Paula Poundstone has been delighting audiences for decades with her quick wit and improvisational style.
In the early ‘80s she left her home in Boston to travel cross-country on a Greyhound bus, stopping along the way at open mics until she landed in San Francisco where she honed her comedy skills.
Robin Williams caught her act in 1984, encouraged her to move to Los Angeles and brought her to Saturday Night Live when he hosted. Her career took off with appearances on talk shows including HBO comedy specials, as a panelist on NPR’s weekly news quiz show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and recurring guest on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. During the 1992 presidential election, she did commentary for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
In 1989, she won the American Comedy Award for Best Female Stand-Up Comic. In 1992, she wrote and starred in the HBO special Cats, Cops and Stuff and won a Cable ACE Award, making her the first woman to win the ACE for Best Standup Comedy Special.
Her current podcast, Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone, has earned a loyal following with fans sometimes showing up at her appearances wearing podcast swag.
Poundstone is the author of the books There Is Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say (2006), The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness (2017) and numerous articles for the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly and other publications.
Her present tour arrives at The Paramount in Huntington on Aug. 9.
Have you spent much time on Long Island?
I’ve been there a number of times, but I don’t get to spend much time anywhere while touring. Because I do one-nighters, I arrive after dark and leave before it’s light. I mostly live a sedentary life of sitting in a car or hotel. The part where I get to tell my little jokes onstage is absolutely thrilling and I love doing a meet and greet after the show.
Don’t you work the audience into your show?
The audience is the best part. They’re varied and interesting. I talk to the audience, to individuals. I do the time-honored questions, like what you do for a living. This way, little biographies of audience members emerge and I use that to set my sails. This automatically makes every show different. It’s a little bit like Willy Wonka’s waterfall turning into chocolate.
How did you learn to ad-lib so easily?
There’s this ridiculous phrase that’s been picked up by comics in recent years and they’ll say, “Oh, you do crowd work.” What does that even mean?! It’s as if I do some fancy thing. It’s conversation! We do it all the time! People talk to people and our conversations are riddled oftentimes with structure: “How are you? I’m fine.” Then you talk to somebody for two seconds more even after they say they’re fine and it turns out they’re not so fine. So, part of stand-up comedy is structure and part of it for me is just talking to people.
When you’re organizing a stand-up routine do you have a particular method?
Not a good one. I have 40-some years of material rattling around in my head. Some of it’s probably gone forever now because I don’t really write things down in great detail any longer. Usually what I do is I carry a pointless notebook with me and before I go on, I try to establish in my head where I’m gonna start. Once I start, one thing leads to another. Then what happens when I’m talking to somebody, and this is a problem socially, everything that gets said reminds me of yet one more thing I literally feel I must say. Socially no one’s really happy with that, but onstage it works pretty well.
Are there subjects that are taboo?
I think currently about the place we are politically. I watch the news and listen to podcasts, so that’s on my mind. There are times when I’m more sort of strict with myself and I feel like we’re drowning in politics right now so perhaps best to stay away from that. In the last year, I have been besieged by pet illnesses and expensive veterinarian expenses, so they come up, but hopefully in a funny way. Where I am in my life comes into what I talk about when I’m in front of the crowd.
Do you have rescue dogs?
I have two big dogs now. One is part German shepherd and part golden retriever. The other one is part golden retriever and part Newfoundland. I think they both high paw when I leave the room, they both clap their paw pads together in solidarity over just making me poor. My old dog has congenital heart disease and then my young dog a year ago tore her ACL [anterior cruciate ligament].
You’re very fashionable. Would you say that your style is an homage to Annie Hall?
Definitely! I happened to be in a Beverly Hills store one day and they had a green tie with cream-color polka dots on it. I bought that tie and wore it in a number of combinations, but I don’t think I would have thought of it were it not for Annie Hall and Lucy. In the old I Love Lucy episodes, she casually wore a necktie. I stumbled on that tie during a time when there were great tie fabrics out. I was working with this wardrobe person to help me make a cover for my performance CD and I thought I would like to dress like a very stylized Minuteman look. So, we were at a costume rental place, and I told her I would like a zoot suit. We found one and she tailored it to me. I liked it so I mostly wear zoot suits now. Between she and I, I have been designing my own clothes for years now.
In a routine, you commented about what a terrible actress Daryl Hannah is. Did you ever hear from her about that?
I do believe that a valuable comic keeps the powerful in check. I was young when I did my Daryl Hannah jokes and looking back, I wonder why I felt it was necessary to criticize her. I liked the popular book, The Clan of the Cave Bear, and when they made the movie, I couldn’t believe she was cast in the starring role. She went on to play a robot, the fish, and a missing link. At a rally for presidential candidate Bill Clinton, backstage at one point it was me, Clinton, and I believe Daryl Hannah was standing behind me, but I’m not certain. Anyway, if it was her, she handled herself very well because she didn’t say anything.
Do you still think you have the best job in the world?
Oh, I know I do. Before Covid hit I might have complained about travel, but after Covid you could put me in the overhead compartment and I wouldn’t care. I’m just so happy to be with my audience. I believe people need to laugh and I would love it if they came out to my show, a place where they could find laughter, rejuvenation and a sense of being a human being. That opportunity to laugh and feel human connection needs to be prioritized right now.
