Steven Wright, Part II
May 6, 2007

Here’s the second half of my conversation with the inimitable Steven Wright (the first part went up on April 23). The occasion of our chat was the release of Wright’s latest DVD, When The Leaves Blow Away (Image, $14.98 srp), which was released a couple of weeks back.

VB: I’m seeing a lot of shorts on cable these days—on Showtime, The Movie Channel, places like that. Hey, it beats 10, 15 years ago when anyone who thought they were funny could appear on a cable TV show.
WRIGHT: Stand-up really peaked in the late 80s. Back then, there were two or three clubs in each city and then it was on cable all over the place
VB: Are you a big DVD fan?
WRIGHT: Not so much DVD as I am into checking out what’s on television. I watch mostly movies. I like to see what’s on the few channels that I like to watch. IFC, A&E and TCM are the ones I like the most. If I’m flipping through the channels and I see a stand-up, I might watch it for a while.
VB: Back to today’s callow youth, I bet that some younger audiences know you from your role as “Stan Spielberg” in the Albert Brooks movie The Muse. How did that come about?
WRIGHT: It was amazing to work with Albert Brooks—I’ve always loved his films. I went in and read for that one. It was really cast for a guy in his 60s or 70s, but I went in anyway and Albert Brooks really liked it. I remember his line more than my lines: He says to me ‘You’re Mr. Spielberg?’
VB: Do you audition for a lot of films? You’ve certainly appeared in a number of them.
WRIGHT: I did a lot of auditioning when I lived out here in the Nineties. Sometimes, they’d want me in the movies without even having me come in and read, but most of the time I would audition, I would rarely get the part. I’m in like 20 movies but most of the things I auditioned for, I didn’t get.
VB: Why’d you leave L.A.?
WRIGHT: The United States is so huge that it’s like seven countries all named one country. Think of how different Colorado is to Florida, or Boston to San Diego. SO I’m living in L.A. and it’s like I’m living in another country. I’m very affected by what I see--the palm trees and architecture and same weather. I never really liked living in L.A. because I never felt at home there so I said, ‘I’m gonna go back to Massachusetts—I wanna go home to where I started.’ It was like New England was in my gut.

Posted by Laurence Lerman on May 6, 2007 | Comments (0)