By Paul Freeman [October 2015 Interview]

Paul Reiser starred in the long-running sitcom “Mad About You.” He has played memorable roles in such hit films as “Diner,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” James Cameron’s “Aliens” and last year’s acclaimed “Whiplash.” A skilled pianist and composer, Reiser has impressively collaborated with such artists as Julia Fordham and Melissa Manchester. He has written best-selling, non-fiction books. And he wrote the screenplay for “The Thing about My Folks,” in which he co-starred with award-winning actors Peter Falk and Olympia Dukakis.

Despite his success in such diverse creative endeavors, the actor/author/producer/musician hasn’t turned his back on his first love - stand-up comedy.

Ranked 77th on Comedy Central's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time, Reiser stepped away from doing live sets, when “Mad About You” dominated his time. But he has recently returned to the stage to create new waves of laughter.

The stand-up that evolved into “Mad About You” scripts came from Reiser’s experiences and struck a resonant chord with audiences. He has also connected with readers in his books “Couplehood,” “Babyhood” and “Familyhood.” In his latest book, “How To Get To Carnegie Hall,” Reiser shares details of backstage encounters with such greats as Neil Simon, Carl Reiner and Carol Burnett.

Big and small screen viewers continue to respond enthusiastically to Reiser’s talents. His upcoming films include “Concussion” with Will Smith and “Devil in the Deep Blue Sea” with Jason Sudeikis. He can currently be seen in the sitcom “Married” and Amazon’s new Steven Soderbergh-produced, coming-of-age, comedy series, “Red Oaks.”

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
Despite all the success in acting and other fields, does stand-up still hold the same appeal to you, that it always did?

PAUL REISER:
All the more so, to be honest. Yeah, it’s the only thing that’s actually fun. [Laughs] That’s not true, the other things are fun. But there’s something uncomplicated about performing. You think of something funny and you just write it down and then you just say it on stage. You think of something at four o’clock and you tell the people at eight o’clock. I like that. I like that there’s the absence of middle men [laughs]. There’s no studio. There’s no network.

Also, when I started, that’s all I wanted to do, was be a comic, and things worked out and I had some nice successes along the way that I’m grateful for. But I always intended to get back to standup. And when I did, about two or three years ago, it was immediately apparent what I was missing. I mean, I had taken about 20 years off… with no intent of taking it off. It just kind of kept getting kicked down the road a bit. And I finally said, “I’m just going to do it.” I didn’t have any plan in mind,” other than to just go and get on stage.

It’s funny, I went into the comedy clubs, this was about three years ago. The young comics would say, “Oh, why are you here tonight? What are you doing? We need this. You don’t need this. Are you doing a special? Are you working on a ‘Tonight Show’ segment?’” I said, “No, I’m just doing it.” It’s like a painter. “Are you going to sell it?” “No, I’m just painting.” I wanted to do it for the fun of it. And the more I did it, the more I was reminded of how much I love this. It’s a first love. So it’s been great. And everything else in show business is so dependent on other people. You get a green light and something goes forward or it doesn’t go forward. Stand-up, there’s none of that. You just show up, tell your jokes, go home, you’re done.

PCC:
Is there any change in approach, this time around?

REISER:
No. You know what? It was funny to me how much the muscles were there. They were under-used and had to be worked out again. The wiring was there. But you definitely lose focus. You know, the muscles atrophy a little bit… more than a little bit. So it takes a while to get back that muscle and that sense of confidence on stage… Not confidence, but I mean, to say, I have this idea and from this point, I can go to that point and I can make changes on stage - just those comic instincts need to get refreshed. So that took a while.

But I have same outlook. I’m still writing in the same vein. I’m still talking about the same kind of stuff. By definition, at a different point in life, your material is going to be different. So in your fifties, you’re not talking about the same things as your twenties. So back then, I was talking about being newlyweds. And out of that standup grew “Mad About You.” Okay, now we’re married 25 years. It’s a different ballgame. And it’s different comedy. There’s different stuff to talk about. But what’s been fun is I really see the audience, we’re all on the same parallel track. So the audience that comes, for the large part, are people that know me from before. So they’re going, “All right, we’re going through the same things, too.” We were newlyweds together and now we’ve been doing it a while. We’ve got some miles on these tires. So it’s still speaking to the same people in a way.

PCC:
In that gap when you weren’t doing the stand-up, did you find things coming up in your life that sparked a great line and made you wish you had that outlet?

REISER:
Well, periodically. I wasn’t really thinking that way. You sort of have to turn on that switch and since I didn’t have an outlet, I wasn’t doing it, I wasn’t going, “Oh, that’s a great bit.” Sometimes I’d jot something down. But you know, in that time, the first 10 years of it, from ’92 to ’99, I was doing “Mad About You.” So stuff found its way into there. And sometimes it would be a marital beat in a marital story. And sometimes it would just be a funny line or something that happened and I’d say, “Okay, we’ve got to find a place to do that. That’s funny.” Or “Gee, that’s a really interesting, moving conversation. Let’s put that in a show.” You can do different stuff in a show than you can in stand-up. Writing dialogue for a couple is a very different beast than telling a story on stage.

And then after that, for like the next 10 years, I was sort of writing a bunch of pilots and so on. And I got to put stuff in there. So there was an outlet, but it was not the same. It’s not the same as stand-up.

PCC:
When you started out in stand-up, were you drawn to comedians who based their acts on personal sorts of observations?

REISER:
Inevitably, which is sort of the fun of standup, it takes a while to find your voice and find out what you’re comfortable with, what you’re not comfortable with. I liked a lot of people who were not necessarily what I do. When I started as a kid, Robert Klein and George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks. Certainly there’s a lot of variation there. And I wouldn’t compare myself to any of them. It takes a while, but then you sort of find your strengths. It’s not that you’re shopping. You just keep doing it and you go, “Okay.” If you’re a ballplayer, you go, “You know what? I’m better going to my left.” or “I need to work on going to my right.” Or “My jump shot is good and I’ve got to work on something else.” And it develops. And to be honest, that’s what I found most refreshing about it, that the process of doing it now, in my fifties was, in a sense, identical to what it was when I was 19, when I first went up on stage. You don’t know until you get up on stage and you find out - “This is funny. That’s not as funny. This is a good idea, but it needs more time. It needs more stage time.” And you work at it. And that process is still the same - going up and just refining something until you get it how you like it.

PCC:
Was it less scary this time, having the perspective you now do?

REISER:
Yes and no. Less scary in that I know I’m not going to go up there and stare at people. And I know how to do this. But on the other hand, the good news is, they know you. So they’re much more welcoming. I can drop by a club and go out and the audience is happy to see you. On the other hand, “We know you, now what did you come here to say?” [Laughs] “Why did you call us here?” So you’re not anonymous.

PCC:
There had to be a great satisfaction in coming back and seeing that it still worked.

REISER:
Yeah. And as I said, it was sort of connecting the dots, because it was a practice that I had let go for so long. And when I got back, I thought, “Not only do I enjoy it, but I remember why I got into this in the first place.” There is something right. There’s not a lot of design. I don’t know anybody that has a career that they really plotted it out. You plan this way and suddenly you take a turn, you go that way. So it was never really ordained, that I said, “I have to get back to stand-up.” But once I started doing it, it was just a comfort zone. To me, it’s really most comfortable. You put a TV show or a movie out there and you hope that the audience finds it. There are a lot of people out there, but will they find it? Will the studio promote it? And so on.

Here, you sell tickets and people come. And you’re already ahead of the game. “We came, because we like you. We dropped some money. We came to see you, because we like what we know so far.” And then it’s up to you to deliver. Most people, if they know me from “Mad About You,” that grew out of my stand-up. It was very much like me. So it’s not the kind of thing where, “Oh, man, that’s not who we expected. Gee, the guy from TV is not this guy.” It’s the same guy. But as I say, it’s from a different perspective. You’re talking about different stuff at another point in life.

PCC:
Why do you think ”Mad About You” had such a wonderful resonance for such a wide audience?

REISER:
There’s this old saying that the things that are most personal are also the most universal. Everybody has some crap to deal with at home. Everybody has the same frustrations and the same sort of darkly funny challenges. So when I get into a fight with my wife and then come into the office and you share it with other writers, everybody goes, “Oh, listen to this! I had the same thing with my wife…” And suddenly you go, “Okay, write it down. This is good. It ain’t just me.”

George Carlin had a great phrase. He used to say, he felt that what he did was called “Ooh, yeah!” comedy. And he would just say something and everyone would go, “Ooh, yeah! That’s true! Ooh, yeah! I noticed that.” Well, yeah, you noticed it, but you didn’t write it down and you didn’t make it funny. That’s our job.

“Mad About You,” the best episodes, the best responses we ever got were when people related to it. It was a really funny show and really well done, but it was more than that. People would see themselves in it. They felt a connection. And, to a degree, it’s what I still like doing. I get up and I can talk about some things that are far-fetched, that are wacky ideas. In general, when I talk about personal stuff, and talk about my kids, I talk about my wife, or what it’s like to be in your fifties… and not in your twenties. And everyone’s going, “Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right. I know what you’re talking about.” And that, to me, is the best response.

PCC:
With the series, did it feel like a luxury to have the time to let the characters and the relationship evolve over the course of those years?

REISER:
Yeah, that’s the nice thing about the TV format is you’re constantly adjusting. You’re finding what works, what doesn’t. And you get to tell the story, in our case, over seven years. And we had a rough idea of what we wanted to do from the beginning and where we wanted to take it. That was one of those things, because it was about a relationship, because it was about something real, you didn’t have to strain too hard to come up with the meat. There were challenges all the time. You’re a couple. Are you going to try to have a kid? Or decide to have a kid? Or decide not to have a kid? Or whatever the story is. And each turn brings treasure troves of material.

PCC:
Another personal project that had that universal chord was “Diner.” What did you find most relatable about that?

REISER:
You know, that’s funny, because “Diner” was about a time that was before my time. And the period piece part of it was very accurate. And people responded to that. But there was also something that was universal. Mostly it’s men who come over and very often will tell me how important that movie was to them, because it dealt with something that hadn’t been isolated, which was that sort of guy camaraderie and the idea of guys sitting around, talking about women, talking big about women, but really not having a clue of what to do. And that’s certainly universal and timeless. And Barry Levinson wrote and directed it from his vantage point. But the reason it resonates with everyone is because you go, “Yeah, I have friends like that, relationships like that.” I don’t know anybody who hasn’t had that head-scratching moment of, “Yeah, I don’t know what we’re doing.”

PCC:
This exceptionally talented young cast, was there a lot of camaraderie amongst the actors? Or was there a sense of competition?

REISER:
The cast? No, we were all babies. We were all thrilled to be in a movie that had cameras and studio trucks. No, it was my first job ever. But hey, most of the other guys, it was their first or second. We were all pretty much newbies.

PCC:
Then making “Aliens,” was that an adventure, working with Jim Cameron?

REISER:
We shot that on location in space. So absolutely. The commute was brutal. Yeah, that was cool, because I never would have imagined myself being in kind of movie. And it was the kind of rare script that you read and go, “Wow! This is going to be a big hit. This is great.” And “Alien,” the first one, was brilliant. And James Cameron, coming off of “Terminator,” you go, “Okay, this guy is a genius. And he’s got this fantastic script to work with.” And as opposed to stand-up, where it’s all you, here it was so clear that, “Okay, I’ve got this little part. Here’s a pie in 40 pieces and I have one piece. I just have to not screw it up. [Laughs] If I can just work on my one little piece, this whole thing is going to be great.”

PCC:
You have that great likability on screen. Was the casting of you as this evil character in “Aliens” playing against type?

REISER:
Yeah, I think that was part of the decision. I think they cast me in that, thinking, “We can delay as long as possible that this guy is the bad guy.” I don’t know how true that turned out to be. I think the minute they see this guy, they go, “Hmmm, something’s not right. This guy doesn’t belong here.”

PCC:
And “Beverly Hills Cop,” what was that experience like?

REISER:
Who remembers? [Laughs] Ask me something that happened more recently. Like today.

PCC:
Today viewers can watch you on Amazon, in the new comedy “Red Oaks,” which is very funny.

REISER:
Oh, thanks. We just finished watching it. Binge-watching. We took two days, because I can’t sit for five hours. I was very moved. I thought it was terrific. It came together on the screen in a way that exceeded my expectations. It was very warm and funny. And these kind of shows now, these little 10-episode series, seasons, allow you to have a different kind of pace. People can watch it all together. So it’s almost like watching a movie, even if you watch it in a couple of viewings, you’re watching a movie in little sections. Each episode doesn’t have the same burden that traditional television does, where you start and finish and it’s going to wrap up. In a show like this, it’s always forward-moving.

And it’s great. There are so many more outlets now and people making shows and there’s a lot of quality stuff. We have a great cast and great pedigree. Steven Soderberg, really the 300-pound gorilla that puts this over the line. He’d producing. So you get a lot of great people flocking to these new mediums, which is great. It’s ultimately the same. It doesn’t matter where it’s going. Everything is around forever. I was saying to somebody, “There’s no such thing as missing a show anymore. You can’t miss it. You’ll find it. It’s there waiting for you.”

PCC:
Is it fun playing this character?

REISER:
Yeah, it’s one of the perks of being a clubhouse veteran, having done it and now being the “older guy,” with all these younger kids, I get to be sort of a father figure… or authority figure. And it’s written really well. He’s bristly, but he’s not two-dimensional at all. He’s sort of full of himself and big ego. A big fish in a very small pond. I don’t think he’s a titan of Wall Street. I think he’s doing very well and he throws his weight around, in a club where, what does it really prove? [Laughs] The characters are really nicely drawn. And they’re terrific actors. The young guys, guys who’d I’d never worked with before and wasn’t familiar with, they’re just great.

PCC:
The series “Married,” your character has taken a different turn this season?

REISER:
Yeah. The season is already finished and the thing that really intrigued me was this older guy-younger woman marriage. And the characters were so apart. They were so different that, at first glance you go, “Well, these people should not be together.” And I thought that was interesting. It’s like “Yeah, let’s find out why they are together.” And the way it played out, it was like, “Yeah, they were right.” [Laughs] “We shouldn’t be together.” And this past season we separated, sort of enough is enough. The characters in the relationship were like, “You’re not happy. I don’t need this. Let’s just call it a day.” So it’s now free to go anywhere. And hopefully it will get picked up for a third season. I don’t know if it was seen as much as everybody had hoped. But people who discovered it really enjoyed it, really warmed to it. It’s a really well-written show.

PCC:
Are you philosophical about that whole thing - ratings, box office? You’ve been in huge successes, as well as some projects that didn’t find their audiences when they were originally released or aired.

REISER:
Yeah, it’s a reality. You know going into anything that some things will meet with success and some might not. And most of it is out of your hands. Almost all of it is out of your hands. The only thing you can control is that you do a good job, is that you make a good show. And then hopefully the people whose job it is to put it out there succeed, so people find it. But again, there is not quite the same urgency. There are shows that I’m catching up with from two or three years ago, that I go, “Oh, this is fantastic. I’m now a fan of this show, even though it premiered three years ago.” So I can watch it at my leisure. And that’s a great thing.

PCC:
You have a number of films you’ve already shot, which are you most excited about?

REISER:
Yeah, I have a small part in this movie “Concussion,” which is a big movie coming out in December with Will Smith, about the NFL concussion controversy. And it’s a really good film. It’s going to generate a lot of conversation [chuckles], a lot of heat. That was another one where I’m just happy to take my little piece of the pie and do my job. Here’s my goal - when I’m in a movie, I don’t want anybody to stop and go, “Mmm, wait a second, that movie just stopped, right there, when that guy came on.” Anything above that is good. [Laughs] But it’s a great script and really terrific people. It’s Will Smith and Alec Baldwin and Albert Brooks, really talented.

I’ve got a few other movies that are coming out. I don’t know when they’re coming out, it’ll be sometime next year. There’s one with Jason Sudeikas called “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” which is really beautiful. I’ve only seen pieces of it. But it’s a really beautiful movie. They’re all going to come out next year. So yeah, it’s been a busy time. I’m doing these films when they come up and something appealing comes up and doing a couple of these shows.

And I’m developing like four shows that I’m going to write and produce, one that I’ll be in, the others not. And so those are fun. And they’re fun when you have the idea. And sometimes the part that’s not fun is selling and getting somebody to say, “Go ahead. Here’s a couple of million bucks. Go make your show.” That’s just the reality. Having the stand-up as the background for me has really put me in this enviable position. For me, it’s a nice place to be, where I’m not sitting around the house, waiting for anything, because a lot of things go and some things don’t go, but in the meanwhile, I’m going out and working, which keeps my interest up, you keep your chops up. And I do it at a very gentlemanly pace. I go out every other weekend, I’m out on the road a lot. I do little short bursts and come home.

PCC:
And is it important to you to have the music, another kind of creativity? You collaborated with Julia Fordham…

REISER:
Yeah, you know, that’s something that was just always a hobby. And that particular project just came out of a total accident. It wasn’t a planned thing. We were friends and we wrote a song and said, “That really came out well. Let’s do another.” Before we knew it, we had 10 and said, “Let’s just put it out there.” I wasn’t trying to be rock ’n’ roll boy. But that’s something I always do, just for my own edification. It keeps me happy.

PCC:
“How to get to Carnegie Hall,” were you always consciously studying the greats you encountered, trying to learn from their experiences?

REISER:
Yeah, sure, anybody in any field, you look at who’s come before you. And I had all these little stories that I thought, “I don’t know what to do with these,” but all these little moments. And it wasn’t to be name-dropping but [chuckles] I was marveling at my unbelievable good fortune that almost everybody that I looked up to as a kid, starting out in this world, I got to work with… or a least meet. And invariably, there were these little moments that because I admire them so much, your eyes are open. You know, if I met with the best accountant in the world, I don’t know that I’ve leave and go, “Boy, I see what he did that was so good.”

Actually, anybody who’s great, it’s sort of seamless. You can’t watch Springsteen and go, “Oh, all right, now I know how to do it.” No, you don’t. [Laughs] That’s kind of gifted and special. And the people that I talk about, they were all people that meant something to me and when I got up close, I was able to leave with a little souvenir of wisdom or inspiration. And it was just sort of, “Let me put this out there.” It’s a nice way to live - to be aware of who came before you and what they still try to offer.

PCC:
Do you try to pass along what you’ve learned, when you work with a young cast like “Red Oaks”?

REISER:
I sit them down and I lecture them. I tie them to a chair and I make them read everything I’ve written. [Laughs] Ah, no. It always tickles me, when people say, “Oh, man, I used to watch you when I was a kid.” “How old are you? You’re like 12 years older than me.” “Oh, all right.” There’s this guy who said, “Oh, man, I became a comedian, because I watched you.” I said, “What do you mean?” And he was 15 years younger. So that makes sense. He was 15 or 18 and I was 30 and doing it. It always surprises me. “What do you mean you were watching me as a kid? I ain’t that old! But I guess I’m old enough.” So, no, I don’t lecture them [laughs]. But the “Red Oaks,” for example, is being received really well. So it’s a nice thing to share. It’s their first time and I can go, “Yeah, I remember when it was my first time.” But other than that, it’s always fun, you’re doing something and it’s being received well, people are liking it, it’s a nice feeling.

PCC:
It’s got to be a nice feeling that you’ve had such a diverse career, as well as such a successful one?

REISER:
Yeah, we’ll see, it could all fall to crap next week. This week - it’s going good.

For the latest news and stand-up dates, visit paulreiser.com.