aware, like, this is very fast. Like, I can't believe this is happening this quickly. And also, that good. Like, it can happen where you come to LA and in two years you get a job on a show and it's kind of embarrassing. It was bananas.

It was bananas because I was a fan of theirs. Like I had seen them do the live shows that led up to Mr. Show. I had, I had seen season one of Mr. Show. I got to be, I got to do a bit part in it.

And so for them to invite us to do this was it was absolutely i can still remember that feeling it was mind-blowing it's like this is actually happening like the things that i want to happen are actually happening you know yeah it was not lost on me you know i did not take that for granted at all you know It was not lost on me. You know, I did not take that for granted at all. You know, I didn't, I didn't believe it was real. I didn't, they took us out to dinner, me and Jay, and I had to call him.

We had to call each other up afterwards. Like, is it, do you think they were serious? Like, did we get hired to do this? You know, it was unbelievable. Literally unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. Do you, was this your first time in a, in a room writing with that many people at once yes yeah yeah i'd never been in a writer's room before i didn't know i'd never had that experience of

writing for uh another voice you know um and it was all it was all new it was all learning it was all growing pains um those guys were i have to to say, really great teachers, you know? Yeah. And they were, they showed a remarkable amount of patience for new, for me, for me being a new writer, because Jay and I wrote stuff separately. We got hired as a team, but wrote separately. got hired as a team, but wrote separately. And, you know, I learned so much from them and they were, they really took the time to say, here's what, here's what would make this better. And because, and also to, to be in that situation and not be resentful of it. Like when they took a sketch of mine and rewrote it, I couldn't, I never could say, well, it's not funnier than what I had come up with.

It always was, you know, it was like, I, I'm still a fan of this show that I'm writing for, you know? Yeah. The only, the only thing for me that was difficult was realizing, oh man, I want to be performing more than I want to be writing. man, I want to be performing more than I want to be writing. Like, I don't, I don't, I think as a, as a standup, you go, you go one of two ways. You either, you either love the writing process so much that you become a room writer where you're like, I really like the math of this. I enjoy the, that's, that's the contentment that I get. But for me, it was like, no, I want to be the one saying the funny things. Like I like being in front of the camera, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how, how many seasons did it last after that? It was four seasons altogether. I wrote on season two and three and just acted on season four.

Okay. Yeah. Because that, I mean, that show, I think, I mean, mean because that also too is the time that i started to get to know you and started to kind of you know when i would come out to la for work things just kind of to dip my toe into the la alternative scene you know um but mr show i think you know it's it's one it's a real pillar of i think

a lot of people's comedic identity like it's as in it's on par i i dare i say with like a lot of people it's on par with the monty python or you know people people still bring it up to me i meet people they still bring it up to me you know yeah and, they still bring it up to me, you know? Yeah. And that's not lost. I mean, but what's so funny is it was the same experience for me, you know? Yeah, yeah.

I was even being inside it, it was the same experience. Like, I felt like, I feel like Sketch, every, it's like every generation or so, there's an important Sketch show like Python or SNL or SCTV. The weird thing for me was, it was so, what I find weird personally is that it was so close to Kids in the Hall, which I think was the other show of that era that was an extremely formative and important sketch show in the comedy world. And that they happened, they were like, they overlapped a little bit.

The fact that they were a little concurrent was, um, is wild to me, like as a comedy fan, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's,

it's crazy. Yeah. Um, did, does it help back home that you got this job for two years, you know, three years? I mean,

like with the it doesn't make any difference like after after i was nominated for an emmy for writing mr show i went home for thanksgiving and was having dinner with my parents and my mom said you know your uncle vick can uh teach you how to tune pianos and i said why would i want to learn how to tune pianos. And I said, why would I want to learn how to tune pianos? She said, well, to have a trade to fall back on. And it's like, I don't know what more I could be doing to show you that this is working out.

Like, it's crazy. It's, it didn't make any difference, you know? Yeah. It didn't make any difference. And I don't know,

she, like she, before she died, she was asking me when I was going to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And I tried my best to assure her, like, mom, it's all working out. Like I'm, I'm so, I'm so lucky that I get to do a thing that I love and to, to keep a roof over my head and food on my table. Like I'm, it's happening. It's working out.

And she said, well, I, I, I, I have to trust that you know more about it than I do. And that's like right before she fucking died. Like, I don't know what more I could have done. But I also realize I don't know what she thought my goals were. And I think she thought my goal was to be Tom Cruise or something. Like, she must have thought that. She must have thought that. She must have thought that because it's not like I wasn't showing up at her door like, hey, mom, I need to stay here for a little bit.

I don't know. She must have thought that I was chasing a crazy pie-in-the-sky dream and that only I didn't see that it was never going to come true. Did you ever sense that there was resentment because you were kind of doing what you wanted to do and she never got to i thought about that all the time i thought i thought man i don't know what her what her vision of her life was you know and what she what she would have rather have done than just be you know a mom to a working mother to six kids. Like,

yeah, I don't know how she fucking did it, man. I don't know how she did it. And it's like, in those times, I'm like, I don't blame you for being burnt out.

That was impossible. That was impossible. Yeah. Bananas. The shit. Also the, like, there just didn't seem to be the notion of like, talk to children get to know them respect them as individuals yeah you know on that that

didn't happen it was like shut up do what you're told yeah get in there you know and i know i had it where i i know i had it better than she did i know that i did yeah yeah i knew her mother and her mother was not fun you know and i can't imagine what it was like to grow up, to grow up in the fucking Great Depression, right? With immigrant parents who, you know, when they, they just expect you to do as you're told because that is the way of the world. And, you know, I know I had it because I had the ability to argue with my mother, you know, I'm sure that she did not have that luxury right you know i know i had it but because i had the ability to to argue with my mother you know i'm sure that she did not have that luxury you know right now you told me once that towards the end of her life she did sort of like revoke her catholicism yeah she became an atheist late in life really yeah it was like how many years before she died was there and did she

just announce it at Christmas? She did. Pretty much, yes. Wow, that's awesome. She became an atheist, I want to say like six to ten years before she died. She was an old lady. She was thinking about the Iraq War, which was raging at the time. the Iraq war, which was raging at the time. And she was trying to figure out what reason God had for the war, because she was brought up to believe God had a reason for everything. And then she thought, well, maybe God doesn't have a reason for this, and that's not the way it ever worked.

And then she stayed up all night thinking, like lying in bed and thinking. And by the morning, as she put it, and then I realized it was just all shit. And I was like, yeah, well, I get that. I get that feeling. Yeah. Good for you, mom. Yeah. And that was it. And when she was dying, she went into hospice care, and, you know, a priest showed up to see her, and she sent him away.

She was like, no, I don't want to see that guy. He wanted to give her last rites. And she had a friend. She had a friend who was her, I think her best friend, who was very upset about this and was like, please let him give you last rites. She's like, no, it doesn't mean anything to me. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't mean anything to me. And yeah, that was like, it was wild. It was really wild to see that, you know, she still did not like it when you said Jesus Christ though.

Yeah. Yeah. It's still like, I remember her, I remember her jumping when i said it one time yeah it's funny because i'm i'm i don't i like i don't call myself an atheist because i don't care enough you know like i'm more agnostic we're like it i don't even give a shit about any of that stuff like go do what you want but i'm not i'm not wasting any time thinking

about how the universe evolved like or or whether there's somebody in the sky that you know thinks i'm being a bad boy but uh i did i uh when my kids like my daughter who's 14 like sometimes she'll be like jesus christ and i'll there will be a part of me that's like look i know we don't care i mean i don't say it but it's like still to a lot of people that's a sacred not you know what the fuck am i talking about now did she did she because one of the like i've i've i've read a lot of like science people get out of scientology kind of stuff like for a while like i just couldn't get enough of that topic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing that was so striking to me was the universal embarrassment they all felt.

And did she exhibit any of that? Like how could I have been believing this? No, she never did. She didn't. She never did. It really was for her. The way she talked about it was like I used to believe this, but then I figured something out. But I think she always knew why she, like, I know why I believed, you know, when I was younger, it, it, it made, it made perfect sense to me. Um, I get why people,

I get why people who are devout are devout. I absolutely understand it. I don't think it's ridiculous. It, it, it comes from a place of, um, you know, real, uh, uh, a real need to, um, to explain, you know, to, to create a purpose. And there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. Like the only, the only place where religion fails people is the organized religion and the imposition of ideas onto other people and trying to reshape the world according to your view. That's where it all falls apart for me. who are religious that I, I are intelligent people. I know they're not dumb. I know they're not, you know, just, you know, zombies who are believing a thing that they were told. I know that they're, they're smart people. They could walk away if they wanted to. It's not like a sense of duty. It's like, this is their deeply held belief. I have nothing but respect for that. But it is when we show, I think, I think we show too much deference to religion in a lot of ways. Look, I'm not like fucking Bill Maher.

You know what I mean? It's not like I don't feel like religion should be abolished. I just think that we need to redefine they're like we're under attack and it's like actually you guys got it pretty good there's a lot of things there's a lot of things going your way you know yeah if you were under attack you would be paying taxes yeah you know like exactly yeah you know you are a money-making entity that gets because you talk you think you got a pipeline to god you don't have to you don't have to share yeah you know you're not you're not it's now there's no mandated sharing yeah yeah so uh you know yeah no i i i'm the same way but i i mean i just i don't know how i don't know how there can be a you know religion in the way that we think of it and maybe this is just a western way of thinking about religion, that doesn't say, well, our way is the best way.

Yeah. Or the notion of evangelism, that's like pushing a scam. That's like where your belief in what's right becomes like, oh, no, no no this is what's best for everybody and everybody should be should join this team you know we believe this so much we're gonna go baptize some graves yeah you know like that's that's a bit rude yeah or or people you know that have never seen a white person we're gonna go to the jungle and you know shove a bible at them and tell them that they've all been that virtually all their ancestors are rotting in hell. Hey, guys, good news, bad news. Good news is we're here.

Yeah. And I know it's not their fault, but yes, all your ancestors are rotting in Christian hell right now. Well, we got to wrap this up pretty soon. I do want to talk about how, and I mean, we talked about a little bit at the beginning, but you are sort of have made an indelible mark on podcasting. And that, you know, like in the podcasting books, you're going to, you know, no, seriously, you're going to be like Uncle Melty of podcasting. I hope I hold up better than that. Well, it's mainly because of your huge cock. That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't like to be the one to say it, but I love to be the one to hear it.

No, but I mean, how does that evolve? And what do you think at the beginning of all this? I mean, I was pretty excited at the very beginning of it. I love this medium. I think it's a lot of fun. I think it's, I love that, you know, like radio, it's a real theater of the mind thing. You can do so many different things with it. And I really love, and I hope this is, I've said this a million times and I'll keep saying it.

I love that it's democratic and I hope it always stays democratic. That literally anyone can do it. If you can record your voice, you can make a podcast. And I hope that it always is open to everybody that wants to do it. You know, you don't have to be part of a network. You don't have to pay some sort of admission fee. You don't have to, you know, buy some special internet or whatever the fuck. I hope that it's always available to everybody because it really is a, it really is a wonderful thing. Like I've made, I've made friends through

this, you know, like it's, it's wild. I've reached people that I never could have reached otherwise. I've, I've, um, I've learned a new, uh, or I should say I'm still learning, uh, new disciplines, uh, new art forms and, um, uh, figuring out, um, new ways to communicate. I think it's a, it's a wonderful thing. And, and, you know, when, you know, in the big book of podcasting, I mean, it encompasses so many people. If I, if I do get, um, if I am a footnote in that book, I'm glad, you know,

but it's like, there's as many different fandoms within this medium as there is within any other. And there's people who listen to a ton of podcasts who have no idea who I am. And that's,

there's something that's also kind of great about that, you know? So, yeah, I'm very, I'm very proud to be a part of this medium, and I'm indebted to it in many ways. And I'm glad that I get to keep on doing it, especially now. I'm so grateful for it. I'm so grateful for it.

To get on here with you and have this conversation uh this this will be my day made you know oh thank you for sure me too me too absolutely you know and i i mean particularly i was excited to talk to you because uh it's been too long so it's been forever i know yeah yeah uh but yeah and like you said it is podcasting is funny because like when people say do you listen to podcasts it's like saying do you watch tv yeah it's like it is it could it's so many different things absolutely and it is hilarious to me you know like diane feinstein or no barbara boxer will be on tv like on msnbc as a talking head and it's like she's also the host of the barbara boxer podcast and it's just so fucking hilarious to me

a former senator like still that she's you know talking about quisp like i just picture her like today we're gonna talk about old cereals remember king vitamin it was just quisp with a fancy name uh wait is that what her podcast is yeah it is it's all nostalgia wouldn't that be awesome well i mean is there anything is there anything in the future that you're not doing now anything specific i mean is it kind of just to keep, keep the course you're on or is there, you know, I mean,

we already talked kind of about who the fuck knows what happens after COVID, but, you know, I mean, I do want to, I do want to get back into standup for sure. I also want to get into theater. I want to get into live theater because it's,

it's a thing that every time I, I go, I see getting cast in a play and being an actor and yeah i would do that i'd like to write something you know um i i really there's something about the the theater that is every time i go i appreciate it as an art form even if i don't enjoy the show you know what what I mean? It's like, this is still, cause when it works, it's so, it's so magical that like all of the timing of everything,

the people on and off stage have to make this happen. Moving sets, changing lights. Like, Oh, I love all that shit. And it's like, I really want to,

it's a thing that I, I, you know, I did musicals in high school, but I've never written a thing that i i you know i did musicals in high school but i've never written a thing and i've never i i have yet to be cast in like a legitimate theater production and it's something i definitely like to try yeah i i agree with you art, whatever it is, to me, the true magic of it is its transformative abilities or transportational abilities, I should say. and all you can see is this immersive world and you get all the you know the benefit of music and editing and and special effects and stuff that's kind of easy like to make somebody feel like

they're somewhere else and somebody else yeah in a theater and a movie theater is kind of easy the times that it's happened to me in a live theater are it's like where where the the thing comes on and I realized, oh shit, I forgot who I was for a while. Absolutely. I was just living here looking at this thing. You forget about the exit signs.

You forget about the people around you. You forget about like maybe the little bit of, of, of wings that you can see over the side of the stage. Like uncomfortable seat. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.

That's powerful. That's really powerful. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like you say, it's happened so infrequently to me because it's so hard to do so hard and then the one thing that does hamstring me from theater and i don't know how to get over this is that sometimes when somebody's on stage really acting up a storm and i'm not in that like i the drug hasn't worked yeah i just feel so

embarrassed for them like i'm i'm there it's one thing to see somebody acting like like getting hysterical on a movie you know and you're just like that's all fake you know but but here it's like this is all fake you're you do this night. And I feel embarrassed for you. But, you know, I personally feel like there's just times when I feel like acting is one of the most embarrassing things a human being can do. Like to have to just on command become like, I'm real sad. Yeah. You know, it's just weird to me. Well, that's why the goal always is to get past it. Is to get past that. Because I think that's an instinct in all of us to greater extents or another, depending on who you are.

And I think the impulses, the drive to get past that to where you're not thinking about, like, how did he memorize those lines? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I memorize those lines? You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet that shirt's uncomfortable. Yeah. That is the goal. Yeah. That is the goal.

Yeah, yeah. Well, there is the third question on here, and it's in this gimmick I've come up with, which is, what have you learned? And, I mean, whether that, you know, it often can be advice, and it certainly doesn't have to be about show business, because that's like, one of the things about this podcast and in doing this podcast that I do sometimes wish is that it's like too much about work. I end up talking about work, but it's like, much about work you know like i i end up talking about work but it's like it's hard to have somebody come on here and be like spill your guts for my listeners you

know i mean because that's like always something i've always been queasy about is asking someone to divulge something personal and private for my content for you know and and i and i mean and there's people you know i've encountered it where people are like what do you think about this very gossipy thing about people you know your opinion of this person i'm like why should i give that to you like because you ask you know and and i so but i do want to you know i it is it's easier sometimes when it's job related but uh and frequently job related and personal stuff overlap for sure yeah 100 they do a lot yeah yeah um i have learned to, the biggest thing that I've learned is to accept that I am a flawed human being and that I can't just stop there with having learned that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I'm better than I was. I'm not as good as I want to be. But I have to remind myself to keep trying. Because there are times where I can plateau and I can think, no, I'm doing pretty good. But I know that I still have a ways to go. I know that there's, there's stuff deep inside me that, um, you know, I revert to and in,

in bad times that I don't want to be a part of me. You know, I, I, I just want to get to the best parts of me that I can get to. And having reached, having reached some, I, I just want to keep

reaching for all of them. Yeah. Yeah, and I think, you know, one thing I learned, and this is something that I, you know, it's where showbiz overlaps.

One thing I learned from being next to Conan O'Brien through for the last 20, whatever years is that I saw in him, his attainment of his goal. He got to be a late night talk show host, the thing he had been working and working for. And from my perspective, I think for a while,

once he got it, he didn't know what to do with himself because there had been such a focus and such like that had been the engine and once that engine is like that engine gets shut off the acquisition of it is now and now there's the doing of it yeah and it really to me i had this thought of it's don't make it a thing, make it a process, make it a goal, make it,

you know, going forward, make it getting better to borrow, you know, a Ron Funches thing, you know, cause that's his thing is getting better. Just,

and it is such a, it is such a process thing. I remember when I worked in film production in Chicago, I was working on, I was doing special effects with a guy, this great guy who one day just was like, told me he's a Buddhist. He's like a straight up, and he's a, you know, white guy, normal guy. It's like, I'm a Buddhist. And in talking to him, like, no, he seriously, you know, is a buddhist and i mentioned to him the whole notion of trying not to try that kind of zen thing of like if you just let things flow then that's when it all really happens and it's magic

and and that that notion of like i gotta really work on not trying i could never get my mind around that like how do you focus on not focusing and he said well that's not the point he said the point is try the point is to try because you never get there probably never ever get there but just try take that yoda yeah your bullshit advice yeah finally we get to the point of this fuck you yoda. Yoda's canceled. Hallelujah. He's going to get savaged on Twitter today. Well, Paul, this has been really lovely.

Likewise. It's been a great chance to talk to you. Give my love to Janie. I will. And when the world opens up again, we definitely have to look at each other face to face. Count on it. Yeah. And deal with it.

Just fucking deal with it. Pixelated sunglasses are lowering over my eyes. All right. Well, thank you, Paul Tompkins. Thank you, Andy Richter.

And all of you out there, thank you for listening. And we will be on next week with more of The Three Questions. I've got a big, big love for you. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Earwolf production. It's produced by me, Kevin Bartelt, executive produced by Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Chris Bannon and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair. Associate produced by Jen Samples and Galit Zahayek.

And engineered by Will Becton. And if you haven't already, make sure to rate and review the three questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts. My loves are growing. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.