Jan. 15--Writer, comedian and actor Patton Oswalt has written a second memoir (the first: "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland"), and it's a tasty, buttery slice of Oswalt's life as he lived it in the 1990s in Los Angeles. At the time he was working toward his first staff writing job ("MADtv") and his first series-regular role (on "The King of Queens") while honing his craft in the hypercompetitive LA stand-up scene (he regularly took the stage at the career-maker of a cabaret known as The Largo).
So, why "buttery"?
Simple. Between 1995 and 1999 Oswalt spent hours and hours, day and night, watching a crazy variety of classic films, exploitation titles, comedies, Westerns, foreign films the old-school way: at theaters. His preferred venue was the New Beverly, a repertory house of the old school, now funded and overseen by Quentin Tarantino. Oswalt's book "Silver Screen Fiend," published by Scribner, is a '90s period piece detailing life and obsessions, set in a specific place and time. Yet it speaks to cinema nerds everywhere -- to anyone, especially, who has known the grim social embarrassment of one too many movie-reference-laden monologues disguised as conversations with other people.
I spoke with Oswalt at the Standard Club in downtown Chicago. The current book tour means time away from his wife, writer and Chicago native Michelle Eileen McNamara, and their 5-year-old daughter. He's well aware that his moviegoing habits aren't what they used to be.
"In the evenings, when I'm not on the road," he says, "I want to be home with my daughter, and I tend to see movies during the week at matinees, if I see them at all." There are other outlets for his habit, though. Oswalt was thrilled to serve as a guest programmer for Turner Classic Movies (disclosure: I was thrilled to do the same). He presented the original "3:10 to Yuma," among others. "Omigod how did Glenn Ford not win an Oscar for that?" he says, grinning.
Like many well-known comedians active on Twitter, Oswalt has offended his share of followers and engaged in varying levels of zinger-battle and micro-smackdown, endemic to that particular social media platform. It can get wearying, he says. "Before Twitter it was the other way -- it was conservative people telling people what not to say. Now it's progressive people telling people how to say it." There is a small but vocal minority, in Oswalt's view, that believes: "I deserve to never be offended for one second. And if I am, I am owed a remedy, an apology, and the other person has to get ruined." It's a touchy world, and Oswalt has had his own share of touchy moments in it. But, he says, quoting the Liz Phair lyric, sometimes "obnoxious, funny, true and mean" are the first and best four options in comedy.
Marinating in all that cinema back in the late '90s, Oswalt reflects, "initially made me a terrible actor, because I only drew on what I saw in the movies." He has learned to draw more from himself and to trust simplicity. When he got hired to be the voice of Remy, the rat with haute cuisine ambitions in Pixar's masterwork "Ratatouille," he soon realized they weren't looking for a character voice. They wanted Patton Oswalt's.
One wonders if future Patton Oswalts will have the chance to revisit or discover "Ratatouille" on a repertory double bill somewhere, in an actual movie theater. He's grateful for the time he spent learning about old film, in the dark, when he was single, "insufferable" (his word) and learning.
"What's lost," he says of home- and tiny-screen viewing experiences, "is the most basic, primal way movies work. A bunch of strangers get together in the dark, disconnected from themselves, wired into each other as a mass mind. That's how the movies are meant to work."
mjphillips@tribune.com
Twitter @phillipstribune
