Interview Paul F. Tompkins

Self-described “Famous Comedian” Paul F. Tompkins has spent over 20 years on the comedy scene, and in that time, he has worn many hats. (Blatant photo tie-in intended). Tompkins has appeared in a plethora of TV shows, including Tenacious D and Mr. Show With Bob And David, comedy specials on HBO and Comedy Central, and currently hosts what is easily the best-named podcast in show business: The Pod F. Tompkast. He spoke with The A.V. Club about his favorite television blowhards, the future of TV sitcoms, and the enigmatic pimp known as Ice-T. 

The A.V. Club: There’s something about your demeanor that seems “old-timey.” Do you get that a lot?

Paul F. Tompkins: Well, it’s something people bring up to me, presumably because I like to wear suits and ties, and there are certain things that people attribute to me because of it. Like that I do not care about the modern world, and that is simply not true. I like wood and metal. But I like my laptop and my plasma-screen TV, also; I do not yearn for a time when those do not exist. I am very glad that they do. I mean, I think of it as: I just like nice things.

AVC: The mustache helps, I think.

PFT: For me, when I was a kid and I pictured myself as an adult, I had a mustache. That was “being a grown-up.” I mean, I was born in 1968, so I came of age when mustaches were a thing, and then that kind of went away, and then it’s kind of had a resurgence. But [a mustache] is a very specific thing, and I didn’t know if I could pull it off, and then I finally got old enough where I was like, “I can do this if I want.” So, a couple years ago I had a full beard, and I shaved the beard and left the mustache, and it just kind of made sense on my face. I looked down and thought, you know, I guess I have enough of an upper lip that it didn’t look out of place on me. And my wife likes it, and that’s pretty much all I need, is for the two of us to both be on board.

AVC: So, are you saying that you didn’t actually become an adult until a couple years ago?

PFT: [Laughs.] I think I’m still on my way. The thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older—I can’t speak to everybody, but a lot of us are in an ongoing state of evolution, and you’re constantly discovering who you are and how life works. It’s a never-ending process, because each new year brings with it new challenges and new discoveries, and I have grown to embrace that rather than fear it.

AVC: You also speak eloquently. That could be construed as old-timey.

PFT: I have a pretty good vocabulary, I guess, and I think that’s what people notice, and what they are perhaps referring to. I like words and the usage of words. I like the specificity of words. That, to me, is a good tool to have. In my writing, when I realize, “Oh, there’s a perfect word for this that will enhance the humor of the story,” I take great pleasure in that. I’ve enjoyed wordplay since I was a kid; just the discovering of new words was always a big thing for me, and that’s certainly something that I’ve carried into adulthood. But people accuse me of using old-fashioned language, and that’s just not true: These words are all still very much with us. These are not archaic words that you have to run to the dictionary to use, it’s just that nobody uses them in casual conversation, but I’m not in a casual conversation, I’m on a stage with lights on me.

AVC: Your stage persona sometimes comes off as a little self-important or condescending. Do you think that’s true?

PFT: No, not at all, actually.

AVC: Sarcastic?

PFT: Sarcastic I will absolutely cop to. What about our old friend “sardonic?”

AVC: Yes. That speaks to the notion that people are lucky to be seeing you. That, “You’re welcome, for this,” feeling.

PFT: That kind of thing is so hilarious to me. The idea of presenting myself as if I am a treat for people to enjoy, and how lucky they are. That kind of stuff has always made me laugh.

AVC: Where does that come from?

PFT: If anything, I think it comes from feeling the opposite. From deep insecurities about everything.

AVC: Do you remember when you realized that kind of humor existed?

PFT: That’s a good question, because I know that was a thing that I was aware of, like the trope of the comedically self-satisfied guy. The first thing that comes to mind is Martin Mull on Fernwood 2 Night. And there were sitcoms with someone like that, like a Herb Tarlek from WKRP In Cincinnati... Frank Burns or Major Winchester, on M*A*S*H.

AVC: You were recently called in as a special guest on Wits, with John Moe, here in St. Paul. Do you enjoy the notion of being considered a “wit?”

PFT: I’m satisfied with that. And I would certainly be more satisfied with that than, you know, whatever the opposite of a “wit” is...

AVC: A dullard?

PFT: Yes, I’d much rather be a wit than a dullard.

AVC: What kind of person comes to mind when you hear the term “wit?”

PFT: Well, unfortunately, I think of the Algonquin Round Table, and I say unfortunately because it seems very tedious to me. I just see them all sitting around a table getting drunk and trying to top each other with their little one-liners, and I just think—God, how tiresome they must have been! If you were somebody else at the Algonquin Hotel at the time, you’d just be like, “Oh, we had to pick tonight to come here. I’m supposed to propose to my girlfriend tonight, and those drunk assholes won’t shut up.”

But yeah, [when I was on Wits] I had just gotten into Australia that day, and an hour later I’m on the phone with those guys. Having done this over half of my life, it’s moments like that which are still exciting to me, to be in show business and to have been doing something like that. That’s really neat.

AVC: Besides your stand-up work, you’ve worked on a disparate variety of TV shows. Has that been satisfying?

PFT: Well, it took me a long time to figure out who I was, as a person, which of course informed who I was as a performer. As things came along, I tried them, and some were more successful than others. I did The Daily Show thing back in the Craig Kilborn days—you know, just me, no audience, in a studio, direct to camera—and they weren’t that great. And then I did the first 10 episodes of Real Time With Bill Maher, and that was not that great, but a little bit better. It was something I tried, outside of my comfort zone, doing topical material like that. And then Best Week Ever was just a commentating-on-pop-culture-type thing, which I feel like I got really good at, and added something to it. Other than just sarcasm, that is, to talk about the stuff that we’re all aware of—that is absolutely inconsequential—but to keep some commentary in there, as to what the topic means in a larger sense. Like, okay: famous people. Why is this worthy of comment?

And then, through it all, my stand-up has been changing, too. It went from very cold, distanced jokes, to being more conversational, to where I am now, which is storytelling—very personal, and very much about me and my life and my point of view. And I think I will continue to evolve.

AVC: Are you excited about where comedy is now, as a craft?

PFT: I’m very excited about where we are right now and where we are headed. I think comedians now have the opportunity to control more of their own careers. Now with social media and so forth, they can create their own ways of booking shows and finding their audiences. You know, there’s not so much shoe leather as there used to be—you maybe don’t have to travel as much or as frequently in order to reach people, so the quality of the shows can be higher. You still gotta pay your dues; you still gotta go up in front of people who don’t know who you are and win them over. But at least you can find people from home as well as going out on the road, with podcasts, and with albums being easier to record and distribute. Podcasts especially, I think, are an opportunity for creative people to express themselves in a way that they weren’t able to before, and you really can do whatever you want. For my podcast, I wanted to do all the things I enjoy doing in a show: a bit of standup and a bit of sketch, and a conversation, stream of consciousness—all that stuff.

AVC: When you joined the cast of Mr. Show With Bob And David, you already had a solid stand-up career in Philly, but you were only 27 and you had only recently moved to L.A. Did Mr. Show shape you, as a comedian?

PFT: I would say that experience definitely shaped me, in a number of ways. It made me a better comedian all around. It changed my approach to writing. And I got to do warm-up for those live tapings of Mr. Show, so I learned a lot about my improv skills. I would come out before the show was about to start and joke around with the audience for 5 to 10 minutes, and then again while sets were being changed—kill time to keep the audience’s energy up. But it was a unique situation, because there were a lot of the same people coming back to these shows, night after night, so I couldn’t repeat material. I mean, I could see their faces! Some of these people came to every show. So I just had to be funny in the moment, off the top of my head.

AVC: Are you naturally comfortable onstage, or do you get nervous?

PFT: I have nerves, and once I get out there and start, I’m fine. There’s that thing that takes over that’s like, “It’s gonna be okay, because it has to be okay.” Then I’m relaxed—or as relaxed as you can be onstage, because you have to be in control, and be aware of what’s going on around you, read the room, and adjust the energy accordingly.

AVC: Assumedly, you drank to calm your nerves back when you did Driven To Drink for HBO?

PFT: Oh yes, I used to drink a lot more than I do now. And I used to drink in the way that many performers do, which is to medicate myself, to calm my anxiety. And now that I have less anxiety—I’m not anxiety-free by any means—but now when I’m anxious, I think about why I am anxious, and try to figure out how not to be anxious instead of saying, “Oh, why don’t I get blind drunk? That ought to do it.”

AVC: How has comedy changed since you started in the ’80s?

PFT: Man oh man, that’s a lot of time to encompass. When I started, the predominant comedy was standing in front of a brick wall with the sleeves of your blazer pushed up. That was the trend at the time, the very observational, Seinfeldian model. And then when I moved to Los Angles, roughly 10 years later, that was the beginning of what people called “alternative comedy,” where it was more conversational; it was less hard-punch-line oriented. Now, the “alternative” has been absorbed into the mainstream, and comedy is just comedy, and that “alternative” label means less than it used to. And I think, as it should be, there are a lot of different styles of stand-up. I don’t think that anyone is more pure than another, and I think that’s the danger of stand-up, is that humor is a subjective thing, yet there are comedians that say, “This is the way you do comedy, and that person’s not really doing comedy, but I am doing comedy.”

Audiences think that, too. I was doing a show at the Aspen Comedy Festival—and I try not to read reviews, but people are kind enough to direct you to it, and it’s such a strange thing to see someone reviewing comedy by saying something like, “There weren’t any surprises in it.” It’s like, well, this is what I do. I’m telling stories from my life, so what do you mean, there’s no surprises in terms of the kind of comedy you expected, or that you already know all these stories of my own life? You already knew that these things would happen to me? [Laughs.] It’s like, I’m sorry I didn’t blow your mind, but I’m not really trying to blow anyone’s mind, here. I’m just trying to entertain people, that’s all.

Another reason I don’t like to read reviews is: I don’t like getting defensive.

AVC: That impulse to entertain, some comedians say it comes from getting defensive. Trying to defend oneself. Do you find that to be true?

PFT: I think when I started, like most people, I had a burning desire for attention, for validation, like, “I need to be putting myself in front of you in this way. I need you to tell me I exist, I am valid, I’m not crazy for thinking this way.” You need to get up in front of people, and the desire to entertain is secondary. That’s being honest. But for me, as I’ve matured as a person, it’s less about the validation from outside sources, and it’s more about—this is a fun way for me to earn a living. And it’s fun to make a connection with an audience. It’s the same impulse but deepened, and grown-up.

AVC: If you couldn’t do comedy any more, what would you do for a living?

PFT: I can’t imagine. If I were to do anything other than this, I think I would probably have some convenience store by the beach or something—something that would allow me to go to the beach every day. If I weren’t performing, the only acceptable alternative, for me, would be something like that.

AVC: Fans of both you and P.T. Anderson will recognize your small roles in Magnolia and There Will Be Blood. How did that come about?

PFT: [P.T. Anderson] was a big fan of Aimee Mann and Michael Penn, so he was hanging around the night club—what was a night club, back in the day—Largo. So when Largo started having comedy shows, too, all the comedians and musicians would perform on one another’s shows, and would be interacting with one another, and he put a few Largo people in Magnolia—Patton Oswalt is also in it. My voice is still in it, but you don’t see me, so [Anderson] stuck me in There Will Be Blood, to make it up to me.

AVC: Would you like to be in more serious films?

PFT: Not so much any more. When I was younger, I really wanted that, but I’ve worked on enough films to know how long and involved the process is—even the single-camera-style of shooting TV now, for me, is not as enjoyable as being in front of an audience.

AVC: You love to hear the laughter.

PFT: Yeah, and the immediacy. Everything goes faster, and it’s just more exciting.

AVC: Do you miss the era of studio audiences?

PFT: Yeah, I got to do a sitcom like that for a year. It did not last, but it was so much fun. You spend most of the week working with the cast members, and you become this tight-knit little family, and that’s a really a great experience. And then that Friday you do the show in front of an audience, and that’s your one long day. And it’s so much fun and so civilized. I would love, love, love to do that again.

AVC: Do you think that style of TV will come back?

PFT: Oh, it’ll come back. Show business is very cyclical, and it’ll be back, and probably soon.

AVC: You do a pretty great impression of Ice-T. In studying his voice, have you gained insights as to why he is the way he is?

PFT: [Laughs.] First of all, I have not “studied” his voice. He’s a character for sure, and I can’t imagine what his life is like, day-to-day. He’s this gangster pimp, but he plays a cop on TV. For like a million years. I don’t even know if he puts out albums anymore, or if he’ll ever return to music, or what. He’s almost like a mythological character, and he really makes me laugh.

AVC: Have you met him?

PFT: No.

AVC: Do you want to?

PFT: No. That would be awkward, regardless if he knows that I do his voice. It would be awkward for anyone.

Paul F. Tompkins will be appearing at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis on Saturday, May 14.