Monday, May 24, 2010

Bill Schulz' Spiked 2005 Interview with Patton Oswalt


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Gentle Readers,

At the bottom of this post appears a spiked 2005 interview between Fox News' "Red Eye" Co-Host Bill Schulz and comedian
Patton Oswalt that was to have appeared in Penthouse magazine. This is from a draft version and the beginning contains notes from Bill to his editors.

Some background from Bill's Twitter feed during the wee hours of this Monday morning...

Speaking of people that r dicks? Watching Real Time right now, and Patton Oswalt is on. Biggest dick I ever interviewed.

I actually think he's hilarious. But could not have been more of a c word during our QandA.

Interviewed Patton for penthouse and it was so awk, and bad, I just turned it in as it was---cause it wouldve been a good read...

And they killed it, cause they didn't want to alienate him, or his publicist. U know what? Ill post it online. Maybe on redeye site.

Patton Oswalt owes me a grand. The kill fee for that article was 200. But his bitchiness hurt my rent.

@haydenlink oh it never went to print. But ill find it. Ill print it to u guys tomorrow. Prepare for stomach cringes...

Okay, I'm looking for this old article on my older laptop. I don't come off well, either. But F it. Patton is a douche. It will be seen...

Okay, I don't have a facebook page. Who wants to post this patton/bill noise?

Finally reread Patton interview. Transcripts r worse than what I edited/wrote. But still good. He was a bitch. Itsa word doc. Who wants it?

So, again, background is his publicist said that the interview WILL NOT be printed. And I gotta kill fee and he was reinterviewed.
In a later exchange with this blogger, Bill lamented, "What I wrote goes nowhere near how awful it really was. I should just release the tapes."

Below appears Bill's transcript of the interview he found "cringe-inducing." Judge for yourself.

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HED: Stand-Up Guys


DEKS: Trading punch lines with comedy’s best.

SINCE THE “PUNCHLINE” TAGLINE DOESN’T REALLY APPLY FOR THIS, HERE’S SOME OTHER OPTIONS…

Trading punch lines—or in this case, punches—with comedy’s best.
The latest installment in our ongoing sit-downs with stand-up’s all-stars.


SUBHED: Patton Oswalt

By Bill Schulz

INTROS: Anyone who owns a remote will recognize Patton Oswalt as Kevin James’ buddy, Spence, (that’s short for “Spencer”, I reckon!) in CBS’s King of Queens, as well his occasional punditry in the snarkathon that is VH1’s Best Week Ever. And the casual fan might go on to mention his meager-but-memorable roles in Magnolia, Starsky & Hutch and Zoolander. But true Oswalt aficionados will point to 2004’s Feeling Kind Of Patton and let the comedy album speak for itself. The man is, quite simply, the funniest stand-up working the clubs today. He’s also kind of a prick. I don’t know if it was the fact that Patton had just done a slew of zoo crew radio appearances the previous Friday or if he just saw me for the hack that I am—but, right off the bat, the comic decided that he hated me. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have opened with the Bill Hicks question…

THE SAFE INTRO: “Anyone who tells you how dangerous and edgy they are, isn’t dangerous or edgy.” Patton Oswalt has, in a roundabout way, just told me that he, himself, is dangerous and edgy without actually saying it. But I’ll let it slide due to the fact that, after recently listening to 2004’s Feelin’ Kinda Patton, I found the album to be both those things as well as chock-full of the funniest material I’ve heard in years. This, I suppose, should come as no surprise considering the man’s pedigree consists of collaborations on Reno 911, The Aqua Teen Hunger Force, VH1’s Best Week Ever and HBO’s deeply-missed Mr. Show With Bob and Dave. Oh, and lets not forget Patton’s role on The King Of Queens and his portrayal of the character Hedges in Blade: Trinity! Actually…he’d rather you did forget the latter. Herein the cranky comic opines on laughs, LSD and—I’m just gonna say it—love.

PH: You worked with the late Bill Hicks. What was your take on Joe Rogan’s claim that Dennis Leary stole his material?

PATTON: It’s absolutely accurate. It’s been documented.

Well Leary has said—like on their respective cigarette monologues—that “you don’t own the subject, you own what you say about it.”

And Denis Leary did the jokes. No one needs to come to Rogan’s defense, these are facts. They’ve been documented. Read the book American Scream. They go point-by-point, bit-by-bit, through Leary’s No Cure For Cancer special. He took word-for-word jokes from Bill Hicks. This isn’t a matter of debate or opinion, it’s fact.

Okay, then. So is he sort of looked down upon by fellow comedians? He seems to have a lot of friends in the business.

None that I know of.

Moving on: Your dad named you after General Patton. Name one of the many qualities that you, no doubt, share with the WWII icon?

Um, with General Patton? I resolve all my differences with desert tank battles.

So Ben Stiller strikes me as one who comes off grumpy, moody and obsessive off camera. Am I wrong on that?

He’s obsessive, but not grumpy and moody about it. He just wants things to be as funny as possible. He also takes on a lot of projects—so it’s not that he’s grumpy or moody, but he’s always pretty stressed. We started working together on the MTV movie awards. We wrote a couple of things together and just really clicked. I did a thing with him where he was a Backstreet Boy.

Oh, yeah. And Andy Dick was the crippled Backstreet Boy with a hook for a hand?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wrote the thing where Will Ferrell came out as that obsessive coach.

Those made me giggle. You used to open for David Cross. Now, are comedians a competitive bunch in the sense that Cross would get pissed at you if you got more laughs than he did?

No. No offense, but it kind of sounds like you have the story already written and you’re kind of hoping for answers you want to hear.

Erm…not at all.

I mean there’s competition among shitty comedians, but the comedians that actually love doing it—it’s not a sense of “I’m counting the laughs I’m getting compared to him.” That’s kind of not how we do it.

Uh, now I know. You recently MC’ed an audience Q&A with The Onion staff. What surprised you about “America’s finest news source?”

How socially awkward they all are. Just, like, not knowing when to start talking and not knowing when to stop. They were awkward, socially, but also very captivating and charming. They’re true comedy nerds. I also never realized it was such a committee thing. Like, even when you write stuff you sort of submit it to the people and then they argue about it, and stuff like that.

What were your impressions of Jim Carrey during your appearance in Man On The Moon? I’m told he stays in character throughout the shoot.

Well, when he would come in it was “hello, it’s Jim,” but for the rest of the day he was Andy [Kauffman]. I heard it was weird at first, but by the time I got on set—I was only in one scene—people we’re kinda like, that’s how it is. In the morning we’d talk, cause we had friends in common, but the rest of the day he was Andy and I didn’t talk to him.

Did you laugh at “Andy” behind his back?

I have so many weird processes myself, that I kind of can’t really judge people on what the fuck is going on with someone else.

Give me an example of some of your proc—

—Can’t articulate them.

[Sighing] Well, you’ve been on Reno 911 a lot. Is there any part of that show that’s scripted?

It’s complete improv. They sort of give you your character, and the situation, and just let you go. I liked doing the D&D character, ’cause we filmed all these extra scenes, and one of my favorites made it onto the DVD. It’s me talking for six minutes, unbroken, about Dungeons & Dragons and Tom Leonard just staring at me and writing down what I’m saying. It’s really bizarre, but it really works. I still play D&D now. Every Wednesday a bunch of friends come over and we’ll play it.

Please tell me costumes are involved.

No costumes.

Do comedians get groupies?

Yeah, but they tend to be kind of sad. If they’re into comedians, it’s like, at least get it up to being with rock stars, you know what I mean?

Give me a good example of the last time you woke up, stared at the thing next to you, and screamed—versus a time when you gave yourself a little pat on the back for her overall hotness.

Put it this way, any woman who’d be excited to wake up next to me is a massive turn off.

Best and worst experience with illegal substances?

My best was my first acid trip on the night Clinton got elected—sitting in a friend’s apartment, and it was full of action figures, and it looked as if they were all on the shelf dancing. The worst time was probably, oh man, probably spring break in college—way too drunk and way too sunburned. Nothing fun. I’ve had worse experiences on alcohol than I ever have on drugs.

Ever over imbibed before a gig?

Whenever I drink too much I kind of just stop caring. Too much booze, for me, makes me not excited to be up there.

You’ve been known to go off on Jay Leno’s comedy in interviews. Ever gotten any feedback from The Tonight Show camp on that?

Why would he even know who I am?

Oh, I definitely think he’d know who you are.

Nah. It’s frustrating when you see someone who’s such a good comedian make those kind of choices, I guess.

Is Leah Remini as much of a hellcat in real life as she comes across on screen?

Um, are we just going to talk about celebrities I’ve met? Because this just seems, I don’t know, kind of boring.

Fine, then. I’ll go for the personal: You’ll be married by the time this hits newsstands. Are you going to have kids?

Nope. Don’t want ’em.

And is the wife in agreement on this?

Nope. [Pauses] But hopefully we’ll come to some sort of compromise.

Uh-huh. Well good luck with that.

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