PAula Poundstone may have originally coined “crowd work”—as the process of turning conversations with members of an audience into comedy is known today—but she still hates the term. “If I say ‘Hello’ to someone while walking down the street, is it street work?” she asks.
In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Poundstone talks about his unexpected path to becoming a comedy icon in the 1980s and ’90s, and how nearly everything was turned upside down after his arrest in 2001. Carson explains how her first brush with “cancel the culture” made her think about second chances and more.
About five years ago, Poundstone finally decided it was time to do what other comedians do and start a podcast. She called it No One Listens to Paula Poundstone, and she’s still not sure how many people actually listen.
“The podcasting world is very similar to the economy as a whole. “There’s the 1 percent and then there’s the rest of us who are still wrestling with whether we should do it or not,” he said. “Unfortunately I fall into the second category.”
Poundstone explains that the only reason he kept doing the show after 250 episodes was because he loved hearing from the audience. to do Have your podcast help them get through the day. “It’s not that I need someone else to suffer in order to feel good,” he jokes, “but I think we’ve all been suffering these past years, and it’s so precious to me to hear that I’ve somehow lightened someone else’s burden. Me.”
So, is that why he got into comedy?
“I love the laughter response,” she says. “People often talk about who they think is funny and who they think isn’t funny. And I try to think to myself, boy, that as many people as possible are funny. Because laughing is so much fun.”
Poundstone still remembers a sentence from his kindergarten teacher’s summary letter when he was growing up outside of Boston in the mid-1960s: “I liked most of Paula’s witty comments about our activities.”
“So that was something I liked early on,” she says, explaining that she thought she could become a comedy actress precisely because when she set out in the late ’70s there were very few female stand-up comics on the scene. “Before I started stand-up—and maybe after—my inspirations were Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball and Mary Tyler Moore, Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner, you get the idea. And I missed it by a country mile.
Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. You can listen to the whole thing here Subscribe to The Last Laugh Open Apple Podcasts, spotify, Google, sewing machine, Amazon Musicor wherever you get your podcasts and be the first to hear about new episodes as they air every Tuesday.
Your 1990 HBO special Cats, Cops and Things is the culmination of this kind of “crowd work.” It’s still among the best stand-up shows of all time I’ve seen. Did you feel how special you were then?
No. When we went to do this, I was at a management firm at the time that had a relationship with HBO. They come to me and say, “HBO wants to give you a special watch.” This is great, this is very exciting. Then they said, “They don’t want you to talk to the audience.” And I actually said – and I have to trust my young self for that – “Then why are they hiring me?” Because Hollywood has a long history of “We’re going to hire this person and ask them not to do what they did”. And I said, well, that doesn’t sound like a good idea. And they said the reason you couldn’t do that was because we couldn’t hear the audience talking. Now you have to keep in mind, that was a long time ago and therefore technology has changed. And it’s not just a matter of other people in the room hearing them, it’s a matter of television viewers hearing them too. So I went to the mat and said, “If I can’t do what I’m doing, there’s no point in doing it.” So they hung microphones from the ceiling all over this room. And they had a guy with a boom mic to get his ass to the person I was talking to. I would specify who I would talk to, but I wouldn’t start getting them talking until the microphone was there.
You really need to be aware and present for this to work. Sounds hard.
It’s done! And apparently, from the responses from the HBO folks under my management at the time, I’m assuming this hasn’t really been done before. So we did all this preparation and expense to allow me to do what I want and do this thing that I really enjoy doing. So I go on stage the night of the show, and I think it went something like this, someone kind of responded to something I said and I turned in that direction and I said, “What do you guys do? to live?” And she says she’s a lawyer. And further to my left a lady said, “Ahhh!” And everyone turned to her – and now I think I’ve completely forgotten about the guy with the microphone – and I turned to that lady and said, “What do you dislike about lawyers?” And she was cautious, she wasn’t going to say it and I pushed her, I pushed in. That’s it.
Thank God you did.
He didn’t want to say it and eventually said that his mother had fallen in a service garage and ripped her face off on an oil rack. And when I heard those words, all I could think of – my answer was purely based on the fact that I had HBO get me to do it, and now I’ve come up with a very likely story that the show will never do. save from. Because this is not a comedy story. This is a tragic, sad, scary story. He didn’t say that my mother was injured, he said, “My mother tore her face on the oil rack.” And I imagine the HBO employees sitting in the truck with the screens with different camera angles getting very angry with me. And somehow, there is something in that chemistry, in that magic, that I can’t control, that I can’t replicate, that I can’t reproduce, that I can’t do with all the genius engineers in the world. There was something about my reaction and what that woman said that we all found very funny at that moment. And people always come up to me and say, “Are you going to do the oil rack thing tonight?” And I’ll go, I don’t think so, no.
I’m not sure this will work.
Yeah, because that’s the other thing, people sometimes come up to me after shows and wonder if the people I’m talking to are some kind of trap. People had this idea because it became such a funny and weird pillar of the show that it was pre-planned. And I always tell people that a few things have to be set up for this, and probably the most repulsive for me is the “e-word” effort. No, it is not installed.
I’m sure that’s not your favorite thing to talk about, but I want to touch on one of the worst moments of your career. arrested in 2001 For this thing called “putting children in danger”. Did you consider quitting comedy at that time? Was it difficult to continue after that?
Was it difficult to continue? Yes. And have I considered quitting? I think so. I mean, I don’t think I thought I’d quit. I guess I thought I couldn’t do it anymore.
They may no longer allow you to do this.
Right, absolutely. And I’m still not responsible for it. I am not responsible for who comes to see me. All I can do is get up every day and try to do better. I cannot turn back time. And frankly, if I could, I would. I would do different things.
“There are times when I feel like there are people doing things that will bring us all down. And if they use this ‘second chance’ to continue this orbit, that’s a big problem.”
— Paula Poundstone
All of this happened long before the current talk about “canceling culture”. I wonder if your own experience has caused you to think differently about these issues and whether people deserve a second chance to come back, save themselves, and move on.
Yes, I think everyone deserves a second chance. And it’s not that hard to give it to them. A second chance at what is a good question.
What does this mean for you?
There are times when I feel like there are people doing things that will bring us all down. And if they use this “second chance” to continue this orbit, that’s a big problem.
I think you definitely got a second chance and managed to pursue a really successful comedy career in many ways. How did you want to use that second chance?
This will sound really stupid and ridiculous, but long ago, amid feelings of guilt, shame, and sadness, I realized that I had children to raise if I hadn’t been drinking at all. And getting up every day and struggling with these feelings wasn’t going to get the job done. And that’s why my head and heart don’t go that way every now and then. But I said to myself very consciously that I should get up every day and try to make the world better. Both for my children and somehow for the whole. And whenever I find myself being dragged into that other thought process, I replace it with this one. And I’m not talking about astronomical changes. I did not heal the sick and did not raise the dead. I’m just talking about it, whatever I can do, I make a very conscious effort to do it. And I think I’ve mostly managed to do that.
That’s very admirable, because as you say you see a lot of cases where people have this kind of thing and then dig it up the other way. “Okay, don’t you want me? I’ll double down on maintaining this behavior.
Well, if anyone listening is in doubt about quitting the devil drink, I’m not the first to say it, but life is much easier overall. There are so many myths about alcohol, so many songs, so many movies, so many ideas about what alcohol does to you. And the answer is, it does nothing. It makes everything worse. If you have a problem today and you decide to drink on it, I can assure you that the problem will be much greater once you stop drinking. And by the way, I also had a drinking mentality back then, “Son, it’s a great day, what a happy day, I should have a drink!” Or “Oh my God, I’m depressed, I need a drink!” Or, you know, “I really don’t feel anything today, I should have a drink.” So when you realize that the answer to everything is “I need to have a drink”, you’re probably in pretty dangerous territory.
When you stopped drinking, what effect did it have on your ability to do comedy? Has being on stage changed anything for you?
Oh, I’m so much better, so much better. At one point I feared that I was a better ping pong player while drunk. But looking back, I don’t think that was true.
Now listen to the episode and Subscribe to Last Smile Open Apple Podcasts, spotify, Google, sewing machine, Amazon Musicor wherever you get your podcasts and be the first to hear about new episodes as they air every Tuesday.