Venture out & fill your laugh Rx with returning Ellen favorite
Following the release of her hilarious new book and equally funny/informative podcast, comedian Paula Poundstone returns to The Ellen Theatre stage on Friday, August 11th with a fresh act. “I’ll be telling my little jokes at The Ellen — and asking Congressman Gianforte questions from a distance,” says Poundstone. Known for her casual style and observational humor, prepare yourselves for an evening of razor-sharp spontaneous wit. Poundstone has starred in several HBO specials, her own series on ABC and the aforementioned cable network, is included in Comedy Central’s list of the “100 Greatest Standups of All Time,” and won an American Comedy Award for Best Female Standup Comic. Paula can be heard regularly on NPR’s number one-rated weekly comedy news quiz, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!
In anticipation of her upcoming Bozeman performance, The Rolling Zone hopped on the phone with Poundstone to talk experience-based material and her (continued) foray into multimedia comedy.
The following interview took place July 6th
RZ: Hi Paula. How are you?
PP: Hey good! How are you?
RZ: Great.
PP: You know what? I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet, but there’s a documentary of sorts on HBO. The title [If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast] came from Carl Reiner — it’s a show about longevity, the sort of astounding longevity of people like Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke. Part of it’s about performers, but not all of it. As they were introducing somebody who’s life they were interested in, a person who’s been alive a very long time, they were showing this person’s background in the business and they flash on The Ellen Theatre and I’m guessing it’s the one in Bozeman, MT.
RZ: Wow, how cool! We’ll have to check it out.
PP: It was very exciting. It was a brush with greatness.
RZ: And right before your trip up here. Did you have a good Fourth of July holiday?
PP: Yes…I practiced the drums and walked on the treadmill while watching Breaking Bad. It was good. I did chores and the phone didn’t ring, it was nice. Sometimes it’s nice when the phone rings, by the way. But it was particularly nice on this occasion that it did not.
RZ: As usual, you’ve got a busy road schedule — and plenty of other irons in the fire. How do you maintain the balance of so many tour dates and various projects with time for family, a personal life, and all those cats?
PP: I work really hard, I just keep moving. I try not to do two things at once. Everybody thinks they’re multitasking and there is no such thing. I try to finish one thing and then go on to the next, mostly I just move at a fast clip! I used to say to my kids when they were little and we were walking to school and they’d be taking forever to get out of the house, “You know, we go much faster when you move your hands and feet quickly!”
RZ: Gotta get where we’re going, c’mon guys.
PP: Yep. I’d say that, and then eventually I’d graduate to “Hurry the fuck up,” but I would start with [the first].
RZ: Having become quite the favorite guest performer, you’re returning to Bozeman’s Ellen Theatre for, I believe, the fifth time. What can Bozemanites expect from this special encore performance of sorts?
PP: Well, let’s see. My act is largely autobiographical, so it’s sort of evolved with time. These days I talk a little bit about raising a houseful of kids and animals, I talk about trying to pay attention to the news well enough to cast a halfway decent vote, I talk about maybe developing an unhealthy reliance on MSNBC. They tell me what I want to hear, then I watch the Newshour and I hear what it is. It really bums me out.
RZ: Let’s say someone has never been exposed to the humor of Paula Poundstone but is itching for some laughs. Why is this show just what the doctor ordered?
PP: Really, any kind of laughs are just what the doctor ordered, I think. Hopefully they’re not derisive Nazi laughs, but it’s good for everybody to go out — [and] I stress go out. Watching videos on your flat thing does not count. Being with a group of people, laughing for the night is incredibly healing and just plain fun. I guess people who have a lousy time don’t generally come up and talk to me, but I get a lot of people coming up to me at the end of the night telling me how much fun they had and how they haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. And I always tell them they need to. Especially at a place like The Ellen. It’s a lovely theatre, it’s fairly intimate. One of my favorite things to talk about to the audience, I do the time-honored “Where are you from? Whataya do for a living?” And this way little biographies from the audience members emerge. Probably a third of any given night, the things that get said are unique to just that night. My act is a little bit like Willy Wonka’s chocolate river — the waterfall churns the chocolate, sort of like the audience.
RZ: The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness, your new book, was just released in May. Did your guinea-pigging experimentation achieve its desired result?
PP: Given for me the desired result was to have several playgrounds within which to write, it absolutely did. I think I found out some helpful information about that, which goes into making for feelings of happiness. And sadly, it’s not all that romantic. To some degree, it’s what we were always told. Get some exercise — happiness is really a chemical reaction. Here’s the weird thing about it. I vaguely suspected that was true going into it, I confirmed that was true, maybe not the only path to happiness, but that physical fitness is really important to feel good. So then the question becomes, why then don’t I work out every day if I’m not doing this experiment?
RZ: What did the experiment entail?
PP: The first thing I did doing the experiment, I went to the closest exercise trainer to my house I could find. I went to a guy on Wilshire Blvd. who teaches taekwondo and self-defense [out of] a lovely little studio. I signed up for as many classes as I could, I began, and they were grueling. Talking about it last night, my daughter and I, because I’m considering going back. I remember well the good feeling I had from doing, but I also remember well being about to cry or throw up in the midst of something because it was so hard. I was up to doing 500 rope jumps, and that I always tell people was in a row! It was really hard, but at the same time I found myself walking down the alley carrying about thirty pounds of kitty litter and animal waste in trash bags and I remember thinking, “I feel pretty good.” Then I realized it has to be exercising because I’ve carried kitty litter in trash bags to the garbage can before, and it just didn’t feel that good. I wish that was where my happiness came from — if sifting litter boxes was the answer to happiness, I would be the most joyful person in the entire world.
RZ: I’m certain of it. And speaking of books, you’re a huge proponent of the literary arts. Considering what feels like a casual exodus from the print medium, do you think we can retain a love of books in the age of Kindles and iPads?
PP: I think it’s really important that we do. A friend of mine gave me for a birthday a few years ago a NOOK thing from Barnes & Noble, and I was intrigued and pleased with this. It was nice and I thought great, I bought some books and put them on the thing. Then later I found out through research on the topic of the effects of electronics on the brain, people who read from paper, the information disseminates differently and more reliably into their brain than reading from a screen device. So I do not read from that screen device anymore. I’m a very slow reader to begin with and I mostly read nonfiction, and I find that if I can remember one or two facts from a nonfiction book I’ve read, I consider myself a genius.
RZ: You’ve certainly got to start somewhere.
PP: So if reading a book from paper to begin with doesn’t leave me with much factual residue after I finish reading it, I don’t want to cut in half, or in any fraction, my already pretty dismal number of what I can retain from a book. I really need all the help I can get, I don’t want to do anything that takes me in the other direction. And screen devices are just not good for the brain. The companies that make screen devices are the tobacco companies of our day. They’ve purposely made things addictive, and they knew it. It wasn’t an accident. So I want to give them as little of my money as I possibly can, anyways.
RZ: And while we’re on the topic of daily-use electronics, your podcast Live from the Poundstone Institute is premiering soon. Produced by NPR — home also to radio show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! for which you’re a regular contributor — the podcast seems a bit like an extension of your book. Going to the source in quest of answers. Can you give us a sneak peek?
PP: It “drops” — I was actually doing an interview yesterday on someone else’s podcast, and I said to them I don’t even know what the verb is that you say about when it begins. So I think it’s “drops,” so that’s what I’m using.
RZ: That works.
PP: I kept calling it casting a pod! But yes, it’s [now] available to the public. It’s taped in front of a small, lively live audience in Hollywood. My boss Peter [Sagal] and host on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! — which has been on for many many years — often cites studies, and whatever piece of information he’s putting out, he’ll say it like it’s an absolute fact. For example, they’ve discovered that cats are the only animals that don’t forgive. And I’m like, well wait a minute. Who says that? Where did they get that from? Well there’s a study at Stanford University. Ok well, who on earth would fund such a study? That’s ridiculous. And how do you know if a rhino is forgiving you anyways? It just doesn’t seem right. I’ll ask him a series of questions and it’s always fun. He knows some of the answers, but he doesn’t know all the answers. So we came up with this idea that the backbone of my podcast would be that I get to interview the scientists themselves, the researchers. Each episode is only a half hour, so it’s not all of what we do, but it’s part of what we do. I also do an in-house study each week, a study of our own. It’s fun to find [out] the results, it’s a small sample size. The show is taped in front of an audience of about 70 if things are full. It’s a small, high-energy space in the back of a Hollywood comic book store.
RZ: That’s so cool.
PP: It kind of is. When we first started workshopping the show and developing it, we were over at NPR West and it was nice, but then they had to remodel their bathrooms so we lost the space. Therefore we found this space in the back of a comic book store, and I have to say, I really enjoy it there.
RZ: Aside from the podcast, what’s on the horizon for Paula Poundstone? To borrow from the high school counselor, where do you see yourself in five to ten years?
PP: I really don’t know. Experience tells me I’ll still be on the road, which is good with me. I love performing to audiences, especially now. I feel the entire world is in the midst of a mental health crisis. Honestly, in five to ten years I might be flattened by Kim Jong-un’s missiles. I try to look on the bright side with stuff like, I don’t have to put away leftovers which is really one of my least favorite jobs. But yeah, I would imagine myself still on the road, I hope Live from the Poundstone Institute will have hit its stride and taken off and maybe the 70-seat venue, which we will maintain, will be the hottest ticket in town. People will come from all over the country, hoping desperately to get a seat at Live from the Poundstone Institute and the hoodie sweatshirts will put me through adult college. I’ll be able to hire someone solely to sift the cat litter because the revenue will be so extreme.
RZ: That’s a great aspiration.
PP: Quite a dream, keeps me going!
RZ: Thanks, Paula. We’re looking forward to your show.
PP: Terrific. Thanks a lot.
Paula Poundstone will perform at The Ellen Theatre on Friday, August 11th at 8pm. All seats are $37.50. Wine, beer, and concessions will be sold in the lobby beginning one hour prior to show time. For further ticketing information and other inquiries, visit www.theellentheatr
