Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film

by Patton Oswalt

  But there I was, in the balcony, watching my and Brian’s shadows writhing clumsily behind Maynard and Tool as they stutter-stomped through “Hooker with a Penis.” They segued into “Sober” and then Brian came up behind me.

  “Check out the tour T-shirt,” he said, laughing.

  Black tee. An image on the front—grainy, me on the toilet, clutching the toilet paper wad. Scowling at the lens. And around the image, in a circle, was: “Tool Fucked the Shit out of Me at the Palladium and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt.”

  “Wow!” I said. “That’s fantastic! Oh man, he didn’t tell me he was going to do that.” I ran and bought five of them.

  The King of Queens pilot taping went until three a.m. on the twenty-eighth. At one point me, Kevin James, Victor Williams and Larry Romano are all piled onto Doug’s bed, trying to watch a football game on Doug’s big-screen TV. In between takes I lay down on the bed and fell instantly asleep. I dreamed a very prosaic, undreamy dream about being back in my apartment. When they called for the next shot I snapped awake and didn’t know where I was. It was the kind of panic I used to get when I’d wake up after a Norse-warrior night of drinking, only I was stone sober and lying safe on a frilly bed on a soundstage.

  The day before I had been a forty-foot silhouette of a she-male behind Tool at the Palladium. My face was on a T-shirt that extolled rough group sex. Now I was taping the pilot for an eight p.m., Monday night sitcom that would be my main source of employment for the next nine years. It bought me a house. It bought me breathing room and the ability to fill comedy clubs and small theaters. I learned to act, literally, by getting to work with Kevin James every day. He was the most solid TV actor I’ve ever seen since Danny DeVito and, before Danny, Jackie Gleason. Those are rare birds, with the ability to rampage with movie-star bluster inside of a TV-screen playing field.

  And I could not have had a more solid demarcation line between my young, pissed-off “alt comic” years and my mellowing, mainstream acting years. Being a hooker with a penis for Tool the night before my King of Queens pilot taping is my reverse “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” But the lure of television, especially for people outside of it, is a more sinister tractor beam pull than the distant, emerald glow of Oz. Within a year, I’d find out exactly how sinister that pull was, and how warping to a seemingly sane psyche.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Killer Burger and

  the Myth of the Largo

  March 4–20, 1999

  “Hey, long time no see!”

  I’m finishing a set at a Borders bookstore. It’s the Borders that used to be perched above the intersection of La Cienega and Blackburn. As I’m writing this it’s a Men’s Wearhouse. By the time you’re reading this it might be a Chipotle. Welcome to Los Angeles.

  It’s March, 4, 1999. I’m filming episodes of The King of Queens, getting used to being on TV. Just like when I was at MADtv, I’m doing sets ferociously. Almost every night, except for the ones where I huddle in a seat at the New Beverly.

  The Largo is at the peak of its popularity and influence. I do regular Monday night sets there. But I make sure to seek out odder, on-the-fringes rooms. Rooms where you have to work. Like this Borders, where a friend of mine puts on a regular Thursday night show in the upstairs Borders Café. The crowd is ideal if you’re in the mood to work out. Half of them are there to actually see the show; the other half just want to sit and read, and you have to win them over. Oftentimes, the half that was there to see comedy ends up agreeing with the oblivious half. It’s pitiless and perfect.

  I come offstage. Wait, no. There isn’t a stage. I’ve stepped away from the spot they cleared in one corner of the café area, away from the mike and back toward the shelves of books. I judge the set successful because, after one joke, an Asian girl who was reading John Grisham’s The Runaway Jury looked up and halfheartedly smiled at me. And then went back to her book.

  I don’t recognize, at first, the man who walks up to me. He says, “Hey, long time no see!” Brown haired, slightly older than me, average-by-way-of-pleasant-­looking. Solid, Midwestern breeding. Like he’s stepped out of one of those stock photo images you see in magazine ads for dress slacks. “Not since Richmond, right?”

  And then it comes flooding back to me.

  Before we proceed, I’ve got to tell you that I’m not going to name the guy. He doesn’t come off well in this story. And he isn’t a bad guy. Misguided is a better word.

  But for the purposes of this chapter, let’s call him Ted. Ted Richmond. Ted because, well—is there any more average-by-way-of-pleasant name than Ted? And Richmond because I’ve realized that Richmond was the last place I saw him.

  It was back in 1991, just before I moved west. The spring. I was still in college, getting ready to graduate. My senior year of college was an epic struggle for me. I realized, halfway through my junior year, that all I wanted to do with my life was become a stand-up comedian. So my senior year of college was a live-action version of those high school anxiety dreams. You know the ones, where you’re not ready for some huge test, but you’re also vaguely aware of the life you’re living now, and of the knowledge and wisdom you’ve accrued through your life, and how you do not belong back in high school anymore but—you’re trapped! You’re trapped! How did it get like this? Don’t they realize you already graduated?

  Every Wednesday, those last two years of college, I hosted an open mike at a local comedy club, there in my college town. There was a regular circle of comedians I hung out with way more than my college friends. Every weekend I was away, working a gig. I knew what I wanted to do.

  Ted Richmond was a regular at the Wednesday night open mike. And of all the regular comedians on that show, he was far and away my favorite. He had a truly original, bizarre, oblique approach to jokes. Sometimes the punch lines were hidden in the middle. Sometimes the setup was the punch line, in that it was so startling, so confusing, that he’d follow it, masterfully, with everyday observations, to give the audience time to let the crust-shifting, plangent thought sink in. He did okay with audiences but amazing with every other comedian. A true original, I thought, with an unhurried, confident, long-view approach to his art and career.

  “They say we’re going to know the devil by his number, 666,” began one of Ted’s bits. Then he’d say, “Aren’t we going to know him by the fact he’s the only one with a number? What does 666 have to do with it? ‘What’s your number? Six sixty-four? How about you? Six sixty-five? Okay . . .

  “And you? Six six six? Okey-doke. Six six six, come over here for a second.”

  Laconic, weird, playful. Brilliant.

  We were acquaintances. He was always friendly but never particularly close to anyone. A true lovable oddball. I moved west and never heard from him.

  For a short time.

  And then . . .

  Starting in 1994, he’d call me. Always at weird, random hours, when I wasn’t picking up my phone. At first he’d call the number in my apartment. Someone I knew on the East Coast must have given it to him. After I got a cell phone, he began calling that. But, as if he had some eerie sixth sense, never when I was there to answer. Always wanting to talk, yet never once leaving a number at which to return his calls. I think at one point, when I was back visiting the East Coast, I ran into a mutual friend from those open-mike days at my college.

  “Hey, do you keep up with Ted Richmond at all?”

  My East Coast friend said, “Yeah. He lives in New York now, but I see him sometimes.”

  I asked, “Do you have his phone number?”

  “Not on me.”

  I said, “Well, when you see him, tell him to call me and leave a number where I can call him back. He’s left me ten messages over these last few years, and I think he thinks I have his number, but I don’t, and I feel like I’m being rude.”

  “You got it,” said my friend.

  A week later,
on my answering machine, a call from Ted. He left it at three o’clock in the morning, West Coast time. His flat, pleasant, slightly spacey voice was on the tape, like a stoned ghost:

  “Hey, Patton. Ted. Giving you a call. I was told you’ve been trying to call me back. Well, nothing’s stopping you. Give me a call.” Click. Goddamn it.

  And now, here he is. In the flesh.

  “Do you know how many times I wanted to call you back? You never left a number!” I say, shaking my head.

  “I didn’t? I always left messages on your machine.”

  I say, “Yeah, but you’ve got to say what your phone number is. It doesn’t just leave it on the machine, you know? That’s why I couldn’t call you back. I hope you weren’t pissed off.”

  Ted says, “Nah, I figured you were just getting around to it.” In Ted’s mind, a three-year lapse is a perfectly acceptable, on-pace lag for returning a phone call.

  “So what’re you doing in Los Angeles? You move here?”

  Ted smiles. “Thinking of it. Thinking real hard about it. Want to do some stand-up.”

  I say, “Oh, cool! Right now you can pretty much go onstage every night. There are all of these amazing—”

  “Largo.”

  Something in his tone catches me short. His eyes, which were always twinkling with the slightly unhinged genius you see in people like Andy Kaufman or Maria Bamford, have suddenly gone dead. Dead, but still hungry, which doesn’t fit his face. Shark eyes in a teddy bear skull.

  “Well, the Largo’s a great room, but you don’t want to just—”

  Ted cuts me off again. “The Largo. I want to go up at the Largo and do a set and have a TV show. I read about that place. In Rolling Stone. There are TV people there and you go onstage and you get a show.”

  I say, “Hey, whoa. It’s not exactly like that. The room’s really popular, but it’s not like you do one set and suddenly you’re on TV.”

  “Well, you’re on TV. And you do the Largo.”

  Okay, let’s stop here for a second. Because I don’t want you thinking this is a Country Mouse/City Mouse story where I suddenly have to contend with a misinformed yokel who’s putting his misperceptions about show business and Life in the Big City on me, and I have to avoid him and find a way to extract him from my life. I like this guy. And he’s no fool. He is, objectively, one of the more original comedic minds I’ve ever encountered. It’s true that some of the full-goose creative types can be a little . . . shaky, when it comes to quotidian life, but Ted is far from that. And he isn’t like some other friends of mine from back home. Like the high school friend who called me after my single line of dialogue on the “Couch” episode of Seinfeld, demanding I let him live in the guest house of my “mansion” while he started learning to “act for the movies.” When I assured him that I didn’t have a house, that I still lived in an efficiency apartment in Little Armenia, he countered with, “I saw you on TV. You don’t think I have a TV? You’re a millionaire. I saw you on TV.” When I explained that I’d gotten a little over four hundred dollars for my acting services on Seinfeld, he hung up on me and told everyone I still knew back home that I’d turned into a “Hollywood asshole.”

  But Ted isn’t like that. Or so I think. And I am well and truly his fan, and I guess I think I’m his friend, as far as that’s possible with someone like Ted.

  “Look, you don’t want to just go up at the Largo just like that. Let me take you to a few of the smaller rooms. They’re all amazing. I want you to have a feel for how stand-up is out here, and then, yeah, I’ll definitely get you up at the Largo.”

  Ted scowls at me. “I read about that place. You go up and you get a show. And you’re trying to keep me from going on there and you’re already on TV and I don’t have time to do these little rooms.”

  Now I’m starting to doubt myself. Am I being an asshole to him?

  Sixteen days later we’re in the cramped back room of a Hollywood Boulevard restaurant called Killer Burger. There’s a Saturday night open mike hosted by Jeremy Kramer, about whom a better writer than me needs to compose a sprawling, Robert Caro–sized biography. To the alternate comedy scene, he is Johnny Cash, Joey Ramone and Bo Diddley. The three-in-one. The Rosetta stone. Too big for my head, too wild for my pen.

  Anyway.

  So I’ve brought Ted here to do a set. It’s a tiny room that’s gotten a lot of heat. Mainly because of Jeremy. Jeremy does the sort of free-form, fearless, nonlinear humor that Ted does. I figure they’re a perfect match, that ­Jeremy will set the table for him, then Ted can go up, do a set where it doesn’t matter how good or bad he does. What kind of friend would I be if I simply tossed him onto the Largo? In the sixteen days leading up to the Killer Burger show, I’ve learned from him that he’s never even been to the Largo or seen a show there. He read an article, formed a myth and is proceeding as if the myth were gospel.

  Then I find out something else, something even more frustrating and exasperating, while he waits to go on.

  “How long were you living in New York?”

  Ted says, “About a month.”

  “A month in the city? In Manhattan?” I’m confused. “Where did you end up living?”

  Ted says, “Upstate.”

  “Huh.” I think about this. Then: “Where’d you do sets?”

  Ted stares at me. “I didn’t like Manhattan. I didn’t do any sets there. I painted houses upstate.”

  “Was there a club upstate?”

  Ted thinks about this for a second. “I don’t think I’ve done comedy in, um. Um. Eight years.”

  Now it’s my turn to stare. “You haven’t done any stand-up. In eight years.”

  “Nope.” He grins. “There really weren’t any rooms to work out in upstate. And like I said, I hated Manhattan.”

  He hasn’t been onstage in eight fucking years. Holy shit.

  “Why . . . I mean, why are you suddenly wanting to do comedy now?”

  Ted says, confidently, “To go onstage at the Largo. And get a TV show.”

  Ten minutes later, Jeremy brings Ted onstage.

  I really, really, really want to tell you a victorious, Geoffrey Rush–in–Shine tale of victory here. But even though that movie is based on a true story, it’s still a fucking movie. And there’s nothing cinematic about Ted’s set at the Killer Burger that night.

  Jeremy gives him a nice intro. Straight up. “Ladies and gentlemen, from New York, please welcome Ted Richmond.”

  Ted walks up, holds on to the mike stand with both hands. Looks at Jeremy. “I’m from New York State. You made it sound like I’m from New York City. I don’t live there now.”

  Jeremy says, from his seat, “Ladies and gentlemen, from the state of New York but not the city, Ted Richmond.” He’s being playful, but with a solid undercurrent of Let’s not fuck with me, okay?

  Ted glares back at him. “New York state.”

  “I said that,” says Jeremy.

  “Not originally.”

  Jeremy says, “We should move on.”

  Ted keeps staring at Jeremy. The audience is getting uncomfortable.

  What follows is eight minutes of . . . look, someone who didn’t know comedy would call it “hate-fucking a crowd.” But there’s no malice to it. Which makes it even more disturbing. A complete emotional disconnect as he delivers half concepts (“Everyone’s mad that the president is lying to us. But he’s talking to us. And we lie. And we don’t talk to the president”) and apologies before an attempt at humor was ever gambled (“I don’t want to talk about the next thing that’s in my head to talk about, because you won’t want to hear me say it”). Stone-silent crowd. Ted walks off without saying good night. Midsentence. Simply stops talking and walks off the stage.

  I meet him in the front restaurant. I try to be supportive.

  “Old muscles, huh? But they come back, right?”
<
br />   Ted says, “That sucked.”

  “Well, aren’t you glad your first set in eight years wasn’t at the Largo?”

  Ted considers this. “I wouldn’t have done that shit at the Largo. I would’ve done my best stuff and then gotten a TV show. None of those people in there could have given me a TV show.”

  I don’t know what to say. To be honest, I feel like if I open my mouth, say anything, he’ll flat-out kill me.

  Ted turns and walks out of Killer Burger and, as far as I know, off of the planet.

  He says over his shoulder as he heads for the door, “You’re on TV and you won’t let me on. No one will let me on TV.”

  He disappears into the flow of pedestrians on Hollywood Boulevard. A random electron in Los Angeles’s ever-crackling circuit of need and delusion. I never see him again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The End of the Addiction

  Thursday, May 20, 1999,

  the Vista Theatre

  Courtesy of Michael Torgan

  Sherman Torgan

  So now it’s four years, to the day, since I first stepped inside the New Beverly. Stepped out of May sunshine to watch Billy Wilder noir. Billy Wilder—a double dose. Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole. Billy Wilder stuck the needle in. Four years later, George Lucas yanks the ­needle out.

  I see The Phantom Menace. Midnight screening at the Vista Theatre, Wednesday the nineteenth, at Hillhurst where it crazy-collides with Sunset and Hollywood. Gorgeous, old-school, art deco theater with extra-wide aisles, a movie palace interior and a manager—Victor—who often dresses up like characters in the movie they’re showing. Victor is, and will continue to be, a friend. He gets me and two other friends into the midnight screening. I’ve waited since 1983, when I saw Return of the Jedi at the Tysons Corner 8 in Fairfax, Virginia, for another chapter of the Star Wars saga.