Interview with Comedian Steven Wright

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Wright talks Red Sox, suicide by falling satellite debris, 'Boardwalk Empire' and what he has in store for his Borgata return Friday night.

By Jeff Schwachter

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Nov. 3, 2011

Just abstract, bizarre things that I’ve noticed and made into jokes, and some weird songs and, you know, just 80 minutes of stuff I thought up that I thought might be funny — and it is funny … hopefully.

Obviously there’s a lot of stuff in the news that can be made fun of; do you do anything on current news events?

Well I do this one thing about the space program — there’s no more shuttle, there’s no more space program, I can’t believe that they took that letter that I sent them seriously. And then I don’t even remember what I wrote. When that piece of thing was falling out of the sky I said that I was going to try to go outside and try to get hit by that thing and try to commit suicide, but nobody would see it as a suicide though, so I was going to try to take advantage of it.

Did it ever come down? They seemed to just stop talking about it.

You know, I’m not sure.

Now, back in 2007, when you released your second album, you told me that you hoped to maybe reach a new generation of college kids who didn’t know you because it had been 15 years since your last HBO special. Did you succeed in reaching those folks?

Yeah, yeah. There’s some high-school kids and way-younger people in their early 20s who get into it and like leave me Facebook messages, and they weren’t even born when I was going on the Tonight Show. So I still have the older folks coming to the shows, but a nice group of younger folks mixed in too. It’s still mainly older though. Like the people who followed me when I first went on like 30 years ago in 1982 — I mean sometimes I can’t believe that it’s gone on this long.

Time passes quickly.

Yeah. You have no control over it. Sometimes I hear from people, “Hey, I don't want to make you feel weird, but I’ve been following you for like 30 years,” and I tell them I have no control over it.

Watch: Steven Wright's first appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson

You’re definitely a thinker. After thinking for 30 years as a comedian, author, actor, and everything else — what do you think that we’re on this planet for?

I have no idea. I made a short film called One Soldier that was about a guy right after the Civil War. I was the soldier. It’s good, it’s in black and white and its funny and very philosophical and addresses that issue. The guy concludes he doesn’t know why he’s here, so he might as well just enjoy eating a sandwich or going for a walk. I think the reason is so big, if there even is a reason, that we wouldn’t be able to understand the reason. Know what I mean? You can show a four year old a picture and they’re not going to know what happened to make the picture appear there. A 12 year old might have a better handle on the process of the light going into the lens and hitting the film or the digital. So we’re more like the four year old people as far as why we’re here, and maybe eight million years from now, when we’re like 12 year olds, I still think we won’t know. (Pause) Are you taping this?

Yes.

OK good, because sometimes I say things, then I read it, and I think, “That’s not how I said it.”

No I would never do that. In fact I interviewed Stephen Stills yesterday for about an hour and he was so great we put the whole thing up online, verbatim.

Was he a nice guy?

A really nice guy. He even gave me his e-mail so that I could send him info on the Atlantic City Pop Festival, which happened two weeks before Woodstock [in August 1969] but got totally overshadowed by Woodstock. I thought he was there, but he didn’t have any recollection of it and I’m like “Dude, you were on the bill,” so he said to send him some links and he'd check them out, pass it on to Graham, whose the one CSN&Y group member, he says, with a decent memory still intact. I said sure. Anyway, later I found out he wasn't there. Although Crosby, Stills & Nash were on the bill, as well as the official T-shirt, and all the other line-up materials, and were slated to appear, they did not make it. If they did it would have been their first live gig. I think.

Wild. That's interesting.

And the last time I saw you play at the Borgata, you signed my record, I Want a Pony.

Do you have the album or the CD?

Album.

Cool. People come up with that sometimes.

You signed it, “Hi, forever!” Hilarious. Every time I look at it.

Yeah, I thought of some things to write on the over the years. It’s cool to see the album show up now and then over the years. Albums have more character. Old things are more interesting.

There’s an album resurgence these days.

Right, Jimmy Fallon’s always holding up a full album.

Letterman too, at least for a while. I was psyched about that. Growing up in Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, there used to be 15 or 20 great record stores around. Nuggets in Coolidge Corner.

There was one, um, Comic Book Records? 

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